Posted on 10/04/2001 12:16:59 PM PDT by ipaq2000
20:40) Sharon to US: Don't turn Israel into Czechoslovakia
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has instructed the IDF to use whatever means necessary to defend the country, he told reporters tonight.
He made his comments after three Israelis were killed this afternoon in Afula, and a terror attack overnight in Jerusalem in which two people were injured.
He also urged the United States not to turn its back on Israel in favor of the Arab states in the way Europe ignored Czechoslovakia in 1938. The results of that move were calamitous, he said.
There is considerable concern in Jerusalem that the Bush administration is allowing terrorist states to join the war on terrorism.
Maybe that time will soon come.
America is in the Middle east because of the Oil, that is why she supports dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, and corrupt governments such as Egypt.
But if America was to relinquish her control of the pro Western Arab states, would there be any need for her to be in the Middle East at all.
I know people talk about standing up for democracy but in real terms it is just fine rhetoric that is all, after all during the cold war with the Soviet Union, both sides destabilised countries they felt were unfriendly or too neutral, both sides shored up dictatorships.
Israel’s best bet is to go her own way and find a way of dealing with the Middle East problem.
Tony
It WAS a GENERAL POLICY. It couldn't be EXPLICITLY done because THE WHOLE COUNTRY WAS BASED ON ITS PROMISE THE ARABS COULD STAY. At a critical point in its existence, and desperatly needing external support, the country had to do expulsions sub rosa.
Further, the Isaelis couldn't very well expel all Arabs from places they did not yet control. All they could do is intimidate them, then after they took over, get rid of the rest. One village at a time.
600,000 becomes "millions". Only in your myth math world.
The 600,000 800,000 have had descendants. Their descendants are dispossessed as well. Unfortunatly for you, the 600,000 800,000 are not just going to quitely die off with no progeny.
In the meantime where is you yapping about the 800,000 Jews from Arab Islamic lands many who left because the Arab Islamics made it intollerable to live there any more?
This is your FOURTH spin on the subject. (1)First you said it didn't happen. (2)Then you said it was isolated. (3)Then you said they were a "fifth column." (4)Now you say "the Arabs did it too."
Nobody's denying Arabs did it. You're denying the Jews did.
What the Arab countries did was equally wrong, but THEY did not give assurances to the rest of the world to get worldwide support for their existence.
I said the MAJORITY left without being expelled...The 20% happened as a result of the ARAB aggressions and the war. It was an ad hoc process as the war developed in particular locations. KARSH on the other hand states there was not even any ad hoc process which developed.
The truth comes out in bits and pieces. So now Rev #6 says "Yes it did happen, it was an ad hoc process.
You're right. It was an ad hoc process. However it is an ad hoc process which continues to this day. Thank you.
Your Rev #5 - (5)It happened, but it was the Arab's fault.
Garbage. Don't pick and choose quotes from Morris. YOU FRAUDULENTLY USED A QUOTE FROM MORRIS AND THEN YOU HAVE NOW THROWN AWAY THE REST OF HIS COMMENTS ON THIS ISSUE. QUIT YOUR FRAUD!
This is your FOURTH spin on the subject. (1)First you said it didn't happen. (2)Then you said it was isolated. (3)Then you said they were a "fifth column." (4)Now you say "the Arabs did it too."
False. I said the MAJORITY left without ejection. Lie # 1 made repatedly by you now. But since you FRAUDULENTLY USE QUOTATIONS no surprise. The other points you make follow from your lies.
Nobody's denying Arabs did it. You're denying the Jews did.
Hey Jeb. Watch close:20%. Got it.
What the Arab countries did was equally wrong, but THEY did not give assurances to the rest of the world to get worldwide support for their existence.
No one gave any assurance to Jews thrown out and NO ARAB ISLAMIC COUNTRY HAS OFFERED THEM ANYTHING for having confiscated their possessions and property.
The truth comes out in bits and pieces. So now Rev #6 says "Yes it did happen, it was an ad hoc process.
It's apparent you want to believe and say what suites you. I speak from history. You FRAUDULENTLY USE QUOTATIONS from New Historians. I'll leave the posters to determine who is lying and manipulating on this thread.
However it is an ad hoc process which continues to this day. Thank you.
Tell your Arab Islamic fascist brethren to stop the Intifada. In the meantime Israel got out of the Sinai and out of South Lebanon. What have your Pal terrorist friends done but continue their Jihad against Israel.
"What shall we do with the Arabs ?" Ben-Gurion made a dismissive,
energetic gesture with his hand and said:
"Expel them"
(Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949
(Cambridge, 1987) p. 207).
158 Posted on 10/04/2001 22:23:27 PDT by AGAviator
[ Reply | Private Reply | To 156 | Top | Last ]
Please note how AGAviator FRAUDULENTLY dealt with the ABOVE QUOTE. He made it appear that Ben-Gurion is referring to ALL THE ARABS THROUGHOUT THE MANDATE AREA (Palestine). This was a bald-faced and fraudulent use of a source. On page 207 of Morris's book, which I have, the reference was to TWO TOWNS: Lydda and Ramle. These were areas in the midst of the war, which the Arabs had started, and which housed Arab irregulars, Arab militiamen, supplies, arms, etc.
Like this one?
"the Israeli historian Benny Morris found an Israeli Intelligence report that estimated that 70 percent of those who fled in the decisive period up to 1 June 1948 did so as a result of direct or nearby Jewish military or paramilitary action. In other words, they fled either because they were expelled or because they thought their lives were in immediate danger, not because they voluntarily 'abandoned' their homes...
Here is what Morris really states when he's not manipulating the sources as he's done many times:
Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 3ff.
It cannot be stressed too strongly that, while this is not a military history, the events describes -- cumulatively amounting to the Palestinian Arab exodus -- occurred in wartime and were a product, direct and indirect, of that war. Throughout, when examining what happened in each area at different points in the war, the reader must recall the nature of the backdrop - the continuing clash of arms between Palestinian militiamen and later, regular Arab armies and the Yishuv (the collective term for the Jewish community in Palestine before and during 1948); the intention of the Palestinian leadership and irregulars and, later, of most of the Arab states' leaders and armies in launching the hostilities in November-December 1947 and the May 1948 invasion to destroy the Jewish state and possibly the Yishuv; the fears of the Yishuv that the Palestinians and the Arab states, if given the chance, intended to re-enact a Middle Eastern version of the Holocaust (a bare three years after the horrendous European version had ended); and the extremely small dimensions (geographical and numerical) of the Yishuv in comparison with the Palestinian Arab community and the infinitely larger surrounding Arab hinterland.Hey, looks like Morris notes again YOUR ARAB friends started the war. If the Arabs started the war then they should take responsibility for the 600,000 exodus.
In Image and Reality, Norman Finkelstein...the son of Nazi concentration-camp survivors, makes a significant contribution to the literature of the so-called New Historians. These mostly Israeli...have been engaged for two decades in the controversial task of reevaluating the official and heretofore largely unchallenged version of the history of Israel.No, there's people more motivated than Morris attempting to set the record straight.The findings of the New Historians have largely been made possible by the release of many documents from the archives of the Israeli government beginning in the late 1970s. The weight of the official version of a heroic and militarily precarious Israel, cruelly attacked by powerful Arabs, was so pervasive that even liberal Jewish participants in the events of 1948 were convinced of its validity. Israeli historian Simha Flapan, an active figure in Labor party politics in 1948, explained that despite his first-hand knowledge of contemporary events, he had no idea until much later that so much of what he believed was merely propaganda.
Finkelstein writes that in the spring of 1982 he was drawn into research on the topic of...In the wake of the Lebanon war, he became intrigued with the question of whether a Jewish state could also be democratic...The thesis that emerged from Finkelstein's dissertation, and which is synthesized in the first chapter of his book, is "that Zionism is a kind of Romantic nationalism fundamentally at odds with liberal values."
Finkelstein's point is that the aim of Zionism has always been to create a Jewish state by establishing a Jewish majority in Palestine irrespective of the rights of the indigenous Arabs ( p. 99). But at the beginning of the twentieth century, the sizable Arab population already living there made a Jewish majority seem impossible to achieve. For example, in 1917,...the Arab population of 600,000 outnumbered the Jews by more than 10 to 1.
In the next 30 years, a dramatic change in the demographic balance took place due to massive Jewish immigration, especially during the Hitler years and World War II and after. Even so, by the end of 1947, the Jewish population, which had reached 600,000, still represented only a third of the population of Palestine, as the Arab population had grown to about 1.2 million. Nevertheless, the Jewish community was much more unified, purposeful and effective...
How did it happen that about 750,000 Arabs left their homes to become refugees?... Not only does debate still rage over the refugee issue in such unsurprising places as the right-wing Zionist community, but Finkelstein also finds Zionist apologetics in more mainstream voices.
Finkelstein devotes a chapter to arguing that Benny Morris, the author of the authoritative The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Cambridge University Press, 1987), ultimately comes down on the side of Zionist apologetics on the crucial issue of responsibility for driving out the Palestinians....On the less reputable side of the spectrum, Finkelstein includes a chapter detailing his exposé of Joan Peters, author of the immensely popular From Time Immemorial (Harper and Row, 1984). According to Finkelstein, her book implies that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians simultaneously forged their genealogies in order to deny Jewish legitimacy to the contested land.
...For example, Finkelstein quotes from Anita Shapira's Land and Power (one of the "more substantial contributions on the Israel-Palestine conflict) and finds there the "remarkable ... acknowledgment ...that labor Zionism and the dissident right-wing Zionist organizations were in basic accord as far as the deployment of physical force against the Arabs was concerned." According to Shapira, Stalinist Russia was the inspiration for the brand of socialism embraced by the Yishuv... "Effectively this meant that for them ‘a historical mission liberates its bearers from the restrictions of simple morality in the name of higher justice' . . . .
Terror was thus explicitly condoned as a legitimate ‘means of struggle.' The highly respected kibbutz leader Yitzak Tabenkin was fond of quoting that favorite Stalinist stand-by, ‘when trees are felled, the chips will fly'" ( p. 113). ...Nor should it be surprising that liberal elements of Zionism joined in the hard line against the Arabs. The two peoples – Jew and Arab – have been contending for more than a century over a tiny land with limited resources. As in many other such struggles, when an opportunity arises for the stronger side to take decisive action, there is overwhelming pressure to do so. Finkelstein's message is that Zionism is no different from any other conquering regime.
Finkelstein compares Zionism to such settler movements as the British in North America, the Dutch in South Africa, and the Nazis in Eastern Europe. He makes clear that "to compare phenomena is not to equate them." However, he insists that the similarities he indicates are "significant" and "disquieting" (Chap. 4, p. 88).
...After the establishment of the state, "Zionist literature systematically, and with considerable effect, rewrote the history of Palestine – in particular, by writing the Arabs . . . out." Thus David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv's leader and the legendary first prime minister of Israel, wrote in his Personal History that "Palestine on the eve of Zionist colonization [was] ‘in a virtual state of anarchy . . . primitive, neglected and derelict.' Jewish settlements ‘revitalize the ‘Land of Israel' as they are built on ‘desolate tracts, on swamps and sands, on deserted and barren hillsides'" (p. 96). The Nazis also made use of the Wilderness myth. Hitler "depicted Eastern Europe as a virgin land or wilderness: ‘thinly settled,' ‘desert,' ‘desolate,' ‘wide spaces' . . . "(p. 92).
Tilting At Benny Morris
...Finkelstein uses Morris's invaluable data to demonstrate that the Israeli historian's repeated attempts at mitigating Israeli responsibility for the Palestinian exodus cannot be supported by the documentary record. Finkelstein objects to Morris's exculpatory formulation, that the Palestinian refugees were "born of war, not design." Instead, Finkelstein argues, the expulsions were the result of a long-standing Zionist desire to create a Jewish majority in Palestine and that when war came, organized planning to remove the Arabs was well developed.
One of Morris's major assertions is that the "main wave of the Arab exodus, encompassing 200,000-300,000 refugees, was not the result of a general, predetermined Yishuv policy... Finkelstein ...argues that Morris "obscures the fact that Israel's statehood declaration was actually the watershed date." Before that date the Zionist leadership was especially sensitive to international opinion partly because of threats, mainly from the United States, to rescind the U.N. Partition Resolution. After May 15, restraints on the Israelis were loosened by the Arab invasion. This allowed the Zionists to "pursue with virtual impunity a policy . . . openly and relentlessly bent on expulsion. At least as many and probably more Arabs fled after Israel's statehood declaration as before" ( p. 61-62; emphasis in original). ...After the U.N. Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947, fighting immediately broke out in Palestine between the two sides. The stronger Jewish forces were so successful that virtually all the Arabs residents were forced to flee from such towns as Haifa, Safad, West Jerusalem and elsewhere before May 15. The hundreds of thousands of Arabs who became refugees created pressure for intervention in the Arab street on reluctant Arab governments, well aware that they were unprepared for war against Israel. The Arab "invasion" never threatened Israel's existence...Rather the Arab forces merely managed to put something of a brake on Israeli territorial conquests in areas that were designated to be in the proposed Arab state or in proposed international territory....
In his discussion of Abba Eban, Finkelstein makes clear that he cannot fault the Israeli diplomat for his spirited defense of Israeli policy, even if Israeli justifications do not coincide with the documentary record. Eban's job, Finkelstein concedes, was to defend Israel's interests.
Rather the author faults the "intellectual culture" that uncritically accepts Israeli justifications no matter the demands of simple justice and the human-rights implications for Israel's adversaries.
Similarly, in the epilogue to his chapter on the Joan Peters book, Finkelstein records how difficult it was, especially in this country in the mid-eighties, to get a hearing on his and others' exposure of Peters's "colossal and multifaceted hoax," even though her book went through eight cloth printings and received hundreds of positive notices by 1984 ( pp. 45ff.). One of Finkelstein's themes is the power of the "language of force," the rule that the stronger side dominates the political landscape. His book provides a welcome corrective to the power of the image over the reality when those who prefer to believe in the image control the agenda.
[Image]
May 11, 1998[Image]by Andrea Levin
Israel's 50th, the New Historians and NPR
Israel's 50th anniversary with its outpouring of media coverage has
been a numbing reminder of journalism's herd instinct, the tendency
of reporters to imitate one another, repeating the same themes and
citing the same experts. The line on Israel's birthday has been that
this is a time for some limited upbeat appraisal — the Israeli
high-tech sector is extraordinary — but much dour reassessment of
Israel's past.
In this vein many reporters have quoted the "new historians," a
self-styled group of Israeli writers who claim to have exposed the
falsity of Zionist "myths" about the founding of the nation. Israel,
according to writers such as Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim
and Tom Segev, bears little resemblance to the heroic image purveyed
in history books. For these authors the Zionist enterprise is deeply
flawed, if not rotten at its heart.
They claim, for example: the Jews were not a vulnerable, outnumbered
force in 1948 but a cleverly organized, well-armed military that
overwhelmed weaker opponents; the Jews expelled Palestinian Arabs
from Mandate Palestine in a violent and calculated plan; the Jews
did not face implacable Arab enmity, but passed up promising
opportunities for compromise; Palestinian Jews deliberately turned
their backs on European Jews in the Holocaust. And more.
All these assertions have been systematically examined and refuted
in articles and books by Israeli scholars, including Shabtai Teveth,
Itamar Rabinovich, Efraim Karsh and others, but the media have
lionized the revisionists and their themes and virtually ignored the
refutations and the authorities making them.
In the first weeks of April alone leading up to Israel's birthday,
dozens of articles cited the views of revisionists without any
indication their claims have been discredited. Only one reporter,
Nicholas Goldberg in Newsday, included the rebuttals.
He quoted Efraim Karsh, Chairman of the Mediterranean Studies
Department at Kings College London and author of Fabricating Israeli
History. Karsh's research finds the so-called "new historians" have
manipulated and misrepresented original sources, and in effect
invented a history to suit their current political agenda.
Nowhere were these revisionist writers cited more deceptively than
in an April 9 broadcast on National Public Radio. Correspondent Eric
Weiner devoted a long segment to Deir Yassin, an Arab town overrun
by Jewish forces fifty years ago to the day. Controversy has raged
over whether Arab casualties occurred in the course of a military
operation or as a deliberate massacre.
Although it is clear that Arab forces in Deir Yassin were attacking
Jewish convoys trying to break the siege of Jerusalem, that the Jews
counterattacked trying to dislodge those forces, and that Arab
civilians were killed in the course of the conflict, Weiner offers
not a word about these issues. Instead, in an unabashedly one-sided
presentation he promotes Ilan Pappe's version, that Jews massacred
Arabs there. And he repeats Pappe's outrageous claim that "massacres
were part of a Zionist plan to forcibly expel or kill as many Arabs
as possible."
In a particularly scurrilous segment Weiner interviews an Arab
eyewitness at Deir Yassin who claims the Jews prevented the Red
Cross from treating a badly injured Arab infant whose mother was
dead. The NPR reporter offers no corroboration for the claim, nor
does he challenge the speaker. Though there are Jewish eyewitnesses
who would present the other side, Weiner fails to interview them.
In fact, counter-evidence in the Deir Yassin story has been offered
repeatedly not only by Jewish but by Arab sources. For example, as
the Jerusalem Report noted in an April 2, 1998 article:
In a BBC television series, "Israel and the Arabs: the 50
Year Conflict," Hazem Nusseibeh, an editor of the
Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news in 1948,
describes an encounter at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's
Old City with Deir Yassin survivors and Palestinian
leaders, including Hussein Khalidi, the secretary of the
Arab Higher Committee (the representative body of the
Arabs of British Palestine).
"I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story,"
recalled Nusseibeh, now living in Amman. "He said, 'We
must make the most of this.' So we wrote a press release
stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered,
pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities."
A Deir Yassin survivor identified as Abu Mahmud, said the
villagers protested at the time. "We said, 'There was no
rape.' [Khalidi] said, 'We have to say this, so the Arab
armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.'"
Weiner, in citing Pappe's crude revisionist history, casts Pappe as
a beleaguered reformer trying — thus far unsuccessfully — to
introduce his enlightened version of history in the Israeli school
system. Unmentioned are Pappe's extremist political agenda as an
activist in the Israeli Communist party and former candidate in the
1996 Knesset elections on the Communist party ticket. The party
platform opposes the Zionist character of Israel and calls for
resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict on the basis of formulas
that would entail the dissolution of Israel.
It is unfortunate that a reporter for National Public Radio should
offer his audience "news" more reminiscent of Hazem Nusseibeh's
self-confessed 1948 propaganda than of responsible journalism.
Speaking at a conference of Arab-Americans a year ago, NPR Foreign
Editor Loren Jenkins assured the audience that 90% of the criticism
received at the network faults the coverage for being "pro-Arab." He
said the complaints are "overwhelming on one side." Needless to say,
Jenkins did not address the bias and distortion in NPR coverage that
are the basis of those complaints.
Home|NPR Index|On CAMERA Index| New Material
Andrea Levin is National President of CAMERA - PO Box 428, Boston,
MA, 02456-0428.
Copyright © 1998 by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East
Reporting in America. All rights reserved. This column may be
reprinted without prior permission.
The rest of the world don't have to listen to your side only, and indeed we don't even have to listen to it. As time goes on, more and more people everywhere will be taking this position.
The refugees exist, their existence is continually being made worse, and the day-to-day mistreatment of them is what's feeding the current Intifada, all your pseudo-history aside.
The people are in great need of a "myth" to fill their consciousness and imagination.... -- Musa Alami, 1948
Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... they have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal. -- King Hussein of Jordan, 1960
Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon ... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed.... We have accustomed them to begging.... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon ... men, women and children-all this in the service of political purposes .... [36] -- Khaled Al-Azm, Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war
The nations of western Europe condemned Israel's position despite their guarantee of her security.... They understood that ... their dependence upon sources of energy precluded their allowing themselves to incur Arab wrath. -- Al-Haytham Al-Ayubi, Arab Palestinian military strategist, 1974 At the time of the 1948 war, Arabs in Israel were invited by their fellow Arabs -- invited to "leave" while the "invading" Arab armies would purge the land of Jews.1 The invading Arab governments were certain of a quick victory; leaders warned the Arabs in Israel to run for their lives.2
In response, the Jewish Haifa Workers' Council issued an appeal to the Arab residents of Haifa: [See Official British Police Report ]
For years we have lived together in our city, Haifa.... Do not fear: Do not destroy your homes with your own hands ... do not bring upon yourself tragedy by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens.... But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace for you and your families."3
While the Haifa pattern appears to have been prevalent, there were exceptions. Arabs in another crucial strategic area, who were "opening fire on the Israelis shortly after surrendering,"4 were "forced" to leave by the defending Jewish army to prevent what former Israeli Premier Itzhak Rabin described as a "hostile and armed populace" from remaining "in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route . . ."5 In his memoirs, Rabin stated that Arab control of the road between the seacoast and Jerusalem had "all but isolated" the "more than ninety thousand Jews in Jerusalem," nearly one-sixth of the new nation's total population.
If Jerusalem fell, the psychological blow to the nascent Jewish state would be more damaging than any inflicted by a score of armed brigades.6According to a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, however, "the majority" of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, and "68%" left without seeing an Israeli soldier.7
After the Arabs' defeat in the 1948 war, their positions became confused: some Arab leaders demanded the "return" of the "expelled" refugees to their former homes despite the evidence that Arab leaders had called upon Arabs to flee. [Such as President Truman's International Development Advisory Board Report, March 7, 1951: "Arab leaders summoned Arabs of Palestine to mass evacuation... as the documented facts reveal..."] At the same time, Emile Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Command, called for the prevention of the refugees from "return." He stated in the Beirut Telegraph on August 6, 1948: "it is inconceivable that the refugees should be sent back to their homes while they are occupied by the Jews.... It would serve as a first step toward Arab recognition of the state of Israel and Partition."
Arab activist Musa Alami despaired: as he saw the problem, "how can people struggle for their nation, when most of them do not know the meaning of the word? ... The people are in great need of a 'myth' to fill their consciousness and imagination. . . ." According to Alami, ar indoctrination of the "myth" of nationality would create "identity" and "self-respect."8
However, Alami's proposal was confounded by the realities: between 1948 and 1967, the Arab state of Jordan claimed annexation of the territory west of the Jordan River, the "West Bank" area of Palestine -- the same area that would later be forwarded by Arab "moderates" as a "mini-state" for the "Palestinians." Thus, that area was, between 1948 and 1967, called "Arab land," the peoples were Arabs, and yet the "myth" that Musa Alami prescribed-the cause of "Palestine" for the "Palestinians" -- remained unheralded, unadopted by the Arabs during two decades. According to Lord Caradon, "Every Arab assumed the Palestinians [refugees] would go back to Jordan."9
When "Palestine" was referred to by the Arabs, it was viewed in the context of the intrusion of a "Jewish state amidst what the Arabs considered their own exclusive environment or milieu, the 'Arab region.' "10 As the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser "screamed" in 1956, "the imperialists' 'destruction of Palestine' " was "an attack on Arab nationalism," which " 'unites us from the Atlantic to the Gulf.' "11
Ever since the 1967 Israeli victory, however, when the Arabs determined that they couldn't obliterate Israel militarily, they have skillfully waged economic, diplomatic, and propaganda war against Israel. This, Arabs reasoned, would take longer than military victory, but ultimately the result would be the same. Critical to the new tactic, however, was a device designed to whittle away at the sympathies of Israel's allies: what the Arabs envisioned was something that could achieve Israel's shrinking to indefensible size at the same time that she became insolvent.
This program was reviewed in 1971 by Mohamed Heikal,12 then still an important spokesman of Egypt's leadership in his post as editor of the influential, semi-official newspaper Al Ahram. Heikal called for a change of Arab rhetoric -- no more threats of "throwing Israel into the sea" -- and a new political strategy aimed at reducing Israel to indefensible borders and pushing her into diplomatic and economic isolation. He predicted that "total withdrawal" would "pass sentence on the entire state of Israel."
As a more effective means of swaying world opinion, the Arabs adopted humanitarian terminology in support of the "demands" of the "Palestinian refugees," to replace former Arab proclamations of carnage and obliteration. In Egypt, for example, in 1968 "the popularity of the Palestinians was rising," as a result of Israel's 1967 defeat of the Arabs and subsequent 1968 "Israeli air attacks inside Egypt."13] It was as recently as 1970 that Egyptian President Nasser defined "Israel" as the cause of "the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land." Although Nasser thus gave perfunctory recognition to the "Palestinian Arab" allegation, he was in reality preoccupied with the overall basic, pivotal Arab concern. As he continued candidly in the same sentence, Israel was "a permanent threat to the Arab nation."14 Later that year (May 1970), Nasser "formulated his rejection of a Jewish state in Palestine," but once again he stressed the "occupation of our [Pan-Arab] lands," while only secondarily noting: "And we reject its [Israel's] insistence on denying the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people in their country."15 Subsequently the Arabs have increased their recounting of the difficulties and travail of Arab refugees in the "host" countries adjacent to Israel. Photographs and accounts of life in refugee camps, as well as demands for the "legitimate" but unlimited and undefined "rights" of the "Palestinians," have flooded the communications media of the world in a subtle and adroit utilization of the art of professional public relations.16
A prominent Arab Palestinian strategist, AI-Haytham Al-Ayubi, analyzed the efficacy of Arab propaganda tactics in 1974, when he wrote:
The image of Israel as a weak nation surrounded by enemies seeking its annihilation evaporated [after 1967], to be replaced by the image of an aggressive nation challenging world opinion.* 17[* As Rosemary Sayigh wrote in the Journal of Palestine Studies, "a strongly defined Palestinian identity did not emerge until 1968, two decades after expulsion." It had taken twenty years to establish the "myth" prescribed by Musa Alami.18]
The high visibility of the sad plight of the homeless refugees -- always tragic -- has uniquely attracted the world's compassion.19 In addition, the campaign has provided non-Arabs with moral rationalization for abiding by the Arabs' anti-Israel rules, which are regarded as prerequisites to getting Arab oil and the financial benefits from Arab oil wealth. Millions of dollars have been spent to exploit the Arab refugees and their repatriation as "the heart of the matter," as the primary human problem that must be resolved before any talk of overall peace with Israel.
Reflecting on the oil weapon's influence in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Al-Ayubi shrewdly observed:
The nations of western Europe condemned Israel's position despite their guarantee of her security and territorial integrity. They understood that European interests and their dependence upon sources of energy precluded their allowing themselves to incur Arab wrath.20Thus Al-Ayubi recommended sham "peace-talks," with the continuation, however, of the "state of 'no peace,'" and he advocated the maintaining of "moral pressure together with carefully-balanced military tension..." for the "success of the new Arab strategy." Because "loss of human life remains a sore point for the enemy," continual "guerrilla" activities can erode Israel's self-confidence and "the faith" of the world in the "Israeli policeman."
Al-Ayubi cited, as an example, "the success of Arab foreign policy maneuvers" in 1973, which was
so total that.... With the exception of the United States and the racist African governments, the entire world took either a neutral or pro-Arab position on the question of legality of restoring the occupied territories through any means -- including the use of military force.As Al-Ayubi noted, "The basic Arab premise concerning 'the elimination of the results of aggression' remains accepted by the world." Thus the "noose" will be placed around the neck of the "Zionist entity."
But the Arabs' creation of the "myth" of nationality did not create the advantageous situation for the Palestinian Arabs that Musa Alami had hoped for. Instead, the conditions he complained of bitterly were perpetuated: the Arabs "shut the door" of citizenship "in their faces and imprison them in camps."21
Khaled Al-Azm, who was Syria's Prime Minister after the 1948 war, deplored the Arab tactics and the subsequent exploitation of the refugees, in his 1972 memoirs:
Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees ... while it is we who made them leave.... We brought disaster upon ... Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave.... We have rendered them dispossessed.... We have accustomed them to begging.... We have participated in lowering their moral and social level.... Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon ... men, women and children-all this in the service of political purposes .... 22Propaganda has successfully veered attention away from the Arab world's manipulation of its peoples among the refugee group on the one hand, and the number of those who now in fact possess Arab citizenship in many lands, on the other hand. The one notable exception is Jordan, where the majority of Arab refugees moved,* and where they are entitled to citizenship according to law, "unless they are Jews."23
Palestinian leadership will not let the refugee problem be solved In 1958, former director of UNRWA Ralph Galloway declared angrily while in Jordan that
The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die.Prittie, "Middle East Refugees," in Michael Curtis et al., eds., The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1975), p. 71.
---
1. Habib Issa, ed., Al-Hoda, Arabic daily, June 8, 1951, New York; see Economist (London), May 15, 1948, regarding "panic flight"; also see Economist, October 2, 1948, for British eyewitness report of Arab Higher Committee radio "announcements" that were "urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit."
2. Near East Arabic Radio, April 3, 1948: "It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees to flee from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem, and that certain leaders . . . make political capital out of their miserable situation . . ." Cited by Anderson et al., "The Arab Refugee Problem and How It Can Be Solved," p. 22; for more regarding Arab responsibility, see Sir Alexander Cadogan, Ambassador of Great Britain to the United Nations, speech to the Security Council, S.C., O.R., 287th meeting, April 23, 1948; also see Harry Stebbens, British Port Officer stationed in Haifa, letter in Evening Standard (London), January 10, 1969.
3. April 28, 1948; according to the Economist (London), October 1, 1948, only "4000 to 6000" of the "62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa" remained there until the time of the war; also see Kenneth Bilby, New Star in the Near East (New York: Doubleday, 1950), pp. 30-31; Lt. Col. Moshe Pearlman, The Army of Israel (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), pp. 116-17; and Major E. O'Ballance, The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 (London, 1956), p. 52.
4. David Shipler, New York Times, October 23, 1979, p. A3. Shipler cites Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, 0 Jerusalem, and Dan Kurzman, Genesis 1948.
5. New York Times, October 23, 1979.
6. Yitzhak Rabin, The Rabin Memoirs (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 23, pp. 22-44.
7. Peter Dodd and Halim Barakat, River Without Bridges.- A Study of the Exodus of the 1967Arab Palestinian Refugees (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1969), p. 43; on April 27, 1950, the Arab National Committee of Haifa stated in a memorandum to the Arab States: "The removal of the Arab inhabitants ... was voluntary and was carried out at our request ... The Arab delegation proudly asked for the evacuation of the Arabs and their removal to the neighboring Arab countries.... We are very glad to state that the Arabs guarded their honour and traditions with pride and greatness." Cited by J.B. Schechtman, The Arab Refugee Problem (New York: Philosophical Library, 1952), pp. 8-9; also see Al-Zaman, Baghdad journal, April 27, 1950.
8. Musa Alami, "The Lesson of Palestine," The Middle East Journal, October 1949.
9. Lord Caradon, "Cyprus and Palestine," lecture at the University of Chicago, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, February 17, 1976. Similar statement by Folke Bernadotte, To Jerusalem, p. 113.
10. P.J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation (London: Croom Heim, 1978), pp. 256-57.
11. Ibid. p. 234, quoting a speech by Nasser at Suez, July 26, 1956; in 1952, Sheikh Pierre Gemayel, then leader of the Lebanese National Youth Organization "Al Kataeb," wrote: "Why should the refugees stay in Lebanon, and not in Egypt, Iraq and Jordan which claim that they are all Arab and beyond that, Moslem? ... Isn't it for that alone that these so-called nationalist elements are demanding to resettle the refugees in Lebanon because they are themselves Arab and Moslems?" Al-Hoda, Lebanese journal, January 3, 1952, cited in Schechtman, Arab Refugee Problem, p. 84; also see Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, "Quest for an Arab Future," in Arab Journal, 1966-67, vol. 4, nos. 2-4, pp. 23-29.
12. "Mohammed Hassanein Heykal Discusses War and Peace in the Middle East," Journal of Palestine Studies, Autumn 197 1. Heykal thus joined the Arab chorus heard after the 1967 war.
13. Vatikiotis, Nasser, p. 257; also see Mohamed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (New York: Ballantine Books, 1975), p. 56.
14. Interview with Nasser, Le Monde (Paris: February 1970), cited in Vatikiotis, Nasser, p. 259.
15. Charles Foltz, interview with Nasser, U.S. News and World Report, May 1970, cited in Vatikiotis, Nasser, p. 259; see also Le Monde interview, February 1970.
16. contrary to the popular view ... in the West," a "great many refugees" were living out of camps "in comfortable housing outside," in the beginning of the 1960s according to Fawaz Turki, The Disinherited- Journal of a Palestinian Exile (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1972), p. 41.
17. Al-Haytham A]-Ayubi, "Future Arab Strategy in the Light of the Fourth War," Shuun Filastiniyya (Beirut), October 1974. AI-Ayubi, also called Abu-Hammam, has been military head of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Lieutenant Colonel in the Syrian army, and highly respected strategist on Israel. He perceived the "guerrilla" war against Israel as the ultimately successful one.
18. Rosemary Sayigh, "Sources of Palestinian Nationalism: A Study of a Palestinian Camp in Lebanon," Journal of Palestinian Studies, vol. 6, no. 4, 1977, p. 2 1; see also Sayigh, "The Palestinian Identity Among Camp Residents," Journal of Palestinian Studia vol. 6, no. 3, 1977, pp. 3-22.
19. In 1981, the Organization of African Unity's executive secretary, Ambassador Oumarou Garba Youssoupou from Niger, reflected upon why the millions of displaced souls in Africa were not as visible: "We're not getting the publicity because of our culture. No refugee is turned away from the host countries, so we're not dramatic enough for television. We have no drownings, no piratings.... We don't make the news ... .. Aiding Africa's Refugees," by Gertrude Samuels, The New Leader, May 4, 1981.
20. AI-Ayubi, "Future Arab Strategy in the Light of the Fourth War."
21. Musa Alami, "The Lesson of Palestine," The Middle East Journal, October 1949.
22. Khaled Al-Azm, Memoirs [Arabic), 3 vols. (AI-Dar al Muttahida Id-Nashr, 1972), vol. 1, pp. 386-87, cited by Maurice Roumani, The Case of the Jewsfrom Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue, preliminary edition (Jerusalem: World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries [WOJAC], 1975), p. 61.
23. Jordanian National Law, Official Gazette, No. 1171, February 16, 1954, p. 105, Article 3(3). Between 1948 and 1967, 200,000 to 300,000 Arabs moved from the West Bank to the "East Bank," according to Eliyahu Kanovsky, in Jordan, People and Politics in the Middle East, Michael Curtis, ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1971), p. 111.
This page was produced by Joseph E. Katz Middle Eastern Political and Religious History Analyst Brooklyn, New York
Then you should get a new mirror.
Sharon sued Time magazine for libel when they called him a war criminal. He won. Even a foul-mouthed jerk should know that civil trials have much more lenient rules than a criminal trial, especially for public figures. Obviously then if there is not enough evidence to exonerate Time magazine from charges of libel, there is no way it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he's a war criminal.
Tell us how is Israel in violation of resolution 242 -- in particular, how has Sharon violated it (since you were talking about Sharon)? Why do you expect one side to accept the resolution when the other side refuses to terminate "all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force" which is the main requirement of resolution 242. In case you didn't notice, Israel has pulled out of 60% of the territory as a show of good faith, and as a part of the cease fire Sharon disengaged his troops for 48 hours just this week. As a result 6 Israelis were killed by gun wielding shooters. Not stone throwers, you ignoramus.
In case you hadn't noticed, Palestinians throw stones at Jews all the time without retribution. If all they do is throw stones, how come nearly 200 Jews have been killed in the last 10 months and nearly 800 since Oslo began? By throwing stones? If so, then clearly stone throwing is not the innocent sport you claim it is. But obviously they are not just throwing stones, they are shooting and bombing innocent people.
Talk about having a head in an ass, yours is so firmly planted that you don't even know the pertinent issues of which you so shallowly speak. Do us all a favor and learn something before you fume this place up by opening your mouth again.
Your screen name says it all.
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