By Antoine Raffoul * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Edward Said

A recent reading of an old article written by the late Edward Said, the well-known Palestinian author, writer and cultural critic, revealed a rare meeting in Paris to discuss the core issues of the Palestine/Israel conflict. The participants were Israel's rising 'new' historians at the time (professor Ilan Pappe, Benny Morris, Itamar Rabinowitch and Zeev Sternhell) and their Palestinian counterparts (Elie Sanbar, Nur Masalha and Said himself).

In the article, Edward Said noted that during the informal discussions which took place, the Israeli side (with the rare exception of professor Pappe) spoke of 'the need for detachment, critical distance and reflective calm', while the Palestinian was 'much more urgent, more severe and even emotional in its insistence on the need for a new history'.

Said's article touched on the core subject of the meeting: the need to look at the history of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict from the Palestinian point of view and to bring to the fore the events that lead to the 1948 Palestinian Nakba. Despite the attempt by some of the Israeli historians to admit that 'an injustice' may have been committed by the Israelis in 1948, the belief amongst most of them was that it was 'a necessary conquest'. Only professor Pappe spoke with powerful eloquence delivering, in Said's words, 'an espousal of the Palestinian point of view and...[providing] the most iconoclastic and brilliant of the Israeli interventions'.

Yes, the Israelis in Paris said, they wanted peace, but, no, they did not inflict the Nakba of 1948 on the Palestinians.

Again, Edward Said wrote, with the exception of professor Pappe, the rest of the Israeli team members, showed a 'profound contradiction, bordering on schizophrenia that informs their work'. They seemed to hesitate 'when pushed hard by either Pappe or by the Palestinians'.

The Paris meeting took place in early May 1998. The Oslo euphoria was still in the air and (hold your breath) Benyamin Netanyahu was enjoying his first term as Israel's Prime Minister (1996-1999). Under him, Israel held all the Palestinian territories occupied by force in 1948, 1949 and 1967 (and for those who need a reminder, that's ALL of historic Palestine); it had the most formidable military power in the region; it dictated all the rules of occupation on an occupied civilian population in the OPT and it had the luxury of time and space at its disposal.

Slow forward seven years to May 2005, when George W. Bush was claiming the mantle of yet another failed peace process (on the back of his criminal invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan) and Sharon was bulldozing his way through the Palestinian Territories with his Apartheid Wall. Professor Pappe wrote a devastatingly insightful article entitled: "The Palestine Peace Process: Unlearned Lessons of History". This article echoed the failures of all the previous peace processes since Oslo, but, predictably, all later peace processes launched since his article was written. A lot of processes, it seems, and no peace.

In his article, professor Pappe, with the vision of a sharp historian, warned that 'unless the US can now begin to pay attention to the lessons of history [read 1948], this new round of peace talks will not only end in failure, but the hopes currently aroused will turn once again into despair, fury and a renewed wave of violence and devastation'. We now know what happened to Bush and to his peace process.

Palestinian holds key and certirficate of registration from his original home during a Nakba rally in the West Bank city of Nablus; May 14, 2009.

Fast forward to the present day, November 2010, (twelve and a half years after the Paris meeting), and we have Benjamin Netanyahu again as Prime Minister, the illegal occupation of the OPT still continues with even more devastation across the whole landscape of Palestine, the Israeli military machine is pumped up by more nuclear arsenals and (hold your breath again) a new peace process launched by Barak Obama, the U.S President riding high (at the time of his election) on the biggest public support of any previous American president. Yet, no sooner had Obama's peace process been launched than the quick sands of the Middle East began to swallow it without mercy. Across the Palestinian landscape, and especially in occupied East Jerusalem, more demolition of Palestinian homes, more confiscation of farms, olive groves and more outright property theft of private houses by right-wing Zionist settlers under the protection of Israeli law and its military machine take place as the international community watches helplessly.

What does this all show?

It confirms what we have always believed: that the Zionist project of occupying and holding on to all of historic Palestine was, is and continues to be the prime and sole objective of the Zionist leadership in Israel. For this to happen and in an effort to smooth the path infront of such a colonial juggernaut, Israeli media has been put to sleep and the Israeli military leadership was made the only news outlet spurting out the sanitized version of the news to an indifferent Israeli public.

Since the Paris meeting and since professor Pappe's prophetic article, the only bright light shining out of Israel (and now out of the UK) remains professor Pappe's consistent and brave call for a debate on the 1948 Nakba. The other 'new historians' who met in Paris, remain mysteriously silent and surprisingly elusive about this issue.

It is clear to the informed reader and observer of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict that nothing will move on any future process to achieve a just and lasting peace in historic Palestine unless the 1948 Nakba, the Return of the Palestinian Refugees and rule of International Law have been embraced and made the basis for the next peace process.

Finally, it is also clear that the Zionist leaders occupying the Israeli Knesset have now become aware that their colonial juggernaut is running out of fuel. So, in order to pump more colonial life into it, they have come up with the racist "Oath to the Jewish Nation". Its twin tank has been filled with the illegal call to punish all those who commemorate the 1948 Nakba.

A new mirage or a new reality?

* Antoine Raffoul is a Palestinian architect living and practising in London. He was born in Nazareth and was expelled with his family from Haifa in April 1948. He is the Founder and Co-ordinator of 1948: Lest.We.Forget. a campaign group for truth about Palestine. He can be reached at info@1948.org.uk.

Related posts:

• Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe and ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’
• Palestine/Israel History since 1878
• Today in History: Hebron Massacre – 1994

By Lawrence Davidson* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Israel History

In order to maintain these myths one must control history. The story line must be taught in the schools and supported by the nation's multiple media sources. One must raise up a population that is so well inculcated with its mythic worldview that if something occurs which contradicts it, it can be readily dismissed as an exception to the rule. In the case of the United States, two hundred years of indoctrination and a long term status as a great power has allowed its myths to survive, in the minds of its own people, the horrors of Viet Nam, Iraq and now Afghanistan. Israel is a much younger nation with only three or so generations of indoctrination under its psychological belt, so to speak. And, while it may be a regional superpower, its reputation in the Middle East is built on fear. With the rest of the world that reputation is associated with equally unstable and temporary attitudes, like Holocaust guilt. In essence, apart from the convinced Zionists, Israel's sustaining national myths are still fragile.

A number of years ago Israel applied its law that required the government archives to be opened for public review and research following a thirty year waiting period for political affairs and fifty years for military affairs. This brought many of the government documents referring to seminal years of 1947 and 1948 into the open. The result was a serious, evidence based, revision of the founding legends of Israel. In other words, the state lost momentary control of its own history. The result undermined the nation's mythic self-image amongst observers outside of Israel and caused significant unease within the country. So powerful was the reaction of the elites against this revised interpretation of the past that the "new historians" who brought it forth are now either teaching abroad or have, as in the case of Benny Morris, recanted.

In the interim things have only gotten worse for the Zionist defenders of the idealized Israel. Multiple invasions of Lebanon and the essentially defenseless Palestinian cities and towns, the slaughter of the innocent, the reduction of Gaza to an open air prison, the on-going confiscation of land and property in the Occupied Territories, rampant settler violence, and the repeated election of racist governments have resulted in a worldwide civil society effort to isolate Israel and induce it to reform itself in the same manner as South Africa. Except in the United States, Israel's claim to act only in self-defense is not seen as credible and the accusation that all who disagree are anti-Semites not taken seriously. Yet outside disenchantment, as dangerous as it might be in the long run, is not nearly as threatening as the erosion of one's domestic population's adherence to their national myths. That adherence must be maintained at all cost otherwise the nation will metamorphose into something that no longer supports its present elites. The fate of the "new historians" has demonstrated just how determined the Israeli establishment is to prevent that sort of erosion.

That being the case, Israel's present Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has extended for an additional twenty years the period during which government archives can remain closed.

The Haaretz article announcing this decision says that the Prime Minister acted because of "pressure from the intelligence agencies," but Netanyahu probably did not need much convincing. The period of time for which documents will now remain classified include such events as the 1954 Lavon Affair, the 1956 Sinai invasion, and the 1967 war which saw the heinous attack on the USS Liberty and the seizure of the Golan Heights. The State Archivist, Yehoshua Freundlich told Haaretz that "some of the material was selected classified because 'it has implications over [Israel's] adherence to international law.'" This is probably an understatement. To add insult to injury, Haaretz reports that there is a good possibility that the government's decision to classify much of Israel's past as top secret will mean that "archives that had already been made public would again be hidden away."

If you study the new historians' revisionist history of Israel you are struck by the Machiavellian behavior of men like David Ben Gurion who made a profession of being "economical with the truth." So devious were many of Israel early establishment figures that their political competitors, such as the neo-fascist Ze'ev Jabotinsky and the terrorist Menachem Begin, appear almost refreshing in their frightful honesty. Today we have the worst of all worlds in Israel-leaders who are both terrorists and shockingly devious. Now by their own admission, today's Zionist leaders must hide away their nation's sins lest the entire world turn away from Israel, and perhaps even their own citizens begin to fear that their national myths cannot stand honest and objective examination.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

Related posts:

• PA: UN wants Israel to admit secret prison
• At NYU, devilish Shlomo Sand predicts the Jewish past and pastes the Zionists
• Secret Israeli database reveals full extent of illegal settlement

By William A. Cook* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Eliahu Epstein letter to President Harry S. Truman, May 14, 1948

As Israel attempts today to gloss over the reality of its birth 62 years ago with a sweeping public relations campaign extolling the miraculous "resurrection" of ancient Zion in contemporary times, a new nation seeking only peace with its neighbors, it might be enlightening and valuable to examine the truth.

On May 14, 1948 President Harry S. Truman received a letter from the Jewish Agency for Palestine announcing the impending proclamation of the independent republic of Israel (Harry S. Truman Library, document filed August 22, 1949).[i] That date marks not only the beginning of the State of Israel but, sub missa voce, the assumption by the State of Israel of the calculated, systematic and determined ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of the land of Palestine that had been the business of "The Consultancy" and its agents before May 14, as identified by Dr. Ilan Pappe in his monumental The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.[ii]

The letter notes that the republic has been established within "frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947, and that a provisional government has been charged to assume the rights and duties of government for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel, for defending the state against external aggression, and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law." The letter was signed by Eliahu Epstein, Agent, Provisional Government of Israel.

The letter is notable not for what it announces, but for what it does not reveal. Truth requires revelation of all the facts, not concealment by omission of that which would prejudice an understanding. During the six months between the adoption of UN Resolution 181 and the date of this letter, and in subsequent months, the prospective state of Israel launched a massive military incursion into territory designated by that same Resolution for the Palestinian people, creating in its wake "three quarters of a million Palestinian refugees," the destruction of "hundreds of entire villages ... not only depopulated but obliterated ...and houses blown up or bulldozed" (Walid Khalidi, All That Remains, xv).[iii] Khalidi's massive study focuses on 418 villages, once the homes of Palestinians, 292 completely destroyed, 90 others "largely destroyed," the remainder re-inhabited by Jews called Israeli settlers.

In blunt terms, the Jewish Agency for Palestine lied to the American President that it had established a provisional government that "has been charged to assume the rights and duties ... for preserving law and order within the boundaries of Israel ... and for discharging the obligations of Israel to the other nations of the world in accordance with international law."

The Agency's deception made no reference either to the President or the international community that it had created the "Catastrophe," or as the Palestinians termed it, the Nakba, the days of infamy that created what has become the largest Diaspora of refugees in the world and a time of remembrance for those killed in a series of massacres, estimated at 24 by Benny Morris, Israel's preeminent Historian of that period. Indeed, the Agency had acted against international law in invading Palestinian land as designated by the very Resolution that had given them the right to a state of Israel even as it lied without remorse to the international community that it would live in accordance with their laws.

This letter, coupled with an earlier one to the President, dated May 10, 1948, will serve as a microcosm of political deceit characteristic of the Zionist led forces that controlled the nascent state of Israel. This second letter from The Nation Associates, notified the President that

Tomorrow morning the Washington Post will carry, in the form of a full-age (sic) advertisement, the text of an open letter to you requesting the implementation of the November 29 resolution on Palestine...I have been requested to send you the enclosed text of this open letter by the signators ...It is our hope that in the week which remains before the end of the British Mandate, action will be taken by you to insure the recognition of the Jewish state as a means of maintaining the prestige of this country, the authority of the United Nations, and peace in the Middle East (Signed by Freda Kirchwey, President; document available at the Truman Library).[iv]

The Nation Associates supported the establishment of the State of Israel and used its publishing arm to further that goal. The "Open Letter" referred to above argued against the moves by "the British and our own State Department" to "sabotage" the partition resolution despite the President's determined effort to support Israel. Indeed, the Associates went so far as to publish "The British Record on Partition" published in The Nation, America's Leading Liberal Weekly, on May 8, 1948 detailing their selected reading of "British Military Intelligence Sources." This document was simultaneously submitted to the Special Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The Open letter published in the Washington Post amounted to a synopsis of this larger document including its primary argument that "there was no reason why the Jewish state could not be set up (if the Arabs resisted partition) and the Arab area turned over to the Trusteeship Council." Note that this argument is being made even as the Jewish Agency and its affiliates have driven hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes and villages and massacred untold thousands in the area designated for the Palestinians recommended to be turned over to the Trusteeship Council.

The open letter cited an amendment to the resolution inserted by Truman's representative, Herschel Johnson, "the Security Council should determine as a threat to peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 29 of the Charter,any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution." Yet no mention is made here of the invasion by the Jewish forces of the towns and villages in the area designated for the Palestinians. Rather, the Associates allege that it is the British Mandate government that has supported the Arab League against Israel since 1945, "under the direction of Foreign Minister Bevin, {who} (has) resisted every American proposal for a decent settlement of the Palestinian question." "This was true," the letter continues, "in 1946 when he refused to accept the proposal of the Anglo-American Committee and your own, for the admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jews." What is left unsaid by the Associates is the British promise to the Arabs in the Balfour Declaration that they would maintain a strict ratio of Jews entering Palestine to the indigenous population, the second of the Balfour Declaration promises never referenced as the companion piece to the establishment of a home for the Jews in Palestine.[v]

So now we see the strategy of the Zionists as they manipulate the President: (a) advance publication of a major document detailing British subterfuge in eroding the possibility of establishing a Jewish state sent to the United Nations, thereby placing blame for the deterioration of conditions in Palestine on the British; (b) a subsequent letter to the President informing him that a public "open letter" will be published in the Washington Post detailing subversion of the Jewish people, placing him in the unenviable position of not aiding the "victims" of this subversion or carrying through with recognition of the Jewish state "as a means of maintaining the prestige of this country"; (c) and, finally, another letter, this from the Jewish Agency for Palestine, on the 14^th, seeking his recognition by "welcoming Israel into the community of nations" with no reference to the breaching of international law by the very Agency seeking his support.

Control and manipulation of the events coming out of Palestine has been and continues to be the modus operandi of the Zionist leaders of the state of Israel. The above letters to President Truman offer insight into this manipulation. Moreover, Truman was acting on behalf of the American people in recognizing the State of Israel on the 15^th of May 1948. What the American people knew was the suffering of the Jews under Hitler and the apparent logic of the United Nations partition plan to provide a state for the two peoples residing in Palestine. What they did not know was the Zionist entity that had different goals and the will to deceive the citizens of America to achieve them. But the American people were not alone in being deceived. More importantly is the deception kept from the British people about these "disappeared years," as Robert Fisk terms them. What's missing is the perspective of the Palestinians and the British Mandate government.

The United Kingdom had mandatory authority from the League of Nations to govern the area with the establishment of the Palestine Mandate in 1922, an action that imposed a western colonial and national mindset on an area familiar with tribal and imperial authority. Prior to the official implementation of the Mandate, the British Government had enunciated a "declaration" concerning the desirability of His Majesty's Government in the "establishment of a national home for the Jewish people," called the Balfour Declaration.

Discussions that resulted in the final text of the Balfour Declaration clarify the intention of its wording. The use of "national home" was used intentionally instead of "state." Additionally, the first draft of the declaration referred to the principle "that Palestine should be reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people." In the final text, the word that was replaced with in to avoid committing all of Palestine to the Jews only.[vi]

Between 1939 and 1947, the mandate Government found it more and more difficult to maintain its position as the responsible governing force servicing the Arab population and the growing Jewish population, determining by 1947 that these two populations could not coexist. As a result, the British Government placed the resolution of the problem in the hands of the United Nations. That in turn resulted in a partition plan of the land of Palestine, proposed in November of 1947 to the General Assembly, to be implemented in May of 1948, sixty two years ago this May.

British authority in Palestine continued under the United Nations until the implementation of the Partition Plan in May 1948. Consequently, the mandate government had to abide by the Charter of the UN and its Conventions. Ironically, as the Zionist forces, estimated by the Jewish Agency personnel in documents seized by the Mandate Police at 20 to 60 thousand (see top secret file of Sir Richard C. Catling, The Plight of the Palestinians), continued their massacres of Palestinians into 1948, the UN debated the adoption of a Convention defining "genocide" based on Nuremberg principles, a definition approved that same year.

In 1944 the term "genocide" appeared in Raphael Lemkin's Axis Rule in Occupied Europe created out of the conditions that allowed for the Nazi action against those suffering in their concentration camps. Therefore once the State of Israel was created by the Jewish leaders of the area by declaration May 14, 1948, and, subsequently, was recognized for membership in the UN in 1949, it was expected to abide by the UN Conventions. The United Nations does not appropriate to itself the authority to create states. The United Nations only authorizes itself to recognize states for membership, states that are formed or proclaimed by the people of said state.[vii]

What should be obvious now, after the carefully researched and scholarly work of Dr. Ilan Pappe in his Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and the equally well-researched work of Dr. Benny Morris in his Righteous Victims, both based on recently released evidence from the Israeli archives and those of the Israel Defense Forces Archives, complemented now with the materials preserved by Sir Richard C. Catling, to be made available in The Plight of the Palestinians from Palgrave Macmillan in June, is the truth about the creation of the state of Israel: acceptance of UN Resolution 181 by the Jewish Agency Provisional Government as the designated Jewish state was not done with intent to abide by the goal of the UN General Assembly, to provide a state for two peoples in the land of Palestine, but rather to use it as a means of subterfuge to gain eventual control of all the land and cleanse that land of its indigenous people to whatever extent possible. Put bluntly, what was true then is true today; the current government in Israel continues the practices of past Israeli governments, cleanse the land of its rightful inhabitants to make that land part of the Jewish state. This is what is termed, "slow motion genocide," not, one would hope, a civilized policy to be extolled either by the Israelis or the international community.

This essay is a modification of the opening chapter of William A. Cook latest book, "The Plight of the Palestinians: A Long History of Destruction", to be issued by Palgrave Macmillan in June.

* William A. Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of The Rape Of Palestine: Hope Destroyed, Justice Denied, Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy and The Chronicles Of Nefaria. He can be reached at: wcook@laverne.edu.
www.drwilliamacook.com

NOTES:

[i] Eptstein, Eliahu. (1948). Agent, Provisional Government of Israel. Letter to President Harry S. Truman. May 14, 1948. Filed August 22, 1949. Truman Library. www.trumanlibrary.org/whistelstop/study_collections/Israel/large/documents/index. 12/15/2008.

[ii] Pappe, Ilan. (2006). The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oneworld: Oxford.

[iii] Khalidi, Walid. (1992). All That Remains. Institute for Palestinian Studies: Washington, D.C. xv.

[iv] Kirchwey, Freda. (1948). President, The Nation Associates. Letter to President Harry S. Truman. May 10, 1948. Filed May 11, 1948. Truman Library.

[v] Prior, Michael. (1999) Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry. London: Rutledge.

[vi] Stein, Leonard. (1961). The Balfour Declaration. New York: Simon and Shuster, 470.

[vii] Harb, Jim. (2009). "The UN did not create Israel."

www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/04/what-theun-did-not-create-israel.html. 6-11-2009.

Related posts:

• A Nation of Golems
• Alan Hart – Deception has always been the name of Zionism’s game
• William A. Cook – Walled in by Myth and Deceit

Illustration by Carlos Latuff

By Yousef Munayyer* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

This brief appeared today in the Los Angeles Times and is a response to a column written by Benny Morris that was published in the Los Angeles Times on 16 April 2010.

Palestinians are in Israel today because they managed to survive the depopulation of 1948, the year the Jewish state was founded (Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel's population). Ironically, while Benny Morris' scholarship suggests that the mere existence of these Palestinians in Israel -- and millions more in the occupied territories -- irks him, Israel's substantial Arab population also blows a hole in his argument about the need to deal with the supposed Iranian nuclear threat.

Morris is part of an increasingly vociferous chorus warning of an impending apocalypse for Israel at the hands of a nuclear Iran eager to rid the Middle East of its Jews. Yet Iran's religious leaders have repeatedly stated that such weapons are "un-Islamic" or "forbidden under Islam."

Morris' role in our understanding of the region's history is confounding. Arguably, no one played a more central role in exposing Israel's role in the depopulation of Palestinians from their homeland than Morris. In his seminal work, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem," Morris, using declassified military documents, exposes the calculated effort by early Israeli leaders to impose a Jewish majority through ethnic cleansing.

Long considered a champion of modern Israeli historians who sought to shed light on the ugly side of Israel's birth, Morris shocked many Israelis and Palestinians alike when he later changed course. To Morris, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians was no longer the problem at the heart of the conflict; in fact, he suggested that the problem was that Israel didn't finish the job in 1948.

Morris said in a 2004 interview "Under some circumstances expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

Morris added later in the interview that if Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, "was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. ... If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the state of Israel for generations."

Yet the pesky Palestinian minority Morris wishes had been expelled decades ago serves as a deterrent from a nuclear-armed Iran, should the Islamic Republic ever build nuclear weapons and consider using them on Israel. The fact that Arab Israelis were among the casualties of the 2006 war with Hezbollah speaks to the reality that no nuclear attack on Israel could happen without the deaths of countless Palestinians and Israelis, not to mention the likely destruction of Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam.

The reality of Palestinian casualties, the destruction of Jerusalem, the onset of regional war and the immediate destruction of Iran's regime as a result of a multilateral conventional or even nuclear counterattack all serve as a credible deterrent to a nuclear Iran. The Iranian leadership has shown a demonstrable interest in self-preservation

The alarmism espoused Morris and company isn't grounded in reality. Rather - just as with Iraq, Syria and now Iran - Israel constantly needs an enemy that it says threatens its existence. Otherwise the Jewish state would have a harder time maintaining its overwhelming military supremacy in the region and continuously changing the subject from resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to practically anything else.

The ideology at the foundation of the state of Israel and the very justification for its existence requires the existence of apocalyptic anti-Semitic forces with the intent and capability to annihilate. Without these boogeymen, whether it is Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Arabs who "want to push Israel into the sea," the state of Israel ceases to have any justification for the maintenance of a Jewish majority by force or for its ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands.

The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, the pro-colonization Israeli prime minister, has made every effort to connect the idea of a nuclear Iran to the Holocaust is evidence of this scare-mongering. Iran, like Iraq in 2003, is an inflated but necessary fear for Israel. No credible analysis of the situation envisions a scenario in which Iran would use nuclear weapons against the Jewish state. But proponents of Israel's colonial enterprise, who support maintaining a Jewish majority by the force of walls and soldiers in occupied territory, want everyone to believe that the focus should be on Iran, not on the occupation, and that Israel's security policies are justifiable against "existential threats."

The need for these inflated threats has increased in the years since Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Despite these agreements, Israel still maintains and furthers its occupation of Palestinian lands through blockade and settlement expansion.

The emperor may be naked in Tel Aviv, but he can continue avoiding attention and shame if he persuades the world to look in Tehran's direction instead.

* Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center.

Related posts:

• Hillary Clinton at AIPAC: Bomb Iran
• WHY IRAN? Give Iran a Break!
• Elias Akleh – US/Israel vs Iran Nuclear Chess Game

May Day is May 1, International Workers' Day. It is recognized internationally for the celebration of the social and economic achievements of the international labor movement. Put for Palestinians, this day has more than celebration. It is a mourn day.

It was not enough that Palestinians should have their homes and farmland stolen; they faced the death penalty if they should try to carry out any of their belongings with them!

Sometimes a villager would try to sneak back to his home to save some of his worldly possessions. His fate was often death at the hands of the Zionists. Ein al Zeitun massacre is one of many examples that shows the barbaric history of Zionists in Palestine.

Ethnically cleansed 'Ayn al-Zaytun', District Of Safad (photo source: Palestine Remembered)

'Ein ez Zeitun' (also known as Ein Zaytun, Ein ez Zeitun, Ain el Zeitun, Ayn-al-Zaytun, etc) is a village on the northern outskirts of the city of Safad, with a population of approximately 900 Palestinian Arabs, It became the scene of barbarous cruelties.

Timeline: (source: Palestine Encyclopedia)

19 JANUARY 1948 Galilee. 0800 hours, Safad. Near Ein Zeitun village, armed Jews attempted to hold up an Arab bus. When T.J.F.F. troopers arrived on the scene, the Jews retired towards Ein Zeitim Colony. No shots were fired during the incident.

29 JANUARY 1948 Galilee. 1525 hours, Safad. It was reported that, throughout the day, Arab males and females working in fields near Ein Zeitoun came under fire which is believed to have come from the direction of Ein Zeitim Colony.

2 FEBRUARY 1948 1030 hours, Jews from Ein Zeitim stole Arab truckload of flour. Arabs attacked Jewish colony. Troops restored order. 1 truckload flour stolen.

2 FEBRUARY 1948 Galilee. Morning, Safad. Two Arab trucks loaded with flour and traveling from Haifa to Safad were fired on near Ein Zeitim Colony. One of the trucks was forced to stop, and the driver was allegedly taken into the colony.

7 APRIL 1948 Galilee. 2200 hours, Safad. On the Acre/Safad road near Ein Zeitoun village, fire was directed at an Arab taxi from the Jewish Quarter of Safad. A passenger in the vehicle, Ribbi Khadouri of Safad, was wounded and died whilst being conveyed to the hospital.

11 APRIL 1948 Galilee. 0830 hours, Safad. An Arab truck proceeding from Safad to Bin Zeitun was fired on from the Jewish Quarter of Safad. Military personnel returned the fire. There were no casualties.

May 1, 1948 - The massacre day:

The attack on Ein al Zeitun was conducted by the 3rd Battalion of the Palmach* under the command of Moshe Kelman, as a preliminary operation to relieve the Arab siege of the Jewish quarter of Safed. Davidka mortar bombs were used for the first time. The village was taken without much difficulty. Most of the villagers fled during the battle, and the remainder, apart from 30-100 men aged 20-40 were forcibly expelled afterwards.

The Palmach soldiers then began to destroy the village. Palmach officer Elad Peled recalled that:

"at noon, our men began blowing up the village. The intoxication of victory blinded them and they went berserk, breaking and destroying property. The Jews of Safad saw Ein Zeitun blown up and crushed, and were overjoyed." (Morris p. 233, Abbasi p. 14)

According to Palmach soldier Nativa Ben-Yehuda, the captive men were tied up and thrown into the deep gully between Ein al Zeitun and left for two days. Kelman then decided to "get rid of this problem altogether" but most of his men refused. Finally he found two willing to do it and the prisoners were killed. Two days later, word of the massacre leaked out and it was feared that British or UN investigators would arrive, so some soldiers including Ben-Yehuda were detailed to untie the corpses and bury them.

According to the eyewitness testimony of Hussain 'Ali Harnid of the Arab village of 'Ein ez Zeitun (Source: Palestine Encyclopedia):

I and five other villagers went back to get the money that we had buried in our courtyards. Rashid Khalil, the first to enter the village, was shot dead by a Jewish soldier. We saw it was too dangerous to go in and decided to leave to Lebanon.

After the Palmach terrorists occupied the village on the night of May 1, 1948 they ordered the villagers to assemble at Mahmud Hamid's courtyard. Then the women were separated from the men and were taken to a courtyard behind the village mosque. According to the eyewitness testimony of Muhammad Ahmad Hamid. a mechanic:

I decided not to leave the village and hid in a nearby stable, close to my house. I remained in hiding for a while and then decided to join the people assembled at Mahmud Hamid's courtyard. As I was crossing the street, I was caught. The Jewish soldiers took me to the center of the village. There I saw Jamil Ahmad Idris crucified on a tree. I was beaten and questioned, then I was ordered to join the men in the courtyard.

In 'Ein ez Zeitun, Palestinians were killed as they tried to surrender. According to villager Mansur Shaibi:

We were terrified and decided to remain in our house with some of our relatives. We were afraid to surrender because Rashid Shaibi, who was hiding with us, had seen 'Abdullaj Shaibi killed as he was trying to surrender.

At the courtyard a horrible crime took place. According to the testimony of eyewitness Munira Harnid Shaibi, after being taken to the courtyard where the villagers had been gathered,

A Palmach officer ordered his soldiers to choose thirty seven teenage boys at random, ordering the rest of the villagers to move into the storage rooms of the mosque. Those boys were taken away and were never seen again. One was my brother. I do not think my brother is alive. I think the Jews killed him. Why would the Jews keep him for so long? What use is he to them?

Good question!

It is unreasonable to believe that not even one of thirty seven teenaged boys in 1948 would try to contact their families during the four decades since they were separated from them. The only reasonable assumption is that they cannot speak because they are buried in an unmarked mass grave.

After expelling those Palestinian Arabs they had not murdered, the Zionists wantonly burned and destroyed the houses of the inhabitants they had expelled.

Town Today:

According to the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, all that remains of the village:

The rubble of destroyed stone houses is scattered throughout the site, which is otherwise overgrown with olive trees and cactuses. A few deserted houses remain, some with round arched entrances and tall windows with various arched designs. In one of the remaining houses, the smooth stone above the entrance arch is inscribed with Arabic calligraphy, a fixture of Palestinian architecture. The well and the village spring also remain. (Source: Palestine Remembered)

* Palmach:

No doubt about that. Look at Israel history, the terrorist barbaric culture is a major pillar of it's foundation. And they call OTHERS terrorists!!!

Related posts:

• Qibya Massacre: History of Terrorists
• The Massacre of Al-Aqsa Mosque – October 8, 1990
• Beit Hanoun Massacre Update