- On May 14, Israelis will commemorate the 60th anniversary
of their "War of Independence" and founding of the Jewish State.
It also marks 60 years of Palestinian Nakba suffering. The web site alnakba.org
recounts the history:
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- -- from the late Ottoman empire period; to -- the birth
of Zionism; to
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- -- the early Jewish colonization of Palestine; to
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- -- the 1917 Balfour Declaration support for a "Jewish
national home in Palestine;" to
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- -- the simultaneous British betrayal of the indigenous
Arabs; to
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- -- the British occupation; to
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- -- its delayed promised end; to
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- -- the founding of the Haganah underground military organization;
to
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- -- the first British (1922) Palestine census showing
a population of 757,182 - 78% Muslim, 11% Jewish and 9.6% Christian; to
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- -- the official 1923 establishment of the British Mandate
period; to
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- -- the 1920s Jewish population increase to 16% on 4%
of Palestinian land; to
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- -- the terrorist Irgun (IZT) National Military Organization
established in 1931; to
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- -- the terrorist Stern Gang founded in 1939; to
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- -- the 1945 Jewish population growth to 31% of the total;
to
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- -- the October 1947 US endorsement of partitioning Palestine
at a time Palestinians comprised two-thirds of the population and Jews
one-third; to
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- -- the November 1947 UN General Assembly Resolution 181
to end the British Mandate by August 1, 1948 and partition Palestine -
56% to Jews, the remainder to Palestinians, and for Jerusalem to be an
international city; to
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- -- Britain recommending (in December) an end to Mandate
Palestine on May 15, 1948 and independent Jewish and Palestinian states
to be established two weeks later; to
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- -- Harry Truman secretly meeting Chaim Weizmann at the
White House on March 25, 1948 and pledging support for the declaration
of Israel on May 15; to
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- -- the State of Israel established at 4PM on May 14,
1948; to
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- -- the official end of the British Mandate on May 15;
to
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- -- Harry Truman recognizing the Jewish State on the same
day.
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- David Ben-Gurion was Israel's first prime minister. On
March 10, 1948, he met with leading Zionists and young Jewish military
officers in Tel-Aviv's "Red House." They finalized plans to
ethnically cleanse Palestine through a process of siege, intimidation and
terror - to bomb and depopulate villages and cities; massacre innocent
people; burn homes, property and goods; and prevent expelled Palestinians
from returning.
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- Dalet (Plan D) was the final master plan. It was for
war without mercy - mass slaughter, targeted assassinations, rapes, other
atrocities, displacement and destruction. It was to establish an exclusive
Jewish State without an Arab presence.
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- It took six months to complete, consider the toll, and
understand the Nakba's meaning. It displaced 750,000 to 800,000 people
- men, women, children, the elderly and infant civilians. Many hundreds
or thousands of others were killed. Sweeping destruction was carried out.
It erased 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in Tel-Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem
and other cities.
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- The plan's roots went way back:
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- -- to the birth of Zionism;
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- -- the 1901Jewish National Fund (JNF) beginning; it was
to compile a detailed registry of Arab villages so later Zionists knew
what to colonize and where; it was also to buy and occupy Palestinian land;
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- -- by the late 1930s, it was a detailed topographic blueprint
of every Arab village and urban area; its information included husbandry,
cultivated land, number of trees, quality of fruits, crops, average amount
of land per family, number of cars, shop owners, Palestinian clans and
their political affiliation, description of mosques and names of their
imams, civil servants and more;
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- -- by 1947, it also included "wanted" persons,
by villages, to be targeted for elimination - leaders to be arrested and
summarily executed in cold blood to create a power vacuum;
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- -- the process began in December 1947, five months before
the British Mandate ended; Britain did nothing to deter it; David Ben-Gurion
led it from the 1920s to the 1960s; after ethnically cleansing Palestine
he said: "We have come and we have stolen their country....We must
do everything to insure they never do return." Ten years earlier he
wrote to his son: "We will expel the Arabs and take their places....with
the force at our disposal;"
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- -- other Israeli leaders expressed the same mindset;
two were former prime ministers - Golda Meir said: "There are no
Palestinians" and Menachem Begin and Nobel Peace Prize recipient called
Palestinians "two-legged beasts" and said Jews were the "Master
Race" and "divine gods on this planet;"
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- -- Labor Party leader Haim Herzog was more discreet in
expressing disdain for the Arabs; in 1972, he said "I am not prepared
to consider (Palestinians) as partners in any respect in a land that has
been consecrated in the hands of our nation for thousands of years. For
the Jews of this land there cannot be any partner."
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- Earlier in 1969, Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff
Moshe Dayan described the 1947 - 49 success: "Jewish villages were
built in place of Arab (ones). You do not know the names of these Arab
villages (because they) no longer exist....There is not one single place
built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
Like other leading Israelis, Dayan expressed scorn for all Palestinians
and told his Labor Party colleagues that they "shall continue to live
like dogs...."
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- The Palestinian Holocaust
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- Alnakba.org recounts the toll. It lists the destroyed
villages in 14 Palestinian Districts, including Gaza, Jerusalem, Haifa,
Jaffa, Nazareth and Hebron. One was Deir Yassin in the Jerusalem District.
On April 9, 1948, it was the site of an infamous Nakba massacre. Israeli
soldiers entered the village, machine-gunned houses randomly and killed
many inside them. The remaining villagers were assembled and murdered in
cold blood. Included were children, infants, the elderly and women who
were first raped. The total number killed is uncertain but best estimates
place it between 93 and 120. In addition, dozens more were killed in the
fighting that ensued, and many other villages met the same fate in the
systematic cleansing plan - to seize as much Palestinian land as possible
leaving the fewest number of Arabs on it.
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- In December 1947, Jews in Palestine numbered 600,000
compared to 1.3 million Palestinians. Ben-Gurion ordered them removed with
commands like: "Every attack has to end with occupation, destruction
and expulsion." He meant depopulation; obliteration; homes blown up,
burned or bulldozed; their inhabitants inside killed; shooting anything
that moved, especially fighting-age men and boys who might pose a combat
or resistance threat; and leaving behind rubble, a forgotten landscape
and a proud history erased.
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- The Lifta ruins can be seen from Jerusalem. All that
was left in Dayr Aban were piles of rubble, collapsed roofs and part of
some standing walls. Only two houses remained in Barqa. One is deserted.
The other is a warehouse. Jura became the city of Ashqelon. Its Jewish
population is now about 117,000. The only Arab remains in al-Faluja are
the village mosque foundations and fragments of walls. The Israeli town
of Qiryat Gat now stands on land between al-Faluja and Iraq al-Manshiyya
and on al-Faluja land as well. Hundreds of other Arab villages have similar
stories. They were erased and replaced by Jewish-only development.
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- An eye witness to the Deir Yassin massacre recounts the
horror:
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- "I was (there) when the Jews attacked....(They)
closed on the village amid exchanges of fire with us. Once they entered
the village, fighting became very heavy in the eastern side and later it
spread to other parts, to the quarry, to the village center until it reached
the western edge....The Jews used all sorts of automatic weapons, tanks,
missiles, cannons. They enter(ed) houses and kill(ed) women and children
indiscriminately. The (village) youths....fought bravely.
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- We had no aid or support....They took about 40 prisoners....After
the battle was over, they took them to the quarry where they shot them
dead and threw their bodies in the quarry....they took (other) prisoners
and killed them....they killed the youths."
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- Other accounts spoke of shootings, bombs exploding and
a mother being killed with her husband, son and brother. A nurse was shot
dead as well as the daughter of a friend and her baby. "Whomever tried
to run away was shot dead." It was cold-blooded murder.
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- After the battle, "the Jews took elderly men and
women and youths, including four of my cousins and a nephew. They took
them all. Women who had on them gold and money, were stripped of their
gold. After the Jews removed their dead and wounded, they took the men
to the quarry and sprayed them all with bullets." One woman watched
her son shot to death. "They later poured kerosene on his body and"
burned it.
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- The men were fighting. "Eyewitnesses were only women.
The elderly men were (used) to remove the dead, Arabs and Jews." The
Arab ones "were thrown in a well in the village center." It all
happened five weeks before the State of Israel was founded. Arabs died
and were displaced to make Plan D a success. It worked because western
powers supported it, and Arab neighbors were indifferent. Their intervention
held off until May 15, five and a half months after the UN partition. When
it began, it was with an inferior force that was no match against Israeli
superiority, despite popular myth to the contrary.
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- It recounts how an outnumbered and outgunned Jewish force
prevailed against overwhelming odds. Pure rubbish. In fact, the Jews held
a clear advantage. As long as the British stayed out (and they did), the
outcome was never in doubt. Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq held
off intervening as long as possible, then reluctantly stepped in with token
forces. It was too little, too late, and, for its part, Jordan (with its
potent military) stayed out entirely in return for most of the West Bank
as a payoff.
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- Intervening Arab forces performed poorly. They overstretched
their supply lines, ran out of ammunition, mostly used antiquated weapons,
and had no effective command and control. It was a testimony to their lack
of commitment, not their ability to fight had they wished to.
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- Jews, in contrast, were supplied effective armaments
from Soviet Russia and other Eastern bloc countries. They easily outgunned
the Arabs and outclassed and outnumbered them as well. The outcome was
never in doubt that a new Jewish State would emerge. On May 14, 1948, Israel
signed separate armistice agreements with its four major warring adversaries.
It gave Israel 78% of British Mandatory Palestine, 40% above its UN allotment.
Palestinians got the other 22% comprising the West Bank and Gaza.
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- On December 11, 1948, a historic General Assembly resolution
passed - UN Resolution 194 consisting of 15 articles. Four were most important.
Article 7 protected and provided free access to the Holy Places. Article
8 demilitarized Jerusalem and placed it under UN control. Article 9 called
for free access to Jerusalem, and Article 11 is most remembered for granting
Palestinian refugees the right of return or to be compensated for their
loss if they chose not to. From 1948, to the present, Israel defied the
UN mandate and got away with it. It was because of western support and
Arab indifference. As a result, it was able to terrorize remaining Arabs
inside Israel, and set in motion the eventual Gaza and West Bank occupation.
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- The War Ended - State Terrorism Was Just Beginning
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- Throughout 1949 in the war's aftermath, Israel pursued
another one - a war of terror against the remaining Arab population. It
set a six decade precedent. Israel now belonged to Jews. Arabs were unwelcome.
State security forces cracked down to show how much.
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- Thousands of displaced Palestinians were rounded up and
imprisoned. Others were targeted, harassed and abused. They lost everything
- their land, homes, fields, crops, places of worship, freedom of movement
and expression, and any hope for fair treatment in the new Jewish State.
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- Naked and undisguised racism confronted them. They were
issued identity cards with penalties up to 1.5 years in prison and immediate
transfer to an "unauthorized" and "suspicious" Arab
pen if caught without them.
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- Persecution was relentless, much the way it is today.
Roadblocks and checkpoints went up, curfews imposed, violators shot on
sight, and systematic abuse inflicted. In addition, thousands of Palestinians
were conscripted, sent to labor camps, and forced to help build the new
Jewish state. Conditions there were deplorable. Quarry laborers performed
arduous work, carried heavy rocks, and had to live on one potato and half
a dried fish for daily sustenance. Complainers or slackers were beaten,
many severely. Others, considered a threat, were simply shot.
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- Other Arabs weren't treated much better. Human rights
abuses were appalling. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
documented them. Palestinians (now Israeli citizens) got no protections
and were afforded no rights. They were subjected to relentless abuses.
Their mosques were profaned, schools vandalized, homes robbed and at times
stripped bare in broad daylight. Palestinians reported that not a single
home or Arab shop escaped the onslaught. Authorities did nothing to deter
it. They made things worse.
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- Palestinians (inside Israel) were transfered from their
homes, moved to undesired locations, crammed into confined ghettos, they
became open-air prisons, and treatment there was horrific. The ICRC and
UN reported beatings, rapes and other abuses. Israel was undergoing transformation.
Its Arab character was being erased. It affected about 150,000 remaining
Arab Israelis in the new Jewish State.
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- Formal ethnic cleansing ended in 1949, dispossession
and displacements nonetheless continued, and a new Committee for Arab Affairs
was established to defuse growing international pressure to enforce UN
Resolution 194, especially the right of return under Article 11.
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- Arab Israelis lost all their rights and were placed under
military rule. In addition, discriminatory laws were passed, like the Law
of the Land of Israel. It stipulated that the Jewish National Fund (JNF
- the Jewish State landowner) was forbidden to sell or lease land to non-Jews.
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- From inception, Israel has had no formal constitution.
It's governed instead by its Basic Law. Nine laws were passed between 1958
and 1988, all of which pertained to the institutions of state. No basic
rights were enacted until 1992. That year, the Basic Law: Human Dignity
and Freedom was passed authorizing the Knesset to overturn laws contrary
to the right to dignity, life, freedom, privacy, property and to leave
and enter the country. The law states: "There shall be no violation
of the life, body or dignity of any person. All persons are entitled to
protection" of these rights, and "There shall be no deprivation
or restriction of the liberty of a person by imprisonment, arrest, extradition
or otherwise."
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- Israeli Basic Laws are for Jews only. Arab Israelis have
no rights under them with one exception - the right to run for public office
in the Knesset, become a nominal legislative member, but have no power
beyond a public stage for their views to be shouted down and ignored.
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- Palestinians have endured six decades of shattered hope
and dreams. They were uprooted from their homes, denied their basic rights,
given little outside recognition or aid, blamed for Israeli crimes, terrorized
without mercy, falsely promised peace, yet condemned to a state of siege
under which nothing will change without outside pressure to force it.
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- Since 1948, Palestinians have lived in a state of limbo.
Their Nakba never ended. What's left of their country is occupied. They
have no recognized nation and no power over their daily lives. They live
in constant fear. They're economically strangled; dispossessed of their
land and homes; isolated under siege; collectively punished; denied free
movement; casually murdered; ruthlessly arrested, imprisoned and tortured;
afflicted by random curfews; invaded, bombed, and shot at; extra-judicially
assassinated; and constricted by roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences
and the Separation Wall that the World Court ruled illegal.
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- Israel: The World's "Worst Brand"
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- That's according a 2006 National Brands Index (NBI) study.
On November 22, 2006, Israel Today reported the findings. They were compiled
by "government advisor Simon Anholt and powered by global market intelligence
solutions provider GMI (Global Market Insite, Inc.)."
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- The survey polled 25,903 "online consumers"
in 35 countries across the world. It was to measure respondents perceptions
"across six areas of national competence," including governance,
people, culture, heritage and immigration.
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- "Israel's brand (was) by a considerable margin the
most negative we have ever measured in the NBI, and (came) at the bottom
of the ranking on almost every question (asked about 36 countries)."
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- Israel was ranked the least desired country to visit.
Its people were ranked the "most unwelcoming in the world." Surprisingly,
Americans were as negative as others. They "ranked Israel slightly
above China in terms of its conduct in the areas of international peace
and security."
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- Other recent opinion surveys report similar results.
It's encouraging to know that well over half of all Europeans rank Israel
"the biggest threat to world peace" according to a 2003 European
Commission poll. Israel is a pariah state. That's the view of millions
around the world in spite of dominant media efforts to say otherwise. Israel
calls it growing anti-Semitism. That, of course, is rubbish. Jews and Israelis
aren't being singled out - only their criminal leaders. World public opinion
justifiably condemns them.
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- Commemorating the Unforgivable
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- Jews in Israel and around the world will commemorate
May 14. It's the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel's founding. Thousands
of other Jews everywhere along with everyone of conscience stand with the
Canadian Palestine Support Network (CalPalNet). They cannot celebrate.
They will not celebrate. They remember the Nakba. They know it continues.
They condemn 41 years of occupation; the starving and bombing of Gaza;
the oppressive Separation Wall; the theft of Palestinian land; the building
of illegal settlements; the denial of the right of return; the killings,
torture, imprisonment and harassment; the denial of basic human rights;
and Israel's disdain for international law.
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- They "can (and) will continue (their) efforts to
end these injustices, uphold international law," and support every
UN resolution demanding it. "This is the only road map to peace."
They, with millions of others, won't ever stop working for it.
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- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays
from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting edge discussion with distinguished
guests.
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