Conghaileach
4th July 2002, 10:25
Ethnic Cleansing And The Establishment Of Israel
by John Pilger
The New Statesman
June 19, 2002 MidEast
MIDEAST
Behind the turbulent news from Israel, a struggle for historical truth
has passed almost unnoticed outside academic circles; yet its wider
significance is epic. In May 1948, more than 200 Palestinians were
killed by the advancing Jewish militia in the coastal village of
Tantura, south of Haifa. According to the recorded testimony of 40
witnesses, both Arab and Jewish, half the civilians were shot in a
"rampage". The rest were marched to the beach, where the men were
separated from the women and children. They were taken to a wall near
the mosque where they were shot in the back of the head.
The "cleansing" of Tantura (a term used at the time) was a well-kept
secret. When they were interviewed four years ago, several Palestinian
witnesses said they feared for their lives if they spoke out. One
survivor, who as a child witnessed the murder of his entire family in
Tantura, said to the interviewer: "But believe me, one should not
mention these things. I do not want them to take revenge against us.
You are going to cause us trouble . . ."
Trouble indeed. The researcher, a student called Teddy Katz, has had
his masters degree annulled by Haifa University, even though he was
awarded a top grade by the Middle Eastern department. When his research
was revealed in the Israeli press, Jewish veterans of the attack on
Tantura sued him for libel, and several Jewish witnesses recanted.
Katz had breached the taboo of the ethnic cleansing that gave birth to
Israel and which the Palestinians mourn as Nakba - the catastrophe.
Without waiting for the case to come to court, the university struck
Katz's name from its honour roll. Whispered to be a traitor, and under
pressure from his family and friends, Katz, a devout Zionist who lived
on a kibbutz, apologised. Twelve hours later, he retracted his apology.
Professor Ilan Pappe is one of the few to have read all the transcripts
of more than 60 hours of Katz's taping of eyewitness evidence. "They
include," he wrote, "horrific descriptions of executions, of the
killing of fathers in front of children, of rape and torture." He
describes Katz's thesis "as a solid and convincing piece of work whose
essential validity is in no way marred by its shortcomings". The
shortcomings, he says, come down to four minor mistakes. But the
importance of the Katz research is its illumination of Israel's history
in terms of "the expulsion, direct and indirect, of some 750,000
Palestinians, the systematic destruction of more than 400 villages and
scores of urban neighbourhoods, as well as the perpetration of some 40
massacres of unarmed Palestinians."
Although other prominent scholars supported Katz, a silence and
hostility familiar to those who break academic and political ranks in
Israel descended on the case. Since the election of Ariel Sharon last
year, this hostility is such that not even national heroes are
forgiven. Last month, Yaffa Yarkoni, "Israel's Vera Lynn", whose
emotional, wistful songs have celebrated Zionist triumphalism from 1948
to the present day, lost her huge popularity overnight when she
remarked that Israeli soldiers ought not to be writing numbers on the
arms of Palestinians. "Isn't that what the Germans did?" she asked. One
newspaper headline called her an "enemy of the people"; an editor said
she "has joined the new anti-Semites in Europe".
In challenging the Zionist version of Israel's past, Ilan Pappe is one
of Israel's "new historians", a distinguished and courageous critic. He
has likened the Israeli state to apartheid South Africa, with its
Palestinian "bantustans" and plethora of humiliating controls which now
restrict the movement of people within their own communities. He says
that Sharon's goal is to begin the mass expulsion of Palestinians
across the Jordan; only a pretext is required. According to one poll,
44 per cent of Israelis support this latest "cleansing", known as
"transfer", another euphemism from the past. In 1948, David Ben-Gurion,
Israel's founding prime minister, wrote, "We have accomplished our
settlement by transfer of the [Palestinian] population."
Not quite. The notion of a "final transfer" is supported by a number of
cabinet members in the ruling Likud government, by leading Labour Party
members and professors and media commentators. "Very few now dare to
condemn it," says Pappe. "A circle has been closed. When Israel took
over almost 80 per cent of Palestine in 1948, it did so through
settlement and ethnic cleansing. The country has a prime minister who
enjoys wide public support and who wants to determine by force the
future of the remaining 20 per cent."
Now it might be Professor Pappe's turn to be expelled from Haifa
University. In an open letter circulated two weeks ago, he writes that
the dean of the humanities department has demanded his expulsion for
criticising the university over the Katz case. This runs deeper; Pappe
has been a consistent opponent of Israel's illegal military occupation
of Palestine. He describes the university "court" that threatens to
punish him as a "McCarthyite charade". He has called upon "universities
worldwide to debate a boycott of Israeli institutions, given their
contempt for basic principles of academic freedom and dispassionate
research". He says that only international shaming, free of the
intimidation that equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, will
break the silence about "horrific deeds in 1948, and so prevent their
repetition".
Others in Israel, as courageous as Ilan Pappe, are also under pressure,
both crude and insidious. In Ha'eretz, Israel's equivalent of the
Guardian, two outstanding journalists, Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, have
consistently reported the unpopular truth about Israel's occupation of
the remaining 22 per cent of the Palestine it conquered in 1967. They
live daily with threats and hate mail. Upholding the bravest traditions
of Jewish humanity, they need international solidarity.
by John Pilger
The New Statesman
June 19, 2002 MidEast
MIDEAST
Behind the turbulent news from Israel, a struggle for historical truth
has passed almost unnoticed outside academic circles; yet its wider
significance is epic. In May 1948, more than 200 Palestinians were
killed by the advancing Jewish militia in the coastal village of
Tantura, south of Haifa. According to the recorded testimony of 40
witnesses, both Arab and Jewish, half the civilians were shot in a
"rampage". The rest were marched to the beach, where the men were
separated from the women and children. They were taken to a wall near
the mosque where they were shot in the back of the head.
The "cleansing" of Tantura (a term used at the time) was a well-kept
secret. When they were interviewed four years ago, several Palestinian
witnesses said they feared for their lives if they spoke out. One
survivor, who as a child witnessed the murder of his entire family in
Tantura, said to the interviewer: "But believe me, one should not
mention these things. I do not want them to take revenge against us.
You are going to cause us trouble . . ."
Trouble indeed. The researcher, a student called Teddy Katz, has had
his masters degree annulled by Haifa University, even though he was
awarded a top grade by the Middle Eastern department. When his research
was revealed in the Israeli press, Jewish veterans of the attack on
Tantura sued him for libel, and several Jewish witnesses recanted.
Katz had breached the taboo of the ethnic cleansing that gave birth to
Israel and which the Palestinians mourn as Nakba - the catastrophe.
Without waiting for the case to come to court, the university struck
Katz's name from its honour roll. Whispered to be a traitor, and under
pressure from his family and friends, Katz, a devout Zionist who lived
on a kibbutz, apologised. Twelve hours later, he retracted his apology.
Professor Ilan Pappe is one of the few to have read all the transcripts
of more than 60 hours of Katz's taping of eyewitness evidence. "They
include," he wrote, "horrific descriptions of executions, of the
killing of fathers in front of children, of rape and torture." He
describes Katz's thesis "as a solid and convincing piece of work whose
essential validity is in no way marred by its shortcomings". The
shortcomings, he says, come down to four minor mistakes. But the
importance of the Katz research is its illumination of Israel's history
in terms of "the expulsion, direct and indirect, of some 750,000
Palestinians, the systematic destruction of more than 400 villages and
scores of urban neighbourhoods, as well as the perpetration of some 40
massacres of unarmed Palestinians."
Although other prominent scholars supported Katz, a silence and
hostility familiar to those who break academic and political ranks in
Israel descended on the case. Since the election of Ariel Sharon last
year, this hostility is such that not even national heroes are
forgiven. Last month, Yaffa Yarkoni, "Israel's Vera Lynn", whose
emotional, wistful songs have celebrated Zionist triumphalism from 1948
to the present day, lost her huge popularity overnight when she
remarked that Israeli soldiers ought not to be writing numbers on the
arms of Palestinians. "Isn't that what the Germans did?" she asked. One
newspaper headline called her an "enemy of the people"; an editor said
she "has joined the new anti-Semites in Europe".
In challenging the Zionist version of Israel's past, Ilan Pappe is one
of Israel's "new historians", a distinguished and courageous critic. He
has likened the Israeli state to apartheid South Africa, with its
Palestinian "bantustans" and plethora of humiliating controls which now
restrict the movement of people within their own communities. He says
that Sharon's goal is to begin the mass expulsion of Palestinians
across the Jordan; only a pretext is required. According to one poll,
44 per cent of Israelis support this latest "cleansing", known as
"transfer", another euphemism from the past. In 1948, David Ben-Gurion,
Israel's founding prime minister, wrote, "We have accomplished our
settlement by transfer of the [Palestinian] population."
Not quite. The notion of a "final transfer" is supported by a number of
cabinet members in the ruling Likud government, by leading Labour Party
members and professors and media commentators. "Very few now dare to
condemn it," says Pappe. "A circle has been closed. When Israel took
over almost 80 per cent of Palestine in 1948, it did so through
settlement and ethnic cleansing. The country has a prime minister who
enjoys wide public support and who wants to determine by force the
future of the remaining 20 per cent."
Now it might be Professor Pappe's turn to be expelled from Haifa
University. In an open letter circulated two weeks ago, he writes that
the dean of the humanities department has demanded his expulsion for
criticising the university over the Katz case. This runs deeper; Pappe
has been a consistent opponent of Israel's illegal military occupation
of Palestine. He describes the university "court" that threatens to
punish him as a "McCarthyite charade". He has called upon "universities
worldwide to debate a boycott of Israeli institutions, given their
contempt for basic principles of academic freedom and dispassionate
research". He says that only international shaming, free of the
intimidation that equates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, will
break the silence about "horrific deeds in 1948, and so prevent their
repetition".
Others in Israel, as courageous as Ilan Pappe, are also under pressure,
both crude and insidious. In Ha'eretz, Israel's equivalent of the
Guardian, two outstanding journalists, Amira Hass and Gideon Levy, have
consistently reported the unpopular truth about Israel's occupation of
the remaining 22 per cent of the Palestine it conquered in 1967. They
live daily with threats and hate mail. Upholding the bravest traditions
of Jewish humanity, they need international solidarity.