Driving nails into the coffin (Part I)

Doesn't sound pleasant, doesn't it? For us pro-Palestinians, it should: I am going to decimate several Israeli myths and propaganda tools used in arguments against the Palestinians.

>>>Myth #1: Palestine was largely uninhabited during the 1800's, or were occupied by "landless" Arabs (nomads).

This is one of the most incorrect pieces of information ever conceived on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Such baseless information was based on limited accounts from early settlers and Zionist "pioneers". According to Wikipedia,

The Ottoman Sultan discouraged all large-scale immigration to Palestine, replying to a request by Rabbi Joseph Nantonek for permission to settle Jews in 1876 that "almost all lands in Palestine were occupied, and that the autonomy sought by Nantonek was incompatible with the administrative principles of the state" and decrees against mass settlement were issued by the Ottoman government in 1884, 1887 and 1888.[4] Significant numbers of Jews began making Aliyah to the Holy Land in 1882[5] to build collective farms and eventually established the new city of Tel Aviv in 1909.[6] However, during 1891-1900 the total number of Jews in Palestine was never more than 60,000 people out of a total population of 500,000...

Seeing the failure of this myth, Joan Peters, a writer, still decided to exploit it to her own advantage. However, Muhammad Hallaj debunked her nonsense, beginning with,

Blindness to the existence of Palestinian Arabs is widespread and deeply embedded. It spans the beginning of Zionist colonization a hundred years ago, when Israel Zangwill first gave the Zionist movement its earliest and most enduring myth about a “land without people for a people without land,” until today when Joan Peters in her voluminous book, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine,1 assures the Zionists and their supporters that they should not feel any guilt for the dispossession and displacement of the Palestinian people.

Of course, this has a lot to do with Mr. Zangwill's "land without a people for a people without a land" slogan, which was used to accelerate the Zionist propaganda machine. The theory itself smacks of racism: it does not acknowledge the fact that Palestinians did indeed exist at the time. However, the main argument with making the Palestinians seem landless was that the census was "awry" and that Christians were not Palestinians. According to Mr. Hallaj,

Peters, relying primarily on an analysis of the 1893 Ottoman population census, done by professor Kemal Karpat, compares his data with later population statistics and concludes that a large portion of Arab residents of the parts of Palestine which later became Israel were Arab migrants from other parts of Palestine which remained Arab in 1948. She deduces that these people and their descendants (170,000 people) could not be considered authentic refugees who were displaced by Jewish colonization and the subsequent establishment of Israel. Peters subtracts these 170,000 people from her calculations of authentic refugees, and she also subtracts 57,000 nomads and 37,000 reported immigrants, to reach the conclusion that since 140,000 Arabs remained in Israel, “only 343,000” refugees can claim that they are indigenous Palestinians. (p. 262) The rest are not displaced refugees, but recent migrants returning to their original homes. Then she diminishes this figure by an unspecified percentage, claiming that “a very substantial number” of the 343,000 “authentic” refugees were illegal immigrants, as were their descendants. (pp. 262-263) Therefore, there is really no displacement and no refugee problem.

Her calculations rest on the claim that only 92,000 Arabs, compared to 60,000 Jews, were indigenous and lived in 1893 in the area which later became Israel. Using a device frequently utilized in the book to diminish “non-Jewish” presence by breaking down the Palestinian population into religious groups, she concludes that as early as 1893, the Jews were the largest community in the areas of Palestine which became Israel in 1948. She de-Palestinizes the Christian population, subtracts them and finds that the Jews “were actually perhaps [sic] a marginal majority [plurality?] of the population.” (p. 251) In other words, there was always a Jewish country inside Palestine, inhabited by a Jewish majority and some smaller “non-Jewish” minorities!

The bollocks of all this is that Peters seriously has a complex that deduces much out of not reading her sources well. Mr. Hallaj continues to write,

Farrell demonstrates, for example, that only 9,817 Jews lived in Palestine in 1893, that 58,840 Muslims lived in the Akka district (more than Peters gave for the whole area which became Israel in 1948), and that the Jews were a small minority in every subdistrict in the country, including the ones she called “Jewish-settled areas.” According to Farrell’s analysis of Kerpat’s figures, the largest ratio of Jews to Arabs in any subdistrict in Palestine, in the Tabarya (Tiberias) area, only 799 Jews, comprising less than 13 percent of the population, lived there in 1893. In all other areas, the percentage of Jews was even smaller: 501 Jews, amounting to 3.1 percent, in the Haifa subdistrict, for example.

Moreover, Farrell found that Peters ignored more recent Israeli studies, which show that “the Ottoman census severely undercounted the population of Palestine” by as much as 19 percent in some areas.33 These findings have also been confirmed by later Ottoman censuses (1911-1912 and 1914-1915), which make her work unreliable and “inconsistent in view of the great weight Peters puts on the 1893 Ottoman census.”34?

Amazing. So, in fact, the Palestinians were a real majority and have been settled there, and are well-established. For example, John Quigley, in his book "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice", wrote,

“Britain’s high commissioner for Palestine, John Chancellor, recommended total suspension of Jewish immigration and land purchase to protect rab agriculture. He said, ‘all cultivable land was occupied; that no cultivable land now in possession of the indigenous population could be sold to Jews without creating a class of landless Arab cultivators.’…The Colonial Office rejected the recommendation.”

However, this was not the case. I will be explaining this in the next myth to follow, but let's stick to this one for now.More proof follows:

As the Ottoman census records show Palestine was widely inhabited in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially in the rural areas where agriculture was the main profession. According to Justine McCarthy (p. 26), an authority on the Ottoman Turks, Palestine's population in the early 19th century was 350,000, and in 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews (including many European Jews from the first and second Aliyah).

Moreover, it has been cited even by Zionists that Palestine was inhabited, and the only nomads lived in the south of Palestine.

There was also the falsehood that Palestinians were largely immigrants, when in fact the British Survey of Palestine shows otherwise. Zionist immigration remained at all-time highs every year prior to the partition date, reaching over a thousand immigrants each year.

I conclude the decimating of this myth with this simple fact from Wikipedia, and a quote from Illene Beatty's book, "Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan:

“But all these [different peoples who had come into Canaan] were additions, sprigs grafted onto the parent tree…And that parent tree was Canaanite…[The Arab invaders of the 7th century A.D.] made Moslem converts of the natives, settled down as residents, and intermarried with them, with the result that all are now so completely Arabized that we can’t tell where the Canaanites leave off and the Arabs begin.”

Jews, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, and other people have all settled in the region and intermarried [13][14]. Many of their descendants converted to Christianity and later to Islam, and spoke different languages depending on the lingua franca of the time. For the most part, the Arabization of Palestine began in Umayyad times. Increasing conversions to Islam among the local population, together with the immigration of Arabs from Arabia and inland Syria, led to the replacement of Aramaic by Arabic as the area's dominant language. Among the cultural survivals from pre-Arab times are the significant Palestinian Christian community (and smaller Jewish and Samaritan ones) as well as Aramaic loanwords in the local dialect. A distinguishing characteristic of Palestinians is their dialect; unusually among Arabic speakers, speakers of rural Palestinian dialects pronounce the letter qaaf as k (Arabic kaaf). Palestinians, like most other Arabic speakers, thus combine pre-Arab and Arab ancestry; the precise mixture is a matter of debate, on which genetic evidence (see below) has begun to shed some light, apparently confirming Ibn Khaldun's widely accepted argument that most Arabic speakers descend mainly from acculturated non-Arabs.

So, what's ironic is that the Zionists are the real immigrants who have displaced the indigenous people of Palestine, the Palestinians.

Now, on to the next myth...

>>>Myth #2: The Zionist immigrants made the land bloom while the Arabs neglected it and made it barren.

This was just a romanticizing myth used to increase Zionist immigration into Palestine. However, the reality was the contrary: Palestine was far from barren, and even early Zionists said so themselves. Let's return to Dr. Hallaj's debunking of Peters' stupid book. For example, Justice Louis Brandeis "visited Palestine in 1919, and was so impressed by its beauty that, in a letter to his wife on July 10 of that year, he said that the view from the Mount of Olives (Jerusalem) was more beautiful than California and that “all yet say that northern Palestine is far more beautiful.”" There are thus many other accounts that describe the beauty of the Palestinian landscape. Hallaj continues to write,

Peters did not need to rely on “non-Jewish travelers” for this purpose, because early Jewish settlers reported truthfully on Palestine’s condition when they were not contributing for external consumption. David Ben-Gurion relates how a Jewish traveler in the Galilee dreamed of building a Jewish settlement on the lands of an Arab village, “praying for its cultivation by Jewish hands,” not because it was neglected and needed to be “redeemed,” but because he was “enchanted by the natural beauty.” Ben-Gurion continued to say of this Jewish traveler that “when he saw the village, its loveliness won his heart.”

I'd cut a finger myself to go there: I admit that I'm a nature-lover. Cities are jungles that kill the human spirit, not enliven it.

However, this myth was disspelled centuries ago! George Sandys, an English Poet, was in Palestine in 1615. He described Palestine as "a land that flowed with milk and honey; in the midst as it were of the habitable world, and under a temperate clime; adorned with beautiful mountains and luxurious vallies; the rocks producing excellent waters and no part empty of delight or profit." Hallaj continues to disspell this myth with fervent proof and accurate source-citing.

Benny Morris, in his book "Righteous Victims", cited Ahad Ha'am, a European Jew and Essayist, in saying, "We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ..... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains .... are not cultivated".

Finally, it must be noted that such propaganda was in use at that time and is still in use today. This propaganda machine used by Zionist extremists is pushed by racism and neglection of the Palestinians who were living there.

Now, to the next myth...

>>>Myth #3: The Jews only acted aggressively when the Arabs started attacking them

However, like in present-day Palestine, it was found that the Israelis indeed did start this whole mess, ever since they entered Palestine. I'm not saying that their presence was "threatening" the native population "just by being there", but for what they were doing.

The Jewish National Fund was the main body responsible for land purchasing ever since the early 1900's. It was argued mainly that Arab landowners sold their land to the Jews at that time, thus making the purchasing legal, and this adds to their argument that Arabs at that time neglected their land.

However, the facts are very different. The Hope-Simpson Report, written by Sir John Hope Simpson in 1930, writes,

Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extra-territorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. The land is in mort-main and inalienable. It is for this reason that Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation deliberately adopted.

While remaining optimistic on certain aspects of the Israeli kibbutzim in the region,

The report claimed that there was not enough land to support continued immigration. According to the report, Arab farmers were suffering from severe economic difficulties, because there was not sufficient arable land reserves per farmer. The calculations assumed that there could be no irrigation, and no reclamation of land. The report explained the Turkish laws regarding land ownership, which had left most land in the hands of the government.

In that sense, the report confirms that the JNF was not only purchasing lands, but was also boycotting even Arab labor on the part of displaced farmers who were "absent" at the time of purchase.

The Palestine Land Society prepared a special report on the activities of the JNF. To begin with,

The fact is that JNF, in its operations in Israel, had expropriated illegally most of the land of 372 Palestinian villages which had been ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948. The owners of this land are over half the UN registered Palestinian refugees. JNF had actively participated in the physical destruction of many villages, in evacuating these villages of their inhabitants and in military operations to conquer these villages. Today JNF controls over 2500 sq. km of Palestinian land which it leases to Jews only. It also planted 100 parks on Palestinian land.

In addition, JNF has a long record of discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel as reported by the UN. JNF also extends its operations by proxy or directly to the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank and Gaza. All this is in clear violation of international law and particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention which forbids confiscation of property and settling the Occupiers' citizens in occupied territories. Ethnic cleansing, expropriation of property and destruction of houses are war crimes. As well, use of tax-exempt donations in these activities violates the domestic law in many countries, where JNF is domiciled.

The JNF has been doing much to buy land from the Brits at that time, and they acquired 94 square kilometres of it. The Arab landowners at that time were absent, and this was done in the course of time before the partition plan. Ever since 1901, the inception of the JNF,

To achieve the conquest of the land, the Zionists set up an arrangement whereby land was acquired not by individuals, but by a corporation, known as the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The JNF acquired land and leased it only to Jews, who were not allowed to sublet it. Thus land was acquired in the name of "the Jewish people," held for their use, and not subject to market conditions. The idea was for the JNF to gradually acquire as much land as possible as the basis for the expected Jewish state.

Naturally, in order for the land to serve this function, Arab labor had to be excluded. Leases from the JNF specifically prohibited the use of non-Jewish labor on JNF plots. One way to achieve this goal was to lease land only to those Jews who intended to work it themselves. In some cases, when land was bought from Arab absentee landlords, the peasants who resided on and worked the land were expelled. Jewish landholders who refused to exclude Arab labor could lose their leases or be faced with a boycott.

The conquest of labor pertained not only to agriculture but also to industry. The Labor Zionists formed an institution to organize Jewish labor and exclude Arabs: the Histadrut. The Histadrut was (and largely is) an all-Jewish combination trade union and cooperative society providing its members with a number of services. From the beginning it was a means of segregating Arab and Jewish labor and bringing into existence a strictly Jewish economic sector. Even when Arab and Jewish laborers performed precisely the same job, Jewish workers were paid significantly higher salaries. These policies were the death knell for any attempt to organize labor on a non-racial basis. The "laborism" of Labor Zionism killed and continues to kill efforts at building a unified labor movement.

At that time, the pseudo-socialist policies of the JNF and the Histadrut expropriated land and laboring Arabs. That was one of the main reasons why the first mutual riot, that of 1929 at Jerusalem's Western Wall, where hundreds of Jews and Palestinians were killed or wounded.

However, mutual clashes between farmers from both sides were common between the two groups. In 1901, Palestinian farmers in Tiberias were alarmed at the increasing Zionist policies being implemented by the JNF. According to this Afidora analysis, much of this tension was aggravated by the Jewish farmers themselves, eager to grab more land and expel the Palestinian peasantry. One of the pioneers of the Zionist movement, David Ben Gurion stated in 1905,

"We must expel Arabs and take their places ... and, if we have to use force - not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places - then we have force at our disposal." - (A letter to his son, Amos, 5 October 1937. Cited in Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, p.189.)

So, in short, the Arabs had no problems with the Jewish kibbutzim (collective farms) until the JNF body started to purchase land and expel Arabs from their lands at that time. This slow and crafty method of ethnic cleansing is still continuing today, this time in the West Bank. The Israelis have resurrected the legislation and are now imposing it on the Palestinians AGAIN. According to Jonathan Cook of the Daily Star,

The renewed application of the law came to light only after an Israeli lawyer pressed the army for a promised entry permit into Israel for his client, Johnny Atik, a Bethlehem farmer who needed to reach his fields. His land lies on the Jerusalem side of the "security barrier." The permit never arrived; instead Atik received a letter advising him that his land had been passed to the office of the Custodian of Absentee Property. His fields now declared state property, he is ineligible for compensation.

Atik is not alone. Many other Palestinian residents of the West Bank have been receiving similar letters - an Israeli policy that can only be characterized as a huge land grab. According to Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, as much as half of east Jerusalem could be confiscated in this manner.

The same thing is being done in Jerusalem, with apartments being filled by Jewish residents in place of absentee Arab residents. This slow "Zionization" of Palestine will eventually drive out all Palestinians from their homes if something is not done about this injustice that has ever since drove the Palestinians into outrage against the Israeli state that has been wiping Palestine and Palestinian villages off the map ever since 1901.

Thus, I have settled this fact: The Israelis made it clear that they wanted to drive out the Palestinians from their homes ever since that time, and now they are doing it again. If someone bought your land in this way, what would you? Surrender, or fight for the land that you inherited from your parents and your grandparents and theirs and so on?

>>>Myth #4: The Palestinians and other Arabs were promised Jordan solely after World War I, but wanted Palestine as well

While this may be partly true, it's missing a huge part of what really happened. During this time, many things were happening, such as the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and the European imperialist holding over the Middle East and Africa.

Let's revise, first, the dreaded Balfour declaration:

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours 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, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

Ok, so why is the Balfour Declaration a farce? There were several reasons. First, the Jews were promised a home in Palestine, much like a homeland. It did not explicitly call for the formation of a state. Another reason is that while it addressed the religious and civil rights of the indigenous population, the Palestinians, it did not address their political rights. This, of course, was one of the many reasons why the Palestinians were outraged at this expropriation of land that was indeed theirs.

Other reasons were due to contradictory agreements made between Arab leaders and British and French leaders. The first was the Sykes-Picot agreement, and another was the Hussein-McMahon agreement.

As you can see, these two conflict with the Balfour Declaration. Zionists, however, disregard these contradictory promises. According to Arab.NET,

With Arab help, the British took Palestine from the Ottomans at the end of World War I in 1917-18. The Arabs willingly helped the British because they had been promised independence after the war.

Unfortunately, Britain had also made promises to the Jews -- and the two sets of promises were scarcely compatible. In the Sykes-Picot agreement made with France and Russia in 1916, Britain had promised to divide the regions and rule it with its allies. In 1917 in the notorious Balfour Declaration, Britain promised, in exchange for Jewish help, a Jewish "national home" in Palestine.

However, Zionists argue that Transjordan was given to the Arabs, when in fact the Arabs had been offered independence on two other occasions. The Sykes-Picot agreement states that the Palestinians will be given an independent Sanjak to rule over the south of Palestine. There is also the promise of complete independence and full control of Palestine on par with the Hussein-McMahon agreement.

Thus, the Arabs rejected, and rightly so: I wouldn't have people come to my land and start cutting it up between themselves without conforming to me first, because I own that land.

Now, to the next myth...

>>>Myth #5 The Palestinians are not unique, and do not have a language, nation or culture of their own.

Such a myth is racist in nature: who are the settlers to say that we don't have a culture? Who are they to say that we don't have a land to call home? I mean, what kind of derogatory remark is this? It's like saying that a Greek is bland in his cultural sense, which of course is false, as the Greeks have as rich a culture as anyone else on Earth.

So what if our language is Arabic and not "unique"? The only thing Arabs have in common is a language. However, Arabs differ in their respective cultures, and have different dialects and general facial features. If you google for images of Gulf, Shami, Lebanese, Jordanian and Palestinian as well as North African Arabs, you'll see great differences in general facial features.

Other differences include cuisine, dress, music, dance and other folklore-related aspects of culture. As a Palestinian, I have tasted other Arab cultures and found them unique in their own perspective. You'll not find a Jordanian dish in a Lebanese restaurant, and vice versa. There's also dress: even though Jordanian and Palestinian traditional dresses are similar, they differ in their patterns and dimensions. There's also music and folk dance; though the dabka dance is popular among many Arab cultures, each country has its unique style of dabka. Then, of course, there is folklore, history and tradition, as well as ethnic differences.

However, let's just say that Arabs are all the same and are of one ethnicity. Does this make it okay to expel Palestinians from their homes? Of course not: every human being has an attachment to their homes, and depriving one from one's home is a crime. There's also the extreme racism in that the Arabs were "landless" and that displacing them was of no big issue. The Zionist goal was clearly Macchiavellian: they just had to create their state of Israel, even if it involves displacing 700,000+ Palestinians from their homes, farms and businesses. Those who stayed behind moved to the West Bank or remained where they were.

On the other hand, the Palestinians DO have a culture and are human beings, just like every one else. It is this extreme racism and terrorism that is Israel that drove them out of their land, and is still continuing today. This myth is used to disparage Palestinians from their cause, rejecting them as a party over negotiating a suitable deal over this land. This denial of the existence of the Palestinian people is not only racist in nature, but is also an outcome of ethnic cleansing, a racist action.

Granted, the Palestinians may have not had a 100% country at the time of the British Mandate, but Palestine was a nation of people: the Palestinians. They are not immigrants, but are indigenous to the land itself, and are going nowhere. Until the Zionists get this fact through their heads, there never will be peace.

That's settled. Time to go to...

>>>Myth #6: The Arabs rejected the 1947 UN GA partition plan and wanted all of Palestine for themselves.

Well, the rejection did happen, but again for good reasons. The Israelis argue that the Palestinians were given more than half and Jerusalem was itself surrounded by Palestinian territory.

However, by closely examining the map, we can see that this is not the case. Even if it was "fair", the Jewish population was still small, and the Arab majority received the same amount of land.

Let's go back to 1914. The Jewish population at that time was about 8% of the population of Palestine at that time, and their land ownership was about 2%. Refer to the debunking of the Transjordan myth for demographic distribution. It should also be noted that most of the Jews living at that time were escapees from Tsarist Russia, in which anti-Semitic pogroms on the Jews living there.

But for now, let's refer to the partition plan, as it is the first topic of debunkning in this myth.

Now, let's go back to 1947, when the Jewish population rose to about 33% in Palestine. If you take a look at the population percentages per district, and compare it with the partition plan, you'll realize that to make amends for the plan demographic-wise, a lot of Palestinians had to be transferred to the proposed Palestinian state, while only a handful of Jews had to be transferred to the proposed Jewish state. Moreover, looking at the map, you'll realize that while all of the Negev Desert was allocated to the Jewish state, the Jews owned less than 10% of the Beersheba district and occupied only small isolated colonies, while the Palestinians were significantly more than that and also owned much more than the allocated areas.

You will also note that Jewish ownership was under 7% of the total land of Palestine, while the Arabs owned significantly higher: about 90%. The Jews were allocated about 56% of Palestine, while the Arabs only 44%. That means the Jews gain about 49% more land and the Arabs lose 46% of what they own. Why would anyone accept such a plan? Would Americans, for example, accept it if it were given to any minorities within them? Such plans are seriously unfair.

For a moment, let's assume that Arab ownership was indeed 16% as Zionist propagandists like to claim. If that were true, the Arabs would gain only 28% of the land and the Jews about 49%, even though they did not own much and were only a small subset of the population. Still unfair, isn't it?

Earlier partition plans were also brought into this argumentt, such as the Peel Commission, which alloted the lands to each state accordingly with land ownership. The Jews rejected the partition plan, even though they adopted and brought forth the concept of partitioning. Ben Gurion once said, quoted in Tom Segev's One Palestine Complete,

Had partition [referring to the Peel Commission partition plan] been carried out, the history of our people would have been different and six million Jews in Europe would not have been killed---most of them would be in Israel

Even more ironic is the idea that the rejection of the Peel Commission plan was justified by the Zionists but they think that the Arab rejection of the UN GA Partition plan wasn't. Moshe Sharrett, an Israeli foreign minister, once said,

The proposed Jewish state [referring to the proposed 1937 Peel Commission partition plan] territory would not be continuous; its borders would be twisted and broken; the question of defending the frontier line would pose enormous difficulties .... the frontier line would separate villages from their fields .... Moreover the [Palestinian] Arab reaction would be negative because they would lose everything and gain almost nothing ..... in contrast to us they would lose totally that part of Palestine which they consider to be an Arab country and are fighting to keep it such ... They would lose the richest part of Palestine; they would lose major Arab assets, the orange plantations, the commercial and industrial centers and the most important sources of revenue for their government which would become impoverished; they would lose most of the coastal area, which would also be loss to the hinterland Arab states..... It would mean that they would be driven back to the desert ('Zorkim Otam') .... A Jewish territory [state] with fewer Arab subjects would make it easy for us but it would also mean procrustean bed for us while a plan based on expansion into larger territory would mean more [Palestinian] Arab subjects in the Jewish territory.
For the next 10 years the possibility of transferring the Arab population would not be 'practical'. As for the long-term future: I am prepared to see in this a vision, not a mystical way but in a realistic way, of a population exchange on a much more important scale and including larger territories. As for now, we must not forget who would have to exchange the land? those villages which live more than others on irrigation, on orange and fruit plantations, in houses built near water wells and pumping stations, on livestock and property and easy access to markets. Where would they go? What would they receive in return? ... This would be such an uprooting, such a shock, the likes of which had never occurred and could drown the whole thing in rivers of blood. At this stage let us not entertain ourselves with the analogy of population transfer between Turkey and Greece; there were different conditions there. Those Arabs who would remain would revolt; would the Jewish state be able to suppress the revolt without assistance from the British Army?"

Shocking, really. Even Zionists themselves know what they're up to.

There was also a lot of foul play going on at that time, especially during the UN vote. The Americans did quite a lot in twisting the arms of many nations into voting for the partition plan. According again to Tom Segev, the Jewish Agency budgeted a million dollars for its own bribery campaign. The money allocation appeared in the Jewish Agency's budget as "irregular political activity." This bribery went to coercing nations to vote for the partition. Zionists also had an advantage by bugging UNSCOP agencies so they can stay ahead of the game. More treachery followed:

in March 1948 the United States, along with China and France, was withdrawing from its earlier commitments to partition Palestine, and was pressing for "trusteeship" - an extension of Great Power rule- in Palestine beyond May 15th, 1948

. This was on par what Ben Gurion said once:

It is we who will decide the fate of Palestine. We cannot agree to any sort of Trusteeship, permanent or temporary. The Jewish State exists because we defend it."

Well, let's see what else our Zionist friends had to say:

"We shall spread in the whole country in the course of time ..... this is only an arrangement for the next 25 to 30 years."
-Chaim Weizmann

"No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning ..... Our possession is important not only for itself ... through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state .... will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country."
-David Ben Gurion

"[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state--we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel."
-David Ben Gurion

"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever."
Menachem Begin

"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%."
-Ben Gurion

"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area, even if only in an artificial way, in a military way. . . . I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of [Palestinian] Arab population."
-Ben Gurion

Note that they made it clear that they would start a war which would drive out many Palestinians so they may establish the Jewish state.

There's also the hypocrisy that Zionist propagandists refer to the UN GA Partition plan as a scapegoat against the Arabs who rejected it when in fact Israel has violated 200+ UN resolutions and many laws in the Geneva Convention.

But wait... the Arabs started that war... or did they?

>>>Myth #7 The Arabs were the ones who started the 1948 war and wanted to "push" the Jews into the sea". They also fought better.

Although there still is some contention over this, the Israelis have been doing a series of Holocaust-denial-style erasing of evidence that points to them ethnically cleansing over 300 Palestinian villages throughout the course of 1948. Of course, don't forget that they have committed a silent ethnic cleansing through expropriation of land in the past.

Ok, let's take a look at a short chronology of events. In 1947, the UN intervenes and proposes the unfair partition. On the 29th of September, the Arab Higher Committee rejected the partition on the grounds explained above. The Jewish Agency, however, saw this advantageous, and on the 2nd of October, accepted the partition plan. However, as the Palestinian Arabs were aware of what was going on, and were told to keep on their toes. By the 30th Novermber, the Haganah was mobilizing itself for an all-out operation that was to sweep over all of Palestine. However, while all this mobilizing was going on between both sides, the Brits handed over Tel Aviv (Petach Tiqwa) and Jaffa to the Palestinians, who guarded it at the time.

However, before any Arab attacks were carried out, forces from the Haganah and the Irgun Zvai Leumi terrorist organizations carried out coastal "clearing" operations, which involved a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinian villages and bedouin settlements of the coastal plains north of Tel Aviv. This was the preliminary stage of the takeover of Jaffa. On 31 December, 1947, Zionist terrorist organizations made their way into Balad el Shaikh, a village in the subdistrict of Haifa, and a massacre which ended in 60 civilians losing their lives took place. Following that, 275 local committees were organized to defend Palestinian towns and villages.

The first ALA (Arab Liberation Army, a Palestinian defense force) attacked the settlement of Kefar Szold to divert attention from the Zionist onslaught that was sweeping the western coast. This force was repulsed with the help of the Brits.

What followed was a series of evictions of Haifa villagers from their homes, and attacks on part of the Haganah and the Palmach, another Zionist militia. Seeing the danger, Arab leaders plead for an agreement with the Jewish Agency on this issue, as well as pledged an agreement with the Brits on staying within mandated Palestine. However, there was much treachery: the resulting Arab coalition was not as monolithic as many pro-Israelis like it to be. In that sense, neither of the armies had much vigor and zeal as well as intent on defending the lands as much as the poorly-armed ALA did against the Zionist invasion.

However, the ALA suffered greatly afterwards: the Haganah began its second "coastal clearing" operations, driving out Palestinians from Haifa to Jaffa, while still under the British Mandate. The Haganah received more arms during this time, despite the general arms embargo on the Arabs at that time. On the 4th of April, the Haganah launches Plan Dalet, which involved much ethnic cleansing. To divert the attention of the Zionist onslaught, Qawukji (ALA commander) attacked the village of Mishmar Ha Ameq, but was repulsed afterwards, only to see more villages such as Marj ibn 'Amir get occupied by the Zionist invasion. Four days after Qawukji's attack, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, another Palestinian commander, is killed while trying to recapture the village of Al-Qastal, and a day afterwards, the notorious Deir Yassin massacre occurred: 250 villagers were killed. More villages were demolished and its inhabitants drived out during Operation Har'el and Safad was captured during Operation Yiftach.

As the Zionists move forward, more terrorist operations were carried out, with the Palestinians suffering in what became known as the Diaspora and the Nakba ("catastrophe"). Shortly after a failed attempt at taking Jerusalem's Old City, the Zionists procclaimed the State of Israel, on much of stolen land. A day afterwards, the Arab Coalition decides to pounce. The Lebanese regulars, although sidelined from the start while the ethnic cleansing was going on, decided to attack, and managed to capture a few villages. What followed was much treachery, and a lack of unity amongst the "invading" Arab armies. Avi Shlaim, an Israeli historian, tells us,

The War of Independence constituted a glorious contrast to the centuries of powerlessness, persecution, and humiliation. Yet the traditional Zionist narrative of the events surrounding the birth of the State of Israel was still constructed around the notion of the Jews as the victims. This narrative presents the 1948 war as a simple, bipolar no-holds-barred struggle between a monolithic and malevolent Arab adversary and a tiny peace-loving Jewish community. The biblical image of David and Goliath is frequently evoked in this narrative. Little Israel is portrayed as fighting with its back to the wall against a huge, well-armed and overbearing Arab adversary. Israel’s victory in this war is treated as verging on the miraculous, and as resulting from the determination and heroism of the Jewish fighters rather than from disunity and disarray on the Arab side. This heroic version of the War of Independence has proved so enduring and resistant to revision precisely because it corresponds to the collective memory of the generation of 1948. It is also the version of history that Israeli children are taught at school. Consequently, few ideas are as deeply ingrained in the mind of the Israeli public as that summed up by the Hebrew phrase, me’atim mul rabim, or ‘the few against the many.’

One of the most persistent myths surrounding the birth of the State of Israel is that in 1948 the newly-born state faced a monolithic and implacably hostile Arab coalition. This coalition was believed to be united behind one central aim: the destruction of the infant Jewish state. As there is no commonly accepted term for the liquidation of a state, Yehoshafat Harkabi, a leading Israeli student of the Arab-Israeli conflict, proposed calling it ‘politicide’ – the murder of the politeia, the political entity. The aim of the Arabs, Harkabi asserted, was politicidal. Linked to this aim, according to Harkabi, was a second aim, that of genocide – ‘to throw the Jews into the sea’ as the popular phrase put it.[1] Harkabi is just one example of the widely held belief that in 1948 the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine, faced not just verbal threats but a real danger of annihilation from the regular armies of the neighbouring Arab states. The true story of the first Arab-Israeli war, as the ‘new historians’ who emerged on the scene in the late 1980s tried to show, was considerably more complicated.[2]

The argument advanced in this chapter, in a nutshell, is that the Arab coalition facing Israel in 1947-49 was far from monolithic; that within this coalition there was no agreement on war aims; that the inability of the Arabs to coordinate their diplomatic and military moves was partly responsible for their defeat; that throughout the conflict Israel had the military edge over its Arab adversaries; and, finally, and most importantly, that Israel’s leaders were aware of the divisions inside the Arab coalition and that they exploited these divisions to the full in waging the war and in extending the borders of their state.

The rest of Avi Shlaim's essay and this debunking destroy the other Israeli nonsense that the Arabs were well-prepared and that the Israelis were the ones who were fighting in defense the whole time.

What resulted was the depopulation of at least 300 villages and the massive ethnic cleansing of a people from their ancestral homes. The Arabs were defeated easily. The Jordanians were conspiring with the Israelis. The Egyptians were defeated in only ten days. The Iraqis were butchered while the Jordanians watched. The Saudis were too busy fighting rebellious Yemenites. The Lebanese only provided artillery, but were easily repulsed to the degree that Israel actually made its way into Lebanon... and now they say that the Arabs started it? If that was true, then I wouldn't be angry at Israel for what it did, but at the Arabs.

The myth that the Arabs want to "push the Jews into the sea" is easily debunked with the fact that the quote brought about by the Zionists of a certain Arab figure is actually a fake, and none of his speeches contained such a promise. Then, there is the idea that even if the Arabs wanted to push the Jews into the sea (this isn't true), it was the Israelis who have done it first:

The UN gives a figure of 750,000 ­ 800,000 Palestinian refugees by the end of 1948, so that the period covered by the Intelligence Service Report is one in which roughly one half the refugee population was generated.

The report then outlines eleven (I will list five) of what the IDF Intelligence Service regarded, in June 1948, as the factors which precipitated the exodus, listing them in order of importance as:

a. Direct hostile Jewish [Haganah/IDF] operations against Arab settlements. (The Haganah was the army of the Yeshuv, or Jewish community in Palestine, and was the precursor of the Israeli Defense Force, or IDF.)

b. The effect of our [Haganah/IDF] hostile operations on nearby Arab settlements (especially ­ the fall of large neighboring centers).

c. Operations of the Jewish dissidents [Menachem Begin's Irgun and Yitzhak Shamir's Stern Gang, also known as the Irgun Tzvai Leumi and the Lehi, resp.].

d. Jewish whispering operations [psychological warfare] aimed at frightening away Arab inhabitants.

e. Ultimate expulsion orders [by Haganah/IDF].

The Intelligence Service then gives a detailed breakdown and explanation of these factors, stressing that "without doubt, hostile [Haganah/IDF] operations were the main cause of the movement of the population". The wave of emigration in each district, explains the report, "followed hard upon the increase and expansion of our [Haganah/IDF] operations in that district. The departure of the British of course, helped the Arab evacuation, but it appears that the British withdrawal freed our hands for action more than it influenced the Arab immigration directly."

Shocking, really. The Palestinians were driven out. Plain and simple. There's no arguing that anymore.

However, there is this one favorite argument that Israelis like to use a lot, and that is...

>>>Myth #8 Arabs left on the orders of their leaders.

Not only is this utterly false, but the vast majority of Palestinians left their homes not out of free will, but involuntarily due to the five reasons outlined above.

Let's just start with what Yitzhak Rabin once said, when the I"D"F ("defense" so as to conceal the terrorist nature of the organization) captured Lydda and al-Ramla:

After attacking Lydda [later called Lod] and then Ramla, .... What would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities ..... Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution .... and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he [Ben-Gurion] remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endangered the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward.
Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out! [garesh otem in Hebrew]. 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring, .... Psychologically, this was on of the most difficult actions we undertook

Ok, that's just one of the main things. What about the Arabs themselves? I mean, were the Arabs ordered to leave?

Before we get to that, I'd just like to outline the Israeli propaganda on the issue. I quote Simha Flapan, who quotes Yitzhak Rabin, who said,

Great Suffering was inflicted upon the men taking part in the eviction action. [They] included youth-movement graduates who had been inculcated with values such as international brotherhood and humaneness. The eviction action went beyond the concepts they were used to. There were some fellows who refused to take part. . . Prolonged propaganda activities were required after the action . . . to explain why we were obliged to undertake such a harsh and cruel action

This propaganda is what made Israeli myths.

However, there is one other Israeli question that contradicts with this myth: why the Arabs have not welcomed their Palestinian brothers. It is said that the Palestinians left on the orders of Arab leaders, but for some reason were not welcomed later. If this myth was "true", then the Palestinians would have been welcomed by their leaders... which wasn't the case, sadly. Benny Morris writes,

'In general, during the first months of the war until April 1948 the Palestinian leadership struggled, if not very manfully, against the exodus: "The AHC [Arab Higher Committee] decided .... to adopt measures to weaken the exodus by imposing restrictions, penalties, threats, propaganda in the press [and] on the radio .... [The AHC] tried to obtain the help of neighboring countries in this context ..... [The AHC] especially tried to prevent the flight of army-age young males," according to IDF intelligence'

Well, that's just the beginning. Benny Morris, however, also writes, while searching Arab historical archives,

'Whatever the reasoning and attitude of the Arab states' leaders, I have found no contemporary evidence to show that either the leaders of the Arab states or the Mufti [Hajj Amin al-Husseini] ordered or directly encouraged the mass exodus during April [1948]. It may be worth noting that for decades the policy of the Palestinian Arab leaders had been to hold fast to the soil of Palestine and to resist the eviction and displacement of Arab communities'

The racism inherent in the myth is that the Palestinians did not have any attachment to their lands, but they did. That's why they left involuntarily.

To cite one other example,

'In Kafr Saba [early May 1948], the locals, under threat from Haganah attack, wanted to leave, but were ordered to stay by the ALA [Arab Liberation Army] garrison. According to Haganah sources, the ALA, with the population of Ramallah about to take flight, blocked all roads into the Triangle: "The Arab military leaders are trying to stem the flood of refugees and taking stern and ruthless measures against them." Arab radio broadcast, picked up by the Haganah, conveyed orders from the ALA to all Arabs who had left their homes to "return within three days. The commander of Ramallah assembled the mukhtars [official leaders] from the area" and demanded they strengthen morale in the their villages. The local ALA commanders turned back trucks which were coming to take families out of Ramallah. .... Haganah intelligence on May 6 reported that "Radio Jerusalem in its Arabic broadcast (14:00 hours, 5 May) and Damascus [Radio] (19:45 hours, 5 May) announced in the name of the Supreme Headquarters: 'Every Arab must defend his home and property .... Those who leave their places will be punished and their homes will be destroyed.'. The announcement was signed by [Fawzi al-]Qawukji.'

Sounds harsh, but it's true: the Palestinians were told to hold their ground, not the other way around.

I cite numerous sources that debunk this myth:

". . . after April 1948, the flight acquired massive dimensions. Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League, and King Abdullah both issued public calls to the Arabs not to leave their homes. Fawzi al-Qawukji, commander of the Arab Liberation Army, was give instructions to stop the flight by force and to requisition transport for this purpose. The Arab government decided to allow entry only to women and children and to send back all men of military age (between eighteen and fifty). Mohammad Adib al-Umri, deputy director of Ramallah broadcasting station, appealed to the Arabs to stop the flight from Jenin, Tulkarm, and other towns in the Triangle that were bombed by the Israelis. On May 10, Radio Jerusalem broadcasted orders on its Arab program from Arab commanders and AHC to stop the mass flight from Jerusalem and the vicinity." (Simha Flapan, p. 86-87)

'The various National Committees issued bans on flight. The Ramle National Committee set up pickets at the exits to the town to prevent Arabs departing. The inhabitants of the villages east of Majdal (Beit Daras, the Sawafirs, ..etc) were warned not to allow in with their belongings. On 15 May [1948], Faiz Idris, AHC's "inspector for public safety," issued ordered to militiamen to help the invading Arab armies and to fight against " the Fifth column and the rumour-mongers, who are causing the flight of the Arab population' (Benny Morris, p. 69)

'On 10-11 May [1948], the AHC [Arab Higher Committee] called on officials, doctors, and engineers who had left the country to return on 14-15 May, repeating the call, warned the the officials who did not return would lose their " moral right to hold these administrative jobs in the future." Arab governments began to bar entry to the refugee -as happened, for example, on the Lebanese border in the middle of May'. (Benny Morris, p. 69)

'The fall of Safad and the flight of its inhabitants shocked the [Palestinian] Arab villagers of the Hula Valley, to the north. [Yegal] Allon launched a psychological warfare campaign ("If you don't flee immediately, you will all be slaughtered, your daughters will be raped," are the like), and almost all the villagers fled to Lebanon and Syria.' (Righteous Victims, p. 213)

According to a Jewish Agency's Arab section report from January 3, 1948, at the beginning of the flight:
"The Arab exodus from Palestine continues, mainly to the countries of the West. Of late, the Arab Higher Executive has succeeded in imposing close scrutiny on those leaving for Arab countries in the Middle East." Prior to the declaration of the "Jewish state," the Arab League's political committee, meeting in Sofar, Lebanon, recommended that the Arab states " the doors to . . . women and children and old people if events in Palestine make it necessary." (Simha Flapan, p. 85)

The lies are simply stinking, and the fact is that the real radio broadcasts ordering Arabs to leave their homes were actually issued out by psychological warfare personnel in the I"D"F. The Arabs did not, then, order the departure.

Well, now that we have nailed the first coffin, I will be nailing the other one later.