www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Ich bin Judeten

As to Eastern Europe, where there are and have been unhappy relations between Jews and Gentiles, there is a need for serious historical study of the problem (the problem refers, not either to the Jews or to the Gentiles, but to the unhappy relations between the two groups). I am no expert, but I strongly suspect that an important element in the development of these bad relations is the deliberate fomenting of hatred on the part of people who found that it suited them to keep these social groups fighting each other instead of making common cause - it's a technique found in many, many places and historical circumstances. Much more recently, though, there is an all-too-easily documentable tendency to blame much of the Holocaust on the Poles, and especially on the Ukrainians. People who really ought to know better (and in at least some instances DO know better) have lent themselves to this effort. One might, with profit, read Kurt Lewin's account of his survival of the Holocaust and then ask why Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky has been denied recognition among the "Righteous Gentiles" of that horrible period.
As for the Holy Land, I must disagree - the presence of living Christian families is essential to the holiness of the place. Otherwise it would have no more Christian significance than a theme park. Moreover, the Christian presence in Palestine goes right back to Apostolic times - and this is not fantasy; specific families have been traced. To expel them now, as though they should expiate the Nazi war crimes for which they are not responsible and with which they are not associated, is itself a hideous crime against humanity.
On a related topic, there could also be a profitable discussion of how the Christian West has repeatedly failed, over the course of many centuries, to stand in solidarity with Arab Christians. Even today I hear appalling racist language used against Arabs, and the opinion voiced that even the Christian Arabs are "Asiatic" and therefore cannot be quite the same as "European" Christians. If that sort of bigotry isn't anti-Semitism, what is? Incognitus

I meant more memory contributing to the medieval prejudice against the Jews, which is one of the roots of modern anti-Jewish bias.Technically this is not anti-Semitism, which arises from "Aryan" racial theories. And of course I hope no one thinks my post is defending the persecution of the Jews; I was merely looking at some of the historic circumstances, assuming that anti-Jewish bigotry did not just appear out of nowhere, and assuming that the opinion of many modern Jews, that it arose because of the Gospels, is not true.
As to why Christians persist in hating their enemies, we need look no further than our own country and our own hearts; the Gospel runs counter to our natural tendencies and the natural man has deep roots in our heart.

Dear Alex,

I am in total agreement with you. Thank you for this positively beautiful Christian post.

I feel the same way.

In Christ our Lord,
Alice

Incognitus,

The persecution of Arab Christians is a dreadful thing and is participated in by both Jews and Muslims.

Some of the worst Pogroms against the Jews, prior to the Holocaust, did in fact occur in Poland and the Ukraine. Is there any evidence that this is not true?

daniel,

Yes, indeed, bigotry flows of the evils of original sin. Why is it more prevelant in some parts of the world than in others? How do we challenge it as anti-Christian and an offense to Christ?

Dan Lauffer

Good question; perhaps a matter of national temperment? The Italians, even the fascists, appeared incapable of serious anti-Semitism, which they called "the German disease". The Jews were largely protected there, as in Holland and to a large extent, Hungary. Don't get me wrong, Poles and Ukrainians aided the Jews, too, [the largest number of "Righteous Gentiles" are Poles] but all in all, the record of the Slavic peoples is not good...

Alex and Alice

Actually the term Star of David or Magen David has no Biblical basis under that name http://www.menorah.org/starofdavid.html and only in the last few centuries has it become the most popular Jewish symbol. It may well have been mentioned in the Old Testament as the star of Molech (Amos 5:26) or as the star of Remphan in the New Testamant (Acts 7:43)but there has never been an actual association with King David.

Shlomo Dan and Incognitus,
I have stayed out of this for the most part, but I have to speak up for what Arab Christians feel on this subject. For the most part we feel that we along with the Muslim Arabs have been made to pay for Europe's and the West Sins.

Further, because of said payment we Christians have been systematically driven out and our "co-religious" have not spoken out strongly for our rights because they are afraid of being called or preceived as anti-Semites.

All Lebanese religious sects have stated catagorically that the Palestinians must either go back to their own lands, or be settled in some other area. If they are permitted to stay it would drive out the last remaining Christians in the land, and the Druse and Shiite Muslims would become further minorities.

Poosh BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Also this is from the Egyptian Paper, AL-AHRAM, that I thought that the board would find interesting.

A short history of apartheid

Land is at the heart of the drama unfolding in Palestine. But it is not the only thing, argues Azmi Beshara a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset

Rhetoric about demography so dominates Israel's political discourse that one might be tempted to assume that Israel has abandoned its preferred designation as the Jewish democratic state in favour of the Jewish demographic state. The condition has reached the stage where it might be diagnosed as an advanced case of demographomania. The mania, of course, is rooted in Zionist principles, in the need to maintain a Jewish majority capable of implementing a democracy that will absorb the Diaspora, accommodate pioneer settlement and the assumption of a common history, and that allows for the fetishisation of military service. For without any of the above Israel would have to practice government by the minority, which inevitably leads to apartheid or racial segregation, to government by a national minority that sees the state as the embodiment of its legitimacy. Such practices demand dual sets of legality.

Because a state with a Jewish minority in Palestine was never on the cards displacement always lay at the core of the Zionist project for a Jewish state located in a country with an Arab majority and in the midst of an Arab region. It is no coincidence that the portion of land that was initially supposed to host the Jewish state was "ethnically cleansed" early. Along the once flourishing Palestinian coast only two Arab villages remain today.

The first task, then, was to cleanse the areas of the Jewish state -- as defined in the partition resolution -- of Arab inhabitants. This was followed by the displacement of Arabs from the Galilee and other parts of the presumed Arab state. The result: a large Jewish majority made it possible to impose the democratic sovereignty of the Jews, albeit in a non-liberal manner and with military and settler values. Thus did Jewish democracy turn religious commitment into a tool of national formation while it pillaged the Arab Palestinian people. The uprooting of Palestinians in 1948 was an exercise in demographic separation through displacement.

Today's plans for demographic separation -- now called peace initiatives -- invariably acknowledge the impossibility of repeating that particular process. That much, at least, was acknowledged by Igal Allon in the Allon plan following the 1967 War. He then suggested that populated areas be returned to Jordan. Ehud Olmert spoke in similar vein in defending his recent initiative on separation, or unilateral disengagement. "Transfer is no longer possible. It is neither morally defendable, nor realistic to start with."

So long as transfer is impossible, then, it becomes necessary to find another model of segregation. Which is why Israel's Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon has no qualms describing the current phase as "the second half of 1948".

The displacement of 1948, and the post-1967 occupation -- an occupation that shirks annexation by preferring a formula that includes "the application of Israeli law in the West Bank and Gaza" though without, of course, granting citizenship and political rights to the occupied -- are two cases of demographic segregation undertaken on behalf of a Jewish majority.

The ugliness of the contradictory ideology of the Israeli right may have been thrown into greater relief by Sharon's statements of last year but the truth had been there for all to see since Likud came to power in 1977.

The Palestinians, apparently, live beyond the pale of citizenry and political life. They dwell beyond a political system based on a Jewish majority, and this without the benefit of a wall. Once this society that lived -- and still lives -- under occupation evolved its struggle for national sovereignty and for separation in an independent state comprising Palestinian citizens Israel responded with plans to separate from the Palestinians on its own terms. What Israel wants to separate itself from is the largest possible number of Palestinians living on the smallest possible area of land. The self-rule plans negotiated with Egypt in January 1980, the Oslo Accords, the Camp David proposals, the unilateral withdrawal schemes by Sharon and Olmert, the Geneva initiative by the Zionist Israeli left, and the separation wall, are merely different manifestations of such thinking.

The flaw at the heart of all such initiatives, the clear evidence that they are destined not to lead to any real peace, is that they are rooted in a process of separation made necessary by the demand to maintain a large Jewish majority in the Israeli political entity.

This is the demographic context within which Zionism deals with the question of land. For some reason Zionist political culture and symbols are steeped in an unwavering conviction that any unpopulated land is ripe for confiscation and annexation. This assumption is so blatant that Arabs feel guilty when they leave a plot of land vacant for any vacant land is threatened with confiscation, either to become part of a settlement, a road to a settlement or a natural protectorate.

Any uninhabited land is land fit for carving off. Here lies the iniquity of the demographic argument. On the one hand it is racist. On the other it has nothing to do with land. Segregation may take place without land, as in the case of displacement. Or it may take place on the smallest possible piece of land, as Sharon wants.

Some Arabs and Palestinians have internalised the logic of Zionist demographic scare tactics to the extent that they see the slur of "demographic bomb" as something good. They boast of the Palestinian woman's womb, for lack of anything better to boast. Is this what our unified strategy has come to? Aside from the primitiveness and backwardness of regarding women as wombs the demographic factor is not, in itself, conducive to righteousness. It embraces a racist vision that is not driven towards just solutions. Racism is the basic motive for separation.

"They are there and we are here," Barak's electoral slogan once announced. Struggle is being waged so that the terms of this separation are not overly comfortable for Israel, not terminally tragic for the Palestinians living under occupation.

That internalising the colonialist vision has led to the cult of numbers, of quantity not quality, is saddening. Often even progressive political and social forces, people who want a truly better future, such as a bi-communal state, use demographic scare tactics: unless withdrawal is implemented to the lines of 4 June 1967, and unless the Palestinian state is established within this border, we will become a demographic majority, and you will have no alternative but to agree to a bi-communal state.

Those who want to persuade people of the merits of a bi-communal state should not be scaring people with the demographic argument. The argument is embedded in racist soil. It can never sprout a healthy plant.

Perhaps many Arab leaders are unaware that the idea of racial segregation came first from the Labour Party. The first to call for Israel's unilateral separation from the Palestinians, under the highest possible wall, was Hayim Ramon. Likud adopted the proposal and went, literally, to the wall. The left is using the demographic threat to scare Israelis. It is trying to convince the Palestinians to abandon all other logic, through a virtual agreement that serves the segregationists. A worthier left would have sought peace in power and fought racial segregation in opposition. The left should fight the wall rather than draw up virtual agreements. This is the litmus test.

So long that the logic of any settlement remains demographic, so long that it all boils down to separation from the largest possible number of Palestinians, land remains a secondary issue in the creation of a Palestinian entity.

Zionist colonialism inhabits the space between two extinct models -- those provided by South Africa and French practice in Algeria. It is not a blend of the two, but rather a distillation of the worst in each.

In South Africa, that pioneer of apartheid, racial segregation was not absolute. It took place within a framework of political unity. The racist regime saw blacks as part of the system, an ingredient of the whole. The whites created a racist hierarchy within the unity, according to their own vision of the universe. They interpreted Christian religious texts accordingly. Blacks and whites, then blacks and whites and coloureds, were given different ranks and legal status within a frame of a unified system -- apartheid.

Apartheid is one system for whites and blacks. The whites did not think for a moment of creating separation walls running along entire provinces. Assaulting nature in such a pattern was unthinkable. What they did was circumvent entire black towns, ghettos, and squatter camps, and restrict the movement of their inhabitants. The only walls they created were those to their own private dwellings. Behind these walls they retreated, in their gardens, with their black servants.

The struggle for freedom in South Africa was a struggle against segregation and discrimination within the same political entity. Demographic segregation was not even considered. The entire logic of the struggle was to fight racism and segregation -- the goal to create one nation of blacks and whites, a South African nation, a single democratic and sovereign state. This endeavour is still underway and it is premature to judge its outcome. Yet such is the thinking behind it.

French colonisation presented an opposite model, replete with geographic, cultural and societal separation between two entities, the occupier and the occupied. Whereas the Boers saw South Africa as their home and fought a ferocious war against what they considered British occupation, the colonisers of Algeria had a "mother county", an offshore home to look to. The impulse of French colonialism was to achieve unity within the separation between France and Algeria, not separation within the unity, as was the case in South Africa.

This is why French colonialism was accompanied by the hectic quest to give Algeria, and its inhabitants, a French makeover. This is why the liberation movement adopted pure separatist dogma, with a stress on identity that still marks Algerian society. Even class conflicts and domestic politics in Algeria resemble a conflict of identity, one parodying the experience of the struggle against colonialism. The separation achieved through independence was a full one, of land and people. Over a million settlers left the country, even though they were given the choice of remaining as Algerian citizens.

The case of Palestine is not an attempt to achieve separation within unity, as was the case with apartheid, nor is it an attempt to unify what was originally separate, as was the case in Algeria. The Israelis identify with the land, but keep away from the locals. The Israelis want to stay in the country and deny citizenship to its inhabitants. Or they want to be separate but hold on to the settlements. Barriers and walls are the rule, not the exception.

This unique type of colonialism does not seek to "develop" the inhabitants, as other colonialists once did in homage to the "white man's burden". This colonialism displaces people, confiscates their land or bypasses them (the term, often applied to roads, is pertinent). It "develops" the land for settlement, but not for the inhabitants. Because of this Moshe Dayan and his aides adopted a policy of open bridges after the 1967 War. They wanted the Palestinians to have an economic and demographic outlet to Jordan, the Gulf countries, and other parts of the region, so as to free Israel from the economic and other responsibilities commonly assumed by occupying authorities. These open bridges helped the occupation endure, and helped the people endure it.

In all former colonies one comes across traces of French, English, Dutch, Belgian, or Muscovite architecture. One can find hospitals and administrative offices, prisons, railways, even universities built by the occupiers. Not in the areas seized in 1967. Not one Israeli building, not even a prison, is to be seen in Ramallah, Nablus or Gaza. Everything there was built by Arabs. There is not a trace of an Israeli building in Arab areas, apart from the settlements and their related infrastructure.

Separation, within separation, is the logic of Zionist colonialism, the thinking behind the wall of racial segregation, where Israel continues its crimes of barbarism. Separation is the logic underlying Sharon's recent proposals for further obstacles east of the wall, where Israeli forces will be stationed to oversee the outskirts of Palestinian towns and villages.

It is difficult to describe the maze of walls and barriers constructed around the villages in the vicinity of Jerusalem. It is difficult to imagine the ugliness brought about in the course of controlling people and land: gates and observation towers, double walls, barbed and electrical wires. What we have here is a wide-scale recreation of the detention camp which Giorgio Agamben called the essence of the modern fascist state. This is a place where the exception becomes the rule, and the state of emergency becomes permanent, to use the words of Walter Benjamin.

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
One of the biggest problems for us Christians from the Middle East has been the reluctance of the Western Media to report on the Nakba. Here is an interview from Ha'aretz on a couple of books being published by an Israeli historian.

What I hope you all take away from this is the terrible price that we Arabs in general, and the Palestinians in particular have had to pay for the guilt of Europe and the West.

Poosh BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

Benny Morris is a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be'er Sheva.

Rape, massacre, transfer

Benny Morris, in the month ahead the new version of your book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem is due to be published. Who will be less pleased with the book - the Israelis or the Palestinians?

"The revised book is a double-edged sword. It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was the precursor of the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.

"At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages. So that on the one hand, the book reinforces the accusation against the Zionist side, but on the other hand it also proves that many of those who left the villages did so with the encouragement of the Palestinian leadership itself."

According to your new findings, how many cases of Israeli rape were there in 1948?

"About a dozen. In Acre four soldiers raped a girl and murdered her and her father. In Jaffa, soldiers of the Kiryati Brigade raped one girl and tried to rape several more. At Hunin, which is in the Galilee, two girls were raped and then murdered. There were one or two cases of rape at Tantura, south of Haifa. There was one case of rape at Qula, in the center of the country. At the village of Abu Shusha, near Kibbutz Gezer [in the Ramle area] there were four female prisoners, one of whom was raped a number of times. And there were other cases. Usually more than one soldier was involved. Usually there were one or two Palestinian girls. In a large proportion of the cases the event ended with murder. Because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported, which I found, are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg."

According to your findings, how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?

"Twenty-four. In some cases four or five people were executed, in others the numbers were 70, 80, 100. There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima [in the Hebron region], in which a column entered the village with all guns blazing and killed anything that moved.

"The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north. About half of the acts of massacre were part of Operation Hiram [in the north, in October 1948]: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.

"That can't be chance. It's a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."

What you are telling me here, as though by the way, is that in Operation Hiram there was a comprehensive and explicit expulsion order. Is that right?

"Yes. One of the revelations in the book is that on October 31, 1948, the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population. Carmel took this action immediately after a visit by Ben-Gurion to the Northern Command in Nazareth. There is no doubt in my mind that this order originated with Ben-Gurion. Just as the expulsion order for the city of Lod, which was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, was issued immediately after Ben-Gurion visited the headquarters of Operation Dani [July 1948]."

Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion?

"From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created."

Ben-Gurion was a "transferist"?

"Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist."

I don't hear you condemning him.

"Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."

Benny Morris, for decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948?

"There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society.

"A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy."

There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that.

"If you expected me to burst into tears, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will not do that."

So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?

"I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don't think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn't have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being."

You do not condemn them morally?

"No."

They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.

" There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide - the annihilation of your people - I prefer ethnic cleansing."

And that was the situation in 1948?

"That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."

The term `to cleanse' is terrible.

"I know it doesn't sound nice but that's the term they used at the time. I adopted it from all the 1948 documents in which I am immersed."

What you are saying is hard to listen to and hard to digest. You sound hard-hearted.

"I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.

"Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them."

And morally speaking, you have no problem with that deed?

"That is correct. Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history."

And in our case it effectively justifies a population transfer.

"That's what emerges."

And you take that in stride? War crimes? Massacres? The burning fields and the devastated villages of the Nakba?

" You have to put things in proportion. These are small war crimes. All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well."

The next transfer?

You went through an interesting process. You went to research Ben-Gurion and the Zionist establishment critically, but in the end you actually identify with them. You are as tough in your words as they were in their deeds.

"You may be right. Because I investigated the conflict in depth, I was forced to cope with the in-depth questions that those people coped with. I understood the problematic character of the situation they faced and maybe I adopted part of their universe of concepts. But I do not identify with Ben-Gurion. I think he made a serious historical mistake in 1948. Even though he understood the demographic issue and the need to establish a Jewish state without a large Arab minority, he got cold feet during the war. In the end, he faltered."

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that Ben-Gurion erred in expelling too few Arabs?

"If he was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."

I find it hard to believe what I am hearing.

"If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will be because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer in 1948. Because he left a large and volatile demographic reserve in the West Bank and Gaza and within Israel itself."

In his place, would you have expelled them all? All the Arabs in the country?

"But I am not a statesman. I do not put myself in his place. But as an historian, I assert that a mistake was made here. Yes. The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake."

And today? Do you advocate a transfer today?

"If you are asking me whether I support the transfer and expulsion of the Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and perhaps even from Galilee and the Triangle, I say not at this moment. I am not willing to be a partner to that act. In the present circumstances it is neither moral nor realistic. The world would not allow it, the Arab world would not allow it, it would destroy the Jewish society from within. But I am ready to tell you that in other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves with atomic weapons around us, or if there is a general Arab attack on us and a situation of warfare on the front with Arabs in the rear shooting at convoys on their way to the front, acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential."

Including the expulsion of Israeli Arabs?

"The Israeli Arabs are a time bomb. Their slide into complete Palestinization has made them an emissary of the enemy that is among us. They are a potential fifth column. In both demographic and security terms they are liable to undermine the state. So that if Israel again finds itself in a situation of existential threat, as in 1948, it may be forced to act as it did then. If we are attacked by Egypt (after an Islamist revolution in Cairo) and by Syria, and chemical and biological missiles slam into our cities, and at the same time Israeli Palestinians attack us from behind, I can see an expulsion situation. It could happen. If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified."

Cultural dementia

Besides being tough, you are also very gloomy. You weren't always like that, were you?

"My turning point began after 2000. I wasn't a great optimist even before that. True, I always voted Labor or Meretz or Sheli [a dovish party of the late 1970s], and in 1988 I refused to serve in the territories and was jailed for it, but I always doubted the intentions of the Palestinians. The events of Camp David and what followed in their wake turned the doubt into certainty. When the Palestinians rejected the proposal of [prime minister Ehud] Barak in July 2000 and the Clinton proposal in December 2000, I understood that they are unwilling to accept the two-state solution. They want it all. Lod and Acre and Jaffa."

If that's so, then the whole Oslo process was mistaken and there is a basic flaw in the entire worldview of the Israeli peace movement.

"Oslo had to be tried. But today it has to be clear that from the Palestinian point of view, Oslo was a deception. [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat did not change for the worse, Arafat simply defrauded us. He was never sincere in his readiness for compromise and conciliation."

Do you really believe Arafat wants to throw us into the sea?

"He wants to send us back to Europe, to the sea we came from. He truly sees us as a Crusader state and he thinks about the Crusader precedent and wishes us a Crusader end. I'm certain that Israeli intelligence has unequivocal information proving that in internal conversations Arafat talks seriously about the phased plan [which would eliminate Israel in stages]. But the problem is not just Arafat. The entire Palestinian national elite is prone to see us as Crusaders and is driven by the phased plan. That's why the Palestinians are not honestly ready to forgo the right of return. They are preserving it as an instrument with which they will destroy the Jewish state when the time comes. They can't tolerate the existence of a Jewish state - not in 80 percent of the country and not in 30 percent. From their point of view, the Palestinian state must cover the whole Land of Israel."

If so, the two-state solution is not viable; even if a peace treaty is signed, it will soon collapse.

"Ideologically, I support the two-state solution. It's the only alternative to the expulsion of the Jews or the expulsion of the Palestinians or total destruction. But in practice, in this generation, a settlement of that kind will not hold water. At least 30 to 40 percent of the Palestinian public and at least 30 to 40 percent of the heart of every Palestinian will not accept it. After a short break, terrorism will erupt again and the war will resume."

Your prognosis doesn't leave much room for hope, does it?

"It's hard for me, too. There is not going to be peace in the present generation. There will not be a solution. We are doomed to live by the sword. I'm already fairly old, but for my children that is especially bleak. I don't know if they will want to go on living in a place where there is no hope. Even if Israel is not destroyed, we won't see a good, normal life here in the decades ahead."

Aren't your harsh words an over-reaction to three hard years of terrorism?

"The bombing of the buses and restaurants really shook me. They made me understand the depth of the hatred for us. They made me understand that the Palestinian, Arab and Muslim hostility toward Jewish existence here is taking us to the brink of destruction. I don't see the suicide bombings as isolated acts. They express the deep will of the Palestinian people. That is what the majority of the Palestinians want. They want what happened to the bus to happen to all of us."

Yet we, too, bear responsibility for the violence and the hatred: the occupation, the roadblocks, the closures, maybe even the Nakba itself.

"You don't have to tell me that. I have researched Palestinian history. I understand the reasons for the hatred very well. The Palestinians are retaliating now not only for yesterday's closure but for the Nakba as well. But that is not a sufficient explanation. The peoples of Africa were oppressed by the European powers no less than the Palestinians were oppressed by us, but nevertheless I don't see African terrorism in London, Paris or Brussels. The Germans killed far more of us than we killed the Palestinians, but we aren't blowing up buses in Munich and Nuremberg. So there is something else here, something deeper, that has to do with Islam and Arab culture."

Are you trying to argue that Palestinian terrorism derives from some sort of deep cultural problem?

"There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game. Revenge is also important here. Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions. If it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them. If it is able, it will also commit genocide."

I want to insist on my point: A large part of the responsibility for the hatred of the Palestinians rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe.

"True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it's not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What's important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him."

Explain the image: Who is the serial killer in the analogy?

"The barbarians who want to take our lives. The people the Palestinian society sends to carry out the terrorist attacks, and in some way the Palestinian society itself as well. At the moment, that society is in the state of being a serial killer. It is a very sick society. It should be treated the way we treat individuals who are serial killers."

What does that mean? What should we do tomorrow morning?

"We have to try to heal the Palestinians. Maybe over the years the establishment of a Palestinian state will help in the healing process. But in the meantime, until the medicine is found, they have to be contained so that they will not succeed in murdering us."

To fence them in? To place them under closure?

"Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."

War of barbarians

Benny Morris, have you joined the right wing?

"No, no. I still think of myself as left-wing. I still support in principle two states for two peoples."

But you don't believe that this solution will last. You don't believe in peace.

"In my opinion, we will not have peace, no."

Then what is your solution?

"In this generation there is apparently no solution. To be vigilant, to defend the country as far as is possible."

The iron wall approach?

"Yes. An iron wall is a good image. An iron wall is the most reasonable policy for the coming generation. My colleague Avi Shlein described this well: What Jabotinsky proposed is what Ben-Gurion adopted. In the 1950s, there was a dispute between Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett. Ben-Gurion argued that the Arabs understand only force and that ultimate force is the one thing that will persuade them to accept our presence here. He was right. That's not to say that we don't need diplomacy. Both toward the West and for our own conscience, it's important that we strive for a political solution. But in the end, what will decide their readiness to accept us will be force alone. Only the recognition that they are not capable of defeating us."

For a left-winger, you sound very much like a right-winger, wouldn't you say?

"I'm trying to be realistic. I know it doesn't always sound politically correct, but I think that political correctness poisons history in any case. It impedes our ability to see the truth. And I also identify with Albert Camus. He was considered a left-winger and a person of high morals, but when he referred to the Algerian problem he placed his mother ahead of morality. Preserving my people is more important than universal moral concepts."

Are you a neo-conservative? Do you read the current historical reality in the terms of Samuel Huntington?

"I think there is a clash between civilizations here [as Huntington argues]. I think the West today resembles the Roman Empire of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries: The barbarians are attacking it and they may also destroy it."

The Muslims are barbarians, then?

"I think the values I mentioned earlier are values of barbarians - the attitude toward democracy, freedom, openness; the attitude toward human life. In that sense they are barbarians. The Arab world as it is today is barbarian."

And in your view these new barbarians are truly threatening the Rome of our time?

"Yes. The West is stronger but it's not clear whether it knows how to repulse this wave of hatred. The phenomenon of the mass Muslim penetration into the West and their settlement there is creating a dangerous internal threat. A similar process took place in Rome. They let the barbarians in and they toppled the empire from within."

Is it really all that dramatic? Is the West truly in danger?

"Yes. I think that the war between the civilizations is the main characteristic of the 21st century. I think President Bush is wrong when he denies the very existence of that war. It's not only a matter of bin Laden. This is a struggle against a whole world that espouses different values. And we are on the front line. Exactly like the Crusaders, we are the vulnerable branch of Europe in this place."

The situation as you describe it is extremely harsh. You are not entirely convinced that we can survive here, are you?

"The possibility of annihilation exists."

Would you describe yourself as an apocalyptic person?

"The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable. It wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1881 and it wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1948 and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now. Nevertheless, it has come this far. In a certain way it is miraculous. I live the events of 1948, and 1948 projects itself on what could happen here. Yes, I think of Armageddon. It's possible. Within the next 20 years there could be an atomic war here."

If Zionism is so dangerous for the Jews and if Zionism makes the Arabs so wretched, maybe it's a mistake?

"No, Zionism was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given the character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings."

Which leaves us, nevertheless, with two possibilities: either a cruel, tragic Zionism, or the forgoing of Zionism.

"Yes. That's so. You have pared it down, but that's correct."

Would you agree that this historical reality is intolerable, that there is something inhuman about it?

"Yes. But that's so for the Jewish people, not the Palestinians. A people that suffered for 2,000 years, that went through the Holocaust, arrives at its patrimony but is thrust into a renewed round of bloodshed, that is perhaps the road to annihilation. In terms of cosmic justice, that's terrible. It's far more shocking than what happened in 1948 to a small part of the Arab nation that was then in Palestine."

So what you are telling me is that you live the Palestinian Nakba of the past less than you live the possible Jewish Nakba of the future?

"Yes. Destruction could be the end of this process. It could be the end of the Zionist experiment. And that's what really depresses and scares me."

The title of the book you are now publishing in Hebrew is "Victims." In the end, then, your argument is that of the two victims of this conflict, we are the bigger one.

"Yes. Exactly. We are the greater victims in the course of history and we are also the greater potential victim. Even though we are oppressing the Palestinians, we are the weaker side here. We are a small minority in a large sea of hostile Arabs who want to eliminate us. So it's possible than when their desire is realized, everyone will understand what I am saying to you now. Everyone will understand we are the true victims. But by then it will be too late."

Yuhannon,

While your very thoughtful contribution does carry this thread in a different direction than I intended it nevertheless raises some important issues. I've read most of your posts but this raises an important issue and so I would like to comment. Benny Morris comments:

"I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish state here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war."

I agree that the Palestinians have had to pay a heavy price for European evil against the Jews. No doubt about it. It seems rather small in comparison to what the Jews had to pay. Why are the Jews considered to be the punching bag for the Arabs? Why not make a frontal attack upon Europe or at least upon Germany?

I realize that my question is absurd but so were the attacks by the Palestinians and Arabs upon the Jews in 1948.

Assuming that you aren't suggesting a "final solution" to the "Jewish problem" what solution do you suggest given that the Palestinians and Arabs attacked first?

Also, if Lebanon is an example of how secure an integrated democratic state in an Arab environment can be I should think that the Jews would wish to avoid that as much as possible. Perhaps you can assure me that the Lebanese experience since the Syrian attack and takeover is a better experience for Jews or Christians than the one the Jews have now in Israel.

What is your view of Morris' argument that since the Arabs have 22 states why shouldn't the Jews have one?

Do you really think that there is a relatively safe place for Jews to live anyplace on earth?

Dan Lauffer

Orthodox Catholic:

This truly saddens me, and quite simply boggles my mind. How these fellow Christians of the Middle East can support people using themselves as bombs to murder others is quite beyond me. Have they forgotten the commandment to love one's neighbor, even one's enemy? Have they forgotton the example of true Christian martyrdom of laying down their lives while loving and blessing those who kill them?

Dan Lauffer:

They will continue to be squeezed out until they wake up and start evangelizing their surroundings. The Muslims and the Jews are in a seemingly endless cycle of revenge ever since the creation of the Jewish state, and only Christ can free them from this revenge.


From the article on Benny Morris,

No, the end does not justify the means. While finding a suitable place and erecting a state for the suffering diaspora Jews was a good end in and of itself, the process of unjust treatment of palestinians as a means to that end is unjustified.

Even 1 person unjustly killed as a means to an end no matter how good the end is, is wrong, plain and simple.

God bless,

Rony

Rony,

Generally speaking I believe you are correct.

"They will continue to be squeezed out until they wake up and start evangelizing their surroundings. The Muslims and the Jews are in a seemingly endless cycle of revenge ever since the creation of the Jewish state, and only Christ can free them from this revenge."

I have read about several attempts in this area but I wonder just what the story is. Where might we get a study of or links to stories about evangelization in Israel?

Also, I wonder if others have noticed some anti-Jewish sentiment or anti-Arab sentiment in their Churches and what they've done about it.

Dan L

Shlomo Dan,
I can understand how you can see that my posts pull the thread in a different direction, but if you look below the words you will see that it actually carry on the same ideas.

Dan within you own point you have a more just answer than the present situation. As you state:

The question that you should have asked is why should the Palestinians have to pay any price at all. If the unjustice to the Jews was caused by Europeans in general, and Germany in particular, why not have them pay with their own land, and not some one elses?

Dan was it absurd for the North American Indians to fight against European expansion here? Of course not, they were defending their homes and land and that is what Arabs and Palestinians were doing?

Dan, do you know before the war of 48 broke out, the Arab nations sought to have the issue of partition sent to the International Court of Justice for a ruling? Did you know that the U.S. blackmailed our Central and South American allies on this issue. Here is a except from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's reports at the time.

Nov. 25 - The United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine today approved partition by a vote of 25 to 13, with 17 abstention and two delegates absent. The margin for partition is one short of the two-thirds majority which will be needed to secure its adoption by the General Assembly, which will convene tomorrow morning at Flushing Meadow in New York and stay in session all day in an attempt to complete action on the Palestine issue tomorrow or the next day.

Would you not then go to war, when all other means of settlement have been blocked?

What many people seem to forget is that many of the problems in Lebanon were caused by the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the bigotry of the Christians. Especially my own Maronite people. Firstoff, nearly 300,000 Palestinians are in Lebanon. Lebanon's population is only 3 million. Second, none of the Lebanese sects want the Palestinians to stay because it upsets the balance between them. Finally, it was the Christians that invited the Syrians to come into the country since they were losing the civil war at the time.

To me, Morris' argument about there being 22 Arab states is like saying all blacks are a like, or Canadians and Americans are the same. If people want to go to their, there are over 30 countries and territories in the Americas why not offer one of those territories to the Israelis. Or even better yet give them one of our states. My point is that only those that have caused injustice should have to pay for their crimes, not the innocent.

I believe that North America is a very safe place for Jews to live, as well as most of Western Europe. By creating the State of Israel the West has made sure that its "Jewish" problem has been moved off shore. Further, it has placed the Jewish population into a situation that they will have to be oppressors and racists to survive.

Poosh BaShlomo,
Yuhannon

Shlomo Dan,
Also here is what the Patriarchs of the Holy Land had to say when the Intifada started in 2000.

Poosh BaShlomo,
Yuhannon

A Faithful Appeal

A statement by the Patriarchs and Heads of the thirteen historic churches in Jerusalem. They act as if my people's wounds were only scratches.

'All is well,' they say, when all is not well (Jer 6:14)

On 28 September 2000, following the provocative visit of the Israeli opposition Likud leader to the esplanade of the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, a new Palestinian uprising burst forth in the Holy Land. This incident itself, as much as the events that ensued, should have clearly signaled to both the Israeli and Palestinian leadership the dire need to press on with their dialogue in addressing the whole process of peace and in resolving all outstanding issues-including the question of Jerusalem.

Yet Israel preferred to respond with an even larger recourse to force. Fully conscious of our duty as religious leaders, we look with extreme pain and sadness at all the deaths, injuries and handicaps of this latest outburst.

Although both peoples have been affected by the events of the past five weeks, we cannot but also note that the over-whelming majority of the victims are Palestinians. We voice our profound solidarity and deep sympathy with all of them, and offer our condolences to the families of all those-young or old-who have lost their lives or sustained injuries.

We believe that it is truly high time to put an end to such cycles of mutual disaster. We stress that the rights of one people are also the rights of the other people. Palestinians should be able to enjoy their own full security and to protect their interests and those of their people as much as Israel should be able to enjoy its full security and to protect its interests and those of its people. Both peoples can then live peacefully side by side, each in their own sovereign state, without being a source of fear for the other.

But so long as one people remains the subject of injustice, it will continue to be a constant source of fear and insecurity for its neighbor. The Church believes that it is the right as much as duty of an occupied people to struggle against injustice in order to gain their freedom, although it also believes that non-violent means of struggle remain stronger and far more efficient. In this sense, both parties must show the necessary fortitude, both in their hearts and in their minds, to look at the core of the conflict so that the Palestinian people can gain at long last its full freedom within its own sustainable state.

It is imperative now to implement the principles of international legitimacy by enforcing the binding UN Security Council resolutions. Such fortitude is a sign of foresight and an indispensable prerequisite for long-lasting peace.

It remains our conviction that justice will eventually prevail and violence will inevitably cease one day. Only then can reconciliation bring both peoples together again. As such, it would be much wiser and more courageous to go directly to a dialogue that secures peace through those elements of justice, security, and dignity without suffering many more episodes of painful violence.

Today, from the Holy City of Jerusalem, we cry out our desire to see peace with justice, equality and security established soon between Palestinians and Israelis on this holy land that was chosen by God to reveal His wisdom to human beings. We appeal to all Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches worldwide, as well as to all 'friends of peace' in our land, in the region, and across the whole world to toil together for the establishment of a comprehensive, just, and durable peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Peace in justice remains the absolute and inviolable right of both peoples of this land. Peace should not be sacrificed for political pride. After all, peace can only be the fruit of justice.

Some trust in their war chariots and others in their horses, but we trust in the power of the Lord our God. (Ps 20:7).

Signed on November 9, 2000 by:

His Beatitude Diodoros I,
Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem

His Beatitude Michel Sabbah,
Latin Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem

His Beatitude Torkom Manoogian,
Armenian Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem

His Eminence Father Giovanni Battisteli,
Custos of the Holy Land, Latin Catholic Church

His Eminence Abraham,
Coptic Orthodox Church Archbishop in Jerusalem

His Grace, Abuna Matheus,
Ethiopian Orthodox Archbishop in Jerusalem

His Grace Lutafi Laham,
Greek CatholicArchbishop and Patriarchal Vicar

His Grace, Andre Bedoghlian,
Archbishop of the Armenian Catholic Church

His Grace Paul Sayyah,
Patriarchal Vicar,Maronite Church in Jerusalem

His Grace, Mar Swerios Maki Murad,
Syrian Orthodox Archbishop and Patriarchal Vicar to Jerusalem, Jordan, and the Holy Land

His Grace Butros AbdulAhad,
Syrian Catholic Bishop in Jerusalem

His Grace RiahAbu Al-Assal,
Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem

His Grace Muniib Younan,
Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jerusalem.

This text was originally published in The Catholic World Report December 2000.

I think one of the questions we need to ask is, Are the Jews a race or a religion ? If they are a race, then how do you explain the existence of Jews of every hue from fair skinned blonde haired blue eyed Jews, to the Falashas, the Black Jews of Ethiopia. If the Jews are only a religion, why should they be any more entitled to have a country, then say the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists or Zoroastrians. The Kurds are a distinct ethnic group of over 20 million, yet they do not have a country, and have been severely oppressed in Turkey and Iraq in recent years.

I think one of the major causes of political strife in the Middle East in the latter half of the 20th century, has been the little reported fact that many of the founders of modern Israel were radical Zionists who believed in a Greater Israel that would stretch from the Euphrates to the Nile, and from Southern Turkey into Northern Saudi Arabia. Ironically the only people who still seem to promote the idea of a Greater Israel are Evangelicals in the US.