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On the supposed ‘about face’ of some
anti-Israeli Historians (Benny Morris and Nathan Weinstock) Perhaps it is not what it seems. Historical and Investigative Research - 22 June 2006 Table of Contents █ Preface: The ‘New Historians’ █ Benny Morris █ Benny Morris makes
an ‘about face’ █ Nathan Weinstock
makes an ‘about face’ ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Preface: The ‘New
Historians’ There is a group of people who have been dubbed the
‘New Historians.’ These ‘New Historians’ have passionately dedicated themselves
to blaming the Israeli Jews, totally, for any and all problems connected with
the Arab-Israeli conflict. I exaggerate only slightly. These ‘New Historians’ have simply heaved to one
side the manner in which, in the first half of the 20th century, the British
government in British Mandate ‘Palestine’ promoted to positions of political
authority precisely those Arab leaders who had the fanatical desire to
exterminate any and all Jews, at the expense of Arab leaders who welcomed the
Zionist project and the economic benefits it brought to the Middle East.
These ‘New Historians’ also heave to one side how the same British government
energetically assisted the anti-Jewish terrorist violence of their
fanatically antisemitic Arab puppets.[1] Contrary to what the ‘New Historians’ would have you
believe, the Arab-Israeli conflict is a consequence of this British policy,
carried out in the fertile antisemitic soil of the Muslim world, where for
many centuries the Jews (and Christians) have been traditionally considered
slaves who deserve to be slaughtered the minute they complain about their
status as slaves or dhimmis. The Zionist attempt to create a Jewish
state -- the ultimate act of insubordination -- triggered jihad, which
is to say the attempt to exterminate uppity infidels.[2] Why have the ‘New Historians’ ignored all this? Are
they really historians?
Perhaps the most famous and influential of the ‘New
Historians,’ Benny Morris, has blamed the Israeli Jews for supposed
atrocities against the Arabs during the war of 1948, constructing a tale
that, to the innocent, appears to legitimize the claims of Arab opponents of
Israel. But historian Efraim Karsh has produced a detailed demonstration that
Benny Morris is dishonest, and Benny Morris then publicly admitted to the
fact! Writes Efraim Karsh: [Quote from
Efraim Karsh begins here] “Among the new
historians, none has been more visible or more influential than Benny Morris,
a professor at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, whose 1987 book, The
Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949, became the New
Historian’s definitive work. Prominent
Palestinian politicians such as Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) [who inherited the
leadership of the PLO/Fatah from Yasser Arafat] and Hanan Ashrawi cited the
‘findings’ of the New Historians to support extreme Palestinian territorial
and political claims. Academics lauded Morris for using newly available
documents to expose the allegedly immoral circumstances of Israel’s creation.
With frequent media exposure, the New Historians had an impact on mainstream
Israeli opinion, which became increasingly receptive to the notion that both
the fault and the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict lay disproportionately
with Israel’s own actions. Such plaudits,
however, were undeserved. Far from unearthing new facts or offering a novel
interpretation of the Palestinian exodus, The Birth recycled the
standard Arab narrative of the conflict. Morris portrayed the Palestinians as
the hapless victims of unprovoked Jewish aggression. Israel’s very creation
became the ‘original sin’ underlying the perpetuation of the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Had there been an academic foundation to Morris’s revisionism, such
acclaim may have been warranted. But rather than incorporate new Israeli
source material, Morris did little more than rehash old historiography. While
laying blame for the Palestinian refugee crisis on the actions of the Israeli
Defense Forces and its pre-state precursor, the Haganah, Morris failed to
consult the millions of declassified documents in their archives, even as
other historians used them in painstaking research. Once this fact was publicly exposed, Morris conceded that he had ‘no
access to the materials in the IDFA [Israel Defense Forces Archive] or
Haganah archive and precious little to firsthand military materials deposited
elsewhere.’ ” (my emphasis)[3] [Quote from
Efraim Karsh ends here] That’s quite an admission for Benny Morris to make. The most serious and famous accusation of supposed
atrocities against the Arabs during the war of 1948 is the allegation of a
massacre of Arab civilians in the town of Deir Yassin (Dir Yasin). Historians
who unlike Benny Morris have looked at the documents that have recently
become available have now decisively refuted such accusations. For example,
historian Uri Milstein, who has written the most exhaustively documented
history of the War of 1948.[4] As
it turns out, the fraudulent Deir Yassin accusation was put out by agents of
Hajj Amin al Hussieni, who before the war had been Britain’s instrument of
anti-Jewish terrorist violence in British Mandate ‘Palestine.’[5] So a leading ‘New Historian,’ accuser of the Israeli
Jews, cared not one whit for the documentary evidence -- he had not even
looked at it. And those who have looked at the documentary evidence
have shown the most important accusations against the Israeli Jews are frauds
concocted by violent antisemites. Should we be surprised? I don’t think so.
The War of 1948 was a war of aggression launched by the Arabs, who
proudly announced to the world that their objective was the extermination of the Israeli Jews (that the Holocaust was
still fresh did not embarrass them).[6] Under such circumstances, one
should expect the Arabs, not the Jews, to have been guilty of war crimes. And
indeed, war crimes were the Arab policy, to such an extent that Israeli
soldiers quickly learned that if trapped behind enemy lines without hope of
rescue the thing to do was to commit suicide by exploding a grenade, because
the alternative was death by torture.[7] This is without mentioning
that the Arab armies routinely targeted civilians.[8] Benny Morris
makes an ‘about face’ Recently there was much noise in the press because
Benny Morris had supposedly made an ‘about face’: according to many sources,
Benny Morris had retracted his claims. This led many patriotic Jews -- under
siege in an antisemitic world, and desperate for another defender -- to
embrace the supposedly new Benny Morris. But Jared Israel of Emperor’s
Clothes pointed out in a piece published in Israel National News
that Benny Morris had not really changed his tune. Wrote Jared Israel: [Quote from
Jared Israel begins here] “I have seen
several defenders of Israel react with pleasure to the supposed
transformation of Benny Morris. I cannot read the mind of Benny Morris, but I
can read his statements. Looking at them, and especially his recent and
much-discussed interview with Haaretz, I see that Morris still claims that
what he wrote about the Israeli War of Independence is true. The only
difference is that now he claims to have ‘realized’ that Israel was justified
in doing bad things because the Palestinian leaders were never sincere about
peace. Israel, and
indeed the Jewish people worldwide, are under assault from an organized
propaganda campaign aimed at justifying anti-Semitism and genocide. The
crucial battlefield is the minds of millions of Gentiles. The weapons used
against the Jews are lies about Israel. In that battle, the new Benny Morris
is even more harmful than the old. For years,
Benny Morris fabricated ‘facts’ -- mistranslated passages so that, for
example, Ben-Gurion seemed to be saying Arabs should be expelled when in fact
he was saying they should not be expelled. Morris took statements out of
context or left out parts of quotations so that Israeli leaders seemed to be
calling for the harshest conduct, when they were in fact calling for the most
humane conduct possible under the circumstances. He even fabricated evidence
wholesale -- manufactured documents -- to make Israel look bad. This is
proved in devastating detail by Efraim Karsh. One of Prof. Karsh’s best
exposés is on the Internet. It is worth reading.[9] In order for
Morris’ supposed transformation to be positive he would have to repudiate his
own writings. He would have to admit that he lied wholesale. By exposing his
own lies, he would, to some extent, undo the damage he has done. Morris has
made no such admission. Instead, Morris still claims his writings were based
on facts; only his moral conclusions were wrong. However, it wasn’t Morris’
moral conclusions that hurt Israel. When he wrote that Israel was formed
through rape, murder and ethnic cleansing, and justified by deceit, he did
not have to add, ‘And I disapprove.’ It was his lies, his manufactured
‘scholarship,’ which was picked up and spread worldwide by an eager media,
and which poisoned the thinking of millions of people against Israel. Here
was a Jewish scholar, supposedly driven by a passion for truth wherever it
might lead, who accused Israel of terrible crimes. I was one of
the people affected by Morris. In large measure it was because of him that --
and I am ashamed to have to say this -- I once supported the PLO. When I read
Karsh and realized Morris had lied -- not made mistakes, but fabricated
evidence -- I was sickened. Morris’ lies were criminal, just as much as if he
had attacked Israel with bombs. He helped undercut worldwide disgust for
Palestinian terror; he helped create the political basis for a Palestinian
terror state next door to Israel. Morris is responsible, like Yasser Arafat,
for the murder of thousands of Israelis. But Arafat is not an Israeli Jew.
Morally, Morris is worse than Arafat. Over the past
few years, Morris has found himself in danger of losing credibility due to
the exposés written by Karsh and others. Moreover, many Israelis have learned
through terrible experience that the PLO wants genocide. So, adapting to the
new climate, Morris does a supposed about-face, claiming that while what he
said about Israel was true, he was wrong about the Palestinian leaders. And
because of this, says Morris, he was wrong to condemn Israeli actions. What is the
effect of this ‘change’? Where honest
scholars were once inspired to expose Morris’ lies, now they will hold back.
After all, Israel has so few friends and one does not want to abuse an
important person who has seen the light. This is very understandable, but
politically harmful, because Morris has not seen the light. He has seen his
way out of a hole. By claiming what he wrote is true, but that he supports
Israel anyway, he continues to attack Israel while undermining the exposure
of his lies. He is far deadlier ‘defending’ Israel than he was when he openly
condemned her. Now the
enemies of Israel can say, ‘See? The friends of Israel are immoral scum --
look at Morris. He has no trouble defending the ‘Zionist entity’ even though
he, better than anyone, knows it was founded on what even he admits were
crimes!’ Notice that by supposedly switching sides, Morris’ lying accusations
are transformed into ‘admissions’! Defenders of
Israel seem slow to realize that we are facing a twenty-year propaganda blitz
aimed at using the demonization of Israel to build a worldwide anti-Semitic
movement with genocidal goals, including the physical destruction of Israel.
The simplest explanation for Benny Morris’ twenty-year campaign of lies
against Israel -- I have found his anti-Israel lies in the New York Times as far back as 1983! --
is that he is a high-placed kapo, a propagandist assigned to stir up hatred
against his own people. But whether
Morris is a professional liar, or just a lying amateur, he continues to
uphold his lies. And he makes matters worse by claiming to be a friend. With friends
like Benny Morris, the Jewish people don’t need enemies.”[10] [Quote from
Jared Israel ends here] Was Jared Israel’s analysis correct? Well consider
what Ilan Pappe now says about Benny Morris: “Morris
[argues]… that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Jews was justified in the
past and would be acceptable in the future.”[11] This is precisely what Jared Israel predicted would
happen. But what is most interesting here is that Ilan Pappe is also a
‘New Historian.’ Is this a staged fight? In any staged fight, the public is
the dupe: no matter who wins, the truth loses. In this case, so does the
Jewish state. Take a look at the “different point” that Ilan Pappe
defends, which he explains in the same piece: “I had a
different point to make [from Benny Morris]: I condemned the uprooting of the
Palestinians and the violence inflicted on them, as well as the
de-Arabization of Jews who came from Arab countries to Israel, the imposition
of military rule on Palestinians in Israel before 1967 and the de facto
Apartheid policies put in place after 1967.” Pappe condemns what Morris now applauds, but his “different
point” has nothing to do with the claims about what happened: they both
accuse the Israelis of committing massacres in the war of 1948. Who will you
pick? It doesn't matter. Heads the Jews lose, tails the Jews lose. Jared
Israel was right: “With friends like Benny Morris, the Jewish people don’t
need enemies.” The new Benny Morris is indeed worse than the old, because some
defenders of Israel have committed the absurdity of embracing him. The lesson I draw from the above is that when a
historian who has attacked Israel, and who has been shown to be dishonest
rather than misinformed, claims to have made an ‘about face,’ we should
approach this claim with extreme caution before embracing this person.
In 1979 historian Nathan Weinstock published the
following book: Weinstock, N.
1979. Zionism: False Messiah. London: Ink Links Ltd. In the above book Nathan Weinstock documents that the
ones oppressing the ordinary Arabs were the Arab feudal lords, with the help
of their British friends. He also documents that the British authorities in
British Mandate Palestine were helping the Arabs kill Jews. And yet he twists
himself like a pretzel to produce a condemnation of the Jews, all the same. The
British-backed, anti-Jewish terrorism of the Arabs was “understandable,” he says,
because this was the “Palestinian anti-colonialist movement” expressing Arab
“national consciousness.” This requires him to state that the Zionist Jews were
“clearly allied” with the British against the Arabs, thus becoming targets.[12] The only problem: Why
then were the British colonialists, on Weinstock’s own admission, helping the
Arabs kill Jews? Why weren’t the Arabs killing Brits? The obvious answer: this
was not an anti-colonialist struggle, but simply a case of British and Arab antisemites
allying together against the Jews in racist attacks. But in his 1979 book Weinstock
doesn’t go there. Recently, Nathan Weinstock now claims to have seen
the light and changed his mind. This he supposedly does in the following
book: Weinstock, N.
2004. Histoire de
chiens : La dhimmitude dans le conflit israélo-palestinian. Paris:
Éditions Mille et Une Nuits (Groupe Fayard). The title and subtitle of the book, translated, read
as follows: History of Dogs: Dhimmitude in the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict. This title is an obvious reference to what the Arab
terrorists chanted during one especially bloody anti-Jewish terrorist rampage
in Jerusalem, in 1929: “The Jews are our dogs!” This chant was in fact reproduced
in Nathan Weinstock’s original (1979) discussion of the 1929 riots, but it
did not have much of an effect on him then, because he defended this
murderous violence as “understandable” (the quotation is in
footnote [12]). His
new book is supposed to correct this. Thus, Weinstock now boasts on the cover
his new comprehension of the traditional anti-Jewish racism of Muslims, who
for many centuries have considered the Jews to be their slaves -- their
“dogs,” their dhimmis -- and in consequence cannot tolerate that Jews should
graduate from the condition of dhimmitude
to establish their own state. This is a
cosmology deeply rooted in the Qur’an and in Islamic law.[14] Now the question is the following: Has Nathan
Weinstock really made an about face? Or is his supposed ‘about face,’ like
Benny Morris’s, just Nathan Weinstock’s way “out of a hole,” as Jared Israel
would put it? In other words, is this just a new, more clever, way for Nathan
Weinstock to continue attacking the Jewish state? Nathan Weinstock himself, in no uncertain terms,
provides the answer: he accepts Benny Morris’s fraudulent interpretation of
the War of 1948! Here is Nathan Weinstock: “As we know,
hundreds of thousands of Palestinians lost their homes during the course of
the War of 1948, so this year is inscribed in their collective memory and
designated by the term nakba (catastrophe).”[15] To this, Weinstock affixes a footnote that reads: “Though the
main reference here is obviously the now classic work of Benny Morris
(Morris, B. 1987. The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem. New
York: Cambridge University Press), one must not neglect the pioneering work
of Ronny E. Gabbay who was able to consult the parliamentary study
(distributed confidentially) of the Iraqi parliamentary commission charged
with investigating the causes of the Arab defeat: A political history of
the Arab-Jewish Conflict, Geneva, 1959. Benny Morris will soon publish a
revised edition of his classic study, based on numerous new elements that
will show, on the one hand, that the policy of expulsion practiced by the
Israeli army was harsher, and imposed more quickly, than he previously
thought, and, on the other hand, that there were indeed appeals from the Arab
Higher Committee and other Palestinian leaders exhorting the Arab population
to flee, which had been assumed up to now was just Israeli propaganda (cf.
Avi Shavit’s interview of Benny Morris in Haaretz, English
edition, 9 January 2004).”[16] So Nathan Weinstock’s interpretation of the War of
1948 is supplied by Benny Morris. (And it is also supplied, notice, by the
Iraqis, who in the decade before the ‘study’ mentioned by Weinstock, carried
out a devastating pogrom against the Iraqi Jews -- the Farhud -- with the
help of Hajj Amin al Husseini, who before this had been the British tool
fomenting anti-Jewish terrorist violence in the Holy Land.[17]) What is Nathan Weinstock’s excuse for this? I cannot
see that he has one. Efraim Karsh’s demonstration that Benny Morris is a liar
was published in 1999, and Nathan Weinstock’s Histoire de Chiens came
out in 2004. That’s plenty of time for Nathan Weinstock to notice. So, although Nathan Weinstock’s new book recognizes that
the ‘Palestinian movement’ is at root racist, how has he made an about face?
This recognition of Arab racism was already included in his earlier book Zionism:
False Messiah, and it did not affect his analysis then.[17a] Neither does it affect his
analysis now: Nathan Weinstock defends Benny Morris’s fraudulent thesis that
the Israelis supposedly had an ‘ethnic cleansing’ policy against the Arabs in
the War of 1948. This fraudulent thesis is necessary to establish a kind of ‘moral
equivalence’ between Arabs and Jews, because no one disputes that the Arab League
announced in that war its goal of exterminating the Israelis (see footnote [6]). Without
this phony ‘moral equivalence’ any perception that the Israelis owe anything
to the Arabs evaporates. Clear evidence that he pushes the ‘moral equivalence’
argument can be found in how Nathan Weinstock opens his new book. This is
what he claims is the only proper description of the Arab-Israeli conflict: “What terms
shall we use to describe the drama that at this very moment bloodies the Holy
Land? Let us use a neutral, factual, and dispassionate formula. Let us say,
therefore, that this is a conflict that opposes the Israeli Jews to the
Palestinian Arabs. How else to express it?”[18] But is it really “neutral, factual, and
dispassionate” to blame both sides equally? This is a phony conception of ‘fairness.’
It would be absurd, for example, to claim that in the WWII conflict between the
Nazis and the European Jews both sides were equally to blame! What is fair is
to state things as they happened, and to put the weight of the blame on those
who deserve it. The following facts, in my view, must be taken into account
when making a characterization of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The leader of the Palestinians has been Al Fatah,
the controlling core of the PLO. It was Hajj Amin al Husseini’s organization
that created Al Fatah after the World War, and Husseini himself who created
Yasser Arafat, the founder and leader of Al Fatah until his death (also:
Mahmoud Abbas).[19]
This Husseini, mentioned earlier, had been the British tool of anti-Jewish
Arab terrorism in British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ from his perch of Mufti of
Jerusalem, a job that British intelligence made sure he got after he
demonstrated a definite skill in organizing terrorism against Jews. When
World War II exploded, Husseini traveled to Berlin and met up with Hitler in
1941, subsequently becoming so important as a leader of Adolf Hitler’s
extermination program against the European Jews that he may be considered
Adolf Eichmann’s equal.[20] So
Al Fatah, which Husseini created, and which swallowed the PLO by 1970, is an
outgrowth of the German Nazi Final Solution. In fact, Al Fatah was trained in
Egypt by Nazi refugees there to ‘improve’ Gamal Abdel Nasser’s forces for a
future attack against the Jewish State.[20a] This explains why the PLO
Charter calls for the extermination of the Israeli Jews.[21] The supposedly ‘rival’
organization, Hamas, was created by the Muslim Brotherhood, which was closely
allied with the Nazis during World War II (and according to some the
go-between for the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazis was none other than Husseini).[21a] Hamas is always saying in
public that it means to destroy Israel, and the Hamas Charter states very
clearly that “Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason”
(so one may not negotiate with Zionists).[22] Moreover, despite appearances,
the PLO and Hamas have always been allied.[23] In light of the above
facts the Arab-Israeli conflict may be described as follows: the Israeli
Jews are fighting a defensive war against the Nazis. This way of putting it makes a whole lot more sense
than what Weinstock writes, which is that we have a “conflict that opposes
the Israeli Jews to the Palestinian Arabs.” First, because the Israeli Jews
are not opposed to anybody. It is not the Israeli Jews who have repeatedly
launched wars of extermination -- it is their Arab enemies who have done
that; and it is not the Israeli Jews who call for the destruction of their
Arab neighbors -- it is the Arabs who call for the destruction of the Israeli
Jews. Second, because, as Weinstock’s documented in his earlier book, Zionism:
False Messiah, there was no such thing as ‘Palestine’ before the British
so baptized one of their Middle Eastern possessions in the early 20th c.[24] That didn’t stop Weinstock from defending, with
bravado, the supposed reality of the “Palestinian identity” in his 1979 book.
He repeats the maneuver in his new book, where he explains, again, in a
section entitled “A Palestine that cannot be found,” that: “Though it may
seem paradoxical to affirm it, this is nevertheless true: Palestine did not
exist in the 19th century. …Definitely, the territory of the Palestine
Mandate corresponded to Mediterranean Syria and its inhabitants considered
themselves as being part of Syria in the larger sense (bilad al-Sham).
...[but] this affirmation does not mean to invalidate Palestinian
nationalism.”[25] Weinstock’s reasoning is amazing. Especially when
you consider that the immediately following section, on the same page, has
for title: “No Palestinian identity in the 19th century.” What then, in
Nathan Weinstock’s view, might invalidate so-called “Palestinian
nationalism”? Obviously not the fact that ‘Palestine’ never existed, nor the
fact that a people with a Palestinian identity cannot be found. Neither,
apparently, will the traditional Muslim racism against the Jews, which has
made the extermination of the Israeli Jews the central goal of “Palestinian
nationalism.” Let us recapitulate. In his new book, Nathan
Weinstock
But in the middle of all that Weinstock applauds
Benny Morris’s interpretation of the 1948 War, which claims that the Israeli
Jews carried out massacres and expulsions against the Arabs, which is all
that is needed for the current demands on the Israeli state by the ‘Palestinian
movement’ to seem justified. So is it unreasonable, then, to propose that
Nathan Weinstock has merely found a clever way to continue his attack against
Israel? After all, the leaders of the ‘Palestinian movement’ trace their
roots to the German Nazi Final Solution (something Weinstock never mentions). Nathan Weinstock ends his book by applauding Ariel
Sharon’s cleansing of the Jews who lived in Gaza. At the time of Weinstock’s
writing, this was to happen in the near future. The passage in question
expresses the hope that this cleansing of the Gaza Jews by their own
government will lead the ‘Palestinians’ to negotiate.[28] In other words, Weinstock is
hoping for a ‘Palestinian state’ in the West Bank and Gaza. And yet Weinstock
writes these hopes after explaining that the entire PLO and Hamas leadership
is irremediably racist (this is the leadership that will govern any
‘Palestinian state’)!
Nathan Weinstock’s new book is consistent with the
old one: he defends interpretations that are absurd in the face of his own
data, when this data is any good. And he defends the justice of the so-called
‘Palestinian movement,’ resorting to Benny Morris’s lies whenever necessary.
The material effect is, once again, that he attacks Israel. Is this an about
face, then? Or is Weinstock’s new tune, like the Pied Piper’s, merely a
strategy to seduce and lure his victim? I believe it is the latter. Nathan
Weinstock, in recognizing the racism of the Arabs, appears to the innocent
reader all the more trustworthy when he accuses that the Israelis carried out
massacres and expulsions. I think Benny Morris -- with his angry endorsement
of ethnic cleansing -- is the Pied Piper for what they call the ‘political
right.’ He’s the tough mother. And I think Nathan Weinstock -- with his
sudden realization of the importance of recognizing the racism of the Arabs
-- is the Pied Piper for what they call the ‘political left.’ He’s the ‘fair-minded’
bleeding heart. They've got them all cornered, these ‘New Historians.’ Heads, the Jews lose; tails, the Jews lose. Evidence to support that the Pied Piper of the ‘political
right’ is Benny Morris, and the Pied Piper of the ‘political left’ is Nathan
Weinstock, is that Jared Israel, an arch-leftist who has been known to call
himself a Marxist, is not fooled by Benny Morris, as we saw above. But he has
been seduced by his fellow Marxist Nathan Weinstock, whom he can be found
defending, and with some energy (see the comments below the main posting): (It makes a strange loop).
Footnotes and Further Reading [1]
“How did the ‘Palestinian movement’ emerge? The British sponsored it. Then
the German Nazis, and the US”; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June
2006; by Francisco Gil-White. [2]
“Was Arab anti-Jewish racism in the first half of the 20th c. fundamentally different
from the European variety?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 22 April
2006; by Francisco Gil-White; [3]
“Benny Morris’s Reign of Error, Revisited: The Post-Zionist Critique”; The
Middle East Quarterly; Spring 2005, Volume XII: Number 2; by Efraim Karsh. [4]
Milstein, U. 1996. History of the War of Independence. New York:
University Press of America. [5]
“WAS THERE A MASSACRE AT DEIR YASSIN?: The pro-PLO camp says yes; the
historical documentation says otherwise”; Historical and Investigative
Research; 20 November 2005; by Francisco Gil-White. [6] Immediately
before the War of 1948, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League,
promised: “This will be
a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like
the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.” SOURCE: Sachar, H. 1982. A history of Israel:
From the rise of Zionism to our time. New York: Knopf. (p.333) [7]
Historian Uri Milstein, who has produced the definitive history of the 1948
war, recounts many battles with great detail in his work “The Rabin File.” It
becomes clear from these descriptions just how routine the suicide of wounded
Jewish soldiers on the battlefield was, who feared the atrocities they knew
only too well would follow at the hands of the enemy Arabs. SOURCE: Milstein U. 1999. The Rabin file: An
unauthorized exposé. New York: Gefen [8]
Just to give one example, though the Israelis did not conduct a massacre of
civilians at Deir Yassin, the Arabs did ‘retaliate’ by murdering Jewish
civilians. On April 12 Dana Schmidt, from the New York Times, insisted
that “Dr. Hussein
Khalidi, secretary of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee...said...that the
Arabs planned no reprisals [for Deir Yassin]” And yet, the
day after, “on April
13, 78 Jews, mostly medical personnel riding to Hadassah Hospital, were
slain. That was the Arab answer to Deir-Yassin.” SOURCES: First Quote: ARABS
SAY KASTEL HAS BEEN RETAKEN; JEWS DENY CLAIM; By DANA ADAMS SCHMIDT; Special
to THE NEW YORK TIMES. New York Times (1857-Current file); Apr 12, 1948;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 -- 2001) pg. 1. Second quote:
Milstein, U. 1996. History of the War of Independence: Out of crisis came
decision. Vol. 4. New York: University Press of America. (p.387) [9]
“Benny Morris and the Reign of Error”; Middle East Quarterly; March 1999,
Volume VI: Number 1; by Efraim Karsh [10] “ Benny
Morris: The Kiss That Kills”; Israel National News; Mar 02, '04 / 9 Adar
5764; by Jared Israel [11] “Benny Morris's Lies About My Book”; History News Network;
4-05-04; by Ilan Pappe. [12]
“...the Palestinian anti-colonialist movement was deformed by racism. The
distorted national struggle expressed itself in anti-Jewish slogans
(‘Palestine is our country and the Jews are our dogs’), followed up by
attacks upon Jewish passers-by and store-owners, and eventually in mob
violence akin to the all-too familiar pogrom [ pogrom = unprovoked racist attack against unarmed Jews, with the
semi-unofficial assistance of the authorities (in this case, British)]. These
attacks cannot, however, in any way be assimilated to straightforward
anti-Semitic outrages which had their source in classical European
coordinates of the Jewish problem, but should be seen as a deformed
expression of national consciousness, all the more understandable as the
Zionist leaders clearly allied with the British while the latter [i.e. the
British] encouraged this distraction from the anti-imperialist
struggle.” (my emphasis)
For a closer analysis, see the introduction to my
series on the Palestinian movement: The documentation that the British
"encouraged" the Arabs to kill Jews is in Part 4 of
"Understanding the Palestinian Movement":
[13]
Consult pages 163-64 of Weinstock, N. 1979. Zionism: False Messiah.
London: Ink Links Ltd. For a detailed analysis of the issue, and
Weinstock's treatment of it, consult:
[14] “Dhimmitude and slavery: The fates
of non-Muslims (and Muslims, too) in Islamic society”; from THE CULTURE OF
ISLAM, an HIR Series; Historical and Investigative Research; 14 October 2007;
by Francisco Gil-White [15] « Comme on Ie sait, des
centaines de milliers de Palestiniens ont perdu leurs foyers au cours de la
guerre de 1948, de sorte que cette année est inscrite dans leur mémoire
collective et désignée par le vocable nakba (catastrophe). » SOURCE : Weinstock, N. 2004. Histoire de
chiens. Paris: Éditions Mille et Une Nuits (Groupe Fayard). (p.155) This quotation is crucial, so I have provided here
the pdf to the page on Weinstock's book, for those French-speaking readers
who wish to compare. [16]
« Si l’ouvrage de base est évidemment l’ouvrage désormais classique de Benny
Morris (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, New
York-Londres, Cambridge University Press), il ne faut pas négliger pour
autant l’étude pionnière de Ronny E. Gabbay qui a pu consulter l’étude
parlementaire (a diffusion confidentielle) de la commission parlementaire
irakienne chargée d’enquêter sur les causes de la défaite arabe: A Political
History of the Arab-Jewish Conflict, Geneve, 1959. Benny Morris doit publier
prochainement une édition revue de son étude classique, fondée sur de
nouveaux éléments dont il résulterait, d’une part, que la politique
d’expulsion pratiquée par l’armée israélienne a été plus dure et s’est
imposée plus rapidement qu’il ne le pensait antérieurement et, d’autre part,
qu’il y eut effectivement des appels répétés du Haut Comite arabe et de
dirigeants palestiniens exhortant la population arabe a fuir, ce qui était
tenu jusqu’ici pour de la propagande israélienne (Cf. l’interview de
Benny Morris par Avi Shavit dans le Haaretz, édition anglaise du 9
janvier 2004). » SOURCE : Weinstock, N. 2004. Histoire de
chiens. Paris: Éditions Mille et Une Nuits (Groupe Fayard). (p.155) This quotation is crucial, so I have provided here
the pdf to the page on Weinstock's book, for those French-speaking readers
who wish to compare. [17]
To learn about the Farhud, and Hajj Amin’s role in it, visit: To learn about Hajj Amin’s role organizing
anti-Jewish Arab terrorist violence for the British (and then for the Nazis),
visit:
[17a] See footnote 12 for Weinstock's admission that the 'Palestinian'
movement was racist. For a complete analysis:
[18] « …en quels termes convient-il de décrire le drame qui
ensanglante en ce moment même la Terre Sainte ? Cherchons une
formule neutre, factuelle et dépassionnée. Disons donc qu'il s'agit d'un
conflit opposant les Juifs israéliens aux Arabes palestiniens. Comment
l'exprimer autrement en effet? » SOURCE: Weinstock, N. 2004. Histoire de chiens.
Paris: Éditions Mille et Une Nuits (Groupe Fayard). (pp.9-10) [19]
“The mufti [Hajj Amin] barely escaped trial for [war crimes] by fleeing to
Egypt in 1946. There he made young Yasser Arafat, then living in Cairo, his
protégé. The mufti secretly imported a former Nazi commando officer into
Egypt to teach Mr. Arafat and other teenage recruits the fine points of guerrilla
warfare. Mr. Arafat learned his lessons well; the mufti was so proud of him
he even pretended the two of them were blood relations.”
“We are the Mighty People. Were they able to replace
our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini? ...There were a number of attempts to
get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so,
he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his
troops.”
“[the] radical Palestinian group in Syria, the Fatah
(Arab Liberation Movement), organized several years earlier by veterans of
the Mufti’s former Arab Higher Committee.”
To learn more, read:
[20]
“Hajj Amin al Husseini, leader of the ‘Palestinian movement,’ becomes an
architect of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, and then continues the
extermination effort beyond the World War”; from: HOW DID THE ‘PALESTINIAN
MOVEMENT’ EMERGE? THE BRITISH SPONSORED IT. THEN THE GERMAN NAZIS, AND THE
US; Historical and Investigative Research; 13 June 2006; by Francisco Gil-White. [20a] “PLO/Fatah's Nazi training was
CIA-sponsored”; Historical and Investigative Research; 22 July 2007; by
Francisco Gil-White [21] The 1968 PLO Charter states
the objectives of the PLO as follows. Article 9 says that “armed struggle is
the only way to liberate Palestine.” That’s worth chewing on for a second,
because the PLO could have written the same thing like this: “it is required
that Palestine be liberated in the act of killing people.” Killing which
people? This is relatively obvious. Article 15 of the PLO Charter states that
it is “a national duty to repulse the Zionist imperialist invasion from the
great Arab homeland and to purge the Zionist presence from Palestine,” and
article 22 declares that “the liberation of Palestine will liquidate the
Zionist and imperialist presence.” In other words, the PLO, which
organization asserts that ‘Palestine’ may be ‘liberated’ only in the act of
killing people, explains that its goal is purging and liquidating -- that is
to say, exterminating -- “Zionists.” Doesn’t this agree perfectly with how
the PLO, behaviorally, chooses to define ‘Palestine’ as ‘the territory that
Jews live on’? SOURCE: The PLO Charter articles were translated by:
The Associated Press, December 15, 1998, Tuesday, AM cycle, International
News, 1070 words, Clinton meets with Netanyahu, Arafat, appeals for progress,
By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent, EREZ CROSSING, Gaza Strip. [21a] “…as Italian and German
fascism sought greater stakes in the Middle East in the 1930s and '40s to
counter British and French controlling power, close collaboration between
fascist agents and Islamist leaders ensued. During the 1936-39 Arab Revolt,
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of German military intelligence, sent agents
and money to support the Palestine uprising against the British, as did
Muslim Brotherhood founder and "supreme guide" Hassan al-Banna. A
key individual in the fascist-Islamist nexus and go-between for the Nazis and
al-Banna became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini --
incidentally the later mentor (from 1946 onward) of a young firebrand by the
name of Yasser Arafat.”
[22]
Article Thirty-Two of the Hamas Charter: [23]
The following is stated in article 27 of the Hamas Charter:
To see how closely Hamas and the PLO have cooperated
in the killing of both Arabs and Jews, visit:
This piece is also instructive: “Hamas vs. Fatah: A curious ‘fight’: What if Hamas and Fatah are not
really enemies?”; Historical and Investigative Research; 30 June 2007; by
Francisco Gil-White [24] To see Nathan Weinstock’s
claims on this question in Zionism: False Messiah, and my analysis,
visit:
[25] « L’affirmation parait révéler du paradoxe, mais n’en
est pas moins vraie : la Palestine n'existe pas au XIXe siècle. ...En
définitive, le territoire de la Palestine mandataire correspond a la Syrie
méridionale et ses habitants se considèrent comme faisant partie de la Syrie
au sens large (bilad al-Sham). ...[mais] cette constatation ne vise pas
a déconsidérer le nationalisme palestinien... » SOURCE : Weinstock, N. 2004. Histoire de
chiens. Paris: Éditions Mille et Une Nuits (Groupe Fayard). (pp.37-38) [26] Nathan Weinstock’s earlier accusations that the Zionist Jews were
responsible for the peasant Arabs in Palestine losing their land went against
his own evidence, as we show here:
Nathan Weinstock’s retraction in his new book reads
as follows: « L’éviction
d’une fraction du paysannat arabe ne résulte pas de l’implantation
agricole juive : cette spoliation est antérieure au sionisme. Les
acquisitions foncières effectuées par les organisations sionistes ont agi
comme un révélateur d’une dépossession préexistants. On peut ajouter -- j’y
reviendrai plus loin -- qu’une enquête officielle britannique établira en
1931 que, sur le plan quantitatif, cette dépossession tant décrie n’a revêtu
qu’un caractère tout a fait marginal. » TRANSLATION :
“The eviction of a fraction of the Arab peasantry did not result from
the implantation of Jewish agriculture: this despoliation is prior to
Zionism. The main acquisitions made by the Zionist organizations merely
revealed the dispossession that had already happened. One may add -- and I
will return to this -- that an official British inquiry established in 1931
that, in quantitative terms, this dispossession that has been so decried was
in fact quite marginal.” (emphasis in original) SOURCE: Weinstock, N. 2004. Histoire de chiens.
Paris: Éditions Mille et Une Nuits (Groupe Fayard). (p.64) [27]
This may be found in chapter 8 of Weinstock's book. [28] « L’évacuation totale de la bande de Gaza annoncée par
le Premier ministre israélien -- premier pas qui est le bienvenu -- aura
valeur de test a cet égard. Les Palestiniens sauront-ils saisir
cette chance de faire avancer la négociation? » TRANSLATION: “The total evacuation of the Gaza strip
announced by the Israeli prime minister -- a first and welcome step -- will
count as a test. Will the Palestinians know to seize this chance and let the
negotiations proceed?” SOURCE: Weinstock, N. 2004. Histoire de chiens.
Paris: Éditions Mille et Une Nuits (Groupe Fayard). (p.184) |
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