Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim

Historical perspective of the creation of the illegal state of Israel

By Aisha Umar Yusuf

        Being a paper presented in a one-day symposium on the creation of the illegal state of Israel, on Sunday 18^th may 2008, at the Banquet Hall Arewa House Kaduna’

 Relevant quotes:

‘We expect they won’t be in a majority after a few years.’ Dr Chaim Weizmann

Leader Zionist movement, 1922

‘There is no such thing as Palestinians, they don’t exist.’ Golda Meir, former Israeli prime minister.

‘No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world’s tyrannies comes close. Israel is the undisputed world champion violator of international law.’ John Pilger, British journalist, in his book Freedom Next Time

INTRODUCTION

  When I was told to prepare a paper on the historical perspective of the creation of the Zionist State of Israel, my first reaction was one of excitement because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is an issue very close to my heart. But once the excitement was over, reality set in and I began to worry that as someone who is not a historian I may not do justice to the topic. You know a journalist deals more with current issues than with history and I may not be able to engage in the expert historical analysis that an issue like this deserves.

        Luckily for me, a lot of people have written on the issue in the last six decades so it wasn’t so difficult to find reference materials on the world’s longest, bloodiest and most brutal conflict.

Preamble

        In his contribution to the topic, late Sheikh Ahmed Deedat wrote a book titled ‘Arabs and Israel: conflict or conciliation?’ It was apparently the outcome of a debate he had in 1982 with an Israeli diplomat, Dr. E.M. Lotten in South Africa.

Sheikh Deedat started the book with an interesting story about a young Jewish journalist’s encounter with a group of die-hard Zionists led by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, way back in 1922. I find this story worth starting this lecture with because the lessons in it can shed more light on why Israel is doing what it is doing today. The story thus:

An Austrian Jew by the name Leopold Weiss was on a visit to Jerusalem towards the end of 1922 as a reporter for the German newspaper, the Frankfurt Zeitung. An informal meeting was in progress in the home of a friend, with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the undisputed leader of the Zionist movement. He was surrounded by his young fans Ben Gurion, Begin and Dayan. The Doctor had the map of Palestine on the table and was expostulating how it was to be carved out as a Jewish state.

The young journalist, seeing the utter disregard shown to the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, and the injustice of planning to uproot a fully lawfully settled community, was impelled to break through the differential hush with which the Zionists were listening to Weizmann and ask:

“And what about the Arabs?” (he wrote)

…Dr Weizmann turned his face slowly towards me, put down the cup he had been holding in his hand and repeated my question:

“What about the Arabs…?”

“Well how can you ever hope to make Palestine your homeland in the face of the vehement opposition of the Arabs, who after all are the majority in this country?”

The Zionist leader shrugged his shoulders and answered dryly: “We expect they won’t be in a majority after a few years.”

“Perhaps so. You have been dealing with this problem for years and must know the situation more than I do. But…does not the moral aspect of the question ever bother you. Don’t you think that it is wrong on your part to displace the people who have always lived in this country?”

“But it is our country”, replied Dr. Weizmann, raising his eyebrows. “We are doing no more than taking what we have been wrongly deprived of.”

How was it possible, I wondered (he young journalist continues) for people with so much creative intelligence as the Jews to think of the Zionist-Arab conflict in Jewish terms alone?

…And how strange I thought, that a nation which had suffered so many wrongs in the course of its long and sorrowful diaspora was now, in single-minded pursuit of its own goal, ready to inflict a grievous wrong on another nation – and a nation too that was innocent of all that past Jewish suffering.”

I am sure you will understand the moral of this story without my trying to explain any more. But just in case, the above conversation shows clearly that the Zionist aim was to claim the whole of Palestine for themselves and that long before 1948, they had plans on what to do with the majority Arab population (remember Dr. Weizmann’s saying “We expect they won’t be in the majority after a few years.”) once they have established their homeland.

And while there are good non-Zionist Jews like the journalist Leopold Weiss who as far back as 1922 were questioning the morality of uprooting the Arabs to settle the Jews, the amazing thing is why the non-Jewish world has been idly watching for the last sixty years while Israel brutally and systematically pursues this goal.  

Why Israel was created

Two factors have always been cited as the reasons for the establishment of the state of Israel on the soil of Palestine:

1.   The relentless persecution of Jews in Europe and

2.   The desire of Jews at all times in history to secure Palestine as their homeland.

A third factor often cited but somehow given less importance than the above is the desire of European and other Western powers to have a client state in a strategic region such as the Middle East. Populated mainly by Arabs and Muslims, cohesion and mutual cooperation will still come naturally to them even after the break-up of the Ottoman empire unless a non-Muslim client state can be instituted in their midst to protect western interests.

In his book “A short history of Israel” Syed Iqbal Zaheer explained “By the end of 19^th Century…the Jews knew that they could no longer neglect this need (for a homeland) if they wished to survive as a distinct community, with a distinct past and a distinct future. The pogroms and massacres of that century left them in no doubt that no matter what contributions they made in the field of science, art and literature, they would only earn hostility and scorn from Europe….

Their intellectuals however were not as much without hope. They were closely and anxiously watching the ageing and foreseeable breakup of the Turkish (Ottoman) empire. If the British, French and Russians were prowling around Turkey like hungry wolves around an aged lion, the Intelligent Jews were not too far behind in their reckonings and calculations. They had their eye on a specific chunk: Palestine.

        It all began in 1897 when a man called Theodor Herzl called for a Jewish conference in Basle where he invited the participants to work together for a national homeland for the Jews. With the passage of time and with persecutions mounting in Europe, the idea started winning more converts. Various territories such as those of Argentina, Uganda even Nebraska (now in US) were suggested as possible sites. It is said that Herzl himself believed that Jews would never be allowed to live peacefully in Europe. Therefore they must gather themselves in Palestine and live there with the local populations in peace and harmony. He advocated only a national homeland for Jews in Palestine not an independent state. But with the break up of the Turkish (Ottoman) empire and the occupation of its fringes by European powers, the idea of an independent Jewish state in Palestine began to make its appeal to imaginative minds.

        The greatest hurdle in this regard was however that the Palestine everyone spoke of was not an empty stretch of land. A survey carried out in 1917 showed that it was inhabited by 700,000 people: 92% of them Arab and 8% Jewish. Of the total land area of 26,320,000 acres, the Jews owned less than 1% at the beginning of the century.

        Emigration of Jews was therefore covertly encouraged and assisted. Various Jewish organisations in Europe and USA provided finance to the migrating artisans and peasants who came mostly from Europe and were of occidental stock that Judaism had won while Christianity was in its nascent stage. They purchased lands at higher than market prices and employing only Jewish workforce engaged their labour and skill to the fulfilment of a 2000 year old dream. Jews in Palestine began to steadily increase. In 1918 they were only 56,000. By 1925 their number had grown to 108,000. By 1935 they were 300,000 and in 1948 they were 540,000.

        While this was being accomplished on one side, both the Jews and the Europeans, spearheaded by the British were playing another game on the Arabs. The French and British had entered the Arab world early in the last century promising to help nationalist Arabs in their struggle against the Turks (Ottoman rule). But they would not move out after the defeat of the Ottoman armies.

        In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour declaration, a statement delivered by Lord Arthur Balfour, British foreign secretary declaring Palestine as a homeland for the Jews. It reads thus: “His majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”

Yet this is only the public declaration. Balfour’s private declaration which he recorded in his diary shows clearly the true intent of the British in giving Palestine to the Jews and her feelings with regards to the present inhabitants of Palestine i.e. the Arabs. He wrote “…Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in the age long tradition, in present  needs, in future hopes, of a far profounder import than the desire and prejudice of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit the ancient land.’

This deception and treachery marked the beginning of the relationship between Arabs and Western powers in relation to Israel, and persists till the present day, at a great cost to Palestinians. Owing partly to the Jewish pressure and partly to the Western Agreement over the issue as well as their own agenda, the British presented the case of Palestine to the newly founded United Nations in 1947. A resolution was hurriedly passed there partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.  All western countries including Russia voted in favour, in the count of 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions.

With the announcement of this plan a reign of terror was let loose on the Arab civilian population. The Irgun and Stern Gang terrorist organisation, led by Menachem Begin, who later became an Israeli prime minister went on a killing spree of the most horrid kind. The most ghastly of their acts was the massacre of men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin in April 1948. Located on the outskirts of Jerusalem, this was a quiet village with no history of violence of any kind. Most of the men were at work in Jerusalem when the terrorists attacked the village. Overcoming the feeble resistance, they rounded up the inhabitants, lined them up against the wall and shot them in cold blood. …Surviving women and children were stripped naked and paraded in three open trucks, their hands over their heads to warn the Arabs that a similar fate awaits those who will not surrender their homes and fields.

Under a planned strategy, similar attacks were being made on Arabs in other areas. The town of Haifa for instance was attacked at midnight. The Palestinians who managed to leave the town for the safety of the port area of Accra were met on the way by roaming Jewish gangs and were cut down in hundreds.

Thus even before the proclamation of the state of Israel the following month, the Zionists –right under the nose of the British- were ruthlessly driving away as many Arab inhabitants as possible out of their towns and villages especially from strategic and important areas. By the time the British finally withdrew on May 14^th 1948, some 300,000 Arabs had already been uprooted and sent fleeing to safer areas. Arab leaders of adjoining countries decided too late to send in their troops. And when they did, the number was half of what their military chiefs had recommended: about 25,000 who met an estimated 40,000 t0 50,000 Zionist forces.

With victory over the Arab forces and with recognition of the state of Israel by the super powers, Israel immediately began to flush out Arabs in order to make room for fresh arrival of Jews and to get absolute majority in the territories occupied so far. Another reign of terror therefore was let loose on the Palestinians. On July 14, ’48, for instance forces led by Moshe Dayan (later Defence Minister) drove at full speed into the Arab town of Lydda, shooting at every one in sight. People fled in panic, and the town was emptied of Arabs. The same was done to drive out the residents of the town of Ramleh. These, accompanied with wide spread arson, looting, murder, evacuation at gun point, bulldozing of houses, and other such acts led to another mass exodus. In total, some 475 villages were emptied of Arab occupants out of which 385 were completely levelled down and housing for Jews constructed in their place.

The 500,000 of these and the west Jerusalem inhabitants who fled had expected to go back as soon as the war was over. But there was no returning. In a matter of weeks the majority of villages were flattened and allotted to Jewish agencies for construction. At the site of Lifta, for instance, now stands the Israel Knesset and the new Hilton Hotel. At Deir Yassin, Israeli industries have been set up and some houses have been converted into a sanatorium. A memorial for the Jewish holocaust was built on the lands of dispossessed and exiled Palestinians of the Ein Karim village. Moshe Dayan is reported by an Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” {April 4, 1969} as saying to the students of the Haifa Technical School in an address: ‘There is not a single Jewish village in this country that has not been built on the site of an Arab village. The village of Nahial took the place of the Arab village of Mahlotol, Gifat took the place of Giffa…..’

        In addition, Palestinians were completely evicted from the residential districts of west Jerusalem. These suburban areas -the upper and lower Baqan, Qataman Talibiya, Manilla, and part of Rahara- were ihabited mainly by middle class Palestinians such as doctors, lawyers and merchants. In 1948, several thousand fully furnished private houses were forcibly taken over by Israelis, although the Palestinians owners still hold the title deeds for this property. Prior to 1948, Jews owned very little property in East or West Jerusalem. A count in 1950 revealed that the number of Palestinians In refugee camps receiving United Nations aid had swelled to an appalling figure of 960,000. Many thousands spent the winter of 1948 in caves and huts.

Today, after six decades, the situation of Palestinians is only getting worse. Though a lot of deliberately false propaganda is being employed by the Zionist controlled media, discerning readers and viewers usually allow the facts to speak for themselves. In order to capture the current situation in Palestine briefly, I hereby reproduce a piece I wrote for the Daily Trust a few days ago in order to commemorate the 60^th anniversary of the Palestinian tragedy. I called the piece: Israel – A monster at sixty. It goes like this.

On May 14^th 60 years ago, Palestinians woke up to a horrific reality they later named the Nakbah or catastrophe. A month earlier, they had been subjected to merciless killing and sacking of whole towns and villages. Instances like the bloody massacre of civilians at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on them at Haifa market square as well as the authorised destruction of their villages all took place in April 1948, but the final straw was the withdrawal of British troops on May 14^th, which signalled the complete handover of authority to the newly established Jewish state.

Those who were destined to live long have seen the Nakbah being replayed several times over the last six decades. The latest being the re-play by Ariel ‘Worse than Hitler’ Sharon at the beginning of his atrocious rule seven years ago. Today while he lies in bed, a vegetable, going through his well-deserved private hell, the catastrophe he kindled in the form of an apartheid wall and daily persecution of Palestinians continue unabated.

Just last week, a news item in Daily Trust says: ‘UN gets last minute Gaza fuel offer.’ This talked about the ‘special concession’ made by Israel to allow fuel supply to Gaza to enable UN Relief and Works Agency to continue with humanitarian work in the face of Israel’s several months’ long inhuman blockade. On conditions in Gaza, rightly described today as the world’s largest open-air prison, UNRWA director John Ging told Aljazeera that the fuel blockade was ‘a real problem, it is affecting all aspects of life in Gaza.’ He added that the situation was deteriorating every day, with waste, water supply and transport problems increasing.

It is perhaps the sheer brutality and utter shamelessness of this present phase of Israeli occupation that caused a hundred prominent Jews to write a letter distancing themselves from the sixtieth anniversary of the ‘promised land.’ Led by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, this roll-call of Jewish achievers living outside Israel, jointly signed a statement published in the British Guardian of April 30^th telling the world why they will not be celebrating Israel’s 60^th birthday.

Titled ‘We are not celebrating Israel’s anniversary’ the letter runs thus:

“In May Jewish organisations will be celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European Anti-semitism and Hitler’s genocidal policies. …..In April 1948, the same month as the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin and the mortar attack on Palestinian civilians in Haifa’s market square, Plan Dalet was put into operation. This authorised the destruction of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of the indigenous population outside the borders of the (Israeli) state. We will not be celebrating.

In July 1948, 70,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in Lydda and Ramleh in the heat of the summer with no food or water. Hundreds died. It was known as the Death March. We will not be celebrating.

In all, 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. Some 400 villages were wiped off the map. That did not end the ethnic cleansing. Thousands of Palestinians (Israeli citizens) were expelled from the Galilee in 1956. Many thousands more when Israel occupied the West bank and Gaza. Under international law and sanctioned by UN resolution 194, refugees have the right to return or compensation. Israel has never accepted that right. We will not be celebrating.

We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of a people from their land. We cannot celebrate the birthday of a state that even now engages in ethnic cleansing, that violates international law, that is inflicting a monstrous collective punishment on the civilian population of Gaza and that continues to deny the Palestinians their human rights and national aspirations.

We will celebrate when Arabs and Jews live as equals in a peaceful Middle East.”

Except for those blinded by Zionist media propaganda or cowed down by America’s military might, all people with a conscience have equated Israel’s persecution of Palestinians with Adolf Hitler’s own treatment of them in the second World War. But what made Hitler’s actions even better than those of Israeli leaders is that he had the decency to commit most of his atrocities in secret or at least behind closed doors. Today what we see on TV, on the internet, and other news organs is a blatant disregard for human life and the dignity of mankind as committed daily by Israeli soldiers. Through targeted assassination, home demolitions, kidnappings, regular aerial bombardment with its ascendant collective punishment for all regardless of age, sex, or civilian status they achieve their aims.

In trying to describe life for Palestinians under Israeli occupation way back in 1967, John Pilger in his well researched and thoroughly informative chapter “The Last Taboo”, in his 2006 book Freedom Next Time wrote: “If they uttered a word of protest against the occupation they could be arrested; striking or even closing their own shops during normal business hours was forbidden. And before they were even tried or charged, their families and often their neighbours, would be collectively punished. They would be bundled into the street regardless of the hour or the weather- women, children, the old, the sick- marshalled to watch the destruction of their homes.’

And relatively recently after the siege of Jenin in 2002, Amnesty International reported with unusual anger that, ‘Grave breeches of the Geneva convention have been committed daily, hourly, even every minute, by the Israeli authorities against Palestinians. Israeli forces have consistently carried out killings when no lives were in danger. More than 600 Palestinian homes have been systematically demolished, making thousands homeless, the vast majority children. …in apparent treatment intended to hurt and degrade the population, Israeli soldiers who occupied apartments had trashed them. They killed six medical aid workers, including two doctors.’

The report ended with ‘a call for an end to the paralysis of the international community.’ A call which has definitely fallen on deaf ears, because the present blockade of Gaza, with its attendant suffering for all, is no different from the siege of Jenin or the other occupation atrocities committed against Palestinians by the terrorist state of Israel. Yet while they celebrate their monstrous achievement which has survived for six whole decades, and the international community continues in its paralysis, Israel will find that it can never know peace and security unless it recognises the Palestinians’ right to exist in safety and security with human dignity. As long as they continue their apartheid policies and continue paying only lip service to a two-state solution while actually pursuing a one- state agenda, the more they will find their dreams unrealisable.

Here is hoping that Nigeria will have a re-think on the issue of partnering with Israel on this administration’s seven-point agenda. Why Israel, the most lawless country in the world, and the only place where apartheid still has official backing? If we have to have outside help for our developmental programmes, the the ‘Yar’adua government can have such competent assistance from Turkey, Malaysia, Iran and even South Africa but definitely not Israel.’  

CONCLUSION

There is so much to say on the Israeli aggression against Palestinians that it could take us days to exhaust the topic. But all of us who listen to the news are up to date on the tragic situation. And I know that Dr Adam Ahmad will do justice to the rest of the topic so that the role of Arab leaders and their inability to do much to liberate Palestinians can be understood in the light of the New World Order.

As for us here, apart from our regular prayers for Palestinians, another aid we can give them is to be well educated on the topic and always be prepared to counter the negative propaganda being peddled by Zionist international media against their suffering. Know that you can’t fight for them by travelling there to fight the Jews, because quite apart from the near-impossibility of making it, there is also the fact that even the Jews don’t fight on a level ground with the Arabs. They send to them missiles, snipers, apache helicopters, army tanks etc, in fact anything to keep from direct physical contact with their victims. So we can’t help them by physically enlisting to, but we can do so through intellectual Jihad like this symposium and being armed with facts and figures all the time. Issues like who attacked who first, who turned down what peace agreement and what the terms were that made Palestinians refuse to accept a deal should be known. We also need to know who refused to recognise who’s right to exist etc so as to counter all the disinformation going round and making the Palestinians look more like the aggressors  than the victims. May Almighty Allah grant us the courage and faith to always stand up for the truth, and to fight against aggression. May He SWT grant ease and victory to Palestinians, to Iraqis to Afghans and to Muslims all over the world as they struggle against oppression and injustice, ameen.  

References

Arabs and Israel: conflict or conciliation? By Sheikh Ahmed Deedat

A short history of Israel By Syed Iqbal Zaheer

Freedom Next Time By John Pilger