Sunday 24th of November 2024
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with friends like these .....

with friends like these .....

I find myself wondering how many of our present day leaders, President Obama in particular, are aware of what happened in Palestine on 10 March 65 years ago.

On that day in 1948, two months before Israel’s unilateral declaration of independence in defiance of the will of the organized international community as it then was at the UN, Zionism’s in-Palestine political and military leaders met in Tel Aviv to formally adopt PLAN DALET, the blueprint with operational military orders for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

They did not and never would refer to the crime they authorised as ethnic cleansing. Their euphemism for it was “transfer”.

As noted in an excellent anniversary briefing paper by IMEU (the American-founded Institute for Middle East Understanding), from the earliest days of modern political Zionism its advocates grappled with the problem of creating a Jewish majority state in a part of the world where Palestinian Arabs were the overwhelming majority of the population.

The earliest insider information we have on Zionism’s thinking is from the diary of Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism’s colonial-like enterprise. He wrote:

“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

Those words were committed to paper by Herzl in 1895 but they were not published (in other words they were suppressed) until 1962.

By August 1937 “transfer” was a discreet but hot topic for discussion at the 20th Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland. All in attendance were aware that the process of dispossessing the Palestinian peasants (the fellahin) mainly by purchasing land from absentee owners had been underway for years. Referring to this David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first prime minister, said:

“You are no doubt aware of the (Jewish National Fund’s) activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin…Jewish power (in Palestine), which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale.”

A year later Ben-Gurion told a meeting of the Jewish Agency that he supported compulsory transfer. He added:

“I don’t see anything immoral in it.”

In my view that’s a most revealing statement. It tells us – does it not? – that Ben-Gurion, the Zionist state’s founding father, was a man with no sense of what was morally right and wrong.

Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Fund’s Lands Department which was responsible for acquiring the land for Zionism’s enterprise in Palestine. One of his diary entries for December 1940 reads as follows:

“There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for (the Arabs of) Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one (Bedouin) tribe. And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution.”

Plan Dalet called for:

“Mounting operations against enemy population centres located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:

“Destruction of villages – setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris – especially those population centres which are difficult to control continuously.

“Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.”

Before the Zionist state declared itself to be in existence on 14 May 1948, more than 200 Palestinian villages had already been emptied and about 175,000 Palestinians were already refugees. Some had fled in fear; others were expelled by Zionist forces.

The prime fear factor was the slaughter by Zionist terrorists of more than 100 Palestinian men, women and children at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem. As Arthur Koestler was to write, the “bloodbath” at Deir Yassin was “the psychologically decisive factor in the spectacular exodus of the Arabs from the Holy Land and the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.”

It was, however, Menachem Begin, Zionism’s terror master and subsequently prime minister, who provided the most vivid description of how well the slaughter at Deir Yassin served Zionism’s cause. In his book The Revolt, he wrote:

“Panic overwhelmed the Arabs of Eretz Israel. Kolonia village, which had previously repulsed every attack of the Haganah (the underground Jewish military organization that became the Israeli Army), was evacuated overnight and fell without further fighting. Beit-Iksa was also evacuated. These two places overlooked the road and their fall, together with the capture of Kastel by the Haganah, made it possible to keep open the road to Jerusalem. In the rest of the country, too, the Arabs began to flee in terror, even before they clashed with Jewish forces… The legend of Deir Yassin helped us in particular in the saving of Tiberias and the conquest of Haifa… All the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter. The Arabs began fleeing in panic, shouting ‘Deir Yassin!’”

Three decades later, in an article for The American Zionist, Mordechai Nisan of the Truman Research Centre of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem expressed his concern about the failure to understand the major significance of terrorism in the struggle for Jewish sovereignty. He wrote: “Without terror it is unlikely that Jewish independence would have been achieved when it was.”

After the Zionist state declared itself to be in existence, its government set up an unofficial body known as the “Transfer Committee”. Its job was to oversee the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages and/or their repopulation with Jews. The purpose of this Zionist strategy was to prevent dispossessed Palestinians returning to their homes.

By 1949 more than 400 Palestinian towns and villages had been systematically destroyed or taken over by Israeli Jews; and at least 750,000 Palestinians were refugees, dispossessed of their land, their homes and their rights.

In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe, Israel’s leading “revisionist” (meaning honest) historian, documents in detail Zionism’s systematic reign of terror which, from December 1947 to January 1949, included 31 massacres. (Deir Yassin was only the first). In a videoed conversation with me in 2008, which can be viewed in the Hart of the Matter series on my site (www.alanhart.net), Ilan said this:

“Probably more surprising than anything else was not the silence of the world as Zionist ethnic cleansing was taking place in Palestine, but the silence of the Jews in Palestine. They knew what had happened to Jews in Nazi Europe, and some might even have seen it for themselves, yet they had no scruples in doing almost the same thing to the Palestinians.”

On this 65th anniversary of the authorization of the ethnic cleaning of Palestine, the questions I would like to see put to our leaders today, President Obama in particular, are the following:

Are you aware of Plan Dalet?

If not, why not?

If you are aware of it, could it not said be said that your refusal to call and hold Zionism to account for its crimes makes you (and your predecessors) complicit in those crimes by default?

65 Years Ago: The Green Light For Zionism’s Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine

 

Alan Hart has been engaged with events in the Middle East and their global consequences and terrifying implications – the possibility of a Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v Islamic, and, along the way, another great turning against the Jews – for nearly 40 years… Alan is author of "Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews" - http://www.alanhart.net

 

on rare occasions .....

That Rare Occasion When Australian Politicians Speak Truths Over Palestine

There were two examples in yesterday’s New South Wales parliament. Firstly, Labor Councillor Shaoquett Moselmane dared talk about the reality of Israeli crimes in Gaza and a host of other usually unutterable realities in polite company. There were then attempts to shut him down by his own party and the rapacious Zionist lobby. The usual suspects are scared that somebody may hear something contrary to a pro-apartheid and pro-occupation position. Cover your ears!

NSW Upper House Greens politician David Shoebridge gave the following powerful speech that challenged the wilful myopia expressed by nearly all politicians. A recent Zionist lobby trip took silly little politicians to Israel to get their fill of propaganda and falafel:

I speak to this motion and note at the outset that it is a very unbalanced one. Indeed, a member asked if The Greens took part in this study mission to Israel. As far as I am aware, no Greens member of Parliament went on this study mission. That was primarily because of the one-sided nature of the itinerary, which is reflected in the one-sided nature of this motion.

In a motion that purports to talk about building an understanding of the complex and various issues impacting on Israel and other jurisdictions within the Middle East, it is extraordinary that in the more than 100 words and five paragraphs of this motion not one word is mentioned about Palestine or the Palestinians. The human rights of the Palestinians are airbrushed out of the motion, just as they were airbrushed out of the itinerary of the study tour that travelled to Israel and some very small parts of the West Bank.

Having heard the contributions of members who went on the study tour and having read the motion, I can see that this is little more than a public relations exercise for the Israeli Government. Indeed, this public relations exercise has been run in part through the offices of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies which arranged the tour and, I understand, partly paid for the study trip to Israel.

For the record, I do not recall getting an invitation from the Jewish Board of Deputies for this visit. However, had I received one I would not have accepted the invitation to go on this study trip because of the extraordinarily one-sided itinerary provided to members.

If the Parliamentary Friends of Israel were interested in building an understanding of the complex issues in the Middle East, as they purport to be, their itinerary should have included a couple of other places to visit. First, the itinerary should have included visits outside the limited confines of Israel, Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

How could members of this Chamber who wanted to get a balanced understanding of the issues facing the Israelis, the Palestinians and the Middle East travel to that part of the world and not meet with any members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, or at least those members of the Palestinian Legislative Council not currently being held in Israeli jails, many of them without trial and without being charged with any criminal offence?

How could members go there and meet with only one of the legislative bodies, the Knesset, and ignore the Palestinian Legislative Council? How could members, who wanted to get a balanced understanding of the issues facing Israel, Palestine and the Middle East, go to the other side of the planet and fail to visit Gaza, the world’s largest outdoor prison?

How could members not go to see the way the Palestinians live under the illegal blockade or not speak to the local health workers about the conditions in Gaza, or the paramedics about how they respond to the impacts of aerial bombardments by the Israeli military?

If they had visited Gaza they would have been able to see the X-rays that the Gaza doctors show of children’s kidneys riddled with kidney stones because of the saline water they are required to drink. The Israeli wells on the edge of Gaza are stripping out the fresh water from the arterial basin and the arterial basin is filling up with saline water from the sea. That saline water fills the wells. Most of the water treatment plants have been destroyed by Israeli bombardments and almost every child in Gaza has kidneys riddled with kidney stones and ongoing health problems.

Next time members should go to Gaza, look at the children, look at the damage, look at the X-rays and get some balance in their visit.

If they had gone to Gaza surely they would then have gone to the West Bank and outside Bethlehem and Jerusalem and spoken to Palestinian villagers whose lives and livelihoods have been destroyed by the apartheid wall. Talk to the farmers whose olive groves have been cut off by the illegal apartheid wall, who cannot get to the fields that generations of their family had previously tended because of an illegal apartheid wall built by Israel through the middle of their homes, villages and farms.

Surely members could also have met with Israeli peace activists, such as Jeff Halper from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and spoken to Palestinians who have been illegally evicted from their homes and land to make way for internationally condemned settlements being built by the Israelis.

But, no. Members spoke to the Israeli settlers but they did not visit and speak to the people who have been evicted illegally for these internationally condemned, unlawful settlements that are now riddling the West Bank.

How could members not have travelled to Hebron and done the Breaking the Silence tour, where former Israeli soldiers would have told them about what goes on in the occupied territories, about the violence and the discrimination perpetrated by the Israeli military and the settler movement against the native Palestinian population?

Or were they Israeli voices that members wanted to edit out and not hear? The inconvenient truth.

How could members not visit those Palestinian refugee camps in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon, where Palestinian refugees from 1948, 1967 and beyond live in sub-standard Third World conditions and are denied their human right to return to their homes? Members did not speak to them, see their title deeds and see the keys they still hold for the homes that were taken from them in the illegal occupations and evictions that have been taking place for decades in that part of the world?

It is extraordinary to note that Labor members, one of whom is notionally from the Left, visited Israel and small parts of the West Bank but did not travel to Nablus and meet with any of the Palestinian trade unions. How could members have travelled over there and not spoken to the firefighters in the Nablus fire station who were locked into their compound by Israeli tanks and snipers and prevented from doing their job as firefighters? They were prevented from saving the lives and homes of their families and friends for days and days as homes burned; children and other people died while the Israeli military shelled and burned their city around them.

The motion is not balanced; the visit to Israel was not balanced. It was not about getting an understanding of the complex and various issues but, rather, about getting a narrow part of the Israeli understanding.

For members who went on such an unbalanced tour and failed to see the balanced truth, the oppression the Palestinian people face daily as a result of the illegal occupation of Israel, and to support this motion and preach to the rest of the Chamber about truth, understanding, peace and non-violence is extraordinary.

Antony Loewenstein

the evil of “chosenness” ….

“Pour out thy wrath upon the Gentiles (Goyim) that have not known thee.” (Psalm 79:6)

It occurred to me as I was rereading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s unfinished novel, Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret, that the good Doctor’s grim reflection on the human condition, delivered to his adopted child, Ned, knowing the child was too young to grasp his revelation, might well give us pause as the state of Israel seeks to tether itself by an umbilical cord of self-defense to the United States through a strategic ally agreement.

“Then, Doctor Grim … tell me … where I came from…,” asked Ned.

“That is a question, indeed, my friend Ned!” putting forth a whiff of smoke and imbibing a nip from his tumbler … framing his answer in such a way as to let out his secret mood to the child, because knowing he could not understand it:

“Whence did you come? Whence did any of us come? Out of the darkness and mystery; out of nothingness; out of a kingdom of shadows; out of dust, clay, mud, I think, and to return to it again, whence we have brought a good many shadowy revelations, purporting that it was no pleasant one. Out of a former life, of which the present one is the hell! And why are you come? Faith, Ned, he must be a wiser man than Doctor Grim who can tell why you or any other mortal came hither; only one thing I am well aware of,--it was not to be happy. To toil and moil and hope and fear; and to love in a shadowy, doubtful sort of way, and to hate in bitter earnest---that is what you came for!”

Hawthorne returned from Europe in 1860 having fulfilled his position as United States Consul to Liverpool at the close of President Franklin Pierce’s term, followed by two years in Europe. He returned to an America embroiled in an internecine Civil War. For seven years till his death in 1864, he mulled and moiled on the life of Doctor Grimshawe, unable to bring closure to the work. But if one speculates on a life, devoted in his tales and novels, to the inner embroilment of the American mind molded by Puritanical thought, a twisted never ending battle between God and His creatures, embedded in superstition and myths, shrouded in beliefs that they too were God’s Chosen destined to fulfill a covenant between the Almighty and humankind, given by that very God the promised land, Zion here in the new world, driven to command and obey that they might bring truth to a heathen land, then we might understand the gloom that nests in the cobwebs of the Doctor’s study, where the ultimate end of us all is “to hate in bitter earnest—that is what you came for!” Thus we find the Puritans stealing land, enslaving savages, and exterminating tribes to further their hold on God’s gift.

What is it that nestles in Grimshawe’s thoughts but the ultimate psychological sickness that destroys both self and all: fear of all. For if the soul can find no solace in sister and brother, no hope in the community of people, no joy in sharing the fruits of this earth satisfied that this is our purpose, then are all of us victims of perceived hate or the perpetrators of hate, and life has no meaning. How horrific then that the “secret” desire proffered by AIPAC and the Zionist forces in Israel seeks to graft that state to the United States as a “special Security Ally” to ensure that this nation be burdened with their psychological albatross: fear of all, victims of unending condemnation, destined to never ending existential annihilation; and so the people of the United States become tethered to this fear that finds expression every Passover with the chant of the Psalm, “Pour out thy wrath upon the Gentiles.”

America has no need to “Pour out its wrath on the Gentiles,” it is a nation of Gentiles; it has rather to return to its founding declarations, to express the truth that the laws of nature taught it some 250 years ago: “All men are created equal,” that all have rights to life and happiness, that all should be free to worship as they desire and never should anyone be forced to cringe before a foreign god, that all are free to express what they believe and no man can take away that right. These beliefs contain no fear; they voice trust in all humankind; they enunciate the oneness of all displacing the notion of exceptionalness, superiority, separateness, exclusiveness and “chosenness” that divides and destroys; and they recognize the rights of all to share the wealth of this universe which sustains all living things and has authorized no select ownership for the few that they may capitalize on the many.

The Promised Land of Zion is a fabrication of the tribe that is beneficial to the few at the expense of the many; that is true of America’s Israelites that stole the land from those who lived in New England, and it is true of the new world order that declares it America’s responsibility to bring God’s gift to all, when it declares it alone has the right to decide what is the right. When the many are but the chattel of the few, their existence is at the mercy of those few who will willingly destroy their brethren to enhance their own coffers. That’s the world according to Dr. Grim, a world without understanding, without light, without mercy; a life of nothingness, of mud, clay, of dust, a life of inevitable loneliness and sorrow, a life without happiness for it is ruled by those who know no evil, and see no evil for the evil is inside of them and they do not know it.

William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He writes frequently for Internet publications including The Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Countercurrents, Counterpunch, World Prout Assembly, Dissident Voice, and Information Clearing House among others. His books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and the forthcoming The Plight of the Palestinians. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com

Zion - The Promised Land - Too Little, Too Late