Our Zoom call this week, for paid subscribers, will be at its regular time, Friday at Noon ET. Our guest this week will be former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. Last month, de Blasio made a “progressive case for Israel” to students at Harvard Law School. I invited him to reprise that argument for our listeners and I’m grateful he agreed.
I chose Morris because he's a serious historian but also a kind of kal v'chomer. Remember, he discounts Palestinian oral history. Compared to the many Israeli historians Sam cites, not to mention Palestinian scholars from Walid Khalidi on, he's more accepting of the traditional Zionist narrative. He does say that some Palestinians were told to leave by Arab leaders. And yet even he--kal v'chomer--acknowledges that most were expelled and that Ben Gurion and most other Zionist leaders believed in transfer. Here's what I wrote in my Teshuvah essay:
[Morris, in Birth of the Refugee Problem Revisited] did uncover evidence of Arab leaders urging women, children, and the elderly to evacuate villages so Arab fighters could better defend them. Still, he concluded that what Arab leaders did “to promote or stifle the exodus was only of secondary importance.” It was Zionist military operations that proved “the major precipitants to flight.”
I also cite what Israeli official documents themselves said:
Israel’s intelligence service noted in a June 1948 report that the “impact of ‘Jewish military action’ . . . on the migration was decisive.” It added that “orders and directives issued by Arab institutions and gangs” accounted for the evacuation of only 5% of villages.
Thank you for the response, Peter. Where does Morris acknowledge that "most were expelled"? Can you please provide a citation for that claim? In my quote, he says the exact opposite, that most fled and were not expelled.
That's right, military operations caused the flight. That's what Morris said in my source as well. But the military operations were against the five Arab armies coming to wipe out the Jewish state and drive all of the Jews into the sea, not the Arab civilians. The Arab civilians left to get out of the way of the clash of the army, the majority of them were not expelled. Nothing you posted contradicted anything that I posted.
While I have your attention, Peter, any thoughts on Sam, a man you have praised repeatedly in the past, stating that "forced expulsion is in the Zionist Israeli DNA"? Because that statement is more along the lines of something that would be said about Palestinians by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. But maybe that kind of bigotry is only OK when one is talking about the evil Jews oops I mean Zionist Israelis.
"That's right, military operations caused the flight. "
In that case:
“Rule 132. Return of Displaced Persons
Rule 132. Displaced persons have a right to voluntary return in safety to their homes or places of habitual residence as soon as the reasons for their displacement cease to exist”
Practice
Volume II, Chapter 38, Section D.
Summary
State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts. The right to return applies to those who have been displaced, voluntarily or involuntarily, on account of the conflict and not to non-nationals who have been lawfully expelled.
International and non-international armed conflicts
The Fourth Geneva Convention provides that persons who have been evacuated must be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.[1]
Tell me, Paul, where in the Fourth Geneva Convention does it say you can strap bombs to children and send them into crowded restaurants and buses to slaughter everyone inside? It really cracks me up to hear Palestine supporters suddenly care about the Geneva Conventions but of course they only expect Israel to follow them.
"as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased"
Have hostilities ceased? Has Palestine stopped its genocidal war to wipe out Israel and drive the Jews into the sea?
Also, the Fourth GC came into force in 1950, two years after the Nakba. It doesn't apply ex post facto.
But I think I could agree with you that the Palestinians who were expelled, not the ones who fled the fighting, could be allowed to return to their homes. Once hostilities have ceased, of course.
Well, nowhere, of course. Intentional or indiscriminate killing of civilians is a war-crime—be it by suicide bombers or by disproportionate military air or artillery strikes on densely populated civilian areas---but that’s a separate issue.
As you know—and as Palestinians have long been known to point out--the matter of displaced persons was first adjudicated specifically in UNGA 194 at the end of 1948, the refugee issue was notably addressed again in UNSCR 242 in 1967, Oslo I and II, and continuously again up indirectly as recently as 2015, regarding Israeli settlements. International Humanitarian Law, and the Geneva Conventions upon which it is based, is just a modern enshrinement of those general principles.
By your own concession about the historical record of 1948, it follows that there is a right of return for those who left voluntarily or involuntarily under international law. How that right ultimately gets exercised will of course depend on facts on the ground and the state of hostilities, but none of that history between then and now negates that standing right long denied to the Palestinian side. That was my point.
One thing debates like this bring out is how important the Nakba narrative and the right of return is to the Palestinians and any proposed resolution to the conflict—such as Camp David/Taba in 2000/1—that didn’t address it in tangible and material forms—was doomed to failure.
Separate, but no less hypocritical for Palestine and its supporters to cling to international law about stuff that happened decades ago while partying today because a Palestinian ran over some Jewish kids in Jerusalem.
Under international conventions, there's a right of return to one's country. Israel, as the Palestinians have told us through their words and actions so many times, is not the Palestinians' country. Palestine is. And they have a right to return there from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, etc.
And of course, it is the Arab states who violated the UN directive and decided not to accept a Palestinian State. Why is this not their responsibility? Had they accepted we would not be having this discussion today. They did not accept the partition because they insisted on nothing for the Jews. That has been their position from time immemorial—even now they insist on a state plus a right of return to Israel. They were previously also offered statehood by the British in the 1930s but turned that down because a tiny sliver would go to the Jews. Isn’t it time we hold Palestinians and their Arab partners responsible for the poor decisions they made and continue to make? Stop blaming the Jews and Israel for you own folly.
What you are saying here is that the war propelled a departure. That is true. But that is different from a deliberate military plan to cause an evacuation of the Palestinian Arabs. All wars cause people to flee, especially the people who perceive their side is losing the war.
Certainly, a fair number of Palestinian Arabs were pushed out but that is quite different from all 700,000!
Point of fact 70,000 left before the hostilities became serious. Why? Their assessment was the Jews will win so they took their money and ran. There were three waves of departures.
As Jews took over municipalities many Palestinians decided to leave. It’s understandable. Here are people you are at war with, you don’t know what will happen afterwards. Why take a chance.
That is precisely what happened in Haifa.
And surely in some places people were pushed out deliberately Lydda was such an example. But many other Palestinians stayed in the Galilee.
Finally, let’s be clear they were not pushed out of Palestine they were pushed to a different part of Palestine. In America that would be equivalent to being pushed out of one county to another. It begs the question why you can’t have a country in Palestine in precisely the area where in the 19th century you were living in.
Winters, as I've said before, I value your participation as someone who holds opinions different from my own. But please don't make flip accusations of bigotry against people you don't know. Saying that expulsion is in Zionism's DNA is like saying anti-Black racism is in the DNA of American nationalism. It's a statement about ideological traditions not biological processes, God forbid. I know Sam Bahour well. He's among the most decent people I've ever met--the furthest thing from a bigot against Jewish Israelis or anyone else. His many Jewish Israeli friends and admirers would say the same.
Thank you for the response, Peter. This is what Sam wrote: "Peter said it best in his article, forced expulsion, whatever you want to name it, is in the Zionist Israeli DNA." He didn't say "Zionism." He didn't say "the Israeli government." He said "Zionist Israeli." He is obviously talking about the people, and when I asked him to clarify one way or the other, he never responded.
I will acknowledge that upon another reading, it is conceivable that Sam was talking about the Israeli government. His statement could be interpreted that way. But when most people are talking about the Israeli government, they SAY the Israeli government, like you did in your piece. And when most people are talking about people, they say people. Sam chose the latter option, and I have always had the belief that people mean what they say, until proven otherwise. If Ben-Gvir had said "terrorism is in the Palestinian DNA", I have a feeling you wouldn't be interpreting his words so charitably.
That’s not bigotry. It’s historical fact based on inter communal conflict. Any nation that wins always expelled and/or dominates…oh I forgot you are so ethnocentric and pompous you think you have to play by different rules …Mr Enlightened “ Professor”🤮
Thanks, Peter. Your essay in Jewish Currents was spot on. Sadly, the Nakba is an ongoing process. One day, blind supporters of Israel will read and reflect on Ilan Pappé's body of work, especially The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and hopefully repent on why they ignored the overwhelming facts and Jewish values of social justice. Until then, we continue the struggle for freedom and independence.
Excellent comment. It's sad that some commenters on this site are unwilling to admit the reality of history and instead pretend that the Nakba either did not occur or that it was the Palestinians' own fault. Given the overwhelming body of evidence from historians all around the world, all we can do is keep showing it. Possibly, those anti-Palestinian commenters are paid to spread misinformation, but who knows?
"Israel's Ministry of Defence has been systematically sealing archival documents for at least a decade to conceal evidence of the Nakba, the mass expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Haaretz has revealed. A secretive security department in the defence ministry has overseen the ongoing project, taking historic files and putting them away in vaults. In some cases, historians cited documents in their work that later disappeared, Haaretz reported.
Yehiel Horev, former head of the department which goes by the Hebrew acronym Malmab, told Haaretz that it made sense to hide the details of what happened in 1948 because the documents could "generate unrest" among Palestinians in Israel. When asked why files were removed that had already been highlighted by researchers and others, Horev said the objective was to undermine the credibility of history written about the era.
Papers on Israel's nuclear project and the country's foreign relations were also reportedly transferred to vaults."
(Secret Israeli unit hiding documents to undermine history of Nakba: Report, Middle East
"The Palestinian Arabs were not responsible "in some bizarre way" (David Norris, January 31st) for what befell them in 1948. Their responsibility was very direct and simple. In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947 (No. 181), they launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes."
Rather than engage with the arguments and the journalism, you simply laugh out loud. All that tells readers is that you are unwilling, or unable, to provide anything coherent of your own.
There's no arguments here and no journalism either. Even if we believed Middle East Eye, all your paragraphs say is that documents exist. Not what the documents say, let alone that they disprove Benny Morris' thesis from 2008.
So you can't make an argument for yourself, just throw links? And if you have no interest in Benny Morris, clearly you have no interest in facts or a reasonable discussion.
"There is no historian in the world who is objective. I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what’s happened. (“An Interview of Ilan Pappé,” Baudouin Loos, Le Soir [Bruxelles],Nov. 29, 1999)
"I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings…"(Ibid)
"Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers." (Ibid)
"The debate between us is on one level between historians who believe they are purely objective reconstructers of the past, like [Benny] Morris, and those who claim that they are subjective human beings striving to tell their own version of the past, like myself. (“Benny Morris’s Lies About My Book,” Ilan Pappé, Response to Morris’ critique of Pappé’s book, “A History of Palestine” published in the New Republic, March 22, 2004, History News Network, April 5, 2004)
To call Ilan Pappe a historian is laughable. He doesn't even try to be objective, in fact he actively seeks to be subjective, and doesn't care about facts, let alone "overwhelming facts."
Wait, so you're not even going to TRY and defend Ilan Pappe? I guess that's the kind of loyalty we would expect from the same people who backstabbed Lebanon, backstabbed Jordan, and backstabbed Kuwait. LOL.
His writings damn himself. The only people who like him are those who already agree with him. He doesn’t do history, he does propaganda. No surprise to see you and Beinart are big fans.
Yes this was a crime. Similarly, at Kfar Etzion about 150 Jews were slaughtered by Arabs who shouted Dir Yaseen.
And Mr. Bahour, you now have the answer as to why people often left on their own during the war. They did not want to wait until retribution came. The Jews of course had nowhere to go to. The Arabs did.
We can blame each other forever or solve the problem. Litigating the past will solve nothing.
I'm not litigating the past, I learn from the past in order not to repeat the same blunders. However, since the world reset after WWII, do you agree with me that we have a duty to litigate the present?
I am not sure I know what you mean when you want to litigate the present. I have written elsewhere that Israelis and Palestinians are like the characters in Jean Paul Sarte's No Exit, in which the characters find themselves in a room in hell constantly and endlessly getting on each other's nerves and never see the exit sign on the door.
Speaking of WW 2 …what about Amin Al Husseini’s support of Nazism…cling to your colonial borders of “ Palestine” …deny our rights in the Levant and continue to deny your national groups it’s polity
A criminal action in a state you chose to pursue a higher education in…you are Lebanese yet think of yourself as Palestinian …this clearly illustrates the complexity of the history and players…you support BDS when it economically hurts Arabs worse than Israeli Jews…The Emerati plan might work if your narrative and mine can be reconciled and you accept us like many of us like we accept you
So do you acknowledge the overwhelming facts he lays out, including that the Palestinian side started the war and that the majority of Arabs were not expelled?
No, his reverse puts him in the minority. Read Adam Raz and Shay Hazkani, Ofer Aderet, Hagar Shezaf, and so many others. If you don't have time to look them all up, just watch the current Israeli government on the daily news. Peter said it best in his article, forced expulsion, whatever you want to name it, is in the Zionist Israeli DNA.
Peter says Benny Morris is an esteemed historian. If you think he's wrong, you provide a source disputing it. "Go read" is not an argument.
"Peter said it best in his article, forced expulsion, whatever you want to name it, is in the Zionist Israeli DNA."
Actually, such a nakedly racist statement is too far even for Peter. He limited his criticisms to the Israeli state and political "DNA", not the actual people.
But if it's OK for you to say that, it must be OK for me to say that lying, whether about history or about what's written in an article, is in the Palestinian DNA. Right, Sam?
You are so critical and stereotype Zionists yet you are a product of one of their universities and speak of confederation…you expect us to accept, reconcile and confederate (which I also agree is the only viable long term solution) but insult our national movements ethos and our right as indigenous people to have a polity in our home.Choose …or is it that you would use us and try to placate us while trying to eliminate our national ideology…why is it that people like you never question non Jews such King Adballah, a Hashemite, in a country he has no ancient history in…I think that Abdullah’s Hashemite predecessors were and still are essential for peace and regional stability and I have/had tremendous respect for king Hussein, Emir Abdullah and King Feisal…all I ask is for consistency
Peter, I'm so glad you cite Benny Morris as an authoritative source on Israel's history and the Nakba in particular. Because he, in print, directly contradicts your false narrative of the Nakba as "the mass expulsion that happened at Israel’s birth, where roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of the country. "
Benny Morris himself wrote:
"Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops....There was no Zionist "plan" or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of "ethnic cleansing".
The majority of Palestinian refugees were not expelled or forced out. They fled the war their side had started. That's not me saying that, it's Benny Morris, who you yourself described as "the esteemed Israeli historian."
Peter, can you please edit this post so that it is accurately describing the events of 1948 and not misleading your readership? Instead of "the mass expulsion that happened at Israel’s birth, where roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of the country," I would say "the war launched by the Arab side to wipe out the newborn Jewish state, where roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee due to the fighting on both sides." A much more accurate way to describe the Nakba, clearly.
Benny Morris argues that most of the Palestinian refugees left their homes voluntarily or were encouraged to do so by their leaders. He estimates that between 60,000 to 80,000 Arabs were expelled by Israeli forces, while the majority left voluntarily.
"Arab leaders and other elements of Palestinian society encouraged Palestinian villagers and urbanites to leave their homes, promising them protection, promising that they would be able to return within a week or two, and suggesting that they get out of the way of the forthcoming Arab armies. In some cases, notably in Haifa, the Arab leaders ordered evacuation. In most cases, local leaders and families decided on their own to leave. The main reasons were fear and insecurity, a desire to avoid the fighting, and a wish to be on the winning side.”
"The overwhelming majority of the refugees were caused by the war and not by pre-war planning. The number of refugees totalled about 700,000, including some 200,000 who fled in the months before May 15, 1948, and 100,000-150,000 who were expelled or fled during and after the first stage of the war, in April-June 1948. The remainder fled their homes due to the general violence, instability, and insecurity that accompanied the war, including the breakdown of Palestinian society, the collapse of local government, and the breakdown of law and order.”
Meanwhile, many Arabs chose to stay. Today there are over 1.9 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, comprising around 21% of the country's population. No Israeli politician talks of expulsion of them.
Of course they were. They were and are still fighting for their land. We're in agreement.
Tell us, how exactly were the Zionists to make Israel a Jewish state while there were people in the land who put up a resistance and are defiant todate? Present your facts.
Thanks for admitting Palestinians were making threats and attacking people long before the war. Any threats and attacks they received were brought on by their willingness to kill for land.
The same way the Palestinians were planning to make Palestine an Arab state while there were people in the land who put up a resistance and are defiant to date.
People everywhere around the world resisted colonialism and settlers. Never heard of a people who handled over their land or property to some thieves. Have you?
Even the Zionists expected resistance and wondered how they could achieve their goal. Ben-Gurion was quoted in 1956, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." [See The Jewish Paradox]
So, yes, they were and are killing for their land.
OK, so much for the claim that the Palestinians were innocent victims sitting around minding their own business when the evil Zionists started attacking and threatening them. That narrative didn't last very long.
You're right, I've never heard of imperialist colonialists like the Arabs willingly allowing indigenous natives like the Jews gain their rights of self-determination and statehood. Imperialist overlords always try to keep all of their stolen land for themselves. The British tried to stop the Indians, the Turks tried to stop the Armenians, the Europeans tried to stop the Native Americans, and the Palestinian Arabs tried to stop the Jews. Unfortunately for them, and you, they didn't succeed. Too bad, so sad. Get over it already.
You’ve proven yourself quite the knowledgeable historian in these comments. I guess we should listen to you more than Benny Morris who studied and documented all in his book. Thanks for the clarification. Please let Benny know.
Beinart, this might be hard to believe, but I actually agree with you. It is POSSIBLE that SOMEDAY Israel MIGHT expel Palestinians.
After all, Amnesty International states that ethnic cleansing is perfectly fine and justified when it comes to Jews living in the West Bank. Thanks to Palestine and its allies, mass expulsions are no longer something to be avoided, but rather something to be embraced. https://twitter.com/amnesty/status/1630904473123008514
Palestine and its allies including Beinart have also made it clear that they're going to hate Israel and continue to try to kill Israelis really no matter what Israel does, so there's essentially no difference what policies Israel has or what the makeup of its government is. How many columns has Beinart and those like him written stating that the problem is Zionism and/or that Israel is a Jewish state? This idea that Israel's policies or government makeup is the problem is a big red herring.
Of course, if Beinart and Palestine were actually worried about expulsions of Palestinians, they should probably dial down the Israel hating rhetoric and make peace with Israel as soon as possible. If Israel sees Palestinians as something other than weapons of its destruction, which would be a change from how the Western Left and the Arab governments have used Palestinians for the past 75 years, it's far less likely that anyone would be expelled from anywhere.
I must say, it's quite something to see this column come on the heels of two columns advocating for the one state "solution." Advocates for the one state solution insist that if the two state solution fails, the one state solution is inevitable. But it's not inevitable. Expulsion is equally a possibility. If Beinart had his way, Israel would be forced to make a choice between non-existence and expulsion. Which one do you think it's more likely to choose? Which one would Palestine choose if it was in Israel's position?
PS: It would be great if you had mentioned that 700,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab World despite literally doing nothing wrong. If the Arabs can ethnically cleanse Jews once, what's to say they couldn't or wouldn't do it again?
"I teach history at Tel Aviv University and live not far from campus. Both my apartment and my place of work are located on the ruins of an Arab village that ceased to exist on March 30, 1948. On that spring day, the village's last frightened residents walked down the dirt road leading northward, bringing with them what belongings they could and slowly disappearing from the view of the enemies who had encircled the village. Women carried infants, and small children capable of walking on their own trailed behind them. The elderly were helped along by the young; the sick and handicapped were seated on donkeys. In their hasty, terrified flight, they left behind furniture, kitchen utensils, suitcases, and unraveled bundles, along with the forgotten and confused village idiot, who could not understand why he had been left behind.
Within a few hours, the joyful besiegers had taken control of the village, on which their sights had been set for some time. Thus did the inhabitants of al-Sheikh Muwannis fade from the pages of the history of the Land of Israel and fall into the depths of forgetfulness.
The village's houses and fields no longer exist. All that remains are two or three rickety structures, some damaged and neglected graves, and a few particularly robust date trees that just happened not to interfere with the parking lot. My university was established right beside these last vestiges of the village. It evolved into the largest institution of higher education in Israel, extending across the land of the village that is no more. Indeed, parts of this book were written in an office within the university. It was from this strange, almost neighbourly proximity between the built and the obliterated, and the intolerable friction between an illusive past and a mobile and constantly advancing present, that I derived a certain moral inspiration for some of the narrative strategies employed here.
As a historian, that is to say, as a certified agent of memory who makes a living by teaching about so many yesterdays, I was unable to finish this book without addressing the past of the physical space in which I conduct my everyday life. Although human hands have done almost everything possible to conceal and erase all that remained of the Arab village, it is still the same land and the same heavens, and the horizon above the sea that is visible to the west is the same horizon it always was, just seen through different eyes."
From 'The Invention Of The Land Of Israel' by Shlomo Sand
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said: "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."
The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs: "This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re?enter and retake possession of their country."
In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave: “Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.”
"The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two," Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub (August 16, 1948). "Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
On April 3, 1949, the Near East Broadcasting Station (Cyprus) said: "It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem."
"The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies," according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin (February 19, 1949).
One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: "The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."
Paranoia strikes deep. What are you smoking. Oops let me not insult the weed. Instead let me seriously start asking have you really spend much time reading about the history of the Middle East, starting at least from 1800 onwards? You need to do that.
700,000 expelled? None left of their own volition? Haifa’s large Arab population ran off even as the Mayor of Haifa and other Jewish leaders pleaded with them to stay. Of course, why stay when the Ayon (the notables) the 70,000 “one percenters” picked themselves up and left overnight even before Israel announced its independence.
Your aspirations need to be backed up by supporting facts. They are often absent.
For sure Israelis now mostly wish the Palestinians would simply disappear. After all, who wants to walk the streets of their town and be on the lookout for some stranger who will attack you with a knife? Last week I was on a video chat with a cousin who lives on a left wing Kibbutz in the Galilee—this guy is left of Meretz! We were talking about economic opportunities. When I brought up olives and olive oil and the possibility of cooperating with other Arab villages in the Galilee; for the first time ever he gave me a stony look as if I came from another planet.
As your guest last week pointed out these two peoples need to be separated from each other not pushed towards each other. As for your fantasy of Israel pushing all the Palestinians out of Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, I offer two scenarios for you and your audience:
1. Israel gets into a war it starts and not only does not win but is severely battered. In exchange for a supply line from America, it will be forced to accommodate a Palestinian state and a significant return of Palestinians into Israel itself. This will cause Israel’s one percenters to depart and soon after anyone who can afford to as well. There will be a state with religious Jews and religious Moslems and the violence will for sure continue.
2. Israel gets into a war it does not start. And the Palestinians in the West Bank and Hamas and Islamic Jihad join in. If Israel prevails, then there is a heightened likelihood that the Palestinians will be forced to leave the West Bank into Jordan (a Palestinian state except in name and leader).
Not at all unimaginable. We were there recently, and as we do when we go, visited with my husband's extended family. They are uniformly religious and right wing (diametrically opposite to our views). When asked what they would like to see for Palestinians in Israel, if not their autonomy, they immediately responded, "We must push them into the sea." They were not kidding.
Thank you so much for your work. The majority of the people I know don’t pay attention to what is going on outside of this country. I appreciate your words to educate the public. I visited Israel in 2020 and I was fascinated with how much we the public don’t know. I am interested in your work and efforts please don’t stop.
Israel was founded to be a Jewish state and the founders masterminded the Nakba to see this happen. In Dec 1947, Jews made 40% of population. Ben-Gurion and others found this unacceptable and were shooting for 80% to make the Jewish majority dream viable.
Seeing this, they began attacking and threatening Palestians and other Arabs months before the Arabs attacked them. Put another way, had the Arabs not initiated the war, Israel could have kept provoking them to go to war. This is what they wanted. Nakba was premeditated. And it worked.
What's to stop Israel from repeating Nakba if they feel threatened by the demographics again? In fact, demographics is the main reason that many remain insistent on two state. Have we not seen the constant unprovoked attacks on the Palestnians?
Arabs were attacking and threatening Jews centuries before Zionism even existed as a concept. This belief, like so much else of the Palestinian narrative, is an utter falsehood.
Benny Morris: "There was no Zionist "plan" or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of "ethnic cleansing"."
Who should we believe? A historian who Peter himself calls 'esteemed', or an anonymous anti-Semite on the Internet?
Simple. Zionists, unlike Arabs, didn't want to take over the entire region and grab all of Palestine for themselves alone.
"Chaim Weizman, Israel’s first president, famously remarked that he was willing to take a state “even if it’s the size of a tablecloth.”"
Ah, so when you hear from a historian who tells you what you don't want to hear, you just go find another historian. What a closeminded way to go through life.
Peter Beinart's essay is eloquent and persuasive, and therefore terrifying. Just a brilliant analogy to the good liberals (including Maggie Halberman) snorting at Keith Ellison for suggesting in 2015 that Trump could be nominated, even elected. Whaddalaff!
There are indeed times when Ilan Pappe makes some dubious postmodernist methodological statements. Quoting them, endlessly, does not vitiate all of his arguments, and he comes together with all serious historians, including Benny Morris, in documenting a Zionist history of threats, rapes, shootings, and massacres. For Morris on "transfer" (which is the same thing as "ethnic cleansing"), see "The idea of transfer in Zionist Thinking before 1948 (Birth Revisited 39-48).
Both Pappe and Morris, for instance, refer without ambiguity to the massacre that took place in al-Dawayima on October 29, 1948. See Pappe's Ethnic Cleansing, 195-8; and Morris's Birth Revisited, 469-70. The latter is, if anything, even more grisly. True, not all Palestinians in al-Dawayima were ethnically cleansed. The Palestinian babies whose brains were bashed out by Israeli troops pretty much stayed put.
Morris, an indispensible if also racist historian, is himself not immune to self-contradiction. In his infamous interview with Ari Shavit, he first sneers at Arafat for describing Zionists as crusaders, then goes on to say, “This is a struggle against a whole world that espouses different values. And we are on the front line. Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place.” Yes; I repeat, no.
Brigadier General Eitam not only advocates ethnic cleansing; he advocates genocide, in the starkest terms: "We will have to kill them all." That Benjamin Netanyahu's government nominated him to head Yad Vashem (a number of survivors screamed bloody murder at this) indicates the depths to which Zionist settler colonialism is prepared to sink.
Thanks again, Peter, for your essay. Noam Chomsky is looking more and more like the Nev'im, as well as sounding like them; you are still clean-shaven, but the words and passion are the same.
To say that another Nakba is possible is true. But it seems to me that the force of the Israeli publics continuing weekly demonstrations against the Netanyahu led government on before of the essential support of an independent Supreme Court belies the likelihood of something as negative as the expulsion of Palestinians no matter how extreme the current government is. I remain scared because I've watched Israelis increasing accept the venom of Caroline Glick who I use as one of my barometers of Israeli public opinion. But the reaction of truly large numbers of the Israeli public to Netanyahu's attempts to diminish the power of the Supreme Court is making a tangible difference and I believe that President Herzog's call for a global Jewish dialogue presents an opportunity to infuse the vision of the more progressive American Jewish Community.
You are a classic example of an educated idiot…the very embodiment of an over educated diaspora Jew giving advice to real people living in a real country trying to come to terms with a highly emotional situation/competing claims and narratives. You talk about Jews expelling Arabs before 1948 but do you talk about the attacks on Jews by many if not most of these “Palestinians “….you call Israel Apartheid…tell me “ Professor” when were White Europeans ever indigenous to South Africa? Your cosmopolitan Socialist “ Justice” attitude is laughable…I also hear you are Orthodox…well you better hope you theistic imbecile that there really is a God or else all your liturgical incantations to a sky God are primitive speaking in tounges…stop patronizing the lunatic left/academic elitists and wake up…for such a smart guy you really are stupid
I chose Morris because he's a serious historian but also a kind of kal v'chomer. Remember, he discounts Palestinian oral history. Compared to the many Israeli historians Sam cites, not to mention Palestinian scholars from Walid Khalidi on, he's more accepting of the traditional Zionist narrative. He does say that some Palestinians were told to leave by Arab leaders. And yet even he--kal v'chomer--acknowledges that most were expelled and that Ben Gurion and most other Zionist leaders believed in transfer. Here's what I wrote in my Teshuvah essay:
[Morris, in Birth of the Refugee Problem Revisited] did uncover evidence of Arab leaders urging women, children, and the elderly to evacuate villages so Arab fighters could better defend them. Still, he concluded that what Arab leaders did “to promote or stifle the exodus was only of secondary importance.” It was Zionist military operations that proved “the major precipitants to flight.”
I also cite what Israeli official documents themselves said:
Israel’s intelligence service noted in a June 1948 report that the “impact of ‘Jewish military action’ . . . on the migration was decisive.” It added that “orders and directives issued by Arab institutions and gangs” accounted for the evacuation of only 5% of villages.
Here's the link to the report: https://www.haaretz.co.il/st/inter/Heng/1948.pdf
Thank you for the response, Peter. Where does Morris acknowledge that "most were expelled"? Can you please provide a citation for that claim? In my quote, he says the exact opposite, that most fled and were not expelled.
That's right, military operations caused the flight. That's what Morris said in my source as well. But the military operations were against the five Arab armies coming to wipe out the Jewish state and drive all of the Jews into the sea, not the Arab civilians. The Arab civilians left to get out of the way of the clash of the army, the majority of them were not expelled. Nothing you posted contradicted anything that I posted.
While I have your attention, Peter, any thoughts on Sam, a man you have praised repeatedly in the past, stating that "forced expulsion is in the Zionist Israeli DNA"? Because that statement is more along the lines of something that would be said about Palestinians by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. But maybe that kind of bigotry is only OK when one is talking about the evil Jews oops I mean Zionist Israelis.
"That's right, military operations caused the flight. "
In that case:
“Rule 132. Return of Displaced Persons
Rule 132. Displaced persons have a right to voluntary return in safety to their homes or places of habitual residence as soon as the reasons for their displacement cease to exist”
Practice
Volume II, Chapter 38, Section D.
Summary
State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts. The right to return applies to those who have been displaced, voluntarily or involuntarily, on account of the conflict and not to non-nationals who have been lawfully expelled.
International and non-international armed conflicts
The Fourth Geneva Convention provides that persons who have been evacuated must be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.[1]
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v1/rule132
Tell me, Paul, where in the Fourth Geneva Convention does it say you can strap bombs to children and send them into crowded restaurants and buses to slaughter everyone inside? It really cracks me up to hear Palestine supporters suddenly care about the Geneva Conventions but of course they only expect Israel to follow them.
"as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased"
Have hostilities ceased? Has Palestine stopped its genocidal war to wipe out Israel and drive the Jews into the sea?
Also, the Fourth GC came into force in 1950, two years after the Nakba. It doesn't apply ex post facto.
But I think I could agree with you that the Palestinians who were expelled, not the ones who fled the fighting, could be allowed to return to their homes. Once hostilities have ceased, of course.
Well, nowhere, of course. Intentional or indiscriminate killing of civilians is a war-crime—be it by suicide bombers or by disproportionate military air or artillery strikes on densely populated civilian areas---but that’s a separate issue.
As you know—and as Palestinians have long been known to point out--the matter of displaced persons was first adjudicated specifically in UNGA 194 at the end of 1948, the refugee issue was notably addressed again in UNSCR 242 in 1967, Oslo I and II, and continuously again up indirectly as recently as 2015, regarding Israeli settlements. International Humanitarian Law, and the Geneva Conventions upon which it is based, is just a modern enshrinement of those general principles.
By your own concession about the historical record of 1948, it follows that there is a right of return for those who left voluntarily or involuntarily under international law. How that right ultimately gets exercised will of course depend on facts on the ground and the state of hostilities, but none of that history between then and now negates that standing right long denied to the Palestinian side. That was my point.
One thing debates like this bring out is how important the Nakba narrative and the right of return is to the Palestinians and any proposed resolution to the conflict—such as Camp David/Taba in 2000/1—that didn’t address it in tangible and material forms—was doomed to failure.
Separate, but no less hypocritical for Palestine and its supporters to cling to international law about stuff that happened decades ago while partying today because a Palestinian ran over some Jewish kids in Jerusalem.
Under international conventions, there's a right of return to one's country. Israel, as the Palestinians have told us through their words and actions so many times, is not the Palestinians' country. Palestine is. And they have a right to return there from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, etc.
And of course, it is the Arab states who violated the UN directive and decided not to accept a Palestinian State. Why is this not their responsibility? Had they accepted we would not be having this discussion today. They did not accept the partition because they insisted on nothing for the Jews. That has been their position from time immemorial—even now they insist on a state plus a right of return to Israel. They were previously also offered statehood by the British in the 1930s but turned that down because a tiny sliver would go to the Jews. Isn’t it time we hold Palestinians and their Arab partners responsible for the poor decisions they made and continue to make? Stop blaming the Jews and Israel for you own folly.
What you are saying here is that the war propelled a departure. That is true. But that is different from a deliberate military plan to cause an evacuation of the Palestinian Arabs. All wars cause people to flee, especially the people who perceive their side is losing the war.
Certainly, a fair number of Palestinian Arabs were pushed out but that is quite different from all 700,000!
Point of fact 70,000 left before the hostilities became serious. Why? Their assessment was the Jews will win so they took their money and ran. There were three waves of departures.
As Jews took over municipalities many Palestinians decided to leave. It’s understandable. Here are people you are at war with, you don’t know what will happen afterwards. Why take a chance.
That is precisely what happened in Haifa.
And surely in some places people were pushed out deliberately Lydda was such an example. But many other Palestinians stayed in the Galilee.
Finally, let’s be clear they were not pushed out of Palestine they were pushed to a different part of Palestine. In America that would be equivalent to being pushed out of one county to another. It begs the question why you can’t have a country in Palestine in precisely the area where in the 19th century you were living in.
Winters, as I've said before, I value your participation as someone who holds opinions different from my own. But please don't make flip accusations of bigotry against people you don't know. Saying that expulsion is in Zionism's DNA is like saying anti-Black racism is in the DNA of American nationalism. It's a statement about ideological traditions not biological processes, God forbid. I know Sam Bahour well. He's among the most decent people I've ever met--the furthest thing from a bigot against Jewish Israelis or anyone else. His many Jewish Israeli friends and admirers would say the same.
Thank you for the response, Peter. This is what Sam wrote: "Peter said it best in his article, forced expulsion, whatever you want to name it, is in the Zionist Israeli DNA." He didn't say "Zionism." He didn't say "the Israeli government." He said "Zionist Israeli." He is obviously talking about the people, and when I asked him to clarify one way or the other, he never responded.
I will acknowledge that upon another reading, it is conceivable that Sam was talking about the Israeli government. His statement could be interpreted that way. But when most people are talking about the Israeli government, they SAY the Israeli government, like you did in your piece. And when most people are talking about people, they say people. Sam chose the latter option, and I have always had the belief that people mean what they say, until proven otherwise. If Ben-Gvir had said "terrorism is in the Palestinian DNA", I have a feeling you wouldn't be interpreting his words so charitably.
Killing kids is in the Palestinian Arab DNA.
That’s not bigotry. It’s historical fact based on inter communal conflict. Any nation that wins always expelled and/or dominates…oh I forgot you are so ethnocentric and pompous you think you have to play by different rules …Mr Enlightened “ Professor”🤮
Thanks, Peter. Your essay in Jewish Currents was spot on. Sadly, the Nakba is an ongoing process. One day, blind supporters of Israel will read and reflect on Ilan Pappé's body of work, especially The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, and hopefully repent on why they ignored the overwhelming facts and Jewish values of social justice. Until then, we continue the struggle for freedom and independence.
Excellent comment. It's sad that some commenters on this site are unwilling to admit the reality of history and instead pretend that the Nakba either did not occur or that it was the Palestinians' own fault. Given the overwhelming body of evidence from historians all around the world, all we can do is keep showing it. Possibly, those anti-Palestinian commenters are paid to spread misinformation, but who knows?
"Israel's Ministry of Defence has been systematically sealing archival documents for at least a decade to conceal evidence of the Nakba, the mass expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Haaretz has revealed. A secretive security department in the defence ministry has overseen the ongoing project, taking historic files and putting them away in vaults. In some cases, historians cited documents in their work that later disappeared, Haaretz reported.
Yehiel Horev, former head of the department which goes by the Hebrew acronym Malmab, told Haaretz that it made sense to hide the details of what happened in 1948 because the documents could "generate unrest" among Palestinians in Israel. When asked why files were removed that had already been highlighted by researchers and others, Horev said the objective was to undermine the credibility of history written about the era.
Papers on Israel's nuclear project and the country's foreign relations were also reportedly transferred to vaults."
(Secret Israeli unit hiding documents to undermine history of Nakba: Report, Middle East
Eye, 5 July 2019)
"The Palestinian Arabs were not responsible "in some bizarre way" (David Norris, January 31st) for what befell them in 1948. Their responsibility was very direct and simple. In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947 (No. 181), they launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes."
Benny Morris, February 21, 2008. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/israel-and-the-palestinians-1.896017
Read it and weep, James.
Middle East Eye? LOL.
Rather than engage with the arguments and the journalism, you simply laugh out loud. All that tells readers is that you are unwilling, or unable, to provide anything coherent of your own.
There's no arguments here and no journalism either. Even if we believed Middle East Eye, all your paragraphs say is that documents exist. Not what the documents say, let alone that they disprove Benny Morris' thesis from 2008.
Perhaps, as was my obvious intention, you might read the article. I have no interest in Benny Morris, whoever he might be, nor his thesis.
So you can't make an argument for yourself, just throw links? And if you have no interest in Benny Morris, clearly you have no interest in facts or a reasonable discussion.
Some quotes by Ilan Pappe:
"There is no historian in the world who is objective. I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what’s happened. (“An Interview of Ilan Pappé,” Baudouin Loos, Le Soir [Bruxelles],Nov. 29, 1999)
"I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings…"(Ibid)
"Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers." (Ibid)
"The debate between us is on one level between historians who believe they are purely objective reconstructers of the past, like [Benny] Morris, and those who claim that they are subjective human beings striving to tell their own version of the past, like myself. (“Benny Morris’s Lies About My Book,” Ilan Pappé, Response to Morris’ critique of Pappé’s book, “A History of Palestine” published in the New Republic, March 22, 2004, History News Network, April 5, 2004)
To call Ilan Pappe a historian is laughable. He doesn't even try to be objective, in fact he actively seeks to be subjective, and doesn't care about facts, let alone "overwhelming facts."
I offer you the facts from those who carried out the crimes....or are they too unrecognized in your thinking?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExkOxmMMwSM
Wait, so you're not even going to TRY and defend Ilan Pappe? I guess that's the kind of loyalty we would expect from the same people who backstabbed Lebanon, backstabbed Jordan, and backstabbed Kuwait. LOL.
His writings defend himself.
His writings damn himself. The only people who like him are those who already agree with him. He doesn’t do history, he does propaganda. No surprise to see you and Beinart are big fans.
And in perfect style you ignore the issue itself. This has become a stale strategy. Distraction may work for some, but not here.
Yes this was a crime. Similarly, at Kfar Etzion about 150 Jews were slaughtered by Arabs who shouted Dir Yaseen.
And Mr. Bahour, you now have the answer as to why people often left on their own during the war. They did not want to wait until retribution came. The Jews of course had nowhere to go to. The Arabs did.
We can blame each other forever or solve the problem. Litigating the past will solve nothing.
I'm not litigating the past, I learn from the past in order not to repeat the same blunders. However, since the world reset after WWII, do you agree with me that we have a duty to litigate the present?
You as a person with a now proven prejudice towards Jewish Israelis are in a position to litigate nothing.
So is that part of the judicial "reform" blitz, you get to pick who can bring forward litigation and who can't. Pathetic.
I am not sure I know what you mean when you want to litigate the present. I have written elsewhere that Israelis and Palestinians are like the characters in Jean Paul Sarte's No Exit, in which the characters find themselves in a room in hell constantly and endlessly getting on each other's nerves and never see the exit sign on the door.
Exit is clearly marked: THE HAGUE
https://www.icc-cpi.int/palestine
https://www.icj-cij.org/case/186
Speaking of WW 2 …what about Amin Al Husseini’s support of Nazism…cling to your colonial borders of “ Palestine” …deny our rights in the Levant and continue to deny your national groups it’s polity
A criminal action in a state you chose to pursue a higher education in…you are Lebanese yet think of yourself as Palestinian …this clearly illustrates the complexity of the history and players…you support BDS when it economically hurts Arabs worse than Israeli Jews…The Emerati plan might work if your narrative and mine can be reconciled and you accept us like many of us like we accept you
Sam, you should read and reflect on the work of esteemed historian Benny Morris.
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/israel-and-the-palestinians-1.896017
I have, among many other Israeli historians.
So do you acknowledge the overwhelming facts he lays out, including that the Palestinian side started the war and that the majority of Arabs were not expelled?
No, his reverse puts him in the minority. Read Adam Raz and Shay Hazkani, Ofer Aderet, Hagar Shezaf, and so many others. If you don't have time to look them all up, just watch the current Israeli government on the daily news. Peter said it best in his article, forced expulsion, whatever you want to name it, is in the Zionist Israeli DNA.
Peter says Benny Morris is an esteemed historian. If you think he's wrong, you provide a source disputing it. "Go read" is not an argument.
"Peter said it best in his article, forced expulsion, whatever you want to name it, is in the Zionist Israeli DNA."
Actually, such a nakedly racist statement is too far even for Peter. He limited his criticisms to the Israeli state and political "DNA", not the actual people.
But if it's OK for you to say that, it must be OK for me to say that lying, whether about history or about what's written in an article, is in the Palestinian DNA. Right, Sam?
It’s in your DNA Anti semite
All those are journalists that write for Haaretz, the most left-wing media paper in Israel.
It's equivalent to me telling you to read a list of Fox news journalists if you want to really learn about Joe Biden...
You are so critical and stereotype Zionists yet you are a product of one of their universities and speak of confederation…you expect us to accept, reconcile and confederate (which I also agree is the only viable long term solution) but insult our national movements ethos and our right as indigenous people to have a polity in our home.Choose …or is it that you would use us and try to placate us while trying to eliminate our national ideology…why is it that people like you never question non Jews such King Adballah, a Hashemite, in a country he has no ancient history in…I think that Abdullah’s Hashemite predecessors were and still are essential for peace and regional stability and I have/had tremendous respect for king Hussein, Emir Abdullah and King Feisal…all I ask is for consistency
Peter, I'm so glad you cite Benny Morris as an authoritative source on Israel's history and the Nakba in particular. Because he, in print, directly contradicts your false narrative of the Nakba as "the mass expulsion that happened at Israel’s birth, where roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of the country. "
Benny Morris himself wrote:
"Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops....There was no Zionist "plan" or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of "ethnic cleansing".
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/israel-and-the-palestinians-1.896017
The majority of Palestinian refugees were not expelled or forced out. They fled the war their side had started. That's not me saying that, it's Benny Morris, who you yourself described as "the esteemed Israeli historian."
Peter, can you please edit this post so that it is accurately describing the events of 1948 and not misleading your readership? Instead of "the mass expulsion that happened at Israel’s birth, where roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of the country," I would say "the war launched by the Arab side to wipe out the newborn Jewish state, where roughly 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee due to the fighting on both sides." A much more accurate way to describe the Nakba, clearly.
Benny Morris argues that most of the Palestinian refugees left their homes voluntarily or were encouraged to do so by their leaders. He estimates that between 60,000 to 80,000 Arabs were expelled by Israeli forces, while the majority left voluntarily.
"Arab leaders and other elements of Palestinian society encouraged Palestinian villagers and urbanites to leave their homes, promising them protection, promising that they would be able to return within a week or two, and suggesting that they get out of the way of the forthcoming Arab armies. In some cases, notably in Haifa, the Arab leaders ordered evacuation. In most cases, local leaders and families decided on their own to leave. The main reasons were fear and insecurity, a desire to avoid the fighting, and a wish to be on the winning side.”
"The overwhelming majority of the refugees were caused by the war and not by pre-war planning. The number of refugees totalled about 700,000, including some 200,000 who fled in the months before May 15, 1948, and 100,000-150,000 who were expelled or fled during and after the first stage of the war, in April-June 1948. The remainder fled their homes due to the general violence, instability, and insecurity that accompanied the war, including the breakdown of Palestinian society, the collapse of local government, and the breakdown of law and order.”
Meanwhile, many Arabs chose to stay. Today there are over 1.9 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, comprising around 21% of the country's population. No Israeli politician talks of expulsion of them.
Not true. Palestinians were under constant threats and attacks months before the war.
Palestinians were making threats and conducting attacks months before the war. You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Of course they were. They were and are still fighting for their land. We're in agreement.
Tell us, how exactly were the Zionists to make Israel a Jewish state while there were people in the land who put up a resistance and are defiant todate? Present your facts.
Thanks for admitting Palestinians were making threats and attacking people long before the war. Any threats and attacks they received were brought on by their willingness to kill for land.
The same way the Palestinians were planning to make Palestine an Arab state while there were people in the land who put up a resistance and are defiant to date.
This is obvious to everyone. Is it not?
People everywhere around the world resisted colonialism and settlers. Never heard of a people who handled over their land or property to some thieves. Have you?
Even the Zionists expected resistance and wondered how they could achieve their goal. Ben-Gurion was quoted in 1956, "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country." [See The Jewish Paradox]
So, yes, they were and are killing for their land.
OK, so much for the claim that the Palestinians were innocent victims sitting around minding their own business when the evil Zionists started attacking and threatening them. That narrative didn't last very long.
You're right, I've never heard of imperialist colonialists like the Arabs willingly allowing indigenous natives like the Jews gain their rights of self-determination and statehood. Imperialist overlords always try to keep all of their stolen land for themselves. The British tried to stop the Indians, the Turks tried to stop the Armenians, the Europeans tried to stop the Native Americans, and the Palestinian Arabs tried to stop the Jews. Unfortunately for them, and you, they didn't succeed. Too bad, so sad. Get over it already.
You’ve proven yourself quite the knowledgeable historian in these comments. I guess we should listen to you more than Benny Morris who studied and documented all in his book. Thanks for the clarification. Please let Benny know.
I never knew that in today's world people confine themselves to one historian or source. The historian who they agree with.
There are vast viewpoints on this issue. Try exploring them. It's ok to be open minded.
Beinart, this might be hard to believe, but I actually agree with you. It is POSSIBLE that SOMEDAY Israel MIGHT expel Palestinians.
After all, Amnesty International states that ethnic cleansing is perfectly fine and justified when it comes to Jews living in the West Bank. Thanks to Palestine and its allies, mass expulsions are no longer something to be avoided, but rather something to be embraced. https://twitter.com/amnesty/status/1630904473123008514
Palestine and its allies including Beinart have also made it clear that they're going to hate Israel and continue to try to kill Israelis really no matter what Israel does, so there's essentially no difference what policies Israel has or what the makeup of its government is. How many columns has Beinart and those like him written stating that the problem is Zionism and/or that Israel is a Jewish state? This idea that Israel's policies or government makeup is the problem is a big red herring.
Of course, if Beinart and Palestine were actually worried about expulsions of Palestinians, they should probably dial down the Israel hating rhetoric and make peace with Israel as soon as possible. If Israel sees Palestinians as something other than weapons of its destruction, which would be a change from how the Western Left and the Arab governments have used Palestinians for the past 75 years, it's far less likely that anyone would be expelled from anywhere.
I must say, it's quite something to see this column come on the heels of two columns advocating for the one state "solution." Advocates for the one state solution insist that if the two state solution fails, the one state solution is inevitable. But it's not inevitable. Expulsion is equally a possibility. If Beinart had his way, Israel would be forced to make a choice between non-existence and expulsion. Which one do you think it's more likely to choose? Which one would Palestine choose if it was in Israel's position?
PS: It would be great if you had mentioned that 700,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Arab World despite literally doing nothing wrong. If the Arabs can ethnically cleanse Jews once, what's to say they couldn't or wouldn't do it again?
"I teach history at Tel Aviv University and live not far from campus. Both my apartment and my place of work are located on the ruins of an Arab village that ceased to exist on March 30, 1948. On that spring day, the village's last frightened residents walked down the dirt road leading northward, bringing with them what belongings they could and slowly disappearing from the view of the enemies who had encircled the village. Women carried infants, and small children capable of walking on their own trailed behind them. The elderly were helped along by the young; the sick and handicapped were seated on donkeys. In their hasty, terrified flight, they left behind furniture, kitchen utensils, suitcases, and unraveled bundles, along with the forgotten and confused village idiot, who could not understand why he had been left behind.
Within a few hours, the joyful besiegers had taken control of the village, on which their sights had been set for some time. Thus did the inhabitants of al-Sheikh Muwannis fade from the pages of the history of the Land of Israel and fall into the depths of forgetfulness.
The village's houses and fields no longer exist. All that remains are two or three rickety structures, some damaged and neglected graves, and a few particularly robust date trees that just happened not to interfere with the parking lot. My university was established right beside these last vestiges of the village. It evolved into the largest institution of higher education in Israel, extending across the land of the village that is no more. Indeed, parts of this book were written in an office within the university. It was from this strange, almost neighbourly proximity between the built and the obliterated, and the intolerable friction between an illusive past and a mobile and constantly advancing present, that I derived a certain moral inspiration for some of the narrative strategies employed here.
As a historian, that is to say, as a certified agent of memory who makes a living by teaching about so many yesterdays, I was unable to finish this book without addressing the past of the physical space in which I conduct my everyday life. Although human hands have done almost everything possible to conceal and erase all that remained of the Arab village, it is still the same land and the same heavens, and the horizon above the sea that is visible to the west is the same horizon it always was, just seen through different eyes."
From 'The Invention Of The Land Of Israel' by Shlomo Sand
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said: "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down."
The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs: "This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re?enter and retake possession of their country."
In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave: “Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.”
"The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two," Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub (August 16, 1948). "Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
On April 3, 1949, the Near East Broadcasting Station (Cyprus) said: "It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem."
"The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies," according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin (February 19, 1949).
One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: "The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."
What has all that got to do with Shlomo Sand‘s story?
There's more to the 1948 war than the experience of one anecdotal Arab village.
I cited the source that Peter Beinart incorrectly cited. Who is your source?
Paranoia strikes deep. What are you smoking. Oops let me not insult the weed. Instead let me seriously start asking have you really spend much time reading about the history of the Middle East, starting at least from 1800 onwards? You need to do that.
700,000 expelled? None left of their own volition? Haifa’s large Arab population ran off even as the Mayor of Haifa and other Jewish leaders pleaded with them to stay. Of course, why stay when the Ayon (the notables) the 70,000 “one percenters” picked themselves up and left overnight even before Israel announced its independence.
Your aspirations need to be backed up by supporting facts. They are often absent.
For sure Israelis now mostly wish the Palestinians would simply disappear. After all, who wants to walk the streets of their town and be on the lookout for some stranger who will attack you with a knife? Last week I was on a video chat with a cousin who lives on a left wing Kibbutz in the Galilee—this guy is left of Meretz! We were talking about economic opportunities. When I brought up olives and olive oil and the possibility of cooperating with other Arab villages in the Galilee; for the first time ever he gave me a stony look as if I came from another planet.
As your guest last week pointed out these two peoples need to be separated from each other not pushed towards each other. As for your fantasy of Israel pushing all the Palestinians out of Israel and the West Bank and Gaza, I offer two scenarios for you and your audience:
1. Israel gets into a war it starts and not only does not win but is severely battered. In exchange for a supply line from America, it will be forced to accommodate a Palestinian state and a significant return of Palestinians into Israel itself. This will cause Israel’s one percenters to depart and soon after anyone who can afford to as well. There will be a state with religious Jews and religious Moslems and the violence will for sure continue.
2. Israel gets into a war it does not start. And the Palestinians in the West Bank and Hamas and Islamic Jihad join in. If Israel prevails, then there is a heightened likelihood that the Palestinians will be forced to leave the West Bank into Jordan (a Palestinian state except in name and leader).
Not at all unimaginable. We were there recently, and as we do when we go, visited with my husband's extended family. They are uniformly religious and right wing (diametrically opposite to our views). When asked what they would like to see for Palestinians in Israel, if not their autonomy, they immediately responded, "We must push them into the sea." They were not kidding.
Thank you so much for your work. The majority of the people I know don’t pay attention to what is going on outside of this country. I appreciate your words to educate the public. I visited Israel in 2020 and I was fascinated with how much we the public don’t know. I am interested in your work and efforts please don’t stop.
Israel was founded to be a Jewish state and the founders masterminded the Nakba to see this happen. In Dec 1947, Jews made 40% of population. Ben-Gurion and others found this unacceptable and were shooting for 80% to make the Jewish majority dream viable.
Seeing this, they began attacking and threatening Palestians and other Arabs months before the Arabs attacked them. Put another way, had the Arabs not initiated the war, Israel could have kept provoking them to go to war. This is what they wanted. Nakba was premeditated. And it worked.
What's to stop Israel from repeating Nakba if they feel threatened by the demographics again? In fact, demographics is the main reason that many remain insistent on two state. Have we not seen the constant unprovoked attacks on the Palestnians?
Peter's right. What he wrote is not far fetched.
Arabs were attacking and threatening Jews centuries before Zionism even existed as a concept. This belief, like so much else of the Palestinian narrative, is an utter falsehood.
Benny Morris: "There was no Zionist "plan" or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of "ethnic cleansing"."
Who should we believe? A historian who Peter himself calls 'esteemed', or an anonymous anti-Semite on the Internet?
How exactly did Zionists intend to make Israel a Jewish state, a land that was teeming with Arabs who were not willing to give up their land?
Try more historians, even those with dissenting views. That's how education works.
Simple. Zionists, unlike Arabs, didn't want to take over the entire region and grab all of Palestine for themselves alone.
"Chaim Weizman, Israel’s first president, famously remarked that he was willing to take a state “even if it’s the size of a tablecloth.”"
Ah, so when you hear from a historian who tells you what you don't want to hear, you just go find another historian. What a closeminded way to go through life.
"Chaim Weizman, Israel’s first president, famously remarked that he was willing to take a state “even if it’s the size of a tablecloth.”"
Why did Weizman &Co not carry through with this if they really meant it? And why are the present Zionists like you not pushing for this?
A moronic question even for you. If you ran a charity that was asking for $5 donations, would you turn down a $50 donation?
What's charity to you? Where are you going with this?
Peter Beinart's essay is eloquent and persuasive, and therefore terrifying. Just a brilliant analogy to the good liberals (including Maggie Halberman) snorting at Keith Ellison for suggesting in 2015 that Trump could be nominated, even elected. Whaddalaff!
There are indeed times when Ilan Pappe makes some dubious postmodernist methodological statements. Quoting them, endlessly, does not vitiate all of his arguments, and he comes together with all serious historians, including Benny Morris, in documenting a Zionist history of threats, rapes, shootings, and massacres. For Morris on "transfer" (which is the same thing as "ethnic cleansing"), see "The idea of transfer in Zionist Thinking before 1948 (Birth Revisited 39-48).
Both Pappe and Morris, for instance, refer without ambiguity to the massacre that took place in al-Dawayima on October 29, 1948. See Pappe's Ethnic Cleansing, 195-8; and Morris's Birth Revisited, 469-70. The latter is, if anything, even more grisly. True, not all Palestinians in al-Dawayima were ethnically cleansed. The Palestinian babies whose brains were bashed out by Israeli troops pretty much stayed put.
Morris, an indispensible if also racist historian, is himself not immune to self-contradiction. In his infamous interview with Ari Shavit, he first sneers at Arafat for describing Zionists as crusaders, then goes on to say, “This is a struggle against a whole world that espouses different values. And we are on the front line. Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place.” Yes; I repeat, no.
Brigadier General Eitam not only advocates ethnic cleansing; he advocates genocide, in the starkest terms: "We will have to kill them all." That Benjamin Netanyahu's government nominated him to head Yad Vashem (a number of survivors screamed bloody murder at this) indicates the depths to which Zionist settler colonialism is prepared to sink.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/we-will-have-kill-them-all-effie-eitam-thug-messiah/8555
Thanks again, Peter, for your essay. Noam Chomsky is looking more and more like the Nev'im, as well as sounding like them; you are still clean-shaven, but the words and passion are the same.
Wow, who can argue with such a reputable and unbiased source like Electronic Intifada?
Peter himself calls Benny Morris "esteemed." Take your objections about Morris up with him.
Interesting debate on the Israel/Palestine conflict on Australian TV.
https://youtu.be/_MzfChhhqJc
To say that another Nakba is possible is true. But it seems to me that the force of the Israeli publics continuing weekly demonstrations against the Netanyahu led government on before of the essential support of an independent Supreme Court belies the likelihood of something as negative as the expulsion of Palestinians no matter how extreme the current government is. I remain scared because I've watched Israelis increasing accept the venom of Caroline Glick who I use as one of my barometers of Israeli public opinion. But the reaction of truly large numbers of the Israeli public to Netanyahu's attempts to diminish the power of the Supreme Court is making a tangible difference and I believe that President Herzog's call for a global Jewish dialogue presents an opportunity to infuse the vision of the more progressive American Jewish Community.
You are a classic example of an educated idiot…the very embodiment of an over educated diaspora Jew giving advice to real people living in a real country trying to come to terms with a highly emotional situation/competing claims and narratives. You talk about Jews expelling Arabs before 1948 but do you talk about the attacks on Jews by many if not most of these “Palestinians “….you call Israel Apartheid…tell me “ Professor” when were White Europeans ever indigenous to South Africa? Your cosmopolitan Socialist “ Justice” attitude is laughable…I also hear you are Orthodox…well you better hope you theistic imbecile that there really is a God or else all your liturgical incantations to a sky God are primitive speaking in tounges…stop patronizing the lunatic left/academic elitists and wake up…for such a smart guy you really are stupid