Exposing Israel's Original Sins (fwd)

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Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2000 07:59:06 +0000
From: MER <MERL@MiddleEast.Org>
To: MER <MERL@MiddleEast.Org>
Subject: Exposing Israel's Original Sins

http://www.MiddleEast.Org


MER WEEKEND READING:

                 EXPOSING ISRAEL'S ORIGINAL SINS

                         By Gideon Levy

               "Correcting a Mistake - Jews and Arabs 
               in Palestine/Israel, 1936-1956," by 
               Benny Morris, Am Oved Publishers, 
               241 pages, NIS 64


Oh, we were so good (and did so many bad things). We were so right (and 
caused so many injustices). We were so beautiful (and our actions resulted 
in so much ugliness). And oh, we were so innocent and spread so many lies - 
lies and half-truths that we told ourselves and the rest of the world.We, 
who were born afterward, weren't told the whole truth; they only taught us 
the good parts, of which there were many. But, after all, there were also 
dark chapters which we heard nothing about. Instead, we were fed lies - 
there's just no other word for it.

They lied when they told us that the Arabs of Lod and Ramle "asked to leave 
their cities" (the head of the history department of the Israel Defense 
Forces). They lied when they told us that the murderous Kibiya operation was 
carried out by "enraged residents" (David Ben-Gurion). They lied when they 
told us that all the "infiltrators" were bloodthirsty terrorists, that all 
the Arab states wanted to destroy us and that we were the only ones who 
simply wanted peace all the time.

They lied; oh, how they lied. We didn't hear a thing about the horrific 
massacre in Safsaf; and not a syllable was uttered about the deportation 
plans.

The Arabs were always the bad guys. We were the absolute righteous, or the 
exclusive victims - or so we were told. Perhaps they didn't want to spoil it 
for us; perhaps they didn't want to ruin it for themselves. The huge 
celebration of a nation without a country that came to a country without a 
nation, settled it, caused its barren wilderness to blossom and established 
a glorious state - with exemplary, impeccable morality - should have been 
complete. As large, true and deserving as it may be, however, this 
celebration cannot be complete without recounting its entire history.
Historical mud-slinging
The time for telling the whole truth is well upon us. Over the past 12 years 
or so - and much to the distress of the "old" historians, whose enterprises 
are developing cracks - a number of "new" historians have taken up the 
challenge.

The rage with which the old historians are responding to the new historical 
enterprise is, perhaps, the entire story: If they had questioned their 
truths, which are beginning to crumble before their denying, repressive 
eyes, it is doubtful whether they would be so angry. After all, if they are 
so sure of themselves, why are they reacting so vociferously and making such 
a fuss? History, as the saying goes, will be the judge ... won't it?

As the doubts begin to surface, with Yitzhak Rabin, the banisher of the 
Arabs of Lod and Ramle, admitting his deeds even before the historian who 
tried to ignore and cover them up did, it is easy to understand the 
mud-slinging campaign that the old historians are waging against their new 
colleagues. With nowhere else to turn, this is their last resort. With no 
other sanctuary available, patriotism, as per usual, becomes the safe 
harbor.

Benny Morris certainly has a large stake in the new historical enterprise, 
even if it would have been better if he had let others determine that, "The 
turning point ... came in 1988, heralded, inter alia, in the first article 
in this compilation" (page 12). Morris' two earlier books - "Israel's Border 
Wars, 1949-1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to 
the Suez War" (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993), and "The Birth of the 
Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1948" (Cambridge Middle East Library, 
1987) - are foundations for an understanding of the roots of the 
Israeli-Arab conflict.

If you want to understand the Palestinian uprising in the territories, go to 
these two books. If you want to understand why a settlement is impossible 
without a solution to the refugee problem, go to Morris. All the 
early-warning signs appear in his works. They show how our relationship with 
the Arabs began. Everything that followed, up until this very day, is 
anchored in their - and particularly our - original sins, which Morris and 
his colleagues have exposed.

Don't get me wrong. Among his colleagues, the new historians, Morris is 
certainly the least political and most Zionistic. His name doesn't appear on 
the protest petitions of the extreme left, and he defines himself as a 
Zionist, without reservations. He is more concerned with his historical 
findings than he is with their political and moral implications. Sometimes, 
his findings appear to cause him a certain discomfort, but you won't catch 
him voicing unequivocal moral assessments of his revelations, as chilling as 
they may be, particularly not to anyone who didn't know an Avraham (or 
Ibrahim) of those days.

He hasn't written ideological articles either. As assiduous a researcher, 
and as hard-working an in-the-field reporter (Morris began his professional 
life as a journalist) as he was, he presents the story and leaves us to draw 
most of the conclusions.

Morris' conclusions, one can safely assume, are a lot more forgiving than 
one would expect, and in this, lies his strength: Despite the claims leveled 
against the new historians, Morris does not home in on a target before 
embarking on his research. Neither does he hesitate to present findings that 
contradict or weaken his basic theories. For Morris, the experience 
determines the consciousness, and not vice-versa. A small ideologist and a 
significant historian - that's Morris in a nutshell.

His new book, "Correcting a Mistake," is a collection of articles that come 
together to form a gripping, infuriating collage of injustices committed 
between 1936-1956 by the Jewish community of Palestine, and thereafter, the 
state, against the native Palestinians.

         No contrition

This time, in contrast to his other books, Morris doesn't focus on one 
particular issue. Contrary to the connotations stemming from the name of the 
book, this is not an expression of contrition. Morris doesn't present new 
findings to sweeten the previous bitter pills he asked us to swallow. Quite 
the opposite: Regrettably, the opening of the archives, which had been 
closed for some 50 years, and the exposure of new material has shed more 
light on the picture, which Morris had painted, in shadow, and which now, 
stirs up more fury than he first imagined.

"The Deportations of the Hiram Operation: Correcting a Mistake" is the title 
of the article from which the collection takes its name. "Sometimes a 
historian must correct a mistake," Morris writes, and the reader is riveted. 
Perhaps it never happened? Perhaps there were no deportations or massacres? 
Perhaps Morris was wrong and everything was done by the book?

Not a chance! Over a decade after the publication of "The Birth of the 
Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1948," Morris reveals that he did, indeed, 
make a mistake, but errors and omissions accepted. He believed Major General 
(res.) Moshe Carmel and other sources, who told him that no deportation 
orders were issued during the course of Operation Hiram, to be the dirtiest 
there was.

And now, the IDF archives have been opened and there we find a cable dated 
October 31, 1948, signed by Major General Carmel and addressed to all the 
division and district commanders under his command: "Do all you can to 
immediately and quickly purge the conquered territories of all hostile 
elements in accordance with the orders issued. The residents should be 
helped to leave the areas that have been conquered."

Perhaps this was the right thing to do; perhaps there was no alternative. 
But why lie all these years? Why didn't they say: "Righteousness encountered 
righteousness; a victim encountered a victim; and this was the inevitable 
result. We had to deport them. It was either them or us." It's a lot more 
convincing than lying about it. The only thing is, Carmel's deportation 
order isn't the whole truth which Morris reveals in "Correcting a Mistake."

Apparently, Carmel's troops carried out massacres in no less than 10 (!) 
villages in the north of the country. They would gather the men of these 
villages in the square, choose a few of them, sometimes dozens, stand them 
up against a wall and shoot them. Because the IDF has kept the relevant 
document under wraps, we know nothing about these massacres. We can only 
hope that this nonsense, this outrageous practice of keeping things 
confidential, passes from the world and that 52 years on, we will eventually 
learn everything - where we went wrong and the evil things we did.

       Blood-chilling testimonies

In any event, Morris presents a number of blood-chilling testimonies, first 
hand, about the massacres carried out during Operation Hiram, the numbers of 
which are different to and far more serious than any other operation. No, he 
doesn't say that Carmel ordered the massacres; who knows, perhaps there's 
another confidential document that does, and Morris will have to correct 
another mistake. But, he deduces - based on the large number of incidents in 
this particular operation, their similar nature, and the fact that no one 
was punished in their wake - that the commanders understood Carmel's orders 
to be a stamp of approval for acts of murder that would make the residents 
of the villages flee.

Up until a short while ago, one could have run into the pleasant-mannered 
Carmel, who served as a government minister on behalf of the now-defunct 
Achdut Ha'avoda and Ma'arach parties, sitting in the Beit Ariella municipal 
library in Tel Aviv, seven days a week, and browsing through the newspapers 
like one of the pensioners. He was also among the very good people who did a 
number of very bad things.

Terrible things were done after the War of Independence, too; for example, 
in the town of Majdal in 1950. At that stage, Israel was already quite sure 
of itself - big, but not big enough, as far as it was concerned.

Some 10,000 Palestinians lived in Majdal before the war and, in October 
1948, thousands more refugees from nearby villages joined them. Majdal fell 
in November and most of its residents and refugees fled wherever they could, 
leaving some 3,000 inhabitants, mostly women and the elderly. Orders in 
Hebrew and Yiddish were posted in the streets of the town, warning the 
soldiers to be aware of "undesirable" behavior on the part of the town's 
residents. "As was customary in such instances," the Israeli intelligence 
officer wrote, "the behavior of the population was obsequious and 
adulatory."

Majdal was too close to Gaza for Israel's liking. In December 1948, IDF 
soldiers "swept through" the town and deported some 500 of its remaining 
inhabitants. In 1949, Yigal Allon demanded "to transfer all the Arab 
inhabitants." Ben- Gurion objected. An inter-ministerial committee for the 
"transfer of Arabs from place to place" - yes, we had one of those as well - 
decided to thin out the population somewhat; another ministerial committee - 
"on abandoned property" - decided to settle Majdal with Jews.

>>From committee to committee, Majdal was "Judaized," until, with 2,500 Jewish 
residents, it became known as Migdal-Ad.

In December 1949, more Arabs were deported so as to vacate a few more houses 
- "abandoned property" - for a few more discharged soldiers. The IDF made 
the life of those Arab who remained a misery, hoping they'd get the message. 
The new commanding officer of the Southern Command, Moshe Dayan, rekindled 
the ideas of his predecessor, Yigal Allon.

"I hope that perhaps in the coming years, there will be another opportunity 
to transfer these Arabs [170,000 Israeli Arabs - G.L.] out of the Land of 
Israel," he said at a meeting of the Mapai faction, outlining its ideas 
while in uniform. Dayan backed up his words with actions: He submitted a 
detailed proposal for "the evacuation of the Arab inhabitants of the town of 
Majdal." The chief of staff agreed and Ben-Gurion authorized the plan. The 
government was circumvented, the Histadrut labor federation objected, and 
Rabin informed the residents.

The transfer began at the beginning of 1950, although the "official 
operation" took off in June. There were still those who spoke of dispersing 
the Arabs around the country; in the end, they were deported to Gaza. They 
were loaded onto trucks and dropped off at the border - "deliveries," as 
they were termed. Just to remind you again, the state already existed. The 
last delivery of 229 people left for Gaza on October 21; the Egyptians 
didn't bat an eyelid.

Back in Israel, the officials pondered over how to distribute the 
"abandoned" houses, most of which went to individuals who had some political 
clout. In 1956, Migdal-Ad changed its name to Ashkelon. To this very day, 
the former residents of Majdal live in the shacks and shanties of the 
refugee camps in Gaza.

How many Israelis know this story? How many have heard it before? How many 
have ever thought of the refugees on whose destroyed homes the city of 
Ashkelon was founded?

           'Tearful assassin'

But the most enlightening and probably most significant document presented 
in the book is the journal of concerned-citizen Yosef Nachmani, perhaps the 
original tearful assassin, certainly not the last.

For 40 years, Nachmani spearheaded the Zionist enterprise in the Land of 
Israel - a high-ranking member of the pre-independence underground, Haganah; 
the director of the offices of the Jewish National Fund in Tiberias; and the 
man responsible for purchasing and settling land throughout the Galilee and 
Jezreel Valley regions.

Nachmani's beliefs underwent numerous upheavals all through his life: At 
first, he supported the transfer; then, he sobered up. At first, he was in 
favor of adopting a harsh approach; then, his conscience started eating away 
at him. At first, he dispossessed; then, he denounced. At first, he fired; 
then, he cried.

But above all, he was a fascinating observer. At least one particular 
portion of his journal requires repeating here: " ... the acts of cruelty 
committed by our soldiers. After they went into Safsaf, the village and its 
people raised a white flag. They separated the men from the women, tied the 
hands of some 50 to 60 peasants and shot and killed them, burying them in a 
single hole. They also raped a number of the women from the village. 
Alongside the wood, he [probably an eye-witness by the name of Freedman - 
G.L.] saw a few dead women, among them one who was holding her dead child in 
her arms ...

"In Salha, which raised a white flag, they carried out a real massacre, 
killing men and women, about 60 to 70 people. Where did they find such a 
degree of cruelty like that of the Nazis? They learned from them."

Bosnia? Kosovo? Chechniya? Rwanda? No, not at all; right here, and not that 
long ago.

Morris, as calculated as ever, concludes: "The fundamental change in the 
thoughts and actions of Nachmani between 1947-1949 leaves the observer with 
a sense of paradox and admiration and gives him a key to understanding 
Zionism and its success. Zionism has always had two faces: a constructive, 
moral, compromising and considerate aspect; and a destructive, selfish, 
militant, chauvinistic-racist one. Both are sincere and real ... The 
simultaneous existence of these two facets was one of the most significant 
keys to the success of Zionism" - shooting and weeping.

But, there were also incidents in which they shot - oh, and how they shot - 
and didn't weep at all. And lied. This is the picture that emerges from the 
chapter about the Israeli press at the time of the Kibiya affair, which 
expresses the dark side of the then already five-year-old state: no longer a 
community struggling to establish a country, but an orderly, victorious 
state, thought of as a democracy, with David Ben-Gurion, who lies, 
poker-faced, and its press, which brazenly conceals scandalous information 
from its readers and even lies knowingly - all for the glory of the State of 
Israel.

"First of all, the facts," as Morris writes. On the night of October 12-13, 
1953, a group of infiltrators crossed the border into Israel, reached Yehud 
and threw a grenade into the home of the Kanias family. The mother and her 
two young children were killed. Retribution was two days in coming: Soldiers 
from the IDF commando unit (Unit 101) raided Kibiya, going from house to 
house, throwing in grenades and shooting indiscriminately. The result: 60 
dead, most of them women and children.

The Israeli leaders did not make mention of most of these facts to the 
public, but worse still - a thousands times worse - neither did the Israeli 
press. The Mapai newspaper, Ha'dor, tried, at first, not to refrain from 
reporting a thing about the massacre; the other newspapers offered partial 
and even blatantly false versions of the story.

Morris, on the article in Ma'ariv by the legendary Azriel Carlibach: "There 
is hardly one sentence among Carlibach's words that does not defile, distort 
or twist the truth, either explicitly or implicitly; whereas the words of 
Radio Ramallah, as quoted in the Hebrew press, were almost all the simple 
truth."

Most of the press - aside from Kol Ha'am, and later Ha'aretz and Al 
Hamishmar, all of which expressed reservations - reported that the Kibiya 
killers weren't IDF conscripts, but rather outraged residents that went out 
to seek vengeance. Unit 101 or outraged residents? The press and then prime 
minister David Ben-Gurion knew, Morris writes, that this was a 
propaganda-like lie.

I read this chapter twice - once, before the outbreak of the "Al-Aqsa 
Intifada"; and then again, a short while thereafter. After my first reading, 
I was incensed by the Israeli press of old - a collaborator and distorter - 
and I took pride in the long way it has come since then.

After my second reading, and in the wake of the way in which the new 
Intifada has been covered by sections of the Israeli media, I was faced with 
the following question: Have we really changed, or perhaps, in testing 
times, does the Israeli press return to its bad old place of being the 
state's trumpet, just as it was in Kibiya, just as Morris describes? Then, 
the press inflamed passions by giving prominence to the Israeli victims 
(relatively few) and playing down the Arab ones (tenfold more), greatly 
enhancing the Israelis' sense of being the victim, the exclusive sufferers.

So, is there anything new under the sun?

The things that Morris writes about the Kibiya press hold true, in part, for 
the press of the past few days: "As a whole, the press approached the Kibiya 
operation as an enlisted press, justifying, no matter what, government 
policy and the actions of the IDF ... The feeling was that if the entire 
world was denouncing [Israel], then the press here must unite, to beautify 
and repel the criticism."

Some things never change.

Isn't it best for us to know about all these things? Isn't it important for 
us to know about all these things, particularly now, in such difficult 
times? That's where it all started. That's how it all began

        Ha'aretz © - 3 November 2000







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