Phyllis Chesler: The Eternal Life of Blood Libels Against the Jews
Men fought and, for a variety of reasons, the Jews won. The numbers involved were small. There were, according to Tauber, "about 120 (Jewish) attackers and 70-80 (Arab) defenders. Arabs were "killed, not massacred." But they lost. The Arab village fought alone with no reinforcements and no support from neighboring Arab villages. Most of the Arabs who were killed in Deir Yassin were combatants, men of fighting age, not women, children, or the elderly as has been alleged.Melanie Phillips: The airbrushed feet of clay Desmond Tutu did some great things. But he had a monstrous side too
However, the shame of losing was impossible for the Arabs to bear. What drove the Arabs out of Deir Yassin and almost everywhere else, was eerily similar to what many Arab/Palestinians do today. They embed themselves and their weapons among their women, children, and elderly. They surround themselves with vulnerable human shields, and then when Israel targets terrorist launching sites and infrastructure, claim that it viciously sought out women and children.
Such deceptiveness is true in Gaza in the 21st century.
But in April 1948, the Arab/Palestinians spread rumors of a terrible, truly ghastly massacre in Deir Yassin, one that never took place—and, they alleged, wildly, and falsely, that rapes had also taken place which, in Tauber's view is what led to the mass Arab exodus. Tauber writes:
"The impact of Deir Yassin went far beyond Jerusalem and the surrounding villages and spread all over Palestine, causing fear and driving people to leave. A woman from Safad related hearing of the rapes and killings in Deir Yassin. Another refugee woman attributed the flight from Haifa to the fear of what the Jews were going to do to women, as they heard that women and girls were raped in Deir Yassin and the bellies of pregnant women and girls were slashed."
Slashing pregnant bellies characterizes Christian pogroms and Muslim farhuds against Jews; it is not something that Jews have done.
However, in 1948, according to Tauber, Husayn Fakhri al-Khalidi, secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, insisted that "25 pregnant women, 50 breast feeding mothers and 60 other girls and women were slaughtered like sheep" in Deir Yassin. A native of the city "wrote to an acquaintance in Egypt that the Jews used axes in Tiberias and Deir Yassin to chop off hands and legs of men and children and did 'awful things' to women."
Once again, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, and Cossacks do this to Jews in pogroms and farhuds. Jews have not been known to do so.
In 1948, Israeli intelligence analyzed the causes for Palestinian flight and found that such false rumors and exaggerated beliefs were a "decisive accelerating factor" in the Arab exodus.
Israel did not exile the Arabs. Only Arab rumors, Big Lies, did. They provoked shame in a shame-and-honor culture and it worked.
Tauber's work has yet to be reviewed in all the venues that have welcomed the belief in this alleged massacre. Either his work on Deir Yassin will not be widely reviewed or it will be savaged. I hope that I'm wrong.
I am hardly a scholar in this area, but it seems to me that the myth of this alleged massacre may have functioned just as the 20th century Al-Dura myth has in our current century. The entire world wanted to believe that Israelis would purposely, wantonly, and viciously kill an Arab child, sheltering in his father's arms. It did not happen.
And yet, blood libels against the Jews never quit, they seem to live on forever.
All this is terrible and depressing. More terrible still, though, is the silence with which Tutu’s bigotry against the Jewish people has been received.New York Times Seizes on Tutu Death to Push Israel-Apartheid Narrative
Despite its scale, it has simply been ignored by all who have continued to lionise Tutu as a moral beacon for the world. Dershowitz first assembled his forensic charge sheet against Tutu almost eleven years ago.
And yet, after his death CNN called him “the voice of justice;” the Associated Press said he was a “moral conscience;” the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “a towering global figure for peace and inspiration to generations across the world;” the Economist said he was “the best kind of troublemaker;” and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, called him “a healer and apostle of peace”.
Not one of these or any of the innumerable others whose similar tributes have poured forth in an unstoppable geyser of hero-worship uttered a single word about his antisemitism.
Maybe they just didn’t know? Maybe they did know but allowed his South African legacy to erase it from their minds as just too complicated and contradictory to process? Or maybe they think that Israel deserves what Tutu said about it and that the Jews really aren’t worth bothering about? That antisemitism is so marginal it just doesn’t matter — and the Jews should simply shut up about it?
Whatever the reason, this near-universal airbrushing of Tutu’s bigotry as he is all but canonised as a modern saint throws into the sharpest relief the devastating moral confusion of our era.
It’s not just the “critics” increasingly describing Israel as an apartheid state; it’s the Times itself. Back in 2020, when the paper started in with it, I wrote, “It’s unusual to see the “apartheidlike” accusation in the Times’ own voice in a news article.” I wrote then, “It shows how far the Times has traveled on the issue: Back in 2007, when former President Jimmy Carter published his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, a Times review justifiably faulted Carter for ‘the word ‘apartheid’ in the title, with its false echo of the racist policies of the old South Africa.’”David Singer: Christian leaders in Jerusalem playing anti-Semitic political games
I wrote then that the Times’ own op-ed columnist, Bret Stephens, had written, “the comparison of Israel to apartheid South Africa is unfair to the former and an insult to the victims of the latter.” Even the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, who has been sharply critical of Israel, wrote in May 2021, “Personally, I’m wary of the term apartheid because there are significant differences from ancien régime South Africa.”
But as the latest examples show, plenty of Times editors aren’t as wary as Kristof is about tossing the term about. In October 2021, a Times book review “in brief” column covering three books about Israel mentioned apartheid twice. And Peter Beinart pushed the Israel apartheid parallel in a July 2020 New York Times podcast and in a Times opinion article published that same month.
I can understand the temptation by Israel’s critics to argue the South African case rather than the Israeli case. South Africa was a clear-cut example of settler colonialist racism. Israel is different in many ways. While Israel could do better at integrating Arab citizens, there’s no legal discrimination of the sort there was in South Africa. Arabs serve in the Israeli parliament, attend Israeli universities, and are doctors in Israeli hospitals. West Bank Arabs are a different story — some of them aspire to their own Palestinian state and in some cases have pursued it violently, so differential treatment of them is based on security considerations and in some cases is aimed at preserving an option of a two-state solution or at least limited self-rule. Also, Jews have lived in the land of Israel for thousands of years, considerably longer than Afrikaners lived in South Africa.
The Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem (Christian Leaders) request (read the letter by clicking the link) for an urgent dialogue with “Israel, Palestine and Jordan” on protecting the Christian community in Jerusalem and the integrity of the Christian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem – is an anti-Israel political ploy that should be rejected by Israel.
The requested dialogue is clearly against Israel’s national interest for the following reasons:
- The Christian Leaders acknowledged that threats to Christians were not limited to Jerusalem only - but extended to Christians throughout the Holy Land without mentioning that most of this is in the Palestinian Authority areas:
“Throughout the Holy Land Christians have become the target of frequent and sustained attacks by fringe radical groups. Since 2012 there have been countless incidents of physical and verbal assaults against priests and other clergy, attacks on Christian churches, with holy sites regularly vandalized and desecrated, and ongoing intimidation of local Christians who simply seek to worship freely and go about their daily lives. These tactics are being used by such radical groups in a systematic attempt to drive the Christian community out of Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land.”
- Inviting “Palestine and Jordan” to participate in a dialogue solely on Jerusalem was a blatant attempt by these Christian Leaders to undermine Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem by replacing Israel as the sole Authority responsible for ensuring the security and safety of the Christian community in Jerusalem.
- Israel’s Christian community actually grew by 1.4 percent in 2020 and now numbers some 182,000 people
Certainly Israel should meet with these Christian Leaders to address and allay their concerns in relation to threats to the Christian community in Jerusalem.