In the past couple of days, an article has been circulated by one M. Shahid Alam, a professor of economics at Northwestern University, which it appears started at
The American Muslim and then flew quickly throughout far-left and Arab sites:
The Zionist Question
by M. Shahid Alam
In recent times, no nationalist project has been so completely mythologized by its partisans as Zionism. In the construction of nearly all aspects of its history, the official Zionist narrative is often at variance – even complete variance – with the facts as they are known to the rest of the world: and, more recently, even as they have been documented by some Zionist historians.
Yet few Zionists would deny one central fact of their history: and that is the history of violence that has attended the insertion of Jewish colons into the Middle East. The history of the Zionist movement in Palestine – it can scarcely be disputed – has been attended by violence between the Jewish settlers and the Palestinians; it has led to unending conflicts between Arab societies and Israel; and these conflicts continue to draw Western powers, especially the United States since 1945, into ever widening clashes with the Islamic world.
The history of this violence was contained in the Zionist idea itself. Violence is integral to Zionism: not incidental to it.
Mr. Alam goes on to provide a highly selective history of Zionism that supports his thesis.
Also, James Abourezk
yesterday quotes Ilan Pappe again in support of his thesis that Zionists engaged in "ethnic cleansing" against Arabs.
It is very difficult to be objective on any topic, and historians will naturally - usually subconsciously - gravitate towards the facts that support their pre-existing worldview while ignoring or minimizing those that disagree with them. In these two cases, however, these are not innocent subconscious errors - these opinions are so far from the truth that it would be laughable if it wasn't for the fact that a majority of the world believes them now.
Any objective observer of the history of Zionism - real, on-the-ground Zionism, the one that our parents and grandparents grew up with, the kind that the original pioneers in Israel were a part of - would know that Zionism has always not only been interested in peace, but it has been obsessed with peace. It is not an exaggeration to say that the idea of peace with the Arabs has permeated Zionist thought.
I have spent many hours reading the Palestine Post archives from 1932-1950. Nowhere in those pages does one see any whiff of "ethnic cleansing;" on the contrary, the ability to live in peace with the Arabs is an obsession, from the early Zionist leaders like Weizmann and Ben Gurion down to the ordinary people who wrote letters.
Just as an example, here are some
articles from a single, 4-page issue of the Palestine Post, from March 10, 1946.The headlining article was the testimony that Chaim Weizmann gave to the Anglo American Inquiry Committee. While he passionately defends Zionism and demands the repeal of the infamous White Paper, Weizmann repeatedly says that the Arabs would become an important part of a Jewish state and that no prejudice is meant against them.
A separate analysis of Weizmann's words shows that the editors of the paper shared his feelings - while the Arabs may not be 100% happy with a Jewish state, it is the lesser of evils compared to the idea of Jews not having the right to self-determination, and the Arabs under Zionist rule have nothing to fear:
This is not hate, this is not "ethnic cleansing" - this is Zionism as it was practiced and believed in by the pre-state Palestinian Jews.
In another article, testimony was given regarding the ability of Palestine to absorb immigrants, and the witness also took pains to emphasize that Arabs would not be hurt by Jewish immigration, and in fact the Zionists expected and hoped that the Arab standard of living would increase:
Obviously, the Arabs of the neighboring nations cared little about whether they would be working for Jews, because they were still illegally immigrating into Palestine as fast as they could:
Amazingly, even though the Jewish woman was deported for her illegal immigration, the Zionist Palestine Post considered this story - where Arabs were saying that Jewish-enriched Palestine was a paradise - as "good news." If there is any bigotry here, it is against Arab Jews!
And all of this goodwill towards Arabs was occuring even as some Arabs were hardly returning the favor:
In the face of unending hostility from their Arab neighbors, these Zionists still clung to a vision of co-existence and peace - a mindset that continues to this day. (Check out how many
Israeli stamps have been issued with the theme of "peace".)
It is easy to pick and choose individual quotes here and there - some real, some imaginary - by Zionists that would, in the aggregate, make it appear that they felt otherwise. But when one wants to see the truth about Zionism, all one has to do is pick up any Zionist newspaper at random from that time period. Rewriting history is easy, but rewriting source materials is impossible. The context is all in the newspapers of the day, in all its mundane detail - you will not find the hate and vitriol that is so pervasive in Arab media even today. It is abundantly clear which side wanted peace and which wanted war - in 1929, in 1946, in 1967 and in 2007.
The truth cannot be erased, no matter how much the Israel-bashers try to. Those who claim that Zionism is predicated on violence, like Pappe, Abourezk and Alam, are simply liars.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Elder of Ziyon
September 16th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
I can’t help but notice that, for all of the supposed “vitriol” my posts here contained, not one of those who are defending Abourezk has been able to find anything that I have written about him or his sources that is incorrect.
It is also a bit humorous to see that somehow the all-powerful Israel Lobby, of which I seem to be a part, manages to not only let books like Walt/Mearsheimer’s and Jimmy Carter’s to be published, but also allows them to be best sellers. We are so sloppy that we even allow a forum such as this to exist, where people openly defend a person - who is on video supporting terrorists - as a purveyor of truth and a great person to review a book that blames all of America’s problems on a small cabal of Zionists.
We Lobbyists must be slipping badly!
September 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Elder, you say that Abourezk is on video supporting terrorists. How typical. Your arguments lack merit so you resort to smear tactics. Moreover, who is really guilty of supporting terrorists? The supporters of Israeli ethnic cleansing or those who oppose it? Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
September 16th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Why did seven well equipped Arab armies attempt to destroy the poorly armed and newly founded ‘Jewish State’?
The baseless myth, of how the Arab armies wanted to destroy the ‘Jewish State’, has been propagated in all sectors of the Israeli society, especially in its school system, military boot camps, and media. As it will be proven below, this myth was deemed necessary by most Zionists to legitimize their continued USURPATION of the Palestinian people’s political, civil, and economic rights.....
September 17th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Gordon, not only did I say that Mr. Abourezk supports terrorists, I quoted the transcript and gave the URL of the video where he calls Hamas “resistance fighters” rather than the far more accurate “terrorists.”
If quoting Mr. Abourezk and inviting people to watch the video that he made for Hezbollah TV is considered a “smear tactic,” then I must be guilty.
Atheo, you are correct in that the Arab armies in 1948 were poorly organized with the exception of the Transjordanian Arab Legion. That has no bearing whatsoever on the Arab desire to utterly destroy Israel, which is incontrovertible.
But if you doubt it, here’s a quote from May 15, 1948, when the Arab League Secretary General Abdul Razek Azzam Pasha announced the intention to wage “a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”
If you need a few dozen other quotes from Arab leaders determined to not only destroy Israel but also to wipe out any vestiges of Jews from the area, just ask. I’ll be happy to educate you, as well as Mr. Abourezk, if he is still lurking about.
September 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
For anyone who is interested in following up on how Israel created itself as a state, please allow me to recommend some books that will inform you.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, by Ilan Pappe (an Israeli historian,who also enumertes the relative size of the opposing military).
Taking Sides, by Steven Green. (An American writer)
Any of Israeli historian Tom Segev’s books.
I believe these books, plus the Donald Neff Trilogy, can be ordered from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, www.middleeastbooks.com. That organization has an extensive book list, all of such books are at a discounted price. Donald Neff used to be Time Magazine’s Jerusalem correspondent until he quit time and began writing Middle East history.
One other point–The UN General Assembly passed a partition plan in 1947, but General Assembly votes are non-binding, unlike Security Council votes which are binding. Thus, the myth that the UN created Israel is just that–a myth. If such votes were binding, then Israel would be forced to obey the dozens of General Assembly votes passed since then that have favored Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, all of them ignored by Israel. There have also been dozens of Security Council votes criticizing Israel for committing war crimes, etc., all of which have been vetoed by the United States.
Ilan Pappe’s book on ethnic cleansing is particularly shocking to read. Pappe recounts the horrendous slaughter, accompanied by a campaign of fear by the Zionist armies and terror groups designed to drive the Palestinians out of Palestine in order to create a majority Jewish state.
Another book that may now be out of print is: Terror Out of Zion, by J. Bowyer Bell (St. Martin’s Press), which carefully details the terrorism wrought by Zionist terror groups, such as the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun, was elected Israel’s Prime Minister in the 1970s, and Yitzak Shamir, one of the troika who led the Stern Gang, also was elected as Prime Minister of Israel.
I became friends with Nathan Yalin Mor, who was also one of the Troika running the Stern Gang, however, since he later had become a “peacenik,” opting for peace between
Jews and Arabs, he was sort of persona non grata in Washington, D.C. It was up to me to make appointments for him when he wanted to see someone in our government, as none of the Jewish groups would even speak to him. The tribulations of someone who wants peace are somewhat remarkable. I once asked him if the Stern Gang had sent letter bombs to British politicians in the 1940s, as Sir Christopher Mayhew told me that his secretary opened one and was injured by doing so. Nathan said, “yes, we sent lots of letter bombs.”
September 17th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
I already addressed Ilan Pappe’s lack of interest in historical truth.
Yes, the Stern Gang engaged in terror. This is not news. What is manifestly a lie is the idea that the Zionists engaged in “ethnic cleansing,” a reprehensible slander that is shown to be false by the simple fact that there are 1.2 million Arabs living in Israel today. If anyone should be accused of “ethnic cleansing” it would be the Arab world that expelled nearly every Jew in the years following 1948. The Old City of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria became literally Judenrein under “moderate” Jordanian rule - not a single Jew was left in those areas, and every single synagogue in the Old City was demolished within days of Jordanian control in 1948.
Other Arab atrocities that Mr. Abourezk wants to sweep under the rug started in 1886 with the first Arab attacks on a Jewish settlement, and they escalated in 1921, 1929 with the horrendous massacres in Hebron and elsewhere (ancient Jewish communities that had lived in Palestine for centuries), the 1936-39 reign of terror where thousands were killed including from Arab infighting, and no shortage of Arab massacres of Jewish civilians in 1947-48 including Hadassah Hospital.
I have spent much time reading contemporaneous accounts of the events in newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s and the Zionists (at least the ones that wrote for the Palestine Post) consistently wanted to live in peace with their Arab neighbors. The archives are online so if you want to find counterexamples, feel free. Yes, not every single Jew acted in an exemplary manner - real life doesn’t allow such neat categorizations - but the vast majority of Zionists considered the terror attacks from Irgun and Stern to be outrageous and did not celebrate them, as too many Arabs have been wont to do whenever Jews or Westerners are murdered.
In other words, Abourezk is cherry-picking the facts that fit his agenda and is not only ignoring the rich history of Arab terror that continues on to this day, he appears to embrace it when the perpetrators are Hamas and Hezbollah (we unfortunately do not have a record of his opinion of Islamic Jihad, PFLP, Al Aqsa Brigades, or any of dozens of other groups.) Israel has time and time again offered real concessions for real peace and it has been rejected by the Arabs, and very often the people who suffer most are the very Palestinians that the Arabs pretend to care so much about.
For more details about the history of the entire Palestinian Arab people - and I am far more sympathetic to them than you might think, although their leaders have been atrocious for decades - I have been writing a series of postings about them. Check out http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychological-history-of-palestinian.html
And if you find any mistakes, please let me know. Unlike some people, I really do care about the truth.