Author's Note:
While a huge number of sources were used to provide background understanding, the primary sources used to document this article, are The Siege: the Saga of Israel and Zionism by Conor Cruise O'Brien and The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict by Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, editors. The former was chosen due to it being hailed by a wide range of Jewish and Israeli experts on the subject (as well as being adopted as source material by numerous pro-Zionist professors). The latter book was chosen as it is a compendium of the actual documentation detailing the historical and legal substrate upon which Palestinian Homeland Issue is premised. The above mentioned books provide the population figures cited throughout.
What you are about to read was written and published in 1988; the culmination of twelve years of researching the issue. After publication the author received huge negative and, in some cases, harassing responses from pro-Israeli factions (Jewish Defense League, Jewish Defense Organization, national Anti-Defamation League, a local SUNY contingent of Jewish Professors). That organized defense of the indefensible led to the author's realization that "nothing will change..." Sadly, twenty years later, nothing has changed.
January 2009
In order to achieve "true" understanding qua ontologic phenomenology of any given situation, historicity as substrate is imperative. We must understand what truly happened yesterday if we are to render judgments regarding events transpiring today.
As specifically pertains to the Zionist reclamation of Palestine (a.k.a., the Palestinian Homeland Issue) we, of the Western World ― industrial democracies that have risen to "premier status" on the back of Arab oil 1 ― have been exposed to a singular, ego-centric point-of-view (POV) that has passed as historical Truth (or, historicity) when, in fact, this viewpoint has been but a well-crafted fictionalization of the historical Truth; a one-sided docu-drama presented again and again in various formats for the express purpose of indoctrinating the Western masses with irreality passed off as real whereby the ancient cliché, "History is written by the victors," is exquisitely reaffirmed.2
Massive propaganda has been unleashed upon the world creating a fantastic gap between Truth/Reality and the prevailing (mis-, dis-) perception of the above mentioned existing political issue. Perversions of reality have been and are still being perpetrated, via media, upon the Western World under the guises of Truth, Legality and Morality, so that we accept ― out of hand, without any reservation whatsoever ― the illegal and immoral Israeli occupation and brutalization of millions of victims; the Palestinians; true "niggers" of the world.
Certainly as far as Americans are concerned, the Zionist POV has been the only POV as regards the reclamation/occupation of Palestine. If we are to achieve historicity, the Palestinian POV must now be considered.
IN QUEST OF HISTORICITY(ANTIQUITY)
1250 BCE: Israelites begin to invade Palestine. For two centuries they fight with neighboring and foreign tribes in futile efforts to conquer Palestine.
1190 BCE: The Philistines take control of Palestine, crushing the resistance by Saul and then son Jonathan.
1000 BCE: Palestine finally comes under the rule of a tribal coalition government led by Israelite King David. His son, Solomon, succeeded David and ruled until 925 BCE at which time ― due to Solomon's excesses in the face of the people's poverty ― the northern Israelite tribes revolted and set up their own kingdom. The subjugated peoples of this new kingdom quickly revolted, thus re-ushering in a period of rival tribal states. Palestine again reverted to a land controlled by no single authority. Israel was separated from Judah.
900 BCE: Around this time a "Yahweh only" sect developed which maintained that all Israelites must worship only Yahweh for Yahweh was the only true God. This sect, steeped in elitism and intolerance,3 led by Elijah and Elisha, provoked a revolution in the northern Israelite kingdom around 840 BCE. The priest of the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem also organized a revolution. These uprising failed to win mass support. Palestine remained highly factionated even among the many Jewish sects.
722 BCE: Assyrians destroy the northern Israelite kingdom.
630 BCE: The Deuteronomic code (Deut. 12-26, 28) was produced instilling as legal order Yahweh-only worship. To worship another god was an offense punishable by death.4
609 BCE: Egyptian king Necho II conquers Palestine.
605 BCE: Babylonians oust Egyptians and assume power in Palestine. The Israelite factions in Jerusalem foment revolt.
597 BCE: Weary of the constant disruptions in Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar ravaged the city and, ten years later in 587 BCE, he destroyed Jerusalem and banished the Judeans to exile in Babylonia. This mass deportation is commonly referred to as the Diaspora; the dispersal of Jews throughout the known world or, the depopulating of Palestine of Judeans.
539 BCE: Persian King Cyrus the Great, descends on Babylon gaining control of entire region, e.g. Syria-Palestine, northern Arabia and Mesopotamia. Cyrus eventually permits Judeans to return to Palestine. However, many remained in the new homes of their diasporic relocation.
500 BCE: It is during this time frame (c 500 – 365 BCE) that Judeans returned to Jerusalem eventually in enough numbers to restore their temple. This is also the time frame in which the books of the Old Testament (Genesis – II Kings) based on borrowed legends (Canaanite) and mythology (Mesopotamian) were collected, edited and otherwise amended to approximately their present form, by more than a few Yahwehist scholars.5 "Until the Restoration, Yahweh had been held to be an ethnic God, the God of Judeans who had made a Covenant with their forefathers..." [The Rise and Fall of the Judean State; Vol.1 (332-37 BCE); Solomon Zeitlin; The Jewish Publication Society of America; 1968]
Thus was the Old Testament compiled and personalized by once-exiled Judeans who no doubt maintained a great sense of resentment at having been so unceremoniously expulsed and dispersed and, therefore possessed not only the modus operandi (scholarship/political awareness) and the opportunity (time and wherewithal), but also a motive to ensure the Old Testament contained Yahweh's proclamation that Palestine belonged to the Israelites: i.e., The only legitimate God deeds Palestine to the outcast tribes of Israelites whom ― via other Yahweh proclamations in the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis 12:7, Genesis 13:14&15, Genesis 17:8) ― are elevated to chosen people status by that same ultimate authority, their God, Yahweh; the only God; proof being the law/word (a.k.a. the Old Testament) of the only true God.
323 BCE: For the next century (until 204 BCE) Palestine was under the rule of Egyptian Greek Pharaohs of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
201 BCE: The Seleucid Antiochus III takes control of Palestine. Although Antiochus was defeated by Roman army at Magnesia in 190 BCE, the Seleucid dynasty ruled Palestine for the next half century until the Roman Empire annexed the area.
168 BCE: In Jerusalem, bitter rivalry between Judean candidates for the coveted position of priesthood precipitated a rash of revolts aimed at Jerusalem officials as well as the Seleucid Imperium. According to Elias J. Bickerman (Ph.D, Petrograd, 1918; Berlin, 1926; former Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia, and Professor of Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary) and Morton Smith (Ph.D, Hebrew University, 1948; Th.D, Harvard, 1957; former Professor of History at Columbia University),6 Judas Maccabeus "turned the revolts into a guerrilla war. His brothers and their children, who eventually won the war (late 2nd C), took over the high priesthood of Jerusalem (in violation of the Pentateuchal law), conquered most of Palestine and parts of Transjordan (at turn of 1st C), and forcibly converted large bodies of the population to their brand of Judaism. But they quarreled among themselves, and were ousted in 37 by a Jewish politician named Herod who had been recognized as king by the Roman senate. Herod, like the Maccabees, made himself the patron of 'Jews' all over the empire. He lavishly rebuilt Jerusalem, especially the temple, which he made one of the most famous buildings of the Greco-Roman world. In his reign ancient Judaism reached the apogee of its power and prestige..."
"But, what was it? A great variety of beliefs and practices which can best be called 'the cult of Yahweh', since they were all regarded as obedience or worship of 'the Lord', the god not to be named, whose greatest temple was that in Jerusalem. The official authority as to the religion there was the high priest of the Jerusalem temple, an appointee of Herod, for whom many Jews had little respect. There was a rival temple-in-exile in Egypt, staffed by descendants of the legitimate high-priestly line, but they, too, seem to have had little influence with the majority of the Jews. There were in Palestine three unofficial schools of legal interpretation ― and consequently of religious practice ― organized as sects: the Pharisees, in one dubious passage said to number 6,000; the Essenes, said on better authority to number 4,000; and the Sadducees, an even smaller group. These sects were sharply opposed to one another. The mass of the people belonged to none but followed their own traditional practices."
Pre-AD: At about this time (turn of the new millennium) Jesus came onto the scene and Christianity had its beginning. This new splinter-cult soon led to even more divisiveness among the peoples of Palestine as Christianity and Judaism both proclaimed to be the "true" religion under the command of the "only God." Ultimately, Jesus was detained by temple officials on the grounds that he was a revolutionary and was promptly turned over to the Romans who exercised their legal authority to execute the Capital Punishment provision of the law.
66 AD: Continued inter se squabbles fed Jewish dissent which fueled civil disobedience which invited greater repression at the hands of Roman authorities. This cycle was repeated over and over until a major revolt raged in Jerusalem. The Sadducees in their entirety (wealthy, pro-Roman Jerusalemites) had their lives expropriated by the rebels. [According to Bickerman and Smith, p. 220; ibid] "This led (in 70 AD) to the capture of Jerusalem by Titus and the destruction of the temple, which put an end to the official sacrificial religion. At the same time the temple in Egypt was closed to prevent disturbances...The Essenes and other parties who supported the revolt were liquidated by the Romans...Next the diasporic Judaism of Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Cyprus rose in revolt against the Romans in 115 – 117 AD (resulting in) annihilation of Judaism in these provinces...(An anti-Roman rabbi) Akiba, backed a Messianic pretender named bar Kosiba (commonly referred to as 'bar Kokeba') in a revolt from 131 – 135 AD which ended with the wiping out of Judaism in southern Palestine."
FIRST ESSENTIAL POINT
Pivotal to the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a single-voiced claim by two parties of connection to Palestine that justifies ownership, ergo the impossibility of resolution as laws of political-physics prohibit two diadems from ruling over the same matters in the same place at the same time. In order to phenomenologically consider (i.e., observe, describe, and analyze without hindrance of emotional or indoctrinal distortions, in an effort to synthesize a solution to) the singular claim of ownership by both parties, a historicity of antecedent events must be considered.
When such historicity is achieved the phenomenological observer realizes that, while Jews have indeed inhabited Palestine for 4,000 years, they have not controlled/ruled Palestine for 4,000 years. In fact, only during the brief reigns of David, then Solomon, and then the Maccabees, did various sects of Jews rule Palestine; a combined total of less than 200 years. Using the Old Testament-based dating of creation, 4,000 BCE, we immediately realize that the land area now called Palestine existed, and then was peopled, 2750 years prior to the arrival of the Israelites. Therefore, in the context of the entire history of the region, a time totaling (by Old Testament standards) 5988 years, the Israelites and Zionists (we will include the Zionist rule of Palestine since Israel's declaration of statehood and de facto recognition in 1948) combined, ruled less than 240 years or, less than 4 percent of the time. Yet it is upon this substrate, this minute percentage of so-called sovereignty (so-called because even during the reign of David, the Kingdom of Israel was a contentious, multi-faceted, sectarian conglomeration of tribes that had banded together primarily to defeat the Philistines) that present-day Zionists build their arguments of justification.
IN QUEST OF HISTORICITY(PRE-MODERN)
From the 1st Century AD on, Jews were the distinct minority living in the region now called Palestine, with the overwhelming majority of that small number living in Jerusalem proper. In fact, the term Jew derives from a geographical reference to the ancient kingdom of Judah (part of the region now known as the southern portion of the West Bank) that separated from Israel in 925 BCE, thus telling us that Judean Jews never constituted a majority in Palestine. Further, there is scant (this writer has found no) evidence to even suggest that the tribes of Israel combined (during the reign of David and Solomon) comprised a majority among the peoples living in Palestine. It should be noted that the Torah, or Pentateuchal law, is the fundamental element of present-day Jewish unity (divisions along orthodox, secular, and liberal lines notwithstanding); it is what has solidified the Jewish people despite two millennia of diasporic separation. Yet, the Torah did not come into being ― as written document ― until the late 5th Century BCE; 500 years after the reign of David, and more than a hundred years after the Diaspora. In fact, not until 1890 (dating since the 70 AD destruction of the temple) did Jews constitute a majority in Jerusalem, and only then as a result of the first wave of the Zionist invasion (the first Aliyah, 1882-1903).
Prior to 1880, there were less than 25,000 Jews in Palestine, constituting approximately 5 percent of the Palestinian population. The overwhelming majority of Palestinian dwellers were Arab Muslims whose tangible, undisturbed, area roots went back millennia. [The Siege: the Saga of Israel and Zionism; Conor Cruise O'Brien; 1986]
Despite the tiresome present-day Zionist rhetoric proclaiming Palestinian Arabs' historic and total absence of any nationalistic sentiments, reality proves otherwise: "The first Arab protest against modern Jewish settlement in Palestine came as early as 1891, and reflected fear of competition on the part of merchants and craftsmen in Jerusalem. It took the form of a telegram to the Grand Vizier, in June 1891, protesting against an expected wave of further Jewish immigration." [The Siege; p.109] While not a call for a Palestinian nation-state,7 this first protest registered a unity of sentiment and an acute awareness of Zionist intent, i.e., usurpation and occupation. This protest by Palestinian Arabs in 1891 made absolutely clear that ― if not the nation of Palestine then certainly the people of Palestine ― wanted, "a halt to Jewish immigration into Palestine, and an end to land purchase by them." [Arabs and Zionism; Mandel; pp 39-40; as excerpted from The Siege, p 109]
1882 AD: A member of the Constantinople BILU Zionist group shows the substrate intent of Zionism. Ze'ev Dubnov, a first Aliyah settler in Palestine wrote that the group's purpose was "to take possession in due course of Palestine and to restore to the Jews the political independence of which they have now been deprived for 2,000 years...in a word to put all the land...in the hands of the Jews. Furthermore, it will be necessary to teach the young people, and the future young generations, the use of arms...Then the Jews, if necessary with arms in their hands, will publicly proclaim themselves master of their own, ancient fatherland." [The Siege; p 42-43]
1896 AD: Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, wrote in his pamphlet Der Judenstaat (1896) that, "The idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is a very old one: it is the restoration of the Jewish State...Those Jews who agree with our idea of a State will attach themselves to the Society (Society of Jews), which will thereby be authorized to confer and treat with Governments in the name of our people. The Society will thus be acknowledged in its relations with Governments as a State-creating power. This acknowledgment will practically create the state." [The Israel-Arab Reader; Laqueur & Rubin; 1984; pp 6 and 11]
1897 AD: First Zionist Congress meets in Basle, Switzerland. While everyone in attendance understood that a State in Palestine which was to include Jerusalem was the unequivocal goal of Zionism, the Basle Declaration of August 1897 softened this understanding by semantic concealment: "The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law." This subterfuge was deemed necessary in order to not stir the opposition of the Sultan (Ottoman Empire) Abdul Hamid, who ruled over Palestine. Also, since most of the world's Jews lived in Russia under the Orthodox Christian rule of the Romanoffs, it seemed a good idea to keep from the Tsar the Congress' true aims. For the Tsar would never tolerate Jewish control of the Holy Land especially if that control was to extend to the holy city of Jerusalem. Theodor Herzl, following the First Zionist Congress, wrote in his diary: "Were I to sum up the Basel (sic) Congress in a word ― which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly ― it would be this: 'At Basel I founded the Jewish State'...Perhaps in five years, but certainly in fifty, everyone will know it." [Diaries; Herzl; II; p 581; as excerpted from The Siege, p 80]
1898 AD: Appearing in a Frankfurt newspaper, the Arabic al-Muqtataf, Rashid Rida (a Lebanese intellectual) excoriated the Arab world for their failure to recognize the Zionist agenda, thus becoming the first published Arab rebuke of Zionism. He wrote: "You complacent nonentities...Are you content for it to be reported in the newspapers of every country that (Zionists) can take possession of your country, establish colonies in it, and reduce its masters to hired labourers and its rich to poor men? Think about this question, and talk about it." [The Siege; p 111]
1903 AD: Ahmed Tevfik, ambassador to Berlin, reported back to his Ottoman Government on the Sixth Zionist Congress, stating that it was imperative "to draw up special laws prohibiting the purchase of land in Palestine by the Zionists under any name whatsoever, so preventing the colonization of that country, the purpose of which colonization is first to attain autonomy and (then) employing all political or other means, form an independent state there. That is the essential aim of the Zionists." [The Siege; p 93]
1904 AD: The second Aliyah (1904-1914) begins with a wave of immigration of a more hostile and intractable breed of Zionists; the Russian Jews, hardened-of-heart by the recent violent, anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia. This second wave of Zionist immigration brought along a more radical attitude that manifested itself in the displacement of indigenous Arabs, via landlessness and unemployment and, in 1907, the development of an armed self-defense unit which, by 1914 blossomed into the hundred-member Ha-Shomer group.
1910 AD: "Al-Darmil (an Arabic newspaper), in Haifa, published...an 'open letter' from an eminent Arab nationalist of Damascus, Shurki al-Asali, which gives a remarkably clear picture of the state of political development of Zionism in Palestine at this period...(The Zionists) do not mix with the Ottomans, and do not buy anything from them...Every village has set up and administrative office and a school, every kaza a central administration, and every district has a general administrator. They have a blue flag in the middle of which is a 'Star of David', and below that is a Hebrew word meaning 'Zion', because in the Torah Jerusalem is called the 'Daughter of Zion.' They raise this flag instead of the Ottoman flag at their celebrations and gatherings; and they sing the Zionist anthem. They have deceived the Government with lying and falsehood when they enroll themselves as Ottoman subjects in the register, for they continue to carry foreign passports which protect them; and whenever they go to the Ottoman courts, they produce their passports and summon foreign protection...They teach their children physical training and the use of arms; you see their houses crammed with weapons...They have a special postal service, special stamps, etc., which proves that they have begun setting up their political aims and establishing their imaginary government. If the Government does not set a limit to this torrential stream, no time will pass before you see that Palestine has become the property of the Zionist Organization..." [The Siege; p 118]
1914 AD: "At the end of June 1914 an anonymous General Summons to Palestinians signed ― a Palestinian ― was circulated in Jerusalem. It is the first clear expression of a distinct Palestinian nationalism (and read) 'In the name of our country Palestine...Men!...Do you wish to be slaves to the Zionists who have come to expel you from your country, saying that this country is theirs...after having deserted it for two thousand years? The Zionists desire to settle in our country and to expel us from it. Are you satisfied with this? Do you wish to perish?'" [Arabs and Zionism; Mandel; as excerpted from The Siege; p 120]
The reader now understands that counter to the anti-Semitic rhetoric of Zionists, regional Arabs and Palestinian Arabs (Semitic people that evolved in the region) did, from the beginning, strongly object to the Zionist usurpation and steady occupation of their homeland. The Ottoman Government was in rapid state of decline and was unable or unwilling to deal with peripheral Palestinian problems.
In 1914, (at the end of the second Aliyah) the total population in Palestine was approximately 800,000: Zionists numbered 85,000 (or, 10.6 percent), Arab Muslims and Christians numbered 715,000 (or, 89.4 percent).
Then, in 1917, after years of lobbying Arthur Balfour, Zionist Chaim Weizmann's efforts were rewarded with the Balfour Declaration being issued. This has been a much heralded document (in pro-Zionist circles) that is always mentioned in the context of Great Britain's "promise" to deliver Palestine to the Zionists for the express purpose of setting up a Jewish State.
For the reader's edification, here is the famous Balfour Declaration (which was contained in a letter from Arthur James Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, dated 2 November 1917), in its entirety:
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations (as they were presented to Balfour, i.e., under the guise of semantic concealment) which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet. "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." [The Israel-Arab Reader; LAQUEUR & RUBIN; p 18]
The reader now easily discerns the "semantic concealment" mentioned above, i.e., a national home for the Jewish people was the euphemistic veil first conjured and applied to Jewish State back in 1897 at the First Zionist Congress when it was consciously decided to conceal the true aims of Zionists so as to defuse lethal opposition (as regards Zionist State aspirations) from the Ottoman Sultan and Russian Tsar.
The reader also now, no doubt, is aware of another example of Zionist "spin" being applied to the Balfour Declaration via torquing semantics; viz., that a "declaration of sympathy," a "view with favour," is transmogrified into the promise of (no longer a national home in, but) a Jewish State (comprising all of Biblical Palestine).
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Revolution (1917) and the end of World War I, all worked to enhance the Zionist usurpation and occupation of Palestine without regard for the wishes of the overwhelming majority indigenous Arab population. Thus, were the seeds of the Middle East's only "democracy" so sown.
At the conclusion of World War I (1918), which had a devastating impact on the population, there were approximately 66,000 Zionists (or, 10.3 percent) and 573,000 Arab Muslims and Christians (or, 89.7 percent).
SECOND ESSENTIAL POINT
Zionism was born in the last decade of the 19th C. In large measure the success of the Yishuv (original Zionist settlements in Palestine) was possible only after exhaustive lobbying efforts by Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann were plied against the Administrations of pertinent authorities (those in control of Palestine). From the beginning, semantic concealment (asking for a national Jewish home) was used to progress towards the Zionists true goal, namely a Jewish State. Herzl and Weizmann (like Jabotinsky and Ben-Gurion later on) like all Zionists believed that any piece of Palestine (granted to Zionists by the recognized authority of the region and thereby legitimizing a Jewish presence in Palestine; achieved with the Balfour Delcaration) would do until all of Palestine could be brought under Zionist rule. Herzl is quoted as saying (when contemplating, in 1898, Cyprus or Egypt as the site of the national Jewish home) "I would be a serious but friendly neighbour to the sanjak of Jerusalem, which I shall somehow acquire at the first opportunity." [Diaries, II; Herzl, as excerpted from The Siege; p 95] Chaim Weizmann (responding to the Peel Commission Report of July 1937 which suggested partition or, separate autonomous entities for Arabs and Jews; the latter to get the proportionately smaller area) wrote, "The Kingdom of David was smaller; under Solomon it became an Empire. Who knows? C'est le premier pas qui compte." (roughly translated: It is the initial, not the final, amount.) [The Siege; p 230]
From as early as 1891 (amidst first Aliyah, the first wave of Zionist immigration) there was Arabic protest against this foreign influx. At the end of the second Aliyah (which produced 85,000 Jews or, 10.6 percent of the total regional population in 1914) there was tangible evidence of Palestinian nationalism. It should be noted that many pro-Zionist sympathizers denigrate the Palestinian nationalism by suggesting it was solely a response to Zionism and therefore (by some stretch of the imagination) not a bonafide demand for nationhood. But, Zionism itself was the Jewish response to pogroms and persecution by hostile peoples and nations.
The Balfour Declaration, issued under the auspices of Great Britain, was a "declaration of sympathy" for, a "view with favour" upon, the establishment in Palestine of a "national home for the Jewish people." It was not a promise of a Jewish State. Further, regarding the 1917 Declaration, Great Britain attempted from the onset (though failed miserably) to safeguard the Arab majority from any usurpation and occupation beyond the original Yishuv except for a slow and controlled growth rate; as stated in the Declaration: "...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine..." In effect, from the very beginning, Great Britain had condoned setting up a national home on the conditions that the Jewish home would consist of a small enclave inside Palestine and not a state including all of Palestine.
By 1918, Zionists comprised but 10.3 percent of the Palestinian population.
IN QUEST OF HISTORICITY(MODERNITY)
1920: January 10, the League of Nations was created with the purpose of preserving post-WWI peace under the Covenant of the League proviso contained in the Treaty of Versailles. On April 24, 1920 (at the League's San Remo Conference) the Palestine Mandate was assigned to Britain. For the next 28 years, Great Britain was the sole arbiter between the Zionists and Palestinian Arabs. The Mandate document (made bona fide by the Council of the League of Nations on 24 July 1922) outlined the responsibilities of the Mandatory. Great Britain was to guarantee that Zionist immigration would be allowed only "under suitable conditions" (Article 6) and that the Arab majority's civil and religious rights would be protected (Article 2). Further, Article 17 of the British Mandate document prohibited armed defense groups ― like the Zionist underground group Ha-Shomer started in 1907 which burgeoned into Haganah in 1920 which split into Irgun, LEHI, and the Stern Gang ― unless such groups operated under the "supervision of the Mandatory." Despite this proscription these groups operated under their own supervision perpetrating terrorist acts until Israel was proclaimed a State in 1948. The third Aliyah (1919-1923) brought more Zionists into the region. British High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel appointed in June 1920, became Governor of Palestine. A Zionist himself, Samuel made Jewish immigration legal for the first time and passed a Land Transfer Ordinance that paved the way for unrestricted land acquisition by Zionists.
1922: The Churchill "White Paper" reaffirmed the essence of the Balfour Declaration, i.e., Britain's facilitation of the establishment of a national Jewish home, "not the imposition of a Jewish nationality upon the inhabitants of Palestine as a whole...(not that Palestine) as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be found in Palestine." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 47, 46]
1924: America closes its doors to mass immigration. From 1924 to 1926, 62,000 Jewish immigrants enter Palestine bringing their total number to 146,000 (about 18 percent of the total regional population).
1931: Unabated Zionist immigration brought Jews' numbers to 174,600 (18.7 percent). Palestinian Arabs numbered 759,700 (or, 81.3 percent). Vladimir "Iron Wall" Jabotinsky (Father of Irgun, a right-wing off-shoot of Haganah) at the 17th Zionist Congress proclaimed, "The aim of Zionism is the formation of a Jewish majority in Palestine on both banks of the Jordan." [The Siege; p 194]
1936: Nearly a half-century of fruitless appeals for justice, for an end to ever-growing Zionist usurpation and occupation, led to the Arab Revolt which began 15 April (and lasted through 1938) when "a group of armed Arabs took two Jews off a bus in the Nablus mountains and murdered them. Two days later members of the 'nationalist Haganah' ― parent body of the Irgun Zvai Leumi ― murdered two Arabs near the Jewish settlement of Petah Tikvah. These events were followed by major Arab disturbances in Jaffa, Nablus and elsewhere, by the establishment of Arab strike committees and by outbreaks of armed violence in many parts of the country." [The Siege; p 210] The Arabs did not discriminate between British or Jews as they saw both as their enemies. On 10 October there was a brief respite as the High Arab Committee called for a cessation of strikes and violence. The Arabs awaited the arrival of the Peel Commission that had promised to hear the grievances of the Arab majority.
On 7 January 1937, David Ben-Gurion, "chairman both of the Zionist Executive and the Jewish Agency; ruler and leader in Zionism for most practical purposes, from this time on, up to the foundation of the new State and well into its earlier years..." [The Siege; p 223] in as address before the Royal Commission led by Lord Peel, stated, "I say on behalf of the Jews that the Bible is our Mandate, the Bible which was written by us, in our own language, in Hebrew in this very country. That is our Mandate. It was only the recognition of this right which was expressed in the Balfour Declaration." [Peel Commission Minutes; as excerpted from The Siege; p 225]
Vladimir Jobotinsky, speaking before the Peel Commission 11 February 1937 stated, "A corner of Palestine, a 'canton' ― how can we promise to be satisfied with it? We cannot. We never can. Should we swear to you we would be satisfied it would be a lie." [ibid; p 230]
Another glimpse into the Zionist attitude is offered by this Ben-Gurion quote, "A...Jewish State in part of Palestine is not the end but the beginning. The establishment of such a Jewish State will serve as a means in our historical efforts to redeem the country in its entirety...We shall organize a sophisticated defense force ― an elite Army. I have no doubt that our army will be one of the best in the world. And then I am sure that we shall not be prevented from settling in all other parts of the country..." [Letters to Paula and the Children; D. Ben-Gurion; Tel Aviv, 1968; as excerpted from The Siege; p 230]
Although the Peel Commission finally proposed a partitioning of Palestine, the reality of Zionist intransigence as regarded their expansionist, exclusionary policies against the Palestinian majority led to a resumption of Arab Revolt in the later months of 1937. This Revolt, "was so formidable and so sustained that the (British) military authorities...decided to enlist the cooperation of the Yishuv...Against the rebels the Mandatory made use not only of the Jewish elements in the legal constabulary (for general duties) but also of the illegal Hagana (for offensive operations)." [The Siege; p 232]
"In July 1938, the Irgun (Zvai Leumi...believed in indiscriminate retaliation against members of the rival community) exploded land mines in the fruit market in Haifa, killing 74 persons and wounding 129. It was the most savage bout of terrorism yet experienced in Palestine." [The Siege; p 233]
Even worse, Britain used "Jewish settlers against the Arab patriots, while at the same time (unchecked by the Mandatory) other Jewish settlers perpetrated atrocities against Arab civilians." [The Siege; p 234] The Revolt left thousands of Arabs dead and many of their homes and businesses destroyed. Coupled with the Mandatory's deportation and jailing of Palestinian Arab leaders (especially Mufti Haj Amin), erosion of Arab belief that justice would ever be served was very nearly complete.
In 1937, Zionists numbered 400,000 (28.6 percent) while Palestinian Arabs numbered 1,000,000. As a result of the Arab Revolt, Jewish immigration was significantly reduced.
1939: The London Conference was held in the Spring of '39. After talks broke off between Zionist Executive and representatives for five Arab nations, the British Government issued a policy statement, a White Paper. British authorities maintained that the White Paper was a clarification of, and not a change in, policy. The White Paper called for a curtailment of Jewish immigration and a single Palestinian State to be governed by both Arabs and Jews. As stated in the Paper's Constitution section, "His Majesty's Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State. They would indeed regard it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, as well as to the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past, that the Arab population of Palestine should be made the subjects of a Jewish State against their will." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 66]
The Zionist response, Statement by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was intransigent: "This blow will not subdue the Jewish people. The historic bond between the people and the land of Israel cannot be broken. The Jews will never accept the closing to them of the gates of Palestine (and will defend)...Jewish immigration, the Jewish home and Jewish freedom." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 77]
Illegal immigration of Jews into Palestine significantly increased. "The British responded...partly by police efforts, and partly by deducting estimated 'illegals' from the already reduced quotas available for legal entries, and also by efforts to induce Balkan states to close their border to Jewish refugees." [The Siege; p 241] On 26 August 1939, the Zionist terrorist group IRGUN turned against the British killing two police inspectors with a mine.
1943: The terrorist ranks of Zionist groups LEHI and IRGUN (led by Menachem Begin) swell. In the Spring of 1944 terrorist acts are numerous and directed against the British.
1945: "On October 1, Ben-Gurion...(instructed) the Hagana to institute an armed uprising against Britain. Shortly afterwards, Hagana began daily broadcasts over its mobile, illegal, Voice of Israel radio station. At the same time, Hagana re-established cooperation with IRGUN and LEHI...on the night of October 31, the Palestine railway system was blown up in 153 places, and many other acts of sabotage took place, the action was defended by most of the Jewish press." [The Siege; p 261] "At the end of July (1946), IRGUN blew up Government offices in the King David Hotel, killing about eight British, Jewish and Arab civil servants and wounding about seventy others." [The Siege; p 268]
1947: Christopher Sykes, in "Crossroads to Israel," [p 337] describes how a "small detachment (of Haganah forces) made its way into the village (of Khissas) at night and with grenades and machine gun fire murdered ten Arabs and injured five others...part of a considered policy which had been preceded by debated, and was finally ordered by the highest authorities of the Jewish Agency and Haganah...About three weeks later the first Arab armed band entered the country from outside."
The continuance of terrorism by Zionists and reprisal by Arabs finally forced the British Government to turn the Palestine problem over to the United Nations for resolution. An eleven-member United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was formed to study the issue. This committee's report (document A/364) recommended the creation of two separate states (Israel and Palestine). "The City of Jerusalem would be placed, after the transitional period, under the International Trusteeship System by means of a Trusteeship Agreement, which would designate the United Nations as the Administering Authority." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 110] Also, the extent of Jewish immigration was to be determined by a committee of three Zionists, three Arabs and three U.N. representatives; this measure, a response to the massive influx of illegal Jewish immigrants into Palestine since July 1945. One-and-a-half hundred thousand illegal immigrants had been intercepted by the British Royal Navy and detained in Cyprus.
It is often (if not always) stated as fact that the Jewish Agency fully endorsed the UN Partition Proposal. While technically correct ― there was verbal acceptance ― the substrate reality is that the Jewish Agency's leadership was wholly Zionist, i.e., as already noted (and quoted) in this article, Zionist leaders from the very beginning ― Herzl, Weizmann, Jobotinsky, Ben-Gurion...as well as later major and minor leaders such as Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir, Moshe Dayan, Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin 8 ― made clear, by their words and deeds, what their intentions were: Zionists would make Palestine, as Biblically defined (Greater Yisrael), their state, regardless of degree or source of opposition, of legal norm, of moral contradiction (i.e., God's will manifested via usurpation, occupation and brutalization of indigenous population which clearly must stand outside anyone's notion of moral precept).
At the end of November 1947, the UN General Assembly approved of the UNSCOP proposal. According to Albert Hourani, Director of the Middle Eastern Centre and Fellow of St. Antony's College in Oxford, at this time Zionist comprised but 33 percent of the Palestinian population.
The UNSCOP proposal for Partitioning Palestine would have bequeathed 55 percent of the land for the Jewish State. The Arab Palestinians rejected the proposal. In December, Britain stated it would relinquish its Mandate on May 15, 1948.
1948: Another myth is born (conjured and maintained by Zionist propaganda to this very day): 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled their homeland as ordered by Arab radio broadcasts. This false charge is still roundly echoed in Zionist circles in an attempt to discredit the Palestinian claim on their homeland. The Zionist Regime has, since 1948, been asked repeatedly to produce the evidence for this charge and have yet to comply. Erskine Childers, in a 1961 article appearing in The Spectator Limited (12 May), investigated the Zionist claim: "which could be done thoroughly because the BBC monitored all Middle Eastern broadcasts throughout 1948. The records, and companion ones by a U.S. monitoring unit, can be seen at the British Museum...There was not a single order, or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to the civilians of Palestine to stay put...Even Jewish broadcasts (in Hebrew) mentioned such Arab appeals to stay put. Zionist newspapers in Palestine reported the same; none so much as hinted at any evacuation orders..." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 147]
This falsity has been further confirmed by Dan Kurzman (in his book, Genesis 1948: The First Arab-Israeli War) who found no evidence even using Israeli military archive records.
Why, then, did 750,000 Palestinian Arabs flee? "...on March 27, four days before the big offensive against Arab centres by the official Zionist (Haganah) forces, the Irgun's radio unit broadcast in Arabic (warning) 'Arabs in urban agglomerations' that typhus, cholera and similar diseases would break out 'heavily' among them 'in April and May'..." Less than two weeks later, Irgun forces under Menachem Begin's command massacred 250 Arab civilians, many of which were women and children, at Deir Yassin. After this atrocity, "Arthur Koestler wrote...that Haganah loudspeaker vans and Haganah radio promised (Haifa's) Arabs escort to 'Arab territory', and 'hinted at terrible consequences if their warning were disregarded'...In Jerusalem the Arabic warning from the vans was, 'The road to Jericho is open! Fly from Jerusalem before you are all killed!' (Meyer Levin, quoted in Jerusalem Embattled)...a Christian missionary reported that another theme was, 'Unless you leave your homes, the fate of Deir Yassin will be your fate'...Nathan Chofshi, one of the original Jewish pioneers in Palestine, wrote (as regards the spurious Arab evacuation charge)...'we old Jewish settlers in Palestine who witnessed the fight (know) how and in what manner we, Jews, forced the Arabs to leave cities and villages...some of them were driven out by force of arms; others were made to leave by deceit, lying and false promises. It is enough to cite the cities of Jaffa, Lydda, Ramleh, Beersheba, Acre from among numberless others.' [From Jewish Newsletter; New York; February 9, 1959]...John Kimche and his brother (wrote) how, on July 1948, Dayan with his columns...'drove at full speed into Lydda, shooting up the town and creating confusion and a degree of terror among the population...its Arab population of 30,000 either fled or were herded on the road to Ramallah. The next day Ramleh also surrendered and its Arab population suffered the same fate'." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 146-149]
Christopher Sykes [Crossroads to Israel; pp 341&352] writes of more Haganah atrocities perpetrated in the village of Sassa and in Kathmon, a Jerusalem suburb.
What were the consequences of these Zionist terror-tactics? 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were forced to flee from their homes. Before this forced expulsion, "The Jewish State envisaged by the U.N. would have contained a 45 percent Arab population: the extra territory attacked by the Zionists before may 14, 1948 would have increased that ratio ― for example, by more than 80,000 Arabs in Jaffa alone.9
"But it was not just a question of numbers. The Arabs owned and occupied far too much of the territory's productive and social facilities to enable anything like the mass Jewish immigration of which Zionists dreamed.
"What this meant in terms of motive can be seen in the statistics that followed the Arab exodus. More than 80 percent, of the entire land area of Israel is land abandoned by the Arab Refugees. Nearly a quarter of all the standing buildings in Israel had been occupied by those Arabs. Ten thousand shops, stores and other firms inside new Israel had been Arab. Half of all the citrus fruit holdings in the new State had belonged to the Arabs now made refugees. By 1954, more than one-third of the entire Jewish population of Israel was living on 'absentee property' ― most of it now 'absorbed' into the Israeli economy, and unilaterally sequestered by Israeli legislation against a 'global' compensation offer." [The Other Exodus; Erskine Childers; The Spectator Limited; 12 May 1961]
The Zionists' crowning glory, a State, produced this response from original settler Nathan Chofshi: "We came and turned the native Arabs into tragic refugees. And still we dare to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name. Instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil we committed...we justify our terrible acts and even attempt to glorify them." [ibid.]
14 May 1948, Prime Minister David (Haganah) Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel. Within minutes of the dissolution of the British Mandate (15 May 1948) U.S. President Truman granted de facto recognition of the State of Israel. (Three days later the Soviet Union granted de jure recognition to Israel.)
Fifty-seven years of protest having gone without redress, and now culminating in the ultimate humiliation, i.e., recognition of the Zionist State by the world's primary superpower, made vividly clear to the Arab nations what last venue was open to them to effect change. Five Arab nations attack the newly legitimized Zionist State: "...Israel, a State recognized by the superpowers, could freely import new and greatly superior weapons (from the Soviet bloc, since there was a Western embargo covering the region). Hagana agents had been buying weapons even before the end of the Mandate [for at least a decade, primarily from Czechoslovakia] and they were now coming in fast...on May 29, the first Israeli fighter planes ― four Messerschmitts ― attacked the Egyptian columns," [The Siege; p 292-293] which had advanced to Yad Mordechai, just 28 miles from Tel Aviv.
The Western arms embargo effectively curtailed weapon shipments to the Arab nations. This embargo was effective because the United States put heavy pressure on post-War European Nations vis-Ã -vis the Marshall Plan, i.e., using extortion-like measure: Do our bidding or no rebuilding bucks.
The disjointed Arab attack was thus thwarted. A U.N. truce was called for by the Security Council on 29 May 1948 and went into effect on 11 June. A U.N. mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, developed a plan for peace which was signed 27 June and called "for a 'union', involving the whole of Mandate Palestine, with a partnership between an enlarged Kingdom of Jordan and the Jewish State. Jordan would be confirmed in possession of its West Bank territory (including East Jerusalem). 'The Arabs' would acquire the whole of the Negev...Unlimited Jewish immigration would be allowed for two years; after that it would be controlled by a United Nations agency. All Arab refugees were to be allowed to return to their homes." [The Siege; p 299]
The Israelis rejected outright the Bernadotte Plan.
On the day before the truce was to expire, "July 8, fighting broke out in the Negev. It is now considered likely that the fighting was initiated by Israel." [The Siege; p 301] The conflict lasted ten days in which time Israel "succeeded in widening the Jerusalem corridor (to Tel Aviv), thus establishing themselves securely in the divided city." [ibid.]
The truce was restored. On 17 September 1948, in Jerusalem, UN mediator Bernadotte was executed by LEHI members. [SEE: Text Note #8]
In October, rather than be bound by UN General Assembly approval of a revised Bernadotte Plan, Israel broke the second truce twice, driving "the Egyptians out of much of the Negev" in the first truce violation and, in December, "the Israelis drove the Egyptians out of the rest of the Negev ― and also dislodged small Transjordanian forces which were there to stake the 'Bernadotte' claim to the territory. Then the Israelis pushed on into Egyptian territory, Sinai." [The Siege; p 304]
Armistice agreements were signed by Israel and each Arab nation between February and July 1949.
"On December 11, (1949) the day after Israel learned of the General Assembly vote, (re-implementing international status to Jerusalem) the Cabinet of Israel, at Ben-Gurion's insistence, decided to make Jerusalem the seat of government, the capital of Israel...(Ben-Gurion announced) 'Jerusalem is an inseparable part of Israel and her eternal capital. No United Nations vote can alter that historic fact'." [The Siege; p 365]
For the next six years Palestinian Arabs awaited justice.10 Over this span of time, small Arab contingents ― Fedayeen ― conducted raids inside Israel resulting in 864 Israeli casualties. [Figure from Israel's Foreign Policy, by Brecher]
1954: Britain prepares to abandon the Suez Canal Zone "thus withdrawing what Israelis regarded as a buffer between them and Nasser's Egypt. In a wild attempt to get Britain to stay, Israeli officials sent agents to burn British and American premises in Egypt, in the hope that these attacks would be blamed on the Egyptians." [The Siege; p 382]
1955: Having received no recompense (for the land "acquisitions" by the Israelis during their truce violations) from the Western powers, the most influential Arab leader, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser struck an arms deal agreement with Czechoslovakia (the same nation that had supplied the Zionists with arms during the preceding two decades). "After the Czech arms deal, Ben-Gurion and his colleagues had considered war with Nasser's Egypt inevitable, and wanted it fought before Egypt's new weapons could be 'absorbed and digested'...The decision to go to war in 1956 seems to have been made by Ben-Gurion in June of that year." [The Siege; p 387]
1956: On "October 29, Israel's attack opened with a paratroop drop deep inside Sinai, and about thirty miles from the Suez Canal. Israel's military operations (resulted) within eight days, in the expulsion of the Egyptian forces from all Sinai, including Sharm al-Sheik, on the Straits of Tiran (reopening) the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping." [The Siege; p 389] Since 1951 the Egyptians had exercised their right of visit, search, and seizure vested under International law. This proviso allows nations in conflict to board vessels passing through their territorial waters to ensure that the cargo contains no support materiel for their enemies. In the modern era, Iran has employed this proviso in the Straits of Hormuz.
7 November 1956, the UN General Assembly votes 65 to 1 (the lone dissenting vote was Israel's) in favor of a complete and immediate withdrawal from Sinai. On this same day, Ben-Gurion declared that the Armistice Agreement with Egypt was "dead and buried...the Armistice Lines have no more validity." Commenting on the UN proposal to station a peace-keeping force in the area (which Egypt accepted), Ben-Gurion said, "On no account will Israel agree to the stationing of a foreign force, no matter how called, on her territory or in any of the territories occupied by her." [Israel's Foreign Policy; Brecher; p 282]
And so, for the next decade, in defiance of the United Nations' demand for withdrawal, Israel maintained its hold of territories expropriated during its two truce-violating attacks and its '56 attack on and subsequent possession of Egypt's Suez Canal Zone.
1964: The Palestine Liberation Organization is established.
1967: 13 May, Nasser is warned by a Soviet ambassador that Israel was planning an attack on Syria and had already amassed tank brigades near the Syrian boarder. Nasser confirmed that Israel had indeed moved 13 brigades to the Syrian front. In an attempt to draw Israeli attention away from their Syrian operation, Nasser mobilized troops into Sinai on 15 May. On 18 May, Nasser requests UNEF (United Nations Expeditionary Force) be removed from U.A.R. lands, including the Gaza Strip. 22 May, Nasser announces, "the closing of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, and to all ships carrying strategic material to Israel." [The Siege; p 411] 25 and 26 May, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson states that it is "vital that Israel should not take pre-emptive action" and that "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone." [Israel's Foreign Policy, Brecher; p 390]
5 June 1967, in New York at the United Nations, "The representative of Israel informed the president of the Security Council, 'that Egyptian land and air forces had moved against Israel, whose armed forces were engaged in repelling the attack.' No trace of this fiction now remains, except in United Nations records." [The Siege; p 702-703] For even as the Israeli UN representative spoke in New York, "the Israeli Air Force, flying in low from the sea, destroyed the Egyptian Air Force on the ground. Jerusalem, wishing to avoid early pressure for a cease-fire, issued no communiqué about this decisive action...The Israeli Air Force then destroyed the Jordanian and Syrian Air Forces. Israeli ground forces ― with Brigadier General Ariel Sharon conspicuous in the most critical action ― broke through the heavily fortified Egyptian positions in Sinai and advance to the Suez Canal. Israeli forces also occupied the Egyptian-held Gaza Strip...The Israel Defence Forces now turned, first against Jordan, and then against Syria. Hussein's forces were driven back behind the Jordan (River). Israel began its occupation of the West Bank: Judea and Samaria. Israel now held all Jerusalem...In the north, a final campaign against the Syrians ended in the capture of the Golan Heights..." [The Siege; pp 414, 416]
No one came to the beleaguered Arabs' aid until, on 10 June, the UN Security Council ordered a cease-fire. All sides agreed.
Arising from the '67 War was UN Security Council Resolution #242, which sought a permanent peace between all Middle Eastern nations via "(1)...the application of both the following principles: (i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories of recent conflict; (ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment 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." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 365]
Further, Resolution #242 called "(b) For achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem." [ibid.]
Israel would only accept Resolution 242 if principle (ii) would be accepted by the Arab nations first. Of course, for the Arab nations to do so would have been to accept the "acknowledgment of the sovereignty (and) territorial integrity" phrase which would have been to acknowledge Israel's then-present form, i.e., Not the '49 Armistice Israel recognized by the UN, but an Israel in possession of the occupied territories. The Arab delegates could hardly be expected to accept Israel's (ii) before (i) ultimatum as this would have been to accept Israel's expanded boundaries at the onset of negotiations and thereby ceding Israel's right to those very territories in question.
In fact, as the Resolution clearly states, in singular form, "the application of both the following principles" meant the single application, and not applications of both principles independently applied as the Israelis chose to "interpret" it.
Beyond that bit of interpretive torquing, the Israelis also chose to interpret principle (i) in a most propitious manner: "A fine point concerned the word 'territories' (as opposed to 'the' territories) in the English text of the resolution. This was to be the basis of Israel's claim that the resolution required it ― contingently (ii before i) ― to evacuate some but not all the territories in question. Russian does not have a definite article, so 'territories' in the Russian text would not have the exclusive significance it has in English. The French text ― des territoires occupes ― contained the definite article. The representative of Israel indicated that it was not the French translation, but the original English text, that Israel was accepting. [The Siege; p 418]
Thus were the principles of Resolution 242 selectively applied and syntactically reinterpreted by Israel in order to keep all territories. The reader may wonder how this fine point of interpretation ― territories versus "the" territories ― became the central focus of debate when the phrase "territories of recent conflict" obviously meant any/all areas involved in the conflict which, by necessity, must include occupied regions: All occupied territories.
After the '67 (Six Day) War there were (according to an Israeli census) 985,600 Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Eight years later [According to George Kossaifi, "Demographic Characteristics of the Palestinian People," in Sociology of the Palestinians; p 27] there were 1.6 million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Another 1.5 million Palestinians, victims of Zionist expansion and expulsion policies from 1947 to 1967, had taken refuge in the various Arab States; most in Jordan, Lebanon, Kuwait and Syria. It should be noted that, en toto, the Palestinians in exile plus those living under occupation numbered 3.1 million in 1975. In 1988 there were about 3.5 million Israeli Jews living in Israel.
1970: Three years after the '67 War Israeli troops were still encamped on the east bank of the Suez Canal. This presence had effectively closed the Canal denying Egypt a prime source of income. This three year period has been dubbed by the Israelis as the War of Attrition (March 1969 to August 1970 especially). During this time sporadic, half-hearted artillery bombardments aimed at Israeli Defense Forces by the Egyptians were meant to convey a message to the occupying power that the occupied people did not accept the status quo. These bombardments were, in no way, attempts to militarily alter the status quo. The Israeli Government responded in January 1970 by initiating a policy of deep penetration bombings of Egyptian cities, i.e., of civilian populations. Both the United States and Soviet Governments pressured Israel to abide by the cease-fire and to embrace "in all its parts" (U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers' words) Resolution 242. Israel continued its bombing of Egyptian civilian population centers until, "on July 30, Israeli fighters shot down four Soviet planes, with their Russian pilots, about thirty kilometers west of the Canal," [The Siege; p 501] i.e., inside, and in violation of, Egyptian air space as recognized by International Law. Only then did Prime Minister Golda Meir stop Israel's deep penetration bombings of civilian targets in Egypt.
BLACK SEPTEMBER 1970― after four international civil airliners (one a U.S. 747) are hijacked by the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and the PDFLP (Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) Jordanian King Hussein, fearing a U.S.-backed Israeli reprisal, sets his army against the PLO. Many innocent Palestinians were killed and jailed along with PLO fighters on the East Bank. Within a year the PLO was expulsed to Lebanon.1971: In February, Nasser's successor, Anwar al-Sadat proposed to his Parliament, "if Israel withdrew her force in Sinai to the Passes (Egypt would) sign a peace agreement with Israel..." [The Siege; p 505]
Israel did not respond.
1973: Moshe Dayan publicly proclaims that the Suez Canal is "one of the 'strong and solid' frontiers of the State of Israel." Sadat, meanwhile, for the two years and eight months since his peace concession offer was made, exhausted all diplomatic avenues in futile attempts to get Israel to embrace the provisions of UN Resolution 242. On 6 October, Egypt and Syria launched a simultaneous attack in efforts to regain their territories occupied by the Israelis. After a huge, initial show of superiority, the Arab armies began to falter. By 10 October, Syrian forces were ousted from their reclaimed land (Golan Heights) and on 11 October, Israel moved into Syria. Egypt decided to press the attack on the southern flank in hopes of dissipating some of the brunt of the Israeli push towards Damascus. A threatened Syria prompted Soviet airlift of armaments to Cairo and Damascus.
12 October, Golda Meir accepts an "in place" cease-fire in order to secure much needed military supplies. As regards the "in place" cease-fire, Sadat's minimum requirement for agreement was the return, in full, as prescribed in Resolution 242, of all Sinai.
13 October, the United States airlifts massive amounts of armaments to Israel.
14 October, Egypt's push into Sinai was utterly repulsed. The Egyptian army retreated to the Suez Canal.
15 October, General Ariel Sharon leads Israeli forces across the Canal.
16 October, the Arab Gulf States announce "a 70 percent increase in the posted price of crude oil." The following day, "the ten oil-producing Arab states, meeting in Kuwait, announced a decision 'to reduce production of petroleum by at least 5 percent progressively each month until Israel withdraws completely from territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war and the legal rights of the Palestinians are restored'." [The Siege; p 524] This unified Arab response set the precedent for a decade-long plague of hardship that befell the entire Western World, destabilizing every Western nation, affecting literally hundreds of millions of people on a very personal level (e.g., with soaring inflation rates and subsequent loss of jobs).
19 October, Ariel Sharon has the Israeli army, en masse, advancing well beyond the Suez Canal.
22 October, the UN Security Council adopts Resolution #338 which demanded an in-place cease-fire "within twelve hours...the implementation of Security Council Resolution 242, in all its parts...(and that) negotiations start between the parties concerned (immediately)." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 481] Henry Kissinger arrived in Tel Aviv from talks in Moscow. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir agreed to provisions of Resolution 338, including the cease-fire proviso. A truce is declared.
23 October, Kissinger is notified by the Soviets upon his arrival in Washington "that Israel had violated the ceasefire...The Egyptian Third Army was now surrounded, and the Israelis threatened to destroy it, or failing that, to starve it out. The Soviet Union made clear that it would not accept the liquidation of the Third Army. Breznev, in a letter to Nixon, threatened, if necessary, to take 'appropriate steps unilaterally.' American forces were immediately placed on a relatively high state of alert, known as DefCon3...Kissinger now leaned hard on Israel." [The Siege; p 528]
25 October, Israel relents and a cease-fire is observed by all parties thereby bringing the Yom Kipper War to a end.
1974: 18 January, Israel relinquishes Suez Canal but "still held the strategic Giddi and Mitla passes in the Western Sinai Desert...separated from the Suez Canal by the United Nations buffer force." [The Siege; p 537] This concession was, of course, only the first step towards Resolution 242 compliance. On May 31, the same first step is achieved with Syria as "Israel agreed to a limited withdrawal from its forward positions on the Golan Heights...The evacuated zone was to be demilitarized, and monitored by a United Nations Disengagement Observer Force." [The Siege; p 541]
However, Israel refused to advance towards full (i.e., taking the second step of ceding the strategic Sinai passes) compliance of Resolution 338 let alone 242, until 21 May 1975 when Israel extorted concessions from the U.S. that included $2 billion in aid and the pledge of the U.S. Administration "to drop the idea of an interim withdrawal in the West Bank, and to accept that only 'cosmetic' changes could be expected (as regarded the Golan Heights)." [The Siege; p 549] In return, Israel agreed to Second Sinai 4 September 1975 and withdrew from the Sinai passes.
For the next three years through various diplomatic initiatives the United States attempted to come up with some kind of plan to get Israel to move towards its commitments as prescribed in Resolution 242.
1976: "...during the Lebanese civil war, (Israeli Defense Minister, Shimon) Peres formed a special unit of retired army officers to advise (Christian) Phalangist militiamen who had surrounded the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel al-Zataar in East Beirut. The camp was besieged for 70 days. Several thousand Palestinians died during the siege ― 800 were shot in cold blood in one single day..." [The Guardian; 23 Sept. '87; p 14]
1977: Menachem Begin allows some settlement of the West Bank by Israeli citizens.
1978: Preceding the Camp David Accords, the Aswan Declaration of 4 January, between U.S. President Carter and Anwar al-Sadat, was an agreement to "recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and enable the Palestinians to participate in the determination of their own future." [Middle East Contemporary Survey, Vol.II; p 20; as excerpted in The Siege; p 582]
In the midst of peace negotiations, on the eve of the Aswan Declaration, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin surreptitiously began a provocative policy to establish new settlements (in violation of International Law) and beef up the populations of already existing settlements in still occupied Sinai. This provocation was the brainstorm of Ariel Sharon and Moshe Dayan. These "architects" no doubt intended the policy to solidify Israel's claim to Sinai. Menachem Begin on the other hand, no doubt saw the Public Relations aspect, i.e., when Israel finally had to give Sinai back, with the added settlements and boosted population, it would be seen in the eye of the world as all that much more of an Israeli sacrifice. However, this policy of provocation and prevarication, when discovered by Sadat, ground the peace talks to a halt.
14 March, Israel invades Lebanon; Operation Litani.
19 March, UN Security Council Resolution 425 demanded the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces.
June 1978, the Israelis withdraw from Lebanon.
5-18 September 1978, the Camp David talks are conducted between Carter, Sadat and Begin.
24 September, the Israeli Knesset approves the Camp David Accords which called for "the conclusion of peace treaties based on Security Resolutions 242 and 338 in all their parts..." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 610] These Accords also called for self-autonomy for the West Bank and Gaza which would be achieved in 5 years or less, "as soon as a self-governing authority (administrative council) has been freely elected by inhabitants of these areas...(at which time) the transitional period of five years will begin. As soon as possible, but not later than the third year after the beginning of the transitional period, negotiations will take place to determine the final status of the West Bank and Gaza..." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 611-612]
However, built into the Camp David Accord was the Israeli bottom-line condition that the PLO (still in exile in Lebanon) would not be allowed to negotiate: "The delegations of Egypt and Jordan may include Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza or other Palestinians as mutually agreed." [Israel-Arab Reader; p 611; emphasis added] Of course, the Israelis had no intention of allowing the PLO to negotiate for the Palestinian people.
So, while ceding back almost all of the Sinai, Israel kept all other occupied territories: Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Taba. The rest of the Camp David proviso evanesced.
1980: Menachem Begin authorizes unlimited Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank; closes Bir Zeit University because of pro-PLO student demonstrations; riots spread throughout the West Bank.
1981: On 7 June, proclaiming it an act of defense, Israel launched Operation Babylon, i.e., six Israeli Air Force F-15s and eight F-16 fighter-bombers destroyed the Iraqi Osirak nuclear facility near Baghdad. This prompted UN Security Resolution 487 which condemned Israel's aggression but carried no penalties. It should be noted that Iraq was a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. As such, the civilian use facility was routinely inspected. Israel was not then, nor is it currently, a party to either convention.
1982: On 6 June, Israel ground forces invade and occupy Lebanon; calls this an act of defense, a justified response to PLO artillery barrages against northern Israeli settlements. But the fact of the matter is that the artillery barrages had stopped a full year before this Israeli "response."
Actually, the "Israeli invasion had begun on June 4 with massive bombing raids over Beirut and southern Lebanon that left 18,000 people dead and 30,000 wounded. Most of the casualties were civilians. About a half-million Palestinians and Lebanese were left homeless...The U.S. government formally undertook an agreement to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians remaining in the refugee camps. An international military force entered Beirut to oversee the ceasefire agreement...All PLO fighters were withdrawn from the city by September 1 (viz., deported). In collusion with the Israelis, the Reagan Administration ended the mandate for the multinational force two weeks early. The last French troops, which were part of the force, pulled out on September 13. The Palestinian camps were left completely unprotected by the time (Ariel) Sharon launched his massacre plan, code-named 'Iron Brain.'
"Elie Hobika, director of Phalangist intelligence, led the first groups of rightist Lebanese militiamen into Sabra-Shatila beginning at 5 PM September 16. Israeli troops had secured all entrances to the camp and had prepared the way with a preliminary shelling attack. As night fell, the Israeli troops surrounding the camps lit up the alley ways with flares. Israeli officers watched the entire slaughter from the roof-top of a high-rise 200 yards outside the camp, as the (Christian) Phalangists set about their systematic killing with machine-guns, grenades, knives and hatchets.
"The massacre continued for more than 40 hours ― until the magnitude of the carnage was unable to be hidden any longer from the outside world. Israeli troops stopped people from fleeing the camps. Bulldozers were brought in to dig mass graves before the press arrived. Three thousand Lebanese and Palestinians were killed." [The Guardian; 23 September 1987; p 14]
Israeli Prime Minster Menachem Begin angrily remarked that the Sabra-Shatila massacre was simply another incidence of "Goyim (non-Jews) killing goyim and then accusing the Jews." [ibid.; This sentiment repeated in a 26 September 1982, New York Times interview: "Goyim kill goyim, and they immediately come to hang the Jews."]
1985: In June, Israeli troops withdraw from Lebanon, maintaining a presence only in the southern part of that nation. A United Nations peacekeeping force is emplaced. On 1 October 1985, Israeli Air Force bombs the PLO headquarters in Tunisia calling the maneuver an act of defense.
1986: Negotiated since the Camp David Accords (1979) the Taba problem ("a few hundred meters of sand at the border south of Eliat"; Foreign Affairs, Vol.65, #3; p 596] that single piece of Sinai still held by Israel, was finally resolved in September. In October, Likud's Yitzhak Shamir takes over from Labor's Shimon Peres. A plethora of scandals come to light, i.e., the Pollard affair, in which a Jewish U.S. Naval intelligence official confessed to spying for Israel; the Shin Beth (domestic intelligence agency) affair, involving a high-level cover-up of the execution of two Arab hijackers after they were taken into custody by the security service; and the Vanunu affair, in which an "employee at Israel's secret nuclear complex (at Dimona in the Negev) left the country with sensitive photographs, and approch(ed) The Sunday Times of London with his exposé of an Israeli nuclear weapons production facility, only to be mysteriously apprehended abroad (by the Mossad, Israel's CIA) and returned for trial." [Israel: The Peres Era; Samuel W. Lewis; Foreign Affairs, Vol.65, #3; p 604-605]
The Pollard affair resulted in the worst U.S. high-level security breach in our history.
As for the Shin Beth episode, "A Government appointed commission, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Moshe Landau, found that since 1971 the Shin Beth had systematically lied to Israeli courts about the methods it used to extract confessions from Palestinians suspected of engaging in, or planning (terrorist acts)...The Shin Beth methods reportedly included various forms of physical torture and psychological pressure, which are against Israeli law...Not only did the Landau commission exempt from prosecution all those Israeli officials who were involved in the last 16 years of tortures and perjuries, but it also sanctioned for the future a certain amount of 'psychological and physical pressures' during interrogations of (suspected) Palestinian guerrillas and even laid down secret guidelines for such practices." ["Israelis Seem Ambivalent on Violence in Domestic War"; Thomas Friedman; The New York Times]
In regards to the Mordechai Vanunu affair, Israel's illicit nuclear capability was exposed. One "week after (Vanunu's) story, The Sunday Times of London ran an interview with Professor Francis Perrin...'the father of the French bomb.' Perrin admitted on the record what the French (and Israelis) have denied for decades ― that France has furnished Israel with the means to make nuclear weapons. If that is the case, it would be the sole example of Israel acquiring the technology in a 'legitimate' manner. (As opposed to...e.g.) The hijacking by Israel in November 1968 of the Scheersburg A, a Liberian- registered vessel carrying 200 tons of uranium ore. (e.g.) The theft by Israeli agents of hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) in Apollo, Pennsylvania, between 1964 and 1965. (e.g.) The breach of an Israeli treaty with Norway, involving the diversion of tons of Norwegian 'heavy water' from their promised 'peaceful use' to the Dimona reactor. (e.g.) The secret collusion of Israel with South Africa in nuclear testing and in the development of purloined technology of mass destruction...In international law, then, it is the Israeli nuclear lobby that has broken all the rules and conventions." [The Nation; 28 March 1987; p 387]11
To these scandalous examples we must add Israel's intimate involvement in the Iran-Contra Scandal; the recent revelation of Peres and/or his Labor party being bribed ― via Attorney General Meese's friend E. Robert Wallach of Wedtech infamy on behalf of Bruce Rappaport who was born in Haifa and was "once listed in Swiss corporate records as Baruch Rappaport of Israel" [The New York Times; 6 March '88] ― in efforts to keep Israel from bombing a Bechtel-constructed pipeline that was to run from Iraq through Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba; the Israeli government's detention and interrogation of, and the subsequent legal proceedings brought against, members of an Israeli peace group that met with "Palestinian leaders, including some members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's Executive Committee...in Romania November 6." [The Nation; 7 February 1987; p 141] We must also add "In Lebanon, meanwhile, some 400 Israeli troops using tanks and heavy machine guns swept out of Israel's self-declared border security zone to attack Palestinian targets near the village of Meidoun...Initial reports indicated the Israelis had moved some 13 miles north of the security zone." [The Guardian; 23 December 1987; p 1]
THIRD ESSENTIAL POINT
Since 1920, Zionist Jews have resorted to genocidal terrorism, racist propaganda, illegal militancy, and Bible-backed intransigence (a.k.a. the moralization of overt criminality) in their dealings with the Palestinian Arabs. For over one hundred years Zionist Jews have enjoyed superpower support and free rein in the quest of Biblically defined Eretz Yisrael.
As documented above, from the very beginning, Zionist Jews: have denied Palestinian Arabs any/all human rights; have provoked two wars (the '48 War, via terrorist reclamation efforts and the '73 War, via Zionist intransigence) and started three more (1956, 1967, 1982)12 have, over four decades, broken every truce struck with their Arab neighbors; have failed (via semantic concealment and/or interpretive torquing) to comply with any United Nations Security Council Resolutions (particularly 242 and 338); have massacred, brutalized and oppressed the Palestinian people; and have brought the art of demagoguery and rhetoric to new heights of obscenity and perversion. Of course, worst of all, Zionists unequivocally ― despite the preponderance of evidence ― deny that this is so and the Western media saturates the masses with this Zionist denial.13
Since the 1940s, the United States ― without equal, to the tune of 4.1 billion dollars14 ― has aided and abetted this immoral regime. Therefore, in the eyes, minds and hearts of the Palestinian people, indeed of Arab world, Americans can only be considered accomplices to these crimes against humanity.
And so it goes...
"Despite an 11th hour appeal to the U.S. District Court in Washington (D.C.), the Palestine Information Office (PIO) was closed down at midnight on 3 December 1987 in line with a U.S. State Department order. On Capitol Hill, meanwhile (Senator Charles Grassley, R-Iowa) continued to push his bill aimed at the (closure of the PLO's UN Observer Mission) through the Senate and into conference committee...The Grassley bill aims to accomplish what the UN refuses to do ― eliminate the Palestinian voice from an international forum where it enjoys overwhelming support." [The Guardian; 23 December 1987; p 14] Unfortunately, AP reports that despite the UN General Assembly vote of 143-1 condemning this illegal maneuver (Israel, the lone dissenting vote; the U.S., abstaining) "Officials within the Reagan administration and in Congress said they were convinced that (Attorney General Edwin Meese III) would enforce legislation enacted by Congress to close the PLO's (UN Observer Mission) office in New York."
"State Department legal advisor Abraham Sofaer has acknowledged that Congressional legislation (closing the PLO's UN Mission) conflicts with international law...Sofaer indicated that the U.S. would face a potentially damaging lawsuit in the International Court of Justice...the move would violate the Headquarters Agreement the U.S. signed with the UN in 1947." [The Guardian; 3 February 1988]
And so it goes...
In January 1987, eight Los Angeles residents, seven Palestinians and one Kenyan, were arrested by INS, FBI and LA Police agents. "They were charged under a section of the McCarthy-era McCarran-Walter Act for distributing 'subversive' PLO literature said to threaten the U.S. Government." [The Guardian; 24 February 1988; p 5] Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark commented at a recent fund-raising event for the Palestinian solidarity activists that "We are the real victims...It was easy to deny us information about the Middle East, of which we are so tragically ignorant, that these eight were arrested." He also said that the arrests were the result of "a long criminal investigation which produced no evidence of wrong doing..." [ibid.] Deportation proceedings are now in progress.
And so it goes...
An AP article (12 December 1986) states: "While journalists in South Africa are contending with expanded censorship restraints for the first time, Israel's local and foreign reporters have had to submit to the military censor's blue pencil...Israel says censorship is essential to state security...The military censorship dates back to 1945...The censor's pencil is all encompassing. He can even prevent publication of comments made in public by the prime minister or his cabinet...By law, violation of censorship falls under the section of the penal code called publication of a State secret and is punishable by up to 15 years in jail...Brigadier General Yitzhak Shani, the chief military censor, told the Asssociated Press that no foreign correspondent (since late 1960s) has been jailed for violating censorship, but four have been asked to leave the country."
And so it goes...
Israel, as of 4 March 1988, (acting on advice from Henry Kissinger) has begun the absolute (a la South African Apartheid regime) curtailment of live coverage of the Palestinian Intifadeh (uprising). American Jews have recently carried out public demonstrations, outraged by the TV coverage of Israeli soldiers brutally assaulting, lobbing made-in-the-USA tear gas (Salzburg, Pennsylvania) and shooting bought-by-the-USA bullets at, Palestinian youths hurling stones. These American Jews claim that the U.S. TV coverage is out of context and "proves" anti-Israel bias. However, even without TV coverage, Palestinian women are experiencing a radical upsurge in miscarriages and stillbirths caused by the tear gas; of ninety-some Palestinian fatalities, not one has yet been found to have been caused by a TV camera; of some 3,000 Palestinians treated for broken bones, crushed ribs, and gunshot wounds, not one victim has accused the television medium of causing their pain.
And so it goes...
A SUNY/Stony Brook professor, Dr. Ernest F. Dube, was denied tenure because a Jewish student took offense at Dr. Dube's characterization of Zionism as racist along the lines of "Nazism and apartheid...The controversy began in mid-1983, when a visiting Israeli professor, Selwyn Troen, after receiving a complaint from a student, charged that Dr. Dube's teachings were 'sloganeering that is practiced by the anti-Semite.' A university senate investigation in August 1983 concluded that Professor Dube's course (Politics of Race) had not overstepped the bounds of academic freedom, unfurling a wave of criticism from Jewish groups in the area...Four faculty committees had recommended that Professor Dube be granted tenure...The chairman of the school's history department, Professor Joel Rosenthal, headed an executive committee to review charges that Dr. Dube's course was anti-Semitic. He said of the ruling, 'It seems we gave in to external influences.' He called the Chancellor (of the State University, Clifton R. Wharton, Jr. who rejected Dube's appeal January 30, 1987) 'chicken' for 'allowing extramural politics to be involved in a tenure decision'." [The New York Times; 8 February 1987; p 39]
And so it goes...
The New York Times (14 June 1987) reports that, "a meeting of (Israel's) central committee of the Labor Party had been convened by Foreign Minister Simon Peres and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin for the sole purpose of verbally flagellating (Abba Eban) for having dared to issue a report that was critical of the Labor leadership for its role in the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy scandal." Mr. Eban, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, current Labor Member of Parliament, and chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, was quoted as saying, "a new Zionism that used to be on the fringes is now creeping to the center of respectability. It says that we will not give any territory back; if the Arabs don't like it here they can get the hell out, and if they stay we will not give them all of their human rights, and being Jewish is more important than being democratic...when I look back at the speech I gave at Israel's birth to get us into the United Nations, I would not dare make that same speech now. The rhetoric was too utopian. Now I would be much more reserved. I would definitely not use the phrase that we will be 'a light unto the nations'."
In an earlier article [The New York Times; 9 November 1986] Abba Eban gave a clear picture of reality regarding the Arabs living in the occupied territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, a "population that accounts for 33 percent of (Israel's) own inhabitants." Mr. Eban wrote, "The Palestinians live without a right to vote or be elected, without any control over the government that determines the conditions of their lives, exposed to restraints and punishments that could not be applied against them if they were Jews, permitted to cross into Israel to work, but without permission to sleep overnight. It is a bleak, tense, disgruntled, repressed existence..." If we add the Arab population living in Israel (about 14 percent) to the Arab population in the occupied territories, we better understand Abba Eban's concern when he goes on to write, "If we give voting rights to the inhabitants of the territories, our parliamentary decisions will be determined by members of a foreign nation and we shall lose the vision of a Jewish state. If we deny them voting rights, we shall lose our place in the democratic family and find ourselves morally adrift."
Demographic studies conducted by two professors from Hebrew University and those conducted by a former Israeli politician, Meron Benvenisti (West Bank Data Project), have predicted a 50/50 population split between Arabs and Jews within twenty or thirty years.
And so it goes...
A 7 December 1986 New York Times article [pp 1, 10, 11] reports that Israel "has become one of the top ten arms exporters in the world and Israeli businessmen are among the world's leading arms merchants...Defense Ministry sources estimate that Israel exports $1.2 billion in arms and security services each year ― more than a quarter of its total industrial exports. Roughly $500 million worth is shipped to the United States...Aaron S. Klieman, a Tel Aviv University political scientist who is Israel's leading expert on arms sales, observed 'Israeli arms manufacturers have reached such a level of production and importance within the Israeli economy that exporting weapons has become an economic imperative.' (He further stated) 'Were Israeli defense marketing strategies to fail, it would have a profound impact on Israeli security, economic viability and diplomacy. Arms sales in the 1980's are a strategic national commitment for Israel'." The article continues, "But Israel's arms trade is more than a business. For years, Israel has practiced a kind of 'Uzi Diplomacy,' using its military exports and training capabilities to open covert relations with regimes (some of which) are such pariahs that they will forge closer-than-normal ties with Israel in order to acquire arms (regimes like)...South Africa, Taiwan, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina and El Salvador." Despite the Israeli Government's professed tightening of arms exportation rules, there are increasing incidents of impropriety like the one involving "a former Israeli Brigadier General, Avraham Bar-Am, a decorated war hero, (who was) arrested last year in Bermuda in connection with a $2 billion arms deal he and some international associates were purportedly trying to put together for Iran." In fact, the fear is that "as Israel is forced to export more weapons to keep its own industry afloat, Israeli companies and individuals may be tempted by increasingly marginal buyers or questionable deals, which, like the Iran affair, could be damaging in the long run...'An absurd situation has been created,' noted Haaretz military editor Zeev Schiff, 'whereby the military industry lends money to the Defense Ministry'."
And so it goes...
U.S. Secretary of State, George Shultz, brings to the Middle East a "new" plan for peace that calls for, "An international conference (to) take place early next month, with negotiations beginning one month later on an interim phase of limited self-administration for Palestinians. Talks would begin in December on the final status of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip...whatever final status is negotiated will not take effect until three years after the interim phase has begun. This is an effort to meet Shamir's demand for an extended period of limited self-rule before the issue of territorial compromise is confronted." [AP; 5 February 1988] This plan, however, as just described, differs from what was reported six days earlier in another AP article: "The independent Haaretz daily leaked details of the plan, saying Shultz intended to give separate letters to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Jordan's King Hussein apparently to allay misgivings about the initiative. The letter to Shamir promises that Israel would not have to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders, guarantees there would be no Palestinian state, and pledges that Jerusalem would not be divided." Israel has, of course, already annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
What the reader should note is that there is never any mention of involving the PLO in negotiations. This is because the United States refuses (according to Israel's demand) to accept Yasir Arafat as bona fide representative of the Palestinian people even though Chairman Arafat has publicly and repeatedly stated his acceptance of Resolutions 242 and 338 in all their parts, simultaneously applied. The U.S. and Israel refuses to accept the PLO leader despite the fact that Chairman Arafat enjoys a much higher approval rating among his constituents than Ronald Reagan, Yitzhak Shamir and Sharon Peres, do among their constituencies. A survey conducted soon after the PLO's expulsion from Lebanon in 1983, "showed that nearly all West Bank Arabs preferred Arafat to the more radical PLO leaders who were fighting him. And a poll released in September 1986, in which traditionally politically active professional and white-collar workers on the West Bank were heavily represented, 70 percent supported Arafat as the preferred leader of the PLO and 93.5 percent supported the PLO as the 'sole legitimate representative' of the Palestinian people." [Myths About Palestinians; Foreign Policy, #66; Spring '87; p 120] A poll conducted in the occupied territories just prior to the December start of the current Intifadeh showed the same 93 percent support for the PLO as sole representative of the Palestinian people, while Yasir Arafat's rating rose to 76 percent.
The reader will note that, while Israeli leaders proclaim their willingness to dialog with Palestinian representatives, they also unequivocally refuse to accept Yasir Arafat as the people's choice; this, in the historical context (dating from the 1948 terrorist campaign against the Palestinian Arabs) of perpetual harassment and/or deportation by Israeli authorities of any/all Palestinian leaders who have espoused statehood and human rights for Palestinians. (e.g., Current leaders like Hanna Siniora, editor of the East Jerusalem daily AL-FAJR, and Faez Abu Rahme, head of the Gaza lawyers' union, both of whom have been arrested.)
How is it possible, the reader may readily wonder, for a Palestinian Arab to ascend to leader status without demanding ― as bottom line substrate ― statehood and human rights for their people? A structure for peace, if it is not to sink into the sands, must have as foundation bedrock upon which to build; the bedrock in this instance always has been and will remain statehood and human rights for Palestinian Arabs.
Alas, as reported in a 6 March 1988 New York Times article, "During his talks with Mr. Shultz, Mr. Shamir was reported to have given no sign of moderating his determination to hold the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under perpetual Israeli control. American officials are keenly aware that the Camp David accord's provision for Palestinian autonomy foundered on Israel's unwillingness ultimately to give up the West Bank and Gaza Strip...The Secretary and his aides who know Israel well understand that direct confrontation on such a point of ideology and security concerns can backfire...The siege mentality comes to the surface easily in Israel."
And so it goes...
CONCLUSION
As promised at the outset, this article has singularly emphasized a Palestinian POV, a point of view that has been totally excluded from Western discourse on the Middle East conflict. If nothing else, this article has proved the validity of that age-old adage, "History is written by the victors." In fact, this article may have also proved ― when the context of global media networking is considered ― that age-old adage should be amended to include "...and distributed by their friends."
For a century, the people of the Western world have been mis-, dis-, and/or un- informed regarding the Zionist reclamation of Palestine. The result has been our complete acceptance of the "moral" correctness of the Zionist position. The Biblical claims to Eretz Yisrael by Zionist Jews have silenced the West's Judeo-Christian majority: for how could believers in the Bible's authority argue against the validity of Biblical pronouncement? The Nazi holocaust served to further silence the Western masses: for how could those who turned their backs ― no nation getting involved until their own interests were threatened ― protest against Jews having their own State?
Catastrophically for the Palestinian Arabs, a century worth of massive propagandizing delivered to the Western world in doses of morality and guilt have worked to first deny, and then revoke, quite literally, the human status of Palestinian Arabs.
This article has demonstrated the specious nature of Zionism's claim on Palestine based on Biblical justification. Eretz Yisrael was, and remains, the mind-land conjured up in Jewish prayers, e.g., "Next year in Zion (Jerusalem)." Eretz Yisrael was, and remains, a psychescape, a wished for land that exists only in Jewish imagination. While the rhetoric over the past several years suggests that Israelis are willing for forego their expansionist delusions of a "Greater Israel" one needs to only ask themselves: "What single other nation in the entire world has yet to define its own borders?" Israel has not done so in its 58 years of existence.
The Zionist Jews that "reclaimed" Eretz Yisrael were people that had evolved in Russia and Eastern Europe. They had no tangible connection to Palestine. Their sole connection was Biblical in nature. The central question must now be raised: How (in God's name no less) can such a "metaphysical" contract as is portrayed in the Old Testament ― allegedly struck some three millennia ago between a "god" and His "chosen people", the very same people that wrote the Old Testament to begin with ― be granted jurisdiction thousands of years later over a different people (Palestinian Arabs) who abide by a different bible (Qu'ran) and whose unbroken ties to their tangible ancestral homeland (Palestine) date back thousands of years?
Only the indigenous Semitic people that evolved in Palestine can be considered the legitimate heirs to the land: prior to 1880 Jews constituted less than 5 percent of the population and most of this small number (25,000) were alien returnees. In fact, they "were known in those days as 'children of death'...pious Jews who wanted to die in Jerusalem." [The Siege; p 31] In 1880, the indigenous, Semitic people of Palestine numbered nearly half a million. The reader my wonder how such reality squares up with the Zionist catch-phrase: "A land with no people for a people with no land."
Further, as demonstrated, the ancient Israelites came to the region now called Palestine as invaders. They were a contentious, factionated grouping of many tribes that once managed an alliance of solidarity in efforts to oust the Philistines. This alliance lasted 75 years (1000-925 BCE) before falling apart and resulting in the destruction of the temple and the final mass expulsion of Jews from the region. Thus, when Zionists claim their right to Eretz Yisrael on the basis of the Jews' ancient "sovereignty" over Palestine, they claim that a contentious alliance between, and coerced compliance of, rival tribes that "controlled" Palestine for less than 200 years (which is ― using the Biblical creation date, 4000 BCE ― about 3.5 percent of the time the region called Palestine has existed; up to 1880) constitutes a greater claim than that made by the Semitic peoples who evolved in that very same region over a span of thousands of years regardless of what authority "ruled" Palestine.
The Zionist reclamation of Eretz Yisrael took on an even more urgent character because of the holocaust. That monstrous Hitlerean policy of genocide served to further justify the Zionist confiscation of Palestine. The guilt-ridden Western world did not dare protest the massive flux of illegal immigration by Jews into Palestine in the context of such an immoral atrocity. Thus, with substrate of Biblical pronouncement and holocaust-mandated recompense, Zionist Jews staked their claim to Palestine.
This explains the Zionist reclamation. It does not excuse it.
For the Zionist POV is now, and has always been, one of blind intransigence. And not a blindness caused by ignorance, but rather, a blindness caused by personal justification at the expense of true moral vision. For, if morality is to have any meaning, it must maintain its quintessential universality or else it is nothing more than situational ethics applied to any human's (or group's) self-contained standard. To wit: One party behaves in a manner that is injurious to a second party. The members of the first party contend their actions are "right for them" which can only be defined as personal justification. For it is a ruling made by members of a single party in the vacuum of that party's singular desires. However, the actions of the first party negatively impact a second party. Thus, with this inclusion of another party, continued validation of injurious behaviors via personal justification stands in utter defiance of morality which demands precepts of virtuous conduct be applied without discrimination to one and all. Therefore, the first party, while perhaps personally justified, continues to act immorally.
Hence, personal justification is not moral justification.
The United States of America should stand up to Israel and demand a just settlement for the Palestinian people. But, if history and current events tell the story, there will be no justice for millions of Palestinian Arab people.
And what might the future bring? A chilling worst-case scenario ― not without eerie precedent ― arises quickly to mind whenever the consequential possibilities and probabilities of continued Zionist intransigence in the face of increasing acquisition of modern weapon systems by surrounding Arab nations; missiles that can strike at the very heart of Israel. The model for this horrific scenario is Masada: "...the symbol of besieged Israel. This Herodian fortress was the last outpost of the Zealots during the Jewish War against Rome (CE 66-70/73 A.D.)...When a breach was made in the wall, at the end of a prolonged siege...rather than be captured and enslaved (officers were chosen by Eleazar to slit the throats of) 960 men, women, and children." [The Siege; p 530] When the chosen officers finished their gruesome task they turned on each other. Eleazar plunged his sword into his own heart. [Embellishment courtesy of, The Holy Land (536 BC to AD 640); Avi-Yonah and History of the People of Israel; Cornill]
Brought into the modern context, this example serves as warning. For, suppose Israel refuses to ever relinquish the occupied territories? Palestinian nationalism is real, it is not going away. The Palestinians are not going to leave (Sumud). The friction between Israelis and Palestinians will escalate. Israeli repression will become even more brutal. Zionist fanaticism will continue to wreck havoc on Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular thereby destabilizing the entire region. Such that, as has been demonstrated throughout the history of Zionist occupation of Palestine, whenever attacked, retaliation measures taken by Israel have always been an escalation of brutality ("asymmetrical response")...ergo the Nuclear Masada scenario wherein the Zionist leadership of Israel, under siege, with the country's internal integrity breached by numerous missile strikes, opts for re-enactment of Masada, i.e., rather than lose to the Arabs, the Israeli leadership decides to give its Zionist fanaticism ultimate expression: If the Jews cannot have all of Palestine, no one will. Thus, the use of their nuclear arsenal rendering the whole of Biblical Palestine uninhabitable. Of course, if the Zionist leadership had any ill-feeling towards the nations of the world for not coming to their defense, for a history of pogroms and persecution, the Israeli leadership might not restrain themselves from delivering a sufficient quantity of nuclear strikes to surrounding Arab nations; this would contaminate the world's oil supply which would render it useless which would unleash such chaos that Humankind would be thrust into a new Dark Age.
Impossible, you say?
Noted investigative journalist and author Seymour Hersh writes about the 1990 Gulf War effort and Israel's retaliatory capability, "...not known to the public but detected by an American satellite making its ninety-six-minute orbit around the earth. The satellite saw that (Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak) Shamir had responded to the Scud barrage by ordering mobile missile launchers armed with nuclear weapons moved into the open and deployed facing Iraq, ready to launch on command. American intelligence picked up other signs indicating that Israel had gone on a full-scale nuclear alert that would remain in effect for weeks...The basic target of Israel's nuclear arsenal has been and will continue to be its Arab neighbors. Should war break out in the Middle East again and should the Syrians and the Egyptians break through again as they did in 1973, or should any Arab nation fire missiles again at Israel, as Iraq did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort, would now be a strong probability." [The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy; Seymour Hersh; 1991; pp 318-319]
The evidence presented in this article strongly suggests that it is time for Israel to assume responsibility for the pain and suffering inflicted upon the Palestinian people. It is time for the entire Western world to demand an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is time for Israel to be judged ― not through the rose-colored lens of the Bible nor through the guilt-distorted lens of the holocaust ― but rather, by Israel's immoral actions.
TEXT NOTES
1) The Western world has achieved supremacy via the unscrupulous backsliding from Capitalistocratic tenets, i.e., though demand for product (oil) was huge, a factor that unilaterally escalates price in a free market ambience, the supply of product was controlled by the procurers not the providers, thereby securing oil at criminally low exchange rates, far below the commodity's true value as the product was always abundantly overproduced in order to depress the market price.
2) Read A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn and Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
3) This elitist, self-chauvinistic, intolerant philosophy, (Yahweh: I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God) is the substrate for the historical non-assimilationism practiced by those of the Jewish faith.
4) Deuteronomy 13:6; 13:9, 13:10..."If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thous hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers...Thous shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him...But thous shalf surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people...And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God..."
5) According to the Old Testament, the world was created in 4,000 BCE. Therefore, as of 1988, 5988 years have so far passed. This means the area now called Palestine existed 2,750 years prior to the Israelites (originally from the Fertile Crescent region) came upon the scene. The tribes of Israel, under David and Solomon (1000-925 BCE), the Judeans under the Maccabees (approximately 140-40 BCE), and the Zionists (1948-1988 AD) have "controlled" Palestine for a combined total of 215 years. Therefore, by their own account, the Jews have reigned over but 3.59 percent of Palestine's span of existence. If we consider the percentage of time Jews "controlled" Palestine before 1882 (the year of the first Zionist Aliyah) in order to gauge the Zionist's Biblical claim, then we see that the Jews "controlled" Palestine for a total of 175 years which is but 2.97 percent of the time. It is important to remember that since the time (925 BCE) that Judah and Israel split, "rivalry and even war marked their international relations. These wars were not considered 'civil wars' because the countries were independent states." [The Rise and Fall of the Judaean State; Vol.1, 332-37 BCE; Solomon Zeitlin; The Jewish Publication Society of America; 1968]
6) All dates (1250 BCE – 70 AD) used in this first section of the current article are from The Columbia History of the World; edited by Garraty and Gay; 1972; Harper & Row; pp 216-217]
7) On this point it should be kept in mind that there were no nation-states in the entire region (which had long been part of the Ottoman Empire and then, after WWII, divvied up as Mandates between Great Britain and France which remained as such) until independence was granted accordingly: Egypt 1922; Iraq 1932; Lebanon and Syria 1943; Jordan 1946; Israel 1948.
8) E.g. IRGUN "demanded all of original Mandate Palestine, including Transjordan." [The Siege; p 273] Menachem Begin (Dec.'77): "Israel stands by its rights and its claim of sovereignty to Judea, Samaria and the Gaza district." [ibid; p 581] Yitzhak Shamir ('88): "...we brought Judea, Samaria and Gaza, as much as parts of the Land of Israel as any other, under Israel's control...regardless of how the question of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is resolved, we cannot be barred from Shiloh, Bethel and Hebron any more than we can be excluded from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa." [Foreign Affairs, Vol. 66; No.3; 1988; pp 576, 580] It should be noted that the above mentioned cities reside well inside the West Bank territory, i.e., Shiloh at 27 kms; Bethel 18kms; Hebron 16 kms. It should also be noted that: "An underground group once led by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir is held responsible by some historians in connection with the 1948 murder of Swedish UN envoy, Count Folke Bernadotte." [The Christian Science Monitor; 27 October 1986] Moshe Dayan (1973): "...proclaimed his vision of a new State of Israel with broad frontiers, strong and solid, with the authority of the Israeli Government extending from the Jordan to the Suez Canal." [The Siege, p 508] As for Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin: Sharon moved into the Arab quarter of the Old City in East Jerusalem during the first few days of the current uprising which no doubt added fuel to the fires of the Palestinian intifadeh. Rabin is current Defense Minister in charge of operations in the occupied territories, Micah Sifry writes in The Nation, 13 February 1988, that Rabin's "iron fist policy over the past two and a half years has brought the Palestinians to a new pitch of suffering and anger. And now it is his declared policy of 'force, might and beatings' that is being brought to bear against the uprising..." The purely Zionist character of Sharon's and Rabin's ideology and rhetoric is well known and documented.
9) Add to this 80,000 the 60,000 from Lydda and Ramleh, plus the 85,000 from Jerusalem who were forced to flee in July, as well as the 45,000 from Acre, and we get 270,000 (which accounts for only 36 percent of the total number of Palestinian Arabs that were expulsed). Based on Shamir's statement in Foreign Affairs that there were 600,000 Jews in residence when Israel was proclaimed a state (accounting for 55 percent of the regional population; region defined by UN-recognized boundaries) then the Arabs (45 percent) numbered about 490,909. If we add only the 270,000 Arabs cited of the newly "acquired" territories, then the total population would have been 1,360,909. The 600,000 Zionists would have constituted but 44 percent. If all the expulsed Arabs were counted, then the Zionist percentage would have dipped below 40 percent. Therefore, when Israel moved to acquire new territory, the intent was to create a Zionist majority.
10) "In 1950, Ben-Gurion's Government imposed the Law of Abandoned Property upon the waqf (what the religious endowment to which the Muslim faithful donated their wealth for the benefit of the Muslim community was called). At one stroke, many thousands of acres of agricultural land, large tracts of urban real estate, and thousands of houses, businesses and shops came under control of the Custodian of Absentee Property, to be used for the benefit of the new Jewish immigrants." [The Siege; p 426] "The total amount of absentee land transferred under this law was about a quarter million acres. This included the waqf land." [ibid; p 702, #14]
11) Mordacai Venunu was to be kept in solitary confinement, incommunicado for 18 years; not released until 2005
12) Menachem Begin, in a speech delivered at the National Defence College in Israel, stated that "we had a choice" not to go to war in 1956 but Israel decided to "meet the enemy before it absorbs the Soviet weapons which began to flow to it from Czechoslovakia in 1955." As pertains to the '67 War, Menachem Begin stated, "We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack (Nasser)." [Israel-Arab Reader; pp 653-654]
13) In fact, as noted by Fayez A. Sayegh in his exceptional publication, Zionist Propaganda In The United States: An Analysis, every single informational venue pertaining to the Middle East available in America up to 1970, was either majority-funded, or wholly owned and operated by, Zionist Jewish organizations.
14) In 1988, dollars per year.
14) In 1988, dollars per year.
