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It’s really important for both Arabs and Jews (especially in Israel, but throughout the world as well) to understand what happened in 1947-48. There was a catastrophe for the Palestinian Arabs and there was a hard-fought and costly victory for Palestinian Jews, resulting in Israel’s independence.
The usual Jewish (or “Zionist”) narrative negates the Nakba, the Arab catastrophe. And the usual Arab narrative ignores the fact that their people could have had an independent state alongside a lesser Israel, and with a sizable minority population in the new “Jewish state” that the United Nations General Assembly endorsed in November 1947. Instead, the Palestinian-Arab leadership, supported politically and later militarily, violently rejected the UN resolution and attempted to destroy the Jewish community in Palestine.
Both sides suffered heavy losses, with the Arabs enduring a bitter defeat and a less than total but still massive expulsion. We can only imagine the scale of massacre and human misery that would likely have occurred if the Arab side had won the war that they began in late 1947.
Both Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians should fully acknowledge the fateful decisions and malicious deeds committed by both sides historically. If they cannot do so, they should at least have the good sense to begin to forget the past and forge a new more peaceful future as neighbors (both within Israel and in a new Palestinian state alongside it).
Posted by rseliger on Jan 2, 2010 at 11:09 AM
While rseliger has attempted to couch his post about respective narratives in neutral symmetrical terms, imbedded therein are Zionist myths that must be pointed out. For example, rseliger makes it sound as if the Palestinians had no reason to resist the Zionist project or the newly created Israel by starting hostilities, and having lost, must now live with the consequences (“the war that they began”). But if I try to steal your land, and you fight me to keep it, who really “started” it?
It amazes me when Zionists talk about how “grateful” the Palestinians should have been to get what was “offered” by the UN in 1947. It’s the equivalent of me taking half your land without your consent, and when you fight me to try to get it back, I defeat you and take the rest, mocking that you should have been “grateful” for the half I had initially left for you. What hogwash. Can it really be said that your resistance, either before or afterwards, legalized my theft because you had the temerity to use violence?
Despite the Zionist myth that the nasty Palestinian resistance is to blame for the creation of Israel, it should be noted that most Zionists have always believed that the Jewish people had an inherent and inalienable right to Palestine. Religious Zionists have stated this in biblical terms, referring to the divine promise of the land to the tribes of Israel. Secular Zionists, on the other hand, have relied more on the argument that Palestine alone could solve the problem of Jewish dispersion and virulent anti-Semitism.
But, let’s be clear here, NEVER was the consent of the native population ever seriously taken into consideration by any of these Zionists or the Europeans. Chaim Weizmann stated, in 1930, that the needs of 16 million Jews had to be balanced against those of 1 million Palestinian Arabs: “The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate have definitely lifted [Palestine] out of the context of the Middle East and linked it up with the world-wide Jewish problem…The rights which the Jewish people has been adjudged in Palestine do not depend on the consent, and cannot be subjected to the will, of the majority of its present inhabitants.” It is this condescending treatment of the indigenous population by its primarily European architects that give the Zionist Project its aura of Colonialism and Imperialism.
While I am sympathetic to the plight of European Jews fleeing persecution, it does not change the fact that the Zionist project was primarily the brain-child of Europeans who wanted to create Jewish State on land that was not theirs without deigning to consult, much less securing the consent of the indigenous population. It would have been just as wrong if these same Zionists had forcibly created a Jewish state in Europe, the US or Uganda without their consent. Past persecution does not create a blank check to steal other people’s land. To assert, as Zionists often do, that the Palestinians could have had half of their OWN state if they simply had acceded to such foreign dictation, is simply ludicrous.
Posted by Imran on Jan 5, 2010 at 3:52 PM
It isn’t that “Zionists” never “consulted” with Palestinian Arabs about Jewish needs for a secure homeland to escape persecution and eventually genocide, it’s that Palestinian Arabs (understandably perhaps) saw no need to accommodate these hounded people in any way. If they had, they would have at least made common cause with the bi-nationalist elements of the Zionist movement.
Being awarded with nearly half a loaf by the United Nations, plus nearly half of the other half with 40% of the initial population of the state awarded by the UN to the Jews, wasn’t enough for them. Not to mention that Arab Palestine was never a sovereign state and has never existed accept as part of a larger empire.
It was certainly an “inconvenience” that these unwanted, persecuted alien people arrived in Palestine. And it’s perhaps understandable that they were perceived as a threat, but Imran is blind to the morality of the situation in apparently justifying the Palestinian and allied external Arab efforts to destroy the Jewish community in 1947-48.
The tragedy is that once the dogs of war were unleashed, and the Jews managed at great cost and with the assistance of their enemies’ military weaknesses to triumph, the mostly innocent civilian Arab population paid the price of their leaders’ decision to choose violence.
Posted by rseliger on Jan 6, 2010 at 7:32 AM
“...it’s that the Palestinian Arabs (understandably perhaps) saw no need to accommodate these hounded people in any way.”
I don’t understand why the onus of this should be placed exclusively on the Palestinians, and only on their land, to the exclusion of the very Europeans responsible for the persecution in the first place, the other European countries’ abominably restrictive immigration policies barring the entry of fleeing Jewish refugees into their own countries (including sadly the US as well), or the Zionists who were fanning the flames of fear in Palestine by openly advocating the forcible creation of a Jewish State.
The answer is simple. Of the all the entities involved in this catch-22, the Palestinians were the weakest and easiest upon which to impose, despite having the least to do with the European pogroms against Jews. This is this context in which Palestinians find “being awarded” half of their own land, by the Europeans responsible for the pogroms in the first place, not just hypocritical, but offensive. No people, under such circumstances, would have been grateful, or found such an"award” “enough for them.”
And in response to the implication that the Palestinians were simply being heartless or xenophobic to “these unwanted persecuted alien people,” it should noted that refugees do not normally openly declare that they intend to create a separate state in their place of refuge, with or without the consent of the indigenous population. Regular refugee immigration to Europe or the US was not the same as the Zionist ideological immigration was to Palestine. Nor was Palestinian resistance to such immigration simply a heartless xenophobic one, with no possible legitimate motivation.
My problem with the Zionist narrative is that it seeks to obscure the main cause of the conflict, the unlawful land grab done without the consent of the indigenous population. Whether this is done intentionally or to ease the conscience of well-intentioned Zionists, I don’t know. But current attempts to criminalize talk about the Nakba are proof of this, and perhaps even a subconscious admission of guilt by Zionists of the sins of their project.
Posted by Imran on Jan 6, 2010 at 11:46 AM
The real “tragedy” did not begin when the “dogs of war were unleashed” in 1947-48 (for that was but the last act). It all really started when Zionists decided to forcibly implement their project for a Jewish State in a land where the overwhelming majority of the indigenous residents were not Jewish. Everything that has followed (nearly all of it unpleasant, to say the least) was a directly forseeable consequence of such act. This is something that Zionists simply will not acknowledge, despite intuitively knowing it to be true (as evidenced by the vociferous attacks upon the Nakba narrative in Israel recently).
As stated by Ben Ehrenreich:
“The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.” For the full article, see:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/16-2
Posted by Imran on Jan 6, 2010 at 3:03 PM
Look, the UN decision to partition the land was perfectly legal. Zionists like myself have long struggled to fulfill the second part of the UN resolution, to allow for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
I take it that Imran approved of the efforts in ‘47 and ‘48 to destroy the Palestinian Jewish community?! Since he doesn’t even see the bi-nationalist Zionists elements as having a leg to stand on (which is the meaning of this reductionist notion that “Zionism is the problem”)—- all so-called Zionists are the same and that whatever Arab forces have done over the decades to defeat “Zionism” is justified?
Posted by rseliger on Jan 6, 2010 at 4:42 PM
Many thanks to both Imran and rseliger for the educational experience above.
Posted by patrick hattman on Jan 7, 2010 at 1:14 PM
“It all really started when Zionists decided to forcibly implement their project for a Jewish State in a land where the overwhelming majority of the indigenous residents were not Jewish. Everything that has followed (nearly all of it unpleasant, to say the least) was a directly forseeable consequence of such act.”
To state that something is a directly foreseeable consequence is not to “approve” or disapprove of something, but to recognize the proper sequence of events: first the cause, and only then the effect.
If I try to take your land without your consent, it is quite forseeable that you might resist, perhaps even violently. To say this doesn’t mean I “justify” or “approve” of your violence, but simply recognizes that violence is a forseeable consequence of such act. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken the land. But when I decide to do so, for me to focus solely on your violent reaction (ignoring what I did to cause it) is intellectually dishonest.
This historical amnesia is a major theme of the Zionist narrative (and understandably so) for to accept that they might actually have forcibly imposed upon a people against their will seriously undermines the “righteousness” of such narrative.
It explains the vociferous nature of the attacks upon the Nakba narrative both in Israel and on the net. And it is also the source of the oft-repeated refrain, heard regularly in the MSM, that poor Israel is just “defending” herself against Arab hordes attacking, apparently for no reason whatsoever, without any discussion of the land grab that is the basis of the conflict.
And thank you, Patrick, for the kind words.
Posted by Imran on Jan 7, 2010 at 4:21 PM
And as for the bi-nationalists “having a leg to stand on,” rseliger himself has in the past admitted that this was a minority position within the Zionist movement. Without commenting on the merits/demerits of these bi-nationalists, his pointing to such a minority position is a veiled attempt to cloak the intentions of the vast majority of Zionists and their openly stated goal of forcibly creating a Jewish State in Palestine, with or without the consent of its indigenous residents.
This focus upon the Palestinian resistance, without any mention of the underlying land grab that is the basis of the conflict, is the usual (and perhaps necessary) MO of the Zionist narrative, and is a feeble attempt to blame the resistance that followed for legitimizing the land grab that most Zionists had been openly advocating for since the 19th Century.
And to say that something is “perfectly legal” is usually the last refuge of someone who has run out of morally sound or convincing arguments. But for the sake of argument, let’s look at this claim: who specifically made it “legal?” God? Lord Balfour? The UN? How many natives did these people bother or deign to consult before granting the deed to their land?
Posted by Imran on Jan 7, 2010 at 5:48 PM
The violent reaction to Jewish immigration to Palestine may have assumed a “land grab,” but the violence began decades in advance of anything like that—-with the worst pre-1947 events being the riots and pogroms of 1920, ‘21 and ‘29, followed by the full-scale uprising of 1936-39.
We will never know what might have happened if the majority Arab reaction to the Jewish immigrants had been welcoming, or at least tolerant. It is logical and likely that the bi-national minority within the Zionist movement would have been much larger, and perhaps the majority. But even if not, there is no real likelihood that there would have been any large-scale displacement of Palestinian Arabs if they had not violently resisted the UN partition plan and thereby unleashed the dogs of war. I know I’ve used these phrases before, but Imran has trouble assimilating this very basic fact.
Posted by rseliger on Jan 8, 2010 at 10:00 PM
The “land grab” was simply the culmination of the openly stated goal of the Zionist project. This is why my very first post said “rseliger makes it sound as if the Palestinians had no reason to resist the Zionist project or the newly created Israel by starting hostilities..” His focus on the violence prior to the creation of Israel (1920’s-30’s) is a feeble attempt to blame the Palestinian resistance for the land grab that the Zionists had been openly advocating for since the 19th Century. If I openly declare that I intend to take your land without your consent, can it really be said that it was your resistance that triggered or legalized my theft, because you had the temerity to use violence?
Rseliger’s statement that there would be have no “large-scale displacement” if the Palestinians had simply not resisted is nothing more than the same colonialist/imperialist refrain that the indigenous population is to blame for their refusal to submit to, abide by, or graciously accept the Zionist and European dictates regarding their land, as a solution to European guilt for European pogroms against the Jews. Combined with these same European countries’ restrictions on fleeing Jewish refugees (including sadly the US as well), Palestinians find their statements and lectures about being “tolerant” and “welcoming” both hypocritical and offensive.
And while rseliger is correct that I have heard him use “these phrases before,” my trouble with “assimilating” these “facts” is that they require the historical amnesia that the Palestinian resistance is the RESULT of the Zionist project (and the later created Israel), not its CAUSE. While this amnesia may ease the conscience of well-intentioned Zionists, it obscures the real cause of the conflict, and is a major obstacle to finding a just and meaningful peace.
Posted by Imran on Jan 11, 2010 at 11:40 AM
Please note that the second line of the last paragraph of my post left out the word “ignores,” and that it should have posted as “the historical amnesia that ignores the Palestinian resistance is ...” Thank you.
Posted by Imran on Jan 11, 2010 at 12:17 PM
Except for the bi-nationalist Zionists, the early Jewish settlers of Palestine had very little consciousness of Palestinian Arabs as a people. And, as Rashid Khalidi indicates in his writings, the Arabs themselves only gradually evolved a national consciousness of themselves as a people.
If Palestine were an established sovereign Arab country, Zionism would have only been about immigration and not the creation of a new society.
Refuge from oppression and a building up of the land, rather than a “land grab,” was how the early pioneers thought of their work in Palestine. Land was not “grabbed” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but rather legally purchased.
The fact that Imran can only see this as a premeditated plot by Western imperialists, and therefore would justify all anti-Jewish violence by Arabs as “resistance,” illustrates how difficult this conflict is. But we all have to move beyond our prejudices, for the sake of both peoples, to work toward a compromise solution that would actually bring about a peaceful end to the conflict. Unfortunately, hardliners like Imran will probably not agree.
Posted by rseliger on Jan 11, 2010 at 10:18 PM
I too want to see a compromise peaceful solution. But getting there requires an understanding of the cause of the conflict. The Zionist narrative blaming the Palestinians for refusing to accept the “grace” of the UN’s “award” in 1947, or their resistance to the Zionist project, but ignoring most Zionists’ openly declared goal of creating a Jewish state in Palestine with or without the consent of the indigenous population, is both intellectually dishonest and a major impediment to a just peace. Pointing out such misstatements has always been the primary reason for my posts.
And I didn’t realize that an indigenous populations’ lacking of a “national consciousness” or a “sovereign state” was an excuse to take their land (and Zionists wonder why people call them imperialists). The Zionist project was the brain-child of the 19th and early 20th century Zionists who wanted to create a Jewish state in a land where the overwhelming majority of the people were not Jewish. How does one do that without finding a way to “displace” or “transfer” the natives? Is rseliger truly not familiar with the verbal gymnastics some Zionists engaged in concerning the ethnic cleansing that would be necessary to bring about such a state?
Does that sound like someone who is simply “legally purchasing” a house in your neighborhood? Does that make the native, who sees and hears the goals of Zionism in his country and then fights back, “prejudiced?” I understand that this Zionist myth about the land being purchased rather than taken is essential for peace of mind, but it’s not true, and conceals a horrible crime.
Pre-1948 Land purchases. There were three periods of land acquisition by Zionists and Jews. While Jews in 1922 owned 3 percent of the land of Palestine, the additional land purchased by 1947 raised the total owned by the immigrant Jews to 7 percent of the whole area of the country. That’s a long way from buying up the whole country. While it appears that rseliger still clings to this myth, at least some Zionists were honest about the true goals (i.e. sins) of their project. See:
http://www.monabaker.com/quotes.htm
I insist upon advancing the Palestinian narrative as a corrective to years of unquestioning acceptance of the Israeli narrative. However, it seems that just hearing the Palestinian narrative is simply too much for these Zionists to bear (i.e. the vociferous attacks upon any discussion of the Nakba, and rseliger’s characterization of those who advocate this narrative as “hardliners).” Perhaps a subconscious admission of guilt for the sins of their project? The excellent quote from this article comes to mind. “I am you negation” indeed.
Try as Zionists might to obscure the issue of the land grab, the cause of the conflict was Zionists deciding amongst themselves to forcibly create a Jewish state in a land where the vast majority of the indigenous inhabitants were not Jewish. Instead of starting from here, rseliger, and Zionists like him, would rather have you overlook this cause, and instead have you to believe that anyone who questions the Zionist narrative blaming the Palestinians for their plight (or worse, one who actually advocates the Palestinian narrative) is simply a “hardliner,” “justifies anti-Jewish violence,” and implicitly an anti-semite.
Posted by Imran on Jan 12, 2010 at 1:27 PM
While it has been a while since the last post to this piece, a recent article by Juan Cole presents an excellent summary of the discussion above.
Mr. Cole’s article outlines the history of the Zionist Project and its “Unmaking of the Palestinian Nation.” See:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/16-6
Zionist apologists (like Alan Dershowitz, et. al.) recognize the importance of this “battle of the narratives,” and have demonstrated that they are quite willing to slander anyone who dares question any part of their narrative. See:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/17-7
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/03/18-0
Posted by Imran on Mar 19, 2010 at 9:22 AM
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Reader Comments
It’s really important for both Arabs and Jews (especially in Israel, but throughout the world as well) to understand what happened in 1947-48. There was a catastrophe for the Palestinian Arabs and there was a hard-fought and costly victory for Palestinian Jews, resulting in Israel’s independence.
The usual Jewish (or “Zionist”) narrative negates the Nakba, the Arab catastrophe. And the usual Arab narrative ignores the fact that their people could have had an independent state alongside a lesser Israel, and with a sizable minority population in the new “Jewish state” that the United Nations General Assembly endorsed in November 1947. Instead, the Palestinian-Arab leadership, supported politically and later militarily, violently rejected the UN resolution and attempted to destroy the Jewish community in Palestine.
Both sides suffered heavy losses, with the Arabs enduring a bitter defeat and a less than total but still massive expulsion. We can only imagine the scale of massacre and human misery that would likely have occurred if the Arab side had won the war that they began in late 1947.
Both Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians should fully acknowledge the fateful decisions and malicious deeds committed by both sides historically. If they cannot do so, they should at least have the good sense to begin to forget the past and forge a new more peaceful future as neighbors (both within Israel and in a new Palestinian state alongside it).
While rseliger has attempted to couch his post about respective narratives in neutral symmetrical terms, imbedded therein are Zionist myths that must be pointed out. For example, rseliger makes it sound as if the Palestinians had no reason to resist the Zionist project or the newly created Israel by starting hostilities, and having lost, must now live with the consequences (“the war that they began”). But if I try to steal your land, and you fight me to keep it, who really “started” it?
It amazes me when Zionists talk about how “grateful” the Palestinians should have been to get what was “offered” by the UN in 1947. It’s the equivalent of me taking half your land without your consent, and when you fight me to try to get it back, I defeat you and take the rest, mocking that you should have been “grateful” for the half I had initially left for you. What hogwash. Can it really be said that your resistance, either before or afterwards, legalized my theft because you had the temerity to use violence?
Despite the Zionist myth that the nasty Palestinian resistance is to blame for the creation of Israel, it should be noted that most Zionists have always believed that the Jewish people had an inherent and inalienable right to Palestine. Religious Zionists have stated this in biblical terms, referring to the divine promise of the land to the tribes of Israel. Secular Zionists, on the other hand, have relied more on the argument that Palestine alone could solve the problem of Jewish dispersion and virulent anti-Semitism.
But, let’s be clear here, NEVER was the consent of the native population ever seriously taken into consideration by any of these Zionists or the Europeans. Chaim Weizmann stated, in 1930, that the needs of 16 million Jews had to be balanced against those of 1 million Palestinian Arabs: “The Balfour Declaration and the Mandate have definitely lifted [Palestine] out of the context of the Middle East and linked it up with the world-wide Jewish problem…The rights which the Jewish people has been adjudged in Palestine do not depend on the consent, and cannot be subjected to the will, of the majority of its present inhabitants.” It is this condescending treatment of the indigenous population by its primarily European architects that give the Zionist Project its aura of Colonialism and Imperialism.
While I am sympathetic to the plight of European Jews fleeing persecution, it does not change the fact that the Zionist project was primarily the brain-child of Europeans who wanted to create Jewish State on land that was not theirs without deigning to consult, much less securing the consent of the indigenous population. It would have been just as wrong if these same Zionists had forcibly created a Jewish state in Europe, the US or Uganda without their consent. Past persecution does not create a blank check to steal other people’s land. To assert, as Zionists often do, that the Palestinians could have had half of their OWN state if they simply had acceded to such foreign dictation, is simply ludicrous.
It isn’t that “Zionists” never “consulted” with Palestinian Arabs about Jewish needs for a secure homeland to escape persecution and eventually genocide, it’s that Palestinian Arabs (understandably perhaps) saw no need to accommodate these hounded people in any way. If they had, they would have at least made common cause with the bi-nationalist elements of the Zionist movement.
Being awarded with nearly half a loaf by the United Nations, plus nearly half of the other half with 40% of the initial population of the state awarded by the UN to the Jews, wasn’t enough for them. Not to mention that Arab Palestine was never a sovereign state and has never existed accept as part of a larger empire.
It was certainly an “inconvenience” that these unwanted, persecuted alien people arrived in Palestine. And it’s perhaps understandable that they were perceived as a threat, but Imran is blind to the morality of the situation in apparently justifying the Palestinian and allied external Arab efforts to destroy the Jewish community in 1947-48.
The tragedy is that once the dogs of war were unleashed, and the Jews managed at great cost and with the assistance of their enemies’ military weaknesses to triumph, the mostly innocent civilian Arab population paid the price of their leaders’ decision to choose violence.
“...it’s that the Palestinian Arabs (understandably perhaps) saw no need to accommodate these hounded people in any way.”
I don’t understand why the onus of this should be placed exclusively on the Palestinians, and only on their land, to the exclusion of the very Europeans responsible for the persecution in the first place, the other European countries’ abominably restrictive immigration policies barring the entry of fleeing Jewish refugees into their own countries (including sadly the US as well), or the Zionists who were fanning the flames of fear in Palestine by openly advocating the forcible creation of a Jewish State.
The answer is simple. Of the all the entities involved in this catch-22, the Palestinians were the weakest and easiest upon which to impose, despite having the least to do with the European pogroms against Jews. This is this context in which Palestinians find “being awarded” half of their own land, by the Europeans responsible for the pogroms in the first place, not just hypocritical, but offensive. No people, under such circumstances, would have been grateful, or found such an"award” “enough for them.”
And in response to the implication that the Palestinians were simply being heartless or xenophobic to “these unwanted persecuted alien people,” it should noted that refugees do not normally openly declare that they intend to create a separate state in their place of refuge, with or without the consent of the indigenous population. Regular refugee immigration to Europe or the US was not the same as the Zionist ideological immigration was to Palestine. Nor was Palestinian resistance to such immigration simply a heartless xenophobic one, with no possible legitimate motivation.
My problem with the Zionist narrative is that it seeks to obscure the main cause of the conflict, the unlawful land grab done without the consent of the indigenous population. Whether this is done intentionally or to ease the conscience of well-intentioned Zionists, I don’t know. But current attempts to criminalize talk about the Nakba are proof of this, and perhaps even a subconscious admission of guilt by Zionists of the sins of their project.
The real “tragedy” did not begin when the “dogs of war were unleashed” in 1947-48 (for that was but the last act). It all really started when Zionists decided to forcibly implement their project for a Jewish State in a land where the overwhelming majority of the indigenous residents were not Jewish. Everything that has followed (nearly all of it unpleasant, to say the least) was a directly forseeable consequence of such act. This is something that Zionists simply will not acknowledge, despite intuitively knowing it to be true (as evidenced by the vociferous attacks upon the Nakba narrative in Israel recently).
As stated by Ben Ehrenreich:
“The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.” For the full article, see:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/16-2
Look, the UN decision to partition the land was perfectly legal. Zionists like myself have long struggled to fulfill the second part of the UN resolution, to allow for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
I take it that Imran approved of the efforts in ‘47 and ‘48 to destroy the Palestinian Jewish community?! Since he doesn’t even see the bi-nationalist Zionists elements as having a leg to stand on (which is the meaning of this reductionist notion that “Zionism is the problem”)—- all so-called Zionists are the same and that whatever Arab forces have done over the decades to defeat “Zionism” is justified?
Many thanks to both Imran and rseliger for the educational experience above.
“It all really started when Zionists decided to forcibly implement their project for a Jewish State in a land where the overwhelming majority of the indigenous residents were not Jewish. Everything that has followed (nearly all of it unpleasant, to say the least) was a directly forseeable consequence of such act.”
To state that something is a directly foreseeable consequence is not to “approve” or disapprove of something, but to recognize the proper sequence of events: first the cause, and only then the effect.
If I try to take your land without your consent, it is quite forseeable that you might resist, perhaps even violently. To say this doesn’t mean I “justify” or “approve” of your violence, but simply recognizes that violence is a forseeable consequence of such act. Perhaps I shouldn’t have taken the land. But when I decide to do so, for me to focus solely on your violent reaction (ignoring what I did to cause it) is intellectually dishonest.
This historical amnesia is a major theme of the Zionist narrative (and understandably so) for to accept that they might actually have forcibly imposed upon a people against their will seriously undermines the “righteousness” of such narrative.
It explains the vociferous nature of the attacks upon the Nakba narrative both in Israel and on the net. And it is also the source of the oft-repeated refrain, heard regularly in the MSM, that poor Israel is just “defending” herself against Arab hordes attacking, apparently for no reason whatsoever, without any discussion of the land grab that is the basis of the conflict.
And thank you, Patrick, for the kind words.
And as for the bi-nationalists “having a leg to stand on,” rseliger himself has in the past admitted that this was a minority position within the Zionist movement. Without commenting on the merits/demerits of these bi-nationalists, his pointing to such a minority position is a veiled attempt to cloak the intentions of the vast majority of Zionists and their openly stated goal of forcibly creating a Jewish State in Palestine, with or without the consent of its indigenous residents.
This focus upon the Palestinian resistance, without any mention of the underlying land grab that is the basis of the conflict, is the usual (and perhaps necessary) MO of the Zionist narrative, and is a feeble attempt to blame the resistance that followed for legitimizing the land grab that most Zionists had been openly advocating for since the 19th Century.
And to say that something is “perfectly legal” is usually the last refuge of someone who has run out of morally sound or convincing arguments. But for the sake of argument, let’s look at this claim: who specifically made it “legal?” God? Lord Balfour? The UN? How many natives did these people bother or deign to consult before granting the deed to their land?
The violent reaction to Jewish immigration to Palestine may have assumed a “land grab,” but the violence began decades in advance of anything like that—-with the worst pre-1947 events being the riots and pogroms of 1920, ‘21 and ‘29, followed by the full-scale uprising of 1936-39.
We will never know what might have happened if the majority Arab reaction to the Jewish immigrants had been welcoming, or at least tolerant. It is logical and likely that the bi-national minority within the Zionist movement would have been much larger, and perhaps the majority. But even if not, there is no real likelihood that there would have been any large-scale displacement of Palestinian Arabs if they had not violently resisted the UN partition plan and thereby unleashed the dogs of war. I know I’ve used these phrases before, but Imran has trouble assimilating this very basic fact.
The “land grab” was simply the culmination of the openly stated goal of the Zionist project. This is why my very first post said “rseliger makes it sound as if the Palestinians had no reason to resist the Zionist project or the newly created Israel by starting hostilities..” His focus on the violence prior to the creation of Israel (1920’s-30’s) is a feeble attempt to blame the Palestinian resistance for the land grab that the Zionists had been openly advocating for since the 19th Century. If I openly declare that I intend to take your land without your consent, can it really be said that it was your resistance that triggered or legalized my theft, because you had the temerity to use violence?
Rseliger’s statement that there would be have no “large-scale displacement” if the Palestinians had simply not resisted is nothing more than the same colonialist/imperialist refrain that the indigenous population is to blame for their refusal to submit to, abide by, or graciously accept the Zionist and European dictates regarding their land, as a solution to European guilt for European pogroms against the Jews. Combined with these same European countries’ restrictions on fleeing Jewish refugees (including sadly the US as well), Palestinians find their statements and lectures about being “tolerant” and “welcoming” both hypocritical and offensive.
And while rseliger is correct that I have heard him use “these phrases before,” my trouble with “assimilating” these “facts” is that they require the historical amnesia that the Palestinian resistance is the RESULT of the Zionist project (and the later created Israel), not its CAUSE. While this amnesia may ease the conscience of well-intentioned Zionists, it obscures the real cause of the conflict, and is a major obstacle to finding a just and meaningful peace.
Please note that the second line of the last paragraph of my post left out the word “ignores,” and that it should have posted as “the historical amnesia that ignores the Palestinian resistance is ...” Thank you.
Except for the bi-nationalist Zionists, the early Jewish settlers of Palestine had very little consciousness of Palestinian Arabs as a people. And, as Rashid Khalidi indicates in his writings, the Arabs themselves only gradually evolved a national consciousness of themselves as a people.
If Palestine were an established sovereign Arab country, Zionism would have only been about immigration and not the creation of a new society.
Refuge from oppression and a building up of the land, rather than a “land grab,” was how the early pioneers thought of their work in Palestine. Land was not “grabbed” in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but rather legally purchased.
The fact that Imran can only see this as a premeditated plot by Western imperialists, and therefore would justify all anti-Jewish violence by Arabs as “resistance,” illustrates how difficult this conflict is. But we all have to move beyond our prejudices, for the sake of both peoples, to work toward a compromise solution that would actually bring about a peaceful end to the conflict. Unfortunately, hardliners like Imran will probably not agree.
I too want to see a compromise peaceful solution. But getting there requires an understanding of the cause of the conflict. The Zionist narrative blaming the Palestinians for refusing to accept the “grace” of the UN’s “award” in 1947, or their resistance to the Zionist project, but ignoring most Zionists’ openly declared goal of creating a Jewish state in Palestine with or without the consent of the indigenous population, is both intellectually dishonest and a major impediment to a just peace. Pointing out such misstatements has always been the primary reason for my posts.
And I didn’t realize that an indigenous populations’ lacking of a “national consciousness” or a “sovereign state” was an excuse to take their land (and Zionists wonder why people call them imperialists). The Zionist project was the brain-child of the 19th and early 20th century Zionists who wanted to create a Jewish state in a land where the overwhelming majority of the people were not Jewish. How does one do that without finding a way to “displace” or “transfer” the natives? Is rseliger truly not familiar with the verbal gymnastics some Zionists engaged in concerning the ethnic cleansing that would be necessary to bring about such a state?
Does that sound like someone who is simply “legally purchasing” a house in your neighborhood? Does that make the native, who sees and hears the goals of Zionism in his country and then fights back, “prejudiced?” I understand that this Zionist myth about the land being purchased rather than taken is essential for peace of mind, but it’s not true, and conceals a horrible crime.
Pre-1948 Land purchases. There were three periods of land acquisition by Zionists and Jews. While Jews in 1922 owned 3 percent of the land of Palestine, the additional land purchased by 1947 raised the total owned by the immigrant Jews to 7 percent of the whole area of the country. That’s a long way from buying up the whole country. While it appears that rseliger still clings to this myth, at least some Zionists were honest about the true goals (i.e. sins) of their project. See:
http://www.monabaker.com/quotes.htm
I insist upon advancing the Palestinian narrative as a corrective to years of unquestioning acceptance of the Israeli narrative. However, it seems that just hearing the Palestinian narrative is simply too much for these Zionists to bear (i.e. the vociferous attacks upon any discussion of the Nakba, and rseliger’s characterization of those who advocate this narrative as “hardliners).” Perhaps a subconscious admission of guilt for the sins of their project? The excellent quote from this article comes to mind. “I am you negation” indeed.
Try as Zionists might to obscure the issue of the land grab, the cause of the conflict was Zionists deciding amongst themselves to forcibly create a Jewish state in a land where the vast majority of the indigenous inhabitants were not Jewish. Instead of starting from here, rseliger, and Zionists like him, would rather have you overlook this cause, and instead have you to believe that anyone who questions the Zionist narrative blaming the Palestinians for their plight (or worse, one who actually advocates the Palestinian narrative) is simply a “hardliner,” “justifies anti-Jewish violence,” and implicitly an anti-semite.
While it has been a while since the last post to this piece, a recent article by Juan Cole presents an excellent summary of the discussion above.
Mr. Cole’s article outlines the history of the Zionist Project and its “Unmaking of the Palestinian Nation.” See:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/16-6
Zionist apologists (like Alan Dershowitz, et. al.) recognize the importance of this “battle of the narratives,” and have demonstrated that they are quite willing to slander anyone who dares question any part of their narrative. See:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/17-7
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/03/18-0
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