* "Oil in the East Stirs Hornet's Nest Anew; France, Imperialistic, Militaristic, Seeks to Subjugate Syria in Absolute Violation of Every Pledge Made by the Allies" (1921-12-10, by George D. Herron, for the Dearborn Independent newspaper, published by Henry Ford):
Professor Herron is an American publicist of wide repute. Throughout the war he was the confidential agent of our State Department. Later he was attached tot he American delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. Profoundly disappointed by the results of the Paris Conference, he has exposed its blunders and betrayals in "The Greater War," his latest book.
STAGED and managed by the Parisian Junta. and as pitiless as it is cynical, the devil's lewd comedy of nations continues. Today, it is in Silesia the chief scene is laid. The officer in charge of the British troops resigned his command rather than participate in what was really the French subjugation of German Silesia under the ostensible expedition of Korfanty [archive.is/LLZ5r]. Tomorrow, the scene will be laid in Asia Minor. And no man can today tell how vast the scene will be—how terrible a tragedy to Asian peoples may be enacted. The policy of Britain has been to separate the Arabs from the Turks, and to keep the Arab race under British protection. Incidentally, the road to India is in question; but fundamentally, it is a question of oil. Britain is in Mesopotamia and Persia and Palestine for oil. The Arab Kingdom of Irak (Mesopotamia), the Zionist Commonwealth in Palestine, the Independence of Persia - each of these is sheerest fiction. No such thing as a Zionist Commonwealth or a Jewish State exists; no such thing as an Arab Kingdom exists; no such thing as an independent Persia exists.
Again, the French occupation of Syria is involved. And nothing more flagrant, more savage or shameless, has grown out of the war than this French seizure of Syria. Nothing has been more rooted or organized in lies than the Syrian conquest - for it was a conquest, in absolute violation of every pledge made by the Allies.
The Exploitation of Syria -
I KNOW the people of Syria. I have been among them oh foot and on horseback, and as a tent-dweller in the regions beyond Damascus. The Lebanon Syrians are among the most intelligent, beautiful and capable people of the world. I say without hesitation that they are more capable of actual self-government than the citizenry of interior France. I know, more-over, that not a man among them, either Christian or Moslem, unless bought and a traitor to his own people, wanted the unqualified corruption and administrative anarchy inevitably attendant upon French occupation and Jewish exploitation. Yet if now France and England, each of which has been diplomatically fighting the other in Asia Minor, come to an agreement to recognize the Angora Government of Kemal. it will be but a temporary success the two governments thus achieve. The day of the European exploiter of Asia is already near unto its dusk. Its day will soon be done.
Yesterday, it was in Hungary the scene was laid. But the genesis thereof went back to the middle of the war, and to subsequent intrigues reaching from Paris to Berne. One of the managers of the recent Hungarian scene was a Hapsburg agent in Switzerland in 1918. And, though France and Austro-Hungary were at war, this Magyar magnate was persona grata at Paris, and traveled back and forth with the freedom of a French diplomatic agent. The next preparation for the Hungarian scene was the presence of Bela Kun in Budapest. English and American workers are still obsessed by the notion that Bela Kun represented an uprising of Hungarian Socialists. He rep-resented nothing of the kind—for by his regime the Socialists were exiled, imprisoned, or assassinated. Not by Hungarian Socialists, but by agents of Parisian concessionnaires accompanying the French Army of Occupation, was Bela Kun placed in power. It was Paris that kept Bela Kun in Budapest for so long a time, despite the protests of Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia and Rumania; and the fabled Soviet regime, deluding Hungarian workers as it did, was a French preparation, first for rich concessions in the Banat, and then for a French conducted return of the Hapsburgs.
France Wants Hapsburgs -
THE knowledge that France has steadily intrigued for the Hapsburg return, that she heavily financed the restoration of Charles, is now public property in Europe—just as it is public property that she is financing the Wittelsbach propaganda in Bavaria. with a view, to dividing Germany and establishing a South German power under virtual French protectorate. The French munition factories have worked day and night to supply the war materials with which the boundaries of Hungary are now bursting. Whence Hungary is a French barracks, a French military satrapy, where new wars are preparing : where, also, needy Hungarian magnates, lapping gold from French hands, have been preparing the way of King Charles. So Charles stole from Lake Geneva to Strasburg - a French city, remember... Whence French agents started him on his way to Budapest, Charles naively blurted the truth to Admiral Horthy: "I came here with M. Briand's knowledge and consent, he had proposed to me that I should make a fait accompli, which Europe would accept." Yet all did not fall out as was planned. Even with Hungary as a French protectorate, both domestic opposition and foreign obstruction unexpectedly balked the Hapsburg adventure. The able Hungarian Socialists - whose ranks were first decimated by the Bolshevists and then by Admiral Horthy - suddenly manifested a voice and a vigor not predicated by the agents of the French Government. Again, the resolution of Italy to fight rather than consent to a Hapsburg restoration, together with the resolute action of the British High Commissioner in Budapest and the ultimatum of the Little Entente, arrested the Franco-Hapsburgian march. Moreover, Admiral Horthy, even if subsidized by France, manifested sudden royal ambitions of his own that cooled his ardor for Charles. Came now the climax of the fiasco. From Paris went abroad the news that France was unalterably opposed to a Hapsburg restoration! Yet, even so, the opposition was tempered with qualifications. The first was the anxiety of France - an anxiety widely advertised - as to vast quantities of munitions left in Hungary by the Germans. (The munitions shipped from France suddenly became the munitions left by Von Mackensen's Army!) Next, there was the greater French anxiety lest an English prince be placed upon the throne of Saint Stephen. Third, was the French fear that Italian intrigues in Hungary would result in new dissensions in the Balkans - though these dissensions as everyone familiar with the European situation knows, were the creation of diligent Balkanese agents whom France had subsidized. Finally, though Charles started to Budapest from a French city, where he was indirectly commissioned by the agents of the French Foreign Office, the world was informed - and especially was America informed - of how Hungary was saved from the Hapsburgs by the instant and fervent intervention of France, true to her "historic mission to preserve public order in Europe!"
Always Demands Spotlight -
THE Hungarian scene was precisely the same as that displayed before the international public at the time of the Polish invasion of Russia. When Pilsudski's armies had reached Kief, it was France, so Paris proclaimed abroad, that had alone championed the Polish cause; France that had supplied and trained the Polish armies; France that had accomplished the near overthrow of Moscow; France that thus deserved the gratitude of "the great democracies, America and England." But when the marauding Poles were hurled back to Warsaw, and during the days when the fate of Poland was in the balance, then the news went forth from Paris that it was France that had steadfastly protested against the Polish adventure, and that the peril of Poland was now due to the refusal of Warsaw to listen to the French military advisers as well as to the French Government. But, lo! when the Russians were turned back, and the Poles had their 'French peace, it was again France - and France acting alone - that had saved Poland - had indeed saved Europe - from the Red armies; and Pilsudski had all along acted under orders from Paris.
THE Hungarian scene was precisely the same as that displayed before the international public at the time of the Polish invasion of Russia. When Pilsudski's armies had reached Kief, it was France, so Paris proclaimed abroad, that had alone championed the Polish cause; France that had supplied and trained the Polish armies; France that had accomplished the near overthrow of Moscow; France that thus deserved the gratitude of "the great democracies, America and England." But when the marauding Poles were hurled back to Warsaw, and during the days when the fate of Poland was in the balance, then the news went forth from Paris that it was France that had steadfastly protested against the Polish adventure, and that the peril of Poland was now due to the refusal of Warsaw to listen to the French military advisers as well as to the French Government. But, lo! when the Russians were turned back, and the Poles had their 'French peace, it was again France - and France acting alone - that had saved Poland - had indeed saved Europe - from the Red armies; and Pilsudski had all along acted under orders from Paris.
Meanwhile, France ever higher and more brazenly builds her besotted "reparations" figures. And her juggling is not confined to the astronomical sums demanded from Germany. It is illustrated by every French presentation to the world - never more aptly than in M. Stephen Lauzanne's article in the North American Review. He tells his American readers of the vast increase in amounts paid to Germany's public servants, as compared with the number of public servants and the amounts paid under the Empire - confirming Napoleon's adage that nothing lies like the truth. The immense increase in the German public service is due, as M. Lauzanne perfectly well knew, to the fact that Germany is now a Socialist state in process of evolution. The workers who were employed by industrial owners under the Empire are now to a considerable extent employees of the state. What was private industry under the Empire is now public. Every coal miner of Germany, for instance, is now in the way of becoming a public servant. And from all this socialization comes, in large part, the increase of which M. Lauzanne speaks. Again he names the increased quantity of champagne bought and consumed in Germany. But he does not tell you how largely this champagne is bought and consumed by foreigners, and especially by officers of the Army of Occupation. He also tells the phenomenal increase in the amount of betting at the Berlin races. He does not tell you - though it is a notorious ' fact - of how greatly this betting is by the foreigners crowding Berlin, and of how the gambling and luxury of these foreigners is sorely deplored by the Germans themselves.
Profiteering and Restoration -
NOR does M. Lauzanne tell you what the better French publicists all declare, how large a part of the money ostensibly used for the devastated regions has passed into the hands of contractors, some of whom have as yet no restorations to show to their credit. Nor does he tell you that, over and over again, Germany has offered to restore by her own labor and materials the devastated regions, and put them in more perfect order than that which prevailed before the war. And that, furthermore, the French Union of Contractors, or Constructors - of which union M. Loucheur, the French Minister of Finance, is a member - has steadily fought the German restoration of France - because it would interfere with their own profits. In other words, these restorations, which would give back their homes and farms to hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen, are refused in the interest of French profiteers. French peoples of the devastated regions are sacrificed, are deprived of their homes, in order that the French contractors may add peace-profits to war-profits. Such is the quality of French figures, such the quality of French truth, wherever and whenever, it today officially appears.
NOR does M. Lauzanne tell you what the better French publicists all declare, how large a part of the money ostensibly used for the devastated regions has passed into the hands of contractors, some of whom have as yet no restorations to show to their credit. Nor does he tell you that, over and over again, Germany has offered to restore by her own labor and materials the devastated regions, and put them in more perfect order than that which prevailed before the war. And that, furthermore, the French Union of Contractors, or Constructors - of which union M. Loucheur, the French Minister of Finance, is a member - has steadily fought the German restoration of France - because it would interfere with their own profits. In other words, these restorations, which would give back their homes and farms to hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen, are refused in the interest of French profiteers. French peoples of the devastated regions are sacrificed, are deprived of their homes, in order that the French contractors may add peace-profits to war-profits. Such is the quality of French figures, such the quality of French truth, wherever and whenever, it today officially appears.
So the spiritof France of today is being manifested in innumerable ways - without one spark of magnanimity or decency in international relations; without fidelity to a promise. The diplomacy of loot and lies, the fountain whereof is the Parisian Junta, is now supreme in Europe. Any peace made in Europe under the French domination will be purely a peace of plunder. Even the things which call for some decency, if not chivalry, are not to be found. Take the cynical and brutal violation of the ancient treaties regarding the zones upon which the economic life of Geneva and French Switzerland depend. Or take an instance like the following, furnished me by a publicist of international authority, who was himself Franko-phile during the war. "On the occasion of the exposition at Lyons in 1914, the municipality of that city requested the trustees of the Goethe Museum in Frankfurt to lend the exhibition committee some objects belonging to this collection. With this request they gladly complied and sent to Lyons a considerable number of objects, among them the original portrait of Goethe painted by Colbe, some statues, silhouettes, manuscripts and the original edition of 'Faust' illustrated by Delacroix [archive.is/SPq18]. The Grand Duke of Weimar lent for the same purpose his special set of the great Weimar edition of the works of Goethe. In the meantime the war broke out, and the exhibits were kept back in France. All endeavors on the part of Professor Dr. Heuer, the chief conservator of the Goethe Museum, to get them back through the mediation of neutral savants, proved ineffectual. As a final means. Professor Heuer addressed himself directly to President Millerand, pleading that there are things which ought to be considered as being beyond the strifes of nations, such as relics of great poets and thinkers, like Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe or Moilire. To this President Millerand replied that he had passed the letter on to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Now the news has come from France that the French Government refuses to restore the objects in question. Comment is unnecessary."
Million for Propaganda -
SO THE comedy continues, with French millions spent in an American propaganda, even while France is bankrupt. Yet the France that M. Viviani represented at the White House, the France that is still bestirring American public opinion anew against the dangers of a fabled pro-German propaganda, is the France that is but augmenting the world-ruin which Prussia began. The material devastations of France by the Germans, appalling as they were, are indeed trifling, as far as their evil results are concerned, as compared with the moral devastations of France by the French financiers themselves. And France, moreover, now openly fights - and fights with all the weapons in the arsenal of the powers of evil - for the continued government of the world by fraud and violence. It is the France that stands, as no modern power except Prussia has stood, against every approach of that peace and good will which go forth from Christ for the healing of the nations. [end article]
There are two histories: That of the jurisdiction, and that of the people themselves. Palestine is a legal jurisdiction containing an ethnically diverse and religiously tolerant people, established during the 1910s, when the UKGB government was "granted" jurisdiction over the area and implemented a religious administration over the objections of the inhabitants.
Under the Ottoman Empire, the name Palestine referred to a geographic region, not to an administrative unit.
* 1730 map of the Ottoman Empire with its administrative divisions [archive.is/JjZ9C],
* The political divisions of northern Arabia peninsula's Mediterranean Sea coast ("Palestine") under the Ottoman Empire [archive.is/TVhra] [archive.is/XlZxB], and after their partition by the Empires of France and British [archive.is/ksM3A].
* Quote found in "Palestine Papers: 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict", by Doreen Ingrams, p. 26:
Zionist researchers have shown how the majority of those inhabitants of modern Palestine were workers immigrating to the coast for jobs being afforded under the administration of the British Empire's Mandate of Palestine. Yet, before the immigration mentioned of the 1920s, the land was still a majority Arab and Muslim.
* "Where did the Palestinians of today come from?" [archive.is/Veyvg]
* "The Truth about "Palestinian" Arabs A.K.A. Arab immigrants' children, grand children & the vastly vacant desolate land prior to the rise of Jewish return" [archive.is/77UeZ]
* "Palestine" (retrieved 2015-09-23, britishempire.co.uk) [archive.is/ZbE4g], a history page with research materials, such as the following maps, captioned "1921 Map of British and French Mandates" [archive.is/syqEp] (shown below), and "1944 Map of Palestine Mandate" [archive.is/MFIVW]. [begin excerpt]: For most of the nineteenth century, the British were considered to be one of the staunchest defenders of the autonomy of the Ottoman empire where Palestine would have been considered a key central province of this sprawling empire. Britain's only real direct political involvement with the area was in the 1830's and only then as a result of French diplomacy. Mohammed Ali of Egypt temporarily displaced Ottoman rule in the area with the tacit agreement of the French. The French used Ottoman treatment of christians in the holy lands as an excuse to extend their influence over the area. However, Britain and Russia came to the diplomatic rescue of the Ottomans and compelled Mohammed Ali to withdraw from the area. Partly to placate the French, special agreement was made with the Ottomans to allow the French to protect Catholic citizens and the Russians to protect Orthodox citizens of the Ottoman empire. British (and other European) citizens in the area were granted extraterritorial legal status. With the exception of this incident, official British involvement in the area was extremely limited throughout the nineteenth century. As usual, the British government preferred not to interfere in areas that they did not need to do so. Unofficially, the holy land proved a powerful draw and influence to many British scholars, artists and upper class travellers.
The Great war was to unexpectedly turn the imperial spotlight onto this part of the world. As the Ottomans had thrown in their hand with the Germans, it was inevitable that the British would want to defend their strategic connection with India through the Suez. And, in 1915 they would even try to force a way through to the Russians through the Dardanelles. Palestine was suddenly thrust into an active theatre of war. At this period of time the most important indigenous group that the British had to work with was the Arabs. The number of Jews in Palestine were less than 60,000 at the outbreak of the war. Therefore, initial British contacts were, almost exclusively, aimed at the Arabs. The most important advance at this time was when the British High Commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, tried to co-opt the help of the Sharif of Mecca, in the fight against the Ottomans. He did this through a series of correspondence known as the Hussein-McMahon letters. This correspondence seemed to promise the Arabs their own state stretching from Damascus to the Arabian peninsular in return for fighting the Ottomans. However, not only was the correspondence deliberately imprecise but the status and ability of the Sharif of Mecca to speak for all of the Arabs was itself in question. Despite these problems, the Sharif of Mecca formally declared a revolt against Ottoman rule in 1916. Britain provided supplies and money for the Arab forces led by the Sharif's sons; Abdullah and Faisal. British military advisers were also detailed from Cairo to assist the Arab army that the brothers were organizing. Of these advisers, T.E. Lawrence was to become the best known.
To complicate the diplomatic waters, the British entered into an agreement with the French and Russians to divide the entire Middle East into areas of influence for each of the imperial powers but leaving the Holy Lands to be jointly administered by the three powers. This was a secret arrangement that was known as the Sykes Picot agreement of 1916. It directly contradicted many of the promises made to the Sharif of Mecca.
Indeed, the waters were even further muddied by a third commitment entered into by the British in 1917. The British government made a promise to prominent Jews in Britain that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine would be looked on with favour by the British. The reason for this pledge is not exactly clear, but it seems to have been made for two reasons. The first was to secure financial support from prominent Jewish financiers in Europe. The second seems to have been a way of breaking their own secret arrangement with the French and Russians by promoting their own influence into Palestine at their supposed allies' expense.
Whatever the reason for this diplomatic chicanery, the diplomatic timebomb of these conflicting promises was about to explode as a direct result of the Russian revolution. The newly formed Bolshevik government took great pleasure in releasing the imperialistic designs of the British and French governments by publishing the Sykes-Picot agreement publicly and in full. The idea was to expose these capitilastic nations as morally bankrupt in their prosecution of the war and these secret agreements seemed to confirm that fact.
The publication of the Sykes-Picot agreement was not to be as politically devastating as feared for the simple fact that, at this point in time, the Arabs were advancing swiftly and assuredly against their Ottoman enemies. The Arabs felt that if they could make even further gains against the Ottomans that they would have more leverage in dealing with the imperial powers after the fighting had finished. The British were also advancing steadily through Palestine, capturing Jerusalem in December 1917. The British decisively defeated the Turks at Megiddo in September 1918, although the Arabs did manage to enter Damascus before the British were in a position to do so. The Ottomans capitulated soon after which left all of their previous dominions up for grabs.
The Versailles peace conference was used to impose allied plans and ideas on the defeated Central Powers, amongst whom was the Ottoman Empire. Both the Arabs and the Jews had delegations represented there. But, it was the victorious allies who virtually dictated all of the relevant terms and divisions of the lands. The Arab delagation was unsuccessful in promoting Arab independence, but had some success in persuading a border commission that Jewish immigration was not a good idea. Unfortunately, by this time, the British had already been declared as holding the mandate over Palestine and they had independently reaffirmed the Balfour declaration opening the way for a Jewish homeland.
The intense rivalry and competition between the Jews and Arabs was to afflict the British administration for virtually their entire period of governance. Unfortunately, the Zionists and the Arabs had mutually exclusive goals. The Zionists wished to create a Jewish homeland in their Holy Land. Whereas the Arabs were equally adamant that they should not lose their autonomy and rights in their own homeland. At this stage, the Arabs still massively formed the majority of the population. But what the Zionists lacked in numbers they more than made up for with political influence in the West and a zeal to succeed that bordered on fanatacism.
The fact that the British mandate included references to the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of a Jewish homeland was a severe blow to the Arabs. Partly to try and mollify this disappointment, the British split the Palestine mandate into two distinct areas, using the Jordan River as a natural boundary. The British claimed that Jewish immigration would be confined to the West of the river. The East of the river, which represented three quarters of the whole mandate area was to be reserved for the Arabs alone. The Hashemite Abdulla was to become the ruler of what was to become Transjordan. Most Arabs still felt ill at ease with this British plan. They regarded Transjordan as little more than an arid, empty desert. Besides, the principle of any Jewish homeland anywhere in Arab lands was still completely abhorrent to them.
Arab intransigence and unwillingness to work with the Jews was demonstrated almost immediately as the British tried to set up a legislative council and a constitution. The council was supposed to have ten of the seats allocated to the Arabs and only two to the Jews. The Arabs refused to cooperate on the basis that two seats for so few Jews meant that they were relatively over represented. They also resented the comments and concessions made to Zionism in the constitution. This failure meant that the British had no choice but to continue ruling Palestine directly themselves. [end excerpt]
* "Reply to the Advisory Opinion of 9 July 2004 in the matter of the Legal Consequences of the construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as submitted by the International Court of Justice, part 2: The 'Mandate for Palestine' Document" (2006-01, online edition, by Eli E. Hertz, mythsandfacts.org) [archive.is/OJhue] [begin excerpt]: The “Mandate for Palestine” laid down the Jewish right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law and valid to this day.
The legally binding Mandate for Palestine document, was conferred on April 24 1920, at the San Remo Conference and its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sevres on August 10 1920. The Mandate’s terms were finalized on July 24 1922, and became operational in 1923. [end excerpt]
Maps:
- 1920 - Original territory assigned to the Jewish National Home
- 1922 - Final territory assigned to the Jewish National Home
* "The Event of the Week: Zion Recedes into the Shadows" (1922-07-13, The Christian Register)
ARDENT HOPES for the reconstruction of Zion as a "national home for the Jewish people" went glimmering last week because of the issuance by the British government of a new definition of the status of Palestine as a free state under British man-date. It was in 1917 that a British declaration, made through Mr. Balfour, evoked in the minds of Jews scattered throughout the world the dream of a Zion emerged from oblivion and made a political, economic, and spiritual factor in the life of the Jewish race. The declaration read: "His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object; it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."
The issuance of this guarded pledge aroused profound emotion in all the Jewish race. As an ideal for the restoration of the race, it appealed with especial fervor to the adherents of the Zionist group, to which ever since the days of Dr. Theodor Herzl Jews high in finance, in politics, science, and industry had contributed ardently of their counsel and their substance. Even to Jews who opposed the reconcentration of the race within a geographical area, the prospect of the rebuilding of the historic walls of Zion carried a thrill.
But in the effort to carry out the conditional pledge made by Arthur Balfour, British policy met with a difficulty which might easily have been foreseen. That difficulty was the fact that Palestine, which once was Jewish, is now Arabic. Arab susceptibilities were promptly aroused by the British pledge to the Jewish race, guarded though it was by a clause which on its face guaranteed Arabic civic rights against invasion and safeguarded Mohammedan religious ideals against attack. Fully alarmed by the prospect of the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in their country, the Arabs pressed for a more definite declaration of complete respect for their race and their religion. Inasmuch as they constitute a majority of about nine to one, the Arabs very properly demanded to know how a Jewish state could be established in Palestine without infringing upon their rights, civil and religions. Their anxiety as to the future was reflected throughout the Moslem world. Even in India, Mohammedan leaders exerted some pressure upon the British government for a reconciliation be-tween its pledge for the formation of a Jewish state and its respect for the rights of majorities, which constitute the basis of democratic rule.
The Arabic agitation, spreading through the Moslem world, sent a wave of profound depression among Zionists everywhere. A Jewish diplomat of wide experience in the service of America gave definite expression to this depression when he said in New York. a few months ago, that there was no such thing as a Zionist state in Palestine; that Jews were merely tolerated in the country of their fathers; that the limit of their political, economic, and social aspirations in their historic homeland was the right to settle in Zion on a basis of equality with persons of all other races who might wish to settle there. "Zion under the British pledge is a myth." said this American diplomat of Jewish race. This leader in Israel several months ago uttered the same conclusion of despair which Israel Zangwill, another leader in Israel, put into words upon the publication of the British white book on Zion on July 1: "The Jewish national home offered us wax, at best, not Jewish or national or a home."
The essence of the latest British decision concerning the future—and present—status of Palestine is that Palestine "cannot be a distinctly Jewish state, although Jews may remain or go into the country as of right and not of sufferance." This definition constituted a formal phrasing of a fact long accepted. It was merely the formulation into words of an existing situation. Back of this declaration is a strong sentiment in Great Britain against any political arrangement in Palestine that might imperil the rights of an unquestioned Mohammedan majority. On June 21 the House of Lords, by a vote of sixty to twenty-nine, passed a resolution in the sense that the acceptance of the mandate for Palestine "should be postponed until such modifications have therein been effected as will comply with pledges given by His Majesty's government." These pledges were contained in a declaration of October, 1913, assuring the people of Palestine of their liberties after the defeat of Turkey, and a subsequent declaration of November, 1918, assuring the Arabs of the purpose of the British government to respect their rights in the country in which it purposed to establish a national home for the Jewish. people. In speaking to the resolution, Lord Islington, an expert in Near Eastern affairs, pointed out the repugnancy of the Zionist conception of Zion, and the possible interpretation of the British official attitude indorsing that conception, in the following words: "Parliament is not committed to Zionism. Parliament has never given its decision in regard to it. We, as a country, are no more committed to it than the United States was committed to an adherence to the League of Nations on the declaration of President Wilson. The Parliament of the United States thought otherwise, and decided other-wise, and what the Constitution of the United States can do the constitution of this country can do as well. I venture to say that this Zionist scheme really runs counter to the whole human psychology of the age." So died Zion. The reconstitution of the homeland of the Jews was a beautiful ideal from many points of view. The project outlined by the British government appealed powerfully to many hearts, both among Jews and non-Jews. It failed because history had intervened with its inexorable decree. That decree is that Palestine is Arabic and not Hebrew; Mohammedan and not Jewish.
There are other Palestines scattered about the reconstructed world—areas where the exigencies of war and of politics have imposed the rule of minorities upon majorities. In receding from an idealistic and appealing project, the British government bowed to the democratic principle that it is unjust and politically immoral for a majority to be subjected to a minority. By so doing, it has avoided a long period of struggle in Palestine—for the Arab is proud and the Mohammedan jealous of his rights and his religion. It is safe to say that had European diplomacy treated all Palestines within the range of its decisions in the same enlightened way, the world would have been rid of many a sore spot—many a quaking area which is now heaving over the pressure of suppressed racial hopes, aroused national resentments and awakened national fears. Zion is dead ; but the seeds of a new Armageddon may he germinating under these heaving spots on the map of Europe.
Map caption: Distribution of ethnic groups in the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor in 1923, Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, New York (The map does not reflect the results of the 1923 population transfer between Greece and Turkey)
* Set of maps [archive.is/MDXsQ], accompanying the book "Hydropolitics along the Jordan River: Scarce Water and its Impact on the Arab-Israeli Conflict" (1995, United Nations University Press, archive.unu.edu) [archive.is/M2ZWQ], including -
- Map 8 Jewish colonies in Palestine, 1916. Source: Sacher (1916) [archive.is/Zio8C]
- Map 13 Growth of the Jewish national home, 1931-1939 [archive.is/TWChw]. Jewish immigration: 1931, 4,075; 1932, 12,533; 1933, 37,337; 1934, 45,267; 1935, 66,472; 1936, 29,595; 1937, 10,629; 1938, 14,675; 1939, 31,195. Source: Sachar (1979)
- Map 18 Palestine Land Transfer Regulations, February 1940 [archive.is/pPUK2]. Total area 10,429 square miles, including 266.5 square miles of water surface (Lake Tiberius and Palestinian half of Dead Sea). Zone A (6,615 sq. miles): land purchases by Jews prohibited; zone B (3,295 sq. miles): land purchases by Jews restricted; free zone (519 sq. miles): land purchases unrestricted; Jewish land owned by the Jewish national fund or in private ownership. Source: Esco Foundation (1947)
* "On Einstein’s Acceptance of Communist Russia and Rejection of Zionist Israel" (2012-12-07, saswat.com) [archive.is/wJGIY] [begin excerpt]:
In the “God Letter” (1954), Einstein wrote, “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”
[...]
Einstein’s Zionism: For a Cultural Center, not a Political State -
Einstein never disowned his association with Zionism, although it is important to note his definition of Zionism largely varied from the ones commonly held during his own time, and now. He could easily have succumbed to a reactionary (nationalist) variant of Zionism considering he was constantly victimized as a Jew, regardless of his celebrity. But he consciously did not choose that path. In 1920, a group of German scientists, led by Nobel Prize winner Philipp Lenard, denounced the theory of relativity as a “Jewish perversion”. Lenard would go on to serve as Hitler’s chief scientist, and the man to fund this campaign to discredit Einstein’s contributions would be later unraveled as the American industrialist Henry Ford, a Nazi collaborator. Remaining unprovoked however, Einstein declared the same year: “I do not believe in anything that might be described as ‘Jewish faith’. But I am a Jew and am glad to belong to the Jewish people, though I do not regard it in any way as chosen…”
Cognizant of the anti-semitism impacting Einstein’s career and legacies, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1921 asked Kurt Blumenfeld, a top Zionist recruiter to “stir up Einstein”. Blumenfeld sent back Weizmann a warning – “Einstein, as you know, is no Zionist, and I ask you not to try to make him a Zionist or to try to attach him to our organization…Einstein, who leans to socialism, feels very involved with the cause of Jewish labor and Jewish workers… I heard…that you expect Einstein to give speeches. Please be quite careful with that. Einstein…often says things out of naïveté which are unwelcome by us.”
Einstein required no stirring up, as he had already chosen the side of the oppressed and without any hesitation accepted Weizmann’s invitation to travel to England and America, but duly noted, “In several places, a high-tensioned Jewish nationalism shows itself that threatens to degenerate into intolerance and bigotry; but hopefully this is only an infantile disorder.” Besides, Blumenfeld was clearly wrong, for Einstein was no naive. He knew from his experiences that “anti-Semitism is frequently a question of political calculation”. During his stay in Switzerland, he was not aware of his Jewishness and he wrote, “There was nothing in my life that would have stirred my Jewish sensibility and stimulated it. This changed as soon as I took up residence in Berlin. There I saw the plight of many young Jews, especially of East European Jews. They are made the scapegoats for the malaise in present-day German economic life…Meetings, conferences, newspapers press for their quick removal or internment.” When the German government contemplated measures against East European Jews, Einstein protested and exposed the “inhumanity and irrationality of these measures” in the Berliner Tageblatt.
Einstein distinguished early on between the West European Jews and the prevailing anti-Semitism targeting East European Jews. His support for Soviet Union was strengthened based on how Stalin’s policies welcomed East European Jews into Soviet Union. And at the same time, between the First World
War and the Second, Einstein witnessed how the racist Germany was treating the East European Jewish refugees, and the barbarity of it all would awaken his sense of belonging with the oppressed race of the time. Although he could afford to, Einstein refused to remain indifferent, and he refused to separate his profession from his politics. Together with a few colleagues – both Jews and non-Jews, he held university courses especially to benefit the East European Jews in the summer of 1921 and he declared that “such experiences have awakened my Jewish-national feelings. I am not a Jew in the sense that I call for the preservation of the Jewish or any other nationality as an end in itself…I consider raising Jewish self-esteem essential, also in the interest of a natural coexistence with non-Jews. This was my major motive for joining the Zionist movement…But my Zionism does not preclude cosmopolitan views.” His envisioning of a “free Jewish community in Palestine” was not so much a demand for a militarist sovereign country as it was about the need to recognize that the East European Jews are not treated as wretched refugees in the racist European powers. Jewish Diaspora would never have aimed for a separate land if the Jews were treated humanely in the various European countries they lived in, Einstein cited early on.
German Jewry, for one, lived in abysmal conditions. Einstein described its history in details: “Our ancestors lived in the ghetto. They were poor, politically disenfranchised, separated from non-Jews by a wall of religious traditions, daily lifestyle, and legal restraints. In their intellectual development they were limited to their own literature, and only faintly influenced by the tremendous revival that European intellectual life experienced during the Renaissance.” In 1925, Einstein would express his support for Zionism as it was “in the process of creating in Palestine a center of Jewish intellectual life…The moral homeland will, I hope, succeed in bringing more vitality to a people that does not deserve to die.”
But wary he would always remain of the Zionists at the same time. One of them was Isaac Don Levine who tried early on to persuade Einstein against the Bolsheviks by making false claims about how Jews were being colonized by Stalin’s Russia. On April 9, 1926, Einstein rubbished such claims by Levine and wrote to him that he was supporting Russia and that the “efforts being made to colonize Jews in Russia must not be opposed because they aim at assisting thousands of Jews whom Palestine cannot immediately absorb.” Einstein had duly acknowledged how Stalin was the only international leader to have been supportive of the Jewish cause, so much so that Soviet Union was the first country to develop an autonomous territory for the Jewish people, a concept that Einstein had dreamt to see realized in Palestine, upon British promise. But reactionary Zionism was intolerant towards the communists and was refusing to credit the Soviet Union for their initiatives. As history would prove it later, and Einstein would attest, the British ended up deceiving the Jews, while Soviet Union continued to save millions of them.
Einstein was deeply committed to the welfare of Jewish people, but for that he also needed to be politically alert. His activism did not spare even Blumenfeld whom Einstein wrote demanding to peruse through the financial details of the Zionist Organization and started expressing doubts over the viabilities of Zionism. In the March 1926 letter to Blumenfeld, he wrote, “I appreciate the educational achievements of Zionism. However, as an enterprise, I don’t know it well enough to support it with good conscience.” Even as Einstein’s conscience would continue to haunt him, he was still optimistic about the forthcoming “Jewish center” of morality and intellectualism. He never got the “impression that the Arab problem might threaten the development of the Palestine project.” He said, “I believe rather that, among the working classes especially, Jew and Arab on the whole get on excellently together.” (1927)
Next year, in 1928, contrary to political wisdom, the British proposed a parliament for Palestine in a rushed manner that mandated equal representations from Jewish and Arab (and some British appointees) – a move that would result in the first major “riots” claiming hundreds of lives on each side. By the Jewish migrations in 1930, the British census report would declare almost 17 percent of the population in the Arab land to be Jews. Mass agitations among the Arabs would be “tackled” by the British in 1936 when for the first time the colonizers would station more troops in Palestine than in the entire Indian subcontinent. In 1937, the proposed mandate would be declared a failure because common grounds between the Arabs and Jews would not be allegedly found and the British conveniently would then “partition” Palestine, much to the chagrin of the Arabs (and, Einstein).
Before the proposed “Partition” could materialize, Zionist Weizmann demanded that all Arabs be deported to Jordan, an idea that was opposed by Einstein and resulted in further differences between the two of them. Describing Jewish nationalism as guided by militarism and conservatism, Einstein even compared it with Prussia in a letter to Weizmann: “Without honest cooperation with the Arabs there is no peace and no security. This is for the long range politics and not for the present times. In the last analysis, even if we were not practically defenseless, it would not be worthy of us to want to maintain a nationalism a la Prussienne.”
Einstein became bitterly opposed not just towards Weizmann (who went on to become the first President of Israel), but also towards the more liberal Zionists such as Selig Brodetsky, whom Einstein characterized as a “Mussolini”. Brodetsky defended himself as a socialist and as an “outspoken opponent of any form of chauvinism and militarism in connection with the Zionist movement”, but Einstein saw through the motives of such Zionists and criticized Brodetsky vociferously: “What I have against your talk is less what you have done but more what you have left unsaid. What’s missing is an analysis of the cause of the reaction of the Arab world against us – without which the question, in my conviction, cannot be solved.” Brodetsky was known for inciting caution against the allegedly growing power of Arabs and of their increasing population in Palestine – a jingoistic assertion that was attacked by Einstein thus: “I’m happy that we have no power. If national pigheadedness proves strong enough, then we will knock our brains out as we deserve.”
It was not any political power that Einstein wanted to see instituted in the Arab land. Refusing to be deluded by the Zionist propaganda, he was increasingly becoming concerned about the safety of the Arab people in Palestine. In a letter to Bernard Lecache in May 1930, Einstein wrote, “With regard to the question of Palestine, my most eager wish would be that, by policies preserving the legitimate interests of the Arabs, the Jews might succeed in proving that the Jewish people has managed to learn something from its own past, long ordeal.” In the same year, he wrote to Hugo Bergmann, “Only direct cooperation with the Arabs can create a dignified and safe life. If the Jews don’t comprehend this, the whole Jewish position in the complex of Arab countries will become step by step untenable.”
Although immigration of Jewish people to the Arab land was becoming legally inevitable, Einstein proposed there should be a limit to that. In a letter to Edward Freed, he wrote in 1932, “I am not a nationalist and I do not wish any discrimination of the Arabs in Palestine. The Jewish immigration to Palestine in the framework of ‘suitable limits’ can’t do harm to anyone.” The ‘limits’ were opposed by many Zionists of the time, principally by the anticommunist and Jewish nationalist Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Einstein attacked them as Fa
scists and in a letter to the Zionist Beinish Epstein, he accused them of “borrowing from the Fascists…methods that I abhor deeply, and use them to serve the interests of those who, relying on their ownership of the means of production, disfranchise and exploit the nonowners.” (1935)
Einstein’s communistic analysis irked many, and surprised many more. So disgusted were some Zionists that one of them, Elias Ginsburg threatened legal actions against Einstein. But the scientist remained persistent in objectively laying out the verifiable truths. In 1938, he declared his priorities based on that: “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state…” These sentiments are more relevant today as the Gaza wars continue to oppress the Arabs in the name of defending the state of Israel. Back then, Einstein had warned the Jewish people not to fall into the trap of nationalism, and the following excerpt of his commentary sums it up: “The essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power..I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain – especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. A return to a nation in the political sense of the word would be equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community…”
However, Einstein’s plan was not laying the foundation for the future; British colonialism’s declarations were. As the Second World War unfolded, between 1939 and 1944, the British allowed for a limited number (75,000) of Jews to be settled in Palestine. In the meantime, Nazi Germany’s onslaughts made possible somewhat of a unity among the Arabs and Jews – Palestinian Communist Party (which supported the Soviet Union) as well as Jewish Communists and left-leaning Zionists Hashomer Hatzair worked towards forging alliances between antifascists from each side. At the same time, to counter the influence of the communists, the rightwing Zionists also grew in leaps and bounds (some of them assassinated Lord Moyne, British Minister of State in 1944). Next year, they demanded immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Eretz Israel, Einstein sharply attacked these Jewish militants and said “I regard them as a disaster. I’m not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people”, in an interview with I.Z. David.
Anti-Israel: “The war is won, but the peace is not.” (Einstein, 1945) -
While he rejoiced the defeat of Hitler and Nazism, Einstein continued to oppose the idea of a Jewish state. In January 1946, testifying before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine (AACIP), Einstein argued against the idea of Israel. He wrote to Rabbi Wise, “I’m firmly convinced that a rigid demand for a ‘Jewish State’ will have only undesirable results for us.” American radical journalist I. F. Stone, himself a fellow ‘cultural Zionist’ declared his support for Einstein saying that “to have the greatest Jewish figure of the period oppose a Jewish state as unfair to the Arabs is a very noble thing.”
When Menachem Begin (who would later become the sixth Prime Minister of Israel and win Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973) visited the US, Einstein denounced him and the right-wing Zionism as “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” Not only was he bitterly critical of the reactionary Zionists, Einstein was equally forthright in his support for the Soviet Union. At the annual Nobel Prize anniversary dinner at New York, he said, “We do not forget the humane attitude of the Soviet Union who was the only one among the big powers to open her doors to hundreds of thousands of Jews when Nazi armies were advancing on Poland.” Later that year, he released another statement revealing his support for Stalin in a time when most of his peers were distancing themselves, “We must not forget that in those years of atrocious persecution of the Jewish people, Soviet Russia has been the only great nation who has saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives. The enterprise to settle 30,000 more Jewish war orphans in Birobidjan and secure for them in this way a satisfying and happy future is new proof for the humane attitude of Russia towards our Jewish people.” Not only that, Einstein also gladly accepted the offer to become honorary president of the most prominent committee setup to coordinate Jewish settlements in Birobidjan (which was established within the Soviet Union under Stalin in the late 1920s as the first autonomous Jewish region in the world).
By the end of Second World War, Einstein had already made his political commitments clear. Testifying before AACIP, he attacked the British as the root cause of the instabilities in the lives of Arabs and Jews. “Difficulties between the Jews and Arabs are artificially created, and are created by the English,” he thundered. Opposing a separate Jewish state, Einstein noted that Palestine could still rule with one government, but without British interventions, because in his impression, “Palestine is a kind of small model of India. There is an attempt, with the help of a few officials, to dominate the people of Palestine and it seems to me that the English rule it.” Attacking the British colonial rule as one that exploits the native while collaborating with landowners, Einstein laid bare a vicious critique of Western interests in the proposed partitions. In addition, Einstein denounced the idea of a new state while replying to a question by Judge Hutcheson: “The state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad.”
In short, Einstein was opposed to a separate Jewish state, opposed to a partition of Palestine, opposed even to an establishment of a Jewish government-in-exile, considered the Jewish underground movement a “disaster” and supported a bi-national self-government in Palestine with both Arabs and the Jews ruled with the consent of the Arabs.
On matters of Palestine, Einstein detested the Americans as having “inherited the inflatedness and arrogance of the Germans.” He accused the American administration of “taking on the role England has played up to now.” He predicted quite accurately that the English “old-fashion methods of suppressing the masses by using indigenous unscrupulous elements from the economic upper class will soon cost them their whole empire.” In a 1948 letter to a friend, Einstein deplored the Western world for preparing a war against Russia, “By now, it is not only the English, but also the Americans who have sold and betrayed us politically for a song. In Washington, they are conspiring for a preventive war against Russia, a fact that is also related to the villainy in Palestine. We Jews are not safe in America where anti-Semitism has increased very much…The psychological situation of the Jews over here is quite similar to the one in Germany before Hitler. The rich and the successful try to cloak their Jewish descent and act out as super patriots…” [end excerpt]
The National Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazi-Sozi, or simply The Nazis) first-and-foremost put forward a program of absolute expropriation of "foreign owned" properties owned by Jewish folks (excluding the up to 500,000 "assimilated Jews" who served the government), and the expulsion of non-German people out of the Realm (Reich) of Germany to their own National Homelands. The Nazi program specifically targeted non-assimilated Jews for expropriation and expulsion (900,000 people) and worked with the Jewish agency responsible for the creation of a homeland...
“GOEBBELS HAS A SPECIAL COIN MINTED TO CELEBRATE ZIONISM”
In 1933 and 1934, Untersturmführer SS Leopold Itz von Mildenstein, (photo), from the SS Office for Jewish Affairs, traveled to Palestine on fact finding missions accompanied by a number of Zionist officials. He became a welcome guest for six months.
SS von Mildenstein’s pro-Zionist report, later printed in the Reich’s propaganda Ministry Official magazine “ANGRIF” with the title “A Nazi travels to Palestine” (Ein Nazi fährt nach Palästina) was so filled with praise and compliments about the work being done by the German Jewish settlers in Palestine that Josef Goebbels had a special coin minted in honor of the co-operation. The coin had a Star of David on one side and a Swastika on the other side. In recognition of this coin, Palestine’s largest fruit growing firm decorated its placard advertising signs for Jaffa Oranges with a huge portrait of King David flanked by Swastika flags.
According to convicted and executed war criminal Obersturmbannführer SS Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi-SS nobles, Untersturmfuehrer SS von Mildenstein and Baron von Bolschwing, were the major operatives-originators behind the Ha’avara Agreement.
In Palestine, Baron von Bolschwing stayed behind to establish a clandestine paramilitary group of Zionist-Nazi Jews and Arabs to conduct counterintelligence operations against the British. Baron von Bolschwing hoped that the Arabs would stage a diversion of their own to coincide with the Jewish revolt against the British Authority.
The Zionist group Baron von Bolschwing helped establish in Palestine was the Haganah, the Underground Zionist-Nazi Paramilitary in Palestine during the British Mandate (1920-1948). Immediately after the establishment of the Israel, the Haganah paramilitary members transferred over to the ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES (IDF).
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* "Rescuing the 1948 Palestinian Mind is Crucial to Achieving Justice for All" (2016-01-09, by Shady Srour) [archive.is/272E9]:
We often hear from Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank on the struggle for freedom from occupation. One group of Palestinians who are not heard from as often is the 1948 Palestinians, those who after the 1948 Nakbe were able to remain within what became the State of Israel. While 750,000 -800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes during the Nakbe, a very small number were allowed to remain or return [1].
Those Palestinians who were able to remain or return had Israeli citizenship forced upon them and became known as 1948 Palestinians.
My lineage descends from these 1948 Palestinians, in the small village of Ilabun, in the north of historic Palestine.
I have spent most of my life in the United States. The journey to understanding my origin as Palestinian was a long one.
This experience has profound implications for people trying to understand the best strategy for pursuing justice for Palestinians. Despite my recent activism and writing, I have not always understood my own identity.
The educational system in the United States, while growing up, was in general, quite biased against the Palestinians and our history.
The media, for the most part, also did little to educate one on these issues.
Having United States citizenship and Israeli citizenship did not in any way promote my understanding of who I am, and where I come from. The summer visits while growing up to Ilabun to see family did little to further my education. The process of true education on this issue began in 2011 and continues today. All of it was done due to my own interest.
Prior to this self-education process, I made many mistakes when discussing the Israeli-Palestinian issues and history. In my defense, I knew next to nothing of my own history and repeated platitudes about peace without any honest understanding of the reality. I felt that somehow I had some kind of confused identity, which everyone around my referred to as “Israeli-Arab.” I didn’t understand what that meant. Why were we in Israel? Why are “they,” referring to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians, and we, being fellow Arabs, referred to as “Israeli Arabs.”
It took a lot of self-education from 2011 onward to finally understand what had happened. Part of the issue that blinded me for so long is that much of the discussion of the issue looks at the problem as if it began in 1967. This history totally ignores the basis of the problem, which is Zionism. The roots of the conflict therefore began long before 1967, and actually long before even 1948, with the early Zionist ideas beginning in the 1880s.
As I devoured material on the history, I finally understood my identity. My questions and feelings which were so confused and conflicted finally were resolved. I finally understood that I was Palestinian. I was just as Palestinian as the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I was just as Palestinian as the refugees and just as Palestinian as the diaspora. We were all the same people. There is no difference in terms of identity. The only difference is location.
After much time spent in Ilabun and discussing these issues with people, I began to understand what had happened. The program of Zionism requires racism as a prerequisite to create a Jewish majority state in land which is majority non-Jewish. The 1948 Palestinians (my grandparents and their parents, etc) were the first victims during the Nakbe, along with the refugees. Those remaining were put under martial law from 1948-1966. A systematic erasure of our identity has been organized and implemented on all levels (media, education, etc). The suppression of the idea of us being Palestinians was and continues to be the cornerstone of Israeli government policy. The creation of the term “Israeli-Arab” was intended to separate our identity from our fellow Palestinians in the rest of historic Palestine and the Palestinian refugees. I no longer accept this term, which is a colonialist creation intended to further the Zionist aim of ethnically cleansing the maximum amount of land. This is pure divide and conquer strategy.
In the decades since 1948, the Israeli government has continued to maximize isolation of the 1948 Palestinians from the rest of our Palestinian brothers and sisters. In my discussion with fellow 1948 Palestinians who retained their identity (more common in the older generation), and with additional historical self-education, I discovered a disturbing pattern of propaganda and control. The education system has long been the target of the Israeli government, with teacher selection tightly controlled and anti-Zionist teachers excluded as much as possible. Textbooks also have been screened to minimize any possibility of teaching 1948 Palestinians their identity and history. Although the various forms of suppression did not remain the same over the past 67 years, and occasionally became more or less strict, the overall goal of isolating 1948 Palestinians remains the same today as it was in 1948.
Nakbe denial was common and continues today, although it has lessened slightly since the “new historians” of the 1980′s and onward. A bit more disturbing is the replacement of some Nakbe denial with Nakbe justification, which seeks to justify the ethnic cleansing of 50% of the population of historic Palestine during the Nakbe.
Through martial law for the 1948 Palestinians from 1948-1966 (very similar to the policies of the occupation in the West Bank today), and a systemic attempt to eliminate the Palestinian identity through government, media, and educational propaganda and control, the 1948 Palestinians have gone through much and continue to suffer greatly.
When coming from the United States to visit Ilabun, I immediately, upon entering historic Palestine, sense that something is wrong. I feel that I am entering a prison. There is something disturbing in the air. I remember, when I was a young child in the 1990s, being questioned in the airport in Tel Aviv about what language I spoke at home. The security official looked at me and with hate-filled eyes, asked me “Do you speak Arabic at home?”
“Yes,” I answered, all the while perceiving his eyes as if he had just gotten me to confess to a murder. It was the strangest thing, and at such a young age, with no historical understanding, I simply brushed it off as a strange occurrence. But today, I look back upon it as something deeply disturbing. It was an intentional method to cause the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine to feel unwelcome and hated. The government wanted us to feel that, by letting us in, Israeli security was doing us a favor, allowing us into our homeland. The incident, with that feeling of being hated for admitting to speaking Arabic, has stuck with me since then.
In 2012, upon leaving to go back to the United States, I experienced the worst airport screening experience in my life in Tel Aviv airport. I remember the security officer stating “We don’t care about your health, we only care about security.” I remember thinking as I left, “I will never come back here.” Later on, when I processed that thought in a historical context, I realized that this is exactly what the Israeli government wants. The government wants to encourage Palestinian emigration. They want to make sure you get that last bit of humiliation and suffering on your way out, just to keep fresh in your memory, in case you ever consider visiting or living in Palestine. On recent trips, I have avoided the Tel Aviv Airport and used the Amman, Jordan airport instead whenever possible.
The point of all of this is to highlight some current issues which I believe are relevant to the struggle for Palestinian rights. There is a unique history of suppression and identity removal that the 1948 Palestinians have experienced which requires significant efforts to overcome. Although I speak mainly from experience in Ilabun, I believe that this unique history has resulted in many 1948 Palestinians not knowing their identity and history. It has led to increasing numbers of 1948 Palestinians being Zionist in their outlook. It has led to rising numbers of 1948 Palestinians hating themselves (self-hating Arabs/Palestinians). It has led to more 1948 Palestinians enlisting in the Israeli army, something which is quite problematic. We have been taught to hate ourselves and to believe that we are inferior to Jews. Obviously, the truth is that all human beings are all equal. There are also many 1948 Palestinians who today celebrate independence day in Israel. The level of self-hatred and/or ignorance of one’s history and identity is stunning in such scenes. These people are essentially celebrating their own ethnic cleansing. It will take a lot of effort to reverse the effects of the Zionist propaganda machine of the Israeli government.
In particular, in the last 15 years, I can see some of the indirect effects of all this propaganda on people in the 1948 Palestinian community. While there are many in our community who are struggling valiantly for Palestinian rights and justice, there has been a cumulative effect on many people’s psyche. Many people have left (emigrated), feeling hopeless. There are dozens of laws that distinguish between Jews and non-Jews in Israel. [2]. And in terms of the supposedly “democratic” nature of living in Israel, it is illegal for any political party to run for the Knesset unless it believes in the “democratic and Jewish” nature of the state. Basically, this implies that it is illegal for a political party to run for the Knesset unless it is Zionist, and therefore racist.
The sky-high poverty rate among 1948 Palestinians (approximately 53%), combined with constant incitement to hate one’s own people from the Zionist media, and the confusion of one’s identity, have resulted in numerous psychological and social effects. Crime and organized crime have become an issue, egoism has increased, with a loss of caring about neighbors and the community around them. Principles and ethics have been reduced dramatically, with people more likely to look at economic issues as more important than any other issue. Capitalism has become more common as a guiding force for people in their daily interactions, with price being considered more important than environmental, labor, and ethical standards.
All of these issues have occurred concurrently with the slow loss of the Arabic language. The older 1948 Palestinian generation speaks a relatively complete Arabic. Many Arabic vocabulary terms have been lost in today’s generation, which occasionally finds it difficult to find the words in Arabic, as they only know the word in Hebrew. Other 1948 Palestinians stubbornly hold on to their language as an act of cultural self-preservation in the context of the settler-colonialism of Zionism.
Learning the Hebrew language, and as many languages as possible, is a positive development. I do, however, find it disconcerting that in the context of our Palestinian history, a history that involves ethnic cleansing, occupation, colonialism, and cultural oppression, that many 1948 Palestinians no longer have the ability to speak the complete Arabic language. I am concerned about the deteriorating Arabic vocabulary and saddened at the slow loss of our language, and believe that a revival in our language would be a positive development.
We also have an environmental crisis in some areas where 1948 Palestinians reside. The continual effect of propaganda on people’s psyche has resulted in a casual attitude toward polluting the land and littering. People have lost their identity as Palestinians, and they have lost their deep connection with the land which is traditional in Palestinian culture. As more and more of the land has been stolen by the Israeli government, people have become more and more unconcerned with taking care of the Earth and the land of our ancestors. In general, we, as the 1948 Palestinians are losing our connection with the land and the environment, becoming more capitalistic, more individualistic, and more materialistic. Consumerism is becoming more common as well. The combined effects of poverty, ethnic cleansing, environmentally-induced neurological damage, consumerism, capitalism, the destruction of our heritage and connection with the land, the destruction of our identity and self-esteem, have all combined to cause severe environmental problems, particularly in the past 15 years.
The overall world trend of increasingly toxic environments (toxic chemicals, heavy metals, plastics, genetically modified foods, synthetic pesticides/herbicides/insecticides, and electromagnetic fields-blood brain barrier damage from microwave radiation from wireless devices, for example), has strongly contributed to impaired brain activity, among many other negative health, environmental, and social consequences [10, 12-15]. Another contributor to this brain damage and other health problems is the current vaccination program [8-10]. Corrupt multinational corporations which produce these vaccines have severely biased the science on this topic in pursuit of profits at the expense of health. A proper, safe, and effective vaccination program for infants, toddlers, children, adults, and seniors could be designed based exclusively on homeoprophylaxis, which could provide very solid protection with essentially no side effects. A massive study in Cuba related to Leptospirosis demonstrates the potential for such a program based on homeophrophylaxis [7]. Instead, children with undeveloped blood-brain barriers and immune systems (under the age of 2) are given toxic vaccines, causing post-vaccine encephalopathy and autoimmune problems, among other negative results. This brain damage which is increasing due to the toxic environment, particularly, in the younger generation, is contributing to a “carefree” attitude toward everything. Such an attitude does not think twice before dumping a television onto the land. This attitude does not consider the toxic effects of such behavior on the community, and ultimately, themselves. Everyone worldwide is effected by these issues and problems. There are differences in degree of effects based on local and national differences in policies/exposure/legal framework/etc. Certainly, 1948 Palestinians are affected severely by these increasing environmental and health problems.
As I recently walked the path toward my family’s ancestral olive grove north of Ilabun, I was shocked and dismayed by the televisions, computers, electronics, trash, plastics, and other toxic materials thrown on the ground. The toxicity of such dumping is incredibly destructive to our people’s health and well-being. We must reverse these negative influences on our health and environment, and reclaim our connection with the land in order to recover as a people. There are encouraging signs on this front in terms of Palestinian cooperative organic farming booming in the West Bank. Unfortunately, the same level of organic fair-trade cooperative movement has not yet occurred among 1948 Palestinians.
I believe strongly in the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement as a method to advance Palestinian rights, and I follow the guidelines to the best of my ability. I call on everyone worldwide to join the BDS movement and promote justice for all. I use the research center whoprofits.org to avoid any company involved with violations of Palestinian human rights [16]. It is essential that all people worldwide, including Arabs, Jews, and all others who care about human rights use their financial resources to promote positive change in the world. Every penny removed from the hands of people involved in abusing Palestinians is a victory for humanity as a whole.
I feel that the enthusiasm for BDS would be higher if 1948 Palestinians were reminded or taught for the first time about their own history and identity. BDS is a positive movement because it moves us toward justice and equal rights for everyone, whether that be in the context of a one-state, two-state, bi-national solution, etc. The name doesn’t really matter, whether one calls it Palestine or Israel or some combination of the two. What matters is substance. Equal rights and justice for everyone, including all refugees, is the goal, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, etc.
If one looks at what has happened to 1948 Palestinians in the past 67 years, it gives an idea of the goals of Zionism for the rest of the Palestinians. Despite making up approximately 20% of the population, 1948 Palestinians only control 2-3% of the land. What this reflects is a massive land theft that occurred not only during the 1948 Nakbe, but long afterwards [6]. Massive land theft occurred to the point that today only 2-3% of land is owned by 1948 Palestinians. 600 Jewish settlements have formed since 1948, while there have been zero new Palestinian settlements [17]. Remember, we are talking about “Israel proper/pre-1967 Israel” here, not the West Bank or Gaza.
Despite the obvious atrocious history and the fact that approximately 53% of 1948 Palestinians suffer under the poverty line today, we have a continued ignorance among many 1948 Palestinians, who having been brain-washed by Zionist propaganda, do not speak the truth. Until we reverse the profound effects of the brain-washing campaign of 67 years, we will not have the full measure of self-Palestinian support for our rights. What is necessary is a massive counter-educational campaign, done on all fronts to reach the 1948 Palestinian. I am concerned that the path that is occurring with 1948 Palestinians will be followed by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
We must remind 1948 Palestinians (or teach them for the first time) of our shared history and identity with all Palestinians. Zionist media, news, and education must be overcome. Fear must be overcome, as many 1948 Palestinians fear speaking out. Whether as a result of ignorance, fear, or a combination, reigniting our common Palestinian heritage will be incredibly helpful, and potentially necessary, in achieving justice in the long struggle for Palestinian rights. This includes restoring our connection with the land and natural environment. We cannot ignore the 1948 Palestinians, call them “traitors,” or simply view them as a lost cause after suffering for 67 years of Zionist propaganda. Our pursuit of righteousness must include all issues, including environmental, cultural, health, social, and economic. Rescuing the minds of 1948 Palestinians is a missing piece in the quest for this justice.
Shady Srour is a writer, activist, and musician. His interests include peace-making, social justice, environmentalism, organic agriculture, permaculture, cooperative movements, naturopathic medicine, ecological living, sustainability, homeopathy, and spirituality. He received his BA in Zoology with a minor in Neuroscience from Miami University-Oxford, Ohio. He can be reached at srours8@autistici.org. In 2014, he wrote Radical Revolution: A Conversation with God (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/488107).
Suggested References:
Pappe, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. 2007. One World Publications.
Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Adalah.org accessed January 4, 2016.
Kovel, Joel. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. 2007. Pluto Press.
Said, Edward. Bayoumi, Moustafa. Rubin, Andrew. The Edward Said Reader. 2000. Vintage.
Pappe, Ilan. Chomsky, Noam. Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians. 2010. Hamish Hamilton.
Palestine Remembered. PalestineRemembered.com accessed January 4, 2016.
Bracho G, Varela E, Fernández R , Ordaz B, Marzoa N, Menéndez J, García L, Gilling E, Leyva R, Rufín R, de la Torre R, Solis RL, Batista N, Borrero R, Campa C. Homeopathy. Large-scale application of highly-diluted bacteria for Leptospirosis epidemic control. 2010 Jul;99(3):156-66.
Tenpenny, Sherri. Saying No to Vaccines: A Resource Guide for all Ages. 2008. NMA Media Press.
Humphries, Suzanne. Bystrianyk, Roman. Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History. 2015. CreateSpace Independent Publishing.
Murray, Michael. Pizzorno, Joseph. The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine. 2012. Altria Books.
Said, Edward. Hitchens, Christopher. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. 2001. Verso.
Davis, Devra. Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family. 2010. Dutton.
Milham, Samuel. Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization. 2012. iUniverse.
Rees, Camilla. Havas, Magda. Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless Revolution. 2009. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Crofton, Kerry. Wireless Radiation Rescue: safeguarding your family from the risks of electro-pollution. 2012. Global Wellbeing Books.
Whoprofits.org. A research collaboration detailing involvement of specific corporations in the illegal occupation.
Electronic Intifada Interview with Haneen Zoabi October 29, 2010. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDs5vhQsrQ8
---
SO THE comedy continues, with French millions spent in an American propaganda, even while France is bankrupt. Yet the France that M. Viviani represented at the White House, the France that is still bestirring American public opinion anew against the dangers of a fabled pro-German propaganda, is the France that is but augmenting the world-ruin which Prussia began. The material devastations of France by the Germans, appalling as they were, are indeed trifling, as far as their evil results are concerned, as compared with the moral devastations of France by the French financiers themselves. And France, moreover, now openly fights - and fights with all the weapons in the arsenal of the powers of evil - for the continued government of the world by fraud and violence. It is the France that stands, as no modern power except Prussia has stood, against every approach of that peace and good will which go forth from Christ for the healing of the nations. [end article]
There are two histories: That of the jurisdiction, and that of the people themselves. Palestine is a legal jurisdiction containing an ethnically diverse and religiously tolerant people, established during the 1910s, when the UKGB government was "granted" jurisdiction over the area and implemented a religious administration over the objections of the inhabitants.
Under the Ottoman Empire, the name Palestine referred to a geographic region, not to an administrative unit.
* 1730 map of the Ottoman Empire with its administrative divisions [archive.is/JjZ9C],
* The political divisions of northern Arabia peninsula's Mediterranean Sea coast ("Palestine") under the Ottoman Empire [archive.is/TVhra] [archive.is/XlZxB], and after their partition by the Empires of France and British [archive.is/ksM3A].
* Quote found in "Palestine Papers: 1917-1922: Seeds of Conflict", by Doreen Ingrams, p. 26:
Zionist researchers have shown how the majority of those inhabitants of modern Palestine were workers immigrating to the coast for jobs being afforded under the administration of the British Empire's Mandate of Palestine. Yet, before the immigration mentioned of the 1920s, the land was still a majority Arab and Muslim.
* "Where did the Palestinians of today come from?" [archive.is/Veyvg]
* "The Truth about "Palestinian" Arabs A.K.A. Arab immigrants' children, grand children & the vastly vacant desolate land prior to the rise of Jewish return" [archive.is/77UeZ]
* "Palestine" (retrieved 2015-09-23, britishempire.co.uk) [archive.is/ZbE4g], a history page with research materials, such as the following maps, captioned "1921 Map of British and French Mandates" [archive.is/syqEp] (shown below), and "1944 Map of Palestine Mandate" [archive.is/MFIVW]. [begin excerpt]: For most of the nineteenth century, the British were considered to be one of the staunchest defenders of the autonomy of the Ottoman empire where Palestine would have been considered a key central province of this sprawling empire. Britain's only real direct political involvement with the area was in the 1830's and only then as a result of French diplomacy. Mohammed Ali of Egypt temporarily displaced Ottoman rule in the area with the tacit agreement of the French. The French used Ottoman treatment of christians in the holy lands as an excuse to extend their influence over the area. However, Britain and Russia came to the diplomatic rescue of the Ottomans and compelled Mohammed Ali to withdraw from the area. Partly to placate the French, special agreement was made with the Ottomans to allow the French to protect Catholic citizens and the Russians to protect Orthodox citizens of the Ottoman empire. British (and other European) citizens in the area were granted extraterritorial legal status. With the exception of this incident, official British involvement in the area was extremely limited throughout the nineteenth century. As usual, the British government preferred not to interfere in areas that they did not need to do so. Unofficially, the holy land proved a powerful draw and influence to many British scholars, artists and upper class travellers.
The Great war was to unexpectedly turn the imperial spotlight onto this part of the world. As the Ottomans had thrown in their hand with the Germans, it was inevitable that the British would want to defend their strategic connection with India through the Suez. And, in 1915 they would even try to force a way through to the Russians through the Dardanelles. Palestine was suddenly thrust into an active theatre of war. At this period of time the most important indigenous group that the British had to work with was the Arabs. The number of Jews in Palestine were less than 60,000 at the outbreak of the war. Therefore, initial British contacts were, almost exclusively, aimed at the Arabs. The most important advance at this time was when the British High Commissioner of Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, tried to co-opt the help of the Sharif of Mecca, in the fight against the Ottomans. He did this through a series of correspondence known as the Hussein-McMahon letters. This correspondence seemed to promise the Arabs their own state stretching from Damascus to the Arabian peninsular in return for fighting the Ottomans. However, not only was the correspondence deliberately imprecise but the status and ability of the Sharif of Mecca to speak for all of the Arabs was itself in question. Despite these problems, the Sharif of Mecca formally declared a revolt against Ottoman rule in 1916. Britain provided supplies and money for the Arab forces led by the Sharif's sons; Abdullah and Faisal. British military advisers were also detailed from Cairo to assist the Arab army that the brothers were organizing. Of these advisers, T.E. Lawrence was to become the best known.
To complicate the diplomatic waters, the British entered into an agreement with the French and Russians to divide the entire Middle East into areas of influence for each of the imperial powers but leaving the Holy Lands to be jointly administered by the three powers. This was a secret arrangement that was known as the Sykes Picot agreement of 1916. It directly contradicted many of the promises made to the Sharif of Mecca.
Indeed, the waters were even further muddied by a third commitment entered into by the British in 1917. The British government made a promise to prominent Jews in Britain that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine would be looked on with favour by the British. The reason for this pledge is not exactly clear, but it seems to have been made for two reasons. The first was to secure financial support from prominent Jewish financiers in Europe. The second seems to have been a way of breaking their own secret arrangement with the French and Russians by promoting their own influence into Palestine at their supposed allies' expense.
Whatever the reason for this diplomatic chicanery, the diplomatic timebomb of these conflicting promises was about to explode as a direct result of the Russian revolution. The newly formed Bolshevik government took great pleasure in releasing the imperialistic designs of the British and French governments by publishing the Sykes-Picot agreement publicly and in full. The idea was to expose these capitilastic nations as morally bankrupt in their prosecution of the war and these secret agreements seemed to confirm that fact.
The publication of the Sykes-Picot agreement was not to be as politically devastating as feared for the simple fact that, at this point in time, the Arabs were advancing swiftly and assuredly against their Ottoman enemies. The Arabs felt that if they could make even further gains against the Ottomans that they would have more leverage in dealing with the imperial powers after the fighting had finished. The British were also advancing steadily through Palestine, capturing Jerusalem in December 1917. The British decisively defeated the Turks at Megiddo in September 1918, although the Arabs did manage to enter Damascus before the British were in a position to do so. The Ottomans capitulated soon after which left all of their previous dominions up for grabs.
The Versailles peace conference was used to impose allied plans and ideas on the defeated Central Powers, amongst whom was the Ottoman Empire. Both the Arabs and the Jews had delegations represented there. But, it was the victorious allies who virtually dictated all of the relevant terms and divisions of the lands. The Arab delagation was unsuccessful in promoting Arab independence, but had some success in persuading a border commission that Jewish immigration was not a good idea. Unfortunately, by this time, the British had already been declared as holding the mandate over Palestine and they had independently reaffirmed the Balfour declaration opening the way for a Jewish homeland.
The intense rivalry and competition between the Jews and Arabs was to afflict the British administration for virtually their entire period of governance. Unfortunately, the Zionists and the Arabs had mutually exclusive goals. The Zionists wished to create a Jewish homeland in their Holy Land. Whereas the Arabs were equally adamant that they should not lose their autonomy and rights in their own homeland. At this stage, the Arabs still massively formed the majority of the population. But what the Zionists lacked in numbers they more than made up for with political influence in the West and a zeal to succeed that bordered on fanatacism.
The fact that the British mandate included references to the Balfour Declaration and the establishment of a Jewish homeland was a severe blow to the Arabs. Partly to try and mollify this disappointment, the British split the Palestine mandate into two distinct areas, using the Jordan River as a natural boundary. The British claimed that Jewish immigration would be confined to the West of the river. The East of the river, which represented three quarters of the whole mandate area was to be reserved for the Arabs alone. The Hashemite Abdulla was to become the ruler of what was to become Transjordan. Most Arabs still felt ill at ease with this British plan. They regarded Transjordan as little more than an arid, empty desert. Besides, the principle of any Jewish homeland anywhere in Arab lands was still completely abhorrent to them.
Arab intransigence and unwillingness to work with the Jews was demonstrated almost immediately as the British tried to set up a legislative council and a constitution. The council was supposed to have ten of the seats allocated to the Arabs and only two to the Jews. The Arabs refused to cooperate on the basis that two seats for so few Jews meant that they were relatively over represented. They also resented the comments and concessions made to Zionism in the constitution. This failure meant that the British had no choice but to continue ruling Palestine directly themselves. [end excerpt]
* "Reply to the Advisory Opinion of 9 July 2004 in the matter of the Legal Consequences of the construction of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as submitted by the International Court of Justice, part 2: The 'Mandate for Palestine' Document" (2006-01, online edition, by Eli E. Hertz, mythsandfacts.org) [archive.is/OJhue] [begin excerpt]: The “Mandate for Palestine” laid down the Jewish right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an entitlement unaltered in international law and valid to this day.
The legally binding Mandate for Palestine document, was conferred on April 24 1920, at the San Remo Conference and its terms outlined in the Treaty of Sevres on August 10 1920. The Mandate’s terms were finalized on July 24 1922, and became operational in 1923. [end excerpt]
Maps:
- 1920 - Original territory assigned to the Jewish National Home
- 1922 - Final territory assigned to the Jewish National Home
* "The Event of the Week: Zion Recedes into the Shadows" (1922-07-13, The Christian Register)
ARDENT HOPES for the reconstruction of Zion as a "national home for the Jewish people" went glimmering last week because of the issuance by the British government of a new definition of the status of Palestine as a free state under British man-date. It was in 1917 that a British declaration, made through Mr. Balfour, evoked in the minds of Jews scattered throughout the world the dream of a Zion emerged from oblivion and made a political, economic, and spiritual factor in the life of the Jewish race. The declaration read: "His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object; it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine."The issuance of this guarded pledge aroused profound emotion in all the Jewish race. As an ideal for the restoration of the race, it appealed with especial fervor to the adherents of the Zionist group, to which ever since the days of Dr. Theodor Herzl Jews high in finance, in politics, science, and industry had contributed ardently of their counsel and their substance. Even to Jews who opposed the reconcentration of the race within a geographical area, the prospect of the rebuilding of the historic walls of Zion carried a thrill.
But in the effort to carry out the conditional pledge made by Arthur Balfour, British policy met with a difficulty which might easily have been foreseen. That difficulty was the fact that Palestine, which once was Jewish, is now Arabic. Arab susceptibilities were promptly aroused by the British pledge to the Jewish race, guarded though it was by a clause which on its face guaranteed Arabic civic rights against invasion and safeguarded Mohammedan religious ideals against attack. Fully alarmed by the prospect of the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in their country, the Arabs pressed for a more definite declaration of complete respect for their race and their religion. Inasmuch as they constitute a majority of about nine to one, the Arabs very properly demanded to know how a Jewish state could be established in Palestine without infringing upon their rights, civil and religions. Their anxiety as to the future was reflected throughout the Moslem world. Even in India, Mohammedan leaders exerted some pressure upon the British government for a reconciliation be-tween its pledge for the formation of a Jewish state and its respect for the rights of majorities, which constitute the basis of democratic rule.
The Arabic agitation, spreading through the Moslem world, sent a wave of profound depression among Zionists everywhere. A Jewish diplomat of wide experience in the service of America gave definite expression to this depression when he said in New York. a few months ago, that there was no such thing as a Zionist state in Palestine; that Jews were merely tolerated in the country of their fathers; that the limit of their political, economic, and social aspirations in their historic homeland was the right to settle in Zion on a basis of equality with persons of all other races who might wish to settle there. "Zion under the British pledge is a myth." said this American diplomat of Jewish race. This leader in Israel several months ago uttered the same conclusion of despair which Israel Zangwill, another leader in Israel, put into words upon the publication of the British white book on Zion on July 1: "The Jewish national home offered us wax, at best, not Jewish or national or a home."
The essence of the latest British decision concerning the future—and present—status of Palestine is that Palestine "cannot be a distinctly Jewish state, although Jews may remain or go into the country as of right and not of sufferance." This definition constituted a formal phrasing of a fact long accepted. It was merely the formulation into words of an existing situation. Back of this declaration is a strong sentiment in Great Britain against any political arrangement in Palestine that might imperil the rights of an unquestioned Mohammedan majority. On June 21 the House of Lords, by a vote of sixty to twenty-nine, passed a resolution in the sense that the acceptance of the mandate for Palestine "should be postponed until such modifications have therein been effected as will comply with pledges given by His Majesty's government." These pledges were contained in a declaration of October, 1913, assuring the people of Palestine of their liberties after the defeat of Turkey, and a subsequent declaration of November, 1918, assuring the Arabs of the purpose of the British government to respect their rights in the country in which it purposed to establish a national home for the Jewish. people. In speaking to the resolution, Lord Islington, an expert in Near Eastern affairs, pointed out the repugnancy of the Zionist conception of Zion, and the possible interpretation of the British official attitude indorsing that conception, in the following words: "Parliament is not committed to Zionism. Parliament has never given its decision in regard to it. We, as a country, are no more committed to it than the United States was committed to an adherence to the League of Nations on the declaration of President Wilson. The Parliament of the United States thought otherwise, and decided other-wise, and what the Constitution of the United States can do the constitution of this country can do as well. I venture to say that this Zionist scheme really runs counter to the whole human psychology of the age." So died Zion. The reconstitution of the homeland of the Jews was a beautiful ideal from many points of view. The project outlined by the British government appealed powerfully to many hearts, both among Jews and non-Jews. It failed because history had intervened with its inexorable decree. That decree is that Palestine is Arabic and not Hebrew; Mohammedan and not Jewish.
There are other Palestines scattered about the reconstructed world—areas where the exigencies of war and of politics have imposed the rule of minorities upon majorities. In receding from an idealistic and appealing project, the British government bowed to the democratic principle that it is unjust and politically immoral for a majority to be subjected to a minority. By so doing, it has avoided a long period of struggle in Palestine—for the Arab is proud and the Mohammedan jealous of his rights and his religion. It is safe to say that had European diplomacy treated all Palestines within the range of its decisions in the same enlightened way, the world would have been rid of many a sore spot—many a quaking area which is now heaving over the pressure of suppressed racial hopes, aroused national resentments and awakened national fears. Zion is dead ; but the seeds of a new Armageddon may he germinating under these heaving spots on the map of Europe.
Map caption: Distribution of ethnic groups in the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor in 1923, Historical Atlas by William R. Shepherd, New York (The map does not reflect the results of the 1923 population transfer between Greece and Turkey)
* Set of maps [archive.is/MDXsQ], accompanying the book "Hydropolitics along the Jordan River: Scarce Water and its Impact on the Arab-Israeli Conflict" (1995, United Nations University Press, archive.unu.edu) [archive.is/M2ZWQ], including -
- Map 8 Jewish colonies in Palestine, 1916. Source: Sacher (1916) [archive.is/Zio8C]
- Map 13 Growth of the Jewish national home, 1931-1939 [archive.is/TWChw]. Jewish immigration: 1931, 4,075; 1932, 12,533; 1933, 37,337; 1934, 45,267; 1935, 66,472; 1936, 29,595; 1937, 10,629; 1938, 14,675; 1939, 31,195. Source: Sachar (1979)
- Map 18 Palestine Land Transfer Regulations, February 1940 [archive.is/pPUK2]. Total area 10,429 square miles, including 266.5 square miles of water surface (Lake Tiberius and Palestinian half of Dead Sea). Zone A (6,615 sq. miles): land purchases by Jews prohibited; zone B (3,295 sq. miles): land purchases by Jews restricted; free zone (519 sq. miles): land purchases unrestricted; Jewish land owned by the Jewish national fund or in private ownership. Source: Esco Foundation (1947)
* "On Einstein’s Acceptance of Communist Russia and Rejection of Zionist Israel" (2012-12-07, saswat.com) [archive.is/wJGIY] [begin excerpt]:
In the “God Letter” (1954), Einstein wrote, “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”
[...]
Einstein’s Zionism: For a Cultural Center, not a Political State -
Einstein never disowned his association with Zionism, although it is important to note his definition of Zionism largely varied from the ones commonly held during his own time, and now. He could easily have succumbed to a reactionary (nationalist) variant of Zionism considering he was constantly victimized as a Jew, regardless of his celebrity. But he consciously did not choose that path. In 1920, a group of German scientists, led by Nobel Prize winner Philipp Lenard, denounced the theory of relativity as a “Jewish perversion”. Lenard would go on to serve as Hitler’s chief scientist, and the man to fund this campaign to discredit Einstein’s contributions would be later unraveled as the American industrialist Henry Ford, a Nazi collaborator. Remaining unprovoked however, Einstein declared the same year: “I do not believe in anything that might be described as ‘Jewish faith’. But I am a Jew and am glad to belong to the Jewish people, though I do not regard it in any way as chosen…”Cognizant of the anti-semitism impacting Einstein’s career and legacies, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann in 1921 asked Kurt Blumenfeld, a top Zionist recruiter to “stir up Einstein”. Blumenfeld sent back Weizmann a warning – “Einstein, as you know, is no Zionist, and I ask you not to try to make him a Zionist or to try to attach him to our organization…Einstein, who leans to socialism, feels very involved with the cause of Jewish labor and Jewish workers… I heard…that you expect Einstein to give speeches. Please be quite careful with that. Einstein…often says things out of naïveté which are unwelcome by us.”
Einstein required no stirring up, as he had already chosen the side of the oppressed and without any hesitation accepted Weizmann’s invitation to travel to England and America, but duly noted, “In several places, a high-tensioned Jewish nationalism shows itself that threatens to degenerate into intolerance and bigotry; but hopefully this is only an infantile disorder.” Besides, Blumenfeld was clearly wrong, for Einstein was no naive. He knew from his experiences that “anti-Semitism is frequently a question of political calculation”. During his stay in Switzerland, he was not aware of his Jewishness and he wrote, “There was nothing in my life that would have stirred my Jewish sensibility and stimulated it. This changed as soon as I took up residence in Berlin. There I saw the plight of many young Jews, especially of East European Jews. They are made the scapegoats for the malaise in present-day German economic life…Meetings, conferences, newspapers press for their quick removal or internment.” When the German government contemplated measures against East European Jews, Einstein protested and exposed the “inhumanity and irrationality of these measures” in the Berliner Tageblatt.
Einstein distinguished early on between the West European Jews and the prevailing anti-Semitism targeting East European Jews. His support for Soviet Union was strengthened based on how Stalin’s policies welcomed East European Jews into Soviet Union. And at the same time, between the First World
War and the Second, Einstein witnessed how the racist Germany was treating the East European Jewish refugees, and the barbarity of it all would awaken his sense of belonging with the oppressed race of the time. Although he could afford to, Einstein refused to remain indifferent, and he refused to separate his profession from his politics. Together with a few colleagues – both Jews and non-Jews, he held university courses especially to benefit the East European Jews in the summer of 1921 and he declared that “such experiences have awakened my Jewish-national feelings. I am not a Jew in the sense that I call for the preservation of the Jewish or any other nationality as an end in itself…I consider raising Jewish self-esteem essential, also in the interest of a natural coexistence with non-Jews. This was my major motive for joining the Zionist movement…But my Zionism does not preclude cosmopolitan views.” His envisioning of a “free Jewish community in Palestine” was not so much a demand for a militarist sovereign country as it was about the need to recognize that the East European Jews are not treated as wretched refugees in the racist European powers. Jewish Diaspora would never have aimed for a separate land if the Jews were treated humanely in the various European countries they lived in, Einstein cited early on.
German Jewry, for one, lived in abysmal conditions. Einstein described its history in details: “Our ancestors lived in the ghetto. They were poor, politically disenfranchised, separated from non-Jews by a wall of religious traditions, daily lifestyle, and legal restraints. In their intellectual development they were limited to their own literature, and only faintly influenced by the tremendous revival that European intellectual life experienced during the Renaissance.” In 1925, Einstein would express his support for Zionism as it was “in the process of creating in Palestine a center of Jewish intellectual life…The moral homeland will, I hope, succeed in bringing more vitality to a people that does not deserve to die.”
But wary he would always remain of the Zionists at the same time. One of them was Isaac Don Levine who tried early on to persuade Einstein against the Bolsheviks by making false claims about how Jews were being colonized by Stalin’s Russia. On April 9, 1926, Einstein rubbished such claims by Levine and wrote to him that he was supporting Russia and that the “efforts being made to colonize Jews in Russia must not be opposed because they aim at assisting thousands of Jews whom Palestine cannot immediately absorb.” Einstein had duly acknowledged how Stalin was the only international leader to have been supportive of the Jewish cause, so much so that Soviet Union was the first country to develop an autonomous territory for the Jewish people, a concept that Einstein had dreamt to see realized in Palestine, upon British promise. But reactionary Zionism was intolerant towards the communists and was refusing to credit the Soviet Union for their initiatives. As history would prove it later, and Einstein would attest, the British ended up deceiving the Jews, while Soviet Union continued to save millions of them.
Einstein was deeply committed to the welfare of Jewish people, but for that he also needed to be politically alert. His activism did not spare even Blumenfeld whom Einstein wrote demanding to peruse through the financial details of the Zionist Organization and started expressing doubts over the viabilities of Zionism. In the March 1926 letter to Blumenfeld, he wrote, “I appreciate the educational achievements of Zionism. However, as an enterprise, I don’t know it well enough to support it with good conscience.” Even as Einstein’s conscience would continue to haunt him, he was still optimistic about the forthcoming “Jewish center” of morality and intellectualism. He never got the “impression that the Arab problem might threaten the development of the Palestine project.” He said, “I believe rather that, among the working classes especially, Jew and Arab on the whole get on excellently together.” (1927)
Next year, in 1928, contrary to political wisdom, the British proposed a parliament for Palestine in a rushed manner that mandated equal representations from Jewish and Arab (and some British appointees) – a move that would result in the first major “riots” claiming hundreds of lives on each side. By the Jewish migrations in 1930, the British census report would declare almost 17 percent of the population in the Arab land to be Jews. Mass agitations among the Arabs would be “tackled” by the British in 1936 when for the first time the colonizers would station more troops in Palestine than in the entire Indian subcontinent. In 1937, the proposed mandate would be declared a failure because common grounds between the Arabs and Jews would not be allegedly found and the British conveniently would then “partition” Palestine, much to the chagrin of the Arabs (and, Einstein).
Before the proposed “Partition” could materialize, Zionist Weizmann demanded that all Arabs be deported to Jordan, an idea that was opposed by Einstein and resulted in further differences between the two of them. Describing Jewish nationalism as guided by militarism and conservatism, Einstein even compared it with Prussia in a letter to Weizmann: “Without honest cooperation with the Arabs there is no peace and no security. This is for the long range politics and not for the present times. In the last analysis, even if we were not practically defenseless, it would not be worthy of us to want to maintain a nationalism a la Prussienne.”
Einstein became bitterly opposed not just towards Weizmann (who went on to become the first President of Israel), but also towards the more liberal Zionists such as Selig Brodetsky, whom Einstein characterized as a “Mussolini”. Brodetsky defended himself as a socialist and as an “outspoken opponent of any form of chauvinism and militarism in connection with the Zionist movement”, but Einstein saw through the motives of such Zionists and criticized Brodetsky vociferously: “What I have against your talk is less what you have done but more what you have left unsaid. What’s missing is an analysis of the cause of the reaction of the Arab world against us – without which the question, in my conviction, cannot be solved.” Brodetsky was known for inciting caution against the allegedly growing power of Arabs and of their increasing population in Palestine – a jingoistic assertion that was attacked by Einstein thus: “I’m happy that we have no power. If national pigheadedness proves strong enough, then we will knock our brains out as we deserve.”
It was not any political power that Einstein wanted to see instituted in the Arab land. Refusing to be deluded by the Zionist propaganda, he was increasingly becoming concerned about the safety of the Arab people in Palestine. In a letter to Bernard Lecache in May 1930, Einstein wrote, “With regard to the question of Palestine, my most eager wish would be that, by policies preserving the legitimate interests of the Arabs, the Jews might succeed in proving that the Jewish people has managed to learn something from its own past, long ordeal.” In the same year, he wrote to Hugo Bergmann, “Only direct cooperation with the Arabs can create a dignified and safe life. If the Jews don’t comprehend this, the whole Jewish position in the complex of Arab countries will become step by step untenable.”
Although immigration of Jewish people to the Arab land was becoming legally inevitable, Einstein proposed there should be a limit to that. In a letter to Edward Freed, he wrote in 1932, “I am not a nationalist and I do not wish any discrimination of the Arabs in Palestine. The Jewish immigration to Palestine in the framework of ‘suitable limits’ can’t do harm to anyone.” The ‘limits’ were opposed by many Zionists of the time, principally by the anticommunist and Jewish nationalist Ze’ev Jabotinsky. Einstein attacked them as Fa
scists and in a letter to the Zionist Beinish Epstein, he accused them of “borrowing from the Fascists…methods that I abhor deeply, and use them to serve the interests of those who, relying on their ownership of the means of production, disfranchise and exploit the nonowners.” (1935)
Einstein’s communistic analysis irked many, and surprised many more. So disgusted were some Zionists that one of them, Elias Ginsburg threatened legal actions against Einstein. But the scientist remained persistent in objectively laying out the verifiable truths. In 1938, he declared his priorities based on that: “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state…” These sentiments are more relevant today as the Gaza wars continue to oppress the Arabs in the name of defending the state of Israel. Back then, Einstein had warned the Jewish people not to fall into the trap of nationalism, and the following excerpt of his commentary sums it up: “The essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power..I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain – especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. A return to a nation in the political sense of the word would be equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community…”
However, Einstein’s plan was not laying the foundation for the future; British colonialism’s declarations were. As the Second World War unfolded, between 1939 and 1944, the British allowed for a limited number (75,000) of Jews to be settled in Palestine. In the meantime, Nazi Germany’s onslaughts made possible somewhat of a unity among the Arabs and Jews – Palestinian Communist Party (which supported the Soviet Union) as well as Jewish Communists and left-leaning Zionists Hashomer Hatzair worked towards forging alliances between antifascists from each side. At the same time, to counter the influence of the communists, the rightwing Zionists also grew in leaps and bounds (some of them assassinated Lord Moyne, British Minister of State in 1944). Next year, they demanded immediate admission of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Eretz Israel, Einstein sharply attacked these Jewish militants and said “I regard them as a disaster. I’m not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people”, in an interview with I.Z. David.
Anti-Israel: “The war is won, but the peace is not.” (Einstein, 1945) -
While he rejoiced the defeat of Hitler and Nazism, Einstein continued to oppose the idea of a Jewish state. In January 1946, testifying before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine (AACIP), Einstein argued against the idea of Israel. He wrote to Rabbi Wise, “I’m firmly convinced that a rigid demand for a ‘Jewish State’ will have only undesirable results for us.” American radical journalist I. F. Stone, himself a fellow ‘cultural Zionist’ declared his support for Einstein saying that “to have the greatest Jewish figure of the period oppose a Jewish state as unfair to the Arabs is a very noble thing.”
When Menachem Begin (who would later become the sixth Prime Minister of Israel and win Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973) visited the US, Einstein denounced him and the right-wing Zionism as “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” Not only was he bitterly critical of the reactionary Zionists, Einstein was equally forthright in his support for the Soviet Union. At the annual Nobel Prize anniversary dinner at New York, he said, “We do not forget the humane attitude of the Soviet Union who was the only one among the big powers to open her doors to hundreds of thousands of Jews when Nazi armies were advancing on Poland.” Later that year, he released another statement revealing his support for Stalin in a time when most of his peers were distancing themselves, “We must not forget that in those years of atrocious persecution of the Jewish people, Soviet Russia has been the only great nation who has saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives. The enterprise to settle 30,000 more Jewish war orphans in Birobidjan and secure for them in this way a satisfying and happy future is new proof for the humane attitude of Russia towards our Jewish people.” Not only that, Einstein also gladly accepted the offer to become honorary president of the most prominent committee setup to coordinate Jewish settlements in Birobidjan (which was established within the Soviet Union under Stalin in the late 1920s as the first autonomous Jewish region in the world).
By the end of Second World War, Einstein had already made his political commitments clear. Testifying before AACIP, he attacked the British as the root cause of the instabilities in the lives of Arabs and Jews. “Difficulties between the Jews and Arabs are artificially created, and are created by the English,” he thundered. Opposing a separate Jewish state, Einstein noted that Palestine could still rule with one government, but without British interventions, because in his impression, “Palestine is a kind of small model of India. There is an attempt, with the help of a few officials, to dominate the people of Palestine and it seems to me that the English rule it.” Attacking the British colonial rule as one that exploits the native while collaborating with landowners, Einstein laid bare a vicious critique of Western interests in the proposed partitions. In addition, Einstein denounced the idea of a new state while replying to a question by Judge Hutcheson: “The state idea is not according to my heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with many difficulties and a narrow-mindedness. I believe it is bad.”
In short, Einstein was opposed to a separate Jewish state, opposed to a partition of Palestine, opposed even to an establishment of a Jewish government-in-exile, considered the Jewish underground movement a “disaster” and supported a bi-national self-government in Palestine with both Arabs and the Jews ruled with the consent of the Arabs.
On matters of Palestine, Einstein detested the Americans as having “inherited the inflatedness and arrogance of the Germans.” He accused the American administration of “taking on the role England has played up to now.” He predicted quite accurately that the English “old-fashion methods of suppressing the masses by using indigenous unscrupulous elements from the economic upper class will soon cost them their whole empire.” In a 1948 letter to a friend, Einstein deplored the Western world for preparing a war against Russia, “By now, it is not only the English, but also the Americans who have sold and betrayed us politically for a song. In Washington, they are conspiring for a preventive war against Russia, a fact that is also related to the villainy in Palestine. We Jews are not safe in America where anti-Semitism has increased very much…The psychological situation of the Jews over here is quite similar to the one in Germany before Hitler. The rich and the successful try to cloak their Jewish descent and act out as super patriots…” [end excerpt]
The National Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazi-Sozi, or simply The Nazis) first-and-foremost put forward a program of absolute expropriation of "foreign owned" properties owned by Jewish folks (excluding the up to 500,000 "assimilated Jews" who served the government), and the expulsion of non-German people out of the Realm (Reich) of Germany to their own National Homelands. The Nazi program specifically targeted non-assimilated Jews for expropriation and expulsion (900,000 people) and worked with the Jewish agency responsible for the creation of a homeland...
“GOEBBELS HAS A SPECIAL COIN MINTED TO CELEBRATE ZIONISM”
In 1933 and 1934, Untersturmführer SS Leopold Itz von Mildenstein, (photo), from the SS Office for Jewish Affairs, traveled to Palestine on fact finding missions accompanied by a number of Zionist officials. He became a welcome guest for six months.SS von Mildenstein’s pro-Zionist report, later printed in the Reich’s propaganda Ministry Official magazine “ANGRIF” with the title “A Nazi travels to Palestine” (Ein Nazi fährt nach Palästina) was so filled with praise and compliments about the work being done by the German Jewish settlers in Palestine that Josef Goebbels had a special coin minted in honor of the co-operation. The coin had a Star of David on one side and a Swastika on the other side. In recognition of this coin, Palestine’s largest fruit growing firm decorated its placard advertising signs for Jaffa Oranges with a huge portrait of King David flanked by Swastika flags.
According to convicted and executed war criminal Obersturmbannführer SS Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi-SS nobles, Untersturmfuehrer SS von Mildenstein and Baron von Bolschwing, were the major operatives-originators behind the Ha’avara Agreement.
In Palestine, Baron von Bolschwing stayed behind to establish a clandestine paramilitary group of Zionist-Nazi Jews and Arabs to conduct counterintelligence operations against the British. Baron von Bolschwing hoped that the Arabs would stage a diversion of their own to coincide with the Jewish revolt against the British Authority.
The Zionist group Baron von Bolschwing helped establish in Palestine was the Haganah, the Underground Zionist-Nazi Paramilitary in Palestine during the British Mandate (1920-1948). Immediately after the establishment of the Israel, the Haganah paramilitary members transferred over to the ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES (IDF).
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* "Rescuing the 1948 Palestinian Mind is Crucial to Achieving Justice for All" (2016-01-09, by Shady Srour) [archive.is/272E9]:
We often hear from Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank on the struggle for freedom from occupation. One group of Palestinians who are not heard from as often is the 1948 Palestinians, those who after the 1948 Nakbe were able to remain within what became the State of Israel. While 750,000 -800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes during the Nakbe, a very small number were allowed to remain or return [1].Those Palestinians who were able to remain or return had Israeli citizenship forced upon them and became known as 1948 Palestinians.
My lineage descends from these 1948 Palestinians, in the small village of Ilabun, in the north of historic Palestine.
I have spent most of my life in the United States. The journey to understanding my origin as Palestinian was a long one.This experience has profound implications for people trying to understand the best strategy for pursuing justice for Palestinians. Despite my recent activism and writing, I have not always understood my own identity.
The educational system in the United States, while growing up, was in general, quite biased against the Palestinians and our history.
The media, for the most part, also did little to educate one on these issues.
Having United States citizenship and Israeli citizenship did not in any way promote my understanding of who I am, and where I come from. The summer visits while growing up to Ilabun to see family did little to further my education. The process of true education on this issue began in 2011 and continues today. All of it was done due to my own interest.
Prior to this self-education process, I made many mistakes when discussing the Israeli-Palestinian issues and history. In my defense, I knew next to nothing of my own history and repeated platitudes about peace without any honest understanding of the reality. I felt that somehow I had some kind of confused identity, which everyone around my referred to as “Israeli-Arab.” I didn’t understand what that meant. Why were we in Israel? Why are “they,” referring to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians, and we, being fellow Arabs, referred to as “Israeli Arabs.”
It took a lot of self-education from 2011 onward to finally understand what had happened. Part of the issue that blinded me for so long is that much of the discussion of the issue looks at the problem as if it began in 1967. This history totally ignores the basis of the problem, which is Zionism. The roots of the conflict therefore began long before 1967, and actually long before even 1948, with the early Zionist ideas beginning in the 1880s.
As I devoured material on the history, I finally understood my identity. My questions and feelings which were so confused and conflicted finally were resolved. I finally understood that I was Palestinian. I was just as Palestinian as the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I was just as Palestinian as the refugees and just as Palestinian as the diaspora. We were all the same people. There is no difference in terms of identity. The only difference is location.
After much time spent in Ilabun and discussing these issues with people, I began to understand what had happened. The program of Zionism requires racism as a prerequisite to create a Jewish majority state in land which is majority non-Jewish. The 1948 Palestinians (my grandparents and their parents, etc) were the first victims during the Nakbe, along with the refugees. Those remaining were put under martial law from 1948-1966. A systematic erasure of our identity has been organized and implemented on all levels (media, education, etc). The suppression of the idea of us being Palestinians was and continues to be the cornerstone of Israeli government policy. The creation of the term “Israeli-Arab” was intended to separate our identity from our fellow Palestinians in the rest of historic Palestine and the Palestinian refugees. I no longer accept this term, which is a colonialist creation intended to further the Zionist aim of ethnically cleansing the maximum amount of land. This is pure divide and conquer strategy.
In the decades since 1948, the Israeli government has continued to maximize isolation of the 1948 Palestinians from the rest of our Palestinian brothers and sisters. In my discussion with fellow 1948 Palestinians who retained their identity (more common in the older generation), and with additional historical self-education, I discovered a disturbing pattern of propaganda and control. The education system has long been the target of the Israeli government, with teacher selection tightly controlled and anti-Zionist teachers excluded as much as possible. Textbooks also have been screened to minimize any possibility of teaching 1948 Palestinians their identity and history. Although the various forms of suppression did not remain the same over the past 67 years, and occasionally became more or less strict, the overall goal of isolating 1948 Palestinians remains the same today as it was in 1948.
Nakbe denial was common and continues today, although it has lessened slightly since the “new historians” of the 1980′s and onward. A bit more disturbing is the replacement of some Nakbe denial with Nakbe justification, which seeks to justify the ethnic cleansing of 50% of the population of historic Palestine during the Nakbe.
Through martial law for the 1948 Palestinians from 1948-1966 (very similar to the policies of the occupation in the West Bank today), and a systemic attempt to eliminate the Palestinian identity through government, media, and educational propaganda and control, the 1948 Palestinians have gone through much and continue to suffer greatly.
When coming from the United States to visit Ilabun, I immediately, upon entering historic Palestine, sense that something is wrong. I feel that I am entering a prison. There is something disturbing in the air. I remember, when I was a young child in the 1990s, being questioned in the airport in Tel Aviv about what language I spoke at home. The security official looked at me and with hate-filled eyes, asked me “Do you speak Arabic at home?”
“Yes,” I answered, all the while perceiving his eyes as if he had just gotten me to confess to a murder. It was the strangest thing, and at such a young age, with no historical understanding, I simply brushed it off as a strange occurrence. But today, I look back upon it as something deeply disturbing. It was an intentional method to cause the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine to feel unwelcome and hated. The government wanted us to feel that, by letting us in, Israeli security was doing us a favor, allowing us into our homeland. The incident, with that feeling of being hated for admitting to speaking Arabic, has stuck with me since then.
In 2012, upon leaving to go back to the United States, I experienced the worst airport screening experience in my life in Tel Aviv airport. I remember the security officer stating “We don’t care about your health, we only care about security.” I remember thinking as I left, “I will never come back here.” Later on, when I processed that thought in a historical context, I realized that this is exactly what the Israeli government wants. The government wants to encourage Palestinian emigration. They want to make sure you get that last bit of humiliation and suffering on your way out, just to keep fresh in your memory, in case you ever consider visiting or living in Palestine. On recent trips, I have avoided the Tel Aviv Airport and used the Amman, Jordan airport instead whenever possible.
The point of all of this is to highlight some current issues which I believe are relevant to the struggle for Palestinian rights. There is a unique history of suppression and identity removal that the 1948 Palestinians have experienced which requires significant efforts to overcome. Although I speak mainly from experience in Ilabun, I believe that this unique history has resulted in many 1948 Palestinians not knowing their identity and history. It has led to increasing numbers of 1948 Palestinians being Zionist in their outlook. It has led to rising numbers of 1948 Palestinians hating themselves (self-hating Arabs/Palestinians). It has led to more 1948 Palestinians enlisting in the Israeli army, something which is quite problematic. We have been taught to hate ourselves and to believe that we are inferior to Jews. Obviously, the truth is that all human beings are all equal. There are also many 1948 Palestinians who today celebrate independence day in Israel. The level of self-hatred and/or ignorance of one’s history and identity is stunning in such scenes. These people are essentially celebrating their own ethnic cleansing. It will take a lot of effort to reverse the effects of the Zionist propaganda machine of the Israeli government.
In particular, in the last 15 years, I can see some of the indirect effects of all this propaganda on people in the 1948 Palestinian community. While there are many in our community who are struggling valiantly for Palestinian rights and justice, there has been a cumulative effect on many people’s psyche. Many people have left (emigrated), feeling hopeless. There are dozens of laws that distinguish between Jews and non-Jews in Israel. [2]. And in terms of the supposedly “democratic” nature of living in Israel, it is illegal for any political party to run for the Knesset unless it believes in the “democratic and Jewish” nature of the state. Basically, this implies that it is illegal for a political party to run for the Knesset unless it is Zionist, and therefore racist.
The sky-high poverty rate among 1948 Palestinians (approximately 53%), combined with constant incitement to hate one’s own people from the Zionist media, and the confusion of one’s identity, have resulted in numerous psychological and social effects. Crime and organized crime have become an issue, egoism has increased, with a loss of caring about neighbors and the community around them. Principles and ethics have been reduced dramatically, with people more likely to look at economic issues as more important than any other issue. Capitalism has become more common as a guiding force for people in their daily interactions, with price being considered more important than environmental, labor, and ethical standards.
All of these issues have occurred concurrently with the slow loss of the Arabic language. The older 1948 Palestinian generation speaks a relatively complete Arabic. Many Arabic vocabulary terms have been lost in today’s generation, which occasionally finds it difficult to find the words in Arabic, as they only know the word in Hebrew. Other 1948 Palestinians stubbornly hold on to their language as an act of cultural self-preservation in the context of the settler-colonialism of Zionism.
Learning the Hebrew language, and as many languages as possible, is a positive development. I do, however, find it disconcerting that in the context of our Palestinian history, a history that involves ethnic cleansing, occupation, colonialism, and cultural oppression, that many 1948 Palestinians no longer have the ability to speak the complete Arabic language. I am concerned about the deteriorating Arabic vocabulary and saddened at the slow loss of our language, and believe that a revival in our language would be a positive development.
We also have an environmental crisis in some areas where 1948 Palestinians reside. The continual effect of propaganda on people’s psyche has resulted in a casual attitude toward polluting the land and littering. People have lost their identity as Palestinians, and they have lost their deep connection with the land which is traditional in Palestinian culture. As more and more of the land has been stolen by the Israeli government, people have become more and more unconcerned with taking care of the Earth and the land of our ancestors. In general, we, as the 1948 Palestinians are losing our connection with the land and the environment, becoming more capitalistic, more individualistic, and more materialistic. Consumerism is becoming more common as well. The combined effects of poverty, ethnic cleansing, environmentally-induced neurological damage, consumerism, capitalism, the destruction of our heritage and connection with the land, the destruction of our identity and self-esteem, have all combined to cause severe environmental problems, particularly in the past 15 years.
The overall world trend of increasingly toxic environments (toxic chemicals, heavy metals, plastics, genetically modified foods, synthetic pesticides/herbicides/insecticides, and electromagnetic fields-blood brain barrier damage from microwave radiation from wireless devices, for example), has strongly contributed to impaired brain activity, among many other negative health, environmental, and social consequences [10, 12-15]. Another contributor to this brain damage and other health problems is the current vaccination program [8-10]. Corrupt multinational corporations which produce these vaccines have severely biased the science on this topic in pursuit of profits at the expense of health. A proper, safe, and effective vaccination program for infants, toddlers, children, adults, and seniors could be designed based exclusively on homeoprophylaxis, which could provide very solid protection with essentially no side effects. A massive study in Cuba related to Leptospirosis demonstrates the potential for such a program based on homeophrophylaxis [7]. Instead, children with undeveloped blood-brain barriers and immune systems (under the age of 2) are given toxic vaccines, causing post-vaccine encephalopathy and autoimmune problems, among other negative results. This brain damage which is increasing due to the toxic environment, particularly, in the younger generation, is contributing to a “carefree” attitude toward everything. Such an attitude does not think twice before dumping a television onto the land. This attitude does not consider the toxic effects of such behavior on the community, and ultimately, themselves. Everyone worldwide is effected by these issues and problems. There are differences in degree of effects based on local and national differences in policies/exposure/legal framework/etc. Certainly, 1948 Palestinians are affected severely by these increasing environmental and health problems.
As I recently walked the path toward my family’s ancestral olive grove north of Ilabun, I was shocked and dismayed by the televisions, computers, electronics, trash, plastics, and other toxic materials thrown on the ground. The toxicity of such dumping is incredibly destructive to our people’s health and well-being. We must reverse these negative influences on our health and environment, and reclaim our connection with the land in order to recover as a people. There are encouraging signs on this front in terms of Palestinian cooperative organic farming booming in the West Bank. Unfortunately, the same level of organic fair-trade cooperative movement has not yet occurred among 1948 Palestinians.
I believe strongly in the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement as a method to advance Palestinian rights, and I follow the guidelines to the best of my ability. I call on everyone worldwide to join the BDS movement and promote justice for all. I use the research center whoprofits.org to avoid any company involved with violations of Palestinian human rights [16]. It is essential that all people worldwide, including Arabs, Jews, and all others who care about human rights use their financial resources to promote positive change in the world. Every penny removed from the hands of people involved in abusing Palestinians is a victory for humanity as a whole.
I feel that the enthusiasm for BDS would be higher if 1948 Palestinians were reminded or taught for the first time about their own history and identity. BDS is a positive movement because it moves us toward justice and equal rights for everyone, whether that be in the context of a one-state, two-state, bi-national solution, etc. The name doesn’t really matter, whether one calls it Palestine or Israel or some combination of the two. What matters is substance. Equal rights and justice for everyone, including all refugees, is the goal, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, etc.
If one looks at what has happened to 1948 Palestinians in the past 67 years, it gives an idea of the goals of Zionism for the rest of the Palestinians. Despite making up approximately 20% of the population, 1948 Palestinians only control 2-3% of the land. What this reflects is a massive land theft that occurred not only during the 1948 Nakbe, but long afterwards [6]. Massive land theft occurred to the point that today only 2-3% of land is owned by 1948 Palestinians. 600 Jewish settlements have formed since 1948, while there have been zero new Palestinian settlements [17]. Remember, we are talking about “Israel proper/pre-1967 Israel” here, not the West Bank or Gaza.
Despite the obvious atrocious history and the fact that approximately 53% of 1948 Palestinians suffer under the poverty line today, we have a continued ignorance among many 1948 Palestinians, who having been brain-washed by Zionist propaganda, do not speak the truth. Until we reverse the profound effects of the brain-washing campaign of 67 years, we will not have the full measure of self-Palestinian support for our rights. What is necessary is a massive counter-educational campaign, done on all fronts to reach the 1948 Palestinian. I am concerned that the path that is occurring with 1948 Palestinians will be followed by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
We must remind 1948 Palestinians (or teach them for the first time) of our shared history and identity with all Palestinians. Zionist media, news, and education must be overcome. Fear must be overcome, as many 1948 Palestinians fear speaking out. Whether as a result of ignorance, fear, or a combination, reigniting our common Palestinian heritage will be incredibly helpful, and potentially necessary, in achieving justice in the long struggle for Palestinian rights. This includes restoring our connection with the land and natural environment. We cannot ignore the 1948 Palestinians, call them “traitors,” or simply view them as a lost cause after suffering for 67 years of Zionist propaganda. Our pursuit of righteousness must include all issues, including environmental, cultural, health, social, and economic. Rescuing the minds of 1948 Palestinians is a missing piece in the quest for this justice.
Shady Srour is a writer, activist, and musician. His interests include peace-making, social justice, environmentalism, organic agriculture, permaculture, cooperative movements, naturopathic medicine, ecological living, sustainability, homeopathy, and spirituality. He received his BA in Zoology with a minor in Neuroscience from Miami University-Oxford, Ohio. He can be reached at srours8@autistici.org. In 2014, he wrote Radical Revolution: A Conversation with God (https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/488107).
Suggested References:
Pappe, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. 2007. One World Publications.
Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. Adalah.org accessed January 4, 2016.
Kovel, Joel. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. 2007. Pluto Press.
Said, Edward. Bayoumi, Moustafa. Rubin, Andrew. The Edward Said Reader. 2000. Vintage.
Pappe, Ilan. Chomsky, Noam. Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians. 2010. Hamish Hamilton.
Palestine Remembered. PalestineRemembered.com accessed January 4, 2016.
Bracho G, Varela E, Fernández R , Ordaz B, Marzoa N, Menéndez J, García L, Gilling E, Leyva R, Rufín R, de la Torre R, Solis RL, Batista N, Borrero R, Campa C. Homeopathy. Large-scale application of highly-diluted bacteria for Leptospirosis epidemic control. 2010 Jul;99(3):156-66.
Tenpenny, Sherri. Saying No to Vaccines: A Resource Guide for all Ages. 2008. NMA Media Press.
Humphries, Suzanne. Bystrianyk, Roman. Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and the Forgotten History. 2015. CreateSpace Independent Publishing.
Murray, Michael. Pizzorno, Joseph. The Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine. 2012. Altria Books.
Said, Edward. Hitchens, Christopher. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. 2001. Verso.
Davis, Devra. Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family. 2010. Dutton.
Milham, Samuel. Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization. 2012. iUniverse.
Rees, Camilla. Havas, Magda. Public Health SOS: The Shadow Side of the Wireless Revolution. 2009. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Crofton, Kerry. Wireless Radiation Rescue: safeguarding your family from the risks of electro-pollution. 2012. Global Wellbeing Books.
Whoprofits.org. A research collaboration detailing involvement of specific corporations in the illegal occupation.
Electronic Intifada Interview with Haneen Zoabi October 29, 2010. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDs5vhQsrQ8
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