Is this the same way Sharon sparked the current Intifada by visiting the Temple Mount?!
For those of you who are not quite sure whether my sarcasm is valid, don't take my word for it. Take Imad Falouji's (Palestinian Authority Communications Minister) words on March 3, 2001:
Whoever thinks that this [war] started as a result of Sharon's despicable visit to Al Aksa is in error. It was planned since Arafat's return from Camp David [where he] firmly stood up to Clinton and rejected the U.S. terms.For more on this, read palestinefacts.org: What Started the Al Aksa Intifada?
(Note: if you believe congratulatory phone calls spark violence, you will probably remain unconvinced)
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I admire people who publish their views - but I think you're on a hiding to nothing attempting to defend Israel.
Surprised? Well, if you check back, you'll discover that the Zionists were always violent racists, determined to dispossess whoever was in their way. The current behaviour of Israel is in exactly the same mould - hampered only by the fact that it can no longer get lots of immigrants to seize and hold new lands.
Where do I start proving my claim? Here are some quotes, they, and many more, are very easy to find. I've attempted to double-check that I'm using credible sources and find lots of confirmation, including Israeli and Zionist sources:
1895, Theodor Herzl, Founder of Zionism: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by ... denying it employment in our country ... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." (This is to be the new Zion, but at this stage, Herzl is probably considering Argentina and Uganda ahead of Palestine).
|| http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7854/transf3.html
|| ....... Up to the 1970s, the various biographers of Herzl had
|| been unaware of (or had suppressed!) Herzl's transfer plans.
|| The first biographer to discuss them was Desmond Stewart,
|| whose book entitled "Theodor Herzl" was published in 1974.
1905, Israel Zangwill (UK journalist): "must be prepared either to DRIVE OUT BY THE SWORD the tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grabble with the problem of a large ALIEN population. Many are semi-nomad, they have given nothing to Palestine and are not entitled to the rules of democracy."
|| See http://www.wzo.org.il/home/movement/zangwill.htm -
|| pro-Israel web-site - ascribes these and similar
|| views to Zangwill
1930 Menahem Ussishkin: chairman of the Jewish National Fund and a member of the Jewish Agency Executive. A speech in Jerusalem: "We must continuously raise the demand that our land be returned to our possession .... If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a greater and nobler ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of Arab fellahin."
|| Daor Hayom (Jerusalem), 28 April 1930. www.nad-plo.org
|| (this is the PLO - but most of these clips are from
|| unimpeachable sources!)
1937, Chaim Weizmann: "We Shall spread in the whole country in the course of time ..... this is only an arrangement for the next 25 to 30 years."
|| letter Chaim Weizmann sent to the Palestine-British high
|| Commissioner while the Peel Commission was convening, 1937
1938, David Ben-Gurion (first Prime Minister of Israel): "I favour partition of the country because when we become a strong power after the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and spread throughout all of Palestine."
|| cited by Benny Morris (teaches history at Ben Gurion
|| University in Beer Sheva) in "The Birth Of The Palestinian
|| Refugee Problem"
1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky (founder of the Likud Party) in his book "The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)", 1923: "Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. It is important to speak Hebrew, but it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through at playing with colonizing" & "There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs" (Eretz Yisrael means Greater Israel, Jabotinsky wanted Israel to stretch from "the brook of Egypt", a river in the Sinai, to the Euphrates).
|| The Ethical Spectacle, April 1995, http://www.spectacle.org
|| .... By writing articles critical of Israel, I, as a Jew,
|| open myself to accusations of self-hatred or antisemitism.
1944, Eliahu Dobkin, (Mapai colleague of Ben-Gurion): "There will be in the country a large (Arab) minority and it must be ejected. There is no room for our internal inhibitions in this matter."
|| Benny Morris, `Revisiting the Palestinian exodus of 1948', in
|| Rogan and Shlaim, eds, The War for Palestine, Rewriting the
|| History of 1948, Cambridge 2001, pp. 41-7
1947, Moshe Sharett again: "Transfer could be the crowning achievements, the final stage in the development of [our] policy, but certainly not the point of departure. By [speaking publicly and prematurely] we could mobilizing vast forces against the matter and cause it to fail, in advance."
|| International Press Center, www.ipc.gov.ps/alnakba/English/
|| refugees/refugees01.html quoting Benny Morris (again). "We do
|| not expect every Palestinian or Zionist to agree with everything
|| the revisionist Israeli historian, Benny Morris, has written.
|| However, it should be NOTED that his conclusions were based on
|| declassified Zionist and Haganah archives.
1948, Menachim Begin: "The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for
Ever.".
|| "The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World"
|| by Avi Shlaim, p. 25. (an Israeli)
1948 January, Yosef Weitz about the inhabitants of Daliyat al-Rawha', 24.5km south-east of Haifa: "Isn't now the time to be rid of them? Why continue to keep in our midst these thorn at a time when they pose a danger to us? Our people are weighing up a solution."
|| Benny Morris again, apparently from Yosef's diary.
|| http://www.palestineremembered.com/Haifa/Daliyat-al-Rawha'/
|| Ethnically cleansed in mid February 1948, & possible
|| occupation on the 10th of April 1948.
|| unknown troops from the Haganah. In mid-June 1948, the
|| village has been completely obliterated, and only house
|| rubble left behind.
October 1882 Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michal Pines write describing the indigenous Palestinians:
"... There are now only five hundred [thousand] Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become a the strong and papules ones." (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 49)
Same time, October 1882 - Validimir Dubnow writes to his brother:
"The ultimate goal ... is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years. ... The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland." (Benny Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 49)
I hesitate to add my name to this posting, because the viciousness of the Zionists in cyber-space knows no bounds. At least one in their number has made a determined attack on the personal reputation of the person they believe me to be.
Needless to say, this bitterness is not because I've been posting lies about the Zionists - it's because everything I've said is provably true.
Firstly, I wish to thank you for your comment. Although I am probably on the opposing political spectrum than you are, I respect the manner in which you have backed up your assertions. As I am a strong believer in resolving disputes via dialogue, it seems we are making the first steps towards convergence.
As for the topic of the post, it does not seem that you disagree with my sarcasm of The Scotsman’s inference that Sharon’s congratulator phone call had something to do with the violence that has since taken place… or do you?!
As for your comments, the task of verifying the content and context of each of the quotes you mentioned is beyond the resources I have available tome on the subject in Australia. I would appreciate if someone could comment on the specific quotes mentioned. Until then, I have to rely on your references, and while some references are from the PLO and History Revisionists/Rewriters, others seem to be from credible sources.
So to the point of the matter, it would seem that the early Israeli leadership had contemplated the notion of population transfers as a bitter pill that would have to be swallowed, an unpleasant but necessary course of action. While the concept of transfer in today’s context smacks of racism, and as such only a miniscule fragment of modern Israeli society advocate it, this was not the case all those years ago.
There are three main reasons for this:
1) Population transfers in the early pre and post war eras was far more common than they are today and were seen as a legitimate consequence of geopolitical changes. India and Pakistan is a notable example.
2) The Jewish State was a necessary instrument in the survival of a people. This fact was highlighted as immigration around the globe (with a few notable exceptions - such as the USA) shut their gates at Jews fleeing the atrocities of Europe. No other nation has more blood on its hands than the United Kingdom itself who forced Jews to return to slaughter by the boatload. Creating a safe haven was the first priority for the Jewish leadership. The fact that this would inconvenience others was rightly secondary consideration. Life overrides inconvenience.
3) The Arabs living in Palestine at that time did not have a national identity and by in large were workers (fellahin) who worked the lands for landowners who resided in Syria and Transjordan. It was thus not seen as dispossessing people as they were not the possessors and their identity was more with the neighbouring nations than with the land that is now Israel.
Note the following two quotes on the subject in Barr’s Myths & Facts (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths/mf1.html):
• “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds” (First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations in Yehoshua Porath, Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion: 1929-1939, vol. 2, (London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1977), pp. 81-82)
• There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria" (Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Peel Commission 1937)
• "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria" (PLO Rep Ahmed Shuqeiri at the UN Security Council in Avner Yaniv, PLO, (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Study Group of Middle Eastern Affairs, August 1974), p. 5)
Note that your quotes date back to pre establishment and early establishment. Israel has since become a refuge for the dispossessed Jews from around the world (including the 700,000 Jews who were forced to flee from Arab states). On the Palestinian side a distinct identity has emerged. As the above reasons are no longer applicable, talk of transfer nowadays is limited to a very few indeed.
If only we could say the same about the Palestinian side.
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In my view everyone have to glance at it.
It cannot have effect as a matter of fact, that's exactly what I suppose.
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