PHILIPPE ASSOULINE; JUSTICE IN THE MIDDLE EAST **** NOTES FROM 1948

Posted By on June 26th, 2013

http://philassie.blogspot.com/2013/06/same-old-first-hand-accounts-from-48-61.html?m=1

“Robert F. Kennedy, martyred liberal icon, was a reporter for the Boston Globe in 1948 and was dispatched to Mandatory Palestine to cover the lead up to the British withdrawal. He wrote this of the Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine in 1948, days before israel’s independence:

“The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state. This is the only country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in existence.” (Emphasis throughout is mine).

RFK also points out that “many Palestinian Jews fought as volunteers with Allied troops throughout the world and still others were dropped by parachute into German-held territory as espionage agents. They were perhaps doing no more than their duty, but they did their duty well.”

 This tidbit about the 1948 war proves that Jews faced murderous hostility from ordinary Palestinian Arabs, not just militants or Arab leadership:

There is a narrative war raging, where Zionists claim that the Arabs — largely recent immigrants drawn to Zionist industry and prosperity — after rejecting partition in 1947, embarked on an openly genocidal war against hugely outnumbered and outgunned Jewish forces in order to erase the Jewish presence in the Holy Land. In the ensuing melee, according to Israel, hundreds of thousands of local Arabs fled, encouraged to do so by their leaders.  The Arabs on the other hand claim that young Israel was heavily supported by the British, was the aggressor in 1947, and expelled countless peaceable Arab peasants from their ancient communities.


While doing research for some new memes, I stumbled across a number of extremely interesting primary historical sources, i.e., reports on the ground from 1948 and subsequent years. Why go to history books written decades later when interviews and records from the period in question are readily available? Indeed, proximity to events necessarily means greater accuracy in their reporting. And what the sources find is a unanimous confirmation of Israel’s version of events. Propaganda can destroy many things, but it cannot change the documented past.

I urge you to read this extended piece, and to share it.
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1948 as told in 1948

Robert F. Kennedy, martyred liberal icon, was a reporter for the Boston Globe in 1948 and was dispatched to Mandatory Palestine to cover the lead up to the British withdrawal. He wrote this of the Arabs living in Mandatory Palestine in 1948, days before israel’s independence:

“The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state. This is the only country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in existence.” (Emphasis throughout is mine).

RFK also points out that “many Palestinian Jews fought as volunteers with Allied troops throughout the world and still others were dropped by parachute into German-held territory as espionage agents. They were perhaps doing no more than their duty, but they did their duty well.”

 This tidbit about the 1948 war proves that Jews faced murderous hostility from ordinary Palestinian Arabs, not just militants or Arab leadership:

The Arabs living in the old city of Jerusalem have kept the age-old habit of procuring their water from the individual cisterns that exist in almost every home. The Jews being more “educated” (an Arab told me that this was their trouble and now the Jews were going to really pay for it) had a central water system installed with pipes bringing fresh hot and cold water. Unfortunately for them, the reservoir is situated in the mountains and it and the whole pipe line are controlled by the Arabs. The British would not let them cut the water off until after May 15th but an Arab told me they would not even do it then. First they would poison it.

Within the Old City of Jerusalem there exists a small community of orthodox Jews. They wanted no part of this fight but just wanted to be left alone with their wailing wall. Unfortunately for them, the Arabs are unkindly disposed toward any kind of Jew and their annihilation would now undoubtedly have been a fact had it not been that at the beginning of hostilities the Haganah moved several hundred well-equipped men into their quarter.

RFK goes on to recount how the Arabs had been arming volunteer fighters from as far as Pakistan and sending them into the borders of Mandatory Palestine long before May 1948.  Once the war of 48 started in earnest, RFK made the following observation which, 65 years on, is shockingly and tragically timely:

The die has long since been cast; the fight will take place. The Jews with their backs to the sea, fighting for their very homes, with 101 percent morale, will accept no compromise. On the other hand, the Arabs say:

“We shall bring Moslem brigades from Pakistan, we shall lead a religious crusade for all loyal followers of Mohammed, we shall crush forever the invader. Whether it takes three months, three years, or 30, we will carry on the fight. Palestine will be Arab. We shall accept no compromise.”

In such a war, where people who have immutably refused partition also relish the thought of poisoning or murdering thousands of innocents just because they are Jews (a mere 3 years after Arab leaders supported the Nazis) expulsions are to be expected — and would be fair. Between suffering another genocide and expelling those who have attacked you to satisfy maximalist and chauvinist imperatives, the moral if unfortunate choice is undoubtedly the latter. And yet, the Palestinian Arabs who left –if we are to trust first hand accounts over later, ideological renderings — did not leave because they were expelled. They left, overwhelmingly, because of their own leaders and without having ever seen a Jewish soldier.

Refugees by choice 

Consider in support of this contention nothing less than the recently released British intelligence archives from 1948:

The Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming defeats… Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands. It is now obvious that the only hope of regaining their position lies in the regular armies of the Arab states.”

One would expect an intelligence report by the British military about the 1948war to at least mention expulsions which, we are told today by 20 year old “activists” were rampant.  And yet there was not a single mention of such. On the contrary, the British report — and bear in mind that, as testified to by RFK, the British forces in Palestine were exceedingly hostile to Jews– mentions only flight fueled by cowardice. That is, the opposite of forced expulsion.

The Refugees Speak… “Mad Hattery” and Myth

Most compelling perhaps is a 1961 in depth and extensive jewel of a piece on Palestinian Arab refugees by author and journalist Martha Gellhorn, who was also married to Ernest Hemingway. Gellhorn travelled to many Arab states and to israel itself to interview and put a human face on what she called the undifferentiated mass of Palestinian Arab refugees. Her piece, though extremely long, is a must read study in the birth of anti-Israel propaganda, and the pathologies that fuel it:

Sitting in his neat office, with my guide, the principal of the school (a former member of the Palestinian police), and the camp leader, I listened to the first of what became an almost daily Mad Hatter conversation. 

It went like this: 

“The Arab countries invaded Israel in 1948 to save the Palestine Arabs from being massacred by the Jews.” 

“Were there massacres? Where?” 

“Oh, yes, everywhere. Terrible, terrible.” 

“Then you must have lost many relatives and friends.”  This, being a tiresome deduction from a previous statement, is brushed aside without comment.

Martha Gellhorn

Indeed, Palestinian refugees interviewed by Gellhorn recounted tales of massacres and atrocities that could never, it seemed, be verified. Then as now, manufactured dependence inhabiting an echo chamber of myth and embellished tales of perfect victimhood – rather than a sober look at the evils of war, past mistakes and the need to avoid them – compelled millions of Arabs to blindly hate a state that could instead be a boon to them. 

The Last Vestiges of Journalistic Integrity and Professionalism

The big difference between now and then, however, is that then reporters took their responsibility to inform their public seriously.  Today, journalists all too often peddle cliched propaganda as fact.  Not so Gellhorn in 1961. Upon hearing tales of atrocities allegedly committed by the Jews of Jaffa to its Arab inhabitants in 1948, Gellhorn said the following:

Arab refugees tell many dissimilar versions of the Jaffa story, but the puzzler is: where are the relatives of those who must have perished in the fury of high explosive the infallible witnesses? No one says he was loaded on a truck (or a boat) at gun point; no one describes being forced from his home by armed Jews; no one recalls the extra menace of enemy attacks, while in flight. The sight of the dead, the horrors of escape are exact, detailed memories never forgotten by those who had them. Surely Arabs would not forget or suppress such memories, if they, too, had them. 

As for those Arabs who remained behind, they are still in Jaffa–3000 of them–living in peace, prosperity, and discontent, with their heirs and descendants.

Tired of the propaganda she was hearing, Gellhorn finally confronted an Israeli Arab who, being in Israel and not in a camp she had previously visited, was free to speak.  The conversation is mind-blowingly telling of the anti-Israel mindset and the banalized double standards upon which it is built:

“In 1947, the United Nations recommended the Partition of Palestine. I have seen the Partition map and studied it. I cannot tell, but it does not look to me as if the Arabs were being cheated of their share of good land. The idea was that this division would work, if both Jews and Arabs accepted it and lived under an Economic Union. And, of course, the Arab countries around the borders would have to be peaceful and cooperative or else nothing would work at all. The Jews accepted this Partition plan; I suppose because they felt they had to. They were outnumbered about two to one inside the country, and there were the neighboring Arab states with five regular armies and forty million or more citizens, not feeling friendly. Are we agreed so far?” 

“It is right.” 

“The Arab governments and the Palestinian Arabs rejected Partition absolutely. You wanted the whole country. There is no secret about this. The statements of the Arab representatives, in the UN are on record. The Arab governments never hid the fact that they started the war against Israel. But you, the Palestinian Arabs, agreed to this, you wanted it. And you thought, it seems to me very reasonably, that you would win and win quickly. It hardly seemed a gamble; it seemed a sure bet. You took the gamble and you lost. I can understand why you have all been searching for explanations of that defeat ever since, because it does seem incredible. I don’t happen to accept your explanations, but that is beside the point. The point is that you lost.” 

“Yes.” It was too astonishing; at long last, East and West were in accord on the meaning of words. 

“Now you say that you want to return to the past; you want Partition. So, in fact you say, let us forget that war we started, and the defeat, and, after all, we think Partition is a good, sensible idea. Please answer me this, which is what I must, know. If the position were reversed, if the Jews had started the war and lost it, if you had won the war, would you now accept Partition? Would you give up part of the country and allow the 650,000 Jewish residents of Palestine -who had fled from the war–to come back?” 

“Certainly not,” he said, without an instant’s hesitation. “But there would have been no Jewish refugees. They had no place to go. They would all be dead or in the sea.“

Gellhorn concluded dryly that “[t]he Arab psychosis… about Israel is official, and infectious. There may be many reasonable people in the Arab countries who are able to think calmly about Israel and about Arab-Israel relations; if so, they choose safety and keep their mouths shut.”

The More Things Change…

Alas, perfectly mirroring the weaponized revisionism of today, many Palestinians in 1961 were too often prone to accusatory hyperbole and conspiracy theories — anything to avoid their own responsibility and agency in bringing about their plight. And it appears that using the Holocaust – which their leadership eagerly supported a mere 13 years prior – as a cognitive tool against its Jewish victims was fair game then too.  Gellhorn reports being told:

“Oh, that is all exaggerated. [Hitler] did not [kill 6 million Jews]. Besides, the Jews bluffed Hitler. They arranged in secret that he should kill a few of them–old ones, weak ones–to make the others emigrate to Palestine.”

Sound familiar?

The maps that lie. A perfect example of contemporary Palestinian Propaganda
indulging in caricatured revisionism , crass victimhood, and nonsense.
Gellhorn encountered similar attitudes over and over in Beirut, the Jordanian-Occupied West bank, Gaza and Israeli Arab villages. And her observation of the dynamics at play is a perfect encapsulation of why, despite so many fundamental facts being in Israel’s favor, Palestinian propaganda still works today: victimhood — however counterfeit — compels sympathy, even when it shouldn’t:

It is hard to sorrow for those who only sorrow over themselves. It is difficult to pity the pitiless. To wring the heart past all doubt, those who cry aloud for justice must be innocent. They cannot have wished for a victorious rewarding war, blame everyone else for their defeat, and remain guiltless. Some of them may be unfortunate human beings… [b]ut a profound difference exists between victims of misfortune (there, but for the grace of God, go I) and victims of injustice.

Perhaps because of this, Gellhorn felt that a Westerner speaking to or about Palestinian Arabs “requires non-Arabs to treat Arabs as if they were neurotic children, subject either to tantrums or to internal bleeding from spiritual wounds.”  It is as if time has stood still. Today too, more than ever perhaps, the politically correct mindset would hold Israel always responsible for the Arabs’ self-inflicted wounds — as if Arabs are essentially not fully capable adults. It is a despicable, condescending and racist attitude masquerading as compassion when it is everything but.  To respect the Arabs, like anyone, is to hold them to the same standard as other humans, at least. 


With that in mind it is perhaps a good time to re-asses this statement by Mahmoud Abbas himself regarding the Arab refugees:

“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.”

(March 1976 issue of Falastin a-Thaura, then the official journal of the Beirut-based PLO.)

What do Palestinians have to show for 65 years of canonized lies, exaggerations and cultivated victimhood?  What has the moral deflection gotten them if not more suffering, while Israel has thrived?

Those of us who truly care for the Palestinians should let them know once and for all that only the truth will set them free.

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