[racehorse]

Israeli minister warns of Palestinian 'holocaust'

An Israeli minister today warned of increasingly bitter conflict in the Gaza Strip, saying the Palestinians could bring on themselves what he called a "holocaust". "The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, told army radio.
Shoah is the Hebrew word normally reserved to refer to the Jewish Holocaust. It is rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi extermination of Jews during the second world war, and many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other events.
The minister's statement came after two days of tit-for-tat missile raids between Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip and the Israeli army. At least 32 Palestinians and one Israeli have been killed since the surge in violence on Wednesday.
Today Israel activated a rocket warning system to protect Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people, from Palestinian attacks.
Ashkelon was hit by several Grad rockets fired from Gaza yesterday. One hit an apartment building, slicing through the roof and three floors below, and another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.
Located 11 miles from Gaza, Ashkelon has been sporadically targeted before but not suffered direct hits or significant damage.
"It will be sad, and difficult, but we have no other choice," Vilnai said, referring to the large-scale military operation he said Israel was preparing to bring a halt to the rocket fire.
"We're getting close to using our full strength. Until now, we've used a small percentage of the army's power because of the nature of the territory."
Israel would not launch a ground offensive in the next week or two, partly because the military would prefer to wait for better weather, defence sources said. But the army had completed its preparations and was awaiting the government's order to move, officials said.
Until now, the Palestinian rocket squads have largely targeted Sderot, a small town near Gaza. Ashkelon, a big population centre only 25 miles from Tel Aviv, was caught unprepared, its mayor said on Friday.
"It's a city of 120,000 people, with large facilities – a huge soccer stadium, a basketball stadium and a beach. No one is ready for this," Roni Mehatzri told Israel Radio.
Dozens of soldiers in orange berets from the Israeli military's home front command arrived in Ashkelon and hung posters around the city telling residents what to do in case of rocket attack.
The barrage of Iranian-made Grads directed at Ashkelon yesterday came after an escalation of violence in Gaza. Israel killed five Hamas militants on Wednesday morning, apparently including two planners of the rocket attacks, in an air strike on a minivan.
Later in the day, a Palestinian rocket killed an Israeli civilian, a 47-year-old father of four, in Sderot.
Hamas, an Islamist group with close ties to Iran, has ruled Gaza since its violent takeover there in June 2006.
Since Wednesday, 32 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli missile strikes, including 14 civilians, among them eight children, according to Palestinian officials. The youngest was a six-month-old boy, Mohammed al-Borai, whose funeral was held yesterday.
There were further indications that Israel was preparing for an offensive by sending confidential messages to world leaders, including the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, who plans to visit the region next week.
"Israel is not keen on, and rushing for, an offensive, but Hamas is leaving us no choice," the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, told the senior figures, according to Israel's mass circulation daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.
Security sources were quoted by both Israel Radio and army radio as saying a big operation was being prepared but was not imminent.

[Moshe]

That is totally out of context! Israeli use that word even in soccer games.

In fact i thing it is extraordinary that only a few thousands Palestinians were killed in all those years of war. I hate to think what would be the results of this conflict if the arabs were the stronger side.
Would they let the Jews appeal to their high court?
Would they allow a Jewish minority in their state?

and if you support the right for Palestinians for their own state (hich I do) you can't be anti -Zionist. Zionism means that the Jewish people should have normal life in thier own state.
If you are pro palestinian state and anti Zionist than you must be a racist!

BTW, I don't see any thread about the Turkish army killing all those Kurds. I wonder why Israel get all the heat???

[racehorse]

Originally Posted by Moshe

If you are pro palestinian state and anti Zionist than you must be a racist!

i don't see it.
anti-Zionist is basically anti-colonianism, the feeling that it was wrong for the people of Israel to take out their angerand frustratation at being oppressed in europe for centuries upon a group of people who had no part whatsoever in european anti-semitism.
to frighten millions of people out of their villages and while they were gone, burn the villages to the ground and throw civilians into the sea. anti-Zionism is anti-ethnic cleansing. it is a fact that the original leaders of Israel (ben gurion and his cronies) as well as the present day leaders express a strong, idealistic vision of an extermination of all arab peoples from their historical land.

[Moshe]

you should stop reading science fiction and start reading history books.

here are some facts:

There was never a Palestinian state!

Israel is the historic land of the Jews not of the arabs. The Jews pray 3 times a day to return to Jerusalem with their face toward the city. The Koran doesn't mention Jerusalem and the Muslims pray with their back to Jerusalem and faces to Mecca.

There was a Jewish community in Israel long before the Arbs occupied it.

The Zionist movement bought 10% of the land from Arabs and agreed to UN plans for a jewish state beside an arbs state. The Arabs refused.

Israel never "frighten millions of people out of their villages and while they were gone, burn the villages to the ground and throw civilians into the sea".
That is a complete BS.

The Arabs started a war on Israel and during that war more Jews had to leave their homes in Arabs countries than Arabs had to leave theirs.

so how come "anti-Zionist is basically anti-colonianism"?

[SpectralJulianIsNotDead]

Originally Posted by Moshe

That is totally out of context! Israeli use that word even in soccer games.

In fact i thing it is extraordinary that only a few thousands Palestinians were killed in all those years of war. I hate to think what would be the results of this conflict if the arabs were the stronger side.
Would they let the Jews appeal to their high court?
Would they allow a Jewish minority in their state?

and if you support the right for Palestinians for their own state (hich I do) you can't be anti -Zionist. Zionism means that the Jewish people should have normal life in thier own state.
If you are pro palestinian state and anti Zionist than you must be a racist!

BTW, I don't see any thread about the Turkish army killing all those Kurds. I wonder why Israel get all the heat???

Because Israel is a major US ally. Turkey isn't.

The Kurds aren't innocent you know. Neither are the Turks.

I'm pro-peace. And nobody is doing anything to promote peace over there.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by fugazifan

the situation in gaza is a very difficult one at the moment. the people in sderot have been mercileesly bombed for the past year. the people there cant live a normal life and now it has started to reach ashkelon. i am usually against fighting, but at some point a country must defend itself. especially after it evacuated all of its people from a certain area and in exchangew they continue to bomb. i am not for the seetelers, in fact the4 excact oppisit. and i do agree that we could be handling this better, but one feels at times that we have tp do something.
and it still is not a terrorist state.alestine is a terrorist state, israel is a military state

couldn't the modern and supposedly efficient Israeli military strike its targets more accurately instead of hitting so many civilians? the civilians in gaza are not launching rockets into Israel, militants are, and the israelis should either target militants, or chill back, I am sorry, just because shit is fucked up for people getting rocketed in israel, does not give the israeli military to right and authority to to tit-for-tat bomb palestinian civilians. just because israeli grandmothers are crying over their dead, does not mean that israelis need to make palestinian grandmothers mourn that much harder.....

Originally Posted by everyneurotic

dear mr pothead,

i won't debate whether is right or wrong what this thread is about, i'll just say that next time you come all self righteous about antiracism and talking about tolerance, remember you started this biggoted racist thread.

ps: general discussion: the israeli government has been a crop of shit for some ten years now, it's stupid.

biggoted thread? in which regard, calling out names? every single israeli citizen is required to serve in some regard to the military. In this regard, all israelis, either by choice or force, support the Israeli military actions in Palestine, other wise there would be the kind of mutiny that plagues corrupt militaries across the globe, but you don't see such mutiny in the ranks, so I-man's assumption is that the Israeli population generally supports the military activities of their fellow countrymen, that being said, please identity my bigotry against israel here?

further, am I wrong to call out names on the Israeli military for deliberately targeting palestinian civilians when their enemies are clearly active militants? are you telling me that a modern military super power can't get its targets straigth? terrorism, by the definition of the word, is targeting civilians with military strikes in order to inflict general terror and chaos and force your actual enemy into submission be denying public support. that my friend is cruel and vindictive, and it is standard israeli policy. In this regard, the Israelis are thus terrorists.

So I dont have the right to criticize the military policies of Israel simply because Israel is an ethnically defined state? I am not criticising the Jews as a race in citing the failures of its military. So please, you misunderstand me. I hate zionism, not jews. I hate the military policies of Israel, not the Israelis. and I use the term hate correctly, I despise it with all of my being, and fear its consequences to my very core. This is simply my testimony, and the reality is that the divisiveness of zionism in the world wrecks the cooperation and unity that we have been working on for the past 6000 years, it is simply a backwards political philosophy from the stoneage, and it is terrifying to see it manifest itself continuously through the 21st century.

Originally Posted by racehorse

don't see it.
anti-Zionist is basically anti-colonianism, the feeling that it was wrong for the people of Israel to take out their angerand frustratation at being oppressed in europe for centuries upon a group of people who had no part whatsoever in european anti-semitism.

I think that everyone has forgotten that the arabs are semites too.

Originally Posted by moshe

Mosheyou should stop reading science fiction and start reading history books.

here are some facts:

There was never a Palestinian state!

Israel is the historic land of the Jews not of the arabs. The Jews pray 3 times a day to return to Jerusalem with their face toward the city. The Koran doesn't mention Jerusalem and the Muslims pray with their back to Jerusalem and faces to Mecca.

There was a Jewish community in Israel long before the Arbs occupied it.

The Zionist movement bought 10% of the land from Arabs and agreed to UN plans for a jewish state beside an arbs state. The Arabs refused.

Israel never "frighten millions of people out of their villages and while they were gone, burn the villages to the ground and throw civilians into the sea".
That is a complete BS.

The Arabs started a war on Israel and during that war more Jews had to leave their homes in Arabs countries than Arabs had to leave theirs.

so how come "anti-Zionist is basically anti-colonianism"?

this is promoting religious zionism! so you are saying that there were no palestinians in israel before the state of israel was created in 1948? So Muslims hold no regard to Jerusalem in their prayers? bullshit! thats like saying christians don't pray for jerusalem. jews don't hold a monopoly on the holy city of Jerusalem, it is holy to dozens of religious groups and institutions. further, what justification does Israel have for its negative military reactions against Palestinians, honestly now? what would G-D think of all this? While it is true that it is back and forth between Palestinian militants and the Israeli military, somebody is going to eventually have to be the bigger man and back down, either that or every single arab and jewish man woman and child is just going to have to mutually slaughter each other in hatred? [I exaggerate to point out that war goes in no direction positive, it only leads to death and human suffering, regardless of what palestinian rockets do to Israel, it does not give them the vindication to return the same barbarous savagery to the palestinian civilians, who openly are the underdogs here. it is a first world power against a third world people, and it is getting absolutely ridiculous.]

[Moshe]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

this is promoting religious zionism! so you are saying that there were no palestinians in israel before the state of israel was created in 1948? So Muslims hold no regard to Jerusalem in their prayers? bullshit! thats like saying christians don't pray for jerusalem. jews don't hold a monopoly on the holy city of Jerusalem, it is holy to dozens of religious groups and institutions. further, what justification does Israel have for its negative military reactions against Palestinians, honestly now? what would G-D think of all this? While it is true that it is back and forth between Palestinian militants and the Israeli military, somebody is going to eventually have to be the bigger man and back down, either that or every single arab and jewish man woman and child is just going to have to mutually slaughter each other in hatred? [I exaggerate to point out that war goes in no direction positive, it only leads to death and human suffering, regardless of what palestinian rockets do to Israel, it does not give them the vindication to return the same barbarous savagery to the palestinian civilians, who openly are the underdogs here. it is a first world power against a third world people, and it is getting absolutely ridiculous.]

I never said there were no Palestinians here before 1948. All I said that this land is embedded in jewish heritage much more than in palestinian culture.
Anyway the question now is not who is right. The question is how can Israel live with a neighbour who declares that he wants to destroy Israel and fires missiles on a civilian population? All this is after Israel did withdrawal from all of the Gaza strip and didn't leave a single Jew there.
Another question is why the Hamas terrorist fire their missiles from housea and hospitals? Don't they care about the innocent civilians? Does Israel Have to worry about Palestinian lives more than the Palestinians themself care? about?

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Moshe

I never said there were no Palestinians here before 1948. All I said that this land is embedded in jewish heritage much more than in palestinian culture.
Anyway the question now is not who is right. The question is how can Israel live with a neighbour who declares that he wants to destroy Israel and fires missiles on a civilian population? All this is after Israel did withdrawal from all of the Gaza strip and didn't leave a single Jew there.
Another question is why the Hamas terrorist fire their missiles from housea and hospitals? Don't they care about the innocent civilians? Does Israel Have to worry about Palestinian lives more than the Palestinians themself care? about?

jerusalem is imbedded in anglo christian culture for over a thousand years. it is in the western catholic tradition, the eastern orthodox, hell there have been Ethiopian orthodox monks in jerusalem since the fourth century! do they all have some divine right to manifest destiny over the small territory of Israel? I say, the people living there had the right, and palestinians were there before the israelis were imported, and so like or not the israelis have to deal with it. unfortunately their solution has been to terrorize the palestinians into fleeing from the land as refugees,as they fill up egypt, syria and lebanon with over 1 million refugees. It sounds exactly like Israel is trying to scare out millions of palestinians to solve to problem through violence rather then sincere compromise.

palestinian civilians do not launch rockets into israel. why does israel then retaliate with air strikes and blitzkrieg on palestinian civilians? It is not that Israel should care about palestinians more then israelis, is its that israel's military is being cruel and hostile directly towards palestinian civilians, and that is savage and uncalled for. if they were piling up the bodies of militants it would be one thing, but old women and children in gaza are not launching rockets into israel. israel just wants to terrorize the palestinians hoping to starve out the militants, and that is unfair.

[fugazifan]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

couldn't the modern and supposedly efficient Israeli military strike its targets more accurately instead of hitting so many civilians? the civilians in gaza are not launching rockets into Israel, militants are, and the israelis should either target militants, or chill back, I am sorry, just because shit is fucked up for people getting rocketed in israel, does not give the israeli military to right and authority to to tit-for-tat bomb palestinian civilians. just because israeli grandmothers are crying over their dead, does not mean that israelis need to make palestinian grandmothers mourn that much harder.....
ridiculous.]

did you read all of my posts? cause i thought that i made it pretty clear that i wasn not supporting what the israeli military does.
. it must be very easy to sit in cozy LA and say that all israelis are terrorists that is kind of a bullshit remark. not every israeli goes to the army. and those that do dont always have a choice. i didnt serve, they didnt want me and i didnt want them.
and i dont follow your claim that since you are somehow affiliated with the army then you support it and thus terrorism, remember hear it is MANDATORY
whats worse, a country who does terrible things and the army service is mandatory or obligatory (is that the right word?).

[Glice]

I think you mean voluntary. Mandatory and obligatory are close enough to be synonyms.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Moshe

I never said there were no Palestinians here before 1948. All I said that this land is embedded in jewish heritage much more than in palestinian culture.
Anyway the question now is not who is right. The question is how can Israel live with a neighbour who declares that he wants to destroy Israel and fires missiles on a civilian population? All this is after Israel did withdrawal from all of the Gaza strip and didn't leave a single Jew there.
Another question is why the Hamas terrorist fire their missiles from housea and hospitals? Don't they care about the innocent civilians? Does Israel Have to worry about Palestinian lives more than the Palestinians themself care? about?

I think your protagonist would probably say that Hamas (or Hezbollah [etc]) are merely the oppressed, the confused victims of someone else's oppression; one fact of one matter is that shooting people ain't a good thing. Another more important point is, as you say, Israel has made compromises, and, to my mind, doesn't as a nation support the denial of a whole nation, or promise martyrdom to 'freedom fighters' who are killed in battle against a nation that 'doesn't exist'. Again: Israel isn't right always, but it is far more complicated than 'Israel is wrong' (this isn't directed at you Mr Moshe, as I'm sure you've inferred).

[racehorse]

Originally Posted by Moshe

you should stop reading science fiction and start reading history books.

here are some facts:

There was never a Palestinian state!

Israel is the historic land of the Jews not of the arabs. The Jews pray 3 times a day to return to Jerusalem with their face toward the city. The Koran doesn't mention Jerusalem and the Muslims pray with their back to Jerusalem and faces to Mecca.

There was a Jewish community in Israel long before the Arbs occupied it.

The Zionist movement bought 10% of the land from Arabs and agreed to UN plans for a jewish state beside an arbs state. The Arabs refused.

Israel never "frighten millions of people out of their villages and while they were gone, burn the villages to the ground and throw civilians into the sea".
That is a complete BS.

The Arabs started a war on Israel and during that war more Jews had to leave their homes in Arabs countries than Arabs had to leave theirs.

so how come "anti-Zionist is basically anti-colonianism"?

science fiction? i'm sorry but how about "the ethnic cleansing of palestine" by Ilan Pappe, an israeli historian who currently holds the chair of HISTORY at exeter university? how about chomsky's "middle east illusions" - noam chomsky who was recently voted the world's top public intellectual by prospect magazine? or how about meron benvenisti, shlomo ben ami, julie peteet and mark tessler? These are not science fiction authors, far from it - they are reputed scholars, politicians and diplomats. They will all reinforce the fact that in 1948, around one million people were expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians were massacred and hundreds of Palestinian villages destroyed. if it had happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". here is a quote from "Plan Dalat", finalised and initiated by the israeli goverment in 1948 :

"These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) and especially of those population centers which are difficult to control continuously; or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state."

It is now irrelevant whose religion shows a greater dedication to Jerusalem. We must analyse states by their actions and actions only. the Israeli state demolished the history and homes of one million people in 1948, a people who had been living there for 7 centuries. to ignore this is to ignore a grave , criminal, and unforgiveable injustice.

it is also relevant that you mention hospitals.
roads built over the demolished palestinian villages are for israeli-only use, meaning that ambulances meant to carry Palestinians say, from Ramallah to Jerusalem are forced to take massive diversions, increasing journey times by up to an hour. These are roads which were built over demolished Palestinian villages and are now out of bounds to the palestinians themselves.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by fugazifan

did you read all of my posts? cause i thought that i made it pretty clear that i wasn not supporting what the israeli military does.
. it must be very easy to sit in cozy LA and say that all israelis are terrorists that is kind of a bullshit remark. not every israeli goes to the army. and those that do dont always have a choice. i didnt serve, they didnt want me and i didnt want them.
and i dont follow your claim that since you are somehow affiliated with the army then you support it and thus terrorism, remember hear it is MANDATORY
whats worse, a country who does terrible things and the army service is mandatory or obligatory (is that the right word?).

lets get one thing straight, I don't know how cozy you think Los Angeles is, but more people were shot dead in this city last year then in the past five in your whole fucking country.

second:

i did not say that every israeli was a terrorist. I said that the israeli military was using terrorism against palestinians. and I also said, "I am not criticising the Jews as a race in citing the failures of its military. So please, you misunderstand me. I hate zionism, not jews. I hate the military policies of Israel, not the Israelis."

second:

the way I understand, military service is mandatory in Israel, and last year only 300 were arrested for refusing. sounds like the youth are pretty supportive of Israeli military policy to me, but I could be mistaken, after all you live there, not me. further, i never said you, but I suppose that was implied with the tone of my posts, but I am speaking on true hearsay, I dont live in Israel just like you dont live in Los Angeles, but none-the-less, I still have a right to interpret the events as I have access to see them. I apologize if my opinions offended you, I can only speak what I understand and seek necessary correction, exchanging notes so to speak. regardless, the israeli military follows a strict policy of terror tactics against palestinians, and my initial and continuous argumment remains valid, tit-for-tat military policy is savage and cruel.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

jerusalem is imbedded in anglo christian culture for over a thousand years. it is in the western catholic tradition, the eastern orthodox, hell there have been Ethiopian orthodox monks in jerusalem since the fourth century! do they all have some divine right to manifest destiny over the small territory of Israel?

I just imagined the world reaction of the Ethiopian military invaded Israel with its 50 odd fighter jets, blitzkrieg with the 300 tanks, and attack in the name of their 1500 hundred year old cultural herritage with jerusalem, where they too have prayed for, seven times a day at that! sounds absurd! and yet this is the defense for the israeli military? come on, bullshit! It is as ridiculous Monroe's Manifest Destiny, and yet we are supposed to accept it as valid and legitimate, because jewish religious mythology dictates contemporary politics. I am sorry y'all, but if I was to regenerate the inquisition or the crusades in the name of Christianity i would be rightfully considered a monster! mythology should affect spirituality, and I am deeply attached to mythology, especially jewish mythology such as the prophets and the patriarchs. I know more about abraham isaac and jacob then I do my own grandparents, but I do not adjust political policy because of these
personal beliefs...

Originally Posted by glice

I think your protagonist would probably say that Hamas (or Hezbollah [etc]) are merely the oppressed, the confused victims of someone else's oppression; one fact of one matter is that shooting people ain't a good thing.

I see you did notice my post here saying, "I exaggerate to point out that war goes in no direction positive, it only leads to death and human suffering, regardless of what palestinian rockets do to Israel, it does not give them the vindication to return the same barbarous savagery to the palestinian civilians"

I dont support war or death or destruction from any side, so I do not automatically support those who attack israel because I do not support israel. "we don't need no trouble, oh no... what we need is love sweet love..."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...74136062328804

[Moshe]

Rewriting Israel's History

by Efraim Karsh
Middle East Quarterly

June 1996

Efraim Karsh is director of the Mediterranean Studies Programme at King's College, University of London, and editor of the quarterly journal Israel Affairs.

One of the reasons I gave up political history was that it is very difficult not to direct it towards the future, towards your idea of what ought to happen. And that somehow distorts your view of what has happened.
Albert Hourani
As Israel edges toward peace with the Palestinians, old, highly controversial, and seemingly defunct issues are back on the table, such as the legal status of Jerusalem and the question of the Palestinian refugees. The refugees and their present rights inspire two very different approaches. The Israeli view, based on an assessment of the 1947-49 period that ascribes primary responsibility for the Palestinian tragedy to an extremist and short-sighted leadership, sees Palestinian wounds as primarily self-inflicted and so not in need of compensation. In contrast, Palestinian spokesmen justify their "right of return" to the territory that is now part of the State of Israel (or an alternative compensation) by presenting themselves as victims of Jewish aggression in the late 1940s.
Ironically, it is a group of Israelis who have given the Palestinian argument its intellectual firepower. Starting in 1987, an array of self-styled "new historians" has sought to debunk what it claims is a distorted "Zionist narrative." How valid is this sustained assault on the received version of Israel's early history? This question has real political importance, for the answer is bound to affect the course of Israeli-Palestinian efforts at making peace.
THE NEW HISTORIANS AND THEIR CRITICS
Simha Flapan, the left-wing political activist and editor of New Outlook who inaugurated the assault on alleged "Zionist myths," made no bones about his political motivations in rewriting Israeli history, presenting his book as an attempt to "undermine the propaganda structures that have so long obstructed the growth of the peace forces in my country."1 But soon after, a group of Israeli academics and journalists gave this approach a scholarly imprimatur, calling it the "new history."2 Its foremost spokesmen include Avi Shlaim of Oxford University, Benny Morris of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Ilan Pappé of Haifa University. Other prominent adherents include Tom Segev of the Ha'aretz newspaper, Benjamin Beit Hallahmi of Haifa University, and researchers Uri Milstein and Yosi Amitai.
Above all, the new history signifies a set of beliefs: that Zionism was at best an aggressive and expansionist national movement and at worst an offshoot of European imperialism;3 and that it was responsible for the Palestinian tragedy, the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict, and even the Middle East's violent history.
In an attempt to prove that the Jewish State was born in sin, the new historians concentrate on the war of 1947-49 (in Israeli parlance, the War of Independence). Deriding alternative interpretations as "old" or "mobilized," they dismiss the notion of a hostile Arab world's seeking to destroy the Jewish state at birth as but a Zionist myth. They insist that when the Jewish Agency accepted the U.N. Resolution of November 1947 (partitioning Mandatory Palestine into Arab and Jewish states), it was less than sincere.
It is obviously a major service to all concerned to take a hard look at the past and, without political intent, to debunk old myths. Is that what the new historians have done? I shall argue that, quite the contrary, they fashion their research to suit contemporary political agendas; worse, they systematically distort the archival evidence to invent an Israeli history in an image of their own making. These are strong words; the following pages shall establish their accuracy.
A number of scholars have already done outstanding work showing the faults of the new history. Itamar Rabinovich (of Tel Aviv University, currently Israel's ambassador to the United States) has debunked the claim by Shlaim and Pappé that Israel's recalcitrance explains the failure to make peace at the end of the 1947-49 war.4 Avraham Sela (of the Hebrew University) has discredited Shlaim's allegation that Israel and Transjordan agreed in advance of that war to limit their war operations so as to avoid an all-out confrontation between their forces.5 Shabtai Teveth (David Ben-Gurion's foremost biographer) has challenged Morris's account of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem.6 Robert Satloff (of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) has shown, on the basis of his own research in the Jordanian national archives in Amman, the existence of hundreds of relevant government files readily available to foreign scholars,7 thereby demolishing the new historians' claim that "the archives of the Arab Governments are closed to researchers, and that historians interested in writing about the Israeli-Arab conflict perforce must rely mainly on Israeli and Western archives"8 -- and with it, the justification for their almost exclusive reliance on Israeli and Western sources.
This article addresses a different question. The previous critics have looked mostly at issues of politics or sources; we shall concentrate on the accuracy of documentation by these self-styled champions of truth and morality. By looking at three central theses of the new historians, our research reveals a completely different picture from the one that new historians themselves have painted. But first, let us examine whether the alleged newness of this self-styled group is justified.
NEW FACTS?
The new historians claim to provide factual revelations about the origins of the Israeli-Arab conflict. According to Shlaim, "the new historiography is written with access to the official Israeli and Western documents, whereas the earlier writers had no access, or only partial access, to the official documents."9
The earlier writers may not have had access to an abundance of newly declassified documents, which became available in the 1980s, but recent "old historians," such as Rabinovich and Sela, have made no less use of them than their "new" counterparts, and they came up with very different conclusions. Which leads to the self-evident realization that it is not the availability of new documents that distinguishes the new historians from their opponents but the interpretation they give to this source material.
Further, much of the fresh information claimed by the new historians turns out to be old indeed. Consider Shlaim's major thesis about secret contacts between the Zionist movement and King `Abdallah of Transjordan. He claims that "it is striking to observe how great is the contrast between accounts of this period written without access to the official documents and an account such as this one, based on documentary evidence."10 Quite the contrary, it is striking to see how little our understanding has changed following the release of state documents. Shlaim himself concedes that the information "that there was traffic between these two parties has been widely known for some time and the two meetings between Golda Meir [acting head of the Jewish Agency's political department] and King `Abdullah in November 1947, and May 1948 have even been featured in popular films."11 Indeed, not only was the general gist of the `Abdallah-Meir conversations common knowledge by 1960,12 but most of the early writers had access to then-classified official documents. Dan Kurzman's 1970 account of that meeting is a near verbatim narration of the report prepared by the Jewish Agency's political department adviser on Arab affairs, Ezra Danin.13 Shlaim also relies on Danin's report, adding nothing new to Kurzman's revelations.
Much of the fresh information claimed by the new historians turns out to be old indeed. . . .
. . . As for new interpretations, some are indeed new, but only because they are flat wrong.
Similarly, Shlaim places great stress on a February 1948 meeting between the prime minister of Transjordan, Tawfiq Abu'l-Huda, and the foreign secretary of Great Britain, Ernest Bevin, claiming the latter at that time blessed an alleged Hashemite-Jewish agreement to divide Palestine. But this meeting was already known in 1957, when Sir John Bagot Glubb, the former commander of the Arab Legion, wrote his memoirs,14 and most early works on the Arab-Israeli conflict used this information.15
Morris's foremost self-laudatory "revelation" concerns the expulsion of Arabs from certain places by Israeli forces, at times through the use of violence. This was made known decades earlier in such works as Jon and David Kimche's Both Sides of the Hill; Rony Gabbay's A Political Study of the Arab-Israeli Conflict; and Nadav Safran's From War to War.16
Eager to debunk the perception of the 1947-49 war as a heroic struggle of the few against the many, the new historians have pointed to an approximate numerical parity on the battlefield.17 Yet this too was well known: school-children could find it in historical atlases, university students in academic books.18 Ben-Gurion's autobiographical account of Israel's history, published nearly two decades before the new historians made their debut on the public stage, contains illuminating data on the Arab-Israeli military balance; his edited war diaries, published by the Ministry of Defense Press in 1983, give a detailed breakdown of the Israeli order of battle: no attempt at a cover-up here.19
</H1>

[Moshe]

NEW INTERPRETATIONS?
As for new interpretations, some are indeed new, but only because they are flat wrong. Ilan Pappé has gone so far as to argue that the outcome of the 1947-49 war had been predetermined in the political and diplomatic corridors of power "long before even one shot had been fired."20 To which, one can only say that the State of Israel paid a high price indeed to effect this predetermined outcome: the war's six thousand fatalities represented 1 percent of Israel's total Jewish population, a higher human toll than that suffered by Great Britain in World War II.21 Further, Israel's battlefield losses during the war were about the same as those of the Palestinians; and given that its population was roughly half the latter's size, Israel lost proportionately twice the percentage of the Palestinians.22
Other interpretations ring truer, but only because they are old and familiar. Shlaim concedes that his charge of Jordanian-Israeli collusion is not a new one but was made decades before him.23 In fact, this conspiracy theory has been quite pervasive. In Arab historiography of an anti-Hashemite caste, "the collusion myth became the crux of an historical indictment against the king for betraying the Arab national cause in Palestine."24 On the Israeli side, both left- and right-wingers have levelled this same criticism at the government's conduct of the 1947-49 war. Shlaim has hardly broken new ground.
Shlaim's main claim to novelty lies in his challenging "the conventional view of the Arab-Israeli conflict as a simple bipolar affair in which a monolithic and implacably hostile Arab world is pitted against the Jews."25 But this "conventional view" does not exist. Even such passionately pro-Israel feature films on the 1947-49 war as Exodus and Cast a Giant Shadow do not portray "a monolithic and implacably hostile Arab world pitted against the Jews," but show divided Arab communities in which some leaders would rather not fight the Jews and others would cooperate with the Jews against their Arab "brothers." And what applies to popular movies applies all the more to scholarly writings. Not one of the studies by the "old historians" subscribes to the stereotypical approach attached to them by Shlaim.
The same applies to Morris. His claim that "what happened in Palestine/Israel over 1947-9 was so complex and varied . . . that a single-cause explanation of the exodus from most sites is untenable"26 echoes not only Aharon Cohen's and Rony Gabbay's conclusions of thirty years earlier27 but also the standard explanation of the Palestinian exodus by such "official Zionist" writers as Joseph Schechtman: "This mass flight of the Palestinian Arabs is a phenomenon for which no single explanation suffices. Behind it lies a complex of apparently contradictory factors."28
Even the claim to novelty is not new! Aharon Klieman, the quintessential "old historian," wrote in his study of Hashemite-Zionist relations, published just two years before Shlaim's book, that "it has been a commonplace to present the Palestine or the Arab-Israeli conflict in all its historical stages as a simple bilateral conflict. . . . It is a mistake to present the Arab side to the equation as a monolithic bloc. The `Arab camp' has always been divided and at war with itself."29
At times, the new historians themselves realize they are recycling old ideas. For example, Shlaim acknowledged that their arguments were foreshadowed by such writers as Gabbay, Israel Baer, Gabriel Cohen, and Meir Pail.30 In all, the new historians have neither ventured to territory unknown to earlier generations of scholars, nor made major factual discoveries, nor provided truly original interpretations, let alone developed novel historical methodologies or approaches. They have used precisely the same research methods and source-material as those whose work they disdain -- the only difference between these two groups being the interpretation given to their findings. Let us now turn to the accuracy of those interpretations.

[Moshe]

I. PUSHING OUT THE ARABS
The new historians make three main claims about the Zionist movement in the late 1940s: it secretly intended to expel the Palestinians, it conspired with King `Abdallah to dispossess the Palestinians of their patrimony, and it won British support for this joint effort. Are these accusations accurate?
Morris writes that "from the mid-1930s most of the Yishuv's leaders, including Ben-Gurion, wanted to establish a Jewish state without an Arab minority, or with as small an Arab minority as possible, and supported a `transfer solution' to this minority problem."31 He argues that the transfer idea "had a basis in mainstream Jewish thinking, if not actual planning, from the late 1930s and 1940s."32 But Morris, the new historian who has made the greatest effort to prove this thesis, devotes a mere five pages to this subject. He fails to prove his claim.
First, the lion's share of his "evidence" comes from a mere three meetings of the Jewish Agency Executive (JAE) during June 7-12, 1938. Five days in the life of a national movement can scarcely provide proof of longstanding trends or ideologies, especially since these meetings were called to respond to specific ad hoc issues. Moreover, Morris has painted a totally false picture of the actual proceedings of these meetings. Contrary to his claim that the meetings "debated at length various aspects of the transfer idea,"33 the issue was discussed only in the last meeting, and even then as but one element in the overall balance of risks and opportunities attending Britain's suggested partition rather than as a concrete policy option. The other two meetings did not discuss the subject at all.34
Secondly, Morris virtually ignores that the idea of transfer was forced on the Zionist agenda by the British (in the recommendations of the 1937 Peel Royal Commission on Palestine) rather than being self-generated.35 He downplays the commission's recommendation of transfer, creates the false impression that the Zionists thrust this idea on a reluctant British Mandatory power (rather than vice versa), and misleadingly suggests that Zionist interest in transfer long outlived the Peel Commission.36
Thirdly, and most important, Morris systematically falsifies evidence, to the point that there is scarcely a single document he relies on without twisting and misleading, either by a creative rewriting of the original text, by taking words out of context, or by truncating texts and thereby distorting their meaning. For example, Morris finds an alleged Zionist interest in the idea of transfer lasting up to the outbreak of the 1948 war. Yes, Morris concedes, Ben-Gurion in a July 1947 testimony to the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) "went out of his way to reject the 1945 British Labour Party platform `International Post-war Settlement' which supported the encouragement of the movement of the Palestine Arabs to the neighboring countries to make room for Jews."37 But he insinuates that Ben-Gurion was insincere; in his heart of hearts, he subscribed to the transfer idea at the beginning of the 1947-49 war. Becoming a mind-reader, Morris discerns the transfer in a Ben-Gurion speech in December 1947:
There was no explicit mention of the collective transfer idea.
However, there was perhaps a hint of the idea in Ben-Gurion's speech to Mapai's supporters four days after the UN Partition resolution, just as Arab-Jewish hostilities were getting under way. Ben-Gurion starkly outlined the emergent Jewish State's main problem -- its prospective population of 520,000 Jews and 350,000 Arabs. Including Jerusalem, the state would have a population of about one million, 40% of which would be non-Jews. "This fact must be viewed in all its clarity and sharpness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be complete certainty that the government will be held by a Jewish majority. . . . There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." The Yishuv's situation and fate, he went on, compelled the adoption of "a new approach . . . new habits of mind" to "suit our new future. We must think like a state."38
Morris creates the impression here that Ben-Gurion believed only transfer would resolve the problem of a substantial Arab minority in the Jewish State.
Is this mind-reading of Ben-Gurion correct? Was there really a hint of the transfer idea in his speech? Here is the text from which Morris draws his citation:

In the territory allotted to the Jewish State there are now above 520,000 Jews (apart from the Jerusalem Jews who will also be citizens of the state) and about 350,000 non-Jews, almost all of whom are Arabs. Including the Jerusalem Jews, the state would have at birth a population of about one million, nearly 40 per cent of which would be non-Jews. This [population] composition does not constitute a solid basis for a Jewish State; and this fact must be viewed in all its clarity and sharpness. With such a composition, there cannot even be complete certainty that the government will be held by a Jewish majority. . . . There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 per cent, and so long as this majority consists of only 600,000 Jews. . . .

We have been confronted with a new destiny -- we are about to become masters of our own fate. This requires a new approach to all our questions of life. We must reexamine all our habits of mind, all our systems of operation to see to what extent they suit our new future. We must think in terms of a state, in terms of independence, in terms of full responsibility for ourselves -- and for others.39
This original text suggests that Morris has distorted the evidence in three ways.
First, Morris omits Ben-Gurion's statement that there can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as the Jewish majority "consists of only 600,000 Jews." He distorts Ben-Gurion's intention by narrowing the picture to a preoccupation with the 60-40 percent ratio, when its real scope was a concern about the absolute size of the Jewish population.
Secondly, Morris creates the impression that Ben-Gurion's call for a "new approach . . . new habits of mind" applied to the Arab minority problem, implicitly referring to transfer. In fact, it applied to the challenges attending the transition from a community under colonial domination to national self-determination.
Thirdly, he omits Ben-Gurion's statement on the need to take "full responsibility for ourselves -- and for others." Who are these others but the non-Jewish minority of the Jewish State?
Worse, Morris chooses to rely on a secondary source rather than consult the primary document; and for good reason, for an examination of the original would easily dispel the cloud of innuendo with which Morris surrounded Ben-Gurion's speech:
. . . There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 percent, and so long as this majority consists of only 600,000 Jews.
From here stems the first and principal conclusion. The creation of the state is not the formal implementation process discussed by the UN General Assembly. . . . To ensure not only the establishment of the Jewish State but its existence and destiny as well -- we must bring a million-and-a-half Jews to the country and root them there. It is only when there will be at least two millions Jews in the country -- that the state will be truly established.40
This speech contains not a hint of the transfer idea. Ben-Gurion's long-term solution to the 60-40 percent ratio between the Jewish majority and non-Jewish minority is clear and unequivocal: mass Jewish immigration.
As for the position of the Arabs in the Jewish State, Ben-Gurion could not be clearer:

We must think in terms of a state, in terms of independence, in terms of full responsibility for ourselves -- and for others. In our state there will be non-Jews as well -- and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without any exception; that is: the state will be their state as well.41

Ben-Gurion envisaged Jewish-Arab relations in the prospective Jewish State not based on the transfer of the Arab population but as a true partnership among equal citizens; not "fortress Israel," a besieged European island in an ocean of Arab hostility, but a Jewish-Arab alliance.
These passages make it clear that Benny Morris has truncated, twisted, and distorted Ben-Gurion's vision of Jewish-Arab relations and the Zionist position on the question of transfer. All this is especially strange given that Morris contends that the historian "must remain honour-bound to gather and present his facts accurately."42

[Moshe]

II. COLLUSION ACROSS THE JORDAN
Shlaim traces Israel's and Transjordan's alleged collusion to a secret meeting on November 17, 1947, in which King `Abdallah and Golda Meir agreed supposedly to frustrate the impending U.N. Resolution on Palestine and instead divide Palestine between themselves. He writes that

In 1947 an explicit agreement was reached between the Hashemites and the Zionists on the carving up of Palestine following the termination of the British mandate . . . it was consciously and deliberately intended to frustrate the will of the international community, as expressed through the United Nations General Assembly, in favour of creating an independent Arab state in part of Palestine.43

Is there any evidence for this alleged conspiracy? No, none at all. First, a careful examination of the two documents used to substantiate the claim of collusion -- reports by Ezra Danin and Eliyahu Sasson, two Zionist officials -- proves that Meir implacably opposed any agreement that would violate the U.N. partition resolution passed twelve days later. In no way did she consent to the Transjordan annexation of Arab areas of Palestine. Rather, Meir made it eminently clear that:
* Any Zionist-Hashemite arrangement would have to be compatible with the U.N. resolution. In Danin's words: "We explained that our matter was being discussed at the UN, that we hoped that it would be decided there to establish two states, one Jewish and one Arab, and that we wished to speak now about an agreement with him [i.e., `Abdallah] based on these resolutions."44 In Sasson's words: "Replied we prepared [to] give every assistance within [the] frame [of the] UN Charter."45
* The sole purpose of Transjordan's intervention in post-Mandatory Palestine would be, in Meir's words, "to maintain law and order and to preserve peace until the UN could establish a government in that area,"46 namely, a short-lived law-enforcement operation aimed at facilitating the establishment of a legitimate Palestinian government. Indeed, even `Abdallah did not expect the meeting to produce any concrete agreement. In Danin's words: "At the end he reiterated that concrete matters could be discussed only after the UN had passed its resolution, and said that we must meet again immediately afterwards."47
Secondly, Meir's account of her conversation with `Abdallah -- strangely omitted in this context by Shlaim (though he cites it elsewhere in his study) -- further confirms that Mandatory Palestine was not divided on November 17, 1947.
For our part we told him then that we could not promise to help his incursion into the country [i.e., Mandatory Palestine], since we would be obliged to observe the UN Resolution which, as we already reckoned at the time, would provide for the establishment of two states in Palestine. Hence, we could not -- so we said -- give active support to the violation of this resolution.48
Thirdly, Shlaim's thesis is predicated on the idea of a single diplomatic encounter's profoundly affecting the course of history. He naïvely subscribes to the notion that a critical decision about the making of war and peace or the division of foreign lands is made in the course of a single conversation, without consultations or extended bargaining. This account reflects a complete lack of understanding about the nature of foreign policymaking in general and of the Zionist decision-making process in particular.
Fourthly, as mere acting head of the Jewish Agency's political department, Meir was in no position to commit her movement to a binding deal with King `Abdallah, especially since that deal would run counter to the Jewish Agency's simultaneous efforts to win a U.N. resolution on partition. All she could do was try to convince `Abdallah not to oppose the impending U.N. partition resolution violently and give him the gist of Zionist thinking.
Fifthly, Meir's conversation with `Abdallah was never discussed by the Jewish Agency Executive, the Yishuv's effective government. The Yishuv's military operations during the 1947-49 war show not a trace of the alleged deal in either their planning or their execution. Quite the contrary, the Zionist leadership remained deeply suspicious of `Abdallah's expansionist ambitions up to May 1948.
Lastly, while the Jewish Agency unquestionably preferred `Abdallah to his Palestinian rival, the Jerusalem mufti Hajj Amin al-Husayni, this preference did not lead the agency to preclude the possibility of a Palestinian state. As late as December 1948 (or more than a year after `Abdallah and Meir had allegedly divided Palestine), Ben-Gurion stated his preference for an independent Palestinian state to Transjordan's annexing the Arab parts of Mandatory Palestine. "An Arab State in Western Palestine is less dangerous than a state that is tied to Transjordan, and tomorrow -- probably to Iraq," he told his advisers. "Why should we vainly antagonize the Russians? Why should we do this [i.e., agree to Transjordan's annexation of Western Palestine] against the [wishes of the] rest of the Arab states?"49
In short, not only did the Zionist movement not collude with King `Abdallah to divide Mandatory Palestine between themselves but it was reconciled to the advent of a Palestinian state. `Abdallah was the one who was violently opposed to such an eventuality and who caused it to fail by seizing the bulk of the territory the United Nations had allocated to the Palestinians.

[Moshe]

III. COLLUSION WITH GREAT BRITAIN

Shlaim writes that "Britain knew and approved of this secret Hashemite-Zionist agreement to divide up Palestine between themselves, not along the lines of the U.N. partition plan."50 This alleged British blessing was given in the above-noted conversation between Bevin and Abu'l-Huda, in which the foreign secretary gave the Transjordanian prime minister

The green light to send the Arab Legion into Palestine immediately following the departure of the British forces. But Bevin also warned [Trans]jordan not to invade the area allocated by the U.N. to the Jews. An attack on Jewish state territory, he said, would compel Britain to withdraw her subsidy and officers from the Arab Legion.51

This thesis is fundamentally flawed. True, the British were resigned to Transjordan's military foray into post-Mandatory Palestine, but this was not out of a wish to protect Jewish interests. Rather, it was directed against those interests: Israel was intended to be the victim of the Transjordanian intervention -- not its beneficiary.
* Contrary to Shlaim's claim, the British government did not know of a Hashemite-Zionist agreement to divide up Palestine, both because this agreement did not exist and because `Abdallah kept London in the dark about his contacts with the Jewish Agency. The influential British ambassador to Amman, Sir Alec Kirkbride, was not aware of the secret Meir-`Abdallah meeting until well after the event.52 How then could the British bless a Hashemite-Zionist deal?
* Glubb's memoirs alone indicate that Bevin gave Abu'l-Huda a green light to invade while warning him, "do not go and invade the areas allotted to the Jews."53 In contrast, declassified British documents unequivocally show that Bevin neither encouraged Abu'l-Huda to invade the Arab parts of Palestine as "the obvious thing to do," as claimed by Glubb, nor warned him off invading the Jewish areas. Bevin said only that he "would study the statements which his Excellency had made."54 Shlaim's choosing an old and partisan account over a newly released official document suggests a desperate attempt to prove the existence of such a warning.

* The British archives are bursting with evidence that the foreign secretary and his advisers cared not at all whether `Abdallah transgressed Jewish territory; they only wanted to be sure he did not implicate Britain in an embarrassing international situation. Shortly after the Bevin-Abu'l-Huda meeting, Bernard Burrows, head of the Eastern department, wrote (with Bevin's approval) that

It is tempting to think that Transjordan might transgress the boundaries of the United Nations Jewish State to the extent of establishing a corridor across the Southern Negeb [i.e., Negev] joining the existing Transjordan territory to the Mediterranean and Gaza . . . [thereby] cutting the Jewish State, and therefore Communist influence, off from the Red Sea.55

More important, on May 7, 1948, a week before the all-Arab attack on Israel, Burrows suggested to the Foreign Office intimate to King `Abdallah that "we could in practice presumably not object to Arab Legion occupation of the Nejeb [i.e., Negev]."56 In other words, not only was the Foreign Office not opposed to Transjordan's occupation of the Jewish State's territory but it encouraged `Abdallah to go in and occupy about half of it.
* Having grudgingly recognized their inability to prevent the partition of Palestine, British officialdom wished to see a far smaller and weaker Jewish state than that envisaged by the U.N. partition resolution and did its utmost to bring about such an eventuality. Limitations of space do not allow a presentation of the overwhelming documentary evidence of British efforts to cut Israel "down to size" and stunt its population growth through the prevention of future Jewish immigration.57 Suffice to say that British policymakers sought to forestall an Israeli-Transjordanian peace agreement unless it detached the Negev from the Israeli state.
CONCLUSIONS
Recently declassified documents in Israeli and Western archives fail to confirm the picture of the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict painted by the new historians. The self-styled new historiography is really a "distortiography." It is anything but new: much of what it presents is old and much of the new is distortion. The "new historians" are neither new nor true historians but rather partisans seeking to give academic respectability to longstanding misconceptions and prejudice on the Arab-Israeli conflict. To borrow the words of the eminent British historian E.H. Carr, what the new historians are doing is to "write propaganda or historical fiction, and merely use facts of the past to embroider a kind of writing which has nothing to do with history."58
Returning to political issues of today: the Palestinian claim to national self-determination stands on its own and does not need buttressing from historical falsification. Quite the contrary, fabricating an Israeli history to cater to interests of the moment does great disservice not only to historical truth but also to the Palestinians that the new historians seek to champion. Instead, they should heed Albert Hourani's advice. Securing the future means coming to terms with one's past, however painful that might be, not denying it.

[Rob Instigator]

how can the endless paprade of corrupt fucks running these african nations into the ground be stopped?