Here are ten popular arguments Zionists use to defend Israel's crimes against the Palestinians and how to answer them effectively.
If you’re active in the struggle for peace and justice in the Middle East, you’ve no doubt frequently encountered Zionists who defend Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. You’re familiar with many of their talking points, and maybe you know how to answer many or most of them. Here are ten you’ve likely encountered, but perhaps didn’t know quite how to debate effectively–until now!
1. The Palestinian refugee problem is an unfortunate result of the Arab states launching a war of aggression in 1948 to wipe Israel off the map.
There are two principle fallacies in this argument:
One, it was not simply that Palestinians fled war. Many did flee, but this was encouraged by the Zionist forces, which also directly expelled many civilians from their homes and destroyed their villages so they could never return. It was the intent of the Zionists to ethnically cleanse Palestine of most of its Arab population in order for the demographically “Jewish state” of Israel to be established. Indeed, cleansing Palestine of Arabs was a prerequisite for this state to be created. This is why Israel refused to allow those refugees to return.
Two, this argument assumes that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of the existence of Israel on May 14, 1948, was legitimate. It wasn’t. The Zionists had neither any legal nor moral authority to declare sovereignty over a land in which they were a minority and of which they owned only about 7 percent. While they cited UN Resolution 181 (the “partition plan” resolution) as granting such authority, in fact, this resolution neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration.
- “Benny Morris’s Untenable Denial of the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”
- Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
In Obstacle to Peace, see specifically:
- Chapter 1, Subchapter “UN General Assembly Resolution 181”
- Chapter 2, Subchapter “Resolution 194”
- Chapter 9, Subchapter “The Bias of the New York Times”
2. Israel has a right to exist.
No state has a “right to exist”. This concept is a propaganda device invented by the US and Israel for a reason that will become clear momentarily.
One might be tempted to answer this argument with: “Well, Palestine has a right to exist, too!” But this is not the proper response!
Political entities defined by lines on maps do not have rights, individuals do. The proper framework for discussion is the right to self-determination. And it is manifestly Israel that has denied that right to the Palestinians since its founding (and indeed, by the Zionists even before Israel’s founding), and not vice versa.
The necessity of redefining the framework for discussion thus becomes obvious. To say that Israel has a “right to exist” is effectively to assert that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of Israel’s existence and the ethnic cleansing by which Israel actually came into being were legitimate. Needless to say, these were not legitimate actions on the part of the Zionists.
3. In 1967, Israel acted in self-defense by launching a preemptive attack on Egypt.
Israel’s attack on Egypt on the morning of June 5, 1967 — the event that started the “Six Day War” — was not preemptive.
Zionists will argue that Nasser’s threats, Egypt’s closing of the Straits of Tiran and Suez Canal to Israeli shipping, its movement of troops into the Sinai Peninsula, and its expelling of the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) all essentially amounted to acts of war.
However, none of these actions constituted aggression under international law.
Egypt’s perspective was that the straits and Suez Canal were its territorial waterways so it had a right to deny passage to an enemy state that had already attacked it once, in 1956 (when Israel conspired with Britain and France to launch a war of aggression against Egypt). While legal scholars may debate the legitimacy of that point of view, the fact is that Israel had peaceful means available to it to seek redress for this grievance against Egypt. It did not, under international law, constitute a casus belli (justification for war).
Nasser wanted the UN peacekeeping force gone because he was being accused by Syria and Jordan of hiding behind it. His bellicose rhetoric was about saving face but was just that: rhetoric. The proposal was made to restation UNEF on Israel’s side of the border, but, instructively, Israel rejected this proposal.
Furthermore, the CIA observed that Egypt’s troops took up defensive positions in the Sinai, and Israel’s own intelligence assessed that Israel was under no threat of attack from Egypt.
In 1982, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin acknowledged, “In June 1967 we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
Under international law, Israel’s attack on Egypt constituted aggression, defined at Nuremberg as “the supreme international crime”.
- “Israel’s attack on Egypt in June ’67 was not ‘preemptive’”
- Chapter 9, Subchapter “‘Defensible Borders'”, from Obstacle to Peace
4. UN Resolution 242 did not require Israel to fully withdraw from the territories it occupied in 1967.
This is a lie. Unfortunately, it is very effective Zionist hasbara and is widely believed even by supporters of Palestinians’ rights.
There are three main components of the Zionist argument:
- The absence of the article “the” before the words “territories occupied” in sub-paragraph (i) of the first operative paragraph of this Security Council resolution means only a partial withdrawal was required.
- Sub-paragraph (ii) requires that “secure and recognized borders” be established before Israel is required to withdraw.
- Officials responsible for creating and passing Resolution 242, like Lord Caradon (UK) and Arthur Goldberg (US) have said it did not require a full withdrawal.
Briefly, here are the flaws in these arguments:
First of all, this is nonsense even on its face: the resolution does not say Israel must withdraw from “the territories occupied” so we must understand it to mean Israel must withdraw from only “some territories occupied”? This self-defeating Zionist logic is prima facie nonsense.
In truth, the absence of the article has no effect on the meaning of the resolution inasmuch as the extent of withdraw is concerned. It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces “from territories occupied”, plural. The Syrian Golan Heights, the Egyptian Sinai, and the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and West Bank are all “territories occupied” during the 1967 war and thus territories from which Israel was required to withdraw under the clear and unambiguous wording of Resolution 242.
In fact, the preambulatory section of the resolution emphasized the principle of international law that the acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible — and it is in the context of that emphasized principle that the resolution’s call for Israeli withdrawal must be understood.
As for sub-paragraph (ii), while it does call for the establishment of “secure and recognized borders”, it does not establish this as a precondition for the withdraw of Israeli forces. It says “both” Israeli withdrawal and establishment of such borders are required, conditioning neither one upon the other. It was not the Security Council’s intent that a people whose land was occupied be required to negotiate with the occupier over where to draw the border.
Zionists claim otherwise, but to do so, they quote Caradon and Goldberg from years after the resolution’s passage. But, first, UN resolutions are not open to unilateral interpretation, but must be understand according to the will of the Security Council as a whole; and, second, the relevant documentary record for understanding the will of the Council is from prior to and up until the resolution’s adoption.
And turning to that documentary record, it is absolutely clear that the Security Council was explicit and unanimous that Resolution 242 required Israel to return to the lines it held prior to June 5, 1967.
5. The Palestinians have rejected every generous offer from Israel to have a state of their own.
This argument assumes that Israel accepts the two-state solution and had made generous concessions in each of those “offers”, such as that made at Camp David in 2000. Those assumptions are absolutely false.
In fact, every single concession made during each of the “offers” in question — throughout the entire so-called “peace process” — was demanded or made by the Palestinians.
This Zionist hasbara, frequently propagated by US government officials and media commentators, simply frames the discussion in terms of what Israel wants rather than what it has a right to under international law.
Zionists say things like, “Israel offered the Palestinians a state in 95 percent of the West Bank at Camp David”. First of all, this is false. Israel started out demanding to annex 12 percent of the West Bank, and by the end of the talks was still demanding 9 percent. Second, none of this land was Israel’s to give. Under international law, every inch of it is recognized as “occupied Palestinian territory”. So translated into meaningful terms, we see arguments like the above equate that Israel “offered” to take only 5 percent (really 9 percent) of the Palestinians’ land.
Furthermore, these demands to annex Palestinian territory were accompanied with other unreasonable demands, such as dividing the West Bank into Bantustan-like enclaves with Jewish-only highways connecting illegally constructed Israeli settlements and Israeli military control over Palestine’s borders and airspace. In other words, Israel demanded that the Palestinians surrender more of their land, rights, and sovereignty.
If a thief steals a $100 from you and then says he will give you back $91 if you agree to certain other demands requiring you to surrender your rights, would you describe it as a “generous offer” or a “concession”?
The truth is that while the Palestinian leadership has accepted the two-state solution since the late 1980s, Israel has always rejected it. In fact, the US-led so-called “peace process” is in reality the process by which Israel and its superpower benefactor have long blocked implementation of the two-state solution.
6. Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip is legal — the UN has said so.
Actually, the UN has repeatedly affirmed the illegality of Israel’s blockade, which amounts to a policy of collective punishment in violation of international law. This criminal policy has been condemned by numerous UN bodies; the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC); and numerous international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli rights groups B’Tselem and Gisha. This blockade continues in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1860, which called on Israel to end it.
So what are Zionists talking about when they claim the UN has said Israel’s blockade is legal?
They are talking about a report commissioned by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon known as the “Palmer Report”. It’s true that this report expressed the opinion of its two chairmembers that Israel’s naval blockade was legal. But what Zionists don’t tell you is that they also noted in their report itself that this conclusion of theirs went beyond their mandate and that they had no authority to offer their legal opinion.
Furthermore, the arguments they employed to arrive at their conclusion were riddled with factual and logical errors. Essentially, they employed circular reasoning by adopting the conclusion as their premise: in short, they argued that the naval blockade was legal because it was not a policy of collective punishment. In fact, they went to great lengths to avoid inquiring whether the blockade constituted collective punishment under international law, and they resorted to demonstrable misrepresentations of what international law actually has to say in an effort to sustain their expressed opinion.
So why would they do that? Well, they stated the reason in their report: their mandate was not to inquire into the legality of the blockade, but the political objective of allowing Israel and Turkey to put the Mavi Marmara incident behind them.
That was the incident in May 2010 in which Israeli forces attacked the humanitarian “Freedom Flotilla” — which was seeking to break Israel’s illegal blockade and draw the world’s attention to it — in international waters and murdered nine Turkish activists on board.
Ban Ki-moon charged them with helping these two states to reconcile. Had they affirmed the international consensus that Israel’s blockade was illegal, it would have undermined their political objective. So they expressed the opinion it was not as a predetermined conclusion and then proceeded to manipulate the facts and employ fallacious reasoning to support it.
For a thorough debunking of the Palmer Report, see Chapter 9, Subchapter “The Palmer Report” in Obstacle to Peace. For more about Israel’s criminal assault on the Mavi Marmara and how to answer the arguments of those who try to defend it, see Chapter 7, “Murder on the High Seas”.
7. Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead” only after thousands of rockets had been fired at Israeli towns from Gaza.
This Zionist hasbara — frequently parroted by the US government and mainstream media — is deceit by omission. It’s true that in the years prior to Israel’s 2008-09 “Operation Cast Lead” thousands of rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza — and indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli population centers are certainly war crimes. However, what the Zionists don’t tell you is that on June 19, Israel and Hamas entered into a ceasefire agreement that was repeatedly violated not by Hamas, but Israel.
The New York Times actually reported on the most serious of those Israeli violations on the day it occurred (November 4, 2008), but thereafter tossed this fact down the memory hole. Subsequently, when it referred to the ceasefire, it merely said that it “broke down” without stating the reason why: because it was violated by Israel. More frequently, that there had even been a ceasefire — much less that it was not Hamas but Israel who violated it — was completely omitted, replaced by a false narrative in which Israel was acting in self defense against Hamas rocket attacks.
As illustrated by Operation Cast Lead, it is a modus operandi of Israel’s to take actions to attempt to provoke a violent response from Palestinian militants in order to create pretexts for its own resorts to its own violence, which occurs on an incomparably greater scale.
8. Palestinian civilians were only killed during operations like “Cast Lead” because they were being used by Hamas as human shields.
This is a lie. The truth is that Israel engaged in deliberately disproportionate use of force during its 2008-09 (Operation Cast Lead), 2012 (Operation Pillar of Defense), and 2014 (Operation Protective Edge) assaults on Gaza. In fact, it openly declared its intention to commit what amount to war crimes with its so-called “Dahiya Doctrine” — a reference to the flattening of the Dahiya district of Beirut in 2006 to punish the civilian population.
To take the example of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s war crimes are well documented and incontrovertible. It deliberately targeted the civilian infrastructure for destruction as part of a policy of punishing the people of Gaza, and the IDF routinely used indiscriminate force, such as attacks on UN schools being used as shelters, hospitals, and residential homes.
In fact, there is not a single documented case of a Palestinian civilian killed during Operation Cast Lead who was being used by Hamas at the time as a human shield.
This might seem like a shocking truth, given the US mainstream media’s mindless repetition of the IDF’s own propaganda about civilians dying only because Hamas was using them as human shields, but this operation has been extensively investigated by human rights organizations and the UN, all of which investigations have concluded that there is no evidence to support Israel’s claimed justifications for killing civilians.
On the other hand, these investigations did conclude that Israeli forces used Palestinian civilians as human shields during Operation Cast Lead, such as forcing children to walk in front of them as they cleared homes.
- Chapter 1, Subchapter “The Collapse of the Ceasefire”
- Chapter 2, “‘Operation Cast Lead'”
- Chapter 4, Subchapter “‘The Most Moral Army in the World'”
- Chapter 5, “The Goldstone Report”
- Chapter 6, Subchapter “Israel’s ‘Cast Lead’ Self-Exoneration: Update”
- Chapter 7, Subchapter “Israel’s ‘Cast Lead’ Self-Exoneration: Second Update”
9. The finding of the UN “Goldstone Report” that Israel committed war crimes during Operation Cast Lead has been debunked.
This is a lie. What Zionist apologists for Israeli war crimes are referring to, specifically, when they make this claim is an op-ed by one of the four chairs of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, Justice Richard Goldstone.
The so-called Goldstone Report did indeed conclude that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes — and these conclusions still stand.
For his part in that report, Goldstone came under intense pressure and heavy criticism from Zionists, including threats to protest outside of and bar him from attending his grandon’s bar mitzvah. His op-ed was a transparent attempt to appease his Zionist detractors. But further than that, it was a disgraceful betrayal of truth and justice, as Goldstone outright lied about the UN report’s findings in his attempt at appeasement.
The occasion for Goldstone’s betrayal was the report of a follow-up UN committee charged with inquiring into the credibility of Hamas’s and Israel’s self-investigations into the allegations of war crimes. In this context, Goldstone wrote that had the UN Fact-Finding Mission known then what was now known, it would not have arrived at the conclusions it did.
Goldstone, however, was lying about the contents of the both the Goldstone Report and the follow-up committee’s report. He claimed the Fact-Finding Mission had not examined any evidence presented by Israel. That was false. In fact, the Mission fully took into account Israel’s own reports of its self-investigations that had occurred.
Goldstone also set up his op-ed on the premise of a strawman argument: the claim was ostensibly now retracting was that Israel had a policy of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians for death. In fact, this was not a finding of the Fact-Finding Mission’s report. Rather, the Mission concluded that Israel’s policy was to punish the civilian population through the deliberate use of disproportionate force. By setting up this strawman argument, Goldstone avoided having to “retract” the Mission’s actual findings.
Further, he quoted the follow-up committee’s finding that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza”, but he withheld from readers the fact that the committee found that these investigations lacked credibility.
After Goldstone’s disgraceful betrayal of justice, his three co-authors publicly criticized his op-ed and pointed out that information that had since come to light — including the findings of the follow-up committee Goldstone was deceptively relying on to support his own argument — did not change the Mission’s conclusions, but bolstered them.
10. Hamas was responsible for initiating the round of violence that culminated in Israel’s launching of “Operation Pillar of Defense” in 2012.
As with Operation Cast Lead, the truth is dramatically different.
Israeli apologists — including US government officials and US mainstream media commentators — cited as the initiating event a Hamas attack on an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) jeep just days before Israel launched its operation. What was withheld from readers in this Zionist hasbara was the fact that this was an attack on IDF forces that had invaded Gaza and was in part retaliation for the IDF’s murder of a thirteen-year-old Palestinian boy shortly prior.
Furthermore, just the day before Israel launched its operation, once again Hamas had agreed to a ceasefire that was then violated by Israel. In fact, Israel took advantage of the opportunity created by Hamas’s acceptance of the ceasefire to draw out and assassinate a senior Hamas official, Ahmed al-Jabari one of the initiating events of its “Operation Pillar of Defense”. Israel’s Orwellian justification for this operation was that it was intended to re-establish calm — the very calm that was shattered by its launch of the operation and assassination of Jabari.
Conclusion
For peace and justice to be realized, the lies have to be exposed and the true nature of the conflict must come to light. There needs to be a paradigm shift in which it is no longer feasible for mainstream media outlets — which effectively serve the role of manufacturing consent for the US policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians — to mindlessly parrot US and Israeli government claims and peddle deceitful propaganda.
Zionist apologists for Israel’s behavior employ numerous hasbara talking points to try to justify its crimes. Knowing how to effectively counter the propaganda is key to effecting the necessary paradigm shift for peace to be achieved.
You as an individual can play an important role in helping to effect that paradigm shift.
Empower yourself with the knowledge you need to become an effective voice for peace.
Educate yourself and gain the confidence you need to speak up and correct those around you who have been misinformed about the true nature of the conflict.
Challenge the Zionist apologists when you encounter them on Facebook or Twitter and know how to destroy their propagandistic talking points with the truth.
If we want peace, government isn’t going to get the job done. It’s up to us. Go to it!
“carefully documented and highly informative” — Noam Chomsky
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“breaks new ground in ways that fundamentally alter our understanding of the conflict and how to resolve it” — Richard Falk
“as meticulously detailed as it is readable” — Max Blumenthal
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“sharp and original” — Steven Salaita
“a valuable resource for every scholar and activist” — Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
“a must for every bookshelf on the topics” — Don Liebich
“a bridge to a real peace process” — Mats Svensson
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Thank you, Jeremy, for providing this resource. I’ve often dreamed of a comprehensive database of counter-hasbara material categorized according to topic. You’re providing great impetus for this.
One point:
To say that Israel has a “right to exist” is effectively to assert that the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of Israel’s existence and the ethnic cleansing by which Israel actually came into being were legitimate.
The very name “Israel” was chosen by the zionists to propagate the impression of their divine entitlement to the Promised Land delineated by Scripture, an entitlement conditioned upon their faithful compliance with the terms of The Covenant as given in Dueteronomy 29. Originally, the term refers to the House of Israel, inclusive of descendants from all twelve tribes of Jacob. By this understanding, Israel does have a right to self-determination in the Holy Land that is explicitly recognized by our ~ Islamic ~ foundations of Law. Of course, this requires honoring the aforementioned terms.
None of this is to deny the veracity of your quoted statement. Rather, it is merely a reminder that ~ with a few exceptions ~ communities of Israel had enjoyed political autonomy throughout the Holy Land for over one thousand years after Umar assumed administrative responsibility of Jerusalem, and they enjoyed this because muslims were religiously obligated to secure their right to self-determination.
It was merely suzerainty that Israel lacked, and we now see how well that’s turned out in the last seven decades.
Glad you found the article valuable!
A very slick piece of propaganda, Jeremy, but unfortunately for you, no amount of propaganda can change the facts. Just to take one example, you claim Israel’s “blockade continues in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1860, which called on Israel to end it.”
The blockade is not mentioned ANYWHERE in the UNSC resolution 1860. Anyone here can go and read it for yourself, it’s only two pages long. Here’s what it does say though:
“to intensify efforts to provide arrangements and guarantees in Gaza in order to sustain a durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the sustained reopening of the crossing points on the basis of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.”
Let me reiterate: there is NOTHING in the relevant UN resolution that calls on Israel to end the blockade of Gaza. Zip. Zero. Nothing. You got the answers to that?
Yes, I advise people to do so, as anyone who does can see you can’t get basic facts straight. Anyone who reads Resolution 1860 for themselves can see that it calls for “the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including food, fuel, and medical treatment.”
Which is to say, it calls for an end to Israel’s illegal blockade.
Your article is a classic display of Palestinian privilege. Throughout history, blockades have been used as part of warfare. The British blockade of the Faulkland Islands, the Indian blockade of east Pakistan, the Allied blockades of Germany and Japan during WWII. Yet somehow, incredibly, only when the entitled Palestinian nation is the one being blockaded, is it suddenly “illegal” and “collective punishment.” It’s neither of those things, and it’s propaganda to claim otherwise.
War crimes have been committed throughout history; therefore to condemn war crimes against the Palestinians is to present a “display of Palestinian privilege”. <= Classic display of Zionist (il)logic attempting to justify Israel's crimes against the Palestinians.
Your premise is false. Nobody has argued that only when its the Palestinians being collectively punished is it a war crime. If the Irish were being collectively punished in the same way, that would be a war crime, too. Your premise being false, your conclusion is also false. It’s a completely uncontroversial point of fact under international law that Israel’s blockade is illegal.
When has a blockade been a “war crime” and “collective punishment,” besides when the entitled Palestinians are the ones being blockaded?
Article 42 of the UN Charter states that “Should the Security Council consider that measures provided for in Article 41 would be inadequate or have proved to be inadequate, it may take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. Such action may include demonstrations, blockade, and other operations by air, sea, or land forces of Members of the United Nations.”
So you decide, either the UN Charter states that the Security Council is allowed to commit a war crime and collective punishment, or you are just wrong when you say blockades are war crimes and collective punishment.
This is why the Palestinian cause hasn’t gotten anywhere in 60 years. It’s built on lie upon lie upon lie.
The definition of “war crime” and “collective punishment” under international law is not dependent upon the specific civilian population being targeted.
Yes, than you for pointing out that the UN Charter requires Israel to turn to international mechanisms available to it, as opposed to imposing a blockade unilaterally without any legal authority for doing so. (The Charter does not prejudice a state’s right to self defense, and a blockade may be implemented without UN authorization so long as it serves a specific military purpose and does not target the civilian population or otherwise cause disproportionate harm to the civilian population — as Israel’s blockade does.)
This is a strawman argument. I did not say that ALL blockades are ALWAYS war crimes and acts of collective punishment. Israel’s blockade, however, is collective punishment and therefore a war crime.
This is why the Zionist project is doomed to failure. It’s built upon willful ignorance and deception. In the end, those of us interested in peace and justice will persevere. We may have lost battles, but we will win the war because we have truth on our side.
What makes Israel’s blockade different from all the other blockades in history and therefore a collective punishment and a war crime? Besides that Israel is blockading the extremely entitled and privileged Palestinians?
I’ve already identified that criteria: Israel’s blockade targets the civilian population. Hence it is an illegal policy of collective punishment — a war crime.
How does Israel’s blockade “target the civilian population” in a way other blockades don’t? You’re not making any sense.
Israel controls Gaza’s borders, airspace, and territorial waters, blocking the import and export of civilian goods and the movement of people. It’s a simple empirical fact that it targets the civilian population. Hence, it is collective punishment by definition. Ergo, it is illegal, by definition.
Nor is this outcome accidental or incidental. It’s the purpose. Here’s Sharon adviser Dov Weisglass on the purpose of the blockade:
Here’s the US State Department confirming this purpose of the blockade in an embassy cable to Secretary Clinton, et al:
This, again, is a war crime, of course.
Jeremy. You need to stop and take a step back. With every post you show yourself to have more and more of an anti-Israel double standard.
You say that Israel’s blockade is collective punishment because it blocks the import and export of civilian goods and the movement of people. First of all, it’s debatable that that is what Israel’s blockade does. But more important that is exactly what, to give just one example, the British blockade of Nazi Germany did during WWII. The blockade was extremely comprehensive and stopped even foodstuffs, which the Israeli blockade does not. As a result of the British blockade, hundreds of thousands of Germans died of starvation. The British blockade was not considered a war crime or collective punishment. It is an absurd example of Palestinian privilege to declare that the Israeli blockade, which has caused NO ONE to die of starvation, to be worse than the British one.
My God, man, in your piece above you defend the Egyptian closure of the Strait of Tiran to Israeli CIVILIAN shipping! So how come it’s OK for the British and the Egyptians to blockade the import of civilian goods, but not for Israel?
I propose that, on the contrary, it’s you who reveal your anti-Palestinian hypocrisy with every comment. The difference is I can actually demonstrate your hypocrisy and prejudice by pointing out the factual or logical errors in your arguments. Example:
No, this is not debatable. It’s an empirical and uncontroversial fact — and you reveal your prejudice by denying this fact. Further example of your factual/logical errors:
Here you resort to strawman argumentation. Of course, I have not made the argument that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is “worse” than the British blockade of Germany.
Once again, the simple fact remains that targeting the civilian population for collective punishment is a violation of international law — regardless of which state is implementing the blockade and regardless of which civilian population they are targeting for punishment.
It follows that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is illegal. Next example of your factual/logical erros:
In fact, I did not defend Egypt’s closure of the straits to Israeli shipping. I merely provided Egypt’s perspective on it, and didn’t even offer my own view of it. If you’d like to know, my view is that Egypt’s actions were in violation of international law, but this is open to debate.
There’s a distinction, of course, between what Egypt did and what Israel is doing. Egypt did not control Israel’s borders, airspace, and territorial waters, and it simply did not implement a blockade to stop goods and people from moving in and out of Israel.
“No, this is not debatable. It’s an empirical and uncontroversial fact — and you reveal your prejudice by denying this fact. ”
In 2010, the Israeli cabinet ruled that all non-military items can enter Gaza freely. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3907978,00.html. Every day humanitarian supplies enter Gaza by the truckload. Your claim that Israel’s blockade prevents the import of civilian goods is false.
“Of course, I have not made the argument that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is “worse” than the British blockade of Germany.”
Of course you are making that argument, because you’re saying that Israel’s blockade of Gaza should be considered collective punishment and a war crime even though no one considered the far worse British blockade to be one. There is a precedent set by the Allies that blockades, even ones that restrict the import of civilian goods, are not collective punishment or war crimes or illegal. You’re simply wrong.
“I merely provided Egypt’s perspective on it, and didn’t even offer my own view of it.”
Anyone can read the article above and see that isn’t true. You said that Egypt’s closure of the strait was not considered aggression under international law and should not have been considered a casus belli. It boggles the mind that a nation can inflict a war crime and collective punishment on another but such an act is not “aggression.”
“it simply did not implement a blockade to stop goods and people from moving in and out of Israel.”
Of course it did. Egypt’s blockade of the Strait of Tiran stopped goods and people from moving in and out of Israel. That’s an empirical fact.
What is false is your claim that Israel doesn’t block the import of civilian goods.
That is a lie.
It’s true that Israel eased its restrictions on imports of civilian goods into Gaza following its murder of civilians aboard the Mavi Marmara in international waters in May 2010. For example, it began allowing sage, vinegar, and chocolate in.
But, contrary to your claim, it did not end those restrictions. Instead, it just redefined them as “dual use” items, meaning items that could hypothetically serve some military purpose.
So, for example, Israel continued to block civilian goods like: fresh meat, plaster, tar, wood for construction, cement, iron, glucose, industrial salt, ropes for fishing, notebooks, goats, cattle, etc.
So once again we see that you are the one incapable of getting your facts straight.
No, I have not made the argument that Israel’s blockade of Gaza is “worse” than the UK’s blockade of Germany. But it’s highly instructive that you feel it necessary to resort to such strawman argumentation to sustain your position.
Anyone can read the article above and see that isn’t true. You said that Egypt’s closure of the strait was not considered aggression under international law and should not have been considered a casus belli.
To point out facts regarding international law with respect to Egypt’s closure of the straits is not to “defend” what Egypt did. As I’ve said, in my view, this action was wrong and contrary to international law. Some “defense”!
But once again, it’s instructive you need to resort to strawman argumentation rather than addressing my actual arguments.
One warning: comments such as these violate the terms of use of this website. Serious debate is encouraged; trolls are not welcome. Any further offenses will result in you being banned. You are welcome to cease this behavior and instead substantively address my actual arguments.
False. We are talking about a total blockade here. Again, Egypt did not control Israel’s borders, airspace, and territorial waters and block imports via this control. In fact, to quote from Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren, “few Israeli-flag vessels in fact traversed the Straits”. Only about 5% of Israel’s trade passed through Eilat. Egypt did not, needless to say, implement a naval blockade along Israel’s Mediterranean coast to punish the civilian population of Israel by preventing civilian goods from entering.
Point being, the situations are incomparable.
who the hell is the Israeli cabinet to decide what goes and what doesn’t go into Gaza in the first place? Israel is a lunatic asylum run by its own inmates!
the criminal and illegal Israeli blockade is debatable only in your head..your analogy of Britain and Germany is really dumb to put it mildly..50% of the population of Gaza are under age 25 and defenseless civilians, they have no army, no navy no air force..on the other hand, Isreal is supposed to have the 4th strongest army in the world…what the heck are you drinking? Food is going through or not, israel has no business blockading Gaza, every few years going there committing one massacre after another.
What is it so difficult for you to understand? I live in Jerusalem, I am Palestinian, I am not allowed to go to Gaza. You, are not allowed to go to Gaza, Israelis are not allowed to go, tourists are not allowed..none of the Gazans are allowed ..ships that come to help Gazans are shot at by the terrorist Israeli army..Gaza is blockaded..no one in Gaza is allowed to leave..Gaza has 2 million people living in what amounts to the largest open prison in the world….2 million civilians are targeted in this blocjükade..get it?
ThisIsPalestine. Troll much ?
Palestinians are the true semites . Israelis are fake semites. That is all we need to know.
We are sick of the lies and the idea our tax dollars pay for the lies and genocide to Palestinians, the true semites, by the most racist element on the planet.= We Must Stop payin . .
“Israelis are fake semites.”
That’s not a very nice thing to say about the millions of Israeli Arabs.
It’s also an invalid generalization with respect to Israeli Jews. Certainly, there are non-Semites who’ve converted to Judaism, but strictly speaking in terms of genetics, Jews are a Semitic people — as are Arabs.
It’s a shame the kind of Jew hatred anti Zionism attracts.
Yes, very regrettable. And it harms the Palestinian cause.
What are you talking about, didn’t they teach you in Zionist school how good it is for Zionism to have Anti Jewish (not that we are) ..Your prophet Hetzl is known to have said ““It is essential that the sufferings of Jews.. . become worse. . . this will assist in realization of our plans. . .I have an excellent idea. . . I shall induce anti-Semites to liquidate Jewish wealth. . . The anti-Semites will assist us thereby in that they will strengthen the persecution and oppression of Jews. The anti-Semites shall be our best friends”. (From his Diary, Part I, pp. 16…
like you give a shit about the PALESTINIANS who had NO choice but to be an Israeli citizens!
Playing on words?……humorous.
Second you 100%.
Ah, so when you said that the UN resolution “called on Israel to end [the blockade]” that wasn’t entirely true, was it? The resolution doesn’t say that, you just creatively interpreted it to say what you wanted to say.
And that’s pretty hypocritical considering in this article you yourself said “UN resolutions are not open to unilateral interpretation, but must be understand according to the will of the Security Council as a whole.” What evidence do you have that the will of the Security Council is to end the blockade?
You are aware that the UN is made up of grown-ups, right Jeremy? If they wanted Israel to end the blockade, why didn’t they just say that? Over the past decade, humanitarian assistance has never come through the sea (with the exception of the illegal propaganda flotillas that most of the time don’t even carry aid) only through the land border crossings with which we are all familiar. How do you know that wasn’t what the UN was referring to? You shouldn’t make claims without evidence, Jeremy.
Yes, it was entirely true, as I’ve just shown you.
They did, as I’ve just shown you.
You didn’t show anyone anything, except some hypocritically creative interpretations. I suggest pro-Palestinian people on this board look elsewhere for help with their propaganda.
The UN’s call for Israel to cease targeting the civilian population with its blockade is not open to interpretation.
Correct, but no such call is made in the resolution you cited. On the contrary, the UN tells Israel and all other member states to continue restricting the flow of illicit arms into the Gaza Strip, aka blockading the Strip.
Resolution 1860 unambiguously calls on Israel to cease targeting the civilian population with its blockade. As for where it calls on measures to prevent illicit arms trafficking, the very same sentence next states the need “to ensure the sustained reopening of the crossing points” between Israel and Gaza.
That is, it reiterates its call for Israel to end its unilaterally imposed blockade that targets the civilian population for collective punishment in violation of international law.
“That is, ” No, no, no “that is”. No interpretation. You said UN resolutions cannot be interpreted, so don’t interpret it for us.
Resolution 1860 never mentions Israel’s blockade. The word “blockade” never appears in it. You are doing a truly terrible job combating this “Zionist argument.”
I think we can agree on something. The UN resolution may or may not call on Israel to stop a blockade that “targets the civilian population” but it also calls on Israel to maintain a blockade to prevent illicit arms trafficking. Agreed?
Correct. UN resolutions are not open to interpretation. Hence my observation that Resolution 1860 unambiguously calls on Israel to end its illegal blockade of Gaza.
Your logic, “The resolution doesn’t contain the word ‘blockade’, therefore it doesn’t call on Israel to end its blockade of Gaza” is a ridiculous non sequitur.
Contrary to what you are suggestion, the part of Resolution 1860 speaking of the need to end illicit arms trafficking does not authorize Israel’s blockade. Again, this call is made of Member States, and the next part of that very same sentence reiterates the call for Israel to end its blockade.
Your observation is flawed from the outset as Resolution 1860 never contains the word “blockade.” You are fooling no one.
“the part of Resolution 1860 speaking of the need to end illicit arms trafficking does not authorize Israel’s blockade. Again, this call is made of Member States,”
Israel is a Member State, and how do you propose Israel stop illicit arms trafficking other than a blockade?
Another question for you: Egypt is blockading Gaza just as much as Israel is. Is Egypt’s blockade also “illegal”, a “war crime” and “collective punishment”?
And I’ve already pointed out that this argument of yours is a non sequitur. It doesn’t follow from the fact the word “blockade” doesn’t appear in the text that the UN did not call on Israel to end its illegal blockade. As anyone can see by reading the resolution for themselves, it did.
By working through the UN, as opposed to acting unilaterally in violation of international law (and Resolution 1960).
Yes, Egypt has absolutely been complicit in Israel’s illegal collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza, and Egyptian leaders should also be held accountable for their participation in this war crime.
“It doesn’t follow from the fact the word “blockade” doesn’t appear in the text that the UN did not call on Israel to end its illegal blockade. As anyone can see by reading the resolution for themselves, it did.”
Anyone reading the resolutions themselves can see that the blockade is not mentioned.
“By working through the UN, as opposed to acting unilaterally in violation of international law (and Resolution 1960).”
By working through the UN how?
Anyone reading Resolution 1860 for themselves can see that it calls for an end to Israel’s illegal blockade of civilian goods into Gaza.
Once again, it calls for “the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including food, fuel, and medical treatment” and reiterates the need for Israel “to ensure the sustained reopening of the crossing points”.
I just told you, specifically.
Infinite number of thumbs down.
Naaaaah, he’s doing rather fine as evidenced by your concern trolling. Now remember, scum like you burn in hell forever after the day of standing. So, enjoy this measly life on earth while you’re alive. It is your Paradise to what comes next. :)
1000 thumbs up.
100 thumbs up.
Jeremy, you just forced out one of those Hasbara Trolls from under his rock.
Well said.
“If a thief steals a $100 from you and then says he will give you back $91 if you agree to certain other demands requiring you to surrender your rights, would you describe it as a “generous offer” or a “concession”?”
Considering the West Bank is not and has never been Palestinian territory, is the thief in this analogy the Palestinians? They’re the ones trying to “generously compromise” with only $91 when in reality before the Oslo Accords they owned none of the $100. They should be grateful with what parts West Bank they can get through peaceful negotiations. If it wasn’t for Israel’s defeat of Jordan in 1967, they would be living in annexed Jordanian territory and have no “rights” at all.
It is a completely uncontroversial point of fact under international law that all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem is “occupied Palestinian territory” (quoting the ICJ).
Conversely, not one inch of the West Bank is Israeli territory.
The ICJ doesn’t have the power to allocate territory, and references within one non-binding ICJ ruling is not anywhere close to enough to grant legal ownership over territory. The West Bank was never legally acquired by the Palestinian nation and what the ICJ has to say is legally and morally irrelevant.
I didn’t argue otherwise. This is a strawman argument. The fact remains that it is a completely uncontroversial point of fact under international law that all of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is “occupied Palestinian territory” (again to quote the ICJ).
That is, the West Bank isn’t “occupied Palestinian territory” because the ICJ said so; rather, the ICJ said so because the West Bank is “occupied Palestnian territory” under international law. It was merely making an observation on a point of fact, not “allocating” any territory or “granting” legal ownership.
What remarkably self-defeating logic! Oh, how much less so for Israel! Again, it’s another completely uncontroversial point of fact under international law that all of Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank have been constructed in violation of international law.
Which international law grants the Palestinian nation control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem? The only international law I can think of that’s relevant is the law that says territory cannot be acquired using military force, and Palestinians have certainly never negotiated for control over the territory.
You can’t get right answers asking wrong questions.
The right to self-determination is “granted” to the Palestinians by any international law. International law merely recognizes this inherent and universal right.
But thanks for pointing out that under international law, the acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible — hence the requirement for Israel to withdraw from the territories occupied since 1967.
The right of self determination? How does the right of self-determination equate to Palestinian control of the entire West Bank and east Jerusalem? The right of self-determination just says peoples can control their own political status, it says nothing about territorial acquisition.
But I’m glad you acknowledge the right of self-determination is an inherent and universal right, and therefore your second point that Israel has no right to exist is factually impaired just like the rest. It is an anti-Jewish double standard to say that Palestinians have the right of self-determination and a state of their own but Jews do not. Agreed?
How does it not? Better yet, you should be asking: How does the right to self-determination equate to Israeli control of any part of the West Bank and all of Jerusalem?
The answer, of course, is: it doesn’t.
Non sequitur fallacy. Your conclusion certainly doesn’t follow from the premise. States don’t have rights.
“How does it not?”
LOL nice response. The right of self-determination is defined in the UN Charter and simply states “All peoples have the right to self-determination; by virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” Nothing about “by virtue of that right do they take land they think they’re entitled to.”
> How does the right to self-determination equate to Israeli control of any part of the West Bank and all of Jerusalem?
The problem for you is that I never claimed the right to self-determination equates to Israeli control of any part of the West Bank and all of Jerusalem. I don’t consider the West Bank Israeli territory. But you claimed it was Palestinian territory because of the right of self determination, which is absurd and extremely factually impaired. As usual.
> Non sequitur fallacy. Your conclusion certainly doesn’t follow from the premise. States don’t have rights.
Wrong again. States do have rights, like the right of sovereignty, but that wasn’t my point. My point was Jews have the right of self-determination. Do you agree with me about that at least?
You are right: the right to self-determination doesn’t entitle anyone to take land belonging to others. That’s why Israel’s settlements are illegal under international law!
The Palestinians were living on and working the land before Israel even existed. Israel came into being by ethnically cleansing most of the Arab population from their homes.
So your arguments with respect to self-determination are patently self-defeating.
Yet you are trying to defend the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
Every government on the planet other than Israel’s own recognizes the West Bank as occupied Palestinian territory. The absurd and extremely factually impaired position is Israel’s.
No, as a simple logical truism, they don’t — humans do.
No such thing as a state’s “right” to “sovereignty”. Sovereignty belongs to the people, who are masters over the government, not vice versa.
How vain of you to suggest I don’t when I have already explicitly stated that it’s a universal right.
“the right to self-determination doesn’t entitle anyone to take land belonging to others”
Great, so we agree that the right of self-determination does not entitle the Palestinians to one inch of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“The Palestinians were living on and working the land before Israel even existed. ”
So were Jews. Jews were living on and working the land in the West Bank before Israel exist, and before the Arab invaders colonized it in the 7th century. Fortunately for you, the Arab armies ethnically cleansed Jews from the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1948. How convenient that the land becomes indisputably Palestinian now that all of the non-Palestinians were removed by force.
Your argument is a great way for Israel to justify annexed east Jerusalem. Jews were living in and working in Jerusalem for centuries.
“Yet you are trying to defend the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.”
I haven’t said anything about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
“Every government on the planet other than Israel’s own recognizes the West Bank as occupied Palestinian territory.”
So now you’ve switched from a ridiculous argument about the right of self-determination to an argument ad populum. I’m glad you seem to be admitting that the right of self-determination is not a right to territory, even if you’re Palestinian.
“No, as a simple logical truism, they don’t — humans do….No such thing as a state’s “right” to “sovereignty”. Sovereignty belongs to the people, who are masters over the government, not vice versa”
You’re just wrong. Let’s refer again to your favorite place, the UN. In the UN Charter “Article 2 (4) of the Charter prohibits the threat or use of force and calls on all Members to respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of other States. ” Sure sounds like a right to me.
“How vain of you to suggest I don’t when I have already explicitly stated that it’s a universal right.”
Well, considering you just ducked the question and declared in your article above the expression of the Jewish right of self-determination (a state) has no right to exist, it seemed like a reasonable question. Can you answer it directly this time? Do you agree with me that Jews have the right of self-determination?
I’ve grown weary of your incessant strawman argumentation, a trolling behavior that violates the terms of use of comments section of this site.
What I said was: “You are right: the right to self-determination doesn’t entitle anyone to take land belonging to others. That’s why Israel’s settlements are illegal under international law! The Palestinians were living on and working the land before Israel even existed. Israel came into being by ethnically cleansing most of the Arab population from their homes.”
Naturally, the conclusion does not follow that the Palestinians have no rights to any of the land in the West Bank. Quite the contrary, your behavior of falsely attributing this conclusion to me or my logic notwithstanding.
Indeed, there was a minority Jewish population that had been living in Palestine and working the land in the West Bank prior to 1948. And, indeed, they were ethnically cleansed from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
However, I have not argued that the land they formerly owned now is rightfully the Palestinians simply by virtue of them no longer living there. On the contrary, I fully support the right of Jews or their heirs to reclaim the lands from which they were ethnically cleansed.
You’re the only hypocrite here, with your denial that Palestinians share that equal right to return to the homes from which they were ethnically cleansed — the “Jewish state” of Israel having been established by means of ethnically cleansing 700,000 Arabs from their homes in Palestine.
Indeed, the root cause of the conflict is the rejection of the right of the majority inhabitants of Palestine to self-determination for the explicit purpose of facilitating the Zionists’ racist, colonialist project of establish a “Jewish state” in Palestine’s place with prejudice to the rights of the Arabs.
As were Arabs. Hence your conclusion doesn’t follow.
You just argued that the Palestinians have no right to even “one inch” of land on the basis of the right to self-determination while arguing that the state of Israel has a right to East Jerusalem on the basis of the right to self-determination.
This is what’s known as “hypocrisy”.
To observe a point of fact under international law recognized as such by the entire planet is not a logical fallacy. And simply denying this fact is not a counter-argument.
Another wearying strawman argument. On the contrary, property rights are a natural extension of the right to self-determination.
Well, you just don’t understand what a “right” is, then, because it doesn’t follow from this article of the UN Charter that states have rights.
But I did not duck your question. I answered it plainly, and will repeat my plain answer yet again: The right to self-determination is a universal right.
Unlike you, I do not apply that principle selectively.
Once again, there is no such thing as a state’s “right to exist”. The proper framework for discussion is the right to self-determination. And Israel’s establishment was premised upon the rejection of this right for the majority Arab population, 700,000 of whom were ethnically cleansed from their homes in order for the demographically “Jewish state” to come into being.
No, the thieves are the Zionist Jews who came in from around the world like aliens, murdered the native Palestinian population, ethnic cleansed more than half of their people, and destroyed their villages claiming the GOD gave them the land..the funny thing is that most of these Zionist who invoke God as their real estate agent were and are atheists an dsome were communists..Golda Meir, Chaim Whitezman, Ben Gurion, Moshe Dayan…..!!
Jeremy R. Hammond,
You have plenty of support on here but we are being blocked by the genocidal creeps. God bless you . Yeshua is with you. And we know the creeps hate him.
Shalom aleichem!
Genocidal, insane ZioNazi israeli trolls = ThisIsPalestine, Brownstudent = parasites to humanity.
Thanks, once again Jeremy for sorting the Wheat from the Chaff”.
Decades of Hasbara propaganda has entrenched mythical nonsense within unthinking Zionist Israeli supporters, and they will be very reluctant to implement any changes to their beliefs, the USA has been, since about 1944, the main target of Hasbara propaganda and the USA seems willing to swallow whatever Hasbara serves.
USA double standards with regard to Zionist Israel is well documented, and well ignored by supporters of Zionist Israel, I can give you a typical example;
In June and August 1980, the UN Security Council declared that the (Zionist) Israeli annexation of Jerusalem was “Null and Void” under international law.
In December 1981, the UN Security Council declared that the (Zionist) Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights was “Null and Void” under international law.
In August 1990, the UN Security Council declared that Iraq`s annexation of Kuwait was “Null and Void” under international law.
For the third declaration – but not for the first two – the USA would insist on the strict application of international law.
Arabs (and Iranians) already knew, of course, that the USA applies one rule of law for Zionist Israel, a quite different one for Non-Zionist Israel.
Unconditional USA Financial, Military and Diplomatic support, allows Zionist Israel to “Get Away With Murder” it can`t continue.
USA’s vote on Jerusalem was a mistake.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=33094
You will find that most US Presidents since 1967 believed in an undivided Jerusalem, did not believe that the 1967 borders were hard borders that Israel must retreat to, and did not believe in a separate Palestinian State.
Of course, you will blame that on the Jewish lobby.
Curious what relevance you think your opinion has to what Mike said, which I will reiterate:
Mike’s main thesis is that the US ignores Zionist Israel’s transgressions, but applies a harsher rule of law for others.
I was simply giving him more examples on how this is so true.
Well, those points certainly do support Mike’s observation that US policy is utterly hypocritical.
I was simply supporting Mike’s comment,, giving him even more fuel, more examples on how the US is under the influence of those evil Zionists :)
US policymakers don’t need to be “under the influence” of Zionists when they are themselves Zionists.
dcarde writes that that happened to Palestinians in 1948 was “Not quite an ethnic cleansing”. He means it was not a complete ethnic cleansing, in that only most of the Arab population was ethnically cleansed, not all of it.
He is correct that East Jerusalem was ethnically cleansed of Jews. In fact, around 2,000 Jews were expelled from the Jewish quarter of the Old City. By that time, 30,000 Arab inhabitants of West Jerusalem had been ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces.
He pins responsibility for the 1948 war on the Arabs, who, he asserts, “left no other option than conflict”. Of course, the same could also be said of the Zionists, whose aim from the beginning was to dispossess and disenfranchise the Arab population of Palestine, and readers may refer to the above article for facts to support that opposing view.
Regarding the 1967 war, he asserts that Egypt knew if it closed the straits and Suez Canal to Israeli shippng, Israel would view it as an act of war. Nevertheless, it was Israel that started the war on the morning of June 5 with an armed attack on Egypt amounting to the crime of aggression under international law, and Israel’s own intelligence had assessed that Egypt would not attack Israel. He otherwise repeats the same myth addressed in the article, that the attack was “preemptive”. It was not for the reasons given.
He asserts that the documentary record on UN Resolution 242 “will tell a very different story” from what I wrote above. It does not. Rather, the documentary record tells the story precisely as I have related it above, and anyone wishing to read the details of that record may do so in the reference chapter of my book Obstacle to Peace. In sum, the Security Council was unanimous that 242 required Israel to fully withdrawal to the positions it held prior to June 5.
He asserts that Palestinians “don’t want a two state solution” and otherwise proceeds to parrot some of the very myths I dispelled in the above article. No need to repeat. See the article and references provided, particularly Chapter 2 of Obstacle to Peace, titled “The ‘Peace Process'”, which goes into extensive detail about how these claims are lies.
dcarde would do well to read the book:
http://www.obstacletopeace.com
Yes…thx for clarifying. I agree…I should have said: “it was not a complete Ethnic Cleansing.” However, your assertion of “most [Arabs cleansed]” is rather subjective….and I’ll simply point out this:
If, at end of conflict, 35% of entire Israel population is Arab, you would probably not characterize that as “most” of the Arab population expelled, unless you were trying to bake bias into your Answer.
************************
On your comment about Arab cleansings of Jews and vice-versa, let their be no doubt…….the Jews were about 10 times more successful in the civil and following international war than the Arabs. About 40,000 Jews were ethnically cleansed in the West Bank and Gaza during the 1948 War…virtually 100% of that Jewish population at gunpoint. And during, and in subsequent years, virtually the entire population of Middle Eastern Jews in surrounding Arab countries were decimated to near zero (about one million). That “Near Zero” expulsion in both cases has a special name: Genocide.
Let’s face it, in every conflict in human history on ethnic competition over territory, humans pretty much have always behaved in a similar manner, especially where combatants are in close contact with civilians. The Jews were no better nor worse than any other group involved in ethnic conflict, including those Arabs during that war.
**********************
On your comment about blame for the war…….you talk about the Zionists “AIM.”
This really is the driver for this whole discussion……and what appears to be the drive behind your personal agenda to delegitimize Israel today.
You feel that what those evil Zionists did 70 years ago (1948) needs be undone.
A big portion of my opening comment on your article was a discussion about ignoring words from individuals and looking at their actual actions and reactions instead …..the ONLY real way to judge history.
So you take the quotes from a few individuals, use a wide brush to paint a hugely pluralistic group of people as evil, ignoring what they actually did over all those years.
And you use that label to justify that those Jews had exactly zero rights, and suggest that the only viable outcome that should have happened in 1948 is expulsion and likely death for generations of Jews who had built their lives there (i.e. the ONLY Arab position beginning in 1937 and up to UN vote in 1947).
Simply take a look at the actual history. The first half of a 70 year immigration wave of Jewish immigration (1878-1948) would mostly come with, at most, vague thoughts of Zionism. Herzl’s book on “Zionism” that explicitly calls for a Jewish nation came 20 years after the beginning of that wave. And even after 1897, those immigrating Jews had no idea that the Ottoman Empire, in place for 400 years, would abruptly disappear in 1919. Those Jews were just like every other European in flight to secular countries during the same exact period (the largest migration in human history)…..simply looking for a better life. Most of those 60 million migrating Europeans ended up in N. and S. America, including 97% of European Jews.
And even after the Ottomans disappeared and the British took over, “Zionism” encompassed a wide range of attitudes…from a fringe fiercely determined to make their own state at any cost, to pragmatists that simply wanted equality, and even anti-Zionists. By the 1930’s the World Zionist Organization was dominated by anti-Zionists. Of course, you do know that real life does not exhibit in bipolar extremes, yet that is the brush you wish to paint those Jews for purposes of delegitimization.
So, simply look at their actual actions and reactions of those Jews. They accepted a single state solution as a minority in Churchill’s offer in 1922 (it was clear by then that the notoriously ambiguous Balfour Declaration was scrapped).
They immigrated peacefully over that 70 year period, under the rule of law, disputes heard in Ottoman, then British courts, much like all those other Europeans immigrating into secular countries elsewhere, And, just like all those other migrants, they irritated the native populations in their new host countries. That is just the way it is in secular countries.
Even if the British had revoked equal rights for Jews on day one of their administration, those Jews already there in 1919 had as much right as the Arabs to be there…….and as much right to continue to be absolutely equal under the law as the Arab majority, as it had been under the Ottomans.
The Arabs simply wanted to turn the clock back 80 years to the pre-Tanzimat days of the Ottoman reign. By the mid-1800’s the Ottomans had secular laws, absolutely equal rights for all citizens, secular courts, women’s rights and even gay rights….all in the mid-1800’s. Sharia Law, the dhimmi contract, all revoked.
The Arabs wanted to return to that era….they would not sit in a representative legislature with even a single Jew, they wanted to outlaw sale of property to legal Jewish citizens, and they refused even strong restrictions on Jewish immigration…they wanted absolutely zero.
As an analogy, it would be as if here, in the USA, our government disappeared one day, and the majority decided that it wanted to form a new government that did not allow Hispanics to join the government, outlawed selling property to Hispanics, and refused immigration going forward of even a single ethnic Hispanic person.
We would call that racist to the extreme. I find it amusing that the far right (neo-nazis) and the far left (you) weirdly come about in a circle with nearly the same views.
****************
Concerning the 1967 war, I would like to see some primary sources, preferably legal (not political) that say that Israel’s preemptive attack was a “Crime of Aggression.” I don’t know of any UN Security Council resolutions, ICC nor ICJ actions on this matter.
The Straits of Tiran were a major issue since the early 1950’s, had a big hand in the 1956 Sinai War, and was the driver for the 1967 War.
Before the 1956 War, most Western Nations had already agreed that Customary International Law would grant Israel the legal right to pass its ships in the Gulf of Aqaba through the Tiran Straits. And certainly after the war, there was heated debate, most notably in the UN about this. Access to an enclosed inland sea (Gulf of Aqaba) with one point of entry can be completely controlled by one country ONLY if that country is the sole sovereign of the entire perimeter of that sea. However, that Gulf has four nations on its perimeter: Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi. Every country has a right to enter and exit that sea.
By 1957, nearly all Western countries agreed that the Straits of Tiran were an International Waterway, and the only point of uncertainty was whether Israel had a right to pass warships through that straight. In 1957, at the UN, the US, France, Britain, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, New Zealand, Australia, Norway, and Denmark all went on formal record that the Straits of Tiran were an international waterway. UN Document here:
http://repository.un.org/bitstream/handle/11176/290054/A_PV.667-EN.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
(page 1288; item 56 )
So I highly doubt that you will find anything but some “political opinion” about a “Crime of Aggression.”
http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1556&context=iclr
Now even if there was some uncertainty on that matter……Israel made very public, after 1956, that closing those Straits again would ABSOLUTELY BE AN ACT OF WAR. Read those two 11th session UN transcripts in detail. Those Straits were a massive issue.
Israel’s Foreign Minister, Gola Meir publicly delcared at the UN General Assembly on March 1, 1957 that “interference, by armed force, with ships of the Israeli flag exercising free and innocent passage in the Gulf of Aqaba and through the Straits of Tiran” would be treated as casus belli.
page 1276 (item 13)
https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/NL5/703/38/pdf/NL570338.pdf?OpenElement
Nasser of Egypt was fully aware that Israel would consider closing those straits (again) an act of war.
He was warned multiple times before he closed them. He was warned after he closed them. He knew it would mean war.
According to Anwar Sadat, then third in Egypt’s ruling hierarchy, Nasser well understood the significance of his declaration. In his memoirs, Sadat wrote:
“With the Straits of Tiran closed, war became a certainty.”
Sadat autobiography “In Search of Identity” page 173
*******************************
On UN 242, read the Wikipedia article. You will find the exact interviews with the very authors that created that document. UN 242 was intentionally ambiguous on borders, because ALL parties, Israelis, Arabs, USA, UK considered those borders temporary armistice lines from 1948, and indefensible.
Not sure why anybody needs to read your (likely) propaganda filled book when they can easily find primary sources on the Internet.
********************
…and same true about Palestinian refusals for their own state. Read Bill Clinton’s autobiography, and Dennis Ross’s book about that failure in 2000. People who were actually there, in every discussion.
Your comment:
“dcarde would do well to read the book:” (i.e. your book)
With all due respect, I avoid biased books on either side of this conflict. I choose to read books from true academics that have at least attempted to base their narrative on actual history.
My top recommendation would be a new college textbook co-authored by a Palestinian, and Egyptian, and an Israeli:
https://www.amazon.com/Arabs-Israelis-Conflict-Peacemaking-Middle/dp/113729082X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482128041&sr=8-1&keywords=arabs+and+israelis+conflict+and+peacemaking+in+the+middle+east
No, the it is not subjective. It is a fact that most of the Arab population was ethnically cleansed.
False.
You are engaging in strawman argumentation.
“Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations, as set out in this Definition.”
http://www.un-documents.net/a29r3314.htm
Yes. And it remains true that Egypt did not commit armed aggression against Israel, while Israel did commit armed aggression against Egypt by starting the war on the morning of June 5.
1. How do you resolve the basic math here in your assertion that “most” Arabs were ethnically cleansed in 1948 from what would become Israel. With 20% of the population today as Arabs, and the massive influx of Jews following the war (doubled between 1949-1953 with Middle Eastern Jews and Holocaust survivors), then the massive wave of Jews from the Soviet Union in the 1990’s, the percentage of Arabs by end of 1948 war MUST be higher. My 35% Arabs remaining, albeit a guess, may actually be low.
2. There are few sources for the depopulation of Jewish towns during the 1948 war. Wikipedia has a partial list, and I do know there are more towns than shown on that list (Masada, Sha’ar HaGolan, etc.):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_villages_depopulated_during_the_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_conflict#Jewish_villages_2
I understand that the UNRWA had estimated 40,000 Jews expelled during the conflict, I will investigate further these sources for an exact count.
3. On my strawman argumentation. REALLY? You devote an entire section of your original article to claiming that the creation of Israel itself in 1948 lacks legitimacy….part of your agenda to deny the legitimacy of Israel today. Indirectly, you are denying the Jews any rights leading into 1948. The Arabs left no other option than conflict in 1948. They rejected not only the two-state solution, they rejected a single Arab state where generations of Jews would be allowed to remain (UNSCOP Minority Report). Racist to the extreme, and ridiculously impractical given the facts on the ground.
Yes, the huge bulk of Palestinians were innocent victims in that mess in 1948……. but the Jews are in third place as the victimizers in that play. Non-elected, inflexible, ignorant leaders stand in first place, with the Arab states in close second place.
Just curious what you think the UN should have recommended in 1947? What brilliant solution would you have come up with?
4. The UN never treated the 1967 war as a Crime of Aggression. If they had considered it a crime of aggression, UN SC 242 would have been issued under Chapter VII in the UN Charter, which is reserved for Acts of Aggression (like Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait). UN SC 242 was issued under Chapter VI of the UN Charter…..reserved for pacific settlement of disputes. Simply, the UN treated Israel’s actions as defensive in that war (whether you agree or not). FACT.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_VII_of_the_United_Nations_Charter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_VI_of_the_United_Nations_Charter
5. No, UN 242 did not require Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders. It required negotiated settlement to mutual agreed defensible borders. The international community rejected proposed resolutions in 1976 and 1980 to remove the ambiguity in UN 242 on this point.
6. Again……I tend to not rely on this isolated quotes. Example would be Shlomo Ben-Ami. A quote taken completely out of context in an interview where his thought was cut short by Norman Finkelstein. Read Shlomo’s actual book…..and you will not see that quote in the book, nor even that thought.
Shlomo Ben-Ami has EXACTLY the same opinion as Bill Clinton and Dennis Ross: Arafat walked away from a fantastic deal, unlikely to ever be repeated. Your ridiculous assertion of a West Bank divided as Bantustans is just gross misinformation.
(that was at the end of Camp David- July 2000. 97% of West Bank in Dec 2000’s Clinton Parameters)
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1e579b82e3851c28ea07b5cb8bc4c042e3a33a3f6734c37550f083d4210e9634.jpg
[Ben-Ami, Shlomo. Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy (p. 246 & 260). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.]
Again….I urge those new to this conflict the time to read into the details and not accept emotionally charged, short and extremely biased narratives such as Jeremy’s.
A quick read from Shlomo Ben-Ami interview:
https://webhome.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israel/ben-ami.html
Your questions assumes there is some kind of contradiction in basic math when there is not. By “most” I simply mean more than half. Again: most of the Arab population of Palestine was ethnically cleansed in order for the “Jewish state” to come into being.
False. This, again, is a strawman argument, and engaging in such fallacius argumentation is a violation of the terms of use of the comments section as it constitutes trolling behavior. You’ve been warned.
False. First, they were right to reject the racist, colonialist partition plan since it was premised upon the explicit rejection of their right to self-determination. Second, they did not reject a state where Jews would be allowed to remain as a minority. On the contrary, what the Arabs proposed was that the independence of Palestine be recognized and a democratic government established under a constitution guaranteeing representation for the minority Jewish population and respect for their rights, and it was the Zionists who rejected that democratic solution in favor of ethnically cleansing Palestine of Arabs to establish the “Jewish state” in its place.
Respect the equal rights of the Arabs, of course.
Israel’s attack on Egypt on June 5 was nevertheless an act of aggression, “the supreme international crime”.
False. This conclusion does not follow from the fact Resolution 242 was passed under Chapter VI of the UN Charter.
That’s true inasmuch as there were no “borders”. It’s false inasmuch as Resolution 242 did in fact require Israel to return to the positions it held prior to June 5, 1967.
You haven’t demonstrated that the quote is somehow taken out of context in a way that would show that Ben-Ami, when he said if he was a Palestinian, would have rejected the “offer” at Camp David, really meant he thinks they should accept it.
But let’s just for the sake of argument accept that when he said one thing, he really meant the opposite. Okay, so note that according to Ben-Ami, Israel demanded to annex 8 percent of the West Bank.
In other words, just as I said, Israel’s “offer” consisted of demands that the Palestinians give up even more of their land. Every single concession at Camp David was demanded of the Palestinian side, who were asked to accept far less than what they had a right to under international law.
I now see what our disconnect is on this, and why you believe that my accusations of your denying the Jews equal rights in 1948 is an unfair strawman argument. Please forgive me.
You need to look back before 1948 to understand exactly what the Arab position was in 1948.
Let’s start in 1922. Churchill pretty much announced the death of the 1917 Balfour Declaration. He proposed to set up a single representative legislature with an Arab majority and Jewish minority. Those pragmatic Jews accepted this proposal. Subsequently, the Arabs rejected that proposal. The Arabs refused to sit in a legislature with even a single Jew. They simply wanted to take away the equal rights that the Jews enjoyed under the previous secular Ottoman government. They demanded absolutely no Jewish representation, they wanted to outlaw property sales to Jewish citizens, and they wanted absolutely zero Jewish immigration.
Imagine if our government in the USA disappeared one day,and the majority white people wanted to change the form of government and completely wanted to suppress the rights of a minority group? What if those white people would not let Hispanics, for instance, sit in a legislature, nor allow them to buy property as citizens, and demanded ZERO immigration of Hispanics into the USA. Now THAT would be racist, to the extreme.
This attempt at a single democratic government was rejected again in 1935 by the Arabs.
During the Arab Revolt, in 1937, Lord Peel formed a commission to try to find a solution to the problem. The Peel Commission recommendation for partition was predominately driven by the interview with Palestinian Arab Islamist leader Haj Amin al-Husseini. Haj Amin believed that all the Jews that had arrived after 1917 were not citizens and must leave Palestine (about 500,000 Jews).
There were actually three proposals on the table leading up to the UN Partition vote late November, 1947. UNSCOP had split up into a Majority Report and a Minority Report. The Minority Report would have given the Arabs an overall state with two small autonomous Jewish areas, under Arab control (i.e. zero Jewish immigration), but absolutely guaranteed equal rights.
Leading up to the partition vote, the Arabs absolutely refused both reports. You see, Haj Amin al-Husseini was very clear that Jews that arrived after 1917 would need to be expelled from the region (about 600,000 Jews), joining the 250,000 Holocaust survivors still languishing in DP camps in Europe with nowhere to go.
So another Arab proposal was made that looked like a nice democratic approach, as you suggest in your answer. However, there was included in this proposal a nice little loophole that would allow Haj Amin to deny citizenship for Jews going back to a date of his choosing. The final position that UNSCOP would actually report is that the Arabs would only go back ten years in their definition of “citizenship” for Jews (i.e. that only Jews who were in Palestine ten years or earlier were citizens).
But during the deliberations leading up to that report, the Arabs maintained that this was open-ended, and their sole decision to make….and likely the 1917 date that had been discussed ad nauseum since 1937:
This open-ended demand to deny the rights of Jews living there now for generations, thirty years was shown in the official report of UNSCOP Sub-Committee 2:
http://www.mlwerke.de/NatLib/Pal/UN1947_Palestine-Minority-Report_Chapter4.htm#Reso3
Then there are the deliberations and discussions with all parties that led to complete dismissal of the Arab plan for a Unitary Arab State (Sub-Committee 2):
This quote is from perhaps the best detail account of that six months of UNSCOP investigation, and critical analysis on how the UN failed so miserably in that effort. It is brutally neutral:
http://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10315/2669/H%20A%20UNSCOP%20and%20the%20Partition%20Recommendation.PDF?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
(quote from page 12, para 2) Recommend reading all five chapters
This understanding that Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian leader, an Islamist that would be behind nearly ever attack on innocent Jews during the Mandate years (1920, 1929,1930, 1936-39) was to be the leader of a unitary Arab state and treat the Jews fairly was seen as ridiculous by the entire UNSCOP committee.
Simply, giving the Arabs a Unitary state would absolutely violate the rights of the Jews, and likely result in yet another humanitarian crisis if the Jews could not defend themselves.
A neutral review of the options available to the UNSCOP team would expose that there were NO GOOD OPTIONS, and, regardless of what they decided, or even didn’t decide (through deadlock), that region would erupt into conflict when the British departed.
In fact, as I’ve already pointed out, it was the Arabs who proposed a single democratic state with a constitution guaranteeing the rights of and representation for the minority, and it was the Zionists who rejected that proposal in favor of ethnically cleansing Palestine to further their goal of creating a demographically “Jewish state”.
You mention the Peel Commission. It was actually the Peel Commission’s recommendation that a “compulsory transfer” occur that made it acceptable for the Zionist leadership to openly advocate for the removal of Arabs from the area they wanted for their state, a goal they eventually accomplished with considerable success when they cleansed what became Israel of most of its Arab inhabitants and destroyed their villages so they could never return to their homes.
Haj Amin al-Husseini wasn’t even in power in 1947. He had been expelled by the British from his position ten years prior, so we can see that you are simply fabricating.
The draft UN General Assembly resolution presented in the Report of Sub-Committee 2 of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question rightly noted that “the partition of Palestine is unjust, illegal and impracticable and that the only just and workable solution is the immediate establishment of a unitary, democratic, and independent state, with adequate safeguards for minorities”.
It recommended a provisional government be established “representative of all important sections of the citizenry in proportion to their numerical strength”.
It also noted that the task of framing a constitution “must be left to the Constituent Assembly”, but that it should adhere to numerous principles, including: democratically elected government with a guarantee of adaquate representation for minorities, guarantees for the sanctity of the Holy Places, guarantee of respect for the rights of minorities, and local autonomy.
You point out principle (vii) regarding the Law of Naturalization and Citizenship. Well, I’m an American and the US government also requires applicants to be legal residents of the US for a continuous period as determined by the government. Nothing particularly nefarious about this.
https://unispal.un.org/pdfs/AAC1432.pdf
As for violence being seen as necessary to excise a people from Palestine, I would merely observe once more how Israel came into being precisely through the ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population from their homes.
The Arabs proposed a Unitary state where the Jews would very likely be evicted in mass.
The Arab Unitary State plan was never proposed to the Jews. The Jews never even had a chance to reject it, because UNSCOP was unanimous that it would simply deny rights to hundreds of thousands of Jews on a likely eviction within short order, especially with the angry and violent Islamist Haj Amin al-Husseini at the helm.
UNSCOP never even gave the Arab Unity plan serious consideration, just like they gave even less consideration to having a Unity Jewish State. I really suggest reading that great document that steps through the UNSCOP experience where six or seven options were considered (link in my comment above).
True that the Peel Commission recommended ethnic cleansing from both sides. Pretty typical in that era to separate populations that showed absolutely no ability to get along. Similar to the thinking of the Greece-Turkey arrangement form preceding decades.
We have already covered that issue of ethnic cleansings during the 1948 War, though….plenty of blame to go around on that one. Curious if you are writing articles about two of the largest ethnic cleansings in human history that occurred during the exact same time period that make this conflict look like a minor side sideshow?
Yes, you need to read some actual history books (versus a diet of anti-Israel propaganda form revisionist historians and web sites) to learn that Haj Amin did return to that region to terrorize the countryside after WW2. After escaping the Nuremburg Nazi war trials with the aid of France, he magically shows back up to extort the Palestinian Arab countryside (mostly Christian) to fund his exploits. He works out of Cairo to re-establish his leadership over the Palestinians (as the British will have nothing to do with him in Palestine).
In November of 1945, with the support of the Arab League, the Arab High Committee (AHC) is re-established as the supreme executive body of the Palestinian Arab community, and Haj Amin would be the Chairman (in abstentia in Cairo) and his cousin Jamal al-Husseini as the Vice-Chairman. The Palestinians would, once again, have unified leadership since the Arab Revolt in the late 1930’s.
Of course, the entire Arab situation would see competing interests between Haj Amin, the Hashemites of Jordan, and the Arab League throughout the UNSCOP investigation. These divisions would have a severe impact in the coming civil war, as would competition between the surrounding Arab states have a big impact on the lack of Arab success in the international war.
All parties were gearing up for war in the months leading up to the UN Partition Vote in latte 1947. The Arabs were unified that that would destroy any emerging Jewish state, and promised destruction of the 1,000,000 Jews in surrounding Arab countries, the spilling of Jewish blood throughout the lands, oil embargos against Western countries, etc. etc.
I think enough said by me on this whole thing. As I understand this is your web site, and as moderator, I thank you for respectful discourse here, and your allowing alternate views on this subject on your web site.
I hope anyone that has the patience to read through these comments at least considers that there is an entirely different side to your story, Jeremy. Nothing in life is black and white, and one should be suspicious when events are presented in such a lopsided black and white view.
This whole play is tragic, with plenty of blame to go around.
The Arabs proposed an independent Palestine with a constitution protecting the rights of the Jews and guaranteeing Jewish representation in government. The animosity between the two communities is no secret, but for the Arabs’ part did not stem from some inherent Arab hatred of Jews, but from resentment toward the Zionist project and goal of disenfranchising and displacing them.
How puzzling to try to justify the ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Arabs from their homes in Palestine in order for the “Jewish state” to be established on the grounds that there was “plenty of blame to go around”.
As for your characterization of the Arabs preparing for war in 1947, while certainly true of the Zionists, it is contrasted by Israeli historian Benny Morris’s documentation in his book 1948 of how, in fact, the Arabs were unprepared for war: “the Yishuv had organized for war. The Arabs hadn’t.”
Also, again, the partition plan was inherently prejudicial and, indeed, premised on the explicit rejection of the equal rights of the Arabs, and the unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, was made absent any legal or moral authority and with prejudice toward the majority population in Palestine. By the time the neighboring Arab states managed to muster a military response, 300,000 Arabs had already been ethnically cleansed from their homes in order for this “Jewish state” to come into being.
You close by saying there is “plenty of blame to go around”. I certainly agree. But both parties are not equally at fault, and while I condemn Palestinian crimes against Israelis, you are trying to justify Israeli crimes against Palestinians.
dcarde … I want to thank you for your clear, well-document responses to Jeremy’s thesis. I must say that I have learned a great deal about Israeli history for your posts …
Is there something I wrote you disagree with?
Ultimately, I found your rhetoric less convincing.
You spend significant amounts of space threatening terms of service violations and claiming you’ve already answered what otherwise appear to be novel questions. dcarde answered questions courteously, to the point, and replete with small lessons in history. I appreciated his/her significant efforts to provide context and subtlety to a clearly complicated situation, whereas your responses seemed to formulaicly provide one prima facie point of agreement as an inoculation to a subsequently viscerally negative response. In short, dcarde’s responses educated, and your responses preached. Just my subjective thoughts … since you asked.
I challenge you to identify a single factual or logical error in the article.
The whole purpose of this article is to show that there is an entirely different side to the story than the Zionist propaganda most people are inundated with.
I viewed a video a few months back on Israel/Palestine. It began back at the turn of the 20th century with the British deciding the region would be a perfect for Jews to re-settle. My recollection isn’t the greatest, so I need to review it again, but I had the impression the Jews are the immigrants to the region under the protection of the British government. That would put into question the Jews legal claims to the region. But I’m no expert and repeating something I viewed only once, but left me with an impression any claims are questionable.
There was a relatively small population of indigenous Jews, but, yes, the Jewish population was massively expanded through immigration that was facilitated by the Mandate for Palestine, which was itself drafted by the Zionists to facilitate their project of disenfranchising and displacing the majority Arab population.
Has anyone written “10 popular Zionist alt-truths that are ‘no longer operative’ because they have been debunked”. For example, the claim that “Arab leaders told the Palestinians to leave” has been quietly and unapologetically dropped from the “narrative”.
I don’t know how you have the patience Jeremy. But well done.
Thank you.
Great article Jeremy. Thank you for posting/sharing.
If you are reading the comments above by this decarde then you are wasting your time..anyone who recommend a book by Dennis Ross is a total idiot!
Wow, so many trolls obviously getting paid. I’ve read all the comments, and Jeremy clearly responds to each statement with facts. Not like the loser trolls repeating the same argument over and over like a child. Thank you for your patience and taking the time to respond to each troll trying to bash your legit facts! We need more like you on Facebook battling these trolls on media pages :)
I’m on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Jeremy.R.Hammond.page
;)
Though I more often seem to battle Zionist apologists for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/jeremyrhammond
You’re extremely courageous, confronting zionists trolls, their’s colossal propaganda machine and their crimes against humanity.
About first argument: Besides to your topic, between march and 15 th may 1948, zionist gangs destroyed totally 200 villages (about half of all villages destroyed in Palestine ) and half number of all Palestinian refugees were expelled had allready left these villages forcely by terrorist zionis gangs before first arabic army had entered Palestine. So, this zionist lie expired now.