Adonis Diaries

Israeli historian Benny Morris might deny the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, but Jeremy R. Hammond own research shows that this was indeed how Israel came into being.

The Israeli historian Benny Morris has been very vocal of late in denying that Palestine was ethnically cleansed of Arabs in order for the “Jewish state” of Israel to be established.

In a series of articles in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Morris has debated the question with several of his critics who contend that ethnic cleansing is precisely what occurred.

It’s worth noting at the outset that, while such a debate exists in the Israeli media, the US media remains, as ever, absolutely silent on the matter.

Points of Agreement

While there are a number of points on which Morris and his critics heatedly disagree, it’s imperative to begin by highlighting those facts that aren’t in dispute.

First and foremost, it’s completely uncontroversial that hundreds of thousands of Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes by the Zionist forces during the 1948 war—about 700,000, according to Morris, by the time it was done.

Also uncontroversial is the fact that much of this flight and expulsion occurred well before the neighboring Arab states sent in their armies following the Zionists’ declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948.

In his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949, Morris estimates the number of Arabs made refugees prior to May 14 at somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000.

In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé writes, “There were in fact 350,000 if one adds all of the population from the 200 towns and villages that were destroyed by 15 May 1948.”[8]

This is consistent with Morris’s remark that the number was “apparently smaller” than 400,000.

Another uncontroversial fact is that there was a prevailing “atmosphere of transfer” among the Zionist leadership—with “transfer” being a euphemism for the forced displacement of Arabs from their homes.

As Morris notes in his book 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War, “an atmosphere of what would later be called ethnic cleansing prevailed”, and, to be sure, “much of the country had been ‘cleansed’ of Arabs” by the end of the war.[9]

Indeed, the idea that the Arabs would have to go was an assumption inherent in the ideology of political Zionism.

The Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl, who is considered the father of the movement, outlined the Zionist project in a pamphlet titled The Jewish State in 1896.[10]

A year prior, he had expressed in his diary the need to rid the land of its Arab majority:

“We shall have to spirit the penniless population across the border, by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”[11]

Note: The “Christian” Evangelicals in the USA had already preceded Herzl ideology by 50 years, mainly with the faith that the Second Coming will occur after the Jews occupy Jerusalem. They had the same transfer and incremental genocide on their mind. It is the “Christian” Evangelical Zionists who financed and supported Israel politically and economically to buy land, settle and secure the backing of US establishment and institutions.

In 1937, the British Peel Commission proposed that Palestine be partitioned into separate Jewish and Arab states, but there was a problem: there would remain an estimated 225,000 Arabs in the area proposed for the Jewish state. (The Hews were less of that number in the proposed part)

“Sooner or later there should be a transfer of land and, as far as possible, an exchange of population”, the Commission concluded.

It proceeded to draw attention to the “instructive precedent” of an agreement between the governments of Greece and Turkey in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War of 1922 that determined that “Greek nationals of the Orthodox religion living in Turkey should be compulsorily removed to Greece, and Turkish nationals of the Muslem religion living in Greece to Turkey.”

The Commission expressed its hope “that the Arab and the Jewish leaders might show the same high statesmanship as that of the Turks and the Greeks and make the same bold decision for the sake of peace.”[12]

Of course, the Commission was not unmindful of “the deeply-rooted aversion which all “Arab” (meaning Palestinians) peasants have shown in the past to leaving the lands which they have cultivated for many generations. They would, it is believed, strongly object to a compulsory transfer . . . .”[13]