John Mearsheimer Eviscerates the 'Times' Review of '1948'

John Mearsheimer read the Times today and sent me the following note:

Make sure you read David Margolick's review of the new Benny Morris book in the NYT Book Review section today. It is another shocking piece, given how much we now know about 1948.

First, he talks about "the dramatically outnumbered Jews," how the Arab armies had "numerical superiority" over the Israelis. This is simply not true. The Zionist/Israeli fighting forces outnumbered the Palestinians between December 1947 and May 1948, and they outnumbered the Arab armies from May 1948 to January 1949, when the fighting stopped. Steve [Walt] and I lay out the numbers on p. 82 of the Lobby book.

Second, and related, he says that "on paper and on the ground, the Palestinians had the edge." This is not a serious argument. The Palestinian fighting forces had been decimated by the British in the 1936-1939 revolt, and they were in no position to put up a fight against the Zionists in 1948. This is why Yigal Yadin, a prominent military commander in 1948, said that if the British had not been present in Palestine until May 1948, "we could have quelled the Arab riot in one month." And it was essentially a riot, because the Palestinians had little fighting power, thanks to what happened a decade before. An excellent source on this matter is Rashid Khalidi's book, The Iron Cage.

Third, Margolick says that "transfer -- or expulsion or ethnic cleansing -- was never an explicit part of the Zionist program." It just started happening in the course of the war, and the "Jewish leaders, struck by their good fortune," pushed it along. This is not true; there is an abundance of evidence that contradicts Margolick’s claim. He ought to read Nur Masalha's Expulsion of the Palestinians and Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians. Plus, the argument fails the common sense test. Given demographics and where the Jews and Arabs lived, there was no way that the Zionists could create a Jewish state without transfer. Not surprisingly, that point was well understood by the Zionist leadership. Consider what Morris told a Ha'aretz interviewer in 2004: "Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist... Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here." Although Benny Morris tries to argue that the transfer was "born of war," he provides too much evidence to the contrary in his books and interviews, which is what allowed Norman Finkelstein to undermine Morris's case in Image and Reality (chapter 3).

Fourth, Margolick effectively repeats the myth that one of the main reasons that the Palestinians fled in 1948 was because Arab leaders broadcast messages to them telling them to leave their homes. He writes: "apocalyptic Arab broadcasts induced further flight and depicted as traitors those who chose to stay behind." One would have thought that this myth had been put to rest by now. The truth is that most Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay at home, but fear of violent death at the hands of the Zionist forces led most of them to flee. This is not to deny that some Arab commanders did instruct Palestinian civilians to evacuate their homes during the fighting, either to make sure that they did not get caught in a firefight or to ensure that they were not killed by the Zionist forces engaged in ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

Fifth, he clearly implies that the expulsion was the Arab's own fault. He writes: "The Arabs, it was said, had only themselves to blame for the upheaval: they’d started it. And, Morris notes, the Jews were only emulating the Arabs, who’d always envisioned a virtually Judenrein Palestine." This is an outrageous argument. The Zionist came to Palestine knowing full well that there were an indigenous people there and that they would have to steal their land. Margolick, to his credit, quotes Ben-Gurion saying that the Zionists stole their land. Of course, the Palestinians resisted the Jews. Who could blame them? Again, Ben-Gurion is worth quoting: “Were I an Arab, I would rebel even more vigorously, bitterly, and desperately against the immigration that will one day turn Palestine and all its Arab residents over to Jewish rule."

The Palestinians certainly did not start this conflict. They were simply reacting to an attempt by the Zionists to take away their homes and land, which they eventually did. Furthermore, to talk about a "Judenrein Palestine" is a subtle way of implying that the Palestinians were Nazis, which they were not. It is also worth noting that there were Jews living peacefully in the area we call Palestine before the Zionists began moving there from Europe. Moreover, there was little resistance to the first Jews who came to Palestine in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The resistance appeared when the Arab population came to understand the Zionists' agenda.

Finally, Margolick goes to some lengths to portray Morris as the beacon of reason and light. He writes: "No one is better suited to the task than Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who, in previous works, has cast an original and skeptical eye on his country’s founding myths. Whatever controversy he has stirred in the past, Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively." He later says: "Deep inside Morris’s book is an authoritative and fair-minded account of an epochal and volatile event. He has reconstructed that event with scrupulous exactitude. But despite its prodigious research and keen analysis, ‘1948’ can be exasperatingly tedious."

Of course, he does not say that there are all sorts of experts on 1948 who disagree with Morris. Nor does he mention Morris's outrageous statements about the Palestinians in his infamous January 9, 2004 interview in Ha'aretz, where he described them as "barbarians" and "serial killers" who are part of a "sick society." He went on to say that: "Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."

One would think any fair-minded reviewer would at least make mention of the fact that Morris has made such comments. But, of course, The New York Times is rarely fair-minded when it comes to Israel.

A couple comments. (Phil Weiss again). What a pleasure to see a fine mind running round the track! Mearsheimer reminds me of Big Brown coming 'round the turn in Louisville yesterday, demolishing the field. It's too bad that the Times did not assign this book to him--or Finkelstein, or the eminent anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod. When it is a question of Indian history, or Chinese history, the Times often serves its readers by seeking scholars of a different point of view. Mearsheimer was once a regular in  the  pages of the Times, and is no longer. (An impoverishment, yes-- but one that won't last. I have too much faith not to believe that this orthodoxy is about to collapse.)

Comments

[Richard Witty]

"John Mearsheimer read the Times today and sent the following note:"

Did he send you the note? And is the whole text quoted? I couldn't tell.

Assuming that those are Mearsheimer's words, I derive the OPPOSSITE impression than you did.

I don't see the accusation as insightful, but more repitition of polemic. Pappe is not authority. His writing as assertively selective to his argument.

If you want to be partisan and known as being partisan, you quote Pappe. If you want to be known as historian, you take his source documents, others citations of source documents, your own research and read them yourself.

Has Mearsheimer? I doubt it.

What "experts" disagree with Morris?

If I said something like that, I'd be labeled a lying fraud.

It is possible to disagree with Morris' conclusions, having read the same source material.

Repitition though is not it.

[Richard Witty]

The opening of the review REPRESENTS my view of the conflict. Two victim narratives, RESPECTFULLY told, one a success one a tragedy, as Morris reported well in Righteous Victims.

By DAVID MARGOLICK
Published: May 4, 2008

"1948

A History of the First Arab-Israeli War.

By Benny Morris.

In late August 1948, during a United Nations-sanctioned truce, Israeli soldiers conducting what they called Mivtza Nikayon — Operation Cleaning — encountered some Palestinian refugees just north of the Egyptian lines. The Palestinians had returned to their village, now in Israeli hands, because their animals were there, and because there were crops to harvest and because they were hungry. But to the Israelis, they were potential fighters, or fifth columnists in the brand new Jewish state. The Israelis killed them, then burned their homes.

As much as in any other scene in this meticulous, disturbing and frustrating book, the ineffable tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians resides in that brutal, heartbreaking image. On the one hand, the Jews were fighting for a safe haven three years after six million of them had been murdered. Undoubtedly some of those soldiers on patrol that day were survivors themselves, who’d lost their entire families in Europe and been handed rifles after washing ashore in Haifa or Tel Aviv.

And then there were the Palestinians, who had watched in horror over the past 75 years as these aliens first trickled, then poured, into their homeland. Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?” he asked. “There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”

The history of the 1948 war desperately needs to be told, since it’s so barely understood or remembered and since so many of the issues that plague us today had their roots in that struggle. Much of that history is military: how the dramatically outnumbered Jews managed to defeat first the Arabs of Palestine, then the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq and Syria, along with a smattering of Sudanese, Yemenites, Moroccans, Saudis, Lebanese and others. But arguably even more important than the soldiers are the civilians, specifically the 700,000 Palestinians who fled as the war raged. To understand the Palestinians who now fire rockets from Gaza or become suicide bombers from Nablus, it helps to know how their fathers and grandfathers wound up in Gaza or Nablus in the first place."

...

That Mearsheimer could derive from this nearly entirely balanced review his partisan conclusions, bothers me.

Have YOU taken a side Phil? Have you determined to mourn nakba or to celebrate independance? Or both?

(Obviously you've taken Mearsheimer's side in all things. You are FAR worse than I, accused often of taking Israel's side on all things.)

[Phil Weiss]

Richard, thanks for first point; yes note was to me. fixed that. mearsheimer is not against israel, mearsheimer is balanced in my view. he is for a 2-state solution, for instance, and has often praised israeli might. i dont think we will get anywhere here until we integrate the nakba and independence narrative. last year richard cohen siad the birth of israel was a mistake. to understand his point, one has to come to terms with these narratives, as well as the holocaust narrative that cuased zionists to believe, horrifyingly, that arabs were nazis.
what am i for? i am for an end to the cycle of violence in israel/palestine

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

Arnaud de Borchgrave had the following article which referenced Ilan Pappe as well:

http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Emerging_Threats/Analysis/2007/08/06/commentary_embarrassing_history/1248/print_view/

Commentary: Embarrassing history

Published: Aug. 6, 2007 at 11:17 AM

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The Palestinians call Israel’s 1948 war of independence their nakba, or catastrophic ethnic cleansing, or forced exile. The Israelis, for their part, have steadfastly rejected any suggestion of ethnic cleansing as calumny in all its anti-Semitic horror.

Historic revisionism is now under way. Without fanfare, just below the media radar screen, the Israeli Education Ministry has approved a textbook for Arab third-graders in Israel that concedes the war that gave birth to Israel was a “nakba” for the Palestinians. The textbook refers to the “expulsion” of some of the Palestinians and the “confiscation of many Arab-owned lands.”

Textbooks for Jewish Israelis in the same grade make no such verbal concession. But Israel’s “new wave” historians have been combing through fresh material now available from the British mandate period and Israeli archives that document the history of Israel before and after it became a state. Long-lasting myths are being debunked.

Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and Haifa University lecturer, whose ninth book is titled “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” documents how Israel was born with lands forcibly seized from its Palestinian inhabitants who had lived there for hundreds of years.

During the British mandate (1920-1948), Zionist leaders concluded Palestinians, who owned 90 percent of the land (with 5.8 percent owned by Jews), would have to be forcibly expelled to make a Jewish state possible. Pappe quotes David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, addressing the Jewish Agency Executive in June 1938, as saying, “I am for compulsory transfer. I do not see anything immoral in it.”

Pappe outlines Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew), which followed earlier plans A, B and C, and included forcible expulsion of some 800,000 Palestinians from both urban and rural areas with the objective of creating by any means necessary an exclusive Jewish state without an Arab presence. The methods ranged from a campaign of disinformation -- “get out immediately because the Jews are on their way to kill you” -- to Jewish militia attacks to terrorize the Palestinians.

The first Jewish militia attacks, says Pappe, began before the May 1948 end of the British mandate. In December 1947 two villages in the central plain -- Deir Ayyub and Beit Affa -- were raided, and their panicked Palestinian inhabitants fled. Jewish leaders gave the order to drive out as many Palestinians as possible on March 10, 1948. The terror campaign ended six months later. Pappe writes 531 Palestinian villages were destroyed, and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities were emptied of their Palestinian inhabitants.

There is no doubt in Pappe’s mind that Plan D “was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity.”

Plan Dalet began in the rural hills on the western slopes of the Jerusalem mountains halfway on the road to Tel Aviv, according to Pappe. It was called Operation Nachshon, and served as a model for massive expulsions using terror tactics. Pappe also details what he calls the “urbicide of Palestine” that included attacking and cleansing the major urban centers of Tiberias, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Safad and what he calls the “Phantom City of Jerusalem” once Jewish troops shelled, attacked and occupied its western Arab neighborhoods in April 1948. The British did not interfere.

Lobbied by the World Zionist Organization and its guiding spirit Chaim Weizmann, who became the first president of Israel (1949-52), the British decided in favor of a Jewish state in Palestine in the 1917 Balfour Declaration. This was a letter from the British Foreign Secretary to Lord Rothschild (Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild), the leader of the British Jewish community, for relay to the Zionist Federation. The British also pledged indigenous Arab rights would be protected as they divvied up the Ottoman Empire.

The myth was then created of “a land without people for a people without a land” even though the “empty land” had a flourishing Palestinian Arab population. The U.N. partition plan of Nov. 29, 1947, gave the Jews 56 percent of Palestine, with one-third of the population, while making Jerusalem an international city. The Jewish part included the most fertile land and almost all urban areas.

When the British handed power to the Jews on May 15, 1948, including the influx of survivors from Hitler’s concentration camps, two-thirds of the population was still Palestinian.

The first Arab-Israeli war quickly followed as the armies of Egypt, Transjordan (now Jordan), Syria, Lebanon and Iraq joined Palestinian and other Arab guerrillas who had been attacking Jewish forces since November 1947. The Arabs failed to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state and were defeated. The war ended with four U.N.-arranged armistice agreements between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Commenting on Pappe’s historical research, Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and editor at large of the Beirut Daily Star, writes, “Many Israelis will challenge Pappe’s account. Such a process should ideally spark an honest, comprehensive analysis that could lead us to an accurate narrative of what happened in 1947-48 -- accurate for both sides, if it is to have meaning for either side.”

An Israeli official textbook for Palestinian third-graders, says Fares, “that fleetingly acknowledges the Palestinian trauma of exile and occupation in 1948 is an intriguing sign of something that remains largely unclear.” The “something” is worth exploring and reciprocating, “if it indicates a capacity to move toward the elusive shared, accurate, truthful account of Israeli and Palestinian history that must anchor any progress toward a negotiated peace.”

The consensus in Israel today, says Pappe, is for a state comprising 90 percent of Palestine “surrounded by electric fences and visible and invisible walls” with Palestinians given only worthless cantonized scrub lands of little value to the Jewish state. In 2006, Pappe sees that 1.4 million Palestinians live in Israel on 2 percent of the land allotted to them plus another 1 percent for agricultural use with 6 million Jews on most of the rest. “Another 3.9 million live concentrated in Israel’s unwanted portions of the West Bank and concentrated in Gaza that has three times the population density of Manhattan,” notes Pappe. Back from the Middle East last week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said prospects are good for a two-state solution. A “viable and contiguous” Palestinian state, pledged by the Bush administration, remains a pipe dream.

.

[Richard Witty]

Mearsheimer is wrong about the intent and reality of Arab military power in 1948, as is Pappe.

They are right only from the question of how many served under organized military in Palestine. The reviewer is right about the intent of the Arab organizers, that they SOUGHT to remove Jews from Palestine. It was "Arab land" to them. NOT democratic land.

The Palestinian forces are described as disarrayed, highly highly factional, lacking unity or even fellow feeling for their neighbor Palestinians.

The Arab armies are described as land-grabbing, fought by draftees (only the poor ones, and very coerced) or prisoners compelled to fight.

That they had very very low morale is NOT due to oppression or ethnic cleansing or numerical inferiority.

TELL THE STORY is the point.

"You cannot steal my anger".

You wouldn't believe how many times I've heard that in polemic "movement" meetings. You know what. Acting out the anger did NOT result in good relationships, justice for anyone, survival for projects or institutions, accountability to anyone.

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

Ilan Pappe had the following article which is a must read as well:

http://www.ilanpappe.org/Articles/What%20Does%20Israel%20Want.html

What Does Israel Want?

Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 14 July 2006

Imagine a group of high ranking generals who simulated for years Third World War scenarios in which they can move huge armies around, employ the most sophisticated weapons in their disposal and enjoy the immunity of a computerized headquarters from which they can direct their war games. Now imagine that they are informed that in fact there is no Third World War and their expertise is needed to calm down some of the nearby slums or deal with soaring crime in deprived townships and impoverished neighborhoods. And then imagine - in the final episode in my chimerical crisis - what happens when they find out how irrelevant have their plans been and how useless are their weapons in the struggle against the street violence produced by social inequality, poverty and years of discrimination in their society. They can either admit failure or decide none the less to use the massive and destructive arsenal at their disposal. We are witnessing today the havoc wreaked by Israeli generals who opted for latter course of action.

I have been teaching in the Israeli universities for 25 years. Several of my students were high ranking officers in the army. I could see their growing frustration since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987. They detested this kind of confrontation, called euphemistically by the gurus of the American discipline of International Relations: 'low intensity conflict'. It was too low to their taste. They were faced with stones, molotov bottles and primitive arms which required a very limited use of the huge arsenal the army has amassed throughout the years and did not test at all their ability to perform in a battlefield or a war zone. Even when the army used tanks and F-16s, it was a far cry from the war games the officers played in the Israeli Matkal - headquarters - and for which they bought, with American tax payer money - the most sophisticated and updated weaponry existing in the market.

The first Intifada was crushed, but the Palestinians continued to seek ways of ending the occupation. They rose again in 2000, inspired this time by a more religious group of national leaders and activists. But it was still a 'low intensity conflict'; no more than that. But this is not what the army expected, it was yearning for a 'real' war. As Raviv Druker and Offer Shelah, two Israeli journalists with close ties to the IDF, show in a recent book, Boomerang (p. 50), major military exercises before the second Intifada were based on a scenario that envisaged a full-scale war. It was predicted that in the case of another Palestinian uprising, there would be three days of 'riots' in the occupied territories that would turn into a head-on confrontation with neighboring Arab states, especially Syria. Such a confrontation, it was argued, was needed to maintain Israel's power of deterrence and reinforce the generals confidence in their army's ability to conduct a conventional war.

The frustration was unbearable as the three days in the exercise turned into six years. And yet, the Israeli army's main vision for the battlefield is today still that of 'shock and awe' rather than chasing snipers, suicide bombers and political activists. The 'low intensity' war questions the invincibility of the army and erodes its capability to engage in a 'real' war. More important than anything else, it does not allow Israel to impose unilaterally its vision over the land of Palestine - a de-Arabized land mostly in Jewish hands. Most of the Arab regimes have been complacent and weak enough to allow the Israelis to pursue their policies, apart from Syria and Hizballah in Lebanon. They have to be neutralized if Israeli unileteralism is to succeed.

After the outbreak of the second Intifada in October 2000, some of the frustration was allowed to evaporate with the use of 1,000 kilo bombs on a Gaza house or during operation Defense Shield in 2002 when the army bulldozered the refugee camp in Jenin. But this too was a far cry from what the strongest army in the Middle East could do. And despite the demonization of the mode of resistance chosen by the Palestinians in the second Intifada - the suicide bomb - you needed only two or three F-16 and a small number of tanks to punish collectively the Palestinians by totally destroying their human, economic and social infrastructure.

I know these generals as well as one could know them. In the last week, they have had a field day. No more random use of one-kilo bombs, battleships, choppers and heavy artillery. The weak and insignificant new minister of defense, Amir Perez, accepted without hesitation the army demand for crushing the Gaza strip and grinding Lebanon to dust. But it may not be enough. It can still deteriorate into a full scale war with the hapless army of Syria and my ex-students may even push by provocative actions towards such an eventuality. And, if you believe what you read in the local press here, it may even escalate into a long distance war with Iran, backed by a supreme American umbrella.

Even the most partial reports in the Israeli press of what was proposed by the army to Ehud Olmert's government as possible operations in the coming days, indicate clearly what enthuses the Israeli generals these days. Nothing less that a total destruction of Lebanon, Syria and Tehran.

The politicians at the top are more tamed, to a point. They have only partially satisfied the army's hunger for a 'high intensity conflict'. But their politics of the day are already donned by military propaganda and rational. This why Zipi Livni, Israeli foreign minister, an otherwise intelligent person, could say genuinely on Israeli TV tonight (13 July 2006) that the best way to retrieve the two captured soldiers 'is to destroy totally the international airport of Beirut'. Abductors or armies that have two POWs of course immediately go and buy commercial tickets on the next flight from an international airport for the captors and the two soldiers. 'But they can sneak them with a car', insisted the interviewers. 'Oh indeed' said the Israeli Foreign Minister, 'This is why we will also destroy all the roads in Lebanon leading outside the country'. This is good news for the army, to destroy airports, set fire to petrol tanks, blow up bridges, damage roads and inflict collateral damage on a civilian population. At least the airforce can show its 'real' might and compensate for the frustrating years of the 'low intensity conflict' that had sent Israel's best and fiercest to run after boys and girls in the alleys of Nablus or Hebron. In Gaza the airforce has already dropped five such bombs, where in the last six years it dropped only one.

This may be not enough, though, for the army generals. They already say clearly on TV that 'we here in Israel should not forget Damascus and Teheran'. Past experiences tell us what they mean by this appeal against our collective amnesia.

The captive soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon have already been deleted from the public agenda here. This is about destroying the Hizballah and Hamas once and for all, not about bringing home the soldiers. In a similar way in the summer of 1982, the Israeli public have totally forgotten the victim that provided the government of Menachem Begin with the excuse of invading Lebanon. He was Shlomo Aragov, Israel's ambassador to London on whose life an attempt was made by a splinter Palestinian group. The attack on him served Ariel Sharon with the pretext of invading Lebanon and staying there for 18 years.

Alternative routes for the conflict are not even raised in Israel, not even by the Zionist left. No one mentions commonsensical ideas such as an exchange of prisoners or a commencement of a dialogue with the Hamas and other Palestinian groups at least over a long ceasefire to prepare the ground for more meaningful political negotiations in the future. This alternative way forward is already backed by all the Arab countries, but alas only by them. In Washington, Donald Ramsfeld may have lost some of his deputies in the Defense Department, but he is still the Secretary. For him, the total destruction of the Hamas and Hizballah - whatever the price and if it is without loss of American life - will 'vindicate' the raison d'être for the Third World Theory he propagated early on in 2001. The current crisis for him is a righteous battle against a small axis of evil - away from the quagmire of Iraq and a precursor for the so far unattained goals in the 'war against terror' - Syria and Iran. If indeed to a certain extent the Empire was serving the proxy in Iraq, the full fledged support President Bush gave to the recent Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon, shows that may be pay off time has come: now the proxy should salvage the entangled Empire.

Hizballah wants back the piece of southern Lebanon Israel still retains. It also wishes to play a major role in Lebanese politics and shows ideological solidarity with both Iran and the Palestinian struggle in general, and the Islamist one, in particular. The three goals do not always complement each other and resulted in a very limited war effort against Israel in the last six years. The total resurrection of tourism on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon testifies that, unlike the Israeli generals, for its own reasons the Hizballah is very happy with a very low intensity conflict. If and when a comprehensive solution for the Palestine question will be achieved even that impulse would die out. Crossing 100 yards into Israel proper is such an action. Retaliating to such a low key operation with a total war and destruction indicates clearly that what matters is the grand design not the pretext.

There is nothing new in this. In 1948, the Palestinians opted for a very low intensity conflict when the UN imposed on them a deal which wrested from their hand half of their homeland and gave it to a community of newcomers and settlers, most of whom arrived after 1945. The Zionist leaders waited for long time for that opportunity and launched an ethnic cleansing operation that expelled half of the land's native population, destroyed half of its villages and dragged the Arab world into unnecessary conflict with the West, whose powers were already on the way out with the demise of colonialism. The two designs are interconnected: the wider Israel's military might expands, the easier it is to complete the unfinished business of the 1948: the total de-Arabization of Palestine.

It is not too late to stop the Israeli designs from creating a new and terrible reality on the ground. But the window of opportunity is very narrow and the world needs to take action before it is too late.

[syvanen]

Richard you really do not have to deny the nakba; Israel will remain if that fact is acknowledged. The expulsions of Germans from Prussia, Pomerania and Sudetenland, the cleansings of Serbs from Krajin and Kosovo more recently are accepted facts and that acceptance will not reverse those events.

If you guys could accept the nakba it would go a long way towards accepting the Palestinians history and humanity. On that basis negotiations toward some kind of solution that acknowledges Palestinian greivances and possible restitution would become possible. Insisting on denying the facts of nakba will leave that road closed.

Just think how angry you get in the face of halocaust denial and you do the same to the Palestinians.

[The Fanonite]

I suspect this Richard fella belongs to the Israel lobby's cyber army (the GIYUS crowd). His methods at least conform to the standard hasbara model. He never addresses facts, merely impressions, or reputations. What he writes about Pappe is bullcrap. I know Pappe, and I've seen him take on a hall full of Zionist detractors and bat away every criticism thrown at him.

So here's an advice Richard (pardon me for dropping 'witty', since your comments have all the edge of damp cloth): next time you feel the need to impugn the reputation of someone of Pappe's stature, you better have facts handy.

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

As good as Finkelstein has been he still won't address the pro-Israel lobby's push for the war in Iraq (and it push for the coming one with Iran):

Finkelstein, a Victim of the Israel Lobby, Denies That It Has Power:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=85350

US Support of Israel's brutal oppression of the Palestinians PRIMARY MOTIVATION for tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and on 9/11 as well:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=39590

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

Read the UPI article (about Mearsheimer/Walt) at the beginning of the following URL for mention of the 'JINSA crowd' which is pushing US to war with Iran just like it did to get US into the Iraq quagmire:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=49800

Iran War, Real Fear Petraeus Beating War Drums for Attack

http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/04/why-arent-we-talking-about-this.html

AIPAC Pushing US to war with Iran for Israel:

http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2007/10/re-aipac-is-pushing-us-to-war-with-iran.html

[Richard Witty]

"Pappe's stature"?

I've read some of Pappe, more than most of the people that likely you accuse.

I liked his descriptions of pre-WW2 changes in Palestinian society. A bit incomplete, compared to Kimmerling or Morris for that matter, and a bit polemic.

Those changes are discounted by the left and the left/right.

But, in fact they are the conditions that led to the weakness and lack of morale of the Palestinian and Arab wars of 47/48.

The world changed. Land ownership standards. Globalization. New capital into the region from both Great Britain's war efforts and Zionism, and newly discovered oil.

ALL very significant movers of unintended social change.

Then WW2. A GIANT rock dropped into a potentially settling ocean, of which the need to settle formerly assimilated (mostly) Jewish European refugees was a necessity.

And, it did occur in an environment of commitment on the part of Jews to other Jews, NOT indifference as the Arab world responded to the needs of Palestinians. And, the Jewish armies were committed, disciplined, loyal, motivated internally and NOT by anger.

[MRW.]

Mr. John Mearsheimer,

Thank you for your note to Mr. Weiss; you write what I have determined from my own reading.

I would have preferred someone like Professor Zand of Israel to write that review, not Margolick, but then the Times is far beyond being balanced these days, or intellectually provocative in a thoughtful way. It may be The Grey Lady of print, but it's glasses have long since frosted over; it operates from selective long-term memory.

Another dip in circulation would do it good.

[Richard Witty]

Aren't you guys curious yourselves?

Don't you really want to know what Ben Gurion said, did, thought? or whomever?

Why do you so passively just believe Pappe, rather than read for yourselves?

I also have limited time, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with myself making public statements if I didn't read sufficiently to distinguish what I knew from what I didn't.

Mearsheimer?

[Richard Witty]

Which of these statements is more true?

1. The Palestinian people are currently suffering, and require a change in condition to become healthy.

2. The Palestinian people are currently angry at how they have been treated in the past (grossly), and require "justice".

[MRW.]

"The world changed. Land ownership standards. Globalization. New capital into the region from both Great Britain's war efforts and Zionism, and newly discovered oil. ALL very significant movers of unintended social change. Then WW2."

Nothing could be further from the truth. Read "The Transfer Agreement" by Edwin Black, 1984 MacMillan edition only. It was all intended and the Zionists did it in cahoots with the Riech, even while hiding what they were doing from the majority of Jewry.

[Richard Witty]

Syvannen,
Which nakba?

[Richard Witty]

So, you disagree with Pappe then, Mr W?

""The world changed. Land ownership standards. Globalization. New capital into the region from both Great Britain's war efforts and Zionism, and newly discovered oil. ALL very significant movers of unintended social change. Then WW2."

Nothing could be further from the truth."

[MRW.]

I don't have to believe what Pappe says about Ben Gurion, although he's accurate. I was educated by one of Ben Gurion's friends in Israel, who told me what Ben Gurion thought and said.

Pappe is right. And so was Benny Morris is his 2004 interview with Shavit. (BTW, Ben Gurion despised, loathed, Begin. He feared in the 60s that if Begin ever became PM, it would mean the 'death of Israel', and he called Sharon a 'gangster' and never thought he would ever be elected to office, ever.)

[Todd]

#1 applies to both Israelis and Palestinians. #2 applies to the Palestinians only, and it is still going on. Why choose between the two?

I don't mean any disrespect, but why do we need Walt and Mearsheimer to tell us that Isreal was founded by conquest, and that the defeated were vanquished and savaged, and are still suffering and angry?

The problem with Israelis, zionists, Jews, or any groups or individuals that define Israeli injustice favorably, is that they are just not honest. Just admit the obvious. The world accepts conquest on a regular basis. I think it is outrageous to expect others to pay for, lie about or cheer the situation.

[Richard Witty]

Pappe is right about many things. He's wrong about others.

He is only one interpretation, of which there are various.

The discussion is about intent, and intent of a collectivity, not of an individual, and not even of a changing individual.

The facts of Palestinians' conditions are facts, known.

Lets deal with what is known, rather than what is contended.

Among MANY Palestinian solidarity there is utter indifference to the current experience and prospects for Palestinians and Palestine as a nation, but MUCH contempt for what they guess at (relying on the word of a few individuals that they haven't even read thoroughly or critically - so that their assertions stand some test of their own scrutiny).

Mearsheimer for example, if he doesn't change how he expresses himself and what he expresses, will be Phil's Reverend Wright.

[syvanen]

Richard writes:
"Syvannen,
Which nakba?"

I knew you would dissemble. How, I wasn't sure, but this one is really clever. You pretend to not know what I am talking about.

Why are you in nakba denial?

[syvanen]

Richard writes:
"Syvannen,
Which nakba?"

I knew you would dissemble. How, I wasn't sure, but this one is really clever. You pretend to not know what I am talking about.

Why are you in nakba denial?

[Richard Witty]

Syvannen,
There are multiple interpretations of the nakba.

The literal meaning is of catastrophe, of great and intimate tragedy. I don't deny that. I don't presume that Zionism's success did not result in the suffering of others, nor do I deny responsibility to right prior wrongs.

For example, I do consistently speak of the rule of law in a color-blind manner as THE means to assert title claims to land taken by either force or eminent domain after the 52 law (and that the 50's laws don't magically dismiss contested title as many Zionist apologists contend).

I do contest the inferences of conspiratorial intent as THE story of Zionism from inception to current.

I do believe that some Zionists, opportunists, did engage in some conspiratorial intent (at specific times, and probably some over extended times).

Most fit in the category of conditionally accepting Arabs as peers in Israel.

But, the review's and commentary's assertion that the sequence of history is what caused the nakba and NOT intent, is more accurate a description of the reality.

They will likely NEVER be able to be accurately determined, as the questions are skew to the reality. (What does a collectivity of non-conspiring civilians "conspire" to?)

They certainly accepted the safety that the Jewish state offered, compared to the violence of the Arab League, and the violence of post-war Europe.

[Richard Witty]

I similarly ask Saif indirectly, if he is reading, if he conditionally would accept Zionism, or if his comments are of unconditional rejection?

[Todd]

I'm not sure about the source, but I read this article about a year ago, and wondered if there is any significance to it. It ties oil, Israel and PNAC together quite nicely. Any opinions?

http://www.sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1118&Itemid=5

[Charles Keating]

Richard, I do appreciate, for one, that you have been absorbing the factual complexity of the problem. This is illustrated in part by what you concede above--now, all you need to do is realize
that most Americans, the grunts of the only Superpower, if they ever evidenced the slightest interest, only know a one-sided view of what happened in 1948 et seq. And that this unbalance of information, intentionally kept until Carter, then M & W took a courageous plunge, must be set more evenly.

I don't understand you since you have often said on Phil's blog that those who come here regularly are a mere microscopic handful, and yet you address Phil's articles as if most Americans
know the untidy whole reason why the World thinks we are insane and exceedingly dangerous.

[Arie Brand]

In his defence of land theft Witty coined the term 'democratic land' (see above) - which apparently is, for him, land that is up for grabs by the strongest party. He has, however, illustrious Israeli examples for providing this kind of euphemistic-ideological veneer for land theft, the writings of no less a person than Martin Buber. Compare this piece by the Israeli anthropologist Uri Davis:

"The first Jewish co-operative agricultural settlement was established in Palestine in 1909. The founders of what was to become the kibbutz movement believed they were laying the basis for a new society for the Jews, one based on cooperation, equality and communal living. One of the ideologues of the movement was the philosopher Martin Buber. In his book Paths in Utopia, which remains one of the most powerful critiques of authoritarian socialism, he claimed that this movement was one example of a non-authoritarian, libertarian or "utopian" socialism that had not failed. Uri Davis challenges this understanding of the kibbutz movement and draws parallels with the failure of Buber himself to live by the ethic he endorsed.
Martin Buber's Paths in Utopia
The Kibbutz: an experiment that didn't fail? "
________________________________________
• Uri Davis
________________________________________

"It is important to note at the outset that my own intellectual and moral development was profoundly influenced by Martin Buber's writings. Buber's article "What is to be done" in Pointing the Way represents a milestone in the process of my ideological radi-calisation. (Uri Davis, Crossing the border)
This, then, is a personal account of a critical Buber disciple. Buber did not live to witness the 1967 war and the cruelty and the violence of the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai. But he did witness the 1948 war and the mass "ethnic cleansing" of the indigenous Palestinian-Arab people and the subsequent razing to the ground iof more than 400 villages and neighbourhoods by the Israeli army under the cover of the hostilities.

Selling out

Like Buber, one of my father's relatives (Leon Roth), was a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem at the time. He also witnessed the atrocities committed against the Palestinian Arabs in the name of the "Jewish State". Unlike his colleague Buber, however, he resigned his post and returned to Britain.
Buber, on the other hand, sold out. In 1963 he had this to say: "I have accepted as mine the state of Israel, the form of the new Jewish community that has arisen from the war. I have nothing in common with those Jews who imagine that they may contest the factual shape which Jewish independence has taken." (Martin Buber, "Israel and the Command of the Spirit", Israel and the World, p257.)

According to Edward Said, prior to 1948 the Buber family were tenants of the Saids in Jerusalem. They paid their rent for their house in the wealthy mixed Arab-Jewish Talbiyya Quarter to Edward Said's father. Sometime towards 1948, a tenant-landlord dispute erupted between Mr Said and Professor Buber, and the case was taken for adjudication before the British Mandate court. Buber lost the case and had to leave the premises.
At the door, after returning the keys to Edward Said's father, Buber turned round and said: "Mr Said, you just wait. I will be back."

Buber: comeback kid

The war that began with the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948 ended in 1949 with the expulsion of approximately 75 per cent of the indigenous Palestinian Arab populations from some 400 Arab localities that came under the control of the Israeli army.
In the armistice agreements between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Jerusalem was partitioned and Talbiyya was ceded to Israel. In consequence, the Said family were classified under Israeli law as "absentees", their rights to their properties in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel were nullified and vested with the Israeli Custodian for Absentees' Property.
Immediately after the war Buber was as good as his word. He returned to take residence in the Saids' house in Talbiyya, now as tenant of the Custodian. He lived there for the rest of his life. (Uri Davis, op cit, p54.)
Against the backdrop of the continu-ing Israeli denial of the rights of the 1948 Palestine refugees to return, and the occupation since 1967 of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Martin Buber's "Epilogue" in Paths in Utopia makes for an almost surreal reading.

Jewish Village Commune

Buber's support for the co-operative movement in general, as an important socialist advance, was well placed. What is highly questionable, however, is his assertion that "there is only one all-out effort to create a Full Co-operative which justifies our speaking of success in the socialistic sense, and that is the Jewish Village Commune in its various forms as founded in Palestine" (Paths in Utopia, p141). This is because Buber simply lies in his account of the co-operative enterprise he refers to as a "signal non-failure", namely, the Zionist co-operative movement in Palestine and subsequently in Israel.

The better-known formations of this co-operative enterprise are the Jewish village communes known as the Kibbutz (collective) and Moshav (small-holding co-operative) settlement federation and the more recent development of leafy middle-class suburban localities known as "Community" settlements.

The uniqueness of this Zionist co-operative venture is not, as Buber alleged, in that "it alone has proved its vitality in all three spheres" of "internal relationships, federation and influence on society at large" (ibid), or that in establishing the Jewish village commune "the primary thing was not ideology but work" (Paths, p142). Nor is the uniqueness of the venture represented in its ability to constantly "branch off" into new forms and new intermediate forms (Paths, p145). Rather, the unique feature of the Zionist co-operative enterprise was and remains: a) its utility as a strategic colonial instrument directed to alienate the indigenous Palestinian Arab population from their lands, and b), its racism-membership in these co-operative village communities was (and remains) only open to Jews.
Buber's Paths in Utopia was completed in 1945. The Hebrew edition was published in 1946, the English edition four years later in 1949. Fifty odd years on, the Kibbutz, Buber's "signal non-failure" co-operative venture, is privatising as fast as it can. Very little is left of its mutual aid co-operative structures, except for the Admission Committee, whose primary function is to screen candidates for Kibbutz membership and ascertain that they are not Arab (and preferably also not gay, lesbian, single parents, elderly, physically and/or mentally challenged etc).

Co-ops and the apartheid state

It is clear to me that the Zionist co-operative movement in Palestine has been a primary driving force in the development and consolidation of Israeli apartheid; playing a role similar to that played by the Dutch Reform Church in the development and consolidation of South African apartheid. In recent decades the falsehood of Buber's assessment of the Zionist co-operative venture in Palestine became progressively transparent.
The Kibbutz collective dining room has now become a paying cafeteria and, under privatisation, sections of the Kibbutz membership (eg the elderly) have been pauperised to the extent that some are not able to afford to pay for a full meal. There have been reports in the Israeli Hebrew press of elderly Kibbutz members covering their meat portion with a heap of rice in order to save money at the till. A "signal non-failure", as Buber would have it.

Victimised, colonised, ghettoised

I live in an Arab city called Sakhnin in central Galilee, northern Israel. Under the British Mandate (1922- 1948) the Palestinian Arab people of Sakhnin owned and had access to some 70,000 dunums (17,500 acres) of land. In 1948 the State of Israel was established and today the municipal jurisdiction of Sakhnin is less than 10,000 dunums. The balance of some 60,000 dunums has been confiscated by the various authorities of the State of Israel for exclusively Jewish settlement, including Zionist co-operative settlement, development and cultivation. After I awake in my flat in Sakhnin, brush my teeth, shave, comb my balding scalp, dress and go out to the veranda to greet my neighbours, I see my city of Sakhnin surrounded by a circle of rather lovely leafy rural suburban communal co-operative residential localities, Buber's "new forms and new intermediate forms" of Zionist co-operative village communities. These include Hararit, Yahad, Avtalion, Yodfat, Raqefet, Atzmon, Yuvalim, Eshar, Eshbal and more, mostly perched on the mountain tops around the city and incorporated in the Regional Council of Misgav.
The Misgav Regional Council controls some 185,000 dunums incorporating six Palestinian Arab settlements, classified in Misgav's literature as "Bedouin", and 28 Jews-only communal settlements around Sakhnin and beyond. The total population of Misgav Regional Council is less than 15,000 (approximately 12 dunums -three acres-per person). Sakhnin City Council municipal jurisdiction is today some 10,000 dunums. Its total popula-tion is about 22,000 (approximately 0.5 dunum-0.125 acres-per person).
As I see it, Sakhnin has been victimised by Buber's "signal non-failure", internally colonised by the "Full Co-operative" of the "Jewish Village Commune" and ghettoised by "new forms and new intermediate forms" of the Zionist co-operative movement.
________________________________________
Dr Uri Davis is an anthropologist; a critical researcher of Israel's land tenure and settlement policies; and author of a number of titles on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, most recently Israel: an apartheid state (Abridged Edition), (Media Review Network, Laudium, 2001). A citizen of Israel and Britain born in Jerusalem in 1943, he has been at the forefront of the defence of human rights, notably Palestinian rights, since 1965, and has pioneered critical research on Zionism and Israel since the mid-1970s.
Bibliography
Martin Buber (edited and translated with an introduction by Maurice Friedman), Pointing the Way (Harper Torchbooks, 1963).
Martin Buber (translated by R F C Hull), Paths in Utopia (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949).
Martin Buber, Israel and The World (Stockmen Books, 1963).
Uri Davis, Crossing the Border: an autobiography of an anti-Zionist Palestinian Jew (Books & Books, 1995).
Uri Davis, Israel: utopia incorporated - a study in class, state and corporate kin control (Zed Press, 1977).
Uri Davis, Israel: an apartheid state (Zed Books, London, 1987; second edition 1990; abridged edition, Media Review Network, Laudium, 2001).

[Charles Keating]

Witty, Phil's point, if I take him right, is just compare the story Of Little David battling Goliath, Uris for American textbooks, with what really happened.

Geez, you remind me of that Austiran father who fucked his own daughter for years, and that American who fucked whomever he could catch. They both kept their victims in shabby dungeons to service their Viagra. Just tune in to the usual cable TV channels to watch interviews how they think they were doing nothing wrong.

[Jan]

Anyone who denies that the Zionists ethnically cleansed the indigenous Palestinians is either a fool or a liar.
In 1952 when I met my brother-in-law who had left the U.S. to join the Haganah, he proudly told me how at gunpoint they drove an entire village of Arabs into Lebanon. Their land was wanted for a kibbutz and the Arabs had to go. He smiled as he recalled how they fled leaving their shoes by the door and their pots on the stove. If this isn't ethnic cleansing, I don't know what is.
I don't know if my relative killed any of the hapless and innocent Arabs who did not want to be pushed out of their homes. I didn't want to ask.
Several years ago on an Israeli government web site I searched for photos of the Arab lands which had become a kibbutz. One of the photos was entitled "Breaking stones for a new road at Kibbutz........." The stones were the former homes of the ethnically cleansed Palestinians.

[Charles Keating]

Oops, I mean "Austrian" not "Asutiran."

Arie Brand's comment.

Geez, what a detailed account of a moral sell out. Well, none of us are perfect I guess. I'm guessing, most Germans would agree, given their history.

Time for World Jews to accept the lesson? Better yet, time for them to admit who's paying the price?

It will be interesting to see if an effective agency evolves for Palestinians as the one that has evolved for tracking immoral Nazis.

You have to admit, more and more Gentiles are catching on to the real import of money and propaganda, no?

If you agree, and consider the access of information provided by the internet, wouldn't you agree that Jews really need truth as much as Goys?

Does this mean the increasing sophistication of propaganda?

Yes.

Watch out.

Who's stealing your wallet?

[Charles Keating]

Thanks, Jan, for being an honest witness. It means a lot, as much
as any little shoe piled up in the Holocaust museum. We have to consider all of this. We have to be more responsible than Wolfowitz et al. We owe it. We also owe a lot to the average
USA soldier. Unlike the IDF, they have a much more abstract
humanism to fight for; they have neither settling scores, tribal
battles, or race supremecy.

What nation's soldiers ever fought so courageously in the annuls of history for more humanistic Idealism?

And they come from the working class and lower middle class.

Yes, that's the dual motivation.

No tool power group has ever been more pure.

Who sees this?

[The Fanonite]

"Pappe is right about many things. He's wrong about others."

Spoken like a true GIYUS bot. Now how about listing some of the things that Pappe got wrong? I am not interested in impressions; give me verifiable errors or misrepresentations.

[Charles Keating]

Great, now we know that where a person put his or her life on the line doesn't matter. Everything is fiction, and just some fools pay the ultimate price.

[Arie Brand]

I cannot recall now where I read Witty's description of what he obviously regarded as one of the achievements of the Israeli government. He referred to this, in his cryptic way, as: land titling - not squatters.

I think I know what he referred to. It was the quasi-legal veneer under which land was grabbed on the West Bank.

I have written about this earlier.

Until about 1977 such seizures were mainly justified by citing security reasons. A military commander would spell out such reasons in an affidavit and the defence minister would back it up with a statement of his own. This way of going about things became undesirable mainly because the invocation of such reasons was often patently absurd and also because it could lead into legal hassles. Though challenges were mostly futile (the Israeli Supreme Court took the military declarations at face value) they did entail legal formalities and unwelcome publicity.

After 1977 things were changed. Under the direction of Likud’s legal eagle, Ms.Pli’a Albek, appeals to the Supreme Court were made impossible. Now all appeals had to be directed to military commissions consisting of members of the military government itself and these were heard in camera – a method which prevented unwelcome publicity.

After diligent digging Ms.Albek found two Ottoman legal provisions that were to her purpose. The first of these dated from 1855 and has long since been rescinded in Turkey itself (and is not applied in Israel). It held that any land not explicitly granted by the Sultan to anyone belonged to the Sultan unless it was located so close to a town or village that a scream from a person on this parcel of land could be heard in the center of this town or village. These tests were performed in all seriousness by Israeli officials (often after the village or town concerned was put under a curfew for the purpose).

The second Ottoman legal provision that Ms. Albek found to her liking held that if a piece of land, whether close to a village or not, had not actually been used for pasture or farmed for a number of years, it also belonged to the Sultan (I found a rather ludicrous scene described in which Sharon, then Minister of Agriculture and the 'patron of the settlers' movdement', consorted with Ms.Albek to count the number of goat droppings on the tracks around a village to conclude to the presence or absence of land use).

Since Israel apparently held that it was in these matters the successor in law to the Ottoman Empire it donned the garb of the Sultans and acquired in this way land without paying a penny of compensation. And where Ottoman laws did not provide sufficient justification for the seizure of coveted land other reasons could be invoked: the land was designated for ‘archeological excavations” or a ‘nature reserve” or “ recreation park” etc.etc. In this way Israel had already confiscated more than half of the West Bank land by the beginning of the nineties. Henceforward this land would only be accessible for Jews. Israeli citizens who could not be typified as such could not apply for settlement there and to Palestinians it was off limits altogether..

Now even if we take Israel’s adoption of these ancient Ottoman legal provisions seriously it will be quite easily guessed where the shoe pinched. The premiss was that any land taken was state land. It was thus up to the owners to prove that somehow they had a right to it on the basis of Ottoman or Jordanian legal documents (they could not do so on the basis of Israeli documents because Israeli military order 291, issued in 1968, suspended land registration indefinitely). Here was the first hurdle for traditional owners because many of them did not have explicit documents conferring ownership. This is not uncommon at all in countries with inadequate land registries. If, for instance,an Asian country such as the Philippines would adopt the position that any land on which there was no explicit title belonged to the state it could confiscate most rural properties tomorrow – because many of these have nothing more than a tax declaration to prove ownership and others have no documents at all.

But even if owners had legal documents concerning a title they were in no way out of the woods. The land registry systems used by the Ottoman Empire and Jordan were often difficult to decipher and uncertain about the boundaries of the property described because these could be indicated by landmarks that might no longer exist.

Moreover, the manner in which Israel notified Palestinians of land seizures also created problems. Apparently it rarely attached maps showing the boundaries of what is now regarded as state land. Those who took the trouble to lodge an appeal had to hire their own surveyor and attorney and then still frequently discovered that they had missed an appeal date or had lodged an appeal for the wrong plot since it was not clearly indicated from the start what the right plot was.

The methods employed to seize land in East Jerusalem are too convoluted to be described here.

These quasi-legal methods of land acquisition piled layer upon layer of unfairness. First, there was the legal fiction that the Ottoman Sultan was the supreme owner of the land. Colonial states often used the same fiction about their particular territory. The pre-colonial princes, so it was held, were owners of the land. Their successor in law, the colonial state, was thus entitled to the same ownership.
Second, there was the fiction that land ownership is preponderantly of an individual nature – it is unclear whether communal ownership too could, in Ms.Albek’s view, be indicated by the range of a scream (I rather think not because of the requirement of signs of actual exploitation – also, Israel sets village boundaries unilaterally on the basis of aerial photographs).The government of the Netherlands East Indies (present day Indonesia) entertained a similar fiction until it was proven by (Dutch) experts in Indonesian customary law that there was such a thing as a ‘communal right of avail’ over a certain area around and in a village – a right vested in all members of a community freely to avail themselves of and administer all land, water and other resources within a certain area. In pre-industrial England similar rights existed but were often undone by the legalised land grabbing in the eighteenth century 'enclosure' movement. I would be very surprised if a similar right didn’t exist in Palestine but it seems fairly clear that if so the Israeli government has ignored it.

Third, there was the requirement that land ownership is demonstrated by documentary evidence. Not even the colonial government I am reasonably familiar with (that of the Netherlands East Indies) ever came up with this requirement in a territory with a history of inadequate land registration. It is clear that this would be patently unfair (as I argued above, for instance, for the Philippines).
Fourth, the way in which the Israeli government announced its intended land seizures made it very difficult and costly for owners to lodge an appeal, as has been indicated above.

What is this all about? Were Israel’s housing needs so pressing that it had to resort to these methods of land acquisition? This was most certainly not the case. Only a small percentage of the seized land, now off limits to Palestinians and only inhabitable by Jews (even if they came straight from overseas and had never lived in Israel before), originally became inhabited. Sometimes even already built housing units remained vacant for a considerable time, in spite of all kinds of perks offered to settlers by the government (subsidized mortgages, educational subsidies, generous grants to local government councils etc.).

Binyamin Netanyahu, then deputy to the Prime Minister, described in 1992 what this policy should lead to. The West Bank should become
"a sea of Israeli security with Arab autonomy pockets inside it".
"The Palestinians will be granted cultural, municipal and domestic political autonomy, but only in defined geographic boundaries where the majority of the Palestinian population lives. These areas will not be connected one with the other, there will be no central authority linking them, and each area will be surrounded by Israeli military installations, roadblocks and Jewish settlements." (Haaretz, March 1, 1992).

Baruch Kimmerling, professor of sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, found a telling term for this policy: ‘politicide’, a policy of which the ultimate goal is "the dissolution of the Palestinian people’s existence as a legitimate social, political and economic entity".
"This policy may also, but not necessarily, include the partial or complete ethnic cleansing from the territory known as the Land of Israel."
This policy is often referred to as amounting to a creation of ‘Bantustans’ but the ‘eminence grise’ of Dutch sociology, Jacques van Doorn, has pointed out that this actually attaches more opprobrium to the Afrikaners than they deserve. They, at least, were concerned to make of the Bantustans viable social-economic units. No similar concern can be found on the side of the Israeli government.
The rate of unemployment among Palestinians is frightening. Many can only survive on food handouts from international agencies. The obstacles put in their way, also in the form of roadblocks, manned by young soldiers whose discretionary power has frequently gone to their heads, is well known (even George Bush spoke once of the ‘daily humiliations’ suffered by Palestinians).The settlements are often inhabited by fanatical Zionists – the Gush Emunim settlers were the pioneers here - who harass their Palestinian neighbours (the Israeli army is not allowed to use its weapons against these characters).

In short, it seems to me that there is something going on here that is more than ‘politicide’. The aim seems to be to make daily life so immensely difficult for Palestinians that many will pack up and leave ‘voluntarily’ if they have the chance. This would make more direct methods of 'ethnic cleansing' superfluous.

(Charles Keating - why this reference to Germans? I happen to be an Australian of Dutch extraction).

[NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL]

General Petraeus: Zionism’s Military Poodle

http://www.itszone.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=88974

[Alan Cabal]

I notice that Israel's Willing Executioners are becoming more shrill and desperate as the end of American support for the Jewish state draws nearer. It is always satisfying to watch torturers squirm.

[Doug]

So a Jewish writer for the Jewish owned and Jewish controlled New York Times favorably reviews a book written by another Jewish writer, which repeats Jewish lies intended to cover up the Jewish crime of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people who populated the land coveted by organized Jewry? Wow, who could have imagined such a thing was possible?

[Todd]

"I happen to be an Australian of Dutch extraction."

Whatever happened to Alby Mangels?

[samuel burke]

to the zionist who read this ...may you remember israels independence day and think of the holocaust that you all are putting the palestinians through...history will not absolve you.

you have been chosen so show the world your class.

[Arie Brand]

Alby Mangels? I must confess that I wasn't aware of his existence until you drew my attention to it.

[FirstCasualty]

Iraqi nor Jordanian peoples, disregarding their leadership, would ever let such a pipeline exist. Our war was not led by oil interests obviously. It was led to contain yet
another threat in the minds of the paranoid apartheid zionist.

[Joachim Martillo]

There was a strong conspiratorial and subversive element in Jewish imperialism and colonialism right from the start.

See http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/05/fight-judonia-now-or-never.html.

Why do you think so many Neocons have been so enamored of Strauss's "secret philosophy?"

In Germanizing Polish areas incorporated into Prussia, the Prussian government encouraged collective techniques among German peasant farmers settled among Poles because otherwise the German farmers could not compete with much more cost-effective Polish agriculture.

In this endeavor, Polish ethnic Ashkenazim often served as native collaborators.

It is highly probable that the Prussian collectives and Jewish experience therewith were an input into the logic of the kibbutz.

Because of his studies in Eastern European Jewry, it is hard to imagine that Buber was not familiar with the collective farming techniques encouraged by the Prussian government.

[Todd]

Interesting, Joachim. I was under the impression that the kibbutz movement sprang partly out of utopian fantasy, and largely out of the collectivist example of set by the Russian serfs.

[Todd]

"Iraqi nor Jordanian peoples, disregarding their leadership, would ever let such a pipeline exist. Our war was not led by oil interests obviously. It was led to contain yet
another threat in the minds of the paranoid apartheid zionist."

I don't claim that the theory is correct, or even that the plan is good. I just know that the people who planned the war failed to take many things into account for the actions that they did take.

Is it your view that the author wrote fiction? Maybe there is no basis for the opinion, but it does lay out an economic angle for the PNAC people, where the Americans are usually the ones described as grabbing at oil profits.

[Joachim Martillo]

Sorry, the URL I listed in my previous post was supposed to be: http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2008/05/fight-judonia-now-or-never.html .

[Fed Up]

I'm not sure if Phillip has mentioned this: Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founding Executive Director of the new pro-Israel pac, J Street, wrote in a very recent commentary (I read it within the last week) that his grandfather, one of Israel's founders and a member of Irgun, worked with the Nazi's Eichmann to transport Jews from Europe to Palestine.

So, if someone like Ben-Ami, one of the crown princes of Zionism, admits that the Zionists worked with the Nazis to create what became Israel, who are we, or Richard Witty, to dispute it?

[George]

Richard Witty wrote: "If you want to be partisan and known as being partisan, you quote Pappe. If you want to be known as historian, you take his source documents, others citations of source documents, your own research and read them yourself."

I read Pappe's book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine." I also read his citation notes. Pappe most certainly did cite source documents.

[George]

Richard Witty wrote: "If you want to be partisan and known as being partisan, you quote Pappe. If you want to be known as historian, you take his source documents, others citations of source documents, your own research and read them yourself."

I read Pappe's book, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine." I also read his citation notes. Pappe most certainly did cite source documents.

[Morey]

While Mersheimer is correct that there are experts that disagree with Benny Morris, it's worth noting, there are experts that disagree with Mersheimer, especially some of his choices of historians to quote. But, at least he provided some original sources. I think the bigger problem is the use of generalizations like 'the Palestinians' and 'the Arabs.' The fact is, some Palestinians opposed the Zionists but some Palestinian villages made non-aggression pacts with nearby Jewish communities. Some Arabs fled. Some were deliberately frightened with loud artillery (the infamous Davidka); some refused to believe that they would be harmed by their Jewish neighbours and stayed. Some stayed and died. Some prospered. Some Arabs, such as the Druze and Circassians, joined the Haganah and fought invading Arab forces.

It's a complex and convoluted tale. But, one thing is certain: the Arabs, both within and around Palestine, outnumbered the Jews considerably. Where were they when the fighting began? Why did the Mufti have to travel around Palestine demanding that each village give him at least 30 recruits? Why did so few Palestinian Arabs (only around 6,500 apparently) join the fight? Why were there so few Arab regulars from other Arab states willing to fight the Jews? They claimed they supported the Palestinians, but when it came down to a fight, they were suspiciously absent. One cannot help but think that this was the great catastrophe: the complete collapse of Arab honour and integrity. The Palestinians all but sat out the war, waiting to be saved by strident would-be defenders who never showed up. Pan-Arabism never had a chance.

[Rabbit]

Richard Witty, just for the record, is a better than average Zionist Cyber Shill. No less dishonest or horrible in his viewpoints or intentions than any though. SO predictable. Better than average though because nobody has been called an anti-Semite yet, (though it is being subtly implied near the end, here it comes) and so far we haven't had the usual whining "oh poor us, why does everybody hate us so?" though that is the overall message being projected.

Let me give an account which should put in perspective the supposed rising "antisemitism" around the world. I grew up in the LDS church and as such was indoctrinated with the full force of Christian Zionism and as a young man I accepted the whole story as they like to portray it, without question. I also bought into all the twisted lies about Islam and Arabs which are perpetrated by the media (which I now recognise is controlled by Zionists) and by Zionism in all its guises. The so called War on Terror stank like shit from the start. As an experienced person in explosives I knew in September 2001 I was looking at explosive destruction of the two, and later as I learned three WTCs. That made me sit up and take notice of what was going on. Thereafter I have followed the same course of discovery as millions of others and that is why you are feeling the heat of the spotlight my Zionist compadres.

The accelerating campaign of hate and sometimes overt, while at other times covert propaganda being directed at Arabs and Muslims in general, was enough for someone like me who values his integrity, to investigate further. I soon learned about the truth of Zionism. Its lies and history which mostly consists of cleverly produced and fabricated myths. I learned about Israel atrocities and saw them in action in their atrocious and transparent blitzkrieg of Lebanon in 2006. By now I had come to recognise from direct experience how full of hate and venom is the Zionist. I have had several late night phone calls threatening me in a most disgusting manner for speaking simple truths about Zionism on the net. In all my other subjects of passionate interest, never has any other but Zionists sunk to the level of direct threats and even going to the trouble of tracing me and phoning directly. At this stage I have learned the whole sorry history of the Jewish people, (sic) and the seemingly endless sting of lies and abuse of their unsuspecting hosts. I cannot but feel a deep and abiding antipathy towards the nasty little terrorist state and have no desire to see anything but the absolute end to the Zionist state. I have no bigotry towards Jews, some of whom are enlightened and as opposed to Israeli terrorism as anyone, though I am too well informed at this time to be able to separate Zionism's putrescence from its obvious Jewish roots.

Thus you can see, with the best will in the world, I have come the full circle. In addition to this, consider the implications of the following.

I have never heard of anyone who once they have come to recognise this point of view, who goes the other way. The movement of numbers is AWAY from Israel with NONE on the return journey. If the Zionists feel like they are getting near the edge of a cliff at this time, which might explain their increasing desperation and vindictiveness then they are right on the money. soon you will have nothing left but to rejoin the human race as co-equals or go ahead and give it your best shot, war pigs, carry out your threats to set the world on fire. The rate you and your "PONY" the USA are going you are going to do it one or or another, so come on then and let historic spite be the last thing we remember you for.

Perhaps this applies to our Mr Witty.

Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

"An anti-Semite used to mean a man who hated Jews. Now it means a man who is hated by Jews." - Joseph Sobran (Sobran's, Sep. 2002.)

[Jeff Abel]

Mearsheimer quotes Yadin [2nd hand] as saying that "we could have quelled the Arab riot in one month." He could have quoted Yadin who, when asked by Ben-Gurion to give a realistic evaluation of the future Israel's chances in the impending war, replied "50-50". He could have quoted Montgomery - who knew a little about war and the Middle East - who believed that the Jews would be overrun and slaughtered. But he didn't.

He prefers to quote Masalha and Pappe, neither military experts and both blatantly biased against Israel, one of whom [Pappe] is on record as preferring the narrative to the facts - if it serves an anti-Israel purpose - and whose books are replete with errors. And he claims to have laid out the actual figures on p.82 of the lobby book. In fact he cites Pappe again who gives grossly misleading figures.

The fact is that the 'war' began with Arabs shooting up a bus filled with Jews going to work on November 30th 1947. And the fact is that people like Kaukji came in with some 5000 well-equipped troops while the British were still in Palestine, and when Jews were imprisoned for carrying weapons. And Kaukji sat right in front of a British fort and ambushed Jewish Jerusalem's supply line. And the invasion from outside countries began even before the British had actually left. The Jordanian army attacked Jewish settlements south of Bethlehem on May 12 and Egyptian troops crossed the border on May 13. Arab invading troops were equipped with tanks, artillery and planes while the Jewish forces at this stage fought with hand weapons and very few low-grade anti-tank and artillery pieces. It was only desperate stands - such as at Yad Mordecai, Dan, Deganya and Mishmar HaYarden [where the Syrians took pleasure in gouging out eyes of prisoners, cutting off their testicles and placing them in the empty eye-sockets - as Arthur Koestler describes in 'Promise and Fulfilment'] that gave infant Israel a chance. Later in the war the numbers of those called up - many of whom were newly-arrived Holocaust survivors, hardly the well-trained troops Mearsheimer would have us believe the Jewish side fielded - greatly outnumbered that of the Arabs; but that is of course because of the desperation felt by the Jews - the Arabs talked of the slaughter awaiting and this just after the Holocaust; Mearsheimer would have them relate to this as mere rhetoric; despite the timing and the experience of 1929 and other Arab pogroms. The entire Jewish population - men, women and children, numbered 600,000 - strained every resource in an effort to survive. And Israel lost in this war over 6,000 people.

Then he claims that Arab leaders called on their followers to stay put; and here he is partially right; while Nuri-as-Said called on them to get out the way - not as Mearsheimer puts it, to avoid being massacred by Israel - but so the invaders would not have to worry about whom they were firing on, others such as the local Arab Higher Committee called on them to stay; from the safety of Beirut and Damascus. And if their leaders had already fled to safety what was the Arab peasant to think - that he should do as they told them or as they did. In the one clearly documented case - by the British in Haifa - the Arabs chose to leave. Everything else is far more hazy, and clearly was born of war, though Morris does try to document what happened village by village. Mearsheimer has no problem quoting Morris when it fits his purpose, but he only quotes Morris's evaluations as to what Ben-Gurion must have thought, not anything factual. And Morris fails to even consider how things had worked before the state was born - when the Jewish population settled more and more land sold to them by the very Arab leaders who led the revolt against them; neither he nor Mearsheimer consider how much easier that process would have been with a Jewish state in place. And so transfer was certainly not the only option; and it clearly was born in war. Commanders such as Carmel left no hostile villages in a position to cut his long and vulnerable supply line, but did not touch those villages which did not fight against him. Arabs fled because of fear and because of the example set by their leaders, and in a minority of the cases, because they were expelled. All born of war.

Mearsheimer falls into the basic error of reading Israel's later strength back to '48. And he is far too eager to accept on faith bad history as long as it is anti-Israel.

[therzal]

R Witty..
There is only one al Naqba. It began in 1948 and continues to this day. You know full well that the initial attacks, killings, rapes and expulsions in 48 are what Palestinians mean by al Naqba.. There is no other..
Are you an al Naqba denier??

[Falastini Hurr]

Let us intensify the efforts for the LOVE of Palestine. Do your part and perform your responsibility toward the Palestinian human rights. We are on the right track.

Mark you calendar for May 23-25 where we assert the Palestinian National rights. We will say it loud that we will never forget. Palestinians are the Key holders of peace. Join the thousands and strengthen the network of the thousands of activists. Express your opinion and let the many panelists know of where Palestine should go. Support our efforts to empower our community and assert the Palestinians right of return. Join the many Palestinian Americans and their supporters in Chicago commemorating the 60th year of the forced exile of the Palestinian people. Be pro active, ask questions to the Panelists and discuss the current event. We must empower ourselves and make a strong network for Justice, Peace and Freedom. Be pro active. Enough talks, Register on line.

[N. Friedman]

Mr. David Margolick read a different book than the one written by Professor Morris. In Morris' book, there is substantial examination of the motives on the Arab side, not just on the Israeli side. And, in particular - and not mentioned by David Margolick -, the religious motivation of the Arab side was not only mentioned but illustrated. In my estimation, Margolick reviewed earlier works by Morris. Morris, to make sure his meaning is clear, has written articles to that effect, such as this one: http://hnn.us/articles/49503.html

As for Professor Mearsheimer, he asserts knowledge of things he has not seen. That does not say much for a tenured professor.

As for those who have asserted things about Israel's motives, the clear evidence, if we go by Professor Morris' narrative in 1948, is that happenstance, rather than intent, was at work. He makes clear that Plan D simply was not a blueprint for expulsion.

I might also recommend to Professor Mearsheimer that he read some of what Professor Karsh has written about Pappe, not to mention Morris. The revisionists, among who Pappe and Morris are examples, play games with facts.

[Peter]

N. Friedman, professor Karsh likes to play games with facts too. See a part of
my reply
http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2008/05/surpressing-supersession.html?showComment=1210134000000#c2638690142292518944
(to another blog) based on a very cursory reading of his article here:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/1948--israel--and-the-palestinians-the-true-story-11355

[Danny]

Interesting to see the comments Mearsheimer makes. To my mind it only buttresses my view that this man and his colleague are deeply cynical frauds who have latched onto this subject as a quick and painless way to make money and notoriety.

Mearsheimer claims that palestinian forces had been "decimated" by the British in 1936-1939 - never mind that that was a decade before and that the overwhelming majority of deaths where arabs killing arabs - but as a simple fact these people who "were in no position to put up a fight", killed nearly 2,000 Jews between December 1947 and May 1948. The only force to kill more Jews were the Arab Legion and in pro rata terms these people who "had little fighting power" killed more Israelis than the Germans killed Russians in 1941. I wonder what reaction Mearsheimer would get if he claimed Barbarossa was "essentially a riot", and if to prove his cynicism he quotes Khalidi as a reliable source(note in M&W's book he relies more on Morris...).

Nur Massalha and Illan Pappe are both prominent and well-known frauds - Pappe isn't even ashamed of the fact he simply makes stuff up and is perfectly happy to lie about events. As for Finkelstein, at least Pappe has a passing acquaintance with an archive, Finkelstein basically writes glorified book reviews.

As for there being "no way that the Zionists could create a Jewish state without transfer", Jews were an absolute majority within the borders of the proposed Jewish state under partition - this is before the 150,000 odd refugees from Nazi camps came in. So this is patently and obviously a lie - and I have absolutely no doubt Mearsheimer knows it, especially given he quotes Morris in the next line saying that arabs were a minority.

As for the "myth" of Arab broadcasts, Morris provides archival evidence - you can check the footnotes. Also Naffez Nazzal - hardly a Zionist - provides plenty of evidence of exorbitant rumours that arab leaders spread about what Zionists would do to Arabs who remained(my favourite was the imminent use of an atomic bomb on Sfad).

As for the claim that Zionists "stole" Arab land, it seems strange that in one breath you can say that Jews only had a tiny percentage of the land - which was bought in a free exchange - and in the same breath say that Arabs were cleansed.

What Mearsheimer fails to mention is the "resistance" to Zionism amongst Palestinians it rose exactly with the rise of Hajj Husseini and his brand of "resistance" was by no way a "popular" or majority movement, just a violent nasty one.

If by "experts" who "disagree with Morris" he means Pappe, Finkelstein, Masalha, Said and Khalidi then I think that is a compliment to Prof Morris in the same category as when Libya wants to condemn Israel's record on human rights.

I think this just confirms Mearsheimer as a premier scumbag with zero self-respect who is willing to resort to any lie to strip what little respect Modern Middle Eastern History has and helps to finish off the "Lysenko-isation" of MMEH that Said started. Well if it worked for Pappe and Said why not? Far more profitable and far less effort than doing any real research.

[Danny]

Peter, read your comments:

The Irgun and lehi had less than 2,000 men out of 35,000 Israeli fighters and they were a fringe party for at least 20 years and only got power 30 years later. So it strikes me that "small Jewish underground group IZL" is perfectly accurate. Note the Palestinian forces that were "decimated" were several times larger than the Lehi and IZL combined, the ALA alone were twice the size.

Of course this is the way of Said-ian critic, damn the facts lets "analyse" the commenter.