The Real Estate War in Gaza
The History and "Morals" of Ethnic Cleansing
By Victoria Buch
January 06, 2009
I arrived in Israel 40 years ago. It took me many years to understand
that the very existence of my country, as it is today, is based on an
ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The project started many years
ago. Its seed can be traced to the basic fallacy of the Zionist
movement, which set out to establish a Jewish-national state in a
location already inhabited by another nation. Under these conditions,
one has, at most, a moral right to strive for a bi-national state;
establishing a national state implies, more or less by definition,
ethnic cleansing of the previous inhabitants.
Albert Einstein grasped this fallacy a long time ago. A short time after
WWI "Einstein complained that the Zionists were not doing enough to
reach agreement with the Palestinian Arabs…He favored a binational
solution in Palestine and warned Chaim Weizmann against `Prussian style`
nationalism"[1]
But such warnings passed un-heeded by the Zionist movement. So here we
are, nearly a century later, with a Jewish national state dominated by
militaristic and militant nationalists, who diligently pursue
colonization and "judaization" of the land under Israeli control, on
both sides of the Green Line (1967 border). The project has been pursued
continuously and relentlessly under the different Israeli governments,
recently under the cover of bogus "negotiations" with President Abbas.
Most of the Israeli institutions participate in it. Young Israelis,
generation after generation, join the army to provide the military
cover. The young folks have been brain-washed to honestly believe that
the army pursues Israel’s "fight for existence". However it seems
evident to the author of this article, as to many others, that the
survival of the Jewish community in this country depends on establishing
viable mechanisms of coexistence with the Palestinians. Thus, under the
slogan of "fight for existence", the State of Israel is pursuing an
essentially suicidal project.
This long-standing outlook of the Israeli governing classes was
summarized succinctly in a recent book `Palestine Inside Out` by Saree
Makdisi, an American academic. His book "suggests that occupation is
merely a feature of an ongoing Israeli policy of slow transfer of the
native Palestinian population from their lands. This policy predates the
founding of the state, and all of the various practices of the occupier:
illegal settlement, land confiscation, home demolition and so on, serve
this ultimate purpose."[2]
If you do not believe the above assessment, consider several statements
by David Ben Gurion himself, from the time before the establishment of
the State of Israel (Ben Gurion was the leader of the Zionist movement
before 1948 and the first Israeli Prime Minister after 1948):
"The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of
the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had,
even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second
Temples…We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in
our wildest imaginings. This is more than a state, government and
sovereignty, this is national consolidation in a free homeland." [3]
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]…I
support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it."[3]
During the 1948 war, about two-thirds of the Palestinians who would
become refugees were in fact expelled from their homes by the nascent
Israeli army, and one-third became refugees while escaping the dangers
of war. All these people, 0.75-1 million of them, were prevented from
returning to Israel after the armistice agreement, while their homes and
property were demolished or appropriated by the State of Israel.
Among the common mantras provided to the Israelis to justify the above
is the following: "Israel accepted the UN partition plan, and Arabs did
not, so what happened afterwards is their own fault". What is
conveniently overlooked is that Palestinian Arabs constituted between
one third and one half of the population of that designated Jewish
homeland (according to various UN reports). Why should these people,
whose ancestors lived there for generations, accept living in somebody
else’s designated homeland? Imagine, for example, the reaction of French
Belgians if their country were designated as a "Flemish homeland" by the UN.
But the main mantra drummed into the conscience of an Israeli citizen
from kindergarten, is that in 1948 "it was either them or us", "Arabs
would have thrown us into the sea if we did not establish a Jewish
majority state with a strong army", etc. I have my doubts about that
line, too, but let us suppose for the moment that in fact, it was so.
And then came the year 1967, and the Six Day War. Another chapter in the
Israeli "fight for existence" against recalcitrant Arabs who just keep
trying to throw us into the sea. On the face of it, that is how it
seemed. I together with most of my compatriots believed for years that
1967 was in fact a moment of existential danger for Israel. Until I
stumbled upon some telling quotes, uttered by our very own leaders [4]:
"(a) The New York Times quoted Prime Minister Menachem Begin`s
(1977 – 83) August, 1982 speech saying: `In June, 1967, we had a choice.
The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove
that (President Gamal Abdel) Nasser (1956 – 70) was really about to
attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.`
(b) Two-time Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1974 – 77 and 1992 – 95)
told French newspaper Le Monde in February, 1968: `I do not believe
Nasser wanted war. The two divisions which he sent into Sinai on May 14
would not have been enough to unleash an offensive against Israel. He
knew it and we knew it.`
(c) General Mordechai Hod, Commander of the Israeli Air Force
during the Six-Day War said in 1978: `Sixteen years of planning had gone
into those initial eighty minutes. We lived with the plan, we slept on
the plan, we ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it.`
(d) General Haim Barlev, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief told
Ma`ariv in April 1972: `We were not threatened with genocide on the eve
of the six-day war, and we had never thought of such a possibility.`"
So: instead of "thwarting an existential danger", in 1967 the State of
Israel carried out an effective military operation to acquire some real
estate. There is nothing new about that "existential danger" propaganda.
Acquisition of real estate by conquest has been already called pleasing
names by various other conquerors and occupiers, throughout the old and
new history: such as "manifest destiny", "white man’s burden",
"spreading true religion / culture / democracy", whatnot.
The reader may like to know that the 1967 real estate acquisition by the
State of Israel was anticipated some twenty years earlier by Ben-Gurion,
at the time of the partition plan (which was supposedly accepted by the
Zionist leadership). See the following quotes of Ben-Gurion, which can
be found in the book by an Israeli historian[5]:
"Just as I do not see the proposed Jewish state as a final solution
to the problems of the Jewish people, so I do not see partition as the
final solution of the Palestine question. Those who reject partition are
right in their claim that this country cannot be partitioned because it
constitutes one unit, not only from a historical point of view but also
from that of nature and economy".
"After the formation of a large army in the wake of the
establishment of the [Jewish] state, we shall abolish partition and
expand to the whole of the Palestine".
I wonder if at any point in history there was any association of people
who acquired goodies by brute force, and who viewed themselves candidly
as such. Times and again, conquerors considered themselves unwilling
victims of circumstances, and the barbarians (their own victims!)
against whom they have to regretfully protect their rights. Consider the
following pronouncements of Benny Morris, a historian who documented the
1948 ethnic cleansing. In a 2004 interview with Morris which was
published in Haaretz one reads[6]:
Q: The title of the book you are now publishing in Hebrew is
"Victims." In the end, then, your argument is that of the two victims of
this conflict, we [Israelis] are the bigger one.
Morris: "Yes. Exactly. We are the greater victims in the course of
history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are
oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small
minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us.
The above opinion is representative of the Israeli mainstream. It has
been raised to the status of axiom over the years, and no reasonable
peace offers (such as the latest Saudi one) are likely to put a dent in
it. Israelis are using this slogan to exempt themselves from normal
human decency towards Palestinians. Most Israeli Jews have convinced
themselves that they have a moral right to expropriate and expel
Palestinians because Palestinians are such barbarians, who did not
respond to Israel’s"generous peace offers" and "only wanted to throw us
to the sea". Because we are a nation of Holocaust survivors. My
compatriots imagined themselves starring in a modern version of
Tolkien’s "Lord of the Rings" – starring as beautiful elves, of course,
who were forced by sad fate to fight ugly goblins the Palestinians
(goblins = "terrorists"). Human mercy does not apply to "terrorists".
You do not make territorial compromises or peace agreements with
"terrorists".
The above explains the mass participation of otherwise normal and
more-or-less decent Israelis in the ongoing
…