Originally posted by
[email protected] 5 2006, 01:13 PM
yes but then again this is a different situatin.
Not really.
The Nazis wanted to get rid of all the Jews in what they saw as "Greater Germany", while the Zionists want/ed to get rid of all the Palestinians in what they see as their land.
the haganah was quite civilized, it stuck to military operatiosn. the far right groups were a bit more extreme but there was hardly a genocide planned.
The Haganah carried out terrorist attacks on British forces as well as against the Arab population.
except Morris here is a widely descreidted source with most historians disagreeing with his views and some accusing him of outright fabrication.
Morris is hardly pro-Palestinian.
Indeed he is the complete opposite of that.
He is a Zionist who believes that the Israelis should have done a proper job of removing all the Palestinians.
forgive me but benny morris is a crackpot.see above
Forgive me but such a response is hardly a response at all.
Refrain from such bullshit and for once in your whole time here at RevLeft make a constructive point that refutes the evidence I have provided.
In any case, I will add some more evidence, from different sources.
The fact is that Ben-Gurion, and the Zionists in general, supported “compulsory transfer”, something which is nowadays known as “ethnic cleansing”.
In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th 1938, Ben-Gurion stated:
With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement]… I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it.
Moreover, let us take into account what Yitzhak Rabin, a man who would later become PM of Israel, wrote in his diary after the occupation of Lydda and al Ramla, in June 1948:
After attacking Lydda and then Ramla… What would we do with the 50 000 civilians living in the two cities… Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution… and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward.
Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: "What is to be done with the population?"
Waving his hand in a gesture he said: "Drive them out!"
'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring… Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook.
Israel’s first Minister of Education, Professor Ben-Zion Dinur echoed Ben-Gurion’s sentiments when he declared in 1954:
In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don’t agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force.
Later, Rabin would underline the cruelty of the operation through the response of his soldiers. He stated during an interview with David Shipler from the New York Times on October 22, 1979:
Great suffering was inflicted upon the men taking part in the eviction action. [They] included youth-movement graduates who had been inculcated with values such as international brotherhood and humaneness. The eviction action went beyond the concepts they were used to. There were some fellows who refused to take part… Prolonged propaganda activities were required after the action… to explain why we were obliged to undertake such a harsh and cruel action.
Israeli historians have recorded that there was indeed a clear Zionist objective to expel the indigenous non-Jewish Palestinian population in order to achieve “separation” (apartheid) between Jews and Arabs.
Benny Morris, for example, points out that:
Ben-Gurion clearly wanted as few Arabs as possible to remain in the Jewish state. He hoped to see them flee. He said as much to his colleagues and aides in meetings in August, September and October [1948].
However, this was never enunciated in any official written format outlining the general expulsion policy. Although “Ben-Gurion always refrained from issuing clear or written expulsion orders”, it is nevertheless true that:
He preferred that his generals ‘understand’ what he wanted done. He wished to avoid going down in history as the ‘great expeller’ and he did not want the Israeli government to be implicated in a morally questionable policy… But while there was no [written] ‘expulsion policy’, the July and October [1948] offensives were characterized by far more expulsions and, indeed, brutality towards Arab civilians than the first half of the war.
According to Israeli historian Simha Flapan:
That Ben-Gurion’s ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only from the variety of means he employed to achieve this purpose… most decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their inhabitants… even [if] they had not participated in the war and had stayed in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration of Independence.
One operation, Plan Dalet (D), was indeed written by Zionist forces in March of 1948.
Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, states that the plan:
Defined a very important principle: any Arab village or neighborhood that would not surrender to the Jewish forces, that would not raise the white flag, would be uprooted, destroyed and the people expelled.
Indeed, Tzvi Shiloah, a senior veteran of the Mapai Party and a former deputy mayor of the town of Hertzeliyah recalled that:
In 1948, we deliberately, and not just in the heat of war, expelled Arabs. Also in ’67, after the Six-Day War, we expelled many Arabs.
Not only were Palestinians deliberately expelled, their villages were destroyed so that they could never return.
During May of 1948, Zionists began contemplating ways of consolidating and making permanent the Palestinian exile.
Benny Morris notes that:
The destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim.
Indeed, Zionist forces carried out massacres of the indigenous population even earlier than May:
On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha… The village was destroyed that night… Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on April 20… Abu Zureiq was completely demolished… By mid-1949, the majority of the [depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable.
Indeed, it was the dire conditions of the Palestinians who came under Zionist tutelage that formed the basis for the intervention of neighbouring Arab nations.
That the Zionists deliberately engineered the exodus of three quarters of a million Palestinians from their homes is a shameful fact.
Such a conclusion has been well documented by the Israeli military historian Aryeh Yitzhaki (Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Eretz Yisrael Studies at Bar Ilan University (Tel Aviv) and Senior Lecturer in Military History in IDF courses for army officers).
Yitzhaki is very much qualified in this area due to his in-depth acquaintance with IDF archives, on which his conclusions are based.
He observes that:
The time has come to face the ocean of lies in which we were brought up. In almost every conquered village in the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as indiscriminate killings, massacres and rapes.
For many Israelis it was easier to find consolation in the lie, that the Arabs left the country under orders from their leaders. This is an absolute fabrication. The fundamental cause of their flight was their fear from Israeli retribution and this fear was not at all imaginary.
From almost each report in the IDF archives concerning the conquest of Arab villages between May and July 1948 - when clashes with Arab villagers were the fiercest - a smell of massacre emanates. Sometimes the report tells about blatant massacres which were committed after the battle, sometimes the massacres are committed in the heat of battle and while the villages are ‘cleansed’. Some of my colleagues, such as Me’ir Pa’il, don’t consider such acts as massacres. In my opinion there is no other term for such acts than massacres. This was at the time the rule of the game.
In the first phase a village was usually subjected to heavy artillery from distance. Then soldiers would assault the village. After giving up resistance, the Arab fighters would withdraw while attempting to snipe at the advancing forces. Some would not flee and would remain in the village, mainly women and old people. In the course of cleansing we used to hit them. One was ‘tailing the fugitives’, as it used to be called (‘mezanvim baborchim’).
In a typical battle report about the conquest of a village we find: ‘We cleansed a village, shot in any direction where resistance was noticed. After the resistance ended, we also had to shoot people so that they would leave or who looked dangerous’.
This record of the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population is backed up by another Israeli military historian, Professor Uri Milstein. In fact, Milstein goes further than Yitzhaki in his conclusion of the Zionist massacres of Palestinians:
If Yitzhaki claims that in almost every village there were murders, then I maintain that even before the establishment of the State, each battle ended with a massacre. In all Israel’s wars, massacres were committed, but I have no doubt that the War of Independence was the dirtiest of them all.
[b]so you mean to say the jordnains didnt want the men to leave?i wonder whyt his is..... :rolleyes:
Oh yeah, you haven't provided any evidence at all to back up your claims...
It wouldnt' be if they weren't always s being attacked.
When a people are occupied they will resist.
Until the illegal occupation ends the attacks will not cease.
and now it belongs to neither.
Says who?
The UN have a different approach to the matter.
perception of an unfair peace settlemnet leads to war. thankfully having your country pounded into rubble has the effect making yout hink "thank god we're still alive" and a peace becomes much eaiser.
So far it has not worked like so in Lebanon, where the whole Lebanese population, Druze, Christian or Sunni, pro-Syrian or anti-Syrian, supports Hezbollah's resistance against Israeli aggression.
Israeli strikes boost Hizbullah base (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0728/p06s01-wome.html)
According to a poll released by the Beirut Center for Research and Information, 87 percent of Lebanese support Hizbullah's fight with Israel, a rise of 29 percent on a similar poll conducted in February. More striking, however, is the level of support for Hizbullah's resistance from non-Shiite communities. Eighty percent of Christians polled supported Hizbullah along with 80 percent of Druze and 89 percent of Sunnis.
your constatn repetion of the "fact" :snicker: won't make it true.
List of Palestinian Localities destroyed after the creation of the State of Israel (1948) (http://www.iahushua.com/Zion/zionrac14.html)