A Review of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe - by Stephen Lendman

Ilan Pappe is a Jewish Israeli historian teaching at Haifa University, is an expert on Israel and Zionism and the Palestinians' right of return to their homeland, is considered "an honourable academic with integrity and conscience," and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Council for Palestinian Restitution and Repatriation (CPRR), an organization declaring that "every Palestinian has a legitimate, individual right to return to his or her original home and to absolute restitution of his or her property."

Dr. Pappe is also one of Israel's "new historians" whose scholarship and writings are based on access to material now available from British Mandate period and Israeli archives that provide the most accurate and authentic documented history of Israel before and after it became a state and which now serve to debunk the myths about the years leading up to the Jewish States' founding and those following it to this day.

Pappe has also authored, contributed to or edited nine books, the latest being the one this review covers in detail so readers will know about its extraordinary and shocking content, unknown to most in the West and in Israel, and hopefully will encourage them to get the book and learn in detail what Pappe documented proving from official records how the Israeli state came into being on lands forcibly seized from its Palestinian inhabitants who'd lived on it for hundreds of years and in the 1940s and thereafter were ethnically cleansed and mercilessly slaughtered so their homeland would be one for Jews alone.

The shameful result is that Palestinians then and today have almost no rights including being able to live in peace and security on their own land in their own state that no longer exists. Those who survived the cleansing and slaughter either live in Israel as unwanted Arab citizens with few rights or in the Occupied Palestinians Territories (OPT) where their lives are suspended in limbo in a country occupied by an oppressive foreign army subjecting them to daily institutionalized and codified racism and persecution. They have no power over their daily lives and live in a constant state of fear with good reason. They face economic strangulation; collective punishment for any reason; loss of free movement; enclosures by separation walls, electric fences and border closings; regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, loss of their homes by bulldozings and crops and orchards by wanton destruction; arrest without cause and routine subjection to torture while in custody.

They're targeted for extra-judicial assassination; taxed punitively and denied basic services essential to life and well-being including health care, education, employment and even enough food and water at the whim of Israeli authorities in a deliberate effort to destroy their will to resist and eliminate those who won't by expulsion or extermination. Palestinians have no power to end these unconscionable abuses and crimes against humanity or receive any redress for them in Israeli or world courts.

How can they as Muslims in a racist Jewish state where Israelis oppressive them with impunity, the US supports and finances it and provides the Jewish state with the most modern and destructive weapons of war, and the West and most Arab states are indifferent preferring to ally with Israel and the US and feeling writing off Palestinians is a price worth paying for it.

Pappe tells the incredible story of how it all began in 12 chapters with a short epilogue plus 18 graphic pictures needing no explanation. He calls his book his "J'Accuse against the politicians who devised, and the generals who perpetrated, the ethnic cleansing" and names the names of the guilty, the villages and urban areas destroyed and the cruelest kinds of crimes committed against defenseless people who only wanted to live in peace on their own land and were willing to do it with Jews as neighbors but not as oppressors. This review covers as much of the book as possible so readers will know what Israeli authorities successfully suppressed for decades that courageously Ilan Pappe has now revealed in a book all people of conscience should read and add their voices to others protesting this long-festering injustice against a defenseless people fighting for their rights and existence against overwhelming odds.

Readers should also know about several other authors Pappe mentions who successfully wrote about the origins of Zionism as the ideological cause of the ethnic cleansing in the 1940s and thereafter. He especially cites the work of Nur Masalha and two of his important books - Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882 - 1948 and The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. Readers are encouraged to explore this important subject further with books like these and others. How else can we know the truth vital to get out and be understood for there to be any hope for redress.

The Beginning - The Initial Planning of the Ethnic Cleansing to Follow

In his preface, Pappe writes about the "Red House" in Tel-Aviv that became the headquarters of the Hagana, the dominant Zionist underground paramilitary militia during the British Mandate period in Palestine between 1920 and 1948 when the Jewish state came into being. He also quotes David Ben-Gurion who met with leading Zionists and young Jewish military officers on March 10, 1948 to finalize their plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine that unfolded in the months ahead including "large-scale intimidation (that was deadly serious); laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centres; setting fire to homes, properties and goods; expulsion; demolition; and finally, planting mines among the rubble to prevent any of the expelled inhabitants from returning.

The final master plan was called Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew) following plans A, B, and C preceding it. It was unleashed savagely and without mercy and complied with what David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister after it became a state, said in June, 1938 to the Jewish Agency Executive and never wavered from later: "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." That transfer following Plan Dalet included forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of unwanted Palestinian Arabs in urban and rural areas and the mass slaughter of many of them while it was ongoing. The goal was simple and straightforward - the creation of an exclusive Jewish state without an Arab presence by any means including mass-murder.

Once begun, the whole ugly business took six months to complete, it expelled or killed about 800,000 people, and it destroyed 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. This action was a clear case of ethnic cleansing that international law today calls a crime against humanity and that Nazis at Nuremberg found guilty of this crime were hanged. So far neither international or any other law ever laid a glove on any Israeli from that time till now even though we know the names of the guilty planners then and those in charge of carrying it out to brutal completion that included cold-blooded murder, rapes, other atrocities and massacres of defenseless people without mercy. Their crimes were suppressed and expunged from official accounts as Israeli historiograhy cooked up the myth that Palestinians left voluntarily fearing harm from invading Arab armies. It was all a lie Palestinians call the Nakba - the catastrophe or disaster.

Even before the British Mandate ended with them in charge of law and order, Jewish forces completed the expulsion of about 250,000 Palestinians the Brits did nothing to stop. It continued unabated until completed even after neighboring Arab states sent small, ill-equipped forces into Palestine that were no match for a superior, well-armed Israeli military that easily won the day.

Ethnic Cleansing Defined

Pappe explains that ethnic cleansing is well-defined today in international law that calls it a crime against humanity. He cites several definitions including from the Hutchinson encyclopedia saying it's expulsion by force to homogenize the population and the US State Department agreeing and adding its essence is to eradicate a region's history. The UN as well uses a similar definition discussed in 1993 when the UN's Council for Human Rights (UNHCR) used this characterization to link a state's or regime's desire to impost ethnic rule on a mixed area through expulsion and other violent means including separating men and women, detention of men, explosion of houses and repopulating remaining houses in an area with another ethnic group.

In 1948, Israel's Plan D cleansed Palestine according to the UN definition that included cold-blooded massacres and targeted assassinations that clearly were crimes against humanity that also included ones of war during the short-term "war of liberation." Later the people expelled and crimes committed against them were expunged from the country's official history and erased from its collective memory leaving it to a few courageous historians to resurrect it for those wanting the truth. Ilan Pappe is one such man who's done it extremely well in this valuable book sure to get no mainstream exposure in Israel, the US or the West overall.

Zionism's Ideological Roots

Pappe traces the beginnings of Zionism back to the late 1880s in Central and Eastern Europe "as a national revival movement, prompted by the growing pressure on Jews in those regions to assimilate totally or risk continuing persecution." Founded by Theodor Herzl, the movement became and is international in scope supporting a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel, or Eretz Israel even though early on many in the movement were ambivalent about its location. That changed following Herzl's death in 1904 when it was decided the goal was to colonize Palestine because of its biblical connection that happened to be land occupied inappropriately by "strangers" meaning everyone not Jewish who had no right to be there.

So the myth was created of "a land without people for a people without a land" even though this "empty land" had a flourishing Palestinian Arab population that included a few Jews. Zionist leaders wanted to completely dispossess the indigenous Arab population and reestablish the ancient land of Eretz Israel as a Jewish state for Jews alone. They were aided in their cause by the duplicitous British after WW I who made Palestine part of their empire and in their 1917 Balfour Declaration supported the notion of a Jewish homeland while simultaneously promising Arabs who'd lived there for hundreds of years their rights would be protected and their land would become free from foreign rule.

Once Palestinian Arabs realized the Zionists' real intentions, they understood the threat to their existence and strongly opposed further Jewish immigration. It wasn't halted and set off the conflict leading to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 with the help and/or indifference of the Brits under their Mandate and neighboring Arab states that did little to prevent it. It's continued to this day as an intractable conflict with no signs of resolution because Palestinians are nearly isolated from the West and their Arab neighbors allied with Israel for their own interests that exclude helping Palestinian people get the justice they deserve including a viable homeland free from Israeli occupation.

Pappe traces the early post-Balfour history when Palestinians comprised 80 - 90% of the population who were treated unjustly under the British Mandate that gave Zionist settlers preferential treatment. It led to the Palestinian uprising in 1929 and another one in 1936 that were brutally suppressed by the British military and resulted in Palestinian leaders being expelled in the late 1930s making the people vulnerable against Jewish forces post-WW II and leading to their defeat and subjugation. Sympathetic British Mandate military officers made it possible and helped Jewish settlers transform their principle paramilitary organization into the Hagana (established in 1920 and meaning defense) that became the military arm of the Jewish Agency, or Zionist governing body.

Planning the Expulsion of the Palestinians

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, led the Zionist movement from the mid-1920s until well into the 1960s. He played a central role andhad supreme authority in planning the establishment of a Jewish state and was its "architect" with full control over all security and defense issues in the Jewish community. His goal was Jewish sovereignty over as much of ancient Palestine as possible achieved the only way he thought possible - by force.

To achieve it, he and other Zionist leaders knew a systematic plan was needed to expel the Palestinian population and establish a Jewish state for Jews alone. It was believed it would be helpful to have a detailed registry or inventory of Arab villages giving the task to the Jewish National Fund (JNF) to do it. The JNF was founded in 1901 and was the main Zionist tool used to colonize Palestine that began by buying Palestinian land used to settle Jewish immigrants. By the end of the British Mandate in 1948, the Jewish community owned only 5.8% of Palestinian land, so Jewish leaders understood much earlier a more aggressive approach was needed.

The Arab village inventory was a blueprint completed by the late 1930s that included the topographic location of each village with detailed information including husbandry, cultivated land, number of trees, quality of fruit, average amount of land per family, number of cars, shop owners, Palestinian clans and their political affiliation, descriptions of village mosques and names of their imams, names of civil servants and more. The final inventory update was finished in 1947 that included lists of "wanted" persons in each village to be used in 1948 for search-and-arrest operations with those targeted seized and shot on the spot in cold blood. The idea was simple - kill the leaders and those thought to be a threat the British hadn't already eliminated quelling the 1936-39 uprising to create a power vacuum and neutralize any effective opposition to the Zionists' plans.
The only remaining obstacle thereafter was the British presence that Ben-Gurion knew was on the way out by 1946 and ended in 1948.

Partition, Ethnic Cleansing, War, and Establishment of the State of Israel

Ethnic cleansing began in early December, 1947 at two-thirds of the population were Palestinians and one-third were Jews who were mostly Zionist settlers and refugees from war-torn Europe. The British faced the problem of finding a way to devise two distinct ethnic entities with homogenous populations and decided on petition as the way to do it. This solution became the centerpiece of Zionist policy by 1937, but proved too hard for the Brits to achieve satisfying both sides leading to shifting the problem to the newly formed UN to solve.

The fate of the Palestinians were placed in the hands of a Special Committee for Palestine (UNSCOP) whose members had no prior experience solving conflicts and knew little Palestinian history. It was a recipe for disaster as events unfolded. UNSCOP opted for partition favoring the Jews to compensate them for the Nazi holocaust that became General Assembly Resolution 181 on November 29, 1947 giving them a state encompassing 56% the country with one-third of the population and making Jerusalem an international city. Palestinians were justifiably outraged because it was a decision they were left out of and was against their will.

From this moment forward, the die was cast that led to partition, ethnic cleansing, the first Arab-Israeli war, the others to follow, and the disregard for the rights of Palestinians to this day creating their desperate state and no resolution in sight. Resolution 181 was even worse than a 56 - 44% partitioning as it allotted the most fertile land and almost all the Jewish urban and rural land in Palestine to the new Jewish state plus 400 out of over 1000 Palestinian villages their residents had no say over.

Pappe explains Ben-Gurion simultaneously accepted and rejected the resolution. He and other Zionist leaders wanted official international recognition of the right of Jews to have their own state in Palestine, was determined to make Jerusalem the Jewish capital, and intended final borders to remain unfixed to include within them as much future territory as possible Ben-Gurion said "will be determined by force and not by partition resolution." Ben-Gurion headed the Consultancy or Consultant Committee, an ad-hoc cabal of Zionist leaders created solely to plan the expulsion of the Palestinian population to cleanse the land for Jewish habitation only.

The cleansing began in early December, 1947 with a series of attacks against Palestinian villages and neighborhoods. They were engaged ineffectively on beginning on January 9 by units of the first all-Arab volunteer army. Forced expulsions began in mid-February, 1948. On March 10, final Plan Dalet was adopted. Its first targets were Palestinian urban centers that all were occupied by end of April with about 250,000 Palestinians uprooted, displaced or killed including by massacres, the most remembered being at Deir Yassin.

It was occupied on April 9 when Jewish soldiers burst into the village, machine-gunned houses randomly killing many in them, and then gathered remaining villagers in one place murdering them in cold blood including children and women first raped and then killed. Recent research puts the number massacred at 93 (including 30 babies), but dozens of others were killed in the fighting that ensued making the total number of deaths much higher.

The Arab League finally decided on April 30 to intervene militarily but only after the British Mandate ended on May 15, 1948, the day the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine. The US and Soviet Union officially recognized the new state legitimizing it, and on the same day Arab forces entered the territory.

Pappe details the plan and steps followed by the Zionist leadership to gain as much of Palestine as possible with the fewest number of Palestinians remaining in it, irrespective of Resolution 181 it ignored. They expected the state they would create would include over 80% of Mandatory Palestine or 24% more of the land the UN allocated them taken forcibly from the Palestinians. They colluded tacitly with the Jordanians in their plan, effectively neutralizing the strongest Arab army, and bought them off with the remaining 20% of the territory.

On the eve of battle in 1948, the Jewish fighting force stood at around 50,000 (increasing by the summer to 80,000) that included a small air force, navy and units of tanks, armored cars and heavy artillery. The army was comprised of the main Hagana force plus units of the two extremist terrorist groups - the Irgun led by future prime minister and fanatical Palestinian-hater Menachem Begin and the Stern Gang whose most noted member was also future prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, another noted extreme racist. It also included special commando Palmach units, founded in 1941. They faced a hopelessly outmanned and outgunned Palestinian irregular force of about 7000.

Outside Arab intervention only began on May 15, 1948, five and one-half months after UN Resolution 181 was adopted and during which time the Palestinians were defenseless against the Zionist ethnic cleansing onslaught against them. They waited because they were indifferent, and when they finally entered into conflict with the Israelis it was with an inferior force that proved no match for the superior Jewish one it faced to be discussed shortly.

Finalize the Plan to De-Arabize Palestine

In December, 1947, the Palestinian population numbered 1.3 million of which one million lived in the territory of the future Jewish state. The Jewish minority stood at 600,000. The task at hand for Jewish leaders was how to dispose of this large number of people "cleansing" the land for Jewish habitation only.