"History is perhaps the cruelest goddess of all, and she drives her victorious chariot upon heaps and heaps of bodies, not just in time of war, but also during peaceful economic development. And alas, we men and women are such fools that we never dare to venture out for any real progress unless impelled to do so as a result of boundless suffering." -- Israeli scholar Anita Shapira tells us that Israeli historian Jacob Talmon once adduced this observation by Friedrich Engels.

Jewish Settlers in New York

The first group of Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewish settlers arrived in New Amsterdam in September 1654, following their escape from the onslaught of the Inquisition in Recife, Brazil. But they did not receive a warm welcome in Dutch New Amsterdam. Peter Stuyvesant tried to refuse haven to the penniless refugees, and protested to the Dutch West India Company against the "deceitful race" who professed an "abominable religion." Fortunately he was overruled thanks to the influence of some of the directors of the Company who were Jewish." - Jewish-American Hall of Fame

To many Arabs there is no difference between settlers of 1967, settlers of 1948, settlers of 1922, or settlers of 1881. To Arabs, there is no difference between the settlers in New York and the settlers in Palestine. To many Arabs, all Jews are enemies of Islam. And it is no wonder they have this perception. Arab rulers have sold this story to them as a distraction from their own abuses.

Israel also contributes more to humanitarian causes and provides technical aid to NGOs than Arab countries, but is condemned for its close friendship with America and Israel was a friend and partner with South Africans and was a good friend to the Shah of Iran.

Many Arabs have never really distinguished between Zionists, Israelis and Jews. As Anis Mansur, one of Egypt's foremost journalists and a one-time confidant of President Ahwar Sadat, said in a moment of unusual candor:

"There is no such thing in the world as Jew and Israeli. Every Jew is an Israeli. No doubt about that."

Source: Efraim Karsh. The Long Trail of Arab Anti-Semitism." 
Commentary Mag, December, 2000.

Professor Anita Shapira is the Ruben Merenfeld Professor of the Study of Zionism at Tel Aviv University, the and the author of "Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948" (Stanford University Press) and her essay: "The Past is not a Foreign Country" and the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at Tel Aviv University. Professor Shapira associates the Right Wing with the New Historians argument that blames the early pioneers for much of Israel's current problems.

"It is no coincidence that revisionist ideas were sympathetically received in the ranks of the right. The "new historians" are intent on demonstrating that there was never a golden age of simplicity and innocence in the Zionist movement, and that its founders were full of guilt and guile from the start; and those on the right are keen to show that what is repudiated today as immoral was not an idea that they invented, but rather a part of the Zionist heritage. In both cases, the result is the libeling of Zionism and the undermining of its moral foundations." [Shapira]

While some Israeli scholars, like Shapira, associate those who repudiate the early pioneers with the right, and the left in Israel associate current problems with the new right wing leadership, it is the left outside of Israel which tends to associate Israel's problems with both the early pioneers (who were socialist) and the current leadership. Many see no difference between them. To some an Israeli is an Israeli, left or right. There is a tendency for the left outside of Israel to be anti-Zionist and there is a tendency inside of Israel for the left to be post-Zionist.

For those who utilize anti-Zionist rhetoric to disguise their antisemitism, it must be remembered that the left is not a monolith anymore than the right is same minded on everything. They are marginal elements and not a reflection of rational thought and discourse.

Unfortunately, the attempt to place blame for the failure of the Palestinians and the Israelis (and other Arab states) to agree to a settlement and resolution of their long lasting conflict, too often doesn't focus enough on all the parties, including not only the Jews, but also Arab, French, British and U.S. culpability.

Economic strangulation, not least of all the Arab boycott, and military requirements, have been compelling in this world of Realpolitik where economic and political assistance always comes with strings. It would be an entirely different world if it didn't. Israel had to befriend some of the bad guys - although it is largely a matter of propaganda who are the bad and good guys. But in most instances, Israel had no choice than to cooperate with the South African apartheid government - from whom they got ten tons of nuclear material (when no one else would provide them with what they needed for defense - and the deal to be involved in the Iran/Contra fiasco because not to do so would have been cutting Israel off from economic aid. Often there is a required quid pro quo and Israel sides with America so America will side with Israel, except American oil men and women, like Condoleeza Rice, want to remove Israel from the land. The American president, George Bush says the settlements are a hindrance and settlers an obstacle to peace.

"U.S. oilmen in the Middle East [for reasons of profit for themselves] pressure the U.S. government and Israel to give in to the Arabs. [It is now well documented that for the past 70 years State Department and other government leaders, CIA operatives, and even a president were oil industry people.] To encourage the support of the world to favor the Arabs and stand against Israel, Israel has been slandered. Since the beginning of talks with the PLO the majority in Israel who insist upon a just solution and who don't want to be robbed of their land again have been slandered. They are portrayed as wild-eyed radicals who harm the Arabs. Nothing could be further from the truth--a fact which more than 40,000,000 American Christians and untold millions around the world now know. (Yahoodi Communications)

Accused of Promoting Transfer

Not that it would not have been a bad idea, but Zionists leadership during the exodus to Eretz Israel, during successive Aliyahs, - or even when eastern Palestine which was 75% of the original British Mandate of a Jewish National Homeland was carved off and given to (requested by T.E. Lawrence) Feisal ibn Hussein - never proposed or supported a transfer of the Palestinians. There was enough land to go around. Dissension arose when land purchases to Jews did not take into consideration Arabs who were tenant farmers. Even though these Arab sharecroppers and other tenant farmers had no fee simple rights in the land they lived there and while the record indicates an attempt by the Jews to avoid these parcels some were unavoidable and those Arabs felt displaced when Jews moved on the land and began farming it themselves.

"Feisal Hussein, King of Iraq and Syria agreed to Jewish National Home according to British Mandate (Israel and Jordan) in 1918. King of Iraq from 1921; eldest son of Hussein, sherif of Mecca. He led the Arab intifada against Turkey (1916-1918) and was designated king of Syria. Feisal was at first sympathetic to a Jewish Homeland from which he hoped to receive aid in building his future kingdom. He met Dr. Weizmann in Jordan (1918) and Paris (1919) where they reached an agreement on mutual aid, conditional on the implementation of British promises to the Arabs. Later, owing to his expulsion from Syira by the French (1920) and the influence of other Arab leaders, his attitude later became hostile." (www.eretzyisroel.org)

When Arabs are counted as Palestinians, the Turks and Brits included non-Jews, who were not all Arabs and those in Transjordan (east Palestine) were also included in the totals, but when Jews were counted, only those who were in West Palestine were counted, which produced highly skewed, and disproportionate numbers of Arabs vis-a-vis Jews. The implication was that Jews were displacing a larger population of Arabs. This however was not the case. When you excluded non-Arabs from the totals and those in Transjordan, there were more Jews in those areas of west Palestine which became the Jewish state.

There is another qualification which when considered in perspective to everything else, would most likely change these projections in favor of an even greater Jewish population. Another-words, there may have been many more Jews than those which were counted by the Turks. Peters brings this out in an obscure footnote where she acknowledges that the Turks most likely (because of these quirky population numbers implying a major descrepancy in the totals) DID NOT count Jews who were administratively registered with the Turks. She writes,

"The Ottoman Census apparently registered only known Ottoman subjects; since most Jews had failed to obtain Ottoman citizenship…, a representative figure of the Palestinian Jewish population could not be extrapolated from the 1893 census."

For those who were critical of some of Peters' figures, they probably missed the footnote above - which explains the problem and if anything she underestimated the numbers by not extrapolating for those who had not registered with the Turks. If there is any criticism of her research with regard to this matter, it should be that she estimated the numbers of Jews in the country less than what they really were.

As with most books about Israel, when they're good, they're labeled as propaganda. When Joan Peters first released her book (remember she started out with the intention of supporting the Palestinian position) it was widely received to a great deal of acclaim. Later on it was criticized for some sloppy research. Some of the footnotes have been fixed in the updated revision (2001), but some of it was correct and just hidden or obscured by so much research. It is an amazing book and while some sources are secondary, it appears she made a greater effort than those who condemned her effort, to utilize primary sources and where they were not that reliable to say so. The book and research is useful and an excellent source to be used with other sources.

As for Arabs who left West Palestine (Eretz Israel), the "transfer" of Arabs from Eretz Israel was a result of war and what cannot be attributed to fear ALONE, but was a combination of factors, the encouragement these Arabs received from their leadership though in some cases where villages occupied important security zones and the local inhabitants had to move to prevent further attacks on the Jews (mostly from higher ground) and in some instances the exhortation of Jews for them to get out because they were preceived as potential enemies and combatants.

In some instances they were mistaken, and many Arabs were not a threat but there was a fog of war and many fled out of fear of the Israelis. They ran away. They didn't fight. No one can say for sure how many fled for this reason or because they thought the Jews would be defeated and they would return and grab all the spoils for themselves. In any event, many did leave. Many were asked to return but they did not. Now they want to return and retrieve what they did not come back to before. It is a bit late now because Israel was compelled to accept as many (or more) Jews who were expelled from neighboring Arab countries, who now live in those same places, where once Arabs lived - just as many Arabs now live in those same places in Arab countries where Jews once lived.

The French and the British are culpable of moving people around and the British for backing the Arabs against the Jews. Jews were constrained from getting to Palestine with stringent immigration restrictions, whereas obstructionist Arabs were encouraged to go there to frustrate and deprecate the Jewish Zionist project. Obviously, the Brits knew what side their bread was OILED on. And to some extent their efforts at emasculating the restoration was working - which precipitated a more militant response, with a faction led by Jabotinsky, to strike back at British interests. If the Brits were going to interfere with the Jews, then the Jews were going to interfere with the British.

Jabotinsky

"Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky was undoubtedly the most outstanding liberal Zionist leader. He was born to a Jewish traditionalist middle-class family, in Odessa on October 18, 1880 and died on August 4, 1940 in New York. He received his basic education in Russia and moved to Rome in 1898 to study jurisprudence. Like the majority of intellectual Jewish youth at the time, Jabotinsky was captivated by the dream of a more just Marxist society. However, from the beginning of this Socialist phase of his life, Jabotinsky's political intuition alerted him to the danger inherent in the prominent role of Jews in the worldwide war of classes declared by Marxism against the bourgeoisie and religion." (The Israeli Classical Liberal Website)

He soon turned away from Marxism feeling that collectivization would stifle the creative talents of humanity.

"In 1920 Jabotinsky organized the Jewish self-defense in Jerusalem and founded the Haganah, which constituted the basis of the Israeli Army in 1948. As a result he was sentenced by the British to 15 years of forced labor. However, worldwide public protest brought about his release after only three months in prison. In 1925, Jabotinsky founded the Union of Revisionist Zionists (URZ), antecedent of the Likud (Union) Party." [ibid]

While there were successive waves of immigration to Eretz Israel, and it often coincided with waves of persecution in the Diaspora, its realization was really an uninterrupted process which began not in 1881, but immediately after the crushing of Jewish resistance by the Romans - even if most use the term to apply to the modern Jewish return. So each wave of immigration can actually be defined as a particular period and the "going forth" (or "rising up") called "Aliyah" is the MAJOR IDEAL of Zionism and it implies personal redemption and rebuilding of the Jewish national homeland. The idea never ended and is a persistent part of Jewish history since the Roman expulsion from Israel and renaming it "Palestina".

But Israel was not a cohesive, clearly defined area and when the Ottomans controlled it the borders were somewhat sketchy however the area the Jews wanted a charter for was envisioned by them to become a majority and the land acquired by them were public lands and from absentee owners, where mostly the owners of these lands did not farm them themselves and theoretically the Jews would not be displacing anyone with fee simple property rights. By their own labor and the waves of immigration these pioneers planned to literally rebuild the land, and a lot of it was empty. Must of it was malaria infested, and swamps. And what was the result of establishing viticulture and citriculture in these areas - after draining swamps and clearing land and providing water - was unexpected because the successes of these pioneers attracted Arabs to neighboring villages, some of them new, in order to be closer to Jewish settlements because it really not possible to only use Jewish labor - and the ultimate result was an improvement in the life of those Arabs who moved there. By developing the land the Jews were making it attractive for Arabs to also live there.

And Zionists believed that a Jewish majority would materialize. With each new wave of Jewish immigration however there were also Arabs who immigrated because life was better - and to make matters worse, Jewish immigration was limited; first by the Ottomans, and then by the British when they administered the mandate. SO Jews who could have been saved in the millions if able to depart from Europe - (who also could have been saved by America, if the quotas were changed) so while Arabs could go there without any limits the Jews could only get there if they went there illegally. This was hardly a balanced approach to the "Jewish Problem."

Anita Shapira writes:

"Zionist leaders always believed that the hoped-for Jewish majority in Palestine would materialize by means of massive Jewish immigration. It should not be forgotten that in 1920 the Arab population of Palestine (all of it, West Palestine and East Palestine, that area which became Transjordan) numbered only some 600,000. The Zionist premise--which history has proven right--was that there was land aplenty in western Palestine for millions of Jews and Arabs. All the Zionist plans at the end of the 1930s envisioned the influx of a million Jews to Palestine within a decade. That magical number was geared to guaranteeing a Jewish majority, which is why the Arabs were so hostile to immigration: not because they were afraid of expulsion, but because they wished to prevent a demographic transformation."

They wanted to prevent too many Jews not because of any high minded Palestinian nationalist spirit because the spirit at the time was pan-Arab and the region was in toto considered part of Syria - but because they were concerned that the Jews would take the jobs the Jews were providing in the first place --- and secondly because of Islamic "dhimmi" law having Jews in charge was an affront to the Koran and to Allah.

Jordan is Also Palestine

When Jews were offered a partitioned state they accepted the idea and it was the objective of the partition that Jews would be the majority in their area and the Arabs would form a majority in their partitioned state. Large sections of the original mandate were carved off and given as political favors - i.e., Transjordan to Abdullah Hussein who had been ousted from Iraq. Transjordan (later renamed Jordan) included very large portion of land where the Arabs have their Palestinian state.

In 1920 the French ordered Faisal out of Syria and he was offered Iraq by the British - after it had already been offered to his brother, Abdullah.

"Faisal, bereft of the Syrian crown for which Lawrence and the Arab Bureau had labored so hard, was instead offered the throne of Iraq by the British, though it had previously been earmarked for Faisal's younger brother Abdullah ibn-Hussein, who was thus left without a thrown." Samuel Katz, "Battleground..." p56 (73)

"At the end of October 1920, Abdullah therefore collected some 1,500 Turkish ex-soldiers and Hejaz (Saudi Arabian) tribesmen seized a train on the Hejaz Railway, and entered eastern Palestine. Here he announced that he was on his way to drive the French out of Syria and called on the Syrians to join him. There was no response, nor was Abduhhah given any encouragement by the handful of inhabitants of Transjordan itself." [Katz]

"His continued encampment in eastern Palestine created a dilemma for the British. they had not that set up any administrative machinery in what was largely empty territory--its 90,000 square kilometers were established to hold at most 300,000 inhabitants, most of them nomads. The British feared, or were induced to fear, that the French, angered by Abdullah's threats would invade eastern Palestine. They therefore casually suggested to Abdullah that he forget about Syria and become a representative of Britain in administering eastern Palestine on behalf of the Mandatory authority. Whereupon Abdullah generously resigned himself to the French p;resence in Syria and took up office in Transjordan, and in time accepted it as a substitute." [Katz]

"The British government then recalled that eastern Palestine was part of the area pledged to the Jewish draft text of the Mandate (then not yet ratified by the League of Nations), which gave Britain the right to `postpone or withhold' the provisions of the Mandate relating to the Jewish National Home `in the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined.' The Zionist leaders were stunned by this threatened lopping off at three quarters of the area of the projected Jewish National Home; its establishment had, after all, been Britains's warrant for being granted the Mandate. But the British government countered with the proposal that, if the Zionists did not accept the situation, Britain would decline the Mandate altogether and thus withdraw her protection from the Jewish restoration. The Zionist leaders--struggling with the material problem of building a country out of a desert and restoring a people, largely impoverished, from the four corners of the world---were moreover inadequately equiped with political experience to judge the emptiness of the British threat. They did not feel strong enough to resist this blow to the integrity and security of the state-in-building and to their faith in the sanctity of compacts." [Katz]

Eastern Palestine, which was named Transjordan and later renamed Jordan - and given by the British to Abdullah Hussein, was stolen from the Mandate, which was originally intended to be the Jewish homeland. This carving off of 75% of the Mandate left the Jews with a small sliver of land which was almost equally populated by nomadic Arabs, some tenant farmers, and Jews and Arabs inhabiting the cities and Jewish _kibbutzim_ farming communities, which were all a result of the various waves of immigration. Taking eastern Palestine from the Jews and giving it to Abdullah Hussein, who was a pan-Arabist was natural for Arabs who did not recognize separate national boundaries, except one, from sea to sea as being part of one Arab world. The carving off of east Palestine was an unnatural division of the land and the claim to eastern Palestine remained part of the platform of the Revisionist Party under Vladimir Jabotinsky and the Socialist Achdut Avodah Party. The Arabs got a Palestine state and it was Jordan.

"Thus, as a purely British manufacture, filched from the Jewish Natikonal Home, torn out of Palestine of which it had always been an integral part, there was brought into being from the empty waste what subsequently became a spearhead in the `Arab' onslaught on the Jewish state, the Emirate of Transjordan, later expanded across the river and renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

"Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country.." Abdullah Hussein said this in April 1948, former the formal hostilities against Israel

"We are the army of Palestine...the overwhelming majority of the Palestine Arabs...are living in Jordan." Prime Minister Hazza al-Majali - cited in Paul Riebenfeld, "The Integrity of Palestine," Midstream Mag (1975)

"The Kingdom of Palestine must become the Palestinian Republic..." PLO spokesman Ahmed Shukeiry, 1966

"The League of Nations Mandate for Palestine remained unchanged even though Britain had unilaterally altered its map and its purpose. The Mandate included Transjordan until 1946, when the land was declared an independent state. Transjordan had finally become the de jure state in Palestine just two years before Israel gained its Jewish statehood in the remaining one-quarter of Palestine; Transjordan comprised nearly 38,000 square miles; Israel, less than 8,000 square miles. [Peters]

"Thus, about seventy-five percent of Palestine's `native soil,' east of the Jordan River, called Jordan, is literally in independent Palestinian-Arab state located on the majority of the land of Palestine; it contains a majority of Palestinian Arabs in its army as well as its population. [Peters]

"Yasser Arafat has stated that Jordan is Palestine. Other Arab leaders, even King Hussein and Prince Hassan of Jordan, from time to time have affirmed that - "Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine" Moreover, in 1970-1971, laer called the `Black September' period, when King Hussein waged war against Yasser Arafat's ARab PLO forces, who had been operating freely in Jordan until then, it was considered not an invasion of foreign terrorists but a civil war. It was `a final crackdown' against those of `his people' whom he accused of trying to establish a seaparate Palestinian state, under Arab Palestinian rule instead of his own, `criminals and conspirators who use the commando movement ot disguise their treasonable plots,' to `destroy the unity of the Jordanian and Palestinian people." [Peters]

Palestine was not just the little country of Israel, it was all of the territory given to Abdullah and what was left which was going to be further segmented and partitioned. Transjordan became a state in 1946 and Eretz Israel became a state in 1948. These were two Palestines, one for Arabs and one for Jews. All of Palestine did not become Israel. 75% of Palestine became Palestine.

"...the corner of Palestine that eventually became Israel was sparsely inhabited by any permanent indigenous settled peoples when the Jews' organized redevelopment is said to have commenced, in 1870-1880. It was an underpopulated land, its revolving populace perennially depleted in number because of exploitation, reckless plundering, nomadism, endless tribal uprisings, and natural disaster." [Peters]

Everyone's parents or grandparents or their great grandparents came from somewhere else. That is no longer pertinent. A sense of place can be achieved in one generation. Everyone can feel attached to somewhere in spite of their heritage. If Palestinians feel that sense of place they can make it happen, either as a federation with Israel or with Jordan or as in independent state, but first they must stop their war with the Jews.

Hank Roth

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