Israel’s Been Like This Since 1948

 

We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel, writes Jonathan Cook. It was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.

“Israel army issues new displacement order from northern Gaza.” That headline, about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published Thursday in Middle East Eye.

When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes — what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.

1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel’s establishment.

2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom to expel Palestinians from their homeland, did so only because they were traumatised by their experiences in Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, these Israelis assumed that, were the Jewish people to survive, they had no alternative but to drive out the Palestinians en masse.

3. From others, I was told that no ethnic cleansing had taken place. The Palestinians had simply fled at the first sign of conflict because they had no real historical attachment to the land.

4. Or I was told that the Palestinians’ displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn’t left because of Israeli violence but because they had been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region.

In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.  (more...)

Israel’s Been Like This Since 1948