In his introduction, Said says he believes that the establishment of Israel occurred partly because the Israelis "acquired control" of the land, and partly because they had won the "political battle for Palestine in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue." He returns again to this theme, remarking on the "dominance of the Zionist viewpoint in Western cultural discourse..." In describing this viewpoint he notes what he calls Zionism's "spurious, often flagrantly preposterous arguments." Said says there is an "official Zionist discourse", and "unofficial Zionist work", citing for some praise the "revisionist historians" such as Tom Segev and Benny Morris. Said criticizes American Zionists whose "shameless adulation of Israel is almost limitless."
Said remarks on a pattern in Israel supporters. They "reproduce the official party line on Israel or they go after delinquents who threaten to disturb the idyll." Critics and opponents of the Zionists "take it as their tasks first to decode the myths, then to present the record of facts in as neutral a way as possible." The Zionist viewpoint has "its peculiar blindnesses, its ideological weaknesses to say the least, its outrageous falsifications..." (p 13) Said notes that Western scholarly writing about the Middle East "is adversely affected by the Zionist-Palestinian conflict." Much work has been done by talented Arab scholars and writers, and non- or anti-Zionist Jews, but still needs to be done to expose and uncover the myths.
Concluding his introduction, Said says (page 19),
The Palestinians have since 1974 premised their political work and organization on the notion of joint community for Arabs and Jews in Palestine.....This collection of essays is presented in advancement of that goal.
Blaming the Victims is divided into four parts, with a number of essays comprising each part. The parts are entitled, The Peters Affair, Myths Old and New, The Liberal Alternative, and Scholarship Ancient and Modern.
"The Peters Affair"
This section of the book contains two essays, one by Said and one by Finkelstein concerning Joan Peters and her book, From Time Immemorial. Peters' thesis is that what is referred to as the Palestinian refugee problem is actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and that many of those who came to consider themselves Palestinians, she argues, were in fact immigrants to Palestine from other parts of the Arab world in the early 20th century.
According to Hitchens this confirmation "by an Israeli historian using the most scrupulous and authentic Zionist sources, at last allows us to write finis to a debate which has been going on for a quarter of a century [...] between Erskine B. Childers and Jon Kimche."
Hitchens then goes on to describe the exchange of letters between Erskine Childers and Jon Kimche in The Spectator following the publication of Childers' article of 12 May 1961.
Childers wrote of what Hitchens calls "the best-known Israeli propaganda claim" that the Palestinians had been urged to flee by their own leadership:
Examining every official Israeli statement about the Arab exodus, I was struck by the fact that no primary evidence of evacuation orders was ever produced. The charge, Israel claimed, was "documented"; but where were the documents? There had allegedly been Arab radio broadcasts ordering the evacuation; but no dates, names of stations, or texts of messages were ever cited. In Israel in 1958, as a guest of the Foreign Office and therefore doubly hopeful of serious assistance, I asked to be shown the proofs, I was assured they existed, and was promised them. None had been offered when I left, but I was again assured. I asked to have the material sent on to me. I am still waiting. The quotation is one of about five that appear in every Israeli speech and pamphlet, and are in turn used by every sympathetic analysis. It seemed very impressive: it referred to the exodus from Haifa, and to an Arab broadcast order as one major reason for that exodus. (page 75) (In the following link the typo "Erskin" exists in the URL and cannot be rectified here.) Erskin Childers, The Other Exodus
Hitchens notes that Childers was "intrigued enough" to go on and examine the original (October 2) 1948 issue of the Economist, which had been cited as a source for the claim that Arab evacuation orders had in fact taken place. It turned out that the report, "which made vague reference to announcements made over the air" by the Arab Higher Committee, had been written from Cyprus by a correspondent who had used an uncorroborated Israeli source. Hitchens remarks: "It hardly counted as evidence, let alone first-hand testimony." (page 76) The essay goes on to examine the rest of Childers' argument, and to agree that Childers had made his case that no such radio announcements were ever made.
Hitchens concludes the essay with the observation that even as he was writing the article, he noticed a full-page advertisement from CAMERA, which said:
In 1948, on the day of the proclamation of the State of Israel, five Arab armies invaded the new country from all sides. In frightful radio broadcasts, they urged the Arabs living there to leave, so that the invading armies could operate without interference.
Hitchens says he wrote to CAMERA on 20 February 1987, asking for an authenticated case of such a broadcast. He did not receive any reply. And he concludes with a prediction:
Even though nobody has ever testified to having heard them, and even though no record of their transmission has ever been found, we shall hear of these orders and broadcasts again and again.
"Truth Whereby Nations Live" (Peretz Kidron)
In his essay Truth Whereby Nations Live, Israeli journalist and translator Peretz Kidron tells of his collaboration with the CanadianBen Dunkelman in 1974 ghostwriting the latter's autobiography Dual Allegiance. Dunkelman had fought for Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War as a commander of the 7th Brigade, the country's best-known armored brigade. He had participated in Operation Dekel, leading the 7th Brigade and its supporting units as it moved to capture the town of Nazareth between July 8 and 18, 1948. Nazareth capitulated July 16, after little more than token resistance. The surrender was formalized in a written document that agreed that the inhabitants would cease hostilities in return for promises that no harm would come to the civilian population. A few hours later Dunkelman was given an oral order to evacuate the civilian population of Nazareth which he refused to obey. Dunkelman had told Kidron that he believed the Arab inhabitants in Nazareth were not forced to evacuate because of his refusal to follow that order. In the end, Dunkelman decided not to use this episode in his autobiography, but Kidron felt that this was important evidence that Israel had forcibly expelled the Palestinian Arabs, and he made a copy of it.
Kidron goes on to relate how in 1978–79 he translated Yitzhak Rabin´s memoir, Soldier of Peace, into English. While doing so he had access to the part of Rabin's memoirs which related to the expulsion of Arabs from Lod and Ramle in the middle of July 1948 ("Operation Larlar"). While the Israeli military censor passed the manuscript, a special ministerial commission struck out several portions of the translation, including this section where Rabin had written:
What would they do with the 50,000 civilians in the two cities ... Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution, and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward. ... Allon repeated the question: What is to be done with the population? Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture that said: Drive them out! ... 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring ... Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of Lod did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the 10 to 15miles to the point where they met up with the legion. The inhabitants of Ramleh watched and learned the lesson. Their leaders agreed to be evacuated voluntarily...( )[1]
After some soulsearching, Kidron passed both the Dunkelman story and the Rabin story to The New York Times. They published the story as "Israel bars Rabin from Relating ´48 Eviction of Arabs", on 23 October 1979.
Kidron's conclusion:
"In brief, the two descriptions, particularly when taken together, proved beyond any shadow of doubt that there were high-level directives for mass expulsions of the Arab population, and that the decision-makers, evidently aware of the discreditable and unlawful nature of such a policy, were careful to leave no incriminating evidence about their personal and political responsibility."
"Middle East Terrorism and the American Ideological System" (Noam Chomsky)
Chomsky's essay, denounced as "breathlessly deranged" by a Washington Post reviewer,[2] is an indictment of Israeli and American military operations during the 1980s in the Middle East and Central America, respectively. It is a critique of the role of the Western media in covering these operations up and in painting a picture of the Arabs as inveterate terrorists. He describes Shimon Peres and Ronald Reagan as "two of the world's leading terrorist commanders," noting that Peres had just "sent his bombers to attack Tunis, where they killed twenty Tunisians and fifty-five Palestinians", with the civilian victims "crushed ... to dust" (quoting a Ha'aretz report) in alleged retaliation for the killing of Israeli civilians, noting further that "There can be no serious doubt of [Reagan administration] complicity in the Tunis attack". He proceeds to describe their "shared conception of 'peace' furthermore, [as excluding] entirely one of the two groups that claim the right of national self-determination." (Palestinian Arabs). He refers to "American discourse" on the subject as being framed in "racist terms". He bemoans that Israel denies the Palestinians the right to elect their own representatives to peace negotiations. He presents documentation of what he calls "atrocities" committed by Israelis (for example Peres' "Iron Fist" operations in Southern Lebanon, which he quotes a Western diplomat as characterizing as reaching new depths of "calculated brutality and arbitrary murder", taken from a The Guardian report. He refers to the Israeli-run prison camp at Ansar, Lebanon as a "concentration camp". He supports the thesis that the Israelis created and manipulated the conflict between Lebanese Christians and Muslims and other ethnic conflict in Lebanon, citing the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and other sources. Chomsky holds that, as a U.S. "client state", Israel "inherits from its master [the United States] the 'right' of terrorism, torture and aggression." Chomsky is particularly contemptuous of claims that criticism of Israeli tactics is a manifestation of anti-Semitism, saying such charges are false, and that the media "bends over backwards" to see things from the Israeli perspective.[3]
Zionist political violence refers to politically motivated violence or terror perpetrated by Zionists. The term is used to describe violence committed by those who support the political movement of Zionism, and violence committed against opponents of Zionism. The violence often takes the form of terrorist attacks and has been directed against both Jewish and Arab targets. The most active period of most notable Zionist political violence began on June 30, 1924, through the 1940s, and continues to the present day, usually for the purpose of expanding Zionist settlements in Palestine.
Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians and unarmed soldiers.
Operation Dekel, was the largest offensive by Israeli forces in the north of Palestine after the first truce of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was carried out by the 7th Armoured Brigade led by Canadian volunteer Ben Dunkelman, a battalion from the Carmeli Brigade, and some elements from the Golani Brigade between 8–18 July. Its objective was to capture Nazareth and the Lower Galilee.
Benjamin "Ben" Dunkelman was a Canadian Jewish officer who served in the Canadian Army in World War II and the Israel Defense Forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In Israel, he was called Benjamin Ben-David.
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab–Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters, published by Harper & Row, about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.
Plan Dalet was a Zionist military plan executed in the civil war phase of the 1948 Palestine war for the conquest of territory in Mandatory Palestine in preparation for the establishment of a Jewish state. The plan was requested by the Jewish Agency leader David Ben-Gurion and developed by the Haganah and finalized March 10, 1948.
The Battle of Haifa, called by the Jewish forces Operation Bi'ur Hametz, was a Haganah operation carried out on 21–22 April 1948 and a major event in the final stages of the civil war in Palestine, leading up to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. The objective of the operation was the capture of the Arab neighborhoods of Haifa. By mid-May 1948 only 4,000 from the pre-conflict population estimate of 65,000 Palestinian Arabs remained in the city.
Jon Kimche was a journalist and historian. A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young man. In 1934–35, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and later managed the ILP's bookshop at 35 Bride Street, near Ludgate Circus. As chair of the ILP Guild of Youth, he visited Barcelona in 1937, where he again met Orwell.
Maximos V Hakim was elected Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, and Alexandria and Jerusalem of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church in 1967 and served until 2000. He guided the church through turbulent changes in the Middle East and rapid expansion in the Western hemisphere.
Edward Selim Atiyah was an Anglo-Lebanese author and political activist. He is best known for his 1946 autobiography An Arab Tells His Story, and his 1955 book The Arabs.
Walid Khalidi is a Palestinian historian who has written extensively on the Palestinian exodus. He is a co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies, established in Beirut in December 1963 as an independent research and publishing center focusing on the Palestine problem and the Arab–Israeli conflict, and was its General Secretary until 2016.
Joseph Schechtman was a Russian-born Revisionist Zionist activist and author. He was the author of numerous books of history, biography and works on Zionism.
During the 1948 Palestine war in which the State of Israel was established, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs or 85% of the total population of the territory Israel captured fled or were expelled from their homes by Israeli forces. The causes for this mass displacement is a matter of great controversy among historians, journalists, and commentators.
The Palestinian people are an Arabic-speaking people with family origins in the region of Palestine. Since 1964, they have been referred to as Palestinians, but before that they were usually referred to as Palestinian Arabs. During the period of the British Mandate, the term Palestinian was also used to describe the Jewish community living in Palestine. The Arabic-language newspaper Falastin (Palestine) was founded in 1911 by Palestinian Christians.
The 1948 Palestinian expulsion from Lydda and Ramle, also known as the Lydda Death March, was the expulsion of 50,000 to 70,000 Palestinian Arabs when Israeli troops captured the towns in July that year. The military action occurred within the context of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. The two Arab towns, lying outside the area designated for a Jewish state in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, and inside the area set aside for an Arab state in Palestine, subsequently were transformed into predominantly Jewish areas in the new State of Israel, known as Lod and Ramla.
In 1948 more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of prewar Palestine's Arab population – fled from their homes or were expelled by Zionist militias, during the 1948 Palestine war. The exodus was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba, in which between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed, village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme and properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning, and other sites subject to Hebraization of Palestinian place names, and also refers to the wider period of war itself and the subsequent oppression up to the present day.
Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity established between 1920 and 1948 in the region of Palestine under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is a book authored by New Historian Ilan Pappé and published in 2006 by One World Oxford.
The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. It is known in Israel as the War of Independence and in Arabic as a central component of the Nakba. It is the first war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the broader Arab–Israeli conflict. During the war, the British terminated the Mandate and withdrew, ending a period of rule which began in 1917, during the First World War. Beforehand, the area had been part of the Ottoman Empire. In May 1948, the State of Israel was established by the Jewish Yishuv, its creation having been declared on the last day of the Mandate. During the war, around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were displaced.
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