| Author | Message | | sharkman | | Posted: Wed Jun 12, 2002 10:51 pm Post subject: ethnic cleansing attended the birth of israel... |
| Subj: Ethnic cleansing attended the birth of Israel but,
Date: 6/12/02 2:30:13 PM Pacific Daylight Time
more than 50 years later, the country is still in denial about its bloody
past. Those who speak out risk their jobs. : John Pilger : 30 May 2002
Behind the turbulent news from Israel, a struggle for historical truth has
passed almost unnoticed outside academic circles; yet its wider
significance is epic. In May 1948, more than 200 Palestinians were killed
by the advancing Jewish militia in the coastal village of Tantura, south
of Haifa. According to the recorded testimony of 40 witnesses, both Arab
and Jewish, half the civilians were shot in a "rampage". The rest were
marched to the beach, where the men were separated from the women and
children. They were taken to a wall near the mosque where they were shot
in the back of the head. The "cleansing" of Tantura (a term used at the
time) was a well-kept secret. When they were interviewed four years ago,
several Palestinian witnesses said they feared for their lives if they
spoke out. One survivor, who as a child witnessed the murder of his entire
family in Tantura, said to the interviewer: "But believe me, one should
not mention these things. I do not want them to take revenge against us.
You are going to cause us trouble... " Trouble indeed. The researcher, a
student called Teddy Katz, has had his masters degree annulled by Haifa
University, even though he was awarded a top grade by the Middle Eastern
department. When his research was revealed in the Israeli press, Jewish
veterans of the attack on Tantura sued him for libel, and several Jewish
witnesses recanted. Katz had breached the taboo of the ethnic cleansing
that gave birth to Israel and which the Palestinians mourn as Nakba - the
catastrophe. Without waiting for the case to come to court, the university
struck Katz's name from its honour roll. Whispered to be a traitor, and
under pressure from his family and friends, Katz, a devout Zionist who
lived on a kibbutz, apologised. Twelve hours later, he retracted his
apology. Professor Ilan Pappe is one of the few to have read all the
transcripts of more than 60 hours of Katz's taping of eyewitness evidence.
"They include," he wrote, "horrific descriptions of executions, of the
killing of fathers in front of children, of rape and
torture." He describes Katz's thesis "as a solid and
convincing piece of work whose essential validity is
in no way marred by its shortcomings". The
shortcomings, he says, come down to four minor
mistakes.
But the importance of the Katz research is its
illumination of Israel's history in terms of "the
expulsion, direct and indirect, of some 750,000
Palestinians, the systematic destruction of more than
400 villages and scores of urban neighbourhoods, as
well as the perpetration of some 40 massacres of
unarmed Palestinians."
Although other prominent scholars supported Katz, a
silence and hostility familiar to those who break
academic and political ranks in Israel descended on
the case. Since the election of Ariel Sharon last
year, this hostility is such that not even national
heroes are forgiven. Last month, Yaffa Yarkoni,
"Israel's Vera Lynn", whose emotional, wistful songs
have celebrated Zionist triumphalism from 1948 to the
present day, lost her huge popularity overnight when
she remarked that Israeli soldiers ought not to be
writing numbers on the arms of Palestinians. "Isn't
that what the Germans did?" she asked.
One newspaper headline called her an "enemy of the
people"; an editor said she "has joined the new
anti-Semites in Europe". In challenging the Zionist
version of Israel's past, Ilan Pappe is one of
Israel's "new historians", a distinguished and
courageous critic. He has likened the Israeli state to
apartheid South Africa, with its Palestinian
"bantustans" and plethora of humiliating controls
which now restrict the movement of people within their
own communities. He says that Sharon's goal is to
begin the mass expulsion of Palestinians across the
Jordan; only a pretext is required. According to one
poll, 44 per cent of Israelis support this latest
"cleansing", known as "transfer", another euphemism
from the past. In 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's
founding prime minister, wrote, "We have accomplished
our settlement by transfer of the [Palestinian]
population."
Not quite. The notion of a "final transfer" is
supported by a number of cabinet members in the ruling
Likud government, by leading Labour Party members and
professors and media commentators. "Very few now dare
to condemn it," says Pappe. "A circle has been closed.
When Israel took over almost 80 per cent of Palestine
in 1948, it did so through settlement and ethnic
cleansing. The country has a prime minister who enjoys
wide public support and who wants to determine by
force the future of the remaining 20 per cent."
Now it might be Professor Pappe's turn to be expelled
from Haifa University. In an open letter circulated
two weeks ago, he writes that the dean of the
humanities department has demanded his expulsion for
criticising the university over the Katz case. This
runs deeper; Pappe has been a consistent opponent of
Israel's illegal military occupation of Palestine. He
describes the university "court" that threatens to
punish him as a "McCarthyite charade". He has called
upon "universities worldwide to debate a boycott of
Israeli institutions, given their contempt for basic
principles of academic freedom and dispassionate
research". He says that only international shaming,
free of the intimidation that equates criticism of
Israel with anti-Semitism, will break the silence
about "horrific deeds in 1948, and so prevent their
repetition".
Others in Israel, as courageous as Ilan Pappe, are
also under pressure, both crude and insidious. In
Ha'eretz, Israel's equivalent of the Guardian, two
outstanding journalists, Amira Hass and Gideon Levy,
have consistently reported the unpopular truth about
Israel's occupation of the remaining 22 per cent of
the Palestine it conquered in 1967. They live daily
with threats and hate mail. Upholding the bravest
traditions of Jewish humanity, they need international
solidarity. You can support Ilan Pappe, and the cause
of justice in both Israel and Palestine, by e-mailing
pappe@poli.haifa.ac.il
John Pilger's latest book, The New Rulers of the
World, is newly published by Verso
Subj: brave ucla professor...
Date: 6/12/02 9:49:20 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: Jdtmorris
For the record, I had sent the email reply included below to a "truth distorter" (on the USS Liberty email list via: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/uss_liberty.html) about the intentional and savage Israeli attack on the USS Liberty which resulted in the murder of 34 american sailors with 171 more wounded.
I also would like to make it known here that there are Israelis (and people of Jewish descent) who are very decent, and the following UCLA professor is one of them as I completely agree with his position that Rabin was a good man (and that Netanyahu is not):
http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/db/articles.asp?ID=19398
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=304437
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/dead_in_the_water.shtml
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/index.php
subj: more americans seeing through pro-israel propaganda
Date: 6/12/02 8:44:24 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: Jdtmorris
To: USS_LIBERTY@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
i am american as i have grown up in the usa and love this country more than any pro-israeli spinner like yourself who apparently has more allegiance to the rogue state of israel when you try to cover its treachery against the usa. so what is your pro-israel spin ("truth distortion") on the lavon affair?! i still notice that wolfe, grossman and the "skipper" won't even try to "spin" that one either, but i assume they will be trying to soon.... keep in mind that the arab world has attacked america mostly because of our government's bogus (pro-israel lobby and jewish vote influenced) middle east policy which is blatantly biased for israel, but what is israel's excuse for its treachery against its supposed us ally in the lavon affair and uss liberty attack? look forward to reading your pro-israel spin on this as well... the following is another interesting article by robert fisk about how sharon is arrogantly not fearful of bush:
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=304347
to read other excellent articles by robert fisk (to include his articles about jewish colonization of the west bank and gaza strip as such is the heart of the current palestinian v. israeli conflict while the israelis continue to steal more and more palestinian land as the palestinians have little enough left of it already which is why they are resisting such with their tragic retaliatory suicide bombing attacks against the israelis), access the following web links at your convenience:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2002/05/27/there-s-a-firestorm-coming.php
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/index.php
the good news is that more americans are seeing through the pro-israel propaganda:
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=285777
we americans need to pressure the us government to cut us aid to israel as we can greatly reduce the risk of further domestic terrorism against us as the following article conveys:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0523/p07s02-wome.html | |  | | sharkman | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
