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Why this Palestinian child won’t be celebrating Israel’s birthday
Thursday, 14 May 2009
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The birth of Israel on this day in 1948 was a catastrophe for the Palestinians. By the end of the year, around 750,000 women, men and children had been driven from their homes to make space for Jews, most of them refugees fleeing persecution in Europe.
Terrified, bedraggled and penniless, the new refugees fled to camps in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
The United Nations General Assembly, having sanctioned the establishment of the new State, passed a resolution demanding that the Palestinian refugees be allowed to return home. Israel refused, setting a pattern of rejection of UN resolutions which has persisted ever since.
The Palestinian refugees are still waiting. Last summer, in the Bedawi camp in northern Lebanon, packed, teeming, a mind-blowing hubbub of humanity, I talked to an old man who showed me a cracked photograph of the neat, white home in Haifa which he and his parents had been driven from at gunpoint.
Searching for words which might be half-adequate, I mumbled a hope that we might meet soon in a liberated Palestinian capital. “Next year in Jerusalem...” He gestured towards a clump of children laughing and scrambling in the dust. “Perhaps our grandchildren...”
The ethnic cleansing had begun in 1947. David Ben Gurion, who was to become Israel’s first prime minister, explained that the Jewish community could not stand on ceremony in carving out living space: it faced “a second Holocaust”. There was a pattern established in that statement, too. By the end of January 1948, 1,500 Palestinians were dead and 400 Jews. Neither figure amounted to a Holocaust. But the balance in the casualty figures was clear.
The same death-toll disparity has been evident in every clash since, with this difference — that it has expanded grotesquely over the years, as Israeli superiority in weaponry, mainly supplied by the United States, has steadily grown.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine was carried out in accordance with Plan Dalet. “These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up and by planting mines in their rubble), and especially those population centres which are difficult to control permanently; or by mounting, combing and control operations according to the following guidelines; encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state.”
The Plan Dalet document was unearthed and published three years ago by the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his meticulous, essential, devastating book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. On April 10, 1948, around 90 villagers in the village of Deir Yassin, including many small children, were massacred. Scores of villagers were summarily shot in Ayn al-Zayton. And so on and on. Plan Dalet was explicit about the purpose: so to terrify the surrounding population that they would flee without waiting for murder to engulf them.
Only racism, the notion that their victims had no entitlement to treatment as human beings, can explain the calmness with which Plan Dalet was executed. Israel was built on racism.
The same attitude was evident in the explanation given by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the New York Review of Books in 2001 for the difficulty in finding agreement with the Palestinians: “They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie creates no dissonance ... They don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture.”
The UN’s original idea had been that Israeli and Palestinian States would exist alongside one another. The plan was hardly fair. At the time, around 6% of the territory of Palestine was owned by Jews. But the UN allocated 56% to the imminent Jewish State, against 42% to Palestinians. An ‘internationalised’ Jerusalem (that didn’t last long either) made up the other 2%.
Since then, Israel has remorselessly expanded its territory, and systematically prevented the emergence of a viable Palestinian State, even on the narrowing patches of land left to the people. Last month Prime Minister Netanyahu told US envoy George Mitchell that there’d be no talks about Palestinian statehood until the Palestinians “recognise Israel as ‘the State of the Jewish People’”. This was both contemptuous and contemptible.
States recognise States, not the defining ideology or the character of the regime. Netanyahu, observed the Israeli writer Uri Avnery, of course understands this well.
The demand was not seriously intended, but was ‘a tactic for preventing peace’ ... If he is compelled to drop it, it will not be long before he comes up with another.
Israel’s rulers have been devising tactics to prevent peace since May 1948. Avnery (15) was then a member of the fearsome paramilitary group, the Irgun.
His family had fled to Palestine from Germany in 1933, the year the Nazis came to power. He served three terms in the Knesset before turning to journalism and peace activism.
In 1993, he founded Gush Shalom (the Peace Bloc). He has long given up on the Two States solution, and argues now for a single secular State in historical Palestine in which all the present inhabitants of the territory and the Palestinian diaspora can live as equals.
Avnery is 85, still an indefatigable activist for justice for the Palestinians, a symbol of hope for the future, if there is one.
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Israel is a criminal gangster state set up to accommodate Jews from Eastern Europe and who had no right to be there. The Palestinians were driven off their lands. The crimes against the Palestinians are appalling, but it's sad to see the knee jerk reaction of the Unionist instintively supporting Israel and their criminal backers the USA.
Posted by Patrick Murphy | 25.07.09, 15:16 GMT
I am a friend of Israel I am NOT an enemy of Palestine. When you are a Friend of Palestine do you have to be an Enemy of Israel???? people like Eamonn make it appear so. Would it not be better for the people of both Israel and Palestine if we where Friends of both? and more importantly should we all not be friends of Peace and Security for both Israel and Palestine.
Its time to let go off the old political ties of the past and help find Peace and Security for the Future.
Posted by Terry | 22.05.09, 19:34 GMT
It seems strange that to a lot off Anti Israel people Israel only started in 1948. In 132 AD the Simeon bar Kokba revolt was put down by the Romans who renamed Judea Palestine and banned all Jews from entering Jerusalem. Not to mention that around the time of Christ the Romans Minted coins showing Judea in Bondage and of course Eamonn you wouldnt think of Masada in 72AD when almost 1000 Jews committed suicide rather than give in to slavery under Rome. Is a friend of Palestine an Enemy to Israel
Posted by Terry | 22.05.09, 19:22 GMT
Over 6000 Jews died in Israel's war of independence - over one in every 100 of the Jewish population in Israel at that time. How does McCann explain this horrendous death toll (equivalent to 15,000 Northern Irishmen) by this lazy and bigoted account of Israel's birth? How can you just forget that the armies of 5 Arab states were in the field to kill the Israeli state? How can McCann ever hope to heal the rift between the left and the Jewish people by such cavalier disregard?
Posted by Av | 21.05.09, 10:58 GMT
Thanks for the basics P guy, maybe the original residents of Palestine were a little cheesed off at being forced from their land and the limited autonomy offered in camp David within the two scraps that are left, minus what the usurpers in their illegal settlements have stolen on almost every hill top of course, isn't enough to secure a lasting peace.
With almost total unemployment and relying on UN food aid Gazan's in particular are suffering badly.
But according to you these aren't facts....
Posted by Bren | 18.05.09, 18:42 GMT
No jews were fleeing nazi persecution in 1948, that is the stunning stupidity of the whole story.
They were in the "care" of the US, Britain and other western countries and 9 million German civilians were in the process of being murdered by the US, Britain and other western nations at the same time.
Posted by Marilyn | 17.05.09, 04:47 GMT
An excellent articel, but its sad to see we still have some propagandists in the mould of Joan Peters willing to come on here and scream at the facts. Even a cusory glance at the history of zionism and its founders shows that the leading figures in Zionism were well aware they were commiting an injustice against the palestinians. They were well aware they would have to ethnically cleanse thier way to statehood. I would recommend norman Finkelstein's Image and Reality as well as Pappe's book.
Posted by D.A | 16.05.09, 21:40 GMT
James,James,James - you can't even quote correctly never mind give links to propagandists.
Did Eammon actually say 750,000 were driven out at (specifically) gunpoint from (specifically) Haifa in your "quotes".
Learn how to read properly before you carry on with your fanatical anti-Palestinan views.
Posted by Nospamjl | 15.05.09, 16:37 GMT
James, what has WWII got to do with this article? Your comments just slightly fall short of calling Eamonn an anti-semite.
In my opinion the Israelis/Zionists are religious fundamentalists. They are as rascist as Muslim fundamentalists or christian fundamentalists. The above article is an opinion expalined out by stating facts.
Bringing the Holocaust into this debate is an injustice to the jewish faith and those who died.
The treatment of Palestinians is already available for the world to see.
Posted by Ulysses31 | 15.05.09, 10:20 GMT
Very sincere.
I hope israeli citizens wake up and realize the truth
Posted by Fred | 14.05.09, 22:25 GMT
Outrageous, ignoring all facts and totally misleading.
Just the basics: Palestinian Arabs rejected the UN partition plan and any attempt to reach an agreement with Israel for decades. All progress has been blocked for years by continued Palestinian violence, intended to derail any progress towards a settlement ( eg in Camp David 2000)
Posted by p guy | 14.05.09, 21:32 GMT
This article is pretty disgusting.
"Driven out at gunpoint" in Haifa? "750,000 women, men and children had been driven from their homes to make space for Jews?"
How about the facts:
http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1671
I won't even bother with your absurd and offensive claim that Israelis are racists, or that casualty count points to right and wrong. (Have you forgotten which side of the Axis vs. Allies you were on in WWII, and which suffered more casualties?)
Posted by James | 14.05.09, 21:23 GMT
Glad not to have you Christian. Have a nice life!!!!
Jon not speaking about something doesn't mean he agrees with it. He didn't mention Franco, Hitler, Mussolini or Stalin but I'm sure like any right think person he abhors them all.
You can't cover up Jewish atrocities against Palestinians by blaming those that speak of them of being anti-semitic. Until Israel admits the fact that it wronged the original inhabitants of Palestine and continues to do so there is little hope of a lasting peace.
Posted by Bren | 14.05.09, 18:28 GMT
Israel is a rogue state set up by Britain and the USA as their proxy in the Middle East. Both countries have watched on for years as the Palestinian people have been murdered, expelled, have had their land and homes confiscated by the Israelis. And it is good to know - no matter what Christian wrote - that the Belfast Telegraph allows free speech, such as that of Eamonn Mc Cann's article. Have Palestinians in that false state of Israel been allowed that? No, twenty thousand of them are interned.
Posted by Patrick | 14.05.09, 17:45 GMT
It's unfortunate that the mainstream U.S. media would never have the courage to print an article showing the Israelis as anything but victims.
Posted by Bill in Alabama | 14.05.09, 16:39 GMT
It's good to know that the Belfast Telegraph has taken an irresponsible, misinformed, and biased stance on the matter of the State of Israel. Remind me not to visit Ireland!
Posted by Christian | 14.05.09, 14:24 GMT
A complete lack of context and a selective retelling of facts.
It's depressing Mr McCann that at the age you are, and the experience you have, you are so closed minded and black and white in your outlook.
You also lean on the old tactic of dehumanising Israelis in order to support your argument.
What country, in Europe or the Arab world, was not founded on violence or injustice of a sort? No doubt you do not care to speak of Darfur, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and the countless other examples
Posted by Jon | 14.05.09, 11:56 GMT