#4 – Israel has a “right to exist”
Claim: Israel is illegitimate because it stole land belonging to the Arab's
Israel's right to exist
The framework for a Jewish state began with the British Mandate which expired on May 14, 1948, the day Israel declared independence. To date 149 countries acknowledge Israel's legitimacy. The boundaries of this new Jewish state closely resembles the boundaries of the UN Resolution 181 proposed boundaries for a Jewish state. As previously noted the land allocated for the Jews held a Jewish majority. If this seems unreasonable consider this, there are 22 Arab countries and 400 million Arabs, and only one Jewish state the size of New Jersey, which is one fifth of one percent of the middle-east. The Jews had gone without a place to call their own for 1,800 years and have endured persecutions and genocides. The grave injustice here was not accepting the Jewish state. Today Israeli Palestinians, which make up 20% of the country, are not treated as second class citizens but have the same rights as Jews and can serve in the Israeli military and government. In many cases Israeli Palestinians have a higher standard of living than Arabs elsewhere in the middle-east. This is a contrast to the way Jews were treated under the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand Palestinian Authorities have said no Jews would be allowed within a Palestinian state. So whose really apartheid?
Ethnic cleansing and the cause of the refuge problem
Claim: Israel is illegitimate because it stole land belonging to the Arab's
Israel's right to exist
In the words of
Israeli diplomat and politician Abba Eban, “Nobody does Israel any service by
proclaiming its ‘right to exist.' Israel’s right to exist, like that of the
United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved.
Israel’s legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement. . . .
There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would
consider mere recognition of its ‘right to exist’ a favor, or a negotiable
concession.” Put simply, no nation has to try to prove it’s legitimacy or it’s right
to exist. It exists for the same reason that any other nation exists, because
it can and because it can occupy the land and defend it. This is true for any
nation in history.
The framework for a Jewish state began with the British Mandate which expired on May 14, 1948, the day Israel declared independence. To date 149 countries acknowledge Israel's legitimacy. The boundaries of this new Jewish state closely resembles the boundaries of the UN Resolution 181 proposed boundaries for a Jewish state. As previously noted the land allocated for the Jews held a Jewish majority. If this seems unreasonable consider this, there are 22 Arab countries and 400 million Arabs, and only one Jewish state the size of New Jersey, which is one fifth of one percent of the middle-east. The Jews had gone without a place to call their own for 1,800 years and have endured persecutions and genocides. The grave injustice here was not accepting the Jewish state. Today Israeli Palestinians, which make up 20% of the country, are not treated as second class citizens but have the same rights as Jews and can serve in the Israeli military and government. In many cases Israeli Palestinians have a higher standard of living than Arabs elsewhere in the middle-east. This is a contrast to the way Jews were treated under the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand Palestinian Authorities have said no Jews would be allowed within a Palestinian state. So whose really apartheid?
No sooner had
Israel declared independence when they were attacked by five Arab armies. It
was this attack that created a refugee problem to begin with. The author makes
the argument that the attack was justified because the Zionists stole land, however
if land were the reason it ignores the Rhodes armistice talks of 1949 where
Israel offered to return the lands it had conquered, that were originally meant
for a Palestinian Arab state, in exchange for a peace treaty. If accepted this
would have allowed displaced Palestinians to return to their homes. The Arabs
rejected this offer and instead continued there aggression towards Israel,
which ultimately led to the 1956 Suez crisis. Again in 1949, at the Lausanne
conference, Israel offered to repatriate a hundred thousand refugees without
even a peace treaty. Again the Arab stated rejected this offer because it would
mean recognition of the state of Israel. One has to wonder if the surrounding
Arab nations cared so much for their fellow Palestinian Arabs why did Egypt and
Jordan annex lands meant for the Palestinians for themselves after the 1948
war? It is apparently not an issue when other Arabs take land that is intended
for the Palestinians.
Ethnic cleansing and the cause of the refuge problem
Even though
Israel has never had a policy of ethnic cleansing, this accusation continues to
rear it’s ugly head. Many Palestinian Arabs, in fact, left prior to the 1948
war on their own accord by the urging of Arab leaders.
“Since 1948 we have been demanding the
return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who
encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave
and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.” —Haled al
Azm, Syrian Prime Minister, 1948-1949
“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians… but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave.” —PA President Mahmoud Abbas, 1976
“We will smash the country. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.” —Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, 1948
There is no mention of the Jews who were forced to flee from Arab countries after 1948. In total it is estimated that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews were forced out or fled from their homes in Arab countries from 1948 until the early 1970s. Between 1948 and 2000, the Jewish population in Middle Eastern and North African countries dropped from around 900,000 to less than 50,000.
Dier Yassin
In Dier Yassin Israel is accused of perpetuating a massacre. The events are contested but apparently a contingent of Iraqi troops entered the village on March 13, 1948. In response a contingent of Israeli paramilitary splinter group called the Irgun entered Dier Yassin to drive out the Iraqis. They tried to get the message out for the civilians to flee and left several routes open, to which more than two-thirds did flee. However the Iraqi soldiers disguised themselves as women, hid their weapons under their robes, and blended in with the remaining women and children in the village. When the Irgun did arrive they started taking fire from what they thought were women. Fire was returned by the Irgun and in the course of the battle many innocent women did die, along with 40% of the Irgun.
According to Arab scholars at Beir Zeit University in Ramallah there was no massacre but a confusing military conflict in which civilians were killed in the crossfire. According to these scholars the total Arabs dead, including Iraqi solders, were 107. The Arab sources have also acknowledge that the Arab spokesmen at the time exaggerated and made up stories of rape and murder of women and children. They also say the reason these stories were exaggerated was to shame the nations into attacking Israel. In the PBS documentary "The 50 years wars" survivors of Dier Yassin were interviewed and they recall begging Dr. Hussein Khalidi, director of Voice of Palestine (the Palestinian radio station in East Jerusalem) to edit out the lies and fabrications of atrocities that never happened. But he refused, telling them: "We must capitalize on this great opportunity!" -(David Meir-Levi - History Upside Down)
To add to this Yassir Arafat notes in his own authorized biography the Egyptians used the Dier Yassin "massacre" to terrorize the Palestinians of the South, so they could be more easily herded into makeshift concentration camps in Gaza. The Egyptians forcibly disarmed the Arabs and killed those who tried to escape the camps. Arafat blamed the Egyptians for the refugee problem in Gaza. (Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker?)
"The fabricated atrocity stories about Deir Yassin were our biggest mistake...Palestinians fled in terror.” —Hazem Nusseibeh, editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service’s Arabic news in 1948.
So to say that the Arabs have acknowledged Israel’s right to self-determination is a gross understatement and ignores the three major military attacks against Israel, the terrorist’s attacks, the propaganda campaigns, and the various economic boycotts including the Council of the Arab League’s economic boycott against the Jews of Mandatory Palestine and the modern BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions).
A Palestinian State
On the other hand Israel has been willing to acknowledge a Palestinian state, most notably at the 2000 Camp David Summit. The only major caveat was that the Palestinian Authorities recognize the Jewish state, which they refused to do. In more recent times Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated this sentiment, “The real reason is the persistent refusal to recognize a sovereign Jewish state in any boundary. That was and remains the core of this conflict. To solve this, the Palestinians will have to recognize the Jewish state just as we recognize a Palestinian state. Both peoples, both nations, deserve a nation-state of their own. Palestinians, if they wish so, will go to the Palestinian state; Jews, if they so wish, can go to the Jewish state. And we’ll have to have security and demilitarization agreements between us.” -Source. The bigger question is do the Palestinians currently deserve a state? First they must be willing to live in peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. The next question is a Palestinian state politically and economically even viable? As it stands the Palestinians are economically dependent on others to survive, including Israel who is a major employer of Palestinian labor and a main trading partner. Even with financial aid from UNRWA and other countries, about one-fifth of the Palestinian population lives in poverty and has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. -Source. Then there is the question of territory, even with Gaza and the West Bank combined it would not be able to absorb all the Palestinian Arabs from the surrounding countries.
Self-Determination (again)
On the issue of self-determination, for 19 years from 1948 until the Six Day War, no Arab leader argued for the right of national self-determination. It wasn’t until Yasser Arafat turned the issue into a human rights struggle that it became about self-determination. David Meir, in his book History Upside Down, describes this shift in tactics:
"Arafat was particularly struck by Ho Chi Minh's success in mobilizing left-wing sympathizers in Europe and the United States, where activists on American campuses, enthusiastically following the [propaganda] line of North Vietnamese operatives, had succeeded in reframing the Vietnam war from a Communist assault on the south to a struggle for national liberation. Ho's chief strategist, General Giap, made it clear to Arafat and his lieutenants that in order to succeed, they too needed to redefine the terms of their struggle. Giap's counsel was simple but profound: the PLO needed to work in a way that concealed its real goals, permitted strategic deception, and gave the appearance of moderation:"Stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your terror war into a struggle for human rights. Then you will have the American people eating out of your hand.
At the same time that he was getting advice from General Giap, Arafat was also being tutored by Muhammad Yazid, who had been minister of information in two Algerian wartime governments (1958-1962): wipe out the argument that Israel is a small state whose existence is threatened by the Arab states, or the reduction of the Palestinian problem to a question of refugees; instead, present the Palestinian struggle as a struggle for liberation like the others. Wipe out the impression that in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Zionists, the Zionist is the underdog. Now it is the Arab who is oppressed and victimized in his existence because he is not only facing the Zionists but also world imperialism.
To make sure that they followed this advice, the KGB put Arafat and his adjutants into the hands of a master of propaganda: Nicolai Ceausescu, president-for-life of Romania.
For the next few years, Ceausescu hosted Arafat frequently and gave him lessons on how to apply the advice of Giap, Yazid, and others in the Soviet orbit. Arafat's personal "handler," Ion Mihai Pacepa, the head of the Romanian military intelligence, had to work hard on his sometimes unruly protege. Pacepa later recorded a number of sessions during which Arafat railed against Ceausescu's injunctions that the PLO should present itself as a people's revolutionary army striving to right wrongs and free the oppressed: he wanted only to obliterate Israel. Gradually, though, Ceausescu's lessons in Machiavellian statecraft sank in. During his early Lebanon years, Arafat developed propaganda tactics that would allow him to create the image of a homeless people oppressed by a colonial power. This makeover would serve him well in the west for decades to come."
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Part 5
“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians… but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave.” —PA President Mahmoud Abbas, 1976
“We will smash the country. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.” —Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, 1948
There is no mention of the Jews who were forced to flee from Arab countries after 1948. In total it is estimated that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Jews were forced out or fled from their homes in Arab countries from 1948 until the early 1970s. Between 1948 and 2000, the Jewish population in Middle Eastern and North African countries dropped from around 900,000 to less than 50,000.
Dier Yassin
In Dier Yassin Israel is accused of perpetuating a massacre. The events are contested but apparently a contingent of Iraqi troops entered the village on March 13, 1948. In response a contingent of Israeli paramilitary splinter group called the Irgun entered Dier Yassin to drive out the Iraqis. They tried to get the message out for the civilians to flee and left several routes open, to which more than two-thirds did flee. However the Iraqi soldiers disguised themselves as women, hid their weapons under their robes, and blended in with the remaining women and children in the village. When the Irgun did arrive they started taking fire from what they thought were women. Fire was returned by the Irgun and in the course of the battle many innocent women did die, along with 40% of the Irgun.
According to Arab scholars at Beir Zeit University in Ramallah there was no massacre but a confusing military conflict in which civilians were killed in the crossfire. According to these scholars the total Arabs dead, including Iraqi solders, were 107. The Arab sources have also acknowledge that the Arab spokesmen at the time exaggerated and made up stories of rape and murder of women and children. They also say the reason these stories were exaggerated was to shame the nations into attacking Israel. In the PBS documentary "The 50 years wars" survivors of Dier Yassin were interviewed and they recall begging Dr. Hussein Khalidi, director of Voice of Palestine (the Palestinian radio station in East Jerusalem) to edit out the lies and fabrications of atrocities that never happened. But he refused, telling them: "We must capitalize on this great opportunity!" -(David Meir-Levi - History Upside Down)
To add to this Yassir Arafat notes in his own authorized biography the Egyptians used the Dier Yassin "massacre" to terrorize the Palestinians of the South, so they could be more easily herded into makeshift concentration camps in Gaza. The Egyptians forcibly disarmed the Arabs and killed those who tried to escape the camps. Arafat blamed the Egyptians for the refugee problem in Gaza. (Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker?)
"The fabricated atrocity stories about Deir Yassin were our biggest mistake...Palestinians fled in terror.” —Hazem Nusseibeh, editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service’s Arabic news in 1948.
So to say that the Arabs have acknowledged Israel’s right to self-determination is a gross understatement and ignores the three major military attacks against Israel, the terrorist’s attacks, the propaganda campaigns, and the various economic boycotts including the Council of the Arab League’s economic boycott against the Jews of Mandatory Palestine and the modern BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions).
A Palestinian State
On the other hand Israel has been willing to acknowledge a Palestinian state, most notably at the 2000 Camp David Summit. The only major caveat was that the Palestinian Authorities recognize the Jewish state, which they refused to do. In more recent times Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reiterated this sentiment, “The real reason is the persistent refusal to recognize a sovereign Jewish state in any boundary. That was and remains the core of this conflict. To solve this, the Palestinians will have to recognize the Jewish state just as we recognize a Palestinian state. Both peoples, both nations, deserve a nation-state of their own. Palestinians, if they wish so, will go to the Palestinian state; Jews, if they so wish, can go to the Jewish state. And we’ll have to have security and demilitarization agreements between us.” -Source. The bigger question is do the Palestinians currently deserve a state? First they must be willing to live in peaceful coexistence with their neighbors. The next question is a Palestinian state politically and economically even viable? As it stands the Palestinians are economically dependent on others to survive, including Israel who is a major employer of Palestinian labor and a main trading partner. Even with financial aid from UNRWA and other countries, about one-fifth of the Palestinian population lives in poverty and has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. -Source. Then there is the question of territory, even with Gaza and the West Bank combined it would not be able to absorb all the Palestinian Arabs from the surrounding countries.
Self-Determination (again)
On the issue of self-determination, for 19 years from 1948 until the Six Day War, no Arab leader argued for the right of national self-determination. It wasn’t until Yasser Arafat turned the issue into a human rights struggle that it became about self-determination. David Meir, in his book History Upside Down, describes this shift in tactics:
"Arafat was particularly struck by Ho Chi Minh's success in mobilizing left-wing sympathizers in Europe and the United States, where activists on American campuses, enthusiastically following the [propaganda] line of North Vietnamese operatives, had succeeded in reframing the Vietnam war from a Communist assault on the south to a struggle for national liberation. Ho's chief strategist, General Giap, made it clear to Arafat and his lieutenants that in order to succeed, they too needed to redefine the terms of their struggle. Giap's counsel was simple but profound: the PLO needed to work in a way that concealed its real goals, permitted strategic deception, and gave the appearance of moderation:"Stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your terror war into a struggle for human rights. Then you will have the American people eating out of your hand.
At the same time that he was getting advice from General Giap, Arafat was also being tutored by Muhammad Yazid, who had been minister of information in two Algerian wartime governments (1958-1962): wipe out the argument that Israel is a small state whose existence is threatened by the Arab states, or the reduction of the Palestinian problem to a question of refugees; instead, present the Palestinian struggle as a struggle for liberation like the others. Wipe out the impression that in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Zionists, the Zionist is the underdog. Now it is the Arab who is oppressed and victimized in his existence because he is not only facing the Zionists but also world imperialism.
To make sure that they followed this advice, the KGB put Arafat and his adjutants into the hands of a master of propaganda: Nicolai Ceausescu, president-for-life of Romania.
For the next few years, Ceausescu hosted Arafat frequently and gave him lessons on how to apply the advice of Giap, Yazid, and others in the Soviet orbit. Arafat's personal "handler," Ion Mihai Pacepa, the head of the Romanian military intelligence, had to work hard on his sometimes unruly protege. Pacepa later recorded a number of sessions during which Arafat railed against Ceausescu's injunctions that the PLO should present itself as a people's revolutionary army striving to right wrongs and free the oppressed: he wanted only to obliterate Israel. Gradually, though, Ceausescu's lessons in Machiavellian statecraft sank in. During his early Lebanon years, Arafat developed propaganda tactics that would allow him to create the image of a homeless people oppressed by a colonial power. This makeover would serve him well in the west for decades to come."
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Part 5
