[lit-ideas] Re: U.N. Special Committee on Palestine
- From: "Simon Ward" <sedward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 17:31:20 +0100
"...one needs to remember that there was a good deal of support for the Nazi
cause in Palestine prior to and during WWII."
And not just from the Palestinians.
'In 1940 and 1941, Lehi proposed intervening in the Second World War on the
side of Nazi Germany to attain their help in expelling Britain from Mandate
Palestine and to offer their assistance in "evacuating" the Jews of Europe
arguing that "common interests could exist between the establishment of a new
order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national
aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO (Lehi)." Late
in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik was sent to Beirut where he met
the German official Werner Otto von Hentig and delivered a letter from Lehi
offering to "actively take part in the war on Germany's side" in return for
German support for "the establishment of the historic Jewish state". Von Hentig
forwarded the letter to the German embassy in Ankara, but there is no record of
any official response. Lehi tried to establish contact with the Germans again
in December 1941, also apparently without success.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_%28group%29
Simon
----- Original Message -----
From: Lawrence Helm
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2006 3:46 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: U.N. Special Committee on Palestine
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
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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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