t a time of deepening political and moral crisis, not only
for the Israeli government but for the entire Zionist project,
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has produced a book purporting to set the
record straight by rebutting all the accusations leveled against “the sole
outpost of liberty and democracy in the Middle East.” The structure of each
chapter is based on a defense lawyer’s submission to a court, a statement of
the charge against the accused (Israel) followed by the defense counsel’s
repudiation backed up by counter evidence. However, using dubious methods of
historical scholarship, the book is shot through with falsification through
omission and will convince only the ignorant or the gullible.
One of Dershowitz’s first aims is, in effect, to
uphold the old lie about Palestine being “a land without a people for a people
without a land.” He puts it slightly more subtly by describing “the Palestine
to which the Jews of the First Aliyah immigrated was vastly under populated.”
(p. 23) He brazenly claims that “it is beyond reasonable dispute that—based on
census figures, authoritative reports, eyewitness accounts, and simple
arithmetic—that the myth of displacement by the European Jewish refugees of a
large, stable, long-term Muslim population that had lived in that part of
Palestine for centuries is demonstrably false.” One of his sources in support
of this is King Abdullah of Jordan, the man who negotiated a secret deal with
Prime Minister Ben Gurion to annex the West Bank, thus depriving the
Palestinians of the main portion of their UN-allotted territory.
It is indeed the case, as Dershowitz says, that
before 1948 Zionists purchased land from the big Palestinian landlords—who
were, to begin with, absentee landowners—but increasingly from the early
thirties from resident owners. In 1947, 73 percent of the land held by Jews had
been bought from big landowners, most of the remaining land from small holders.
(See Nathan Weinstock, Zionism: False
Messiah,1969, p. 143). “And despite these land purchases, in 1944 the
British estimated that Jewish-owned land represented no more than 6.6% of
Palestine, though this figure... doesn’t include desert areas or public
property. (Weinstock, p. 221).”However, Dershowitz omits or wildly underplays the
effect of these purchases on the Palestinian fellahin, the share-croppers and smallholders who comprised some 70
percent of the Palestinian population in the twenties and thirties (Weinstock,
p.157).
Following Benny Morris’ recent book Righteous Victims, Dershowitz states
that “only several thousand families were displaced following land sales to
Jews…” (p. 25). (In 1917, the year of the Balfour Declaration, Arabs numbered
roughly 600,000 compared to 60,000 Jews). The reality is that the vast majority
were simply evicted from the land as a result of coordinated land purchases. “…
wretched people who had earned a living, sometimes for many generations, on the
land… found themselves forced out of their homes and deprived without
compensation of their only means of earning bread… Evicted tenants, the real
victims of Jewish immigration, were the essence of the Palestinian problem.”
(C. Sykes, Orde Wingate, London 1959, quoted in Weinstock, p. 154). The new
owners subsequently practiced a strict economic segregation so that when
evicted Palestinian smallholders were forced to migrate to the towns they
couldn’t find work or sell their products. Zionist policy dictated that Jewish
employers must only employ Jewish labor and that Jewish settlers should only
buy Jewish goods. Hence, Palestinian fear of and resentment towards Zionist
colonization predates the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Indeed it
was present from the outset and is surely completely understandable.
A second major falsification is Dershowitz’s claim
that it was the Arab armies’ invasion of the newly-created state of Israel in
1948 that was responsible for the refugee problem. (p. 79) A more truthful
account is provided by Avi Shlaim’s superb book The Iron Wall. In 1947, the UN Partition Plan allocated 55 percent
of Palestine to a Jewish state, whereas the Palestinians, who outnumbered the
Jews by two to one, were granted 45 percent. Not content with this gross
imbalance, the incomers drove out by force of arms 700,000 Palestinians, taking
over their cities, their villages and their land—all in all an additional 23
percent of the territory. As Shlaim documents it—following Benny Morris’
earlier, more radical work, The Birth of
the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949, (1987)— the first and largest
wave of refugees were forcibly expelled between April and May 1948, the State
of Israel being declared on 15th of May. It was on that date that
five Arab armies invaded Palestine. According to Sharon-style mythology, a
Jewish David was pitted against an Arab Goliath whom it defeated in a heroic
struggle. The truth is the Arab armies were no match for the more numerous,
better-armed and trained Zionist armies. By the end of 1948, the ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians was complete. And as Shlaim says, “[I]t was the
collapse of Palestine resistance that prompted the Arab League to commit the
regular armies of the member states to the struggle against partition, thus
reversing an earlier decision merely to finance and arm the local Arabs.” (p.
32)
Dershowitz’ notion that the Arab invasion was
somehow intended to complete what the Holocaust had left unfinished is shown to
be somewhat paranoid and wholly risible. (“Israel defended itself against a
genocidal war of extermination.” p. 74). It was a belated and half-hearted
attempt to rescue the Palestinians from expulsion, the only post-World War Two
case of the majority of a people being ethnically cleansed from their homeland.
This is one, but not the only, reason for the
Palestinian refugee problem being quite different from that of other refugees
whose acceptance of their lot—Dershowitz describes so approvingly, for example,
the minority Sudenten Germans being forced to leave Czechoslovakia after World
War Two. Moving on a few years brings one to the subsequent wars, 1956, 1967,
1973 and 1982. Astonishingly, Dershowitz doesn’t even mention the 1956 war
against Egypt or the brutal invasion of Lebanon in 1982. In 1956, Israel, in
collusion with Britain and France, attacked Egypt in an attempt to topple
Nasser, the nationalist leader who aspired to unite the Arab world and liberate
it from colonial domination. In 1955, he had attacked British interests by
nationalizing the Suez Canal and was supporting the Algerian National
Liberation Front in their struggle against French colonial-settler rule. As he
was being armed by the Soviet bloc, Israeli leaders conspired to have a
showdown before the military balance shifted in Egypt’s favor.
Also, in August 1955, fedayeen self-sacrificers
recruited from Palestinian refugees in Gaza and trained by Egyptian officers
began carrying out a series of attacks inside Israel. Nasser had reversed his
previous policy of restraint following the vicious Gaza raid in February 1955
when Israeli forces led by Ariel Sharon killed thirty-seven Egyptian soldiers.
At the end of 1955, Israeli forces launched further vicious attacks on Egypt
and Syria in an attempt to provoke them into full-scale war. The strategy
failed and in October 1956, Israel attacked Egypt though, contrary to the
official version, there is no evidence that it faced any serious threat from
Nasser at that time. The Palestinians would not accept their fate. In 1964, the
Palestine Liberation Organization was founded under Egyptian auspices, its aim
that of reclaiming its Palestinian homeland. Dershowitz claims that the 1967
“six-day war” was Egypt’s entire responsibility, being inevitable after Nasser
closed the Straits of Tiran. Once again, Dershowitz falsifies by omission. In
May 1967, Israel threatened Syria with action unless it ceased supporting
Palestinian guerrillas operating against Israel. According to Shlaim, “Israel’s
strategy of escalation on the Syrian front was probably the most important
factor in dragging the Middle East to war in June 1967.” Several fire fights
were provoked by Israel, as attested by Moshe Dayan. “We would send a tractor
to plow someplace…in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the
Syrians would start to shoot… And then we would use artillery and later the air
force also…” (Shlaim, p. 235).
In May1967,
Yitzhak Rabin, then Chief of Staff, gave an interview to a newspaper in which
he threatened to overthrow the Syrian regime. Nasser had somehow to respond in
order to preserve his credibility as leader of the Arab world. As Shlaim
argues, “there is general agreement among commentators that Nasser neither
wanted nor planned to go to war with Israel. What he did was to embark on an
exercise in brinkmanship that was to carry him over the edge.” (p.237) Thus, it
was in response to Israel’s threats to Syria that Nasser sent a large number of
troops into Sinai and closed the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping,
generally thought to be moves intended to impress Arab public opinion rather
than provoke war.
But in June, Israel launched a massive, lightning
attack on Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Within six days, it had won a
spectacular victory, capturing the Palestinian territories under Jordan’s
control, the Golan Heights from Syria and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.
Israel made it unambiguously clear that it would rather go to war than
compromise with the Palestinians by granting their rights as demanded under
successive United Nations resolutions. Dershowitz’s omission of the 1956 and
1982 wars can presumably be explained by the fact that they are the ones that
least bear out his concocted image of Israel as the victim state.
Dershowitz frequently repeats the claim that Israel is a democratic state,
indeed the only example of one in the Middle East. Now, Israel's racism is
enshrined in the law of return by which any Jew born anywhere in the world has
the right to emigrate to Israel and acquire automatic citizenship, whereas the
Palestinians expelled in 1948 are denied the right of return. The Palestinians
became a minority, strangers in their own land. Israel is the only post-world
war two state that was established on the basis of the exclusion of the majority
of its indigenous inhabitants. Secondly, beyond the law of return, the concept
of "democracy" surely includes some notion of inclusiveness, of equality before
the law and of opportunity regardless of class, gender, sexual orientation or
ethnicity. However, for over fifty years, the Israeli state has pursued a policy
of systematic discrimination against its Palestinian minority, one rooted in a
profound institutionalized racism.
There are huge differences in the
amount of state funds allocated to Jewish and Arab development and welfare.
Discrimination against Palestinians is also rife in employment, being
particularly marked in public administration. Moreover, budgetary discrimination
in health, education, housing, culture, and so on, results in Palestinians being
relegated to third or fourth class citizens compared to Sephardic (eastern
origin) or Russian Jews. As a result of these policies, one out of every two
Israeli Palestinian children lives below the poverty line, with half of all the
children in poverty being Palestinian, according to figures released by the
government in December 2000(Ruth Sinai in Haaretz, December 20th, 2000).
Dershowitz tries to justify Israel’s discrimination against Palestinians by
arguing that “the most primitive apartheid against non-Muslims is still openly
practiced in some Arab countries.” (P. 157). However, two wrongs don’t make a
right: the fact that the Arab regimes are corrupt, repressive and discriminatory
does not justify Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. Thirdly, if one
includes the Occupied Territories as part of the area ruled by Israel since
1967, its total population is now over nine million. Of these, the 3.5 million
Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have no vote. Hence, one third of
the people do not enjoy a series of basic rights which make up the pillars of
liberal democracy.
In sum, Israel is a democracy for the Jews but not for the Palestinians. Dershowitz
repeats the claim made by Israeli government and Zionist spokespersons, that
Prime Minister Barak made a “generous offer” to the Palestinians in the
U.S.-sponsored Camp David talks of July 2000, insisting that they offered them
over 90 percent of the Occupied Territories. Though this figure is clearly an
exaggeration (Edward Said put it at 50-60 percent), there is an additional
point: what Israel offered were several non-contiguous areas, surrounded by
Israeli settlements and military bases, and split up by the 400 kilometers of
settlers-only roads that Israel has constructed on 160,000 dunams of
expropriated land to link the settlements with each other and with the bases.
The Occupied Territories were thus to be cantonized into disconnected areas
without independent borders, creating a series of separate Bantustans under
Israel’s thumb. No political leader could possibly have accepted such a shoddy
deal and survived politically. As one Israeli leftist put it, it is like saying
that in a prison the prisoners are in control because they occupy 90 percent of
the jail whereas the governor and warders occupy only 10 percent. The question
remains: who controls whom? In the subsequent Taba negotiations (January
2001), what Israel offered was not substantially different from Camp David, the
main difference being in left Zionist hype. As Tanya Reinhart put it in her
excellent book How to End the War of 1948, “what Israel offered in Taba,
then, is essentially the same as what it has been offering before and after
Oslo: preservation of the Israeli occupation within some form of Palestinian
autonomy or self-rule. Everything that regards land, water… control of the
borders, and many other aspects will remain under total Israeli control, but the
Palestinians will be allowed symbolic tokens of ‘sovereignty’, including even
the right to call their enclaves a ‘state,’ and Abu-Dis its ‘capital.’” (p.
219).
In the subsequent Taba negotiations (January 2001),
what Israel offered was not substantially different from Camp David, the main
difference consisting of “left” Zionist hype. An important motive for Israel in
embarking on the Oslo negotiations was the containment of the militant Islamic
movements, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which grew in influence during the first
Intifada. Arafat’s PLO came to be seen as the only force that could effectively
suppress or at least contain them. Arafat had perhaps some control over them at
the beginning of the “peace process” but as the situation worsened, this became
less and less possible. Apart from the physical impossibility of policing the
Palestinians while he himself is incarcerated, recent years have seen a great
acceleration in the growth of Islamist influence. (Though with Arafat’s house
arrest, he has no doubt regained much of his support).
On one occasion, Arafat did imprison several
Palestinian activists, only for a militant crowd to attack the jail and force
their liberation. There is no evidence that he could control even Al-Aqsa
Brigade activists formally linked to his Fatah movement but who have been
operating autonomously. Israel wants Arafat to be a colonial policeman, but the
more of a puppet he becomes, the more he cedes influence to Hamas and the less
use he is to Israel. Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East
is a point that Dershowitz never ceases to emphasize. The point, clearly, is
that Israel is a democracy for the Jews but not for the Palestinians. Dershowitz
may be a good lawyer, pity he’s a lousy historian
Printer Friendly
Format