“Haganah was a secret armed group organized by the Jewish Agency” True, but the Haganah (”The defence”) was established to defend Jewish settlements, not attack civilians. The British were well aware of its existence, and even approved (in June 1938) a British officer named Orde Wingate permission to create the Special Night Squads (SNS) unit of the Haganah. During the war, the British initially arrested Haganah members but then amnestied them in order to aid the British war effort. Beginning in 1944, Haganah assisted the British with arresting members of Irgun and Stern gang. This cooperation ended in 1945, as a result of British intransigence, and Haganah entered into a cooperative effort with Irgun and Lehi, as a means of controlling them. This effort was abandoned after the King David Hotel Bombing when it was clear Irgun would not abandon attacks against the British, which Haganah disapproved of, and publicly denounced (along with the Yishuv, the Jewish community. It is unfair and misleading to lump these groups together; indeed, the showdown which occurred over the Altalena, in 1948, when Ben-Gurion prevented Irgun from illegally importing weapons was a defining moment for the country.

“The Kind David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed with many killed.” You completely fail to mention that the hotel was the site of the British authorities. It was without a doubt a despicable attack, but it was carefully aimed at a military target, although civilian staff were killed (despite a phone call to the British, which was ignored). You also fail to mention that throughout this period, Arab attacks against Jews were incessant. In the 12 days alone following the Partition vote (November 1947), 79 Jewish civilians had been murdered. As a result, Irgun and Stern Gang escalated reprisals against Arabs and the British who they saw as complicit.

Between November 1947 and May 1948, the country was racked by what was essentially a civil war. Arab fighters attacked more than a dozen kibbutzim between December 1947 and March 1948. Arab rioters killed 39 Jews at Haifa’s oil refinery on December 30, 1947, and two weeks later Arab irregulars killed 35 Jews trying to reach Gush Etzion. On February 1, 1948, an Arab terrorist blew up The Palestine Post building and, three weeks later, a terrorist’s bomb killed 44 Jews on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda Street. Massacres continued for weeks both inside Palestine and in the neighbouring states. On March 21, the bodies of 11 missing Jews were found; three had been burned. Local Arab villagers or Bedouins may have precipitated the autumn 1947 violence, but by spring 1948, Arab volunteers from Iraq and Syria were increasingly participating.

“On April 9, 1948, the Irgun terrorist organization, commanded by Menachen Begin, as a part of an increased campaign of violence, attacked the village of Deir Yasin, killing 254 Palestinian men, women and children. The intention was to terrify the Palestinians into leaving their land. Ten thousand Palestinians did leave the country in fear of their lives. Begin later declared: “There would have been no State of Israel without Deir Yasin.”

Much has been said on Deir Yassein. You still managed to leave out many salient facts.

The attack on the village of Deir Yassin followed months of violence despite the Jewish Agency warning the UN on January 15 that an international police force was needed to implement partition. Although everyone agrees civilians were caught in the crossfire, the attack was directed at Iraqi fighters who had holed up in the village, according to Irgun. Unfortunately, as is often the case in war, this claim can never be verified, nevertheless, the vast majority of residents fled before the attack after hearing a warning on an Irgun loudspeaker.

The number of victims has always been a contentious issue but a 1987 study undertaken by Birzeit University’s Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society found “the numbers of those killed does not exceed 120″.

Haj Ayish had been a schoolboy during the war in 1948. “We heard shooting. My Mother did not want us to look out the window. I fled with my sister, but my mother and my other sisters could not make it. They hid in a cellar for four days then ran away.” He said he never believed that more than 110 people had died at Deir Yassin, and accused Arab leaders of exaggerating the atrocities. There had been no rape, he said. “The Arab radio at the time talked of women being killed and raped, but this was not true. I believe that most of those who were killed were among the fighters and the women and children who helped the fighters.”(War Without End, pg 199-200)

A 1998 BBC television program featured Hazem Nusseibeh, an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service’s Arabic news in 1948, admitted that he was told by Hussein Khalidi, a prominent Palestinian Arab leader, to fabricate claims of atrocities at Deir Yassin in order to encourage Arab regimes to invade the expected Jewish state. Nusseibeh “describes an encounter at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City with Deir Yassin survivors and Palestinian leaders, including Hussein Khalidi… ‘I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story,’ recalled Nusseibeh. ‘He said, “We must make the most of this.” So we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities.’ ”

The BBC program also features an interview with Abu Mahmud, a Deir Yassin resident in 1948, who says: “… the villagers protested against the atrocity claims.” We said, “There was no rape.” [Khalidi] said, “We have to say this, so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews.” Khalidi was one of the originators of the “massacre” allegation in 1948. It was Khalidi’s claims about Jewish atrocities in Dir Yassin that were the basis for an article in the New York Times by its correspondent, Dana Schmidt (on April 12, 1948), claiming a massacre took place. The Times article has been widely reprinted and cited as “proof” of the massacre throughout the past 50 years.

Nearly 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and villages almost immediately from areas that were part of Israel’s partition.

There are two issues: the figure of 800,000 has been disputed and was probably no higher than 600,000. The more important issue is the flight of Palestine’s Arabs. Undoubtedly, it was caused by many internal and external factors. It is absolutely true that a number of Arab villages were attacked by Jewish forces; other villagers fled because of nearby conflict. In particular this happened along vital transportation routes as Arab villagers and Arab irregular forces had a habit of shooting down from mountain villages into conveys attempting to bring supplies to isolated Jewish communities. But, in many cases, “the Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned BEFORE they were threatened by the progress of war.” (General John Glubb “Pasha,” The London Daily Mail, August 12, 1948.)

In other places, Arab forces initiated combat but were unable to withstand the Jewish response. ‘[The] Jewish attack at Haifa was direct consequence of continuous attacks by Arabs on Jews in Haifa over previous four days’, the British High Commissioner in Palestine cabled the Colonial Secretary, Arthur Creech-Jones, on 25 April 1948. ‘Attack was carried out by Hagana and there was no “massacre”. Arabs in Haifa were thus themselves responsible for this outbreak in spite of our repeated warnings.’

“As long as mortar bombs are fired from Jaffa at Tel-Aviv, life in that city is…precarious,” wrote the British High Commissioner in a special report (’An Analysis of the Palestine Situation, April 1948′, Cunningham Papers, IV/5/33)

When Jewish defenders attacked Jaffa, Arab forces quickly retreated.

“Really the Arabs are rabbits,” Sir Henry Gurney, Chief Secretary to the Palestine Mandate Government and no friend of Zionism or Jews, recorded in his diary on May 5:

“Ninety percent of the population of Jaffa have just run away, and only some 5,000 now remain. Yesterday the municipal engineer locked the door of the water-supply pumping station, and walked off. The [British] army have taken it on. The mayor has gone, without even saying goodbye, and the remnants of the [Arab irregular] Liberation Army are looting and robbing. This is what the Palestine Arabs get from the assistance provided by the Arab states.”
[Cunningham was actually wrong about the attackers; it was a force of 600 men from Irgun that carried out the attack.

Irgun Commander (and future PM) spoke before the battle: “[...] Soldiers of the Irgun!
We are going to conquer Jaffa. We are setting out on one of the decisive battles in the struggle for Israel’s independence. Know who stands before you, remember who you have left behind. You face a cruel foe, who wishes to destroy us. Behind you are our parents, our brethren, our children. Strike at the foe! Aim well! Spare ammunition! In this battle, show no mercy to the enemy, as he knows none towards our people [but] Spare women and children. Spare the life of anyone who raises his hands in surrender. He is your captive. Do not harm him…”

In Jerusalem, the situation was similar. ‘It may interest you to know that the Arab in command in the Katamon battle [in Jerusalem] also left in the middle. The Arabs had been shooting at the Jews from this quarter for weeks and really brought the attack on themselves.’ (Cunningham to Creech- Jones, 1 May 1948, telegram 1217, Cunningham Papers, IH/5/25)

And, it is equally true that Arab forces were attacking and destroying Jewish settlements in both Judea and Samaria and land designated to be part of a Jewish state. Arab forces destroyed Jewish communities in Kfar Etzion, Revadim, Ein Tzurim, Massu’ot, Bet HaAravah, Atarot, Neveh Yaakov, Kfar Darom and Mishmar HaYarden as well as the industrial sites at Neharayim (electricity) and the Dead Sea (phosphates) and thus rendered Judea and Samaria Jew-free.

By February 1948, the British estimated that at least 10,000 Arab irregulars had already illegally entered Palestine. (Fortnightly Intelligence Newsletter No. 61 of February 13, 1948, issued by Hq. British Troops in Palestine.) The Fortnightly Intelligence Newsletter No. 62, Hq. Palestine, dated February 27, 1948, further says: “the question is whether so many men, possibly ten thousand of them at present in this country, with their bitter hatred of the Jews and their excitable character, whose sole raison d’etre is the killing of Jews, can hold themselves in check until the British forces have quitted.”

“The 1919 King-Crane Commission investigated Palestine and concluded: “Zionists look forward to a practically complete dispossession of the Palestinian people. ” The use of this document is particularly misleading. The commission was commissioned by President Woodrow Wilson under the supervision of two wealthy Arabists, one of whom – Charles R. Crane – was described in a biography of him as being biased by “… a most pronounced prejudice…his unbridled dislike of Jews.” Several members of the commission actually filed a formal dissent, and advocated a Jewish state in Palestine. In any event, Wilson suffered a catastrophic, disabling stroke while President in 1919 and apparently never saw the report.

More importantly, one should be asking what the people of the region were saying. There’s no question that Arab landowners were unsettled by a change to the status quo, and a number of anti-Zionist groups formed in Arab capitals, but opposition to Zionism was not universal even in the Middle East. Yusef Diya al-Khalidi, a veteran liberal member of the first Ottoman parliament acknowledged the Zionist position in a letter to the Chief Rabbi of Paris, Zadok Kahn, writing: “My God, historically it is certainly your country.”

In 1919, Chaim Weizmann signed an agreement with Feisal, the son of Sharif Hussein from the Hashemite family, to work together to establish a Jewish province of an Arab Kingdom. Faisal wrote, in 1919, “We Arabs, especially the educated among us look with deepest sympathies on the Zionist movement…we will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home.”

There was a lot of support for Zionism from the Arabs back then. For example, the editor of the Egypt’s daily al-Ahram wrote: “The Zionists are necessary for this region. The money they will bring in, their intelligence and the diligence which is one of their characteristics will, without doubt, bring new life to the country.” In the same vein, the former Egyptian minister Ahmed Zaki wrote in 1922 that, “The victory of the Zionist idea is the turning point for the fulfilment of an ideal which is so dear to me, the revival of the Orient”. Thus, in 1926 the Egyptian government extended a cordial welcome to a Jewish teachers’ association delegation from the British mandate territory. Later, students from the Egyptian University travelled on an official visit to Tel Aviv to take part in a sports competition there. When the conflict in Palestine escalated in 1929, the Egyptian Interior Ministry ordered its press office to censor all anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish articles. Even in 1933, the Egyptian government allowed 1,000 new Jewish immigrants to land in Port Said on their way to Palestine. (from German historian Matthias Kunzel.)

“Large tracts of land were purchased or “acquired” from the Arabs” What do you mean by acquired? Are you implying that land was stolen? In fact, all of the land occupied by Jews before 1948 was legally purchased as a British Land Survey from the period details. It also confirms that very few Arabs were displaced by Jewish land purchases (the British offered compensation to displaced families. Only 3,000 families applied and all but 600 were dismissed as fraudulent claims), and both the British and Zionists made efforts to relocate or lease back land to Arab farmers. (See the Survey of Palestine, prepared by the British mandate for the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry)

“In 1929 there occurred serious Jewish-Arab violence at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.” Vague and misleading. In fact, attacks against Jews by thugs loyal to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Al-Husseini weren’t limited to the Old City. They also included a massacre of Jews in Hebron and other places. Between 1929 and 1936, the Mufti’s gang-members drove the Jews out of Gaza, Jenin and Shchem.

“In 1930, Sir John Hope Simpson was dispatched by the British government to study the economic conditions in Palestine.” The report also noted significant illegal immigration of Arabs from Syria and Transjordan, as well as importation of Egyptian labor. It failed to take into account improved irrigation practices, suggesting that Palestine could accommodate no more than 20,000 families in all into Palestine. Considering that the population of Israel is now around 7.5 million, the report was obviously out of touch with reality and biased.

“In ten years a binational Palestine (one state) was to be established. Shocked, the Zionists rejected the latest proposal.” The Zionists protested the quota placed on Jewish immigration; the White Paper advocated only 75,000 Jews be admitted over five years while hundreds of thousands of Jews were fleeing persecution in Europe. In truth, both the Zionists and the Al-Husseini unilaterally rejected the proposal, which apparently surprised other members of the Arab Higher Committee who felt that he rejected it only because “it did not place him at the helm of the future Palestinian state.” (The Tangled Truth by Benny Morris, The New Republic, May 07, ‘08)

You’ve also failed to mention several British and Jewish offers to Partition Palestine all rejected by the Arabs.

Ok, I said I would give you a few examples of half-truths and historical omissions. Here are a few examples, and I’ll try to indicate where I think the problem lies:

Historical Introduction

“Canaan, later to be named Palestine by the Romans.” This is extremely misleading. The term Canaan referred to a geo-political region which hadn’t existed for centuries; the Romans renamed the Province of Judea to Syria-Palestina.

You suggest that this area was ruled by many different groups (true enough) but fail to mention a 400-year Kingdom of Judea, and the splinter Kingdom, Israel, in the north. With the exception of the Greeks and Romans, foreign rule was brief, and almost without exception the Kingdom of Judea survived as an autonomous province of a larger empire, with a Governor and High Priest, but did not disappear, just as Poland continued to exist during the decades of denomination by the USSR.

“Palestine was considered the land of the Philistines. In Arabic, Palestine is “Filastin.” You’re attempting to suggest that the Romans considered this place to be Philistina. In fact, the Romans deliberately assigned the name to Judea to humiliate the Jews, who they knew had fought with the Philistines in the past. Historically speaking, however, they didn’t live in the same place; the Philistines were a sea people, living along the southern coast where Gaza is today. I don’t know if I understand your need to mention that Palestine is “Filistin.” There were no Arabs in the region at the time (except, perhaps, the Nabateans, an Arab tribe which converted to Christianity), and Palestinian Arabs only adopted the use of this word in the 20th century.

“the Jews (descendants of Judah)” This may or may not be true but is, in any event, irrelevant. The nomenclature ‘Jews’ appeared as an abbreviation of ‘Judeans.’ Ethnicity was a secondary consideration; Jews were the ancestors of the Judean people, a united nation with a common belief system, language and history.

“All of Judea was destroyed, 985 towns and villages burned, and 50 fortresses razed to the ground.” This is from Dion Cassius who lived decades after the events. Even if exaggerated, Dion Cassius was writing about the province of Judea. The historical and archaeological record suggests that many Jews relocated to Samaria and the Galilee, where a new Sanhedrin and academy was founded. Throughout the area, archaeologists have found the remains of synagogues built between the First and Fourth centuries CE. In fact, it was during this period that the Palestinian Talmud was compiled, evidence that Jewish life and thought continued in Palestine.

“Palestine became predominantly Arab and Islamic by the end of the Seventh Century, and united the Semitic people with the exception of the Jews. ”

What Semitic people are speaking of? Hittites? Moabites? Philistines? Jerusalem was occupied by Christians (descendants of pagans, who the Romans has transferred into Judea after the expulsion of the Jews, and a handful of Jewish residents).

“Palestine was under Arab rule for approximately 1000 years and Islamic governments for 15 centuries.” Very nonfactual.

Palestine was captured by Arab Muslims, under the leadership of the Caliph Omar Ibn al-Khattab in 638. After years of infighting between Arab tribes, the area was briefly – as you wrote – under the control of Turks and Crusaders, until Saladin conquered the area in 1187. Saladin, however, was Kurdish, not Arab, and most of his soldiers were black slaves from the Sudan. And within a few years, Mamelukes, Asian-Egyptian soldier-slaves who overthrew the Egyptian monarchy, took Palestine and ruled from the 13th through to the 16th centuries until the Ottoman Empire defeated the Mamelukes in 1517. Arab rule, then, appears to be quite brief – just a few centuries after the arrival of Omar.

I appreciate you taking the time to comment on this. I did write this as a summary piece, not as an academic treatise. However, to enable your accusations of my “half-truths,”"outright historical errors,” and “simplistic conclusions,” to possess credibility, it would be constructive for you to present your “unbiased” “full” truths, corrections, and “complex” conclusions such that a layperson can understand. Thanks.

While we would agree that mistakes have been made along the way, both sides in this sad conflict bear responsibilities for their actions; and both Jews and Arabs have been manipulated by outside forces, including foreign governments and sponsored extremist groups. It’s a much more complex issue than this ‘article’ makes out. I’m happy to suggest a few less biased sources to both of you. Brian, I applaud your commitment to a non-violent resolution of this conflict (and your service to your country – my father-in-law is also a Vietnam veteran so I appreciate where you’re coming from) – but you must respect everyone’s rights equally; demonizing one side while whitewashing the actions of the other is, frankly, dishonest.

It is heart wrenching, and I think our species will, if we are to survive, experience an evolutionary epistemological shift from narcissism that masks our insecurities, to a deep eco-consciousness that viscerally feels the Connection with everything, and thus behaves with that wisdom.

Brian