This article is in response to Fedwa Wazwaz's Op-Ed piece, "Israel's 60th is not a reason for celebration," published in Minneapolis's Star Tribune on Saturday, May 10, 2008. With great sadness I read Fedwa Wazwaz’s opinion piece on Saturday, May 10 entitled “Israel’s 60th is not a reason for celebration.” Sadder still is that she leads a program to foster dialogue and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims. Her article moves the Palestinian cause backwards, not forwards.
Wazwaz began her piece on why Israelis and Jews should not celebrate Israel’s 60th year of existence by quoting a letter published by British Jews in the Guardian. The small group who are wracked with guilt over the plight of the Palestinians turn to the writing of the late, Edward Said, who emphasized that “what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba [Catastrophe] is to the Palestinians.” True, Said delighted in this comparison and while there can be no doubt that Palestinians have suffered by the hands of Israelis and Arabs alike, such a statement requires no deep analysis to reveal its absurdity.
Is the Holocaust the same thing as the Naqba? Both were formative events in the Jewish and Palestinian narratives but the Palestinians were given a choice to have an independent state with no refugee issue on territory far larger than what is on the table today. Instead, they decided to launch the war of 1947-1949 and unfortunately for them, they lost – certainly a catastrophe from a Palestinian perspective. The Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s were not given multiple choices between independent statehood, war, or death. They were simply slaughtered because they were Jews.
Fedwa Wazwaz demonstrates how easy it is to selectively focus on details and lift quotes from their context in order to make a political case. She chose the new and flawed work by Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe and his book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” Pappe wrote and Wazwaz quotes that on March 10, 1948 the Zionist leaders “put the final touches to the plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.” What they are referring to was Israel’s Plan D, which was not a plan to ethnically cleanse a country that did not yet exist. As revisionist historian Benny Morris described it, Plan D was “a blueprint for securing the emergent Jewish state and the blocs of settlements outside the state’s territory against the expected [Arab] invasion on or after 15 May,” and he recognized that it “was not a political blueprint for the expulsion of Palestine’s Arabs.”
Left out of Wazwaz and Pappe’s selective narrative is the fact that by March 10, 1948, the Jews were being badly beaten and the outcome of the war was far from certain. In the first week after the UN partition in November 1947, Arabs murdered 62 Jews. The following month an additional 200 Jews were killed. By March 1, 1948, 546 Jews had been murdered and by the time Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence on May 14, over 1,000 Jews were killed by the Arabs.
Fedwa Wazwaz demonstrates how easy it is to selectively focus on details and lift quotes from their context in order to make a political case. She chose the new and flawed work by Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe and his book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” Pappe wrote and Wazwaz quotes that on March 10, 1948 the Zionist leaders “put the final touches to the plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.” What they are referring to was Israel’s Plan D, which was not a plan to ethnically cleanse a country that did not yet exist. As revisionist historian Benny Morris described it, Plan D was “a blueprint for securing the emergent Jewish state and the blocs of settlements outside the state’s territory against the expected [Arab] invasion on or after 15 May,” and he recognized that it “was not a political blueprint for the expulsion of Palestine’s Arabs.”
Left out of Wazwaz and Pappe’s selective narrative is the fact that by March 10, 1948, the Jews were being badly beaten and the outcome of the war was far from certain. In the first week after the UN partition in November 1947, Arabs murdered 62 Jews. The following month an additional 200 Jews were killed. By March 1, 1948, 546 Jews had been murdered and by the time Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence on May 14, over 1,000 Jews were killed by the Arabs.
During the six months from the UN vote on partition on November 29, 1947 until Israel declared their independence in May, Palestinian Arabs were not idly sitting by and tending to their crops – they were actively trying to abort Israel’s birth through armed struggle.
Wazwaz claims that Israel’s Plan D led to 750,000 Palestinians being driven from their towns and villages in 1947-49. Really? The Palestinian refugees are not the result of Israel’s plan to secure their state but the result of the war Palestinians launched and lost. Furthermore, that the Palestinian refugees were “driven from their towns” is also misleading and historically inaccurate. There are documented examples of the Israelis expelling Palestinians during the war, most notably from Lydda and Ramle, but there were many cases where Palestinians decided to leave on their own even after the Jews and British pleaded for them to stay – such as in Haifa. There are also many examples where the Arab Legion demanded that Palestinian Arabs vacate their land and examples where Palestinian villages decided not to attack the Jews and were thus left alone such as Abu Gosh.
Yes, as Wazwaz explains, “Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed” but the bases for Palestinian fighters were their towns and villages much as Israeli towns and villages were the base of the emerging Israeli defense forces – towns and villages were the frontlines during that war. As many do, she points to the “massacre of the villagers in Dier Yassin by Jewish forces on April 9, 1948” but elects not to mention the massacre of Jews at Mount Scopus on April 13, 1948 and the murder of fifty Jews on May 15 who had already surrendered to the Arab Legion.
Wars are bad; bad things happen during war. All sides would have certainly been better off if the Palestinians accepted their partition as the Jews had accepted theirs – that truly is the catastrophe. Unfortunately, they decided to launch a war instead and despite their best efforts, they lost. The Palestinian refugees were a result of that war and it is in that context that Wazwaz’s misleading and selective focus must be seen.
She claims that Israel is planning to erase Israeli Arabs from their ancestral homeland. Not only is this statement false, it is just plain, old-fashioned anti-Semitism. Leave aside the fact that Israel is the Jewish ancestral homeland for a moment and concentrate only on this aspect of her argument: Only in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza is it expected that no Jew should be allowed to live. No Jew should remain in an eventual Palestinian state. While it’s easy and false to portray Israelis as people who only immigrated from the West, there are in fact many Jews who remained in parts of Israel throughout history and have lived for generations in Israel, Mandate Palestine, the Ottoman Sanjaqs of Jerusalem, Nablus, and Acre. Do they have no claim to their ancestral homeland because they are Jewish?
According to Wazwaz, Jews should be expelled from any eventual Palestinian state because they are Jewish, while she focuses on the injustice of certain Israeli political parties raising the question that if a Palestinian state is created, should the Israeli Arabs be transferred into it as the Jews are transferred out of Palestine into Israel? Her belief is the height of hypocrisy and is simply racist – this is the peace and apartheid that Jimmy Carter dreams of while falsely accusing Israel of monstrous acts.
“The atrocities that happened in Europe were horrific, and inexcusable, but they don’t justify the suffering of Palestinians and their forced removal from their homeland,” writes Wazwaz. She is right – the Holocaust doesn’t justify Palestinian suffering. Launching the war in 1947 and refusing to accept Israel’s existence played a big part though. Not gaining a state when the West Bank was occupied by Jordan, and Gaza by Egypt from 1949-1967 might contribute as well. She seeks to remove the Palestinians and the Arab states from the stage of responsible actors, cast them in a shroud of victimhood, and point the finger at Israel alone. Are Palestinians not responsible for any of their actions? Are they blameless and accountable for nothing?
The constant Palestinian refrain – “it’s because of the occupation” – does not bear out. Land Israel recently returned to Palestinians in Gaza and the Lebanese in southern Lebanon are used to launch attacks at Israel and kidnap soldiers. It’s not because they are occupied; it is because Israel exists and they do not accept that. It is clear from Fedwa Wazwaz’s piece that she also does not accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state when she claims that, “Today, most Palestinians are exiles, and more than 95 percent of their homeland” is occupied by Israel. One can assume that the 5 percent not occupied by Israel is the Gaza Strip from which Israel withdrew in August 2005; the 95 percent is the rest of Israel and the West Bank. According to her, Tel Aviv in the heart of Jewish Israel is still occupied. Hamas and many in Fatah feel the same way and would prefer the one-state solution.
No, Fedwa, I do raise a toast to Israel on their 60th anniversary and congratulate them on their successes. I congratulate them on making it through their first year when American, George Marshall sent a personal letter to Moshe Sharett (Israel’s foreign minister) warning him that although the U.S. would recognize their independence, it would bring disaster on the Jewish people in Palestine. I celebrate the fact that a Middle Eastern country without oil can be so technologically advanced and economically stable by utilizing the minds of their men and women. I marvel that such a country can exist in a region where they are hated – in a region that has never seen peace either before or after biblical or modern-day Israel.
I celebrate that Israel won the war in 1947-49 and again in 1967 while in the United States, African Americans were still riding in the back of the bus and had to drink from different fountains – that was the racial context of the time. I’m proud that after 60 years of bloodshed, Israel still allows Palestinian Arabs to live within their borders, form political parties, vote, work as doctors alongside Jewish physicians in mixed hospitals, rather than expelling them like most Jews were from the Arab states over the last 60 years.
Having lived in Israel, I realize that there are many problems there that need solutions; what country is perfect? Certainly not Israel’s neighbors. I understand the suffering of the Palestinians and realize that a solution is possible once they and their leaders accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. I look forward to Palestinian refugees returning to their own state from the squalid conditions their Arab brothers continue to keep them in. Nevertheless, I celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary, and I hope that there will be peace and no more wars during the next 60 years with an independent Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Jewish state of Israel.
Wazwaz claims that Israel’s Plan D led to 750,000 Palestinians being driven from their towns and villages in 1947-49. Really? The Palestinian refugees are not the result of Israel’s plan to secure their state but the result of the war Palestinians launched and lost. Furthermore, that the Palestinian refugees were “driven from their towns” is also misleading and historically inaccurate. There are documented examples of the Israelis expelling Palestinians during the war, most notably from Lydda and Ramle, but there were many cases where Palestinians decided to leave on their own even after the Jews and British pleaded for them to stay – such as in Haifa. There are also many examples where the Arab Legion demanded that Palestinian Arabs vacate their land and examples where Palestinian villages decided not to attack the Jews and were thus left alone such as Abu Gosh.
Yes, as Wazwaz explains, “Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed” but the bases for Palestinian fighters were their towns and villages much as Israeli towns and villages were the base of the emerging Israeli defense forces – towns and villages were the frontlines during that war. As many do, she points to the “massacre of the villagers in Dier Yassin by Jewish forces on April 9, 1948” but elects not to mention the massacre of Jews at Mount Scopus on April 13, 1948 and the murder of fifty Jews on May 15 who had already surrendered to the Arab Legion.
Wars are bad; bad things happen during war. All sides would have certainly been better off if the Palestinians accepted their partition as the Jews had accepted theirs – that truly is the catastrophe. Unfortunately, they decided to launch a war instead and despite their best efforts, they lost. The Palestinian refugees were a result of that war and it is in that context that Wazwaz’s misleading and selective focus must be seen.
She claims that Israel is planning to erase Israeli Arabs from their ancestral homeland. Not only is this statement false, it is just plain, old-fashioned anti-Semitism. Leave aside the fact that Israel is the Jewish ancestral homeland for a moment and concentrate only on this aspect of her argument: Only in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza is it expected that no Jew should be allowed to live. No Jew should remain in an eventual Palestinian state. While it’s easy and false to portray Israelis as people who only immigrated from the West, there are in fact many Jews who remained in parts of Israel throughout history and have lived for generations in Israel, Mandate Palestine, the Ottoman Sanjaqs of Jerusalem, Nablus, and Acre. Do they have no claim to their ancestral homeland because they are Jewish?
According to Wazwaz, Jews should be expelled from any eventual Palestinian state because they are Jewish, while she focuses on the injustice of certain Israeli political parties raising the question that if a Palestinian state is created, should the Israeli Arabs be transferred into it as the Jews are transferred out of Palestine into Israel? Her belief is the height of hypocrisy and is simply racist – this is the peace and apartheid that Jimmy Carter dreams of while falsely accusing Israel of monstrous acts.
“The atrocities that happened in Europe were horrific, and inexcusable, but they don’t justify the suffering of Palestinians and their forced removal from their homeland,” writes Wazwaz. She is right – the Holocaust doesn’t justify Palestinian suffering. Launching the war in 1947 and refusing to accept Israel’s existence played a big part though. Not gaining a state when the West Bank was occupied by Jordan, and Gaza by Egypt from 1949-1967 might contribute as well. She seeks to remove the Palestinians and the Arab states from the stage of responsible actors, cast them in a shroud of victimhood, and point the finger at Israel alone. Are Palestinians not responsible for any of their actions? Are they blameless and accountable for nothing?
The constant Palestinian refrain – “it’s because of the occupation” – does not bear out. Land Israel recently returned to Palestinians in Gaza and the Lebanese in southern Lebanon are used to launch attacks at Israel and kidnap soldiers. It’s not because they are occupied; it is because Israel exists and they do not accept that. It is clear from Fedwa Wazwaz’s piece that she also does not accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state when she claims that, “Today, most Palestinians are exiles, and more than 95 percent of their homeland” is occupied by Israel. One can assume that the 5 percent not occupied by Israel is the Gaza Strip from which Israel withdrew in August 2005; the 95 percent is the rest of Israel and the West Bank. According to her, Tel Aviv in the heart of Jewish Israel is still occupied. Hamas and many in Fatah feel the same way and would prefer the one-state solution.
No, Fedwa, I do raise a toast to Israel on their 60th anniversary and congratulate them on their successes. I congratulate them on making it through their first year when American, George Marshall sent a personal letter to Moshe Sharett (Israel’s foreign minister) warning him that although the U.S. would recognize their independence, it would bring disaster on the Jewish people in Palestine. I celebrate the fact that a Middle Eastern country without oil can be so technologically advanced and economically stable by utilizing the minds of their men and women. I marvel that such a country can exist in a region where they are hated – in a region that has never seen peace either before or after biblical or modern-day Israel.
I celebrate that Israel won the war in 1947-49 and again in 1967 while in the United States, African Americans were still riding in the back of the bus and had to drink from different fountains – that was the racial context of the time. I’m proud that after 60 years of bloodshed, Israel still allows Palestinian Arabs to live within their borders, form political parties, vote, work as doctors alongside Jewish physicians in mixed hospitals, rather than expelling them like most Jews were from the Arab states over the last 60 years.
Having lived in Israel, I realize that there are many problems there that need solutions; what country is perfect? Certainly not Israel’s neighbors. I understand the suffering of the Palestinians and realize that a solution is possible once they and their leaders accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. I look forward to Palestinian refugees returning to their own state from the squalid conditions their Arab brothers continue to keep them in. Nevertheless, I celebrate Israel’s 60th anniversary, and I hope that there will be peace and no more wars during the next 60 years with an independent Palestinian state alongside a safe and secure Jewish state of Israel.
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