The Prior History
"In 1948 the Jewish
army expelled three-quarter of a million Palestinians from what then
became the State of Israel. Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian, said he
still felt haunted by the story, and then, in 1998, the Israelis opened
the military archives, and it became clear that the Zionist's movement
had planned to expel the Palestinians long before 1948. In 2006 Ilan
Pappe published his most recent book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
He spoke about his work at the University of Amsterdam in the
Netherlands in January/February of 2007." - Maria Gilardin June 2007
Ilan
Pappe: "(a synopsis) David Ben Gurion, who led an ideological movement
ever since the 19th century, wanted to turn Palestine into a Jewish
state with as few Palestinians in it as possible (when he was out of
office this first Prime Minister of Israel was annoyed by the presence
of so many Palestinians remaining in Israel, particularly in the
Galilee). It shows that the leader of the Zionist movement, the 1st
Prime Minister of Israel, someone at the heart of the Zionist movement,
so annoyed by so many Palestinians in the Galilee, he is committed to a
vision that sees historic Palestine as empty of Palestinians. Most of
the Israeli Jews in the 1950's thought the same way, and nothing has
changed in Israel in 2006. How to get there, how to de-Arabize
Palestine. How to make Palestine a Jewish state, (i.e.) get rid of the
people who live there (except, of course, for that number of Jewish
settlers who in the 1930s had grown to one-third of the population in
Palestine as they left the turmoil in Europe). How to deal with the
majority in Palestine, the Palestinians. In February of 1947 the
Zionists were very focused under Ben Gurion and the advisory committee
he organized around him (only hardliners) and it took them a year, to
February of 1948 to develop the plan to rid Palestine of the
Palestinians, that as many as possible of the one million Palestinians
should be expelled. How to do it? The experiment? The Jewish/Zionist
army expelled about eight to nine villages. They wanted to see how the
world would react. Nothing. So, you come with buses, lorrys - you go
into someone's house, there are children, women, men, people have lived
in these houses for hundreds of years: 'You have twenty minutes' to get
on the bus and out you go. And half an hour after you leave on the bus
someone detonates the house and blows it up. So Ben Gurion and others
were not sure how the world and the young soldiers would react.
Nothing. So, the master plan. They divided Palestine into twelve areas,
the Haganah had twelve brigades, each brigade was given a list of
villages, neighborhoods in mixed towns and systematically, in seven
months, they expelled three-quarter of a million Palestinians, 531
villages were destroyed, eleven towns were demolished."
[Editor's
note: This year 2008 is a trying one, not only because of our
quadrennial elections which includes our presidency. The year is also
the 60th anniversary of the problematic founding of the Jewish State of
Israel (For the May '08 celebration George W. Bush will be a feted and
honored guest. He's earned it, so to speak, with OUR money!) and, not
surprisingly, the year will begin January 9th with a major series on
the Public Broadcasting System, PBS, and a "companion landmark book
(which) chronicles three hundred years of Jewish American history".]