Ray Cook - As I See It

Israel, Zionism and the Media

Tag: nakba

The real meaning of a Palestinian Right of Return

06/06/2011 / / 1 Comment
H/T Elder of Ziyon

This cartoon appeared in the Palestine Times:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although the Elder says a picture is worth a thousand words, let me explain.

The key is the symbol of the Right of Return. You may see Palestinians waving keys during protests. The inference is that they have the actual keys to their ‘former homes’, even though almost all of them were born outside of Israel and it was their parents, grandparents and other forbears who may have lived in what is now Israel.

It is always claimed that all these ‘refugees’ want is justice and to have their homes and property returned.

Yet this cartoon clearly demonstrates the real reason and motivation behind the Right of Return: to erase Israel from the map; but, just as subtly,  the Palestinian key removes the symbol of the Jews. The Right of Return,* then, is merely a ploy to destroy the State of Israel and remove all Jews from the land.

(*No such Right exists in international law for any descendants of refugees anywhere. UN Resolution 194, which is always quoted as granting this right, does no such thing.)

 

 

 

With Israel or against? The West has to decide NOW and fast

18/05/2011 / / 0 Comments

With Israel or against? The West has to decide NOW and fast whether it is willing to stand by and see a second Holocaust.

Will Cameron and Sarkozy and Merkel and Obama and the rest wring their hands and say: “If only they had compromised; if only they had shared Jerusalem and dismantled the settlements. If they hadn’t been such stiff-necked Jews then all this genocide would not have happened.

Why do I say this? Surely Israel is the regional superpower?

Well that means nothing.

The Palestinians are so emboldened by the UN and the Western powers not standing up for Israel, and, to the contrary, accusing Israel of intransigence, failure to compromise, not wanting peace, occupation, appropriation, war crimes, crimes against humanity… you know how it goes; so emboldened are the Palestinians that now they have no fear of saying in English what they have always said in Arabic.

Now the days of bad faith and playing the peace game are over. The mask has dropped.

Now they are telling it like it is and ‘it’ is the destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian IslamoFascist, West-hating, anti-Semitic, racist, genocidal, state.

And this is to replace the democratic, free, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, JEWISH state of Israel.

Let’s see what the Palestinian Authority’s president had to say in the New York Times on the anniversary of what he calls the ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe) and what Israel calls its Independence Day.

This month, however, as we commemorate another year of our expulsion — which we call the nakba, or catastrophe — the Palestinian people have cause for hope: this September, at the United Nations General Assembly, we will request international recognition of the State of Palestine on the 1967 border and that our state be admitted as a full member of the United Nations.

Of course, he doesn’t mention that the same United Nations recognised the very State of Israel that he refuses to recognise. He does not mention that the so-called 1967 border is in fact the 1949 armistice line and was never an agreed border. The borders of Israel were never finalised because the Arab states would not recognise Israel and have not recognised Israel since or intend to do so in the future.

And here’s the really good bit:

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued. Indeed, it was the descendants of these expelled Palestinians who were shot and wounded by Israeli forces on Sunday as they tried to symbolically exercise their right to return to their families’ homes.

Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.

Let’s see how some commentators reacted to this outrageous rewriting of history.

Elder of Ziyon:

A complete and utter lie. Within mere hours after the partition vote, Arabs started murdering Jews:

The link in the above quote is to another Elder blog which describes the massacre of November 1947 :

The first victims were on a bus to Jerusalem. Some were killed instantly from a grenade hurled into the bus; one of the injured passengers was murdered as he tried to tend to his injured wife. Another victim was on her way to Jerusalem to get married.

…

Others were killed that day as well, and many hundreds more – men, women and children – were to be brutally murdered in the coming months.

The reasons for the hate have not changed a bit from then to today. They were not murdered because of “occupation” or “refugees” or any of the dozens of other justifications that have been since used to minimize the horror of these unabashed terror attacks.

Their “crimes” were simply because they were Jews with the desire to live in their own nation, at peace with their neighbors. What the world recognized instinctively in 1947 – that Jews deserve the right to self-determination – was to be tested by a massive temper tantrum of Arab supremacists who were willing to attempt a second genocide against the Jews rather than face what they consider “humiliation.“

The Elder tells us:

Abbas’ account is so outrageously false that it should have been rejected from being in the New York Times editorial just on that basis. An op-ed does not give the writer carte blanche to make up history. The facts are documented quite well. Abbas is a liar.

The Arab armies that invaded in May 1948 didn’t “intervene” to protect Arabs of Palestine. They went in to massacre all the Jews of Palestine.

So it is not surprising that an established liar can write:

Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.

That “promise” was roundly rejected by not only the entire Arab world but by every Palestinian Arab leader themselves. Abbas is arrogantly trying to pretend that he deserves a state when his forebears, and he himself, have rejected just such a state numerous times.

Rivka Shpak Lissak wades in:

Abu Mazen’s article is a combination of 2 lies:
About historical facts
About the negotiating with Israel

Lies about History:…

The historic name of the country is the Land of Israel
It was the homeland of the Jews/Israelis from the 18th century BCE. 3 to 4 million Jews lived in the Land of Israel in 66 CE when they revolted against the Roman occupation of their country and failed.
From 66 CE to 640 CE the Romans and the Byzantines were engaged in a policy to put an end to the Jewish majority, and by 640 only 200,000 Jews survived. Many were killed, many enslaved and sold in the empire’s markets and many were forced to run away.

Until the 15th century CE there was a Christian – Aramaic majority in the so called Palestine (the Romans changed the name of the country in 135 CE).

In the 16th century there were less than 100,000 Muslims in the country. Most of the ancestors of the today Palestinians immigrated to Palestine from Arab and Muslim countries between the middle of the 19th century and the 20th century, most of them, illegally,during the 20th century, due to jobs created by the Zionist movement and the British Mandate.
The only region settled by Arabs in Palestine between the 7th and 12th centuries was the today Western Bank

Conclusion: There was never an Arab or Palestinian state in Palestine.

…

Lies about the negotiating with Israel

Abu Mazen wrote:
“We have been negotiating with the state of Israel for 20 years without coming any closer to realizing a state of our own.”
The Palestinians are responsible for the continuation of the conflict without a peace agreement:
2000 – Camp David, Clinton and Barak gave Arafat a fair proposal. It included 97% of the West Bank and 100% of Gaza, and compensation in Israeli territory for part of the settlements, division of Jerusalem and a solution to the holy places. Arafat rejected the proposal because it included settlement of the refugees in the Palestinian state and not in Israel.
2008/9 – Ulmert proposal was even better than the Clinton – Barak proposal, Abu Mazen admitted in an interview to the Washington Post , May 2009, but he did not say Yes to the proposal because it did not include the settlement of the refugees in Israel.

The settlement of the refugees in Israel is a Trojan horse to put an end to the Jewish state, by turning the Jews into a minority.
The refugee problem was created as a result of the war Palestinians and Arab states declared against Israel because they refused to accept the 1947 UN resolution of 2 states. They declared they were going “to throw the Jews into the sea.” And eliminate the Jewish state,
Israel.
Palestinians could get a state in 1947 besides Israel, thus the refugee problem would have never created. Its their responsibility.
Freeze of settlements was never a pre- condition in 2000 and 2008/9. This is a new device to prevent negotiations.
The settlements were always part of the talks – not a pre- condition. This issue should be part of the negotiations.

So this is the narrative which gets western leaders putting their fingers in their ears and singing ‘la la la’.

It could not be plainer,

This is what Abbas said:

The State of Palestine intends to be a peace-loving nation, committed to human rights, democracy, the rule of law and the principles of the United Nations Charter. Once admitted to the United Nations, our state stands ready to negotiate all core issues of the conflict with Israel. A key focus of negotiations will be reaching a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on Resolution 194, which the General Assembly passed in 1948.

Palestine would be negotiating from the position of one United Nations member whose territory is militarily occupied by another, however, and not as a vanquished people ready to accept whatever terms are put in front of us.

So even when he has his state it will still be negotiating for the return of refugees TO ISRAEL bu Israel is, to him, ‘militarily occupied’. Don’t be fooled. You may think he is talking about the West Bank, but he is clever, this peace-loving man with a doctoral thesis questioning the extent of the Holocaust. He knows and his people know that when he speaks of ‘territory’ that is ‘occupied’ he means the WHOLE OF ISRAEL.

This same narrative is the one you can encounter in the Guardian’s Comment is Free, in the politics of the Far Left, in trendy kaffiyeh-wearing students who shout death to Israel and the United States.

It’s the same lie that makes the dispute a border dispute not an ideologically and religiously driven 100 year long struggle to kill or drive Jews from sacred Islamic land. Leave, die or become a fourth class dhimmi, oh Jew. That is the true narrative. Not settlements, not the Green Line, not so-called East Jerusalem. It’s about a psychotic and deeply-embedded hostility to Jews qua Jews that is endemic in Palestinian society and in the countries which surround Israel. If they wanted a state they could have had it at least four times in history.

An important article from Palestine Media Watch reports what is taught in Palestinian School Books which explains the real truth and intention of the PA and, for that matter, the tens of thousands of people who invaded or attempted to invade Israel on the anniversary of the ‘nakba’ earlier this week:

Abstract:“The Zionist gangs stole Palestine … and established the state of Israel” – this quote, from an official PA 12th Grade schoolbook, is an accurate depiction of how the PA educates its population to view the establishment of the State of Israel. Presenting the creation of the state as an act of theft and its continued existence as a historical injustice serves as the basis for the PA’s non-recognition of Israel’s right to exist. In order to create an ideological basis for this, the PA denies there was an ancient Jewish history in the Land of Israel and also distorts modern history, presenting Zionism as a demonic Nazi-like phenomenon. In order to explain what made Jews come to Israel, since they claim there was no historical connection to draw them, Zionism is presented as a colonialist movement created by the West to further its interests.

First, the countries of Europe wanted to rid themselves of the Jews and needed a place for them. They also wanted a foreign body in the heart of the Arab world to serve Europe’s colonialist aims. For these reasons, they sent the Jews to “steal Palestine.” Israel is further demonized through images and descriptions, such as “the foster child of the Nazis,” “an organized terror state,” “the cruelest enemy,” etc. Accordingly, the idea of the State of Israel ceasing to exist is presented as the achievement of justice.Today, following the establishment of a Fatah and Hamas unity government, many countries are demanding that Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist as a condition for the world’s recognition of their new government. Ironically, this very condition is violated daily by the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas.

Not only to they teach anti-Semitism as they would teach Mathematics, their intention is clear. The state they intend to have recognised in September is just a Trojan horse, another step along the road of delegitimisation, demonisation and ultimate destruction.

On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme we heard exactly this narrative from a Palestinian representative , Husam Zomlot.

The question was: did not Israel have the right to defend its borders when thousands of people from neighbouring hostile countries, who are technically in a state of war, come streaming across the border. Is  it not surprising some were killed?

Mr Zomlot did the usual rhetorical trick of avoiding an answer simply because he believes Israel is not Israel; it’s Palestine and these people were returning to their homes. If you are in the UK you can hear the interview and also Mark Regev’s response on behalf of Israel here. But here’s a flavour of it:

“… they reside in what remains of the Occupied Palestinian Territories’ (namely, Israel)”

Humphrys: “They were carrying clubs, they were throwing stones, they posed a threat to the Israelis”

Zomlot: “Those are the definition (sic) of peaceful demonstration, sir.”

…

Humphrys: “How would you have expected the Israeli security forces to react?”

Zomlot: “This is not a security matter… definitely the security forces would always fail to deal with such a purely political, humanitarian, legal matter”. Wha? Clearly avoiding the issue.

Humphrys: “You say it’s not a security matter.. if I marched into your house waving a club and throwing a stone then it would be a security matter, wouldn’t it?”

Zomlot:  According to the United Nations, according to UN Security Council resolutions, those people they’re marching to their homes, they have the deeds of their homes, it’s their private property… these people are not marching into a foreign territory”

And there you have it. Israel is not a foreign territory for this Palestinian spokesman, it is Palestine. From the River to the Sea.

You see now what I mean about ’emboldened’. Now we see how these Palestinians (if indeed they are) feel. They have a right to march into their homeland because Israel is not a legitimate state. And he has the audacity to quote the UN resolutions as proof of this when, in fact, quite the opposite is true.

The nakba invasions proved very fertile ground for those who would destroy Israel. It gave them a very potent weapon; they will organise more such invasions backed, no doubt, by Hizbollah/Iran and Hamas/Iran and see what the Israelis do. They will be ‘peaceful’ demonstrations, even though invading another country is not peaceful. They will be unarmed with sticks and rocks. And when the Israelis try to  hold them back with tear gas or rubber bullets or live rounds they will be violent colonialist aggressors.

Here’s someone with a long memory salivating at the though of murdering Jews and stealing their property AGAIN. A 92 year old woman gloats about how she saw Jews being massacred in Hebron.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2929.htm (transcript below)

An interview with Sara Jaber, a 92-year-old Palestinian who participated in a Right of Return demonstration on the Jordanian Israeli border. The interview was aired on Al-Aqsa TV on May 13, 2011:

Interviewer: Please tell us who you are.

Sara Jaber: I am from Hebron. The Jaber family.

Interviewer: What is your name?

Sara Jaber: Sara Muhammad ‘Awwadh Jaber.

Interviewer: How old are you?

Sara Jaber: I am 92.

Interviewer: So you remember May 15, 1948, the day of the Nakba.

Sara Jaber: Why wouldn’t I remember? May Allah support us. I hope we forget those days. Allah willing, you will bury [Israel], and massacre the Jews with your own hands. Allah willing, you will massacre them like we massacred them in Hebron.

Interviewer: What does this day mean to you? You have lived 63 years since the Nakba. You have experienced the entire Nakba…

Sara Jaber: 92 years. That’s 92. I lived through the British era, and I lived through the massacre of the Jews in Hebron. We, the people of Hebron, massacred the Jews. My father massacred them, and brought back some stuff…

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

And if you can stomach some more, take a look here:

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2934.htm (transcript below)

Following are excerpts from an interview with Hamas MP and cleric Yunis Al-Astal, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on May 11, 2011:

Yunis Al-Astal: The [Jews] are brought in droves to Palestine so that the Palestinians – and the Islamic nation behind them – will have the honor of annihilating the evil of this gang.

[…]

All the predators, all the birds of prey, all the dangerous reptiles and insects, and all the lethal bacteria are far less dangerous than the Jews.

[…]

In just a few years, all the Zionists and the settlers will realize that their arrival in Palestine was for the purpose of the great massacre, by means of which Allah wants to relieve humanity of their evil.

[…]

When Palestine is liberated and its people return to it, and the entire region, with the grace of Allah, will have turned into the United States of Islam, the land of Palestine will become the capital of the Islamic Caliphate, and all these countries will turn into states within the Caliphate. When this happens, any Palestinian will be able to live anywhere, because the land of Islam is the property of all Muslims.

Until this happens, we must reject all the resettlement plans, naturalization, or even reparations prior to the return of the refugees.

[…]

It’s about time the democracies of the world stood behind Israel. It’s about time the UN did something about it. It’s about time they all recognise this conflict for what it is: a genocidal and fanatical war against Israel, democracy and freedom.

If this is the Arab Spring what will winter bring.

 

 

 

Jewish ‘Nakba’ – why Jews deserve compensation and the Palestinians do not

15/05/2011 / / 8 Comments

Today saw the commemoration of what Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe, which happens to be the anniversary of the Declaration of the State of Israel in 1948.

In scenes unprecedented in history thousands of people in Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, East Jerusalem and even Jordan have tried to cross the border into Israel apparently to demonstrate their so-called ‘Right of Return’. In Tel Aviv an Arab drove two kilometres trying to hit everything in sight and screaming ‘Death to the Jews’ (note ‘Jews’, not ‘Israelis’) killing one man and injuring several others.

Several people were apparently killed by IDF gunfire and at the border with Gaza tank rounds were used.

In Ankara, Turkey and even in Athens, Greece, where you’d think they would have other things to demonstrate about, protests have taken place and Israeli embassies targeted.

I did not intend to write about this particular event, as important as it is. However, it underlines the fact of continued Palestinian rejectionism. As Jonathan Tobin has pointed out :

Nakba Day should illustrate that it is not the eviction of the Jews from parts of the West Bank that has inspired Palestinian Arab nationalism but the notion that Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the country is unacceptable.

Estimates of the number of Palestinians who would claim a Right of Return (or compensation) vary, but it is somewhere between 4 and 7 million and, of course, growing.

The notion that somehow Israel could absorb 7 million people, let alone return them to their putative homes and property is absurd. That doesn’t matter. They are not interested in returning to No. 10 Habibi Street or 17a Jaffa Road.

No, their goal is the same as it has always been: destroy the State of Israel, kick out 5 million Jews and create a Palestinian State from ‘The River to the Sea’. A single, Islamist, authoritarian entity to replace Israel.

The ‘Return’ of a large number of Palestinians would result in Israel no longer being a  state where the Jews remain a majority in charge of their own destiny. The goal of a single Islamic state, yet another in the region, would be achieved and the ‘Zionist Project’ would be history.

The sad fact is that so many on the Left in Europe believe that a one state solution will solve the problem and immediately result in the end of the Arab’s grudge against Israel and the West.

They are deluded.

The justification for the idea of a Nakba and a Right of Return comes from two false narratives.

The first is that Jews ‘stole the land’ from something called Palestine, a mythical Muslim state in cis-Jordanic Mandate Palestine. The Jews attacked the Arabs, driving them out and stealing their land forcing them to be refugees in surrouding countries and in Gaza and the West Bank.

This is a gross distortion of history. The Arab League rejected a two-state solution in 1947 and when the Jewish State was declared armies from surrounding nations attacked the nascent state.

Although many Arabs were driven out, many more left from fear or because they were encouraged to leave whilst the armies of the Arab League mopped up the Jews and drove them into the sea.

Unfortunately for these refugees the Arab league never delivered. Much of the land that had been offered as part of an Arab, Palestinian State was now in the hands of the Israelis.

Then something extraordinary happened; the UN created an Agency to deal only with refugees from the conflict of 1948. This is UNRWA or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

UNWRA’s own website tells us:

UNRWA’s services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. The descendants of the original Palestine refugees are also eligible for registration. When the Agency started working in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, 4.8 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services. (my emphasis)

Thus, uniquely, amongst all the millions of refugees in the world. descendants of Palestinian refugees are also given refugees status with no end date applicable. So in another 60 years there could be 100 million refugees and they would all claim that they have a right to live in Israel and claim back their putative property.

And these refugees were created as a result of an aggressive act by their own people (the Arab nation under the auspices of the Arab League as there was no idea of a separate Palestinian State in 1948).

Let us remember that Israel accepted the partition plan (UN General Assembly Resolution 181) that would have given them a small fraction of what they were promised (by the League of Nations under International Law in 1922), but the Arabs rejected it on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs, and then attacked Israel.

The second false narrative is that there is a Right of Return for these refugees based on UN resolution 194 Article 11:

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible; Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation, and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate organs and agencies of the United Nations;

As the Zionism-Israel website tells us:

UN General Assembly Resolution 194 called for return of refugees who were willing to live in peace with their neighbors. Jewish refugees, including refugees from Palestinian Arab areas and hundreds of thousands of others expelled from Arab lands, were absorbed into Israel and did not claim refugee status. Arab refugees were placed in camps.

Please point out to me a specific ‘Right of Return’ in Article 11, and where does it mention descendants in perpetuity are entitled to refugee status. In the Zionism-Israel article cited above the Right of Return was specifically excluded despite recommendations by Count Folk Bernadotte, the UN mediator murdered by Jewish extremists.

The cited article also points out that there was no specific mention of Arab refugees. It referred to all refugees included Jews who fled from the area now known as the West Bank which came under Jordanian control until 1967 and included East Jerusalem which was ethnically cleansed of Jews by the Jordanians.

And, most importantly, even if there were a Right of Return specifically for Arab refugees mentioned in Resolution 194 Article 11, General Assembly resolutions are not binding in international law. Israel has no obligation whatsoever to provide such a right.

For a full discussion of the putative Palestinian Right of Return I recommend you read the cited article.

But here is the point of the title of this article. There was a Jewish ‘nakba’ which no-one ever hears about very often if at all.

Estimates of Palestinian refugees vary from 450,000 to 750,000.

800-900,000 Jews were expelled from several Arab states and stripped of their property and assets in 1948, and immediately in the aftermath of the creation of Israel, for no other reason than they were Jews.

Many of these fled to Israel where they were absorbed.

Today, the inestimable Michelle Huberman of Harif organised an event in London “The Jewish Nakba, Remembering Jewish refugees from Arab Countries”. This organisation is dedicated to having the issue of Jewish refugees and their narrative recognised and acknowledged.

Communities right across the Arab world from Algeria to Iraq were wiped out; some of these communities could trace their roots back more than 2000 years.

I recommend that you read Sir Martin Gilbert’s fine history: “In Ishmaels’ House” which deals with the Jewish nakba in its final chapters.

This is why I believe those who suffered the enormity of these events deserve compensation; they attacked no-one, they may or may not have been Zionists, they were generally content to continue their tight-rope existence  in Arab lands where many were successful, wealthy, educated, property owning and asset rich.

How did they deserve to be deprived of citizenship, stripped of their assets and their property? What crime did they commit? The crime of being a Jew. That eternal crime which has been punished for centuries.

And they want to punish us still.

That punishment is their version of justice. The perceived grievance of the original 750,000 bloated to 4.5 million or more. Yet the 800,000 or so Jews and their descendants are only now being recognised as the other half to this cruel equation. Indeed, the Israeli government has quite rightly stated that no final peace can be made with the Palestinians without compensation for the Arab Jews.

The compensation and the recognition of this injustice against Mizrachi and Arab Jews is long overdue; and it is a much stronger claim than the Palestinians, many of whom had only moved relatively recently from surrounding countries and fled, or were victims of Israeli action as a result of their own people’s aggression.

Yet, in this Looking Glass world we now live in, the Jews and their grievances are valued at nought whilst the Palestinians must be rewarded and compensating for 60 years of self-victimhood and an aggressive war of extermination.

OK, despite the title, no doubt, at some time in the distant future, hopefully, when there is a final settlement that does not involve the destruction of Israel, Palestinians will be rewarded for their extraordinary patience and, as George Galloway might say, their ‘indefatigability’.  I do not wish to suggest that they have not suffered or that Israel is blameless, but unless and until they recognise their own guilt and allow Jews to live in their homeland on a sliver of land called Israel, they do not deserve any compensation at all.

Celebrating independence, commemorating the Nakba and the question of loyalty

26/05/2009 / / 0 Comments

On the 14th May 1948, Israel declared its independence as a state in Tel Aviv. This day corresponds to the Hebrew date of the 5th Iyar and it is on that date that Israelis celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, have long reserved the day after Israeli Independence day, May 15th, as a day of national mourning.

The Yisrael Beitenu party put forward a new law, the Nakba Law, which passed the Ministerial Committee for Legislation stage on Sunday. The Law seeks to make illegal and punishable with up to 3 years in prison any celebration in Israel of the Nakba.

Although receiving some media attention, it has largely been ignored outside of Israel where it has caused, according to the Jerusalem Post “a maelstrom of criticism”.

Some background.

There was no Palestinian state in 1948.

The Palestinian leadership and the Arab nations had rejected the 1937 Peel Commission plans for a two-state solution and the 1947 UN Partition plan, preferring instead to go to war against the nascent Jewish State.

In July 2000 at Camp David, Yasser Arafat walked out of negotiations with Ehud Barak after being offered approximately 97% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, East Jerusalem as a capital and $30 billion dollars in compensation for refugees. At the time, Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia, who was present when this offer was made  said: “If Arafat does not accept what is available now, it won’t be a tragedy, it will be a crime.”

Arafat offered no counter-proposals and went home to give orders to commence the Second Intifada.

Dennis Ross, chief UN negotiator blamed Arafat for the breakdown of the talks. You can see a full discussion of this topic and the Palestinian attempts at obfuscation here.

Let me make it quite clear; I agree with Michael Eitan (Minister for Improvement of Government Services), Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy, Dan Meridor and Minister without Portfolio, Benny Begin who submitted the following appeal against the decision on Monday (and three other ministers did the same). In the same article, the Jerusalem Post says the appeal states “This bill harms freedom of speech and right to demonstrate, which are basic rights in a democratic country. This bill will increase the isolation and alienation felt by the Israeli Arab community and will strengthen radical elements within it..” (my emphasis)

Of course, the Nakba is blamed on the Zionists not on the rejectionists. Instead of a “catastrophe” the Palestinians could be celebrating 61 years of their state in the vast majority of the British Mandate Palestine and the Israelis would be confined to a small northern enclave. The true catastrophe for the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab neighbours is that then, as now, many are more intent on destroying Israel than creating their own state.

If Arafat had said “yes” in 2000 thousands of live lost in the Intifada could have been saved and Hamas would probably not have been elected and would remain a marginalised extremist group outlawed both by Israel AND Palestine.

Let’s make a distinction here which is important. Nakba commemorations by Palestinians outside Israel are nothing to do with the Israeli government. If the Palestinians wish to continue with their self-deluding national narrative and blame Israel for their continuing plight even though they had at least three chances for their own state and were let down by their own leadership, that’s up to them. In fact, the true narrative behind the Nakba is not a two-state solution at all, but a one-state Palestinian solution.

But Nakba commemoration by Israeli Arabs, is a somewhat different matter.  

Firstly, isn’t it strange that they have the freedom to do demonstrate against their own country’s creation, a freedom which would not be afforded to them in Gaza with Hamas, in the West Bank with the PA or in any other Arab country. The Israeli Arabs are more free than their counterparts anywhere in the Arab world which is why the vast majority of them have expressed the desire to remain Israeli citizens were there ever to be a Palestinian state (78% in 2007 according to A-Sinara, an Arabic newspaper published in Nazareth).

The health of Israeli Arabs is better then their counterparts elsewhere in the Arab world. Life expectancy has increased and infant mortality has dropped enormously since 1948. Indeed, between 1967 and 1995 (when the PA took over control of the West Bank and Gaza), health and education skyrocketed for Palestinians under Israeli occupation compared with Jordanian and Egyptian occupation. As far as I know, there was no commemoration or mourning of being occupied by Jordan or Egypt and no such commemoration would have been permitted.

While conceding that the Arab population does face problems of discrimination and reduced levels of health and education opportunities compared to Jewish Israelis, the ongoing conflict must have considerable impact on these sectors and perhaps, too, cultural differences. Within Israel there are many (Jewish or joint Jewish/Arab) organisations which assist the Arab population to improve its living standards and to champion their rights as equal citizens.

Notwithstanding these problems, it is revealing that the majority still wish to remain within Israel rather then become citizens of a future Palestine. 

It will be interesting to see whether this Bill and the more offensive Loyalty Oath Bill (which seeks to impose an Oath of loyalty to Israel as a Zionist state) will get any further and if they do become law whether they will or can be implemented in practice. The JP ends its piece with:

President Shimon Peres, meanwhile, responded Monday to a journalist’s question on the bill by saying that no decision by the Knesset could overrule the feelings of any person. 

This is the fundamental issue at stake: you cannot legislate loyalty in a true democracy. There are many French Canadians who would like to separate from Canada and there are many Scots who want to destroy the United Kingdom and they have a perfect right to say so and to form parties to agitate for such a cause. Although it is understandable that, given the history of the region, Jewish Israelis and, indeed, may Arabs Israelis, look on Nakba commemorations as disloyal and provocative, I cannot believe how Lieberman and his cohorts cannot see how damaging to Israel’s democratic credentials such a law would be.

The supporters of this Bill would do well to remember that in the British parliament, for example, it has always been necessary for a Member of Parliament to swear an Oath of Allegiance. Until 1888 this Oath effectively prevented professing Jews and Catholics, other faiths and atheists from becoming MP’s because it enjoined them to swear allegiance not just to the monarch but to aspects of the Protestant faith. This goes back to the Test Act of 1673 which effectively equated loyalty to the state to loyalty to not just the Crown but the faith the Crown was defending. The exact words included in the oath were “on the true faith of a Christian” i.e Protestantism.

Even now Republican Sinn Fein MP’s do not sit in the House of Commons because they will not take the Oath of Allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen. No-one is supporting the expulsion to the Republic of Ireland of Sinn Fein members who do not take a loyalty oath. Any such move would be considered inflammatory and counter-productive and also illegal. There are and have never been any moves within the UK for its existing citizens outside of parliament or the armed forces to take any form of loyalty oath to the Crown or parliament. However, new citizens are required to do so as they are in almost every other democracy. This makes sense: if you are actively seeking to become a citizen of a country it is incumbent upon you that you should agree publicly to be loyal to that country. But if you are a citizen by birth or accident your loyalty is always assumed. 

Here’s an interesting thought on which to end: if, in the future, ultra-orthodox Jews decide to remain in a Palestinian state on the West Bank because they believe that they are fulfilling a Divine wish to inhabit the Land, would they be prepared to take a loyalty oath to promise to be good citizens of an Islamic State? Should they even be asked? But if it did happen, I can absolutely assure you that there would not be an iota of protest by the world’s media outside of Israel.

© 2024 Ray Cook – As I See It

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