[lit-ideas] Re: U.N. Special Committee on Palestine
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 07:46:39 -0700
Irene begins a response by saying Selbourne's overview is balanced and then
goes on in the rest of her note as though she hadn't read it. Omar declares
it false and historically inaccurate without reading it -- very interesting.
If there was any "stealing" or "conquering" being attempted in the 1947-49
period, it was the stealing and conquering attempted by the armies that
invaded the land allotted by the UN to the Jews. A legal (as much as
anything could be legal) partition had taken place by the UN and then the
invading armies, Egypt, Syria, TransJordan, and Lebanon, supported by the
Palestinians, attempted to "steal" and "conquer" it in defiance of the UN.
Israel's action during that period could only be described as "defense."
Selbourne refers to the UN being overgenerous to the Jews in the partition,
but one needs to remember that there was a good deal of support for the Nazi
cause in Palestine prior to and during WWII. The UN was formed by the
victors, the anti-Nazi victors, after WWII and they were not inclined to be
overly generous to the sympathizers of the defeated enemy. Prior to and
during WWII, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini provided
"enthusiastic support" . . . "not only for the Palestinian national cause
but for Hitler's Germany. He spent part of the war years in Nazi Berlin,
where a 'pan-Arab government' in exile was formed, a forerunner of the
Nasserite Pan-Arabism of the postwar years. 'Slaughter the Jews wherever
you find them', al-Husseini declared in a broadcast from Berlin in 1942,
'their spilled blood pleases Allah'. The widespread denial in the Arab and
Muslim world of the scale, and sometimes even of the fact, of the Holocaust
ties the knot of odium between Jew and Arab still tighter. So too does the
record of the asylum given in Arab countries, such as Syria and Egypt to
German Nazis, as well as to several leading post-war neo-Nazi 'revisionists'
who fled persecution at home." [Selbourne pp 181-182]
Lawrence
_____
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Lawrence Helm
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2006 9:54 PM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: U.N. Special Committee on Palestine
Stan:
In one of the books I'm reading, Selbourne's The Losing Battle with Islam,
on page 182, he seeks balance and provides an interesting overview of some
of the matters under discussion:
"The United Nations decision on 29 November 1947 to partition Palestine, to
the perceived disadvantage of the Palestinians, contributed to the confusion
and bloodshed which were to follow. It also ensured the hostility which the
very existence of Israel was to arouse. In their pro-Israeli partiality,
some historians and commentators have sought to ignore the implications of
the disproportions in territorial allocation in the UN partition plan.
Others, in their pro-Arab partiality, have sought to cancel the implications
of the invasion of Israel on 15 May 1948 -- within a few hours of the
proclamation of the new state on 14 May 1948 -- first by Egypt and then by
the armies of Iraq, Transjordan (as it the was), Lebanon and Syria.
"Others have elided the complexiti4es of the passage of events from 1947 to
1949. A Guardian commentator in January 2004 could therefore reduce these
events to 'the war that gave birth to the state of Israel in 1948', which by
omission contains its own falsehood. Others have translated the flight of
Arabs in 1948 and 1949 -- thousands fled even before the hostilities had
broken out -- into their 'expulsion'; or, better still, into their
'deportation' by the new state as it was attacked. Some of those who were
intended to be assisted by the attack -- the local Arab population -- stood
their ground, fighting alongside the invading armies so that in certain
sectors they for a while gained the upper hand. Others cut and ran, led in
their flight by their own communities' heads, many other tens of thousands
of Arabs were driven from their ancestral homes and terrains at the hands of
the Israelis.
"In some villages and cities, including Haifa, Jaffa and Tiberias, the
exodus appears to have been ordered by Arab community leaders themselves,
often they were among the first to flee, having the means to do so. As the
then British High Commissioner for Palestine, General Sir Alan Cunningham,
reported, 'the collapsing Arab morale in Palestine' was attributable in part
to what he called 'the increasing tendency of those who should be leading
them [sc. The Arabs] to leave the country'. Furthermore, 'in all parts of
the country the effendi class has been evacuating in large numbers over a
considerable period, and the tempo is increasing'. As Hussein Khalidi, one
of the Palestinians' leaders complained, 'Everyone is leaving. Everyone who
has a cheque or some money -- off he goes to Egypt, to Lebanon, to
Damascus'.
"Even before the invasions of May 1948 Israeli militias had acted brutally
against local Arab population, as at the village of Deir Yassin on 9 April
1948, when more than one hundred villagers were killed. But in the
repetitions of the history of this period, the numbers of those who were
expelled, who were deported or who were 'ethnically cleansed' have often
been exaggerated. Perhaps 700,000 fled the fighting in search of safety, or
were driven from their homes as the Israeli army conquered, '600,000' were
displaced according to the British Foreign Office estimate at the time. In
addition, from 1948 to 1950, hundreds of thousands of Jews also left, or
were driven by expropriation and attack from their homes in Egypt, Iraq --
where 118,000 of the total Iraqi population of 4.5 million were Jews --
Lebanon, the Maghreb, Syria and elsewhere in the Arab world, in August 2004,
the Libyan leader offered compensation of their losses.
"The fate of the Arabs in conflict which lasted until the uneasy truce in
1949 was a many-sided matter. So, too was the multiple invasion of Israel
-- which at the time had an army of only 30,000 -- by neighbouring Arab
nations. Nevertheless, a simplified history of complexity, war, fear, crime
and flight as reduced the events, for many, to the victimization of Arab by
Jew. Contrariwise, and with related simplification of the truth, it has
been asserted by a Jewish historian that 'had the Palestinians and the Arabs
refrained from launching a war to destroy the emerging Jewish state, there
would have been no refugees and none would exist today'."
Comment: With such a small army, only 30,000, fighting the armies of Iraq,
Transjordan, Lebanon and Syria, supplemented by Palestinians, who wished to
drive the Jews out of the land, it would be too much to expect that the
Israelis would fight according to Marquis of Queensbury rules. They were
desperately fighting for their survival, and while no one can know for
certain at this late date how many Palestinians were driven out of battle
zones, Selbourne tells us of the large numbers who fled in advance of the
war. Could they see the war coming? I don't see why not. Surely Iraq,
Transjordan, Lebanon and Syria did some marshalling of troops that would
have alerted the Palestinians to what was coming. To stay could have meant
becoming a victim as Irene suggests they all were, but to stay could also
have meant joining the invading armies that had come to throw the Jews into
the sea.
Lawrence
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