"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country … There has been Anti−Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: We have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" — David Ben−Gurion, founding prime minister of Israel.
As the reader must know by now, this is no ordinary week; I−Fest, the Tufts celebration of the birth of the state of Israel, is fast approaching. There is an inherent tension in the commemoration of historical memory: The jubilant and self−congratulatory spirit of the celebration tends to negate the complexity of the historical event, omitting inconvenient details and marginalizing dissenting voices. In other words, we quite naturally tend to leave out the parts of the story that bring down the mood of the party. Sadly, I−Fest is no different. What Israelis and some American Jews celebrate as Israeli Independence Day, Palestinians and others solemnly mourn as al−Nakba, or "the Catastrophe," which marks the beginning of Palestinian exile from the land of historic Palestine. Why is there such an acute discrepancy? Isn't it true that historic Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land? Didn't the Palestinians flee voluntarily, rather than being forcibly expelled by the Zionist/Israeli forces? As with most nation−states, the origin of Israel in 1948 is shrouded by a plethora of foundational myths, which I believe we, as socially conscious individuals, must unmask before we take part in the festivities.
Myth: The land of historic Palestine was virtually uninhabited until the arrival of Jewish settlers from Europe, and the indigenous people who did live there did not constitute a distinct national group.
On the eve of the establishment of Israel, Mandatory Palestine, which remained under British rule until 1948, was a largely Arab country: two−thirds of the population were indigenous Palestinians, who owned over 90 percent of the land, whereas one−third were Jewish immigrants in possession of 5.8 percent of the total land. Despite these fairly substantial demographic disparities between the two groups, when the United Nations sat down to decide the fate of post−British−mandate Palestine in 1947, it elected to partition the land along demographic lines, disproportionately granting Jewish colonists a state comprising approximately 56 percent of the country and allocating the remaining 44 percent to the indigenous Palestinian majority, according to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe.
This move enraged Palestinian nationalist sentiments, but to no avail, for Palestinian society was by this time too weakened to wage effective resistance. From 1936 to 1939 Palestinians rose in a massive nationalistic rebellion against British rule. In the largest British colonial war of the inter−war period, the Palestinian revolt was brutally drowned in blood.
Therefore, a sizable indigenous population with a strong national identification was in fact present in historic Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel, as much as Golda Meir and others may wish to forget it.
Myth: During the Israeli War of Independence, 750,000 Arabs fled from the country voluntarily on the orders of the invading Arab armies.
The principal challenge facing the Zionist movement in the first half of the 20th century was the question of how to realize an ethnically homogenous Jewish nation−state in a country inhabited by mostly non−Jews. The answer unraveled by Israeli New Historians such as Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe and others is an ugly one: The indigenous Palestinian population was ethnically cleansed, i.e. they were coerced to flee their land by coordinated acts of violence and intimidation on the part of the Zionist/Israeli armed forces. This was no accidental outcome, for on March 10, 1948, the Hagana, the principal Zionist military outfit, unveiled Plan Dalet, what has been termed a "master plan" for the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine. According to the text of the document describing operational procedures for occupying villages, "These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) … or … [i]n cases of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state."
The most notorious example of the systematic implementation of Plan Dalet is the massacre of Deir Yassin, in which approximately 93 men, women and children, including 30 babies, were slaughtered by Jewish forces of the Irgun and Stern Gang under the direction of the Hagana. Despite its horrendous brutality, Deir Yassin is far from an exceptional case. In the words of the former director of the Israeli military archives, "In almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres and rapes." Zionist/Israeli forces committed further massacres in the taking of Al−Dawayma, Al−Tantoura and Eilaboun, among many other villages, for a total of 30 documented massacres, according to studies based on U.N. and Israeli archives that can be found at the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. These massacres and other acts were calculated to terrorize the Palestinian population, which in turn compelled many more people to flee, fearing for their lives.
In all, in the period prior to the proclamation of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948 alone, between 250,000 and 300,000 Palestinians were driven from land. While some claim that these people were ordered to flee via radio broadcast by the surrounding Arab states whose armies did not invade until the departure of the British on May 15, 1948, the myth of such a radio broadcast has been vitiated by documents from the Israeli archives analyzed by Pappe and Morris.
This pattern of systematic violence and terror laid down by Plan Dalet remained in place for the remainder of 1948 and 1949. By the Armistice of 1949, over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland and over 500 of their villages were destroyed.
This is the image of catastrophic decimation captured in the word "Nakba."
Myth: Upon its establishment, Israel was nearly destroyed by six invading Arab armies; Plan Dalet was thus a measure of last resort.
As iterated above, Plan Dalet was implemented and the ethnic cleansing began prior to the entry of the Arab armies, during which time, Jewish forces faced only a rag−tag, all−volunteer army of Arab irregulars. Even after the intervention of the surrounding Arab states, Israeli forces retained the upper hand. The poorly armed and organized Arab force of around 68,000 men was simply no match for the highly trained and organized Hagana with its 90,000 troops armed with Czech weapons provided by the USSR.
According to the renowned Israeli military historian, Martin Van Creveld, the goal of the Arab intervention was not to conquer territories allotted to the Jewish state but to defend against Zionist/Israeli annexations of areas designated as part of the Palestinian state by the U.N. Prior to the Arab interventions Zionist/Israeli forces had already seized Jaffa, the Arab quarters of Jerusalem, Beisan, Safad and Acre, all of which were to fall under Palestinian sovereignty in accordance with the U.N. partition resolution. Overall, the outcome of the Israeli War of Independence was surprising only in the scope of its calamity for the refugee: The superior Israeli forces ended up with a state on 78 percent of historic Palestine cleansed of over 85 percent of its indigenous inhabitants. This consequent realization of the Zionist dream of Theodor Herzl and Ben−Gurion was possible solely through the perpetuation of the nightmarish reality of exile lived daily by the Palestinian refugee. We therefore arrive at the fundamental dichotomy of the Jewish state: A Palestinian refugee from Jaffa must forfeit her legally sanctioned right to return under U.N. Resolution 194, so that I, an American Jew with no direct physical ties to the land, may return to live in her place.
No one blames the Jewish people for seeking a state of their own in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. However, such an endeavor approaches the realm of the ethically indefensible when the coveted land is already inhabited and the creation of a Jewish state necessitates the expulsion of a group of people who, as Ben−Gurion admits, bear no culpability for European anti−Semitism. This is the dark side of Israeli Independence Day, and one that we have a duty to observe alongside the great accomplishments of the Israeli people. On Wednesday, April 20, please join Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine for a commemoration of the 63rd anniversary of the dispossession and enduring statelessness of the Palestinian people, of whom over five million remain refugees. Forbidden from returning to their homeland by Israel's "Law of Return" and barred from assimilating in their Arab host countries, these brave people grasp their keys, ready to return home.
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