Israeli History at 60 - falsified
solly:
Quote
all intent on pushing Israel into the ocean
This often cited phrase could easily be dismissed as mere saber-rattling war rhetoric similar to that issued by Israeli leaders at the time and currently against Iran. It is, however, not even supported by fact:
Quote
In 1973 he (Christopher Paget Mayhew, Baron Mayhew) offered £5,000 to anyone who could produce evidence that Nasser had stated that he sought to "drive the Jews into the sea". Mayhew repeated the offer later in the House of Commons (Hansard, 18 October 1973) and broadened it to include genocidal statements by other Arab leaders (Manchester Guardian, 9 September 1974). Mayhew received several letters from claimants, each one producing one fabricated quotation or another from an Arab leader. One claimant, Warren Bergson, took Mayhew to court. The case came before the High Court in February 1976. Bergson was unable to offer evidence of Nasser's alleged statement. Bergson acknowledged that, after thorough research, he had been unable to find any statement by a responsible Arab leader which could be described as genocidal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Mayhew
With the exception of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel has been the aggressor in all it's conflicts with it's neighbors.
Israel's treatment of the indigenous people of Palestine and it's territorial ambitions have been the prime contentious issues among Arab States, without which these conflicts would not have occurred.
infopri:
Quote from: solly on June 30, 2008, 11:39:42 PM
Quote
In 1973 he (Christopher Paget Mayhew, Baron Mayhew) offered £5,000 to anyone who could produce evidence that Nasser had stated that he sought to "drive the Jews into the sea". Mayhew repeated the offer later in the House of Commons (Hansard, 18 October 1973) and broadened it to include genocidal statements by other Arab leaders (Manchester Guardian, 9 September 1974). Mayhew received several letters from claimants, each one producing one fabricated quotation or another from an Arab leader. One claimant, Warren Bergson, took Mayhew to court. The case came before the High Court in February 1976. Bergson was unable to offer evidence of Nasser's alleged statement. Bergson acknowledged that, after thorough research, he had been unable to find any statement by a responsible Arab leader which could be described as genocidal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Mayhew
This doesn't impress me in the least. There are people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, as well. They offer money for proof of the Holocaust, then reject the evidence when it is forthcoming.
Quote from: solly on June 30, 2008, 11:39:42 PM
With the exception of the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel has been the aggressor in all it's conflicts with it's neighbors.
Not hardly. The Arab nations I mentioned earlier all attacked Israel in 1948, shortly after Israel's establishment as a nation. In 1967, Israel's military actions were prompted by the aggressive actions of several of the same countries. You've already conceded the surprise attack on Israel in 1973. It was not until Anwar Sadat of Egypt (until then, one of the worst aggressors against Israel) finally agreed to peace in the late 1970s that any Arab nation was willing to recognize Israel's right to exist. (And let's not forget that Sadat was assassinated for his efforts.) The next country to recognize Israel was Jordan--and that didn't happen until 1994, nearly 50 years after Israel's founding.
Israel has nothing to gain by being the aggressor when it is so sorely outnumbered. It is fighting merely to survive, and so far it has managed to do so against overwhelming odds. I do not agree with everything Israel does, by any means--but I certainly understand why it does what it does.
BTW, it is worth noting that not all Israelis (and by that I mean Israeli Jews) agree with what Israel does, any more than all Americans agree with what the United States does. To talk about "the Jews" (as pyshnov does) ignores the differences between Israeli Jews and Jews elsewhere in the world, but even lumping all Israeli Jews under one political umbrella is to describe them inaccurately.
solly:
Quote
This doesn't impress me in the least. There are people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, as well. They offer money for proof of the Holocaust, then reject the evidence when it is forthcoming.
Unlike the analogy drawn here, Mayhew's assertion was upheld in the British High Court.
Quote
Not hardly. The Arab nations I mentioned earlier all attacked Israel in 1948
The Zionist intentions had been made very clear well before 1948 and were highly provocative. Noam Chomsky quotes David Ben Gurion in 1938 as saying: "after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine"
To cite one example of many, the massacre at Deir Yassin took place a month before the Arabs entered the fray. At least 30 Arab villages had been cleared by Israelis before the Arab armies intervened to protect Palestinian territory. Here is a list of Irgun attacks prior to 1948:
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-irgun-attacks-during-the-1930s
The position of the two foremost Israeli historians is summed up here by Eric Rouleau, a former French ambassador. He refers to Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris:
Quote
“Both maintain that the 1948 war was not a David and Goliath struggle as is claimed, since the Israeli forces were clearly superior to their adversaries in both manpower and weaponry. Even at the height of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, there were only a few thousand poorly equipped Palestinian fighters, supported by some Arab volunteers from the Fawzi al-Qawuqji liberation army.
Even when the Arab states intervened on May 15, 1948, their forces were still far inferior to those of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization that later formed the core of the IDF, which was able to keep drawing on reinforcements. Morris and Pappé agree that the Arab forces invaded Palestine reluctantly as a last resort, not in order to destroy the fledgling Jewish state, which they knew they were incapable of doing, but to prevent Israel and Transjordan — "in collusion" according to historian Avi Shlaim — from carving up the territory granted to the Palestinians under the United Nations plan of November 29, 1947.
"I have no doubt we are capable of occupying all of Palestine," Ben Gurion, the father of the Jewish state, had written to Moshe Sharett (Israel's second prime minister, who served between Ben Gurion's two terms) in February 1948, three months before the Arab-Israeli war began — and a few weeks before the delivery of massive consignments of arms sent via Prague by the USSR. This boast did not stop him from claiming publicly that Israel was threatened by a second Holocaust.
In the first week of the war in May 1948, carried away by news of Israeli victories, according to Pappé, Ben Gurion wrote in his diary: "We shall establish a Christian state in Lebanon… We shall break Transjordan, bomb its capital, destroy its army… We shall bring Syria to its knees… Our air force will attack Port Said, Alexandria, and Cairo, and this will avenge our ancestors who were oppressed by the Egyptians and the Assyrians in Biblical times." ”
http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=Palestine&article=1042
Quote
In 1967, Israel's military actions were prompted by the aggressive actions
One has to look no further than the words of the architects of the 1967 war:
Quote
"To pretend that the Egyptian forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal [Israeli army]" (Israeli General Peled, quoted in Ha'aretz, 19 March 1972).
A few months after the war, Yitzhak Rabin remarked: "I do not think Nasser wanted war. The two divisions he sent to the Sinai on 14 May would not have been sufficient to launch an offensive against Israel. He knew it and we knew it" (Le Monde, 29 February 1968).
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, in a speech delivered at the Israeli National Defense College, clearly stated that: "The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him" (Jerusalem Post, 20 August 1982).
....or the news reports of the day:
Quote
According to the British newspaper The Observer, Nasser's purpose was clearly "to deter Israel rather than provoke it to a fight" (The Observer, London, 4 June 1967).
New York Times columnist James Reston reported that "Egypt does not war [...] certainly is not ready for war" (New York Times, 4 and 5 June 1967).
Quote
Israel has nothing to gain by being the aggressor when it is so sorely outnumbered
As the fourth largest arms exporter in the World: http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3481578,00.html
....I doubt Israel would have much to fear, even without the backing of the United States (which has been unconditional since 1967) and the 3-5 billion in Military aid received annually. In fact it has gained much by being the aggressor as this map clearly demonstrates:
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/6761/palastinianlandloss8tz.gif
mouseman:
Quote from: solly on June 30, 2008, 07:52:40 PM
One could argue, of course, that an indigenous people forced from their homes by a militarily superior ethnic minority using violence to create a race-based State in their homeland, might well have just cause to react violently.
To claim that the Palestinians are an "indigenous people" is the epitome of revisionist history. Somehow, a people stays ethnically and culturally pure through 80,000 years of human migration through this region. Or are you a proponent of the "theory" that the Palestinians are somehow the Jebusites - a people only known from JEWISH sources, and claimed by the Palestinians as ancestors only for the purpose of trying to establish a claim on Jerusalem the precedes that of the Jews. I'm sorry, but the Palestinians are a mishmash of the different groups that went through the area: Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Mamaluks, Africans, and, as you already mentioned, a large number of Jews. From the end of the 19th Century to 1948, their numbers were vastly augmented by emigrants from other parts of the Arabs world in response to the increased immigration of Jews and Europeans (such as the German Templars).
Yes, and prior to the beginning of the 20th Century, there was no entity called "the Palestinian People". Not that it makes a difference, mind you - a people is a people when, as a group, they consider themselves a people (all peoples have to start somewhere). The American People are a fairly recent invention, as well. But let's try to keep our historical facts in a line.
Quote from: solly on June 30, 2008, 07:52:40 PM
Israeli historians Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev and many others have presented overwhelming evidence that this was indeed the case. Their view is supported by many statements made by Ben-Gurion, Begin, Dayan and contemporaries. The myth of "poor peace-loving Israel" is precisely what pyshnov refers to as "falsified history". Today that myth is supported exclusively by pseudo-scholars for reasons quite distinct from scholarship.
Didn't Benny Morris call much of what Ilan Pappé, Avi Shlaim, and Tom Segev wrote "fabricated"? In any case, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began long before 1948. And yes, compared to the Arabs, Israel is peace-loving. Not that it means much.
In any case, while Israeli history, like that of any country, including the US of A is myth, Palestinian history is mostly fabricated, often using Jewish and Israeli history (and myth) as their template.
Quote from: solly on June 30, 2008, 07:52:40 PM
It is ironic that today, Palestinians are branded as a violent people when the activities of the radical minority in their midst pale into insignificance when compared with the activities of the Irgun, Stern Gang during the Mandate and the IDF operations against them today.
First, the Irgun and the Stern gang were attacking British Soldiers. As far as I can tell, neither exploded a single bomb in London. Nor were there Jewish suicide bombers anywhere in England. And if you bring up the bombing of the King David Hotel with civilians inside - the Irgun called the British Police and notified them that there was a bomb in the hotel. The British, in typical pig-headed fashion, refused to evacuate the hotel.
Not that either of these groups were innocent of any wrong-doing. There were reasons beyond political that the Haganah wanted them shut down. In is important to remember that these two groups were minority groups, and considered fanatics by most of the Yishuv. Sort of like the Hamas, just without the religious fanaticism, the total disregard for their own people, and with goals that did not include forcing the rest of the world to take their own religion. Hmmm, I guess that they weren't much like the Hamas at all.
Another thing solly, you should stop using the European Colonial paradigm for the Israeli-Arab conflict. It has little to do with that. Jews went to the Middle East specifically because they had no place in Europe. And, however revisionist historians would like to paint things, the area which is now Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories was mostly empty. Read most travel accounts from the end of the 19th Century. AND, it wasn't chosen at random. The Jewish people had a long historical connection to the area that they called "the Land of Israel". They had names, written history, and even a language, names, and myth that matched archaeological finds in the region, as well as continued presence in the area for over 1900 years. To compare that to Columbus, Cortez, The British in North America or India, etc. is to commit a colossal historical error. To say the least.
Finally, whatever anybody says here or elsewhere, there are millions of Jews and Palestinians in that area and they will have to live together, whatever the Israeli Right, the Hamas, or you, solly, would like to believe. So, rather than spend time inventing histories that prove that one side or the other behaved the worst in 90 years of political struggle, maybe it's time to figure out how to live together NOW.
And now, back to our regular broadcasts.
infopri:
Quote from: mouseman on July 01, 2008, 12:12:45 PM
Finally, whatever anybody says here or elsewhere, there are millions of Jews and Palestinians in that area and they will have to live together, whatever the Israeli Right, the Hamas, or you, solly, would like to believe. So, rather than spend time inventing histories that prove that one side or the other behaved the worst in 90 years of political struggle, maybe it's time to figure out how to live together NOW.
Amen.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page