The war against the Jews (21)
I’ve just caught up with Jeremy Bowen’s documentary on the birth of Israel which was transmitted last Sunday evening.
Most of what I want to say about it is said in this critique by Honest Reporting. I would just make a couple of additional points.
The first is that, like so much journalism about Israel, this programme failed to acknowledge the true perfidy of the British in reneging on the terms of the Mandate they were given to (re-)establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine. First, in 1921/2 Churchill unilaterally gave away three quarters of Palestine to the Hashemites to create Jordan; then the UK sought to appease Arab terrorism (so what’s new?) by reneging on its undertaking to encourage Jewish immigration into Palestine, even while the Holocaust was unfolding in Europe, and instead turned a blind eye to mass illegal Arab immigration; then it divided the quarter of Palestine that had been left for the Jews in 1922 and offered half of that to the Arabs — as a response to the terrorist attacks they were carrying out against both Jews and British to prevent the Mandate from being fulfilled. The notion peddled by the programme that the British tried to steer a middle course between the Arabs and the Jews is simply false, as Bernard Wasserstein’s classic book, Britain and the Jews of Europe, makes all too shockingly clear.
The other point is that Bowen’s view that the creation of Israel was a tragedy for the Palestinians — who he so erroneously seems to believe were the indigenous people of the land — was dated to the Balfour Declaration of 1917. He placed great emphasis on the fact that this foundation document, which committed Britain to establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine, also pledged that
nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…which he declared constituted the fatal contradiction which lies at the heart of the whole impasse -- the implication being that a Jewish state by definition prejudiced those rights.
But this is simply and demonstrably wrong. The ‘civil and religious’ rights of the Arabs of Palestine have indeed been safeguarded by Israel — far more so, in fact, than in most Arab countries. Bowen is confusing these ‘civil and religious’ rights with political rights — which the Declaration pointedly did not afford to those non-Jewish communities. The reason for that was that it was recognised at that time that the Jews alone had a historic claim to Palestine, because they alone were the people for whom it had been their historic homeland and nation state.
The assertion that Palestinianism is a wholly fabricated national identity, created solely to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, creates apoplexy among the usual suspects who hate Israel. But it is true — and the Arabs themselves have said so time and again. Here are a few such quotes:
‘There is no such country as Palestine. “Palestine” is a term the Zionists invented. [...]Our country was for centuries part of Syria. “Palestine” is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.’
Auni Bey Abdul-Had, Local Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937
‘There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not.’
Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946
‘It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria’.
Ahmed Shukairy, United Nations Security Council, 1956
‘The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.’
Zahir Muhsein, PLO March 31, 1977‘Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.’
King Hussein 1982‘Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian? We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians - they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag. When I finally realized the lies and myths I was taught, it is my duty as a righteous person to speak out’.
Walid Shoebat, former PLO terrorist.