Israeli / US Cluster Bombs Litter Lebanon
Desirable Duds

By JAMES BROOKS

On September 26, the UN announced that the number of unexploded cluster "bomblets" left in southern Lebanon by Israeli forces may be three times higher than previous estimates. A million or more antipersonnel weapons may be strewn across a region one-third the size of Rhode Island.(1)

Israel has yet to respond to repeated requests for information about the locations of its cluster bomb strikes in Lebanon. UN demining experts say this has made their job 'far more difficult'.(2) Two hundred thousand people cannot return to their homes due to the severity of destruction and the massive quantities of unexploded ordnance and cluster bomblets covering their communities.(3) Since the beginning of the ceasefire less than two months ago, 20 people have been killed and 120 others have been injured by cluster bomblets and unexploded ordnance.(4)

UN humanitarian coordinator David Shearer wants to know why the IDF deployed 90 percent of its cluster bombs during the last 72 hours of the conflict, while the UN ceasefire resolution was being approved.(5) UN officials are reportedly "dumbfounded".(6) What could explain Israel's intention in such an act, when peace was at hand?

The IDF responds that the "use of cluster munitions is legal under international law," and claims its military "uses such munitions in accordance with international standards."(7) Yet reports from deminers, aid workers, and civilians in the region clearly state that cluster bomblets are being found on roofs, in gardens, streets, and yards, everywhere people live.(8) To say that Israel used cluster bombs indiscriminately in Lebanon would miss the point. Israel deployed cluster bombs heavily in civilian areas. A number of villages were hit with multiple cluster munitions attacks. Well over a million of these antipersonnel weapons were fired by highly accurate artillery batteries, frequently at targets that were civilian beyond a shadow of a doubt.(9)

The explosive and destructive powers of these bomblets range roughly from those of a hand grenade to those of an anti-tank landmine. One type is designed to hurl projectiles that penetrate up to seven inches of steel armor. In shape and size they are similar to toy balls, candy bars, and cans of soda.(10)

In the lexicon of cluster bombs, the "dud rate" is the percentage of deployed submunitions (bomblets) that fail to explode when deployed. Unexploded cluster bomblets continue to kill and maim innocent people, especially children, for decades. In effect, Israel has left a million small, soulless suicide bombers in south Lebanon, each awaiting its call to action.

The UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UN-MACC) has documented and cleared cluster munitions in several theatres of war. Working with NGOs and the Lebanese Armed Forces in southern Lebanon, UN-MACC continues to report that approximately 40 percent of Israel's bomblets failed to explode.(11) An overall dud rate of 40 percent is unusually high. We will explore possible reasons for this reported poor performance of Israel's cluster munitions.

In terms of dud rates, two classes of cluster bombs are available on the market today: high dud rate and low dud rate. It appears the cluster munitions Israel used in Lebanon were predominantly, perhaps exclusively, of the 'high dud rate' variety.

The vast majority of bomblets reported from Lebanon have published dud rates ranging from 14 to 23 percent.(12) To explode, most of them must impact a relatively solid surface at an angle fairly close to vertical. Sloping or soft terrain can raise dud rates significantly. The drag ribbons attached to some of these bomblets can interfere with obstacles during descent, preventing detonation.

A cluster bomb, rocket, or shell opens in mid-air to spin out many bomblets over a wide area. Dud rates jump when the trajectory of the "parent" projectile is too high or too low. Cluster munitions also lose reliability with age, another common cause of dud rates significantly higher than manufacturers' published rates.(13)

Low dud rate bomblets are a relatively recent alternative. They are usually fitted with a self-destruct fuse and a more sensitive detonator, and sometimes include other 'failsafe' features. The objective for designers of these antipersonnel weapons is a dud rate of less than one percent.

This is a long-delayed victory for the anti-cluster bomb campaigners who began advocating these simple changes four decades ago. At the time it was a pragmatic compromise to try to save Vietnamese children, who were being blown up by the unexploded forerunners of a bomblet that Israel uses today, the BLU 63.

Unfortunately, our government did not respond. Since the war ended in 1975, an estimated 38,000 Vietnamese have been killed by unexploded cluster bomblets. As bomblets deteriorate, death and injury rates are escalating.(14) In Laos, over 12,000 people have died, and the 'bombies' are now killing 120 people a year. Half are children.(15)

In the last six to eight years, the Israeli and US militaries have finally begun to show an interest in low dud rate cluster munitions, mainly for their own protection. It's a significant and welcome improvement, but it does not address the other crucial question about cluster bombs: where are the civilians when the other 99 percent of the bomblets explode?

Israeli Military Industries (IMI) makes low dud rate M85 cluster bomblets to "ensure[] that no hazardous duds are encountered by advancing friendly forces." They leave "a clean [sic] operating area after the firing ends".(16)

In addition to cluster bombs, IMI produces the self-destruct fuses that are the key to low dud rate performance. Israel's top defense contractor also enjoys a strategic alliance with ATK ­ Alliant Techsystems, a multibillion-dollar US defense contractor, with whom it produces Israeli-technology cluster munitions in the US.(17)(18)

Israel prizes such relationships, since the resulting IDF-spec weapons may often be purchased from the US at a steep discount, if not simply received as gifts, through Israel's rapidly growing military aid package from the US, now approaching $3 billion per year.(19)

Israeli Military Industries says that its self-destruct fuses exceed the Pentagon's requirements, which are reportedly "stringent": they must produce a dud rate of no more than one percent at a cost of no more than $10 per unit.(20) (Although the military has not shied from the expense of packing titanium pellets and radar units into mass-produced cluster bomblets, it refuses to spend more than ten bucks to make sure one doesn't lie in wait to blow up a GI, or an innocent civilian.)

IMI is seeking buyers for its self-destructing M85 DPICM (Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition) cluster bomblets. It has produced more than 60 million M85s. Until 1998, they had a published failure rate of 14 percent. That year the M85 was converted to a low dud rate bomblet: too many Israeli soldiers were being injured and killed by unexploded M85s.(21)

An obvious question arises: If Israel was already making cluster bombs that would not have turned southern Lebanon into a minefield, why didn't it use them?

The early results of submunitions clearing efforts conducted by the Lebanese Army and NGOs indicate that some M85s were deployed. They comprise about 8 percent of the dud submunitions reported by type.(22)

One might assume that these would be low dud rate bomblets made after 1998. However, it's quite possible that when the new 'soldier-sparing' M85 became available, the IDF mothballed its remaining 'high dud' M85s. If so, they were probably saved for use when Israeli soldiers would not have to enter target zones after the cluster bombing; for example, immediately preceding a ceasefire or withdrawal. This, however, is only speculation.

Until we learn more about the type(s) of M85s used, we'll have to assume that around 90 percent of the submunitions deployed by Israel were high dud rate cluster bomblets fired primarily in artillery shells and rocket warheads.

The Israeli commander who famously told Ha'aretz that, "in Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombswhat we did there was crazy and monstrous," was an officer in the IDF's Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) unit. He said the army had launched 1,800 rockets that dropped 1.2 million cluster bomblets on Lebanon.

Soldiers were ordered to "flood" target areas with the unguided rockets, ostensibly because they were inaccurate. Reservists were reportedly "surprised" that the army was using the MLRS rocket launchers. They had been told the rockets were "the IDF's 'judgment day weapons'" and were "intended for use in a full-scale war."(23)

Yet UN-MACC estimates that IDF artillery units fired even more bomblets than were carried by the "judgment day" rockets, probably between 1.4 million and 2.8 million.(24)

If the early clearance data is a rough reflection of the whole, an additional 500,000 BLU 63 bomblets may have been dropped by Israeli warplanes. When we add up UN-MACC's most conservative estimates and modest estimates of BLU 63 and M85 deployment based on early data,(25) the lowest reasonable estimate for the number of cluster submunitions released over southern Lebanon is three million.

In that case, the roughly 500 square mile target region would have "received" one cluster bomblet for every 4400 square feet of land, or thirteen bomblets for every (American) football field.(26) If three million bomblets had been evenly dispersed, every living thing would have been within killing range-eventually.

If the 40 percent dud rate repeatedly found in the first 45,000 recovered bomblets is confirmed across the region, the total number of unexploded cluster submunitions in Lebanon may be 1.2 million or more, a possibility that must concern UN and Lebanese officials.

Why would Israel's cluster submunitions perform so poorly? Part of the answer may lie in the IDF's reliance on US-made M26 rockets and their M77 bomblets, which have posted wartime dud rates as high as 40 percent.(27) Meron Rapoport of Ha'aretz wrote that in some cases the IDF fired its M26 rockets "at a range of less than 15 kilometers, even though the manufacturer's guidelines state that firing at this range considerably increases the number of duds." (28)

However, the M77's problems don't explain the equally poor performance of the artillery's M42 bomblets, or the dud BLU 63s. In the absence of evidence that the Lebanese terrain or other conditions were at fault, our search for a common "failure factor" must focus on the IDF and its weapons.

One possibility is that the IDF deliberately increased dud rates by "shooting" its cluster bombs, rockets, and shells too high or too low, as discussed above. However, without further evidence this is merely speculation.

Another possibility is that the IDF's cluster munitions inventory may have been stocked with outdated weapons. Some could have been leftovers from Israel's last war against Lebanon. Others could have come from the expired inventories of another nation that wished to dump its outdated munitions. This is a growing international problem that threatens to saddle the world with high dud rate cluster bombs for decades to come.(29)

Excepting the M85, Israel is believed to purchase most, if not all, of its cluster munitions from the United States. This factor may have significantly contributed to the abysmal performance of the IDF's cluster bomblets in Lebanon.

The US hoards huge stockpiles of cluster munitions, including some types that date back to the Vietnam era. Human Rights Watch reported last year that Washington has 369,576 M26 rockets in its inventory.(30) They would presumably be capable of spinning out 238 million highly lethal M77 bomblets, 200 times as many as Israel spewed over south Lebanon this year. With the Pentagon debuting a new generation of lower dud rate antipersonnel and anti-vehicle weapons in Iraq, the US has an obvious interest in getting rid of these "notoriously inaccurate" rockets and the rest of its mountain of aging 'cluster junk'-to the right buyer, of course.

On the other hand, it can be "useful" to have some supplies of suitably aged cluster munitions on hand. According to Captain Josef Dirschka of the German Armed Forces in Kosovo, 1999:

"Unexploded duds are also used deliberately just to spread insecurity. You can't move around freely here as you don't know what state the bombs are in. Will they go off or won't they? If you drive too close to where unexploded duds are lying, it's possible that the vibrations of the vehicle will set the bomb off. You can't know for sure. A certain number of duds is desirable."(31)

Thus, a nation out to "spread insecurity" might have an interest in acquiring and maintaining an inventory of outdated cluster munitions.

On August 11, the first day of the cluster blitz and three days before the ceasefire, the New York Times reported that Israel had made an urgent request to the Bush administration for the delivery of more M26 cluster munition rockets. They "can be effective against hidden missile launchers", the Times explained.(32)

This report suggests one of two things: either the decision to launch the massive cluster bomb campaign was a last minute, ad hoc affair, or procurement specialists in Olmert's administration really dropped the ball.

The peculiarity of Israel's timing becomes acute when we consider how few targets were left for all those cluster bombs to kill. By the final week of the war, most people in the target zone had evacuated to escape Israel's relentless bombing and shelling, which had erased several villages from the face of the earth. Hezbollah fighters should have been able to ride out Israel's cluster bombing waves in the safety of their bunkers. Nonetheless, the IDF must have made an all-out effort to deploy nearly three million bomblets within 72 hours, probably involving all units capable of delivering such devices. What were they shooting at?

The specifics of the available evidence support one "logical" objective for this attack: Israel used cluster munitions as substitutes for landmines.

The IDF's proclivity for mining southern Lebanon is well known. The IDF mined the region heavily prior to its withdrawal in 2000, especially the border area, where mines still line the length of Lebanon's side of the Blue Line and plague adjacent fields and villages.(33) At the end of 2003, a staggering 410,000 landmines remained. By the end of 2005, 30 civilians had died and 173 had been wounded by Israel's landmines.(34)

The most plausible short-term military objective of Israel's cluster bomb campaign would have been to "demobilize" southern Lebanon with cluster duds, to deny safe passage to Hezbollah fighters on their home turf. Israel's leaders clearly sought to make the region uninhabitable, probably hoping to also deny Hezbollah its sympathetic civilian base. The strategic objective may have been to force Hezbollah to redeploy the bulk of its forces to safer ground, which is now well north of the Litani River.(35)

The most intensively cluster-bombed region of Lebanon is home to hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are unable to return home. On the other hand, Israel considers Hezbollah's fighting force to number about 1,500 men.(36) Simple math reveals the shocking truth: Innocent civilians were perhaps 200 times more likely than Hezbollah militants to be killed or maimed by Israel's region-wide cluster bombing. This basic statistic could not have been unknown to Israeli strategists.

Faced with an apparently indisputable violation of several articles of the Geneva Conventions and a US-Israeli weapons trade agreement, the US State Department confirmed on September 1 that it had begun an investigation into Israel's use of US-supplied cluster munitions in Lebanon.(37)

The likelihood that anything substantive will emerge from this "investigation" is slim. Even slimmer is the chance that Congress and the administration will act as they did in 1982, when Reagan suspended cluster munitions sales to Israel in response to its gross abuses at the time-in Lebanon.

Ten years later, America was cheering its own cluster bombing of Iraq. During the infamously "fast and clean" Gulf War, US and Allied warplanes dropped 20 million bomblets, while the artillery fired another 30 million submunitions. The dud rates of some of these bomblets ranged as high as 30 percent. According to Human Rights Watch in 2003: "At least eighty U.S. casualties during the war were attributed to cluster munition duds. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed or injured by cluster munition duds since the end of the war."(38)

In the darkness of our own long and hideous record with cluster munitions, after al-Hilla and Fallujah and all the other cluster bomb massacres in the current wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, where can the US stand against Israel on the subject?(39)

Where, for that matter, is the political will to hold Israel accountable for any of the thousands of other crimes it has committed in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories? The State Department "investigation" is merely a sop to diplomats in Brussels and the UN, who were demanding that the US 'do something' about Israel's behavior.

The long-running US-Israeli partnership in the manufacture, trade, and repetitive anti-civilian use of cluster bombs is emblematic of a larger relationship stubbornly mired in the ways of war. The US has dumped sixteen times more dud-prone cluster bomblets on Iraq than Israel seems to have fired on Lebanon this summer. Our government has created a yardstick by which Israelis can claim that "flooding" southern Lebanon with stay-behind cluster bomblets was a "proportionate response" to the crime of living in the wrong place.

International sanctions against the use of cluster munitions in civilian areas should be strengthened. But that would be unlikely to stop nations like Israel and the US from using cluster bombs as de facto landmines. We must also ban high dud rate cluster munitions altogether, through an internationally agreed timetable to phase in low dud rate standards and destroy high dud rate cluster bomb inventories. It is the logical, humane, and urgently needed sequel to the Mine Ban Treaty-which the US and Israel have so far refused to join.

James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. He can be contacted at jamiedb@wildblue.net.

1. 'Million bomblets' in S Lebanon
BBC, 9/26/2006

2. 9-Year-Old Boy, 4 Other People Hurt By Cluster Bomb Explosions
An Nahar, 9/27/2006

3. 200,000 remain displaced
Electronic Intifada/OCHA, 9/28/2006

4. South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet
UN Mine Action Coordination Center, 10/10/2006

5. UN: Israel cluster bomb use in Lebanon 'outrageous'
YNet News, 9/19/2006

6. Cluster Bombs a Vestige of Israel's Lebanon Fight
NPR, All Things Considered, 9/27/2006

7. Israel used cluster grenades on civilians
AlJazeera, 7/25/2006

8. LEBANON: Leftover Israeli cluster bombs kill civilians
IRIN - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 8/21/2006

9. South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet, op. cit.

10. Drop Today, Kill Tomorrow
Mennonite Central Committee, 1997

11. South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet, op. cit.

12. Persian Gulf: U.S. cluster bomb duds a threat
Human Rights Watch, 3/18/2003

13. Cluster Bombs and Cluster Munitions: A Threat to Life
Aktionsbündnis Landmine.de, 1st edition 2004

14. Vietnam
Wendy Waldeck and Sarah Sensamaust, Journal of Mine Action, 2/2006

15. LAOS: More than 30 Years On, the Unquiet Land
By Lynette Lee Corporal, IPS Asia-Pacific/Probe Media Foundation

16. M85 dual-purpose bomblet
GlobalSecurity.org

17. ibid.

18. Employee Liabilities of Weapon Manufacturers Under International Law
AlliantACTION, 2004

19. U.S. Military Assistance and Arms Transfers to Israel: U.S. Aid, Companies Fuel Israeli Military (PDF)
By Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute, 7/20/2006

20. M85 dual-purpose bomblet, op. cit.

21. ibid.

22. Latest update on cluster munition problem in south Lebanon
Cluster Munition Coalition, 9/20/2006 (?)

23. IDF commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon
Ha'aretz, 9/12/2006

24. South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet, op. cit.

25. Latest update on cluster munition problem in south Lebanon, op. cit.

26. 770 Cluster Bombs Strikes Map
UN Mine Action Coordination Center South Lebanon, 10/10/2006

27. Cluster Bombs and Cluster Munitions: A Threat to Life, op. cit.

28. When rockets and phosphorous cluster
By Meron Rapoport, Ha'aretz, 9/30/2006

29. Cluster Bombs and Cluster Munitions: A Threat to Life, op. cit.

30. U.S.: Deny Israeli Request for Cluster Munitions
Human Rights Watch, 8/11/2006

31. [Speaking to Report Mainz, 11/17/2003] Cluster Bombs and Cluster Munitions: A Threat to Life, op. cit.

32. Israel Asks U.S. to Ship Rockets With Wide Blast
New York Times, 8/11/2006

33. 770 Cluster Bombs Strikes Map op. cit.

34. The Mine Problem: Southern Lebanon
UN Mine Action Coordination Center South Lebanon, 2006

35. 770 Cluster Bombs Strikes Map op. cit.

36. Peres: Israel achieved its war goals, weakened Hezbollah
Ha'aretz, 8/16/2006

37. US investigating Israel cluster bomb use in Lebanon
Yahoo! News, 9/1/2006

38. Persian Gulf: U.S. cluster bomb duds a threat op. cit.

39. America at War: Killing People in order to Save Them?
By Dave Lindorff, Baltimore Chronicle, 9/6/2006

Cluster Munitions = Terrorism.

What do you want to know?
The dud ratio?
The use thereof that act like land mines?
Their use as an anti- civilian weapon?
What?

To terrorize the Lebanese for years into the future and wreck their economy

It'd be about their speed, vicious shits

saturating Lebanon with CBs you have the gall to point fingers at the retaliation of similar munitions?
As usual, WOW.

The point is that BOTH sides used these weapons- yet only one side has been condemned for it.

And that Human Rights Watch- a organization that has long been considered objective- suppressed the information incriminating Hizbollah's use of culster bombs.

How many Israelis have been killed wounded vs the amount of Lebanese have been killed?
Could it be that the attention of HRW was drawn to the scale of injury and death on the side of Lebanon because of the ratio of same?
Let's see some stats with less finger pointing.

The number of dead or wounded don't indicate guilt or innocence. The Fact that more Japanese died in the Pacifc theater during World War II than Americans doesn't indicate that the Japanese were the victims.

Both sides used cluster bombs. Human Rights Watch- whatever their motive- ommitted this fact until recently.

Maybe you can't or wont because there haven't been any deaths or injuries from Israel. You would have brought it forth if there were any.
I'd call it a toilet paperman, instead of a strawman.

"Each submunition in turn shoots out hundreds of steel spheres, about 3.5mm in diameter, with deadly force."

These would be almost exactly like BBs (4.5 mm dia. brass-plated steel spheres), or #2 steel shot from a shotgun. If you were hit with a large number of them at once, i.e. were within a few teens of feet of the exploding canister, you would be killed by the energy wave they would collectively impart into your body. This is how shotguns kill. It's inaccurate, however, to think of these BBs as individual deadly bullets, with each of the submunitions spraying out thousands of them. This is a wildly exaggerated way to think about the killing power of thousands of BBs.

Now, the zionist liars WANT you to have wildly exaggerated ideas about this and every other weapon used against Israel, so they carefully arrange their words to set up a mental space for such ideas.

You have to watch that about them

"Israeli police officials documented 113 cluster rockets, containing 4,407 individual submunitions, that were fired at Israel during the conflict."

This is zionist "morality" for you:

Israel drops millions of cluster submunitions on Lebanan, leaving behind perhaps a million soda-can-sized land mines

Lebanon fires on the order of a thousandth as many into Israel, leaving (assuming the same preposterous dud rate) ~1800 of them lying around

For a country as wealthy as Israel, cleaning up this many just isn't that big a deal

Lebanon's very poor. Israel's been seeing to it for decades. Cleaning up a million "soda bombs" is a devastating burden for them

To warped sick zionist minds, the "clear moral of this story" is: "Oy G-tt, POOR ISRAEL!!!! Always the VICTIM, WAAAAAAAAAHAAAHAhaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!"

The original post wasn't about Hizbollah. From the beginning, HRW has condemned both sides for violations of legal, moral/ethical violations--but that's not what the article is about. It is about Israel's state sponsored terror in the form of HUGE amounts of cluster munitions used--many of them used right at the end when they KNEW the fighting was about to end. So saying "they did it too!" (even though Hizbollah did it MUCH less) is not an excuse, otherwise many human rights violators would be off tthe hook.

We single out all wealthy powerful states--I.E. the U.S.
Not just Israel.
They do it to is not an excuse. Israel used tons of this shit, and much of it in the last days when they KNEW the fighting was coming to and end, thus making it worse in terms of intent.
Deflection is unacceptable.

Whenever one of "us" brings up Hizbullah's villainy in firing ball bearings laden projectiles or cluster bobmbs over the border into Israel, you immediately spring into motion to deflect and distract and you keep on pointing to the huge quantity Israel fired as if it proved worse intent. That's a telltale sign of bias.

Israel didin't know until perhaps the last few hours that the ceasefire will take effect without Hizbullah wisecracks.

Todays newsppaer indicated that Iran paid Hamas 50 million dollars NOT to release the kidnapped Israeli soldier. When you analyze this conflict, you need to remeeber all the players. Its not just Hamas- its Hamas and Iran- Its not just Hizbollah- its Hizbollah and Syria, and Iran.
There are no innocents. The power base is wide.

It's Israel AND its parent empires (US, all of Western Europe) AND the utter creepiness of the Washington zionist neocons AND what they're doing to domestic policy RIGHT HERE... All of these things are interconnected. I'll concern myself with the human sewage lying in piles all over MY OWN house, thank you.

What makes you think Western Europe (With some countries having a Muslim population of over 6 % ) is on Israel's side?`

No injuries or deaths from CBs reported in Israel after saturating Lebanon with them.
Don't provoke wars
Stop bitching.

This whole goddamned theme revolves around your (pl.) high pitched whining.

I haven't been able to find injuries or deaths from UXOs in Israel, *so far*. That doesn't mean none have occurred. Most likely none have been reported for whatever reason/s.

Got a problem with the UXOs in Lebanon? Tell Hizbullah to cease all aggression.

Whatever reasons being that there weren't any to report. Quick, injure somebody and report it.
Validate your bitching about retaliation.
And quit invading other countries.

'Sheepdog':
"Whatever reasons being that there weren't any to report."

You've got no proof. I'm laughing in your face.
I've heard of a person getting hurt in a car accident who left the scene uninterested in recieving medical care there.
Maybe some civilian was lightly wounded at a location far away from human habitation and there were no witnesses but the victim which proceeded to keep the incident unreported for any number of reasons.


'Sheepdog':
"Quick, injure somebody and report it. Validate your bitching about retaliation."

You know whereof you speak. That's your jihadist genocide practitioner friends' beloved modus operandi which they've used to excellent propaganda effect.


'Sheepdog':
"And quit invading other countries."

Tell your muderous blood brothers not to violently provoke invasions.

Master Race shepherd canine:
"Belch belch puke Then you'll bitch about it, as always. "

Still enjoying your Der Stuermer copies personally autographed by Goebbles, O jihad enthusiast?

I occasionally needed to put myself in harm's way the last July-Aug and never bitched one cyllable about it, whereas you'd whine to high heavens at the slightest sign of life danger.

See, what you're doing is muddling up PUBLIC OPINION with the de facto foreign policy of any given Western government in the context of geopolitical global domination, when it's quite obvious there is NO direct relationship between the two. Didn't Iran-Contra teach you shit? Operation Watchtower?

You portray France as your steadfast enemy, for example, when France's actual foreign relations conduct has not been especially inimical to Israel. France was instrumental, for example, in making you the nuclear-armed menace you are today.

British public opinion is conspicuously critical of Israel, but is British foreign policy? I don't think so. They're blowing billions of their own £££ pumping cannon-fodder into Iraq for you, aren't they?

All the dominant Western countries have a HUGE stake in making sure the tendency of the Middle East to unify into a single political power, i.e. a NEW RIVAL, remains permanently thwarted, and this is what Israel's ALWAYS been about for them. THAT'S WHY IT EXISTS. Jabotinsky figured all this out and thus knew which dicks to suck. Why haven't you?

But really, why am I letting you float this red herring in my face, anyway?

Israel has the ***US*** as its steadfast ally. This is equivalent to the five or ten next-most-powerful countries being Israel's allies, and completely confirms what I said all by itself, especially the part about minding my own skeletons.

But you just have to set Israel up as this lost defenseless waif struggling to survive.

No it's not.

It's a thriving CANCER, being fed gluttonously by the giant arteries roping over to it from its parent cancer on the other side of the planet

France hasn't been an ally of Israel in over 30 years. Much of Europe, including France is more tahn happy to throw their support to the oil rich Arabs.

Here's how it works:
Palestinians as invaders
Lebanon resistance as aggressors
Retaliation as attack
Israel as an injured party.

Bazzaro world reality.
And of course, belch belch puke as an argument.

Amazing splatter. Was it to this comment?
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/183726_comment.php#184425
or was it the 'hero' remark?
curious minds wish to know.

Quiz Yourself on 'Israeli Democracy'

למאמר בעברית



Is it Israeli Democracy or "Jewish Democracy", you be the judge. Are you aware that:

* Prior to the 1948 war, Palestinian Christians and Muslims were a two-third majority of the population of Palestine, who owned and operated 93% of Palestine's lands?

* Prior to the 1948 war, most Israeli Jews were persecuted and dispossessed European Jews who made a one-third minority of the population?

* For Israel to become a "Jewish majority" it opted to expel and dispossess the two-third Palestinian majority?

* 80% of the Palestinian people were dispossessed from their homes, farms, and businesses and have been kept out for the past 54 years?

* 95% of Israel's lands (which is mostly owned by Palestinian refugees) is open for development to Jews only?

* Israeli-Palestinian citizens live almost in segregated communities (or ghettos) because development is strictly limited outside their villages? Ironically, the word "ghetto" was invented to describe the living conditions of Eastern European Jews in Tsarist Russia!

* For just being "Jewish" you gain an automatic citizenship in Israel? Plus tens of thousands of dollars in subsidies too.

* Palestinian Muslims or Christians refugees, who were born in the country and later expelled, cannot gain Israeli citizenship? Of course, unless they convert to Judaism first!

* Pretending to be Jewish in Israel is punishable by law with up to one year's imprisonment? On the other hand, if you pretend to be a Muslim or Christian the law does you no harm!

* When the Palestine problem was created by Britain in 1917, more than 92% of the population of Palestine were Arabs and there were at that time no more than 56,000 Jews in Palestine? That Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Palestinians at that time lived in peace with each other?

* Palestinians in the early 20th century owned 97.5% of the land, while Jews (native Palestinians and recent immigrants together) owned only 2.5% of the land?

* Close to 4 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians are being subjected to Israeli laws that are different than the laws governing the 4.5 million Israeli Jews? Is this a "democratically" elected apartheid, or not, that is the question?

* In the occupied West Bank there are "Jewish Roads" and "Non-Jewish Roads"?

* Israel issues national identify cards where the religion of the card holder is clearly shown in bold type?

* Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza drive vehicles with license plates that have different coloring than the cars driven by Israeli settlers?

* Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza hold ID cards that are of different colors than the cards held by Israeli settlers?

* The only form of Judaism recognized by the "Jewish state" is Orthodox Judaism, so most US Jews could not get married in Israel. Furthermore, the only conversion to Judaism recognized is Orthodox, so most US converts aren't Jewish enough.

* Just prior to the 1948 war, Jews owned under 7% of Palestine's land, and to increase their share after the war, they passed the "Absentees' Law" which dispossessed the Palestinian majority land owners who later became "absent". What is even more tragic was the passage of an oxymoron law, called "Present Absentees' Law," which dispossessed the Palestinian-Israeli citizens who became internal refugees in Israel. It is worth noting that the internal Jewish refugees were not dispossessed as a result of this racist law.

* The U.S. funneled into the Israeli economy over 130 billion dollars, which is almost twice the amount devoted to rebuilding Western Europe after WW II!

* Israeli democracy is a facade for "Jewish Democracy?"

* Israel has nuclear weapons, and it was close to dropping one on Cairo in 1973?

* Israeli soldiers use human shields in battle to minimize their casualties?

* Israel killed over 20,000 Lebanese and Muslims (90% of whom are civilians) with American made and paid for weapons?


If by accident we have missed facts that differentiate Israel from other democracies, please do not hesitate to contact us.

what ever something something blah blah.. 78 lines later and you still haven't addressed this comment.
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/183726_comment.php#184425
more C & P from thee?
Do you need a bulldozer?

Kinda sensitive about the subject, huh?
I can guess why. A new reader who may be a real Jew might read it.
They may not approve of it. A do a bit of historical digging. It's nice to know your soft points. I have a stick.
How much of the zionists early funding came from profits derived from nazi death camps.[?] Care to guess? I mean, business is business.
[shrug]
To make an omelet, you break eggs. Did you call *me* a nazi? tisk.
transference, mine heir.
die Wahrheit kann verletzen, kleine Maus.

600,000-10,000 B.C.
Paleolithic and Mesolithic period. Earliest human remains in the area, found south of Lake Tiberias, dated to circa 600,000 B.C.
10,000-5,000 B.C.
Neolithic period. Establishment of settled agricultural communities.
5,000-3,000 B.C.
Chalcolithic period. Copper and stone tools and artifacts. Remains from this period found near Jericho, Beersheba, and the Dead Sea.
3,000-2,000 B.C.
Early Bronze Age. Arrival and settlement of Canaanites (3,000-2,500 B.C.).
ca. 1,250 B.C.
Israelite conquest of Canaan.
965-928 B.C.
King Solomon. Construction of the temple in Jerusalem.
928 B.C.
Division of Israelite state into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
721 B.C.
Assyrian conquest of the kingdom of Israel.
586 B.C.
Judah defeated by Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar. Deportation of its population to Babylon; destruction of the temple.
539 B.C.
Persians conquer Babylonia. Some Jews allowed to return. Construction of a new temple.
333 B.C.
Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great brings Palestine under Greek rule.
323 B.C.
Death of Alexander leads to alternate rule by Ptolemies of Egypt and Seleucids of Syria.
165 B.C.
Maccabees revolt against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes and go on to establish independent Jewish state.
63 B.C.
Incorporation of Palestine into the Roman Empire.

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70 - 1899

A.D.
70
Destruction of the Second Temple by Roman Emperor Titus.
132-135
Bar Kokhba revolt suppressed. Jews barred from Jerusalem and Emperor Hadrian builds new pagan city of Aelia Capitolina on its ruins.
330-640
Palestine under Byzantine rule: Jerusalem and Palestine increasingly Christianized.
638
Arabs under the Caliph 'Umar capture Palestine from Byzantines.
661-750
Umayyad caliphs rule Palestine from Damascus. Dynasty descended from Umayya of Meccan tribe of Quraysh. Construction of Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem by Caliph 'Abd al-Malik (685-705). Construction of al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem by Caliph al-Walid I (705-715).
750-1258
'Abbasid caliphs rule Palestine from Iraq. Dynasty, founded by Abu al-' Abbas al-Saffah, who is descended from' Abbas, uncle of the Prophet.
969
Fatimid dynasty, claiming descent from the Prophet's daughter Fatima and her cousin 'Ali, rule Palestine from Egypt. They proclaim themselves caliphs in rivalry to the' Abbasids.
1071
Saljuqs, originally from Isfahan, capture Jerusalem and parts of Palestine, which remains officially within the 'Abbasid Empire.
1099-1187
Crusaders establish the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.
1187
Kurdish general Saladin (Salah al-Din who was born in Takrit northern Iraq, the birth place of Saddam Hussein too), son of Ayyub, the sultan of Mosul, defeats Crusaders at Hittin in northern Palestine and recaptures Jerusalem. The Ayyubid dynasty rules Palestine from Cairo.
1260
Mamluks succeed Ayyubids, ruling Palestine from Cairo; defeat Mongols at Battle of 'Ayn Jalut near Nazareth.
1291
Mamluks capture final Crusader strongholds of Acre and Caesarea.
1516-1917
Palestine incorporated into the Ottoman Empire with its capital in Istanbul.
1832-1840
Muhammad 'Ali Pasha of Egypt occupies Palestine. Ottomans subsequently reassert their rule.
1876-1877
Palestinian deputies from Jerusalem attend the first Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul, elected under a new Ottoman Constitution.
1878
The first modern Zionist agricultural settlement of Petach Tiqwa established (click here to learn more about Zionist and its impact on the Palestinian people).
1882-1903
First wave of 25,000 Zionist immigrants enters Palestine, coming mainly from eastern Europe.
1882
Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris starts financial backing for Jewish settlement in Palestine.
1887-1888
Palestine divided by Ottomans into the districts (sanjaks) of Jerusalem, Nablus, and Acre. The first was attached directly to Istanbul, the others to the wilayet of Beirut.
1896
Theodor Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and writer, publishes Der Judenstaat, advocating establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine or elsewhere.
1896
Jewish Colonization Association, founded in 1891 in London by German Baron Maurice de Hirsch, starts aiding Zionist settlements in Palestine.
1897
First Zionist Congress in Switzerland issues the Basle Program calling for the establishment of a "home for the Jewish people in Palestine." It also establishes the World Zionist Organization (WZO) to work to that end.

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1900 - 1918

1901
Jewish National Fund (JNF) set up by fifth Zionist Congress in Basle to acquire land for WZO; land acquired by JNF to be inalienably Jewish, and exclusively Jewish labor to be employed on it, click here to read to Zionist apartheid & racist quotes.
1904-1914
Second wave of about 40,000 Zionist immigrants increases Jewish population in Palestine to about 6% of total. Since the inception of Zionism it has been claiming that Palestinian was an empty country, click here to read our rebuttal to this argument.
1909
Establishment of the first kibbutz, based exclusively on Jewish labor. Tel Aviv founded north of Jaffa.
1914
World War I starts.
1916
30 January
Husayn-McMahon correspondence between Sharif Husayn of Mecca (leader of the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans) and Sir Henry McMahon (British High Commissioner of Egypt) ends in agreement for postwar independence and unity of Arab provinces of Ottoman Empire.
16 May
Sykes-Picot Agreement secretly signed, dividing Arab provinces of Ottoman Empire between Britain and France. Agreement revealed by Bolsheviks in December 1917.
June
Sharif Husayn proclaims Arab independence from Ottomans. Arab Revolt against Istanbul begins.
1917
2 November
Balfour Declaration. British Secretary of State Balfour pledges British support for "a Jewish national home in Palestine."
1918
September
Palestine occupied by Allied forces under British General Allenby.
30 October
World War I ends.

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1919 - 1922

1919-1923
Third wave of over 35,000 Zionist immigrants increases Jewish population in Palestine to 12% of total. Registered Jewish landownership (1923) totals 3% of area of country.
1919
27 January-10 February
First Palestinian National Congress in Jerusalem sends memoranda to Paris Peace Conference rejecting Balfour Declaration and demanding independence.
28 August
Paris Peace Conference sends Commission of Inquiry to Near East, led by U.S. commission members Henry C. King and Charles Crane. England and France decline to participate. Commission recommends "serious modification" of idea of "making Palestine distinctly a Jewish Commonwealth."
1920
April
Disturbances in Palestine; 5 Jews killed, 200 wounded. British appoint Palin Commission of Inquiry .Commission report attributes troubles to none fulfillment of promises of Arab independence and fear of political and economic consequences of Zionism.
25 April
Palestine Mandate assigned to Britain by Supreme Council of San Remo Peace Conference.
May
British prevent Second Palestinian National Congress from convening.
1 July
High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel, an Anglo-Jewish politician, inaugurates British civilian administration.
December
Third Palestinian National Congress, meeting in Haifa, elects Executive Committee, which remains in control of Palestinian political movement from 1920 to 1935.
1921
March
Founding of the Haganah, the Zionists' illegal underground military organization.
1 May
Disturbances in Jaffa protesting large-scale Zionist immigration; 46 Jews killed, 146 wounded. British Haycraft Commission of Inquiry (October) attributes disturbances to fears of Zionist mass immigration.
8 May
Haj Amin al-Husayni appointed Multi of Jerusalem.
May-June
Fourth Palestinian National Congress, convening in Jerusalem, decides to send a Palestinian delegation to London to explain the Palestinian case against the Balfour Declaration.
1922
3 June
British colonial secretary Winston Churchill issues White Paper excluding Transjordan from scope of Balfour Declaration. Ignoring political criteria, White Paper authorizes Jewish immigration according to "economic absorptive capacity" of the country.
24 July
League of Nations Council approves Mandate for Palestine.
August
Fifth Palestinian National Congress, meeting in Nablus, agrees to economic boycott of Zionists (see 1901 entry on JNF).
October
First British census of Palestine shows population of 757,182 -78% Muslim Arab, 11% Jewish, 9.6% Christian Arab. It is often claimed that Palestine was empty until Zionist Jews made the Palestinian desert bloom, click here to read our response to this argument.

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1923 - 1931

1923
29 September
British Mandate for Palestine comes officially into force.
1924-1928
Fourth wave of 67,000 Zionist immigrants, over 50% from Poland, increases Jewish population of Palestine to 16% of total. Registered Jewish landownership (1928) totals 4.2% of area of country. Click here to view a map illustrating a breakdown of Palestinian-Zionist landownership per district as of 1945.
1925
Revisionist Party, founded in Paris by Polish Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky, demands establishment of Jewish state in Palestine and Transjordan and stresses military aspects of Zionism.
October
Sixth Palestinian National Congress convenes in Jaffa.
1928
June
Seventh Palestinian National Congress convenes in Jerusalem.
1929-1939
Fifth wave of over 250,000 Zionist immigrants increases Jewish population in Palestine to 30% of total. Registered Jewish landownership (1939) totals 5.7% of area of country.
1929
August
Riots arise out of dispute between Jews and Palestinians over claims to Wailing (Western) Wall in Jerusalem, a site holy to Muslims and Jews. In resulting clashes 133 Jews killed and 339 wounded, 116 Palestinians killed and 232 wounded, the latter mainly by British military .
October
General Palestinian conference meets in Jerusalem to formulate position on Wailing Wall controversy.
1930
14 January
League of Nations appoints international commission to investigate legal status of Arabs and Jews at Wailing Wall.
March
British Shaw Palestinian Commission of Inquiry attributes 1929 disturbances to Palestinian fears of Jewish immigration "not only as a menace to their livelihood but as a possible overlord of the future."
October
British Hope-Simpson report on land settlement, immigration, and development in Palestine concludes that there is not sufficient agricultural land for substantially increased numbers of Jewish settlers.
British Colonial Secretary , Lord Passfield, issues White Paper which takes note of views of Hope-Simpson and Shaw commissions of inquiry.
1931
Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), Irgun or IZL for short, founded by Revisionist groups and dissidents from Haganah, advocates a more militant policy against Palestinians. Valdimir Jabotinsky is commander-in-chief.
14 February
British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald in a letter to Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann virtually retracts Passfield White Paper.
18 November
Second British census of Palestine shows population of 1,035,154-73% Muslim Arab, 16.9% Jewish, 8.6% Christian Arab.
December
Lewis French, British director of development for Palestine, publishes report on "landless Arabs," caused by Zionist colonization.

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1932 - 1938

1933
14 July
British Secretary of State issues statement on resettlement of Palestinian farmers displaced from land acquired by Zionists.
1935
October
Revisionists quit World Zionist Organization (WZO) to form New Zionist Organization with aim of "liberating" Palestine and Transjordan.
November
Shaykh 'Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Muslim cleric from Haifa, leader of first Palestinian guerrilla group fighting British policy in Palestine, killed in action against British security forces.
1936
25 April
Leaders of Palestinian political parties form Higher Arab Committee under Chairman Haj Amin al-Husseini.
8 May
Conference of Palestinian National Committees in Jerusalem calls for no taxation without representation. Great Rebellion begins.
25 August
Lebanese guerrilla leader Fawzi al-Qawuqji enters Palestine leading 150 volunteers from Arab countries to help fight British.
11 November
Royal Commission headed by Lord Peel arrives in Palestine.
1937
18 January
Royal Commission leaves Palestine.
April
IZL/Irgun, linked to Revisionist movement under Ze'ev Jabotinsky, reorganizes and advocates armed attacks on Palestinians.
7 July
Royal (Peel) Commission report recommends partitioning Palestine into Jewish state comprising 33% of country including Haifa, Galilee, and coastal plain north of Isdud; Arab state in rest of country (to become part of Transjordan); and British mandatory enclaves including Jerusalem. Part of Palestinian population to be forcibly transferred, if necessary, from Jewish state, click here to learn how deeply the concept of "transfer" (Ethnic Cleansing) is entrenched in the Zionist theology.
23 July
Arab Higher Committee rejects Royal Commission proposal and demands independent unitary Palestine with protection of "legitimate Jewish and other minority rights" and the safeguarding of British interests. Rebellion intensifies.
September
Arab National Congress at Bludan, Syria, attended by 450 delegates from Arab countries, rejects partition proposal, demands end to Mandate, a stop to Zionist immigration, and prohibition of transfer of Palestinian lands to Zionist ownership.
1 October
British dissolve Arab Higher Committee and all Palestinian political organizations. Five Palestinian leaders deported. Haj Amin al-Husayni escapes to Lebanon.
11 November
British establish military courts to counter Palestinian rebellion.
1938
April-August
IZL/Irgun bombings kill 119 Palestinians. Palestinian bombs and mines kill 8 Jews.
June
British officer Orde Wingate organizes Special Night Squads of British and Haganah personnel for operations against Palestinian villages.
18 October
British military commanders take over administration from district commissioners to help suppress rebellion. Reinforcements brought from England.
19 October
British recapture Old City of Jerusalem from Palestinian rebels.
9 November
Report of British Woodhead technical commission of inquiry (January-April 1938) declares impracticability of Royal Commission's partition proposal. British call for general conference on Palestine in London attended by Arabs, Palestinians, and Zionists.

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1939 - 1946

1939
7 February
London Conference starts.
27 March
London Conference ends without agreement.
22-23 May
British House of Commons votes 268 to 179 in favor of White Paper issued by Colonial Secretary of State Malcolm MacDonald. White Paper calls for conditional independence for unitary Palestinian state after ten years; admission of 15,000 Jewish immigrants annually into Palestine for five years, with immigration after that subject to "Arab acquiescence" ; protection of Palestinian land rights against Zionist acquisition. British official estimates of Palestinians killed or executed by British military and police during Arab Rebellion is over 2,000 for 1936 and 1938 alone. Total for all years is estimated at 3,500-4,000. About 500 Jews killed in same period.
1 September
World War 11 begins.
October
Stern Gang or Lochemay Herut Yisra'el (LEHI; "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel") formed by dissident IZL members led by Avraham Stern.
1940-1945
Arrival of over 60,000 Zionist immigrants, including 20-25,000 who have entered the country illegally (April 1939-December 1945), increases Jewish population in Palestine to 31% of total. Registered Jewish landownership rises to 6.0% of area of country.
1940
28 February
Land Transfers Regulations, suggested by 1939 White Paper to protect Palestinian land rights against Zionist acquisition, enter into force.
1942
February
Avraham Stern killed by British police. It should be noted that the Stern gang received extensive financial and military support from the Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to terrorize the British Mandate in Palestine. Click here to learn more about the subject.
May
Biltmore Conference in New York attended by Zionist leaders from U.S. and Palestine, urges that "Palestine be established as a Jewish commonwealth."
1943
November
Five-year limit on Jewish immigration (expiring April 1944) extended so all 75,000 visas permitted in 1939 White Paper can be filled.
1944
January
Stern Gang and IZL join to conduct terror campaign against British.
6 November
Stern Gang murders Lord Moyne, British resident minister of state, in Cairo.
1945
8 May
End of World War in Europe.
September
Large-scale illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine resumes under Haganah control.
13 November
British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin issues White Paper announcing continued Jewish immigration into Palestine after exhaustion of 1939 White Paper quota.
1946
6 March
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, proposed in 1945 White Paper, arrives in Palestine.
May
Anglo-American Committee report estimates size of Jewish armed forces at around 61-69,000 people (Haganah: 58-64,000; IZL: 3-5,000; Stern: 2-300) and declares "private armies" illegal. Recommends admission of 100,000 Jews into Palestine and abolition of Land Transfers Regulations. Palestinians strike in protest.
11-12 June
Arab League meeting in Bludan, Syria, adopts secret resolutions warning Britain and U .S. that disregard for Palestinian rights will damage their oil and commercial interests in Arab world.
July
British White Paper on terrorism in Palestine accuses Haganah of cooperating with IZL and Stern Gang in acts of sabotage and violence.
22 July
Ninety-one British, Palestinian, and Jewish civil servants and visitors killed when IZL blows up wing of King David Hotel in Jerusalem housing British government secretariat.
31 July
Anglo-American Conference in London produces Morrison-Grady Plan proposing federal scheme to solve Palestine problem. Zionist and Palestinian leaders reject the plan.

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1947


26 January
London Round Table conference reopens.
7-10 February
British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin proposes variant of Morrison-Grady Plan to London Conference and Jewish Agency. Arab delegates in London and Jewish Agency reject proposal.
18 February
Bevin announces submission of Palestine problem to United
Nations.
28 April-15 May
UN General Assembly special session on Palestine problem leads to appointment of eleven-member Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP).
8 September
Publication of UNSCOP report. Majority of members recommends partition, minority recommends federal solution.
16-19 September
Arab League denounces UNSCOP partition recommendation, and appoints Technical Military Committee to supervise Palestinian defense needs.
26 September
Arthur Creech Jones, British colonial secretary, announces Britain's decision to end Palestine Mandate.
29 September
Arab Higher Committee rejects partition.
2 October
Jewish Agency accepts partition.
7-15 October
Arab League meets at Aley, Lebanon. Iraqi General Isma'il Safwat, chairman of Technical Committee, warns of dangers posed by Zionism at end of Mandate and urges Arab states to mobilize their utmost force and efforts to counter Zionist intentions." One million pounds sterling allocated to Technical Military Committee.
29 October
Britain says it will leave Palestine in six months if no settle-
ment reached.
27 November
Report by Safwat warns of virtual impossibility of overcoming Zionist forces with irregulars; urges prompt Arab action in organizing military force; advocates training Palestinians to defend themselves.
29 November
UN General Assembly recommends variant of UNSCOP partition plan allocating 56.5% of Palestine to Jewish state and 43% to Arab state with international enclave around Jerusalem; 33 votes for, 13 against, 10 abstentions. Arab representatives walk out (Click here to read more why Arabs rejected the U.N. partition plan).
30 November
Haganah calls up Jews in Palestine aged 17-25 to register for military service.
December
Arab League organizes Arab Liberation Army (ALA), a voluntary force of Arab irregulars under guerrilla leader Fawzi al-Qawuqji to help Palestinians resist partition.
2 December
Palestinians start three-day strike protesting UN Partition Resolution. Intercommunal clashes leave 8 Jews and 6 Palestinians dead.
8 December
Britain recommends to UN that Palestine Mandate be terminated on 15 May 1948 and independent Jewish and Palestinian states be established two weeks later.
8-17 December
Arab League Political Committee meeting in Cairo declares partition illegal and resolves to provide 10,000 rifles, 3,000 volunteers (including 500 Palestinians) and a further 1,000,000 pounds sterling to Technical Military Committee.
15 December
British announce intention to hand over policing in Tel Aviv-Petach Tiqwa area to Jews and in Jaffa to Palestinians.
17 December
Jewish Agency Executive reports that American Jews will be asked for $250 million to help Jewish community in Palestine.
21 December-late March 1948
Haganah and IZL attack villages and Bedouin settlements of coastal plain north of Tel Aviv in first coastal "clearing" operation.
31 December
Haganah and IZL paramilitary gangs perpetrate Balad al-Shaykh (Haifa) massacre, in which more than 60 civilians are murdered.
December 1947-January 1948
Arab Higher Committee organizes 275 local committees for defense of Palestinian towns and villages.

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1948


January
Palestinian guerrilla leader 'Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni secretly returns to Palestine after ten-year exile to organize resistance to partition.
8 January
First contingent of 330 ALA volunteers arrives in Palestine.
10 January
ALA assault on Jewish settlement of Kefar Szold repulsed with help of British.
14 January
Haganah concludes arms deal with Czechoslovakia for $12,280,000 worth of arms including 24,500 rifles, 5,000 light machine guns, 200 medium machine guns, 54 million rounds of ammunition, 25 Meserschmitts. By end of Mandate at least 10,740 rifles, 1,200 machine guns, 26 field guns, and 11 million rounds of ammunition arrive in Palestine. Rest of arms arrive by end of May.
16 January
British report to UN estimates 1,974 people killed or injured in Palestine from 30 November 1947-10 January 1948.
20 January
British administration announces that predominantly Jewish or Palestinian areas will be gradually handed over to local majority group in every area concerned.
21 and 28 January
Second and third contingents of 360 and 400 ALA irregulars arrive in Palestine.
January-March
JNF leaders encourage evictions from villages of Haifa area Haganah attacks villages near Lake al-Hula. Palmach attacks Negev Bedouin.
16 February
ALA mounts unsuccessful attack on Jewish settlement of Tirat Zvi north of Baysan.
18 February
Haganah calls up men and women aged 25-35 for military service.
24 February
U.S. delegate to UN says Security Council role should be to keep peace in Palestine, not enforce partition. Syrian delegate suggests appointing committee to explore possible Jewish Agency-Arab Higher Committee agreement.
March
Transjordanian prime minister Tawfiq Abu al-Huda secretly meets British foreign secretary Bevin. They agree that Transjordanian forces will enter Palestine at end of Mandate but will restrict themselves to area of Arab state outlined in partition Plan. (Click here to read our response to the Zionist claim that seven Arab armies attempt to annihilate the newly emerging "Jewish State")
5-7 March
Qawuqji enters Palestine and assumes command of ALA units in Jinin-Nablus-Tulkarm triangle within area allotted to Arab state.
6 March
Haganah declares general mobilization.
10 March
British House of Commons votes to end Mandate on 15 May. Plan Dalet finalized by Haganah. Plan provides for military conquest of area allotted by UN Partition Plan to Jewish state and of substantial Palestinian territories beyond this state's boundaries. Plan contains a series of interlocking operations.
18 March
President Truman secretly receives Chaim Weizman and pledges support for declaration of Jewish state on May 15.
19-20 March
U.S. delegate asks UN Security Council to suspend action on partition plan and to convene General Assembly special session to work on a trusteeship plan. Arabs accept limited trusteeship and truce if Jews also accept. Jewish Agency rejects trusteeship.
25 March
President Truman calls for immediate truce and says U.S. will share responsibility for temporary trusteeship.
30 March-15 May
Second coastal "clearing" operation carried out by Haganah Alexandroni brigade and other units. Attacks and expulsions drive out almost all Palestinian communities from coastal area from Haifa to Jaffa prior to British withdrawal.
1 April
Delivery of first consignment of Czech arms deal: Ship "Nora" arrives in Haifa from Yugoslavia with 4,500 rifles, 200 light machine guns, 5 million rounds of ammunition. Two hundred rifles, 400 machine guns and further ammunition ferried in by airplane. UN Security Council resolutions call for special session of General Assembly and agree to U.S. proposal for truce to be arranged through Jewish Agency and Arab Higher Committee.
4 April
Haganah launches Plan Dalet.
4-15 April
Battle of Mishmar ha-'Emeq: ALA repulsed by Haganah from Jewish settlement of Mishmar ha-'Emeq. Haganah, Carmeli, Alexandroni, and Palmach units occupy villages in Marj ibn 'Amir.
6-15 April
Operation Nachshon: In first operation of Plan Dalet Haganah Giv'ati Brigade and other units capture villages along Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road from local Palestinian militia.
8 April
'Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, charismatic Palestinian militia commander, Jerusalem district, is killed leading counterattack to recover al-Qastal village.
9 April
IZL and Stern Gangs massacre some 250 inhabitants in village of Dayr Yasin near Jerusalem.
12 April
General Zionist Council decides to establish independent state in Palestine on 16 May.
13-20 April
Operation Har'el under Plan Dalet launched at conclusion of Operation Nachshon. Villages along Jerusalem road attacked and demolished. All subsequent Haganah operations until 15 May 1948 undertaken within framework of Plan Dalet.
15 April-25 May
Operation Yiftach: Palmach captures Safad from ALA and local militia (9-10 May). Attacks and psychological warfare used to empty villages of eastern Galilee and Galilee panhandle. Operation Matate (Broom) drives out Bedouin and villagers from area south of Rosh Pinna to Jordan River.
16-17 April
Haganah Golani brigade and Palmach units capture Tiberias as it is evacuated by British. Palestinian inhabitants flee.
17 April
Security Council resolution calls for military and political
truce.
20 April
U.S. submits Palestine trusteeship plan to UN.
21 April
Operation Misparayim (meaning scissor): British forces suddenly withdraw from Haifa precipitating all-out Haganah dawn offensive against city's Palestinian population. Offensive accompanied by heavy mortar shelling of Palestinian residential quarters.
22 April
Resistance of local Palestinian militia in Haifa collapses. Haifa's Palestinian population flees under combined Haganah shelling and ground offensives.
25 April
IZL starts massive mortar shelling of Jaffa's residential quarters; simultaneously launches ground offensive to cut off northern Manshiyeh quarter from rest of city.
26-30 April
Haganah Har'el and Etzioni brigades launch Operation Yevussi in and around Jerusalem; attack East Jerusalem residential quarter of Shaykh Jarrah but are forced to hand it over to British; capture West Jerusalem residential district of Qatamon from Palestinian irregulars. Flight of Palestinian inhabitants.
27 April-5 May
Operation Chametz: Haganah launches major ground offensive against eastern Jaffa suburbs and neighboring villages to cut off city from its hinterland. Some 50,000 civilians flee under combined IZL and Haganah attacks.
30 April
All Palestinian quarters in West Jerusalem occupied by Haganah and residents driven out.
1 May
The Zionists forces occupied and massacred more than 70 civilians from 'Ayn al-Zaytun (Safad).
3 May
175-200,000 Palestinian refugees reported to have fled from areas taken by Zionists.
8-16 May
Haganah Har'el and Giv'ati brigades undertake Operation Makkabi. Capture villages on al-Ramla-Latrun road.
9 May-1 June
Operation Barak: Strikes by Haganah Giv'ati and Negev brigades south and West of al-Ramla.
10-15 May
Golani brigade occupies Baysan, attacks villages of Baysan Valley south of Lake Tiberias.
12-14 May
Arrival of second and third Czech arms consignments for Haganah: 5,000 rifles, 1,200 machine guns, 6 million rounds of ammunition.
13 May
Arab Legion, ALA, and local militia attack and capture Jewish settlements of Etzion bloc, retaliating for attacks on Hebron road. Jaffa formally surrenders to Haganah.
13-21 May
Operation Ben-Ami: Carmeli brigade occupies Acre and coastal area north of city .
14 May
Haganah launches Operation Qilshon (Pitchfork), occupying strategic areas in Jerusalem evacuated by British and taking Palestinian residential quarters outside Old City from Arab irregulars.
Haganah launches Operation Schfifon to take Old City of Jerusalem.
State of Israel proclaimed in Tel Aviv at 4:00 P.M.
President Truman recognizes state of Israel.
15 May
British Mandate ends. Declaration of State of Israel comes into effect.
15-17 May
Lebanese regulars cross border and temporarily retake villages of Malikiyya and Qadas from Haganah, but are forced out of fortress of Nabi Yusha'.
15-28 May
Transjordanian Arab Legion troops cross River Jordan and move towards Jerusalem capturing Jewish settlements of Atarot and Newe Ya'aqov north of city (17 May). In Jerusalem, Legion retakes Shaykh Jarrah quarter (16 May), fails to capture stronghold in Notre Dame monastery (17-25 May), and takes control of Jewish Quarter of Old City (28 May).
On the 23th of May 1948, al-Tantura was perpetrated against 250 civilians and POWs.
15 May-4 June
Iraqi units cross Jordan River, are repulsed from Crusader fortress of Belvoir , and besiege settlement of Gesher for a week. Iraqi regulars move into Nablus-Jinin- Tulkarm triangle 24 May). Haganah advances on Jinin, evicting villagers (28-31 May); it attacks and briefly occupies Jinin before being repulsed (3-4 June).
15 May-7 June
Egyptian regular troops cross border, move up coast to Isdud and capture Jewish settlements of Yad Mordechai (24 May) and Nitzanim (7 June) in Negev. Another column of Egyptian irregulars moves to Bethlehem linking up with Arab Legion. In battle with IDF (21-25 May), Jewish settlement of Ramat Rachel south of Jerusalem changes hands several times and is finally retained by Jews.
16 May-10 June
Syrian columns advance over border and temporarily capture Jewish settlement of Zeniach (18-20 May), are repulsed from twin settlements of Degania (20 May), and capture settlement of Mishmar ha-Yarden (10 June). Syrians, Lebanese, and ALA recapture Malikiyya (6 June).
16-30 May
IDF Operation Ben-Nun: Israeli Sheva' and other brigades fail to capture al-Latrun from Arab Legion in attempt to open Jaffa-Jerusalem road, but occupy villages in vicinity.
20 May
UN Security Council appoints Count Folke Bernadotte as its mediator in Palestine.
22 May
UN Security Council resolution calls for ceasefire.
9-10 June
IDF Operation Yoram, launched against Arab legion by Har'el and Yiftach brigades, fails to capture al-Latrun.
11 June-8 July
First Truce.
28-29 June
Count Bernadotte suggests economic, military, and political union of Transjordan and Palestine containing Arab and Jewish states: Negev and central Palestine to go to Arabs; Western Galilee to Jews; Jerusalem to be part of Arab state with administrative autonomy for Jews; Haifa and Jaffa to be free ports and Lydda free airport. Rejected by both sides.
7 July
Security Council calls for prolongation of truce.
7-18 July
IDF Operation Dani: Capture of Lydda and al-Ramla from local militia. Population of both cities expelled. Three or four IDF brigades occupy villages along Jerusalem-Jaffa road and cluster of villages east of Jaffa. Yiftach brigade's assault on Arab Legion in al-Latrun (17 July) ends with Second Truce.
8-14 July
IDF Operation Dekel: Carmeli and Sheva' brigades push east and south from Acre, capture Nazareth from ALA under Qawuqji and occupy Lower Galilee.
8-11 July
IDF Operation An-Far: Giv'ati brigade, moving against Egyptians, empties villages south of al-Ramla in an arc between Hebron hills and coast.
9-18 July
IDF Carmeli Brigade fails to recapture the Zionist settlement of Mishmar ha-Yarden, south of Lake Tiberias, that had been occupied by Syrian troops.
15 July
UN Security Council resolution calls on governments and authorities concerned to issue indefinite ceasefire orders to their forces in Palestine to take effect within three weeks.
17 July
IDF Operation Qedem against Old City of Jerusalem is repulsed.
18 July-15 October
Second Truce.
24-26 July
IDF Operation Shoter: Carmeli, Alexandroni, and Golani brigades attack and capture three villages of Little Triangle south of Haifa.
16 August-end of September early October
Negev and Yiftach brigades attack and expel Bedouins and inhabitants of villages in Negev.
24-28 August
IDF Operation Nikayon (Cleansing): Giv'ati Brigade occupies coastal area west of Yibna and north of Isdud.
16 September
Report by UN mediator Count Bernadotte proposes new partition of Palestine: Arab state to be annexed to Transjordan and to include Negev, al-Ramla and Lydda; Jewish state in all of Galilee; internationalization of Jerusalem; return or compensation of refugees. Rejected by Arab League and Israel.
17 September
UN mediator Count Bernadotte murdered in Jerusalem by Stern Gang. Replaced by his American deputy Ralph Bunche.
15 October-9 November
IDF Operations Yo'av and ha-Har: Negev, Giv'ati, and Yiftach units move against Egyptians to capture Beersheba, Isdud, Majdal, and coastal strip as far as Yad Mordechai, and villages of Hebron Hills. Har'el brigade captures southern Jerusalem corridor.
29-31 October
IDF Operation Hiram: Upper Galilee pocket, held by Qawuqji's forces, occupied and emptied by Giv'ati, Oded, and Sheva' brigade troops. Tens of thousands flee. Israeli forces move into southern Lebanon as far as Litani River. On the 29th of October 1948, the IDF commits the famous Safsaf (Safad) massacre in which more than 60 civilians are murdered.
November
IDF Har'el Brigade expels several communities in Jerusalem corridor along border with Transjordanian forces. 4 November UN Security Council resolution calls for withdrawal of forces to positions occupied prior to 14 October and establishment of permanent truce lines.
Second week November-mid 1949
IDF expels inhabitants from villages 5-15 km inside Lebanese border, followed by expulsions from other Galilee villages.
22 December-6 January 1949
Operation Horev launched to drive Egyptians out of southern coastal strip and Negev. Asluj and al-'Awja captured. Israeli troops move into Sinai until British pressure forces withdrawal. Golani and Har'el brigades attack on Rafah ended by ceasefire (7 January).
27 December
IDF Alexandroni brigade's attack on isolated Egyptian forces in Faluja pocket is repulsed.

Back To Top
1949

24 February
Israeli-Egyptian Armistice: Egypt keeps coastal strip Gaza Rafah and evacuates Faluja pocket; Asluj-al-'Awja area demilitarized.
End of February
IDF units intimidate 2-3,000 villagers into leaving Faluja pocket in violation of Israeli-Egyptian Armistice Agreement.
March
IDF Negev and Golani brigades complete occupation of Negev as far as Umm Rashrash/Eilat.
23 March
Israeli-Lebanese Armistice: Frontier of Mandate Palestine accepted; Israel withdraws from most of Lebanese territory.
3 April
Israeli-Jordanian Armistice: Jordan takes over Iraqi-held Nablus-Jinin- Tulkarm triangle but is forced to cede area around Wadi 'Ara; Israel controls Chadera-'Afula road; existing status quo in Jerusalem accepted by IDF and Arab Legion.
20 July
Syrian-Israeli Armistice: demilitarized zones established around 'En Gev and Dardara (including Mishmar ha-Yarden).

On September 26, the UN announced that the number of unexploded cluster "bomblets" left in southern Lebanon by Israeli forces may be three times higher than previous estimates. A million or more antipersonnel weapons may be strewn across a region one-third the size of Rhode Island.(1)

Israeli / US Cluster Bombs Litter Lebanon
Desirable Duds

By JAMES BROOKS

On September 26, the UN announced that the number of unexploded cluster "bomblets" left in southern Lebanon by Israeli forces may be three times higher than previous estimates. A million or more antipersonnel weapons may be strewn across a region one-third the size of Rhode Island.(1)

Israel has yet to respond to repeated requests for information about the locations of its cluster bomb strikes in Lebanon. UN demining experts say this has made their job 'far more difficult'.(2) Two hundred thousand people cannot return to their homes due to the severity of destruction and the massive quantities of unexploded ordnance and cluster bomblets covering their communities.(3) Since the beginning of the ceasefire less than two months ago, 20 people have been killed and 120 others have been injured by cluster bomblets and unexploded ordnance.(4)

UN humanitarian coordinator David Shearer wants to know why the IDF deployed 90 percent of its cluster bombs during the last 72 hours of the conflict, while the UN ceasefire resolution was being approved.(5) UN officials are reportedly "dumbfounded".(6) What could explain Israel's intention in such an act, when peace was at hand?

The IDF responds that the "use of cluster munitions is legal under international law," and claims its military "uses such munitions in accordance with international standards."(7) Yet reports from deminers, aid workers, and civilians in the region clearly state that cluster bomblets are being found on roofs, in gardens, streets, and yards, everywhere people live.(8) To say that Israel used cluster bombs indiscriminately in Lebanon would miss the point. Israel deployed cluster bombs heavily in civilian areas. A number of villages were hit with multiple cluster munitions attacks. Well over a million of these antipersonnel weapons were fired by highly accurate artillery batteries, frequently at targets that were civilian beyond a shadow of a doubt.(9)

The explosive and destructive powers of these bomblets range roughly from those of a hand grenade to those of an anti-tank landmine. One type is designed to hurl projectiles that penetrate up to seven inches of steel armor. In shape and size they are similar to toy balls, candy bars, and cans of soda.(10)

In the lexicon of cluster bombs, the "dud rate" is the percentage of deployed submunitions (bomblets) that fail to explode when deployed. Unexploded cluster bomblets continue to kill and maim innocent people, especially children, for decades. In effect, Israel has left a million small, soulless suicide bombers in south Lebanon, each awaiting its call to action.

The UN Mine Action Coordination Centre (UN-MACC) has documented and cleared cluster munitions in several theatres of war. Working with NGOs and the Lebanese Armed Forces in southern Lebanon, UN-MACC continues to report that approximately 40 percent of Israel's bomblets failed to explode.(11) An overall dud rate of 40 percent is unusually high. We will explore possible reasons for this reported poor performance of Israel's cluster munitions.

In terms of dud rates, two classes of cluster bombs are available on the market today: high dud rate and low dud rate. It appears the cluster munitions Israel used in Lebanon were predominantly, perhaps exclusively, of the 'high dud rate' variety.

The vast majority of bomblets reported from Lebanon have published dud rates ranging from 14 to 23 percent.(12) To explode, most of them must impact a relatively solid surface at an angle fairly close to vertical. Sloping or soft terrain can raise dud rates significantly. The drag ribbons attached to some of these bomblets can interfere with obstacles during descent, preventing detonation.

A cluster bomb, rocket, or shell opens in mid-air to spin out many bomblets over a wide area. Dud rates jump when the trajectory of the "parent" projectile is too high or too low. Cluster munitions also lose reliability with age, another common cause of dud rates significantly higher than manufacturers' published rates.(13)

Low dud rate bomblets are a relatively recent alternative. They are usually fitted with a self-destruct fuse and a more sensitive detonator, and sometimes include other 'failsafe' features. The objective for designers of these antipersonnel weapons is a dud rate of less than one percent.

This is a long-delayed victory for the anti-cluster bomb campaigners who began advocating these simple changes four decades ago. At the time it was a pragmatic compromise to try to save Vietnamese children, who were being blown up by the unexploded forerunners of a bomblet that Israel uses today, the BLU 63.

Unfortunately, our government did not respond. Since the war ended in 1975, an estimated 38,000 Vietnamese have been killed by unexploded cluster bomblets. As bomblets deteriorate, death and injury rates are escalating.(14) In Laos, over 12,000 people have died, and the 'bombies' are now killing 120 people a year. Half are children.(15)

In the last six to eight years, the Israeli and US militaries have finally begun to show an interest in low dud rate cluster munitions, mainly for their own protection. It's a significant and welcome improvement, but it does not address the other crucial question about cluster bombs: where are the civilians when the other 99 percent of the bomblets explode?

Israeli Military Industries (IMI) makes low dud rate M85 cluster bomblets to "ensure[] that no hazardous duds are encountered by advancing friendly forces." They leave "a clean [sic] operating area after the firing ends".(16)

In addition to cluster bombs, IMI produces the self-destruct fuses that are the key to low dud rate performance. Israel's top defense contractor also enjoys a strategic alliance with ATK ­ Alliant Techsystems, a multibillion-dollar US defense contractor, with whom it produces Israeli-technology cluster munitions in the US.(17)(18)

Israel prizes such relationships, since the resulting IDF-spec weapons may often be purchased from the US at a steep discount, if not simply received as gifts, through Israel's rapidly growing military aid package from the US, now approaching $3 billion per year.(19)

Israeli Military Industries says that its self-destruct fuses exceed the Pentagon's requirements, which are reportedly "stringent": they must produce a dud rate of no more than one percent at a cost of no more than $10 per unit.(20) (Although the military has not shied from the expense of packing titanium pellets and radar units into mass-produced cluster bomblets, it refuses to spend more than ten bucks to make sure one doesn't lie in wait to blow up a GI, or an innocent civilian.)

IMI is seeking buyers for its self-destructing M85 DPICM (Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munition) cluster bomblets. It has produced more than 60 million M85s. Until 1998, they had a published failure rate of 14 percent. That year the M85 was converted to a low dud rate bomblet: too many Israeli soldiers were being injured and killed by unexploded M85s.(21)

An obvious question arises: If Israel was already making cluster bombs that would not have turned southern Lebanon into a minefield, why didn't it use them?

The early results of submunitions clearing efforts conducted by the Lebanese Army and NGOs indicate that some M85s were deployed. They comprise about 8 percent of the dud submunitions reported by type.(22)

One might assume that these would be low dud rate bomblets made after 1998. However, it's quite possible that when the new 'soldier-sparing' M85 became available, the IDF mothballed its remaining 'high dud' M85s. If so, they were probably saved for use when Israeli soldiers would not have to enter target zones after the cluster bombing; for example, immediately preceding a ceasefire or withdrawal. This, however, is only speculation.

Until we learn more about the type(s) of M85s used, we'll have to assume that around 90 percent of the submunitions deployed by Israel were high dud rate cluster bomblets fired primarily in artillery shells and rocket warheads.

The Israeli commander who famously told Ha'aretz that, "in Lebanon, we covered entire villages with cluster bombswhat we did there was crazy and monstrous," was an officer in the IDF's Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) unit. He said the army had launched 1,800 rockets that dropped 1.2 million cluster bomblets on Lebanon.

Soldiers were ordered to "flood" target areas with the unguided rockets, ostensibly because they were inaccurate. Reservists were reportedly "surprised" that the army was using the MLRS rocket launchers. They had been told the rockets were "the IDF's 'judgment day weapons'" and were "intended for use in a full-scale war."(23)

Yet UN-MACC estimates that IDF artillery units fired even more bomblets than were carried by the "judgment day" rockets, probably between 1.4 million and 2.8 million.(24)

If the early clearance data is a rough reflection of the whole, an additional 500,000 BLU 63 bomblets may have been dropped by Israeli warplanes. When we add up UN-MACC's most conservative estimates and modest estimates of BLU 63 and M85 deployment based on early data,(25) the lowest reasonable estimate for the number of cluster submunitions released over southern Lebanon is three million.

In that case, the roughly 500 square mile target region would have "received" one cluster bomblet for every 4400 square feet of land, or thirteen bomblets for every (American) football field.(26) If three million bomblets had been evenly dispersed, every living thing would have been within killing range-eventually.

If the 40 percent dud rate repeatedly found in the first 45,000 recovered bomblets is confirmed across the region, the total number of unexploded cluster submunitions in Lebanon may be 1.2 million or more, a possibility that must concern UN and Lebanese officials.

Why would Israel's cluster submunitions perform so poorly? Part of the answer may lie in the IDF's reliance on US-made M26 rockets and their M77 bomblets, which have posted wartime dud rates as high as 40 percent.(27) Meron Rapoport of Ha'aretz wrote that in some cases the IDF fired its M26 rockets "at a range of less than 15 kilometers, even though the manufacturer's guidelines state that firing at this range considerably increases the number of duds." (28)

However, the M77's problems don't explain the equally poor performance of the artillery's M42 bomblets, or the dud BLU 63s. In the absence of evidence that the Lebanese terrain or other conditions were at fault, our search for a common "failure factor" must focus on the IDF and its weapons.

One possibility is that the IDF deliberately increased dud rates by "shooting" its cluster bombs, rockets, and shells too high or too low, as discussed above. However, without further evidence this is merely speculation.

Another possibility is that the IDF's cluster munitions inventory may have been stocked with outdated weapons. Some could have been leftovers from Israel's last war against Lebanon. Others could have come from the expired inventories of another nation that wished to dump its outdated munitions. This is a growing international problem that threatens to saddle the world with high dud rate cluster bombs for decades to come.(29)

Excepting the M85, Israel is believed to purchase most, if not all, of its cluster munitions from the United States. This factor may have significantly contributed to the abysmal performance of the IDF's cluster bomblets in Lebanon.

The US hoards huge stockpiles of cluster munitions, including some types that date back to the Vietnam era. Human Rights Watch reported last year that Washington has 369,576 M26 rockets in its inventory.(30) They would presumably be capable of spinning out 238 million highly lethal M77 bomblets, 200 times as many as Israel spewed over south Lebanon this year. With the Pentagon debuting a new generation of lower dud rate antipersonnel and anti-vehicle weapons in Iraq, the US has an obvious interest in getting rid of these "notoriously inaccurate" rockets and the rest of its mountain of aging 'cluster junk'-to the right buyer, of course.

On the other hand, it can be "useful" to have some supplies of suitably aged cluster munitions on hand. According to Captain Josef Dirschka of the German Armed Forces in Kosovo, 1999:

"Unexploded duds are also used deliberately just to spread insecurity. You can't move around freely here as you don't know what state the bombs are in. Will they go off or won't they? If you drive too close to where unexploded duds are lying, it's possible that the vibrations of the vehicle will set the bomb off. You can't know for sure. A certain number of duds is desirable."(31)

Thus, a nation out to "spread insecurity" might have an interest in acquiring and maintaining an inventory of outdated cluster munitions.

On August 11, the first day of the cluster blitz and three days before the ceasefire, the New York Times reported that Israel had made an urgent request to the Bush administration for the delivery of more M26 cluster munition rockets. They "can be effective against hidden missile launchers", the Times explained.(32)

This report suggests one of two things: either the decision to launch the massive cluster bomb campaign was a last minute, ad hoc affair, or procurement specialists in Olmert's administration really dropped the ball.

The peculiarity of Israel's timing becomes acute when we consider how few targets were left for all those cluster bombs to kill. By the final week of the war, most people in the target zone had evacuated to escape Israel's relentless bombing and shelling, which had erased several villages from the face of the earth. Hezbollah fighters should have been able to ride out Israel's cluster bombing waves in the safety of their bunkers. Nonetheless, the IDF must have made an all-out effort to deploy nearly three million bomblets within 72 hours, probably involving all units capable of delivering such devices. What were they shooting at?

The specifics of the available evidence support one "logical" objective for this attack: Israel used cluster munitions as substitutes for landmines.

The IDF's proclivity for mining southern Lebanon is well known. The IDF mined the region heavily prior to its withdrawal in 2000, especially the border area, where mines still line the length of Lebanon's side of the Blue Line and plague adjacent fields and villages.(33) At the end of 2003, a staggering 410,000 landmines remained. By the end of 2005, 30 civilians had died and 173 had been wounded by Israel's landmines.(34)

The most plausible short-term military objective of Israel's cluster bomb campaign would have been to "demobilize" southern Lebanon with cluster duds, to deny safe passage to Hezbollah fighters on their home turf. Israel's leaders clearly sought to make the region uninhabitable, probably hoping to also deny Hezbollah its sympathetic civilian base. The strategic objective may have been to force Hezbollah to redeploy the bulk of its forces to safer ground, which is now well north of the Litani River.(35)

The most intensively cluster-bombed region of Lebanon is home to hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom are unable to return home. On the other hand, Israel considers Hezbollah's fighting force to number about 1,500 men.(36) Simple math reveals the shocking truth: Innocent civilians were perhaps 200 times more likely than Hezbollah militants to be killed or maimed by Israel's region-wide cluster bombing. This basic statistic could not have been unknown to Israeli strategists.

Faced with an apparently indisputable violation of several articles of the Geneva Conventions and a US-Israeli weapons trade agreement, the US State Department confirmed on September 1 that it had begun an investigation into Israel's use of US-supplied cluster munitions in Lebanon.(37)

The likelihood that anything substantive will emerge from this "investigation" is slim. Even slimmer is the chance that Congress and the administration will act as they did in 1982, when Reagan suspended cluster munitions sales to Israel in response to its gross abuses at the time-in Lebanon.

Ten years later, America was cheering its own cluster bombing of Iraq. During the infamously "fast and clean" Gulf War, US and Allied warplanes dropped 20 million bomblets, while the artillery fired another 30 million submunitions. The dud rates of some of these bomblets ranged as high as 30 percent. According to Human Rights Watch in 2003: "At least eighty U.S. casualties during the war were attributed to cluster munition duds. More than 4,000 civilians have been killed or injured by cluster munition duds since the end of the war."(38)

In the darkness of our own long and hideous record with cluster munitions, after al-Hilla and Fallujah and all the other cluster bomb massacres in the current wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, where can the US stand against Israel on the subject?(39)

Where, for that matter, is the political will to hold Israel accountable for any of the thousands of other crimes it has committed in Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories? The State Department "investigation" is merely a sop to diplomats in Brussels and the UN, who were demanding that the US 'do something' about Israel's behavior.

The long-running US-Israeli partnership in the manufacture, trade, and repetitive anti-civilian use of cluster bombs is emblematic of a larger relationship stubbornly mired in the ways of war. The US has dumped sixteen times more dud-prone cluster bomblets on Iraq than Israel seems to have fired on Lebanon this summer. Our government has created a yardstick by which Israelis can claim that "flooding" southern Lebanon with stay-behind cluster bomblets was a "proportionate response" to the crime of living in the wrong place.

International sanctions against the use of cluster munitions in civilian areas should be strengthened. But that would be unlikely to stop nations like Israel and the US from using cluster bombs as de facto landmines. We must also ban high dud rate cluster munitions altogether, through an internationally agreed timetable to phase in low dud rate standards and destroy high dud rate cluster bomb inventories. It is the logical, humane, and urgently needed sequel to the Mine Ban Treaty-which the US and Israel have so far refused to join.

James Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel. He can be contacted at jamiedb@wildblue.net.

1. 'Million bomblets' in S Lebanon
BBC, 9/26/2006

2. 9-Year-Old Boy, 4 Other People Hurt By Cluster Bomb Explosions
An Nahar, 9/27/2006

3. 200,000 remain displaced
Electronic Intifada/OCHA, 9/28/2006

4. South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet
UN Mine Action Coordination Center, 10/10/2006

5. UN: Israel cluster bomb use in Lebanon 'outrageous'
YNet News, 9/19/2006

6. Cluster Bombs a Vestige of Israel's Lebanon Fight
NPR, All Things Considered, 9/27/2006

7. Israel used cluster grenades on civilians
AlJazeera, 7/25/2006

8. LEBANON: Leftover Israeli cluster bombs kill civilians
IRIN - UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 8/21/2006

9. South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet, op. cit.

10. Drop Today, Kill Tomorrow
Mennonite Central Committee, 1997

11. South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet, op. cit.

12. Persian Gulf: U.S. cluster bomb duds a threat
Human Rights Watch, 3/18/2003

13. Cluster Bombs and Cluster Munitions: A Threat to Life
Aktionsbündnis Landmine.de, 1st edition 2004

14. Vietnam
Wendy Waldeck and Sarah Sensamaust, Journal of Mine Action, 2/2006

15. LAOS: More than 30 Years On, the Unquiet Land
By Lynette Lee Corporal, IPS Asia-Pacific/Probe Media Foundation

16. M85 dual-purpose bomblet
GlobalSecurity.org

17. ibid.

18. Employee Liabilities of Weapon Manufacturers Under International Law
AlliantACTION, 2004

19. U.S. Military Assistance and Arms Transfers to Israel: U.S. Aid, Companies Fuel Israeli Military (PDF)
By Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung, World Policy Institute, 7/20/2006

20. M85 dual-purpose bomblet, op. cit.

21. ibid.

22. Latest update on cluster munition problem in south Lebanon
Cluster Munition Coalition, 9/20/2006 (?)

23. IDF commander: We fired more than a million cluster bombs in Lebanon
Ha'aretz, 9/12/2006

24. South Lebanon Cluster Bomb Info Sheet, op. cit.

25. Latest update on cluster munition problem in south Lebanon, op. cit.

26. 770 Cluster Bombs Strikes Map
UN Mine Action Coordination Center South Lebanon, 10/10/2006

27. Cluster Bombs and Cluster Munitions: A Threat to Life, op. cit.

28. When rockets and phosphorous cluster
By Meron Rapoport, Ha'aretz, 9/30/2006

29. Cluster Bombs and Cluster Munitions: A Threat to Life, op. cit.

30. U.S.: Deny Israeli Request for Cluster Munitions
Human Rights Watch, 8/11/2006

31. [Speaking to Report Mainz, 11/17/2003] Cluster Bombs and Cluster Munitions: A Threat to Life, op. cit.

32. Israel Asks U.S. to Ship Rockets With Wide Blast
New York Times, 8/11/2006

33. 770 Cluster Bombs Strikes Map op. cit.

34. The Mine Problem: Southern Lebanon
UN Mine Action Coordination Center South Lebanon, 2006

35. 770 Cluster Bombs Strikes Map op. cit.

36. Peres: Israel achieved its war goals, weakened Hezbollah
Ha'aretz, 8/16/2006

37. US investigating Israel cluster bomb use in Lebanon
Yahoo! News, 9/1/2006

38. Persian Gulf: U.S. cluster bomb duds a threat op. cit.

39. America at War: Killing People in order to Save Them?
By Dave Lindorff, Baltimore Chronicle, 9/6/2006

For the benefit of those whom JS would rather didn't know this, Williamsburg is in BROOKLYN, hometown of Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein

Turn off your computers, folks, and go outside and lie quietly on the ground. There is just a tiny sliver of moon tonight, and the Orionid meteor showers should be at their peak.

We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion year old carbon.

Check it out. Enjoy the show. Me, I'm just going to sit and fume and wait to see if the San Francisco fog clears.

This is actually funny,
Not just myself, but nearly an entire generation.
You see, I know about this stuff. And I know about your fetid secret and how sensitive you are about it.
Otherwise the amount of 'splatter' would not have been so apparent.

The zionists were raking in profits from the nazi death camps.

Just to let you know that the evil does not fall far from the tree,
But in consideration for the abuse you have subjected this thread to, I'll just come back with this every so often. Just to poke you with.
Now that I know it hurts you so much.

Your victimhood is a cover for the unspeakable horror your kind allowed to happen to your own people.
I can deal with my past.
I can see that you can't.
Is this why the ideology of zionism is so evil? Because of their hand in the Jewish holocaust?
And why they squeal so damn loudly?
I can see that, like a rodent caught in a trap, you make a lot of noise.

Go ahead and try to cover this over.
I'll be here to poke you.
It's easy for me.
Tuff for you.
Heh heh...

"Is this why the ideology of zionism is so evil? Because of their hand in the Jewish holocaust?"

Oh, yes indeedy

Not just via their complicity while it was happening, but even more so by their HUGE contribution to its root causes

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/182259_comment.php#182290

forgery is bad
by gehrig Sunday, Oct. 22, 2006 at 7:56 AM

Forgery is bad. Don't do it.

@%<

Critical Analysis Of The Birth Of The Palestinian Refugee Problem By Benny Morris

The Below article was directly quoted from Righteous Victims
By Benny Morris p. 252-258


Galilee October 1948, Ethnically Cleansed Palestinians on their way to Lebanon

We do not expect every Palestinian or Zionist to agree with everything the revisionist Israeli historian, Benny Morris, has written. However, it should be NOTED that his conclusions were based on declassified Zionist and Haganah archives. It is CRITICAL to digest this article in an open mind (especially if you are a Palestinian), even if you disagree with some of what has been written.

* Introduction
* Why Palestinians Left Their Homes?
* Zionist Transfer Policy
* Refugees Flight: In Four Stages
* Palestinian Resistance To Expulsion Policy
* Israel's Policy After The War


Introduction

Beside the emergence of the State of Israel, the other major result of the 1948 war was the destruction of the Palestinian society and the birth of the refugee problem. About 700,000 [Palestinian] Arabs --the figure was later to be a major point of dispute, the Israelis officially speaking of some 520,000, the Palestinian themselves of 900,000-1,000,000--fled or were ejected from the areas that became the Jewish State and resettled in the territories that became known as the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as Transjordan, Syria, and Lebanon, with additional small communities in Egypt, Iraq, and the states of the Arabian Peninsula. The war's end found less than half of the Palestinians in their original homes--fewer then 150,000 in Israel, some 400,000 in the West Bank, and 60,000 in the Gaza Strip.
Why Palestinians Left Their Homes?

Why 700,000 people became refugees was subsequently hotly disputed between Israel and its supporters and the Arabs and theirs. Israeli spokesmen--including "official" historians and writers of textbooks-- maintained that Arabs had fled "voluntarily," or because the Arab states' leaders had urged or ordered them to leave [click here to read our response to this claim], to clear the ground for the invasion of May 15, and enable their spokesman to claim that they had been systematically and with premeditation expelled the refugees. Documentation that surfaced in massive quantities during the 1980s in Israeli and Western archives has demonstrated that neither "official" version is accurate or sufficient.
The creation of the [refugees] problem was almost inevitable, given:

* the geographical intermixing of the population
* the history of the Arab-Jewish hostility since 1917
* rejection of both sides of a binominal solution
* the depth of the Arab animosity toward the Jews and fears of coming under Jewish rule.

The structural weaknesses that characterized Palestinian society on the eve of the war made it especially susceptible to collapse and flight. It was

* poorly organized, with little social or political cohesion,
* there were deep divisions between rural and urban population, and
* between Muslims and Christians, and
* between various elite clans.
* The absence of representative leaders, and
* national institutions [such as labor unions, health care, defense, tax collections, ..etc.]
* As a result of economic and social processes that had begun in the mid-nineteenth century, large parts of the the rural population had been rendered landless by the 1940s. In consequence there was a constant, growing shift of population from the countryside to urban shantytowns and slums; to some degree this led to both physical and psychological divorce from the land. Moreover, 70 or 80 percent of the people were illiterate [reader should not that the public educational system available to Palestinians before 1948 was limited to 25%-30% of total eligible Palestinian student population]. In some measure this resulted in and was mirrored by a low level of political consciousness and activism. The "nationalism" of the urban elite was shared little; if at all, by the urban poor and peasantry.
* And finally, the Arab economy in Palestine had failed to make shift from primitive, agriculture economy to a reindustrialize one--as the Yishuv had done. Equally relevant, in towns very few Arab workers were unionized; none, except the small number in British government service, enjoyed the benefit of unemployment insurance. Effectively ejected from Jewish enterprises and farms when Arab factories and offices closed down, they lost their means of livelihood. For some, exile may have become an attractive option, at least until Palestine calmed down.

Zionist Transfer Policy

Another crucial precondition was the penchant among Yishuv leaders to regard transfer as a legitimate solution to the "Arab problem." Recently declassified Zionist documents demonstrated the virtual consensus emerged among the Zionist leadership, the the wake of the publication in July 1937 of the Peel Commission recommendations, in favor of the transfer of at least several hundred thousand Palestinian Arabs--if not all of them-- out of the areas of the Jewish state-to-be. The tone was set by Ben-Gurion himself in June 1938:

"I support compulsory [Palestinian Arab population] transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral."

Ben-Gurion's views did not change--though he was aware of the need, for a tactical reasons, to be discreet. In 1944, at a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive discussing how the Zionist movement should deal with the British Labor Party decision to recommend the transfer of Palestinian Arabs, he said:

"When I heard these things. . . I had to ponder the matter long and hard ....[but] I reached the conclusion that this matter [had best] remain [in the Labor Party Program] . . . Were I asked what should be our program, it would not occur to me to tell them transfer . . . because speaking about the matter might harm [us] . . . in world opinion, because it might give the impression that there is no room in the Land of Israel without ousting the Arabs [and] . . . it would alert and antagonize the Arabs . . ."

Ben-Gurion added,

"The transfer of Arabs is easier than the transfer of any other [people]. There are Arabs states around . . . And it is clear that if the [Palestinian] Arabs are transferred this would improve their situation and not the opposite."

None of the members of the Executive opposed or questioned these views; most spoke in favor. Moshe Sharett, director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, declared:

"Transfer could be the crowning achievements, the final stage in the development of [our] policy, but certainly not the point of departure. By [speaking publicly and prematurely] we could mobilizing vast forces against the matter and cause it to fail, in advance."

And he added:

"[W]hen the Jewish state is established--it is very possible that the result will be transfer of Arabs."

On February 7, 1948, three months into the war, Ben-Gurion told Mapai's Central Committee that in Jerusalem's Western neighborhoods, from which the Arabs had fled or been expelled, he had seen:

"no strangers [Palestinian Arabs]. Not since Jerusalem's destruction in the days of the Romans has it been so Jewish. . . . I do not assume this will change. . . . And what happened in Jerusalem . . . could well happen in great parts of the country . . if we hold one, it is very possible that in coming six to eight or ten months of the war there will take place great changes. . . . Certainly there will be great changes in the composition of the population of the country."

[Click here for more "transfer" (Ethnic Cleansing) Zionist quotes]
Refugees Flight: In Four Stages

These "great changes" took place in four stages. The first was between December 1947 and March 1948, when Yishuv was on the defensive and upper-and middle-class [Palestinian] Arabs--- perhaps as many as seventy-five thousand--- fled, mainly from mixed cities, or sent their dependents to the West Bank, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, or Transjordan. In this context there can be no exaggeration the detrimental effect on the Arab morale of the IZL and LHI bombing campaigns in big towns.
These families had the wherewithal to settle comfortably in Cairo, Nablus, Amman, or Beirut, and in any case most viewed their exile as temporary. As in the exodus of 1936-1939, they expected to return once the hostilities had ended. Many notable families also resented or feared the domination of the Husseinis, and indeed may have feared a Husseini-ruled Palestine as much as they did life under Jewish rule. It was at this time that many of the political leaders and/or their families left the country--- including most members of the AHC [Arab Higher Committee] and of the Haifa National Committee. Jewish-Arab hostilities were only one aspect of a more general breakdown of law and order in Palestine after UN [General Assembly] Partition Resolution. There was also a gradual collapse of public services and a withdrawal of British authority, and an influx of both urban and rural districts of Arab irregulars, who extorted money from prosperous families and occasionally abused people in the streets.

Arabs also abandoned a number of villages in areas earmarked for Jewish statehood and with Jewish majority, such as the coastal plain. In villages on the edge of Jewish urban centers, a combination of fear of the Jews and actual intimidation, principally by the IZL and LHI, prompted flight. In at least case there was also outright expulsion by the Haganah---on February 20 at Caesarea, midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The flight of the upper and middle classes entailed the closure of schools, clinics and hospitals, businesses, and offices, and in turn engendered unemployment and impoverishment. This was the background of the second stage, the mass flight from urban neighborhood and rural areas overrun by the Jewish forces during spring 1948. The earlier flight of the elite sapped popular morale an gave the masses an example to emulate.

The principle cause of the mass flight of April-June was Jewish military attack, or fear of such attack. Almost every instance---exodus from Haifa on April 21- May 1; from Jaffa during April-early May; from Tiberias on April 17-18; from Safad on May10- was the direct and immediate result of an attack on and conquest of Arab neighborhoods and towns. In no case did a population abandon its homes before an attack; in almost all cases it did so on the very day of the attack and in days immediately following. And flight proved to be contagious. The fall of, and flight from, the big cities---principally Haifa and Jaffa---radiated pessimism and despair to surrounding villages. In the countryside flight by one clan led to that neighborhood clans, and flight from one village to flight from neighboring villages.

Haganah documents described "a psychosis of flight" griping the Palestinian population during this period. The echo of the slaughter on April 9 of the village of Deir Yassin, augmented by Arab atrocity propaganda regarding what happened there, both reinforced and symbolized this. Fear that the same fate might befall them propelled villagers to flight, and this "atrocity factor" was reinforced periodically during the months of fighting by other Jewish massacres, especially in October [such as Safsaf, Sa'sa', 'Ayn al-Zaytun, ..etc.]. Residents of a small number of villagers---more than a dozen---were expelled before the start of the first truce (June 11) by Jewish troops; and some were intimidated by propaganda disseminated by Haganah agents. In most areas there was no need for direct expulsion. Villagers and townspeople usually abandoned hearth and home at the first whiff of grapeshot.

In some areas Arab commanders ordered the villagers to evacuate to clear the ground for military purpose or to prevent the surrender [or collaboration, examples are to many to list]. More than half a dozen villages---just north of Jerusalem and tin the lower Galilee--- were abandoned during those months as a result of such order. Elsewhere, in East Jerusalem and in many villages around the country, the commander ordered women, old people, and children to be sent away to be out of harm's way.

Indeed, psychological preparations for the removal of dependents from the battlefield had begun in 1946-47, when the AHC and the Arab League had periodically endorsed such a move when contemplating the future war in Palestine. Altogether about two to three hundred thousand [Palestinian] Arabs fled their homes during the second stage of the exodus.
During the first stage, there was not Zionist policy to expel the [Palestinian] Arabs or intimidate them into flight, though many Jews, including Ben-Gurion, were happy to see the backs of as many [Palestinian] Arabs as possible. And without a doubt, Jewish-both Haganah and IZL- retaliatory policies and the IZL/LHI terror bombings were precipitants. And there was no Arab policy, aside from sporadic AHC efforts, to stem the tide of the upper-and middle-class departures.
During the second stage, while there was no blanket policy of expulsion, the Haganah's Plan D [Delet] clearly resulted in mass flight. Commanders were authorized to clear the populace out of the villages and certain urban districts, and to raze the villages if they felt a military need. Many commanders identified with the aim of ending up with a Jewish state with a small an [Palestinian] Arab minority as possible. Some generals, such [Yegal] Allon, clearly acted as if driven by such goal [especially in the Galilee panhandle and central region].

On the Arab side there was general confusion at this time about everything concerning the exodus. The governments appear simply not to have understood what was happening and, initially, did not try to stop it. Indeed, Arab Higher Committee [AHC] agents instructed the population of Haifa, after the flight from the town had begun, to continue to leave. But the exodus, as far as the evidence goes, not initiated---as Jewish spokesmen later claimed---by an order from the AHC. It is quite possible that both Arab states and Palestinian leaders were happy to see it happen in order to have a good cause to intervene once the British departed. By early May, some Arab states and the AHC began to take action [to stem the flight]. Transjordan, the AHC, and the ALA [Arab Liberation Army] repeatedly cautioned the inhabitants to stay put and tried to pressure those who had already fled the country to return, to no avail. Meanwhile the Haganah, certainly from mid-May on, adopted a policy of preventing refugees from returning to their homes, using live fire when necessary.
The pan-Arab invasion of May 15 clearly hardened Israel's resolve regarding the Palestinian civilian population, for good military and political reasons. On June 16, the cabinet, without formal vote, resolved to bar the return of refugees. The IDF general staff ordered its units to stop would-be returnees with LIVE FIRE. At some time the army, the settlements, and the JNF [Jewish National Fund] Lands Department took a number of initiatives designed to obviate a return. Abandoned villages were razed or mined or, later, filled with new Jewish immigrants, as were abandoned urban neighborhoods; fields were set alight, and landowners still in place were urged to sell out and leave; and new settlements were established on Arab sites and began to cultivate the abandoned fields.

In the third and fourth stages of the exodus, in July and October-November 1948, about three hundred thousand more [Palestinian] Arabs became refugees, including the sixty thousand inhabitants of Lydda and Ramla who were expelled by IDF troops [based on the orders of Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin]. However, many of Nazareth's [Palestinian] Arabs were allowed to stay, apparently to avert the prospect of negative reactions by Western Christian states [For the same reason Nazareth was the ONLY place where Ben-Gurion gave clear orders to shoot to kill any Jewish looter].
Palestinian Resistance To Expulsion Policy

Israel's readiness to expel the [Palestinian] Arabs was to some degree counterbalanced by a newfound [Palestinian] Arab desire to stay put. By October, villagers in the Galilee had understood that their return was far from imminent. So, during the second half of the war, there far less "spontaneous" flight. Most of this time was due to clear, direct cause, including brutal expulsion and deliberate harassment.

Ben-Gurion clearly wanted as few [Palestinian] Arabs as possible to remain in the Jewish state. But there was still no systematic policy; it was never as far as we know, discussed or decided upon at the Cabinet or IDF general staff meetings. Yet Israeli troops, both in the "Ten Days" in July and during Operation Yaov and Hiram in October-November 1948, were far more inclined to expel Palestinians than they had been during the first half of the war. In Operation Yaov, [Yegal] Allon took care to leave almost no Arab communities alone the lines of Advance. In Operation Hiram, in the north, where Moshe Carmel commanded the Israeli forces, there was confusion and ambivalence. Despite Carmel's October 31 guideline "to assist the Arabs to depart," some units expelled villagers, others left them in place. And while in general the attitude towards Muslim villages was more severe, there were expulsion and massacres of Christians and many Muslim villagers, such as Majd al-Kurum, were allowed to stay. During November, when the IDF cleared the strip from five to fifteen kilo metered deep along the border with Lebanon, for security reasons, both Christians and Muslims were transferred [such as Tabrikha, Kafr Bir'im and al-Mansura].

But while the military attacks or expulsion were the major precipitant to flight, the exodus was, overall, the result of a cumulative process and a set of causes. A Haifa merchant DID NOT ONLY LEAVE only because of :

* months of sniping and bombing, or
* only because business was getting bad, or
* because he saw his neighbor flee, or
* because of extortion by Arab irregulars, or
* because of the collapse of law and order and the gradual withdrawal of the British, or
* because of the Haganah attack, or
* because he feared to live under Jewish rule.

He left because of an accumulation of these factors. In the countryside, too, many factors often combined:

* isolation among cluster of Jewish settlements,
* a feeling of being cut off from [Palestinian] Arab centers,
* a lack of direction by national leaders and a feeling of abandonment by the Arab world,
* fear of Jewish assault, reports and rumors about massacres by the Jews, and
* actual attacks and massacres.

Israel's Policy After The War

From April 1948 onward, the Yishuv was pressed to allow refugees to return. Arab leaders and spokesmen for various groups (inhabitants of Jaffa, Marionettes from the Galilee, and so on) demanded repatriation, as did international figures, including Count Brenadotte [who saved many European Jews citizens from the Nazi Holocaust and on September 17 1948 he was murdered by the Stern gang which was commanded by Yitzhak Shamir] and United States and Britain.
Western pressure brought about two Israeli offers to allow a measure of repatriation as part of an overall peace settlement. In July 1949 Israel said it would take back "100,000" ( 65,000, once those who had already returned or were in the pipeline were deducted), if the Arabs states agreed to resettle the rest in their own lands and conclude a peace settlement. Alternatively, Israel might be willing to incorporate the Gaza Strip into its territories and absorb the Strip's population of 60,000 native inhabitants and 200,000 refugees. In this way, Israel would have done more than its fair share toward resolving the problem---which, its officials tirelessly argued, was not of their making. (OR, as Ben-Gurion was fond of telling Western interlocutors, "Israel did not expel a single Arab.")

The offer was seen by the Arabs as far too little, ands most of the Arab states insisted that Israel take back all the refugees. Egypt was unwilling to hand over the Gaza Strip---its sole territorial gain of the war---even though this would relieved Cairo of the burden of a large, impoverished, subversive population. During the following years of the refugees themselves rejected efforts to resettle them in the Arab states. They wanted to "go home," and the Arab states---save Jordan which gave them citizenship--- did little to absorb them, seeing in them and their misery a useful tool against Israel. Israel refused to allow them back, both because it needed the abandoned lands and houses for new immigrants and because it feared the refugees' potential for destabilization---so the problem remained to plague the Middle Eats, and indeed the world.

Do Palestinians Exists, or Don't They? That's The Question?
BASED On Declassified Israeli Documents & Personal Diaries

From the inception of Zionism in the late 19th century and until the present day, the Zionist leaders have insisted that the Palestinians do not exist as either a people or a nation. This blind attitude was adopted to facilitate the usurpation and suppression of Palestinian political, economic, and human rights. As it will be demonstrated from the quotes below, it was often argued by most Zionists that Palestine was an empty and destitute place until Zionists decided to "redeem" it from the desert; and they also argued that the indigenous Palestinian people were backward, primitive, and mostly nomadic who did not deserve any political rights.

Related Links

* Zionist FAQ: Isn't it true that Palestine inhabitants were mostly a nomadic people? Why should they have a country of their own?
* A scanned page from Ben-Gurion's book stating that Jews made up 12% of Palestine's population in 1914
* Zionist FAQ: Since Palestinians NEVER had a state or distinct culture or language, why should they have a state?
* Zionist FAQ: Isn't it true that Palestine was a destitute place until Israeli Jews made its desert bloom?

Famous Quotes

Michael Bar-Zohar (one of Ben-Gurion's official biographers) openly admitted that it was a myth that "Palestine was an empty land," and to a certain degree, he managed to explain the evolution of the myth, he wrote:

"Whatever became of the slogan: A people without a land returns to land without a people? The simple truth was that Palestine was not an empty land, and the Jews were only a small minority of its population. In the days of the empire building, the Western powers had dismissed natives as an inconsequential factor in determining whether or not to settle a territory with immigrants. Even after the [1st] world war, the concept of self-determination . . . . was still reserved exclusively for the developed world." (Michael Bar-Zohar, p. 45-46)

In describing the following encounter, Shabtai Teveth (one of Ben-Gurion's official biographers) briefly summarized Ben-Gurion's relations with the Palestinian Arabs, Teveth stated:

"Four days after the constituent meeting, on October 8, 1906, the ten members of the platform committee met in an Arab hostel in Ramleh. For THREE DAYS they sat on stools debating, and at night they slept on mats. An Arab boy brought them coffee in small cups. They left the hostel only to grab an occasional bite in the marketplace. On the first evening, they stole three hours to tour the marketplace of Ramleh and the ruins of the nearby fortress. Ben-Gurion remarked only on the buildings, ruins, and scenery. He gave no thought to the [Palestinian] Arabs, their problems, their social conditions, or their cultural life. Nor had he yet acquainted himself with the Jewish community in Palestine [which was mostly non-Zionist Orthodox Jews prior to 1920]. In all of Palestine there were [in 1906] 700,000 inhabitants, only 55,000 of whom were Jews, and only 550 of these were [Zionists] pioneers." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 9-10)

This attitude of ignoring the political rights of the Palestinian people was (and still is) the rule among most Zionists. According to Ben-Gurion's biographer, it's not only that Palestinians were the majority in their homeland as early as 1906, it also should be noted that:

*

The majority of Palestine's Jews were not citizens of the country, but guests from Tsarist Russia.
*

The Jews in Palestinian were mostly Orthodox Jews who made up 7.8% of the total population.
*

At the time, the majority of Orthodox Jews were non-Zionist. Actually, the majority were anti-Zionist.
*

Zionist pioneers were almost absent in Palestine as of 1906, and constituted only 1% of the total Jewish population in Palestine.

In a similar vein, Walter Laqueur (a major historian of Zionism) gave a different dimension to the status of the early Zionist pioneers in 1914 compared to the Palestinian population. He wrote:

"The Zionist immigrants, as distinct from established Jewish community [religious orthodox], numbered no more than 35,000-40,000 in 1914, of whom only one-third lived in agricultural settlements. While Arab spokesmen protested against Jewish immigration, Jewish observers noted with concern that the annual natural increase of the [Palestinian] Arab population was about as big as the total number of Jews who had settled with so much effort and sacrifice on the land over a period of forty years." (A History of Zionism, p. 213)

In October 1882 Ben-Yehuda and Yehiel Michal Pines, two of the earliest Zionist pioneers in Palestine, wrote describing the indigenous Palestinians:

". . . There are now only five hundred thousand Arabs, who are not very strong, and from whom we shall easily take away the country if only we do it through stratagems [and] without drawing upon us their hostility before we become the strong and populous ones." (Righteous Victims, p. 49)

In 1891 Ahad Ha'Am opened many Jewish eyes to the fact the Palestine was not empty, but populated with its indigenous people when he wrote:

"We abroad are used to believe the Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed ..... But in truth that is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains .... are not cultivated." (Righteous Victims, p. 42)

Israel Zangwill, who had visited Palestine in 1897 and came face-to-face with the demographic reality. He stated in 1905 in a speech to a Zionist group in Manchester that:

"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ..... [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 7- 10, and Righteous Victims, p. 140)

Arthur Ruppin wrote in 1913:

"Land is the most necessary thing for establishing roots in Palestine. Since there are hardly any more arable unsettled lands. . . . we are bound in each case. . . to remove the peasants who cultivate the land." (Righteous Victims, p. 61)

It is important to point out that Zionism (as early as 1908 and until the present day) always prophesized that the "Promised Land" had been empty of any people, and it had been waiting for over 2,000 years for Zionist Jews to REDEEM it, click here to read more about the subject.

In 1891Ahad Ha'Am similarly wrote of the Palestinians:

"If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily." (Righteous Victims, p. 49)

Soon after the first Zionist Congress in 1897, Basel (Switzerland), a Zionist delegation was sent to Palestine for a fact finding mission and to explore the viability of settling Palestine with European Jewry. The delegation replied back from Palestine with a cable:

"The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." (Iron Wall, p. 3)

On March 1, 1899 Yosef Diya al-Khalidi (from the renowned Jerusalem family) wrote in a letter to Theoder Herzl explaining that Zionism in practice entails the dispossession and the displacement of the Palestinian people, he wrote:

"It is necessary, therefore, for the peace of the Jews in [the Ottoman Empire] that the Zionist Movement . . . stop. . . Good lord, the world is vast enough, there are still uninhabited countries where one could settle millions of poor Jews who may perhaps become happy there and one day constitute a nation. . . .. In the name of God, let Palestine be left in peace." Herzl responded that Zionists do not intend on dispossession and displacing the Palestinians, on the contrary, he stated the Jews will bring to Palestine ONLY material benefits? (Righteous Victims, p. 37)

Moshe Smilansky wrote in Hapoel Hatzair in the spring edition of 1908:

"Either the Land of Israel of Israel belongs in the national sense to those Arabs who settled there in recent years [before 1908], and then we have no place there and we must say explicitly: The land of our fathers is lost to us. [Or] if the land of Israel belongs to us, the the Jewish people, then our national interests come before all else. . . . it is not possible for one country to serve as the homeland of two peoples." (Righteous Victims, p. 58)

Note that even when the Zionist presence in Palestine was negligible in 1908, they still looked at the Palestinian people as " recent immigrants". Ironically, many Zionists still propagate this myth to this date.

The socialist Zionist Hahman Syrkin, the ideological founder of Socialist Zionism, proposed in a pamphlet, titled "The Jewish Question and the Socialist Jewish State" published in 1898 , that:

"Palestine is thinly populated, in which the Jews constituted today 10 percent of the population, must be evacuated for the Jews." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 7)

In March 1911, 150 Palestinian notables cabled the Turkish parliament protesting land sales to Zionist Jews. The governor of Jerusalem, Azmi Bey, responded:

"We are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites; we value the economic superiority of the Jews. But no nation, no government could open its arms to groups. . . . aiming to take Palestine from us." (Righteous Victims, p. 62)

Moshe Sharett, the first Israeli foreign minister, wrote in 1914:

We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture ..... Recently there has been appearing in our newspapers the clarification about "the mutual misunderstanding" between us and the Arabs, about "common interests" [and] about "the possibility of unity and peace between two fraternal peoples." ..... [But] we must not allow ourselves to be deluded by such illusive hopes ..... for if we ceases to look upon our land, the Land of Israel, as ours alone and we allow a partner into our estate- all content and meaning will be lost to our enterprise. (Righteous Victims, p. 91)

In 1905 during the Zionist Congress convention at Bessel (Switzerland) a Palestinian Jew, Yitzhak Epstein 1862-1943, delivered a lecture about the "Arab question" :

"Among the difficult questions connected to the idea of the renaissance of our people on its soil there is one which is equal to all others: the question of our relations with the Arabs. . . . We have FORGOTTEN one small matter: There is in our beloved land an entire nation, which has occupied it for hundreds of years and has never thought to leave it. . . .
We are making a GREAT psychological error with regard to a great, assertive, and jealous people. While we feel a deep love for the land of our forefathers, we forgot that the nation who lives in it today has a sensitive heart and loving soul. The Arab, like every man, is tied to his native land with strong bonds." (Righteous Victims, p. 57)

Ahad Ha'Am returned to the Arab problem ... in February 1914 ... and he also stated:

" '[the Zionists] wax angry towards those who remind them that there is still another people in Eretz Yisrael that has been living there and does not intend at all to leave its place. In a future when this ILLUSION will have been torn from their hearts and they will look with open eyes upon the reality as it is, they will certainly understand how important this question is and how great our duty to work for its solution." (UN: The Origins And Evolution Of Palestine Problem, section II) But Ahad Ha'Am's plea went unheeded as political Zionism set about to realize its goal of a Jewish State.

As early as 1914, Ben-Gurion secretly admitted the existence of Palestinian nationalism, at least among the working masses. He explained that Palestinians hatred to Zionism was based of their fear of being dispossessed. Ben-Gurion analyzed this hatred and stated:

"this hatred originates with the [Palestinian] Arab workers in Jewish settlements. Like any worker, the [Palestinian] Arab worker detests his taskmaster and exploiter. But because this class conflict overlaps a national difference between farmers and workers, this hatred takes a national form. Indeed, the national overwhelms the class aspect of the conflict in the minds of the [Palestinian] Arab working masses, and inflames an intense hatred toward the Jews." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 18-19)

In 1914, Chaim Weizmann attempted to lay down the foundations of realizing Zionism, and begins by asserting that Palestine is empty and that its current inhabitants have no say in its fate. He stated:

"In its initial stage, Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country? The owners of the country [the Ottoman Turks] must, there for, be persuaded and conceived that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the [Jewish] people and for the country, but also for themselves." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 6)

Just prior to the British conquest of Palestine, Chaim Weizmann wrote describing Palestinian people as:

"the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 17)

In 1913 the renowned Palestinian historian 'Aref al-'Aref wrote an article predicting the outcome of realizing Zionism:

"[land sale was enabling] the Zionists [to] gain mastery over our country, village by village, town by town; tomorrow the whole of Jerusalem will be sold and then Palestine in its entirety." (Righteous Victims, p. 64)

In 1915 Herbert Samuel (who was an influential Jewish British official who later became one of the earliest advocates of the Balfour Declaration and the first British Mandate High commissioner to Palestine in 1920) wrote :

"[A state in which 90,000 or 100,000 Jewish inhabitants [would rule over] 400,000 or 500,000 Mohammedans of Arab race. . . might vanish in a series of squalid conflicts with the [Palestinian] Arab population." (Righteous Victims, p. 72)

The actual demographics picture for Palestine in 1914 was: 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews, click here for details.

In an article published by Ben-Gurion in 1918, titled "The Rights of the Jews and others in Palestine," he conceded that the Palestinian Arabs have the same rights as Jews. The Palestinians had such rights, as stemming from their history since they had inhabited the land "for hundreds of years". He stated in the article:

"Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants." Ben-Gurion often returned to this point, emphasizing that Palestinian Arabs had "the full right" to an independent economic, cultural, and communal life, but not political. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 37-38)

But Ben-Gurion set limits. The Palestinian people were incapable by themselves of developing Palestine, and they had no right to stand in the way of the Jews. He argued in 1918, that Jews' rights sprang not from the past but from the future, and in 1924 he declared:

"We do not recognize the right of the [Palestinian] Arabs to rule the country, since Palestine is still undeveloped and awaits its builders." In 1928 he pronounced that "the [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to close the country to us [Jews]. What right do they have to the Negev desert, which is uninhabited?"; and in 1930, "The [Palestinian] Arabs have no right to the Jordan river, and no right to prevent the construction of a power plant [by a Jewish concern]. They have a right only to that which they have created and to their homes." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 38)

In other words, the Palestinian people are entitled to no political rights, and if they have any other rights, these are confined to their places of residence. Ironically, this statement was written when the Palestinian people made up the majority of the population, well over 85%.

In 1918 Chaim Weizmann denied the existence of an Arab nation in Palestine and portrayed them as ignorant and naive in a letter to a colleague of his:

"The poor ignorant fellah [Arabic for peasant] does not worry about politics, but when he is told repeatedly by people in whom he has confidence that his livelihood is in danger of being taken away from him by us, he becomes our mortal enemy. . . The Arab is primitive and believes what he is told." (One Palestine Complete, p. 109)

On November 2, 1918, at the Balfour day parade in Jewish Jerusalem, Musa Kathim al-Husseini, Jerusalem's mayor at the time, handed the British governor of Palestine, Storrs, a petition from more than 100 Palestinian notables which stated:

"We have noticed yesterday a large crowd of Jews carrying banners and over-running the streets shouting words which hurt the feeling and wound the soul. They [Zionist Jews] pretend with open voice that Palestine, which is the Holy Land of our fathers and the graveyard of our ancestors, which has been inhabited by the Arabs for long ages, who loved it and died in defending it, is now a national home for them." (Righteous Victims, p. 90)

In 1920, Israel Zangwill clearly acknowledged the existence of Palestinians, but not as a people since they were not exploiting Palestine's resources. He said:

"If the Lord Shaftesbury was literally inexact in describing Palestine as a country without a people, he was essentially correct, for there is no Arab people living in intimate fusion with the country, utilizing its resources and stamping it with a characteristic impress: there is at best an Arab encampment." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 6)

Privately, many Zionist leaders acknowledged that Zionism was the primary motive behind the Palestinian nationalist movement, however, publicly they always stated that the movement was organized by a few who did not represent the political aims of the ordinary Palestinian. Kalvaryski, a Zionist Official, put it in May 1921:

"It is pointless to consider this [referring to the Palestinian national movement] a question only of effendis [land owners]. . . This may be fine as a tactic, but, between ourselves, we should realize that we have to reckon with an [Palestinian] Arab national movement. We ourselves---our own [movement]---are speeding the development of the [Palestinian] Arab movement." (Righteous Victims, p. 104)

In July 1922, after the Palestinian Arab commercial strike, Ben-Gurion acknowledged privately that a Palestinian national movement is evolving. He wrote in his diary:

"The success of the [Palestinian] Arabs in organizing the closure of shops shows that we are dealing here with a national movement. For the [Palestinian] Arabs, this is an important education step." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 80)

Similarly in 1929, he also wrote about the Palestinian political national movement:

"It is true that the Arab national movement has no positive content. The leaders of the movement are unconcerned with betterment of the people and provision of their essential needs. They do not aid the fellah; to the contrary, the leaders suck his blood, and exploit the popular awakening for private gain. But we err if we measure the [Palestinian] Arabs and their movement by our standards. Every people is worthy of its national movement. The obvious characteristic of a political movement is that it knows how to mobilize the masses. From this prospective there is no doubt that we are facing a political movement, and we should not underestimate it."

"A national movement mobilizes masses, and that is the main thing. The [Palestinian] Arab is not one of revival, and its moral value is dubious. But in a political sense, this is a national movement." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 83)

In 1923, Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote of how Palestinians really felt about their attachment to Palestine:

"They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true favor that Aztec looked upon Mexico or any Sioux looked upon his prairie. Palestine will remain for the Palestinians not a borderland, but their birthplace, the center and basis of their own national existence." (Righteous Victims, p. 36)

Similarly, Ze'ev Jabotinsky also wrote in 1923:

"The Arabs loved their country as much as the Jews did. Instinctively, they understood Zionist aspirations very well, and their decision to resist them was only natural ..... There was not misunderstanding between Jew and Arab, but a natural conflict. .... No Agreement was possible with the Palestinian Arab; they would accept Zionism only when they found themselves up against an 'iron wall,' when they realize they had no alternative but to accept Jewish settlement." (America And The Founding Of Israel, p. 90)

In 1926 Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote of the national struggle between the two conflicting, but justified Jewish and Palestinian national movements:

"The tragedy lies in the fact that there is a collision here between two truths ..... But our justice is greater. The Arabs is culturally backward , but his instinctive patriotism is just as pure and noble as our own; it can not be bought, it can only be curbed ... force majeure." (Righteous Victims, p. 108)

In the early 1930's, Ben-Gurion finally admitted the mistake of trying to bribe or buy the Palestinian national movement, rather than working with it, he stated in a Mapai forum:

"We have erred for ten years now . . . the crux is not cooperation with the English, but with the [Palestinian] Arabs." By this he meant not merely a relationship of friendship and mutual aid, but political cooperation, which he called the "cornerstone" of the "Arab-Jewish-English rule in Palestine. Let's not deceive ourselves and think that when we approach the [Palestinian] Arabs and tell them 'We'll build schools and better your economic conditions,' that we have succeeded. Let's not think that the [Palestinian] Arabs by nature are different from us." In the heat of the argument, Ben-Gurion said to one of his critics and asked: "Do you think that, by extending economic favors to the [Palestinian] Arabs, you can make them forget their political rights in Palestine?" Did Mapai believe that by aiding the Palestinian Arabs to secure decent housing and grow bumper crops they could persuade the Palestinian Arabs to regard themselves "as complete strangers in the land which is theirs?" (Shabtai Teveth, p. 114)

As the number of Palestinian Jews (Yishuv) doubled between 1931-1935, the Palestinian people became threatened with being dispossessed, with Jews becoming their masters. The Palestinian political movement was becoming more vocal and organized, which surprised Ben-Gurion. In his opinion, the demonstrations represented a "turning point" important enough to warrant Zionist concern. As he told Mapai comrades:

". . . they [referring to Palestinians] showed new power and remarkable discipline. Many of them were killed . . . this time not murderers and rioters, but political demonstrators. Despite the tremendous unrest, the order not to harm Jews was obeyed. This shows exceptional political discipline. There is no doubt that these events will leave a profound imprint on the [Palestinian] Arab movement. This time we have seen a political movement which must evoke respect of the world. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126)

On May 27, 1931, Ben-Gurion recognized that the "Arab question" is a

"tragic question of fate" that arose only as a consequence of Zionism, and so was a "question of Zionist fulfilment in the light of Arab reality." In other words, this was a Zionist rather than an Arab question, posed to Zionists who were perplexed about how they could fulfill their aspirations in a land already inhabited by a Palestinian Arab majority. (Shabtai Teveth, p. xii, Preface)

In a book Ben-Gurion published in 1931 (titled: We and Our Neighbors), he admitted that Palestinian Arabs had the same rights as Jews to exist in Palestine. He stated:

"The Arab community in Palestine is an organic, inseparable part of the landscape. It is embedded in the country. The [Palestinian] Arabs work the land, and will remain." Ben-Gurion even held that the Palestinian Arabs had full rights in Palestine, "since the only right by which a people can claim to possess a land indefinitely is the right conferred by willingness to work." They had the same opportunity to establish that right as the Zionists did. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 5-6)

Ben-Gurion was impressed Izz al-Din al-Kassam's heroism in the mid 1930s, and he predicted Kassam's example would have a far-reaching effect on the Palestinian national movement. Ben-Gurion stated two weeks after Kassam's fateful battle with the British occupation nearby Ya'bad-Jinin:

"This is the event's importance. We would have educated our youth without Tel-Hai [an encounter with Palestinians in the Galilee in the early 1920s], because we have other important values, but the [Palestinian] Arab organizers have had less to work with. The [Palestinian] Arabs have no respect for any leader. They know that every single one is prepared to sell out the Arab people for his personal gain, and so the Arabs have no self-esteem. Now, for the first time, the [Palestinian] Arabs have seen someone offer his life for the cause. This will give the [Palestinian] Arabs the moral strength which they lack."

Ben-Gurion also stressed that

"this is not Nashashibi and not the Mufti. This is not the motivation out of career or greed. In Shaykh Qassam, we have a fanatic figure prepared to sacrifice his life in martyrdom. Now there are not one but dozens, hundreds, if not thousands like him. And the Arab people stand behind them." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 126)

After Ben-Gurion's encounter with George Antonius in May 1936, he was willing to concede the existence of a conflict, between the Palestinian Arabs and Jewish nationalism, for the first time in public. He stated:

"There is a conflict, a great conflict." not in the economic but the political realm. "There is fundamental conflict. We and they want the same thing: We both want Palestine. And that is the fundamental conflict." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 166)

"I now say something which contradicts the theory which I once had on this question. At one time, I thought an agreement [with Palestinians] was possible." Ben-Gurion attached some reservation to this statement. A settlement might be possible between both peoples in the widest sense, between the entire "Jewish people" and the entire Arab people. But such an agreement could be achieved "once they despair of preventing a Jewish Palestine." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 171)

It should be noted that this statement signaled a shift in Ben-Gurion's mind set. Ironically, his conclusion is in a complete agreement with Ze'ev Jabotinsky's IRON WALL doctrine. When Jabotinsky first came out with his famous doctrine in the early 1920s, Ben-Gurion and many other Zionists in the Labor movement branded him as a "racist". As the previous quote demonstrates, Ben-Gurion finally recognized that Zionism had to rely on the IRON WALL doctrine for it to become a reality. Unfortunately for the Palestinian people, according to Ben-Gurion that was a matter of "life or death" for Zionism and Jews.

Over no issue was the conflict so severe as the question of immigration:

"Arab leaders see no value in the economic dimension of the country's development, and while they will concede that our immigration has brought material blessings to Palestine [where exclusively Jewish labor was always the rule], they nevertheless contend---and from the [Palestinian] Arab point of view, they are right-- that they want neither the honey nor the bee sting." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 166)

Soon after the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1936, Ben-Gurion stated in a meeting with his Mapai party:

" .... the [Palestinian Arabs] fear is not of losing land, but of losing the homeland of the Arab people, which others want to turn into the homeland of the Jewish people. The [Palestinian] Arab is fighting a war that cannot be ignored. He goes out on strike, he is killed, he makes great sacrifices." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 18)

On the other hand, he denied the Palestinian any political rights. As a justification, Ben-Gurionstated:

"There is no conflict between Jewish and Arab nationalism because the Jewish nation is not in Palestine and the Palestinians are not a nation." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 19)

A few months before the peace conference convened at Versailles in 1919, Ben-Gurion saw the future Jewish and Palestinian Arabs relations as follows:

"Everybody sees the problem in the relations between the Jews and the [Palestinian] Arabs. But not everybody sees that there's no solution to it. There is no solution! . . . The conflict between the interests of the Jews and the interests of the [Palestinian] Arabs in Palestine cannot be resolved by sophisms. I don't know any Arabs who would agree to Palestine being ours---even if we learn Arabic . . .and I have no need to learn Arabic. On the other hand, I don't see why 'Mustafa' should learn Hebrew. . . . There's a national question here. We want the country to be ours. The Arabs want the country to be theirs." (One Palestine Complete, p. 116)

In the context of the 1929 disturbance, Ben Gurion spoke of the emerging Palestinian nationalism and the main goal of Zionism (where Palestine's population becomes a "Jewish majority") to the secretariat of the major Zionist groupings. He said:

"The debate as to whether or not an Arab national movement exists is a pointless verbal exercise; the main thing for us is that the movement attracts the masses. We do not regard it as a resurgence movement and its moral worth is dubious. But politically speaking it is a national movement . . . . The Arab must not and cannot be a Zionist. He could never wish the Jews to become a majority. This is the true antagonism between us and the Arabs. We both want to be the majority." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 18)

Since the Jews in Palestine (Yishuv) could not become a majority as of 1948 (click here for Palestine's demographic map as of 1946), Zionists resorted to compulsory population transfer (Ethnic Cleansing) to solve what they referred to by the "Arab demographic problem". To hide their basic goals and intentions, they have concocted the myth that Palestinians left their homes, farms, and businesses on the orders of their leaders, click here to read our response to this argument.

In 1930 Arthur Ruppin stated that the dispossession and displacement of the Palestinian Arabs was inevitable if Zionism were to become a reality. He wrote:

"[Palestinian dispossession is inevitable because] land is the vital condition for our settlement in Palestine. But since there is hardly any land which is worth cultivating that is not already being cultivated, it is found that whatever we purchase land and settle it, by necessity its present cultivators are turned away . . . In the future it will be much more difficult to purchase land, as sparsely populated land hardly exists. What remains is densely [Palestinian Arab] populated land." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p.11)

Soon after the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1936, Moshe Sharett spoke of how Palestinians really felt about the continued influx of Jewish immigrants:

"Fear is the main factor in [Palestinian] Arab politics. . . . There is no Arab who is not harmed by Jews' entry into Palestine." (Righteous Victims, p. 136)

As the first Intifada erupted in 1936, many Zionists complained that the British Mandate was not doing enough to stop Palestinian resistance (which often was referred to by "terror"). In that regard, Ben-Gurion argued that:

"no government in the world can prevent individual terror. . . when a people is fighting for its land, it is not easy to prevent such acts." Nor did he criticize the British display of leniency: "I see why the government feels the need to show leniency towards the [Palestinian] Arabs . . . it is not easy to suppress a popular movement strictly by the use of force." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 166)

Sporadically, Ben-Gurion EMPATHIZED with the Palestinian people. He stated in a letter to Moshe Sharett in 1937:

"Were I an Arab, and Arab with nationalist political consciousness . . . I would rise up against an immigration liable in the future to hand the country and all of its [Palestinian] Arab inhabitants over to Jewish rule. What [Palestinian] Arab cannot do his math and understand what [Jewish] immigration at the rate of 60,000 a year means a Jewish state in all of Palestine." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 171-172)

In February 1937, Ben-Gurion was on the BRINK of a far reaching conclusion, that the Arabs of Palestine were a separate people, distinct from other Arabs and deserving of self-determination. He stated:

"The right which the Arabs in Palestine have is one due to the inhabitants of any country . . . because they live here, and not because they are Arabs . . . The Arab inhabitants of Palestine should enjoy all the rights of citizens and all political rights, not only as individuals, but as a national community, just like the Jews." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 170)

In 1938 Menachem Ussishkin commented on the partition plan proposed by the British Peel Commission in 1937:

"We cannot begin the Jewish state with a population of which the [Palestinian] Arabs living on their lands constitute almost half and where the Jews exist on the land in very small numbers and they are all crowded in Tel Aviv and its vicinity .... and the worst is not only the [Palestinian] Arabs here constitute 50 percent or 45 percent but 75 percent of the land is in the hands of the [Palestinian] Arabs. Such a state cannot survive even for half an hour ..... The question is not whether they will be majority or a minority in Parliament. You know that even a small minority could disrupt the whole order of parliamentary life..... therefore I would say to the [Peel] Commission and the government that we would not accept reduced Land of Israel without you giving us the land, on the one hand, and removing the largest number of [Palestinian] Arabs-particularly the peasants- on the other before we come forward to take the reins of government in our lands even provisionally." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 111-112; see also Righteous Victims, p. 143-144)

In May 1944 (during a closed deliberation) Ben-Gurion continued to express without restrain his conviction that Arab transfer was inherent in the very conception of Zionism, he said:

"Zionism is a TRANSFER of the Jews. Regarding the TRANSFER of the [Palestinian] Arabs this is much easier than any other TRANSFER. There are Arab states in the vicinity . . . . and it is clear that if the [Palestinian] Arabs are removed [to these states] this will improve their condition and not the contrary." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 159)

In a speech addressing the United Nations Ad Hoc committee on Palestine October 14 1947, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver (an American Zionist leader) stated:

"There has never been a politically or culturally distinct or distinguishable Arab nation in Palestine. Palestine dropped out of history after the Arab conquest [1,400 years earlier and during the Crusade period] and returned as a separate unit only after the league of nations gave international recognition to a Jewish National home in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 91)

The Rabbi's statement has lots of truth to it, Palestinian nationalism evolved in response to Zionism and the attempts to bring it to reality via the British sponsored Balfour Declaration. To learn more on the subject, click here.

In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947, Ben-Gurion said:

"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176)

As late as 1947, after almost half a century of tireless and relentless effort, the collective ownership of the Jewish National Fund (which constituted one-half of all Zionists and Jewish land ownership) amounted to a mere 3.5% of Palestine. Yosef Weitz was in a good position to know that:

"without taking action to TRANSFER [the Palestinian Arab] population, we will not be able to solve our question by [land] buying." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, 133)

Yosef Weitz also noted on the same date that the BULK of the cultivable land in the "Jewish state", allotted by UN GA proposed Partition in December 1947, was Palestinian owned. He wrote:

"[most of the land is] not Jewish-owned or even in the category of the state domain whose ownership could be automatically assumed by a successor government. Thus, of 13,500,000 dunums (6,000,000 of which were desert and 7,500,000 dunums of cultivable land) in the Jewish state according to the Partition plan, ONLY 1,500,000 dunums were Jewish owned." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 183)

In an interview with the the Sunday Times Golda Meir, Israel's Prime Minister between 1969-1974, stated in June 1969:

"It is not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them, they did not exist." (Iron Wall, p. 311)

On 30 July 1973 Moshe Dayan said to the Time Magazine:

"There is no more Palestine. Finished . . ." (Iron Wall, p. 316)

Isn't it true that Palestinians left their homes during the 1948 war because their leaders asked them to do so? eMail to a friend

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Posted on AUGUST-2-2001


Ethnic cleansing and destruction of 'Imwas, June 17, 1967

For the moment, let's assume that the Palestinian refugees were not terrorized out of their homes, but left based on their free will. The questions that many Palestinians ask:

* Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and business?
* Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes?
* Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the country they were born?

Let's us pose the question the other way around. For a very long time, the Zionist movement encouraged Jews from Europe and the Middle East to emigrate to Israel:

* Is that a good reason to confiscate their homes, farms, and business in their respective countries?
* Is that a good reason to block their return to their homes if they choose to do so?
* Is that a good reason to nullify their citizenship in the countries they were born?

The just and fair answer to all of these questions is a big fat no. Nobody has the right to usurp the political and civil rights of another citizen PERIOD, regardless of the circumstances.

Neither the Israeli Army boot camps, nor the Israeli schools dares to disclose the truth to its subjects. The truth is most Palestinians were terrorized out of their homes, farms, and businesses. PalestineRemembered.com is fortunate to receive pictures portraying the terror that came upon the Palestinian people, click here to witness the ethnic cleansing and destruction of 'Imwas, and make sure to browse through the before and after images posted in its Pictures section. It should be noted that what happened to 'Imwas by the Israeli Army was a copycat war crime to what already happened to other 450 Palestinian towns during the 1948 war.

Since the inception of Zionism, its leaders have been keen on creating a "Jewish State" based on a "Jewish majority" by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem." Year after year, the plan to cleanse Palestine away from its indigenous people became known as the "transfer solution." David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, eloquently articulated the "transfer solution" as the following:

* In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th, 1938:
"With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims p. 144).
* In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947:

"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28)
* And on February 8th, 1948, Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council:

"From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181)
* In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6th, 1948:

"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area ..... I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)
* In speech to the Jewish Agency on June 12, 1948, Ben-Gurion stated:

"I am for compulsory transfer; I don't see anything immoral in it." For tactical reasons, he was against proposing it at the moment, but "we have to state the principle of compulsory transfer without insisting on its immediate implementation." (Simha Flapan, p. 103)
* Click here for more "Transfer" (Ethnic Cleansing) quotes from Zionist leaders.

For the moment, assume that the above evidence is nothing but an Arab propaganda. We ask the reader to contemplate what Yitzhak Rabin, one of Israel's Prime Ministers, had written in his diary soon after the occupation of Lydda and al-Ramla on July 10th-11th, 1948:

"After attacking Lydda [later called Lod] and then Ramla, .... What would they do with the 50,000 civilians living in the two cities ..... Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution .... and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he [Ben-Gurion] remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endangered the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward.
Ben-Gurion would repeat the question: What is to be done with the population?, waving his hand in a gesture which said: Drive them out! [garesh otem in Hebrew]. 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring, .... Psychologically, this was on of the most difficult actions we undertook". (Soldier Of Peace, p. 140-141 & Benny Morris, p. 207) .

Later, Rabin underlined the cruelty of the operation as mirrored in the reaction of his soldiers. He stated during an interview (which is still censored in Israeli publications to this day) with David Shipler from the New York Times on October 22, 1979:

"Great Suffering was inflicted upon the men taking part in the eviction action. [They] included youth-movement graduates who had been inculcated with values such as international brotherhood and humaneness. The eviction action went beyond the concepts they were used to. There were some fellows who refused to take part. . . Prolonged propaganda activities were required after the action . . . to explain why we were obliged to undertake such a harsh and cruel action." (Simha Flapan, p. 101)

Just before the 1948 war, the residents of the twin cities, Lydda and al-Ramla, almost constituted 20% of the total urban population in central Palestine, inclusive of Tel-Aviv. Currently, the former residents and their descendents number at least a half a million, who mostly live in deplorable refugee camps in and around Amman (Jordan) and Ramallah (the occupied West Bank). According to Rabin, the decision to ethnically cleanse the twin cities was an agonizing decision, however, his guilty conscious did not stop him from placing a similar order against three nearby villages ('Imwas, Yalu, and Bayt Nuba ) 19 years later. The exodus from Lydda and al- Ramla was portrayed firsthand by Ismail Shammout, the renowned Palestinians artist from Lydda itself, click here to view his exodus gallery. To learn more about the ethnic cleansing of Lydda and al-Ramla based on declassified Israeli archives, we suggest clicking here as well .

In order to excuse themselves from any responsibility of war crimes, Zionists have concocted a myth that Palestinians were ordered by their leaders to abandon their homes. As it will be proven below, this version of events was conclusively proven wrong based on Israeli declassified documents. According to the Israeli historian Benny Morris:

* 'In general, during the first months of the war until April 1948 the Palestinian leadership struggled, if not very manfully, against the exodus: "The AHC [Arab Higher Committee] decided .... to adopt measures to weaken the exodus by imposing restrictions, penalties, threats, propaganda in the press [and] on the radio .... [The AHC] tried to obtain the help of neighboring countries in this context ..... [The AHC] especially tried to prevent the flight of army-age young males," according to IDF intelligence'. (Benny Morris, p. 60)
* 'Whatever the reasoning and attitude of the Arab states' leaders, I have found no contemporary evidence to show that either the leaders of the Arab states or the Mufti [Hajj Amin al-Husseini] ordered or directly encouraged the mass exodus during April [1948]. It may be worth noting that for decades the policy of the Palestinian Arab leaders had been to hold fast to the soil of Palestine and to resist the eviction and displacement of Arab communities'. (Benny Morris, p. 66)
* 'In Kafr Saba [early May 1948], the locals, under threat from Haganah attack, wanted to leave, but were ordered to stay by the ALA [Arab Liberation Army] garrison. According to Haganah sources, the ALA, with the population of Ramallah about to take flight, blocked all roads into the Triangle: "The Arab military leaders are trying to stem the flood of refugees and taking stern and ruthless measures against them." Arab radio broadcast, picked up by the Haganah, conveyed orders from the ALA to all Arabs who had left their homes to "return within three days. The commander of Ramallah assembled the mukhtars [official leaders] from the area" and demanded they strengthen morale in the their villages. The local ALA commanders turned back trucks which were coming to take families out of Ramallah. .... Haganah intelligence on May 6 reported that "Radio Jerusalem in its Arabic broadcast (14:00 hours, 5 May) and Damascus [Radio] (19:45 hours, 5 May) announced in the name of the Supreme Headquarters: 'Every Arab must defend his home and property .... Those who leave their places will be punished and their homes will be destroyed.'. The announcement was signed by [Fawzi al-]Qawukji.' (Benny Morris, p. 68-69)

Similarly, Simha Flapan (the Israeli writer and politician) stated according to declassified Israeli document and to the November 6th, 1948 edition of the Israeli newspaper Davar:

". . . after April 1948, the flight acquired massive dimensions. Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary general of the Arab League, and King Abdullah both issued public calls to the Arabs not to leave their homes. Fawzi al-Qawukji, commander of the Arab Liberation Army, was give instructions to stop the flight by force and to requisition transport for this purpose. The Arab government decided to allow entry only to women and children and to send back all men of military age (between eighteen and fifty). Mohammad Adib al-Umri, deputy director of Ramallah broadcasting station, appealed to the Arabs to stop the flight from Jenin, Tulkarm, and other towns in the Triangle that were bombed by the Israelis. On May 10, Radio Jerusalem broadcasted orders on its Arab program from Arab commanders and AHC to stop the mass flight from Jerusalem and the vicinity." (Simha Flapan, p. 86-87)
* 'The various National Committees issued bans on flight. The Ramle National Committee set up pickets at the exits to the town to prevent Arabs departing. The inhabitants of the villages east of Majdal (Beit Daras, the Sawafirs, ..etc) were warned not to allow in with their belongings. On 15 May [1948], Faiz Idris, AHC's "inspector for public safety," issued ordered to militiamen to help the invading Arab armies and to fight against " the Fifth column and the rumour-mongers, who are causing the flight of the Arab population' (Benny Morris, p. 69)
* 'On 10-11 May [1948], the AHC [Arab Higher Committee] called on officials, doctors, and engineers who had left the country to return on 14-15 May, repeating the call, warned the the officials who did not return would lose their " moral right to hold these administrative jobs in the future." Arab governments began to bar entry to the refugee -as happened, for example, on the Lebanese border in the middle of May'. (Benny Morris, p. 69)
* 'The fall of Safad and the flight of its inhabitants shocked the [Palestinian] Arab villagers of the Hula Valley, to the north. [Yegal] Allon launched a psychological warfare campaign ("If you don't flee immediately, you will all be slaughtered, your daughters will be raped," are the like), and almost all the villagers fled to Lebanon and Syria.' (Righteous Victims, p. 213)
* According to a Jewish Agency's Arab section report from January 3, 1948, at the beginning of the flight:
"The Arab exodus from Palestine continues, mainly to the countries of the West. Of late, the Arab Higher Executive has succeeded in imposing close scrutiny on those leaving for Arab countries in the Middle East." Prior to the declaration of the "Jewish state," the Arab League's political committee, meeting in Sofar, Lebanon, recommended that the Arab states " the doors to . . . women and children and old people if events in Palestine make it necessary." (Simha Flapan, p. 85)

As Moshe Sharett was ending his career in the mid-1950s, he came to the conclusion that Israel cannot be ruled without deceit as if it's essential for the Jewish state's survival. He wrote just before resigning:

"I have learned that the state of Israel cannot be ruled in our generation without deceit and adventurism. These are historical facts that cannot be altered. . . In the end, history will justify both the stratagems and deceit and the acts of adventurism. All I know is that I, Moshe Sharett, am not capable of them, and I am therefore unsuited to lead this country." (Simha Flapan, p. 52-53)

Finally, it must be emphasized that Israel tried Adolf Eichmann for atrocities committed as a Nazi leader, it included charges of forcible expulsion (ethnic cleansing), which were classified as war crimes and crimes against humanity. It's ironic how often Israelis and Zionists are selective in the interpretation of war crimes against humanity in a way that fits their political agenda.

Why don't Arabs welcome their Palestinian Arab brothers? eMail to a friend

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Posted on AUGUST-2-2001

To accept compulsory population transfer in principle would set a dangerous precedent for international relations, and many nations would use such an excuse to cleanse themselves from "unwanted minorities". In other words, if it is accepted in principle that one can transfer and dispossess the Palestinian people so that Jews can have a "Jewish state," then

Why would it be unacceptable to "transfer" 10 million Mexican Americans to Mexico? or
To "transfer" a million Kosovan Albanians to Albania?, or
Even to "transfer" 6 million American Jews to the "Jewish state"?

Ironically, Serbia, under Milosevic's leadership in 1999, used a similar argument to cleanse itself from its "unwanted Albanian minority", (of course under the pretext that Kosovo was central to Serbia's ancient heritage and religious past).

Consequently, the act of compulsory population transfer (Ethnic Cleansing) has been accepted internationally as a war crime, and on that basis both Serbia and Iraq were subjected to international condemnations, and U.N. resolutions were enforced by military action to stop and reverse these war crimes.

For the moment, let's assume that the above argument are nonsense to the average Israeli or Zionist. Let us analyze why the integration of Palestinian refugees into neighboring host countries is not viable for the following economic and political reasons:

Economic reasons

* It should be emphasized that 75% of the new Jewish immigrants to Israel, after the 1948 war, operated looted Palestinians houses, farms, cars, truck, banks, and the infrastructure resource such as water networks, the power grids, railroads, airports, wells, the telegraph network, and the schools, roads, and ports.

In other words, Israel has had the looted Palestinian capital as collateral, German compensation money for war crimes committed during WW II, and over 120 billion dollars in American taxpayers' money to help settle the new Jewish immigrants. On the other hand, Palestinian refugees and their corresponding host countries had no such good fortune. If Palestinians are to be helped to settle someone else's country, they have to take somebody else's property, which is unfair and unjust to others. From an economical standpoint, the biggest economic boost the "Jewish State" had was the looted and stolen Palestinian properties.
* For a second, let's assume that such repatriation is possible in the host countries, and calculate the cost of such repatriation. For example, let's assume that we need to provide a reasonable health care insurance (not government subsidized) for each Palestinian refugee in Jordan (which hosts close to 3 million Palestinian refugees), and let us also assume that such insurance costs a $100/month per refugee. So the total yearly cost of providing health care insurance to all refugees in Jordan is at least 3.6 billion dollars = $100 * 12 months * 3 million refugees. Note that we have not yet analyzed the costs of providing infrastructure services, i.e. roads, water networks, power grids, education, transportations, ports, airports, ...etc. While contemplating these staggering numbers, keep in mind that the annual budget for the Jordanian government is little over 6 billion dollars, compared to 53 billion dollar for Israel.

While the average Jordanian citizen has some kind of collateral (such as land, real state, ... etc. ) to support his or her future well being, the average Palestinian refugee has nothing but his or her tent as collateral, and even the tent belongs to the United Nations. Consequently, the net worth (in economic terms) of the average Palestinian is almost nil, which negatively impacts tax revenues in the host countries. In fact, the huge number of refugees stifled economic growth in these host countries for several decades-since many essential services had to be diverted to help the refugees.

Ironically, the absence of the Palestinian economic base has motivated the average Palestinian to invest in his or her intellectual capital. It's really amazing how many Palestinians live the lives of many Jews in the past. In general, Europeans used to restrict land purchases by their Jewish citizens, which in return motivated many Jews to invest in their intellectual capital.
* For the moment assume that the above economic formula is nonsense to the average Israeli or Zionist, then let's ask the following questions:

If it's easy for the host Arab countries to integrate Palestinian refugees into their economic and social structure, then why after three decades of Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, has Israel been unable to improve the lives of the Palestinian refugees under its direct control?

If it's easy for the host countries to integrate the refugees (despite their limited resources), then surely it should be much easier for Israel to do so?

Paradoxically, many Palestinian refugees' economic situation has actually worsened under Israeli occupation, and if it were not for United Nations' food rations, many refugees would have starved by now! In fact, malnutrition among Palestinian Children in the occupied West Bank and the occupied Gaza Strip has increased by 1600% since September of 2000.
* It's unfair to claim that many Arab countries did not integrate Palestinian refugees into their economic, social, and even political structures. Out of the 5.9 million Palestinian refugees, there are 3.5 million refugees who still live in refugee camps (usually known as "registered refugees"). So despite all of the above obstacles, some 2 million Palestinian refugees (almost half the number of the Israeli Jews) are already integrated into the host countries' economic, political, and social structures.

Political Reasons

* For the above economic reasons, Palestinian refugees were obliged to compete for all available resources in the host countries and continue to do so. The average Palestinian (ironically, like many Jews in the West) knows that he or she has to work twice as hard as the local worker just to keep his or her job. On average, Palestinians (for economic and political reasons) are not welcomed in the host countries, and that generates anti-Palestinian feeling. For instance, take the discriminatory practices of the Lebanese government where Palestinians are excluded from 73 job types, such engineering, health care, financing, ... etc.

Although this behavior is deplorable, it is a natural reaction by any state to any external threat to its resources, and this is a common experience among Jews when they emigrate to the "Jewish state". It should be noted that it is still a tense situation between Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and African Israeli Jews, and the blood of the latter was not welcomed in Israeli blood banks for a very long time.
* It should be noted that even if the Palestinian refugees are integrated into the host countries, that won't stop Palestinians from demanding their right to return to their homes in Israel. Palestinians are extremely proud of their national identity, and continuously assert their unique cultural and political differences at the earliest possible opportunity. This deep sense of nationalism is widely shared most Palestinians, especially among the affluent families, who are already integrated in Western and Arab societies, i.e. in the US, Europe, Canada, ... etc. Actually, many of them still marry from the same indigenous localities, and maintain their unique dresses, folklore, and accents.

The major obstacle that many Israelis and Zionists have in their dealings with Palestinians is that they think that 8.5 million Palestinians have no national rights, such as the right of self determination. Paradoxically, they believe that 4.5 million Jews in Israel have the right of self determination! From the start, the struggle between Zionism and the Palestinian people was a struggle between two distinct and conflicting nationalistic movements.
* Most, if not all, host countries are hesitant to grant political rights (such as the right to vote) to non-citizens, especially if the "newcomers" could overnight change the political landscape. This political problem was the case in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria soon after the 1948 war. For example, Jordan's citizens became (overnight) a minority in their own country. To ask the average Jordanian to accept this situation on a permanent basis, without anything in return, is to create a "political time bomb". Unfortunately, this "political time bomb" has already exploded in Jordan and Lebanon, and its after shocks are still felt today.

There is no question of the fact that some political movements have benefited politically and economically from not integrating the Palestinian refugees. We agree that all host countries used (and will continue to use) the refugees as a tool to collect international aid and bribes. We also concur that suppressing Palestinians makes political and economic sense to some regional leaders. On the other hand, it's not fair to point the finger of blame at the host countries for not solving a problem that Israel has created. By blocking the Palestinian refugees' return to their homes, farms, and businesses, Israel has made this problem persist and fester for many generations, and it has to put up the lion's share of the effort needed to solve it.

Why did Arabs reject the proposed UN GA partition plan which split Palestine into Jewish and Arab states? eMail to a friend

למאמר בעברית

Posted on AUGUST-10-2001

The 1947 UN GA proposed partition plan of Palestine is often used by Israelis and Zionists to obscure facts from those new to the argument. As demonstrated below, the myth has been concocted to legitimize Israel in the eyes of many Jews and Western people. It should be noted that each of the facts below can be independently verified either from the Zionist archives in Jerusalem, or from the British Mandate books.

The best way to present the facts concerning this question is by asking the following questions:

*

Are you aware that Palestine's Jewish population was under 8% of the total population as of 1914? (Righteous Victims, p. 83) It should be noted that the mass majority of the Jews residing in Palestine were not citizens of the country, but they recently fled anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia.
*

Are you aware that in 1914 Jewish land ownership in Palestine was under 2%?
*

Despite the active British assistance to establish a "Jewish National home" in Palestine (based on the British commitment in the Balfour Declaration), Palestine's Jewish population in 1947 was increased to 33% of its total population. (Righteous Victims, p. 83). Click here for a map illustrating Palestine's population distribution per district as of 1946. Again, prior to the 1948 war many of the Jews in Palestine were not recognized as legal citizens by the Government of Palestine, however, they mostly maintained citizenship of their respective countries, such as Russian, Polish, Romanian, and Germany citizenships.

It's worth noting that even after five decades of ethnic cleansing, occupation, and dispossession, the demographic ratio between Palestinians (8.5 million) and Israeli Jews (4.5-5 million) is still the same as it was in December 1947, which was (and still is) 2 to 1 in favor of the Palestinian people. However, for Israel to maintain its democratic "Jewish state", and above all its "Jewish character", it opted to ETHNICALLY CLEANSE 80% of the Palestinian people out of their homes, farms, businesses.
*

Are you aware that Jewish land ownership in Palestine was under 7% as of 1947? (Benny Morris, p. 170) Click here for a map illustrating Palestine's land ownership per district as of 1945.
*

Are you aware that the United States of America arm twisted the arms of dozens of small nations to get their support for the partitioning of Palestine? For example, Greece and France were threatened with a foreign aid cutoff, Liberia was threatened with a rubber embargo plus Firestone Company's president threatened to revoke his company's planned expansion in Liberia, bribing several Latin American countries by hinting at the possibility that the U.S. might fund the construction of a Pan-American highway, ... etc. (Righteous Victims p. 184 , Jerusalem Post, and America And The Founding Of Israel p. 141-143)
*

Are you aware that two US Supreme Court justices, Frank Murphy and Felix Frankfurter, contacted the Philippine's ambassador in Washington D.C. and sent telegrams to the Philippine's president, Carlos Rojas, warning that a vote against the proposed partition plan would alienate millions of Americans. Ten senators also cabled Rojas (Jerusalem Post).
*

Are you aware that the Jewish Agency budgeted a million dollars for its own bribery campaign? The money allocation appeared in the Jewish Agency's budget as "irregular political activity." (One Palestine Complete, p. 496)
*

Are you aware that the Zionist leaders enjoyed a clandestine advantage by BUGGING the rooms of the UN Special Committee On Palestine (UNSCOP), and they knew what every committee member and witness was saying? (Righteous Victims, p. 182)
*

Are you aware that in March 1948 the United States, along with China and France, was withdrawing from its earlier commitments to partition Palestine, and was pressing for "trusteeship" - an extension of Great Power rule- in Palestine beyond May 15th, 1948? (Benny Morris, p. 61) And on March 19th, 1948, Ben-Gurion responded to the idea of UN trusteeship in a press conference in Tel-Aviv with as follows:

"It is we who will decide the fate of Palestine. We cannot agree to any sort of Trusteeship, permanent or temporary. The Jewish State exists because we defend it." (Israel: A History, p. 165)

It should be noted that since November 1947 the UN GA has failed to reaffirm the 1947 UN GA proposed partition plan.

*

Are you aware that the 20th Zionist Congress, which convened in Zurich in August 1937, almost UNANIMOUSLY REJECTED the British proposed partition plan of Palestine (which became known as the Peel Commission Partition plan)? (Israel: A History, p. 88, and One Palestine Complete, p. 414). Although the proposed Peel Commission's partition plan was rejected because the areas allocated to the "Jewish state" was "too small," the concept of partitioning the country was adopted by the 20th Zionist Congress. Click here to view the map proposed by the Peel Commission which was rejected by the 20th Zionist Congress, and click here to view a map proposed by the U.N. GA in 1947 for the partition of Palestine. While inspecting both maps, note the following:

1) The Jewish population in Palestine as of 1937 was under 27% of the total population.
2) The Jewish population in Palestine as of 1947 was under 33% of the total population.
3) The Negev Desert was populated with Zionist Jews only in few isolated colonies.
4) The Peel Commission allocated the most fertile regions of Palestine to the "Jewish state," which included all of Galilee and a much wider area in the coastal region compared to the areas proposed by the UN GA in 1947.
5) The 1947 UN GA proposed Partition plan did not advocate compulsory population transfer (ethnic cleansing) for Palestinians out of the areas allocated to the "Jewish State", where Palestinians made up 45% of the total population. On the contrary, compulsory population transfer was a major pillar for the success of the Peel Commission Partition plan.

We call upon your sense of fairness while contemplating the following questions:

1) If the Peel Commission plan had been accepted by the Zionists in 1937, how many Jews might have been saved from the Nazi holocaust? In that respect, it's worth quoting Ben-Gurion, who wrote twenty years later:

"Had partition [referring to the Peel Commission partition plan] been carried out, the history of our people would have been different and six million Jews in Europe would not have been killed---most of them would be in Israel" (One Palestine Complete, p. 414).

2) Why is the rejection of the 1937 Peel Partition plan justifiable according to many Zionists, but the Arabs' rejection of the 1947 UN GA Partition plan is not?

*

To give a different perspective on the issue, it's worth contemplating what Moshe Sharett, the 1st Israeli Foreign Minister, said in justification of why the Palestinian people would reject any Partition to their country. Sharett stated behind closed doors to the Zionist Actions Committee on April 22nd, 1937:

"...in contrast to us they [Palestinian Arabs] would lose totally that part of Palestine which they consider to be an Arab country and are fighting to keep it such ... They would lose the richest part of Palestine [referring Peel Commission Partition plan]; they would lose major Arab assets, the orange plantations, the commercial and industrial centers and the most important sources of revenue for their government which would become impoverished; they would lose most of the coastal area, which would also be loss to the hinterland [Palestinian] Arab states. .... This would be such an uprooting, such a shock, the likes of which had never occurred and could drown the whole thing in rivers of blood. " (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 59-60), click here to read the full quote.

*

Are you aware that the Syrian proposal to refer the Palestine issue to the International Court of Justice at The Hague was defeated by a single vote, twenty one votes against twenty. (Simha Flapan, p. 123)
*

Are you aware that the 1947 UN GA proposed partition was outside the competence of the Assembly under the Charter of the United Nations? Nowhere in the UN's charter was there the power to partition any country, especially based on racial or religious grounds. Even if the UN had the power, the resolution to partition Palestine was not binding since it was indorsed by the General Assembly rather than the Security Council.
*

Notwithstanding the above facts, are you aware that the 1947 UN GA proposed partition granted the "Jewish state" ABOUT 60% of the total area of Palestine?
*

Assuming that you are an American, based on the above facts, would you concede sovereignty and land ownership over 60% of your country to a foreign minority, such as Canadians and Mexicans, who owns under 7% of U.S.'s lands? Click here for a map illustrating such comparative partition of the U.S. in favor of one of its ethnic or religious minorities.

If you do not accept such a plan for yourself as an American, then

Why ask the Palestinian people to concede 60% of their land in favor of an ALIEN foreign minority?
*

For a moment, let's assume that the above arguments and facts are nonsense to the average Israeli and Zionist, and ask the following question:

Assuming that as of 1947 Israeli Jews constituted a 2/3 majority of the total population, owned and operated 93% of Israel's lands, and contributed 55%-60% of the Israeli Gross Domestic Product (GDP), would you accept a U.N. IMPOSED partition of Israel in favor of an alien minority?

It should be NOTED that currently Palestinian-Israeli citizens make up 20-22% of the total Israeli population, so is it acceptable for the U.N. to partition Israel in a favorable way to its Palestinian-Israeli minority? As an Israeli Jew, would you accept a UN GA imposed partition of your country?
*

We cannot help it but to a draw similarity with a famous Old Testament story, when two women disputed the motherhood of a baby. They took their dispute to King Solomon, who decided to settle the dispute by cutting the baby in half. The baby's mother quickly objected the King's decision and preferred giving up that baby rather than killing it. That is when the wise King recognized that she must be the mother, and the other woman is an imposter. In a similar fashion, the Palestinian people refused the unjust resolution that called for the division of their country with an alien colonizers.

As it will be demonstrated below, the decision by the Zionist leadership to accept the 1947 proposed UN GA Partition plan was nothing but a smoke screen, which was done solely to gain international recognition and support. This deception was a political ploy to gain initial international legitimacy for the existence of the "Jewish state", and this was well known to the Palestinian people. The reader is urged to contemplate the following Zionist leaders' quotes in an open mind. Note that most, if not all, of the quotes below are dated before the entry of any single Arab Army into British Mandated Palestine:

*

In a letter Chaim Weizmann sent to the Palestine-British high Commissioner, while the Peel Commission was convening in 1937, he stated:

"We shall spread in the whole country in the course of time ..... this is only an arrangement for the next 25 to 30 years." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 66)
*

Ben-Gurion emphasized that the acceptance of the Peel Commission would not imply static borders for the future "Jewish state". In a letter Ben-Gurion sent to his son in 1937, he wrote:

"No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of the Land Of Israel. [A] Jewish state in part [of Palestine] is not an end, but a beginning ..... Our possession is important not only for itself ... through this we increase our power, and every increase in power facilitates getting hold of the country in its entirety. Establishing a [small] state .... will serve as a very potent lever in our historical effort to redeem the whole country." (Righteous Victims, p. 138)
*

In 1938, Ben-Gurion made it clear of his support for the "Jewish state" on part of Palestine was only as a stepping ground for a complete conquest. He wrote:

"[I am] satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we build up a strong force following the establishment of the state--we will abolish the partition of the country and we will expand to the whole Land of Israel." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 107 & One Palestine Complete, p. 403)
*

One day after the UN vote to partition Palestine, Menachem Begin, the commander of the Irgun gang and Israel's future Prime Minister between 1977-1983, proclaimed:

"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever." (Iron Wall p. 25)
*

Ben-Gurion was happy and sad when the U.N. voted to partition Palestine into two states, Palestinian and Jewish. He was happy because "finally" Jews could have a "country" of their own. On the other hand, he was sad because they have "lost" almost half of Palestine, and because they would have to contend with a sizable Palestinian minority, well over 45% of the total population. In the following few quotes, you will see how he also stated that a "Jewish state" cannot survive being 60% Jewish; implying that something aught to be done to remedy the so called "Arab demographic problem". He stated on November 30, 1947:

"In my heart, there was joy mixed with sadness: joy that the nations at last acknowledged that we are a nation with a state, and sadness that we lost half of the country, Judea and Samaria, and , in addition, that we [would] have [in our state] 400,000 [Palestinian] Arabs." (Righteous Victims, p. 190)
*

While addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947, Ben-Gurion stated:

"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176)
*

Ben-Gurion commented on the proposed Peel Commission Partition plan as follows in 1937:

"We must EXPEL ARABS and take their places .... and, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places-then we have force at our disposal." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 66). Note the premeditated plan to ethnically cleanse the Negev and Transjordan which were not allocated to the Jewish State by the Peel Commission, click here to view a map illustrating the areas allocated to the "Jewish State" by the Peel Commission in 1937.
*

Moshe Sharett, director of the Jewish Agency's Political Department who later became Israel's first foreign minister, declared:

"[W]hen the Jewish state is established--it is very possible that the result will be [population] transfer of [the Palestinian] Arabs." (Righteous Victims, p. 254)
*

While addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30th, 1947, Ben-Gurion said:

"In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%."(Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28)
*

On February 7th, 1948, while addressing the Mapai Council he responded to a remark that the "Jews have no land in the Jerusalem corridor" with the following:

"The war will give us the land. The concept of 'ours' and 'not ours' are only concepts for peacetime, and during war they lose all their meaning." (Benny Morris, p. 170 & Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180)
*

And on February 8th, 1948 Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council:

"From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181)
* In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6, 1948, Ben-Gurion clearly stated that war could be used as an instrument to solve the so called "Arab demographic problem". He stated:

"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area, even if only in an artificial way, in a military way. . . . I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of [Palestinian] Arab population." (Benny Morris, p. 181 & Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181)

Note the premeditated plan to occupy and ethically cleanse areas, such as Galilee and Jerusalem, which were not allotted to the "Jewish State" by the 1947 UN GA Partition plan. Click here to view a map illustrating the areas allocated to the "Jewish State" by the 1947 UN GA partition plan.

Finally, it's hypocritical when on one hand Zionists use UN GA partition plan as a pretext to legitimize Israel's existence, while they've rejected almost every other UN resolution since Israel's creation, chief among them UN GA resolution 194 that called for the immediate return to all Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel. To suit Zionists' political agenda, they have deliberately chosen to ignore most, if not all, of UN resolutions concerning Palestine and its people, of course with the exception of withdrawing from occupied southern Lebanon in May 2000. Sadly, Israel has accepted that UN resolution not because it was influenced by a UN, a U.S., or even a European diplomatic pressure, but because it was compelled to do so by the heroic Lebanese resistance.

But the documentation is valid as is the historical evidence to anyone who will look,
Denial without facts is a normal reaction of last resort and a non rebuttal.

Aside from Third Reich Germany, the largest Eugenics movement was right here at home. Eugenics as a social movement lead to the forced sterilizations of tens of thousands of women in America , continuing through the 1960's. The developmentally delayed, epiltic, even the deaf were prevented from marrying. Immigration laws were drafted to prevent the "physically unfit" from entering the country.

Must be a forbidden history
To see what is such an inflamed wound this is check out this link to the 'hidden zone' that the zionists are in fear of.
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=14955

That is why everyone hates them. They go overboard with the killing and then blame it on the poor people who get so desperate that they are willing to blow themselves up because of hopelessness.

There's no defending cluster munitions, from any side. The original post wasn't about Hizbollah and wasn't entitled "They did it to!". If it was, Hitler would be off the hook.

The original post was about israeli state terror with its use of cluster munitions. Saying that Hizbollah "does it, too" does not make it OK. You will not deflect from the topic.

That's exactly right. Every single fucked up thing the Nazis are infamous for, the US did FIRST, and in many cases kept right on doing after the war ended. Like when we smuggled Nazi scientists over and gave them false identities so they could perform radiation-exposure studies on unconsenting human subjects

This book will fry your brain like an egg
http://www.amazon.com/Plutonium-Files-Americas-Medical-Experiments/dp/0385314027