'Commentary': 'Nakba' Is Arabic for 'Picnic'
Nakba-denying Commentary Magazine has chosen to expand and magnify its distortion of the Palestinian experience in its latest issue by printing Efraim Karsh's response to a critical letter pointing out that Karsh elided Arab testimony about the events of 1947-48 in his original article, where he claimed that Arabs were "driven" out of Jaffa and other Arab towns and villages by their own leaders.
Karsh's statements are so lacking in judgment and moral authority that I cannot waste the time of reading them in detail, not on this beautiful day. Though I'd note that he quotes the late scholar Ibrahim Abu-Lughod as saying he was ashamed when he boarded a Belgian ship that rescued him from Jaffa in April '48 when a sailor asked him, "Why don't you stay and fight." Karsh notes that Abu-Lughod wrote, "I have never forgotten his face and I have never had one good answer for him."
Karsh offers this as evidence that the Palestinians walked away. As if Jews who left Europe didn't have similar misgivings later about their failure to fight!
And Karsh has misrepresented Abu-Lughod. This is from his book, Resistance, Exile and Return:
Abu-Lughod has said that the Arabs' higher committee was urging Arabs to stay, but they were leaving in fright. Abu-Lughod's daughter Lila, a distinguished anthro at Columbia who has written a book called Nakba, says that her father was "driven from" Palestine by Zionists, not by Arabs. I have cited the testimony of people who were literally forced into the sea to survive (the perpetual nightmare raised about Israelis today). Karsh claims that these people all left because Palestinian society collapsed, and there was never "a Jewish design to dispossess the Palestinian Arabs." Then why wasn't Abu-Lughod invited back? And why wasn't UN 194, passed late in '48, honored? The Zionists wanted a substantial Jewish majority in the new state, and ethnic cleansing was the answer. In The Revolt, Menachem Begin, the former leader of the terrorist organization Irgun, says that the desertion by Arabs of Jaffa was effected by two causes, both Jewish: 1, reports of Deir Yassin--"the repute which propaganda had bestowed on [the Irgun]," says Begin, who tried to deny the massacre of early April but notes with pride that the fact that the Irgun was coming to Jaffa threw the Arabs into "abject fear." 2, "the weight of our bombardment." The expulsion of Arabs from Jaffa was intentional and necessary, Begin says. For Jaffa--the heart of Palestinian civilization-- was to remain Arab under U.N. partition. "Jaffa was intended to threaten Tel Aviv after the 15th of May...Jaffa was an instrument--perhaps the chief instrument--in the attempt to subjugate the Jews."
Begin's hysteria about British and Arab intentions might be comprehended if not excused: he was a Holocaust survivor. Terrorized people terrorized others. I have provided ample testimonials on this site of Arabs who fled Jaffa in pure terror. Imagine how Jews would feel if a once-prominent intellectual magazine asserted that Jews had walked away from Berlin after Kristallnacht in 1938?
At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign we have a Program for Jewish Culture and Society, which sponsors an Israel Studies program, which twice a year invites and Israeli (always Jewish, Israel Studies does not include non-Jewish Israelis). Israel Studies has been lauded by Chancellor Richard Herman, who is Jewish, and a year or more ago was taken on a trip to Israel with other university presidents, shown around, and came back with one thought in mind--no boycott of Israeli academics.
The Fall speaker has usually been a journalist or historian, the Spring speaker more artsy fartsy. The Fall is for propaganda, the Spring for sanitization. Last Fall it was Yosef Gorny, a critique of whose work on the origins of Zionism can be found in Norman Finkelstein's Image and Reality. Finkelstein accords him respect, although disagreeing with him on a fundamental level about the nature of Zionist ideology.
Gorny's presentation was unprofessional and unscholarly, with no references to the literature, more like a Zionist fairy tale he might tell to his grandchildren. As is the case in these matters, the event was attended almost only by Jews, academic or from the community. These events are never seen as a forum to debate serious issues, although two Muslim students attended and critically questioned him, as well as myself, especially on the role of transfer in labor Zionist ideology, which Gorny denies.
The comment that stuck in my mind from Gorny: In 1948, "some Palestinians ran, others were pushed out." Gorny, a refugee from Germany in the 1930s, would hardly apply the same terms to German Jews, of course.
Posted by: David Green | September 01, 2008 at 03:31 PM
Why didn't Israel invite the Pal's back? They offered to let 100K back, and that was an opening offer. The Arabs refused to negotiate. Meanwhile, they had hundreds of thousands of new immigrants, many expelled from Arab countries to feed, and no assurances that the Arabs who returned wouldn't be irredentists. It would have been quite irrational to "invite" the Arabs who were just at war with Israel to return in the absence of a peace agreement, which wasn't possible because non one was willing to negotiate with Israel except King Abdullah, who was assassinated.
Perhaps you would argue that this is what Ben-Gurion wanted in any event. Perhaps, but there's no denying he had no choice in the matter. Either commit natonal suicide, or refuse to allow the refugees to return in the absence of an internationally recognized peace agreement.
Posted by: GHY | September 01, 2008 at 06:41 PM
INTERVIEWS: 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF DEIR YASSIN MASSACRE
In retrospect, Palestinians of today admit that one of the most terrible mistakes they made back in 1948 was to over-report the details of the Deir Yassin massacre. "The goal was to mobilize Arab support for the Palestinians who were slaughtered by the Zionists but what really happened was that more and more Palestinians became scared and left their country," said Hazem Nusseibeh, a leading Palestinian figure who currently lives in Jordan. In 1948 he was among the key figures of the city of Jerusalem.
..."True, there was exchange of fire with the Jews. Prior to the attack, they used to come to the village and distribute leaflets calling for the establishment of friendly and brotherly relations with us offering a formula of 'do not hit us, we won't hit you.' Our youths confronted them and did not listen to them. Our youths used to go out to the eastern side of the village and beat up whatever Jew they saw."
...Mohammed Asaad Radwan Al Yassini, 70, who currently lives in the Old City of Jerusalem, confirmed that some of the men were dressed in women's outfits.
...Did they use speakers and what did they say?
"They called on us to surrender, to throw our weapons and to save ourselves. But we did not imagine them breaking into the village.
...Ali Yousef Jaber, Abu Yousef, is also 70 years old. He lives in Am'ari refugee camp near Ramallah. Excerpts below:
"I would like to stress on the fact that no rape incidents took place. That was part of a big lie that some of the Arabs and some of our leaders invented but were refuted by our villagers. I was among a group of people who went to Saad Eddin Al Aref to talk to him about this. He told us he wanted to frame them and attribute to them a brutal crime. I said to him: if you want to frame them, do not use Deir Yassin, or our women. Do not attribute to us something that never happened, otherwise this is infamy that our village and its people do not deserve...
Posted by: Mafish Falastin | September 02, 2008 at 09:08 AM
THE "NAQBA" IS JUST ANOTHER ARAB LIE
Posted by: Mafish Falastin | September 02, 2008 at 09:09 AM