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[solly]

pyshnov.

Thank you for your kind words. The topic is large and I have read extensively but it never fails to astonish me how much evidence is actually in the public domain but not generally known.

I have scanned your site and sympathize with your position. There was a similar case at my own University which, despite being well known, went unresolved and the miscreant is now dead. Universities are not the bastions of truth and morality that we once expected them to be. I shall try to get some time to read your case more thoroughly. Unfortunately I am rather pressed at this time.

mouseman.

I am intrigued by your debating style. One must assume that you hold a very high academic position if your pronouncements are to be taken as definitive without reference to sources and you are able to dismiss Professor McCarthy as a man of no academic integrity with such aplomb.

It seems that you are not so disdainful of Morris so, as I am pressed for time, I shall leave you with an excerpt from an interview with him. My response to the rest of your post will have to wait until I am less busy.

Q: 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?

Morris: 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.
http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm

catarin. Get rid of the "telly" and read a some of the books by Morris, Pappe, Shlaim etc. Amazon has most of them.

[catarin]

Do you think the Muslims granted any mercy to Jews and Christians when they conquered Israel in the 7th century?

_Long Unholy Wars of Words_, by Benny Morris, pub. 2008

There are several book reviews on line.  Check out

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/review/1948-benny-morris-israel.html

It seems Benny Morris has revised his views over the years.  He has now taken a moderate stance toward Israel.  After deeper research, he argues the atrocities of the 1948 war were largely unavoidable by-products of a war the Arabs wanted and started.

You tell me:  What should Israel do about the millions of Arabs who are faking their ancestry and others who were birthed for the purpose of adding burgeoning population to this little strip of land in Israel?  I say they are the responsibility of the Arabs -- let the Saudis take them in and put them in the Empty Quarter.  I for one resent the Palestinian Arabs who take welfare payments year after year and refuse to get down to work.

Pyshnov.  I'm talking about the internet.  Any Muslim who has a computer can go online and see what the REAL Middle East history is.

[solly]

Mouseman.

You can't have it both ways, solly.  If these results are correct, than your story of European colonial ousting indigenous peoples is quite debunked -

No. The DNA is cited to confirm that the Palestinians are indigenous to the area in which they have continued to dwell. The proposition that other people  have a right to forcibly evict such people by virtue of sharing the same ancestry is spurious. As Erich Fromm said:
"If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived 2000 years ago, this world would be a madhouse."

Nothing like a an attempt to disable a boat which misfires....

I see you subscribe to the story told by the Haganah after 17 years of attempting to attribute the blame to either the British or the Arabs. In order to believe that story one must also believe that the perpetrators were not experienced in the use of explosives and that the only way they could devise of disabling a ship was to blow it up. Now we know they were very experienced with explosives and that there are many less hazardous ways of disabling a ship. That means they were either rather dim-witted or perhaps had another, more nefarious purpose in mind. Given that the organization was not averse to the use of "false flag" operations for propaganda purposes (the perpetrators of the King David bombing were dressed as Arabs), I tend to invoke the principle of Occam's Razor in this case.
There was an amusing article in the Village Voice entitled "From the Irv Rubin Bust to the Stern Gang: The Rich History of Jewish Terrorism" here:
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0151,vest,30862,1.html
It points up the hypocrisy of those who attribute terrorism solely to people they don't like or wish to succeed.

What justification did "great" American "heroes" like Lindbergh have?  Not to mention the connection that the Nazis had with the elite of Great Britain, such as the Sir Oswald Mosley, and possibly the Duke of Windsor.

Lindberg, Mosley and Windsor were peaceful and open advocates against War. So far as I know, not one of them blew anything up. This notwithstanding, I fail to see what relevance their behaviour has to the actions and philosophy of the Irgun whose letter to the Nazis contains such gems as:
"The NMO (Irgun)...is well acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities toward Zionist activity inside Germany and toward Zionist emigration plans....
The NMO is closely related to the totalitarian movements in Europe in its ideology and structure.”
"The indirect participation of the Israeli freedom movement in the New Order in Europe, already in the preparatory stage, would be linked with a positive-radical solution of the European Jewish problem ...."
The ramifications of these statements are somewhat nasty - the document is dated 11 January 1941.

Most of the area where Jews bought land and settled until 1948 was not considered tillable.  In fact 2/3 of the area of the State of Israel after 1948 was desert.

This is utter falsehood. For a start, Jews owned no more than 8% of the land before 1948.
 "Buying the Emek  by Dr. Arthur Ruppin" published in "The New Palestine" New York,May, 1929 begins:
"The acquisition of the Emek Yizael for Jewish colonization has been the object of Jewish efforts for many years. It was natural that this region, the largest fertile plain of Palestine...."
and ends:
"Thus we may say that the Zionist Organization concentrated its land-purchasing efforts upon the two great plains of Palestine almost simultaneously. It is only in the mountainous country adjoining these plains that, recognizing the greater difficulties of colonization in the mountains, it bought nothing."

One of the primary methods of acquiring land was by approaching absentee landlords. These landlords were more than happy to sell as Ottoman Law forbade them to alienate the tenant farmers who worked the land without paying compensation. Jews did not fall under the Ottoman law so the tenants were evicted summarily. This stratagem was responsible for great hardship on the part of the Palestinians and laid the foundation for later trouble.

It would be the best solution, but it is not viable.  Too much antipathy and accumulated hatred on both sides

Again this is nonsense. The situation in South Africa differed only in the shades of skin of the parties involved. The Single State solution is the only way to break the cycle that will ensure the eventual re-conquest of Palestine and more mayhem.

catarin

Do you think the Muslims granted any mercy to Jews and Christians when they conquered Israel in the 7th century?

Absolutely. The era you refer to was characterized by tolerance for religious belief. In the words of James Michener in ‘Islam: The Misunderstood Religion,’ Reader’s Digest, May 1955, pp. 68-70:

    "No other religion in history spread so rapidly as Islam. The West has widely believed that this surge of religion was made possible by the sword. But no modern scholar accepts this idea, and the Qur’an is explicit in the support of the freedom of conscience."

It is not my area of expertise but here is a Wikipedia article that deals with Muhammad's edict of 622 AD:

After emigration to Medina, Muhammad drafted the Constitution of Medina, "establishing a kind of alliance or federation" among the eight Medinan tribes and Muslim emigrants from Mecca, which specified the rights and duties of all citizens and the relationship of the different communities in Medina (including that of the Muslim community to other communities specifically the Jews and other "Peoples of the Book.......One of the constitution's more interesting aspects was the inclusion of the Jewish tribes in the Ummah, the Jewish tribes were "one community with the believers," but they "have their religion and the Muslims have theirs."[11]")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Medina

See also:
Infidels with Benefits
Jews in the Medieval Islamic Empire
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history_community/Medieval/TheStory6321666/TheIslamicWorld.htm

It seems Benny Morris has revised his views over the years.

For his current views see:
http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm

What should Israel do about the millions of Arabs who are faking their ancestry and others who were birthed for the purpose

Do you have some evidence of this?

[pyshnov]

In Israel, I heard, with the group of immigrants, a lecture by a former(?) intelligence officer who delivered this story:
In German concentration camps, Jews were given a choice to leave for Palestine. This was at the meeting where Eichman and a representative of some Jewish agency were present. Very few Jews left, though. The intelligence officer commented on how stupid the Jews were. 
Of course, we were all shocked by this story.
I think that, if the story is true, it is possible that some evidence of the connection between Eichman and Zionists still exists.

[spork]

For those of a historical bent:

David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East

Martin Gilbert, Jerusalem in the Twentieth Century

Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
 
 
 

[solly]

I think that, if the story is true, it is possible that some evidence of the connection between Eichman and Zionists still exists.

Goodness me pyshnov, you are a brave soul! Going there can get you in serious trouble. Even at my age, with very little to lose, I only read Lenni Brenner late at night with the doors locked!
Once again, this is a part of History that has been swept into a dark and dusty corner. For what it is worth, here is a link to  review of Brenner's book: "51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis"
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display/5200/index.php

spork.

I heartily endorse your list and would add:
The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Force, by Martin Van Creveld
..for those with a penchant for things military.

[pyshnov]

solly, I read the link page.
I noticed this:
1. May be Jewish leaders tried to save Jews by "collaborating"?
2. However, it appears that they wanted only certain Jews (susceptible to Zionist propaganda) to be saved.
3. Is that why Israel wanted Eichmann so badly?
4. "[Zionists were] helping keep the deportation camps peaceful", Eichmann said. However, Jews indeed went like sheep.
5."[After] Sept., 1935, that there were only two flags that were permitted to be displayed in all of Nazi Germany. One was Hitler’s favorite, the Swastika. The other was the blue and white banner of Zionism"
Is this true? That's a claim to an historical fact! That can be verified. However, again, did the blue and white just indicated a Jewish enclave?
===
In a comment: "The right of return of Palestinian refugees has been re-stated annually ever since [res.242 in 1967 by UN]. Is this true?
===
Whatever the documents show, I think that:
1. Jews have a claim to be a "chosen people" by origin. That is unusual, I don't know if there ever existed similar assertions in other religions. Anyway, for as long as this was only a belief, nothing was much wrong. But, it was turned into such arrogance that, together with God's promise of Palestinian territory, it made a cult without any substantial difference with Nazism with respect to both: brutality and the blatant defiance of law.
2. Apparently, Hitler was full of envy: why Jews and not Aryans are the Chosen? Here, may be, is the clue to both: hatred and the mutual understanding at a certain level. The fact is that Nazis and Zionists had an ideal of racially pure societies. (Funny enough, Israel up to now cannot issue an official definition of who is a Jew and who is not.)

[solly]

pyshnov.

The story of Zionism is a complex one. Like all good stories it has heroes and villains. Despite what some posters here might aver, I am quite rigorous when it comes to History. I am old school - the tradition that educated me insisted on verification of every single fact. Unlike the  modern disciplines, those suffixed with "ology" which deal in opinion and the opinions of progenitors in the field, my discipline demanded not only documents but that the provenance and translation of those documents be verified.

Pre-War Germany is out of my field. I do not speak German, therefore the documents are not available to me. I can therefore only pass on to you some of the articles and books that have raised questions in my mind concerning this period. In general, I find Brenner quite plausible and well referenced. Here is a search result that throws up quite a lot of his articles and a link to one of his books online.
http://www.google.co.nz/search?q=Lenni+Brenner&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
http://ns.leb.net/brenner1223.html
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/

The right of return of Palestinian refugees has been re-stated annually

I am unsure of this but it is definitely still in force. From 1955 through 1992 Israel accumulated 65 U.N. declarations against it's actions in Palestine.

As an agnostic and Humanist, any concept of "Chosen people" is anathema to me. Psychologists posit that relatively insignificant events in our childhood have far-reaching effects on our thinking. Not one, to my knowledge, has ever investigated the effects on the psyche of cradle to the grave indoctrination into belief in one's "chosen" status. Perhaps this is why it is so difficult to get some folk to acknowledge that the Zionist project is a secular political one and deal with it appropriately. As Neil MacDonald said after five years on the ground in Palestine:
"Everyone talks like it's complex and difficult to understand. That's a cop-out for not wanting to accept reality. It's just a classic ethnic conflict about who owns this piece of land. It's as simple as that."
-- Niel McDonald, News Middle East Bureau Chief, Canadian Broadcasting Company

[catarin]

I started posting on Muslim websites before Bush II started the last war in Iraq.  That's when I noticed that Muslim history is not the same as Western history.  Muslims are taught that the Muslim raiders were gentle and kind to the people they conquered.  They are taught King David was as pure as the risen sun.  They are taught Jesus did not die on the cross and nor arise.  They are taught the Jews and Christians' Holy Land is theirs, that the Koran is far superior to the Bible (even though it's based on the Bible.)  They are taught Jews and Christians are apes and pigs.  Oink Oink  Yada yada yada, blah, blah.

When Mohammed died he did not choose a successor to follow him.  He chose his friend, Abu Baker, to officiate at his burial, and Abu Baker, in turmoil with others, took over the leadership of the Muslims to become the first Caliph of Islam.  This is a quote by Abu Baker from _The Story of Civilization_, by historian Will Durant:

"Be just, be valient, die rather than yield; slay neither old men, nor women, nor children.  Destroy no fruit trees, grain or cattle.  Keep your word, even to your enemies.  Molest not those religious persons who live retired from the world, but compel the rest of mankind to become Muslims or pay us tribute.  If they refuse these terms, slay them."  The choices were Islam, tribute or the sword.

Muslim hordes killed tens of thousand of people, maybe millions, in all the countries they conquered.  One hundred years ago, the Turkish Muslims chased the Armenians out of Turkey, killing and maiming as they went.  Today the Armenians are accusing them of committing genocide against them.  The Turkish government refuses to accept any responsibility.  Armenian history says the Muslims told them to become Muslims, pay taxes or die.  Same song for 1300 years.  I don't see how Muslims can be let off the hook for their history, because we need only look around today to see them doing the same, but today they are worse.

When Abu Baker, then Omar, took over the Caliphate, many Muslims were angry, because they thought the succession should go to a blood relative of Mohammed, Ali, who was both Mohammed's son-in-law and his cousin.  Ali was killed in battle, and from then forward the Muslims split, Ali's side known as Shiites and Abu Baker/Omar's side known as Sunnis.

The ghoul Eichman was hanged for being responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews.  In the story told of the Eichman capture in South America by the Mossad, it is interesting to note that Mossad prepared for this mission for months and months only to find out they had brought the wrong clothes to South America because the Northern Hemesphere's winter is the Southern Hemisphere's summer.

As I understand "chosen people", Jews were chosen to be an example to humanity on the worship of G-d, but my friend Doris said "chosen people" meant chosen to suffer.

[robert_smithson]

I started posting on Muslim websites before Bush II started the last war in Iraq.  That's when I noticed that Muslim history is not the same as Western history.  Muslims are taught that the Muslim raiders were gentle and kind to the people they conquered.  They are taught King David was as pure as the risen sun.  They are taught Jesus did not die on the cross and nor arise.  They are taught the Jews and Christians' Holy Land is theirs, that the Koran is far superior to the Bible (even though it's based on the Bible.)

This is quite unbelievable. I have no dog in this fight, and have rather enjoyed the quality of the posts, but this is really ridiculous. Catarin, what religious tradition acknowledges other religious traditions as legitimate?? It kind of goes against exclusive belief, doesn't it? I grew up Catholic. How much do you think we talked about Martin Luther?

If you are expecting Muslims to acknowledge the superiority of Westernness, you are living in quite the wrong era and are in fact part of exactly the problem that they rail against. Both your perspective and that of the Muslims you speak of (if true), illustrates quite plainly the dangers of a religious "education."

[catarin]

I have no religious education except that which I have learned on my own, from a wide variety of libraries, books, and scholars and lately from Biblical Archaeology Review.  I'm not interested in theology or exclusive belief, only in religious history.  I am fond of quoting from Will and Ariel Durant's _The Story of Civilization_, because it was written in the first half of the 20th century, long before people thought it was cute to mingle their own opinions and propaganda with history.  Hahaha  What idiots!  The Durants spent their entire careers writing over a dozen history books and spent much of their lives on the road in the Mediterranean areas to search out every historical place related to the Biblical traditions and to dig deep into ancient records. 

[pyshnov]

catarin, it is not Mr. Baker, but Bakr.
Your friend Doris just reflected the beliefs adopted by many Jews who came close (also in their habits) to Christianity.

[mabeelrc]

OOP!!  Someone is off his medications again!

[catarin]

Sorry you are having med problems.

I was reading online about members of the Israeli Knesset who are drawing the line on this 60 year struggle.  They are contacting many governments, nonMuslim and Muslim, to see who would be agreeable to take in some Arab Palestinian Muslims.  In a humanitarian effort, they want to move refugees to other countries so the Muslims can start new lives.  But will anyone take them?  There will not be a division of Jerusalem, the holy city G-d and the Israelis founded thousands of years ago. 

I read about Muslims asking why does the USA favors Jews over Arabs?  Americans have respect for the Jews as the source of our religious beliefs.  Islam doesn't.  Their Holy Land is the holy land for a billion Jews and Christians all over the world.  If I as a Christian wanted to move to the West Bank because Jesus taught, prayed and performed miracles there, you would fight me, even though it's my Holy Land and not yours.  BTW, the Jews were also one of the founding people of America.

Turkish Muslim scholars are talking about remaking the Quran and updating it for the present era.  There are so many hadiths that need to be taken out of Islam because they are self-serving and false.  Other things need reinterpreting.  I believe someone added to the Quran after Mohammed died because of the Evil it speaks toward Jews and Christians.   The author of _The History of Civilization_ , Will Durant, treats the three Abrahamic religions fairly but tells the truth.  Why don't you read it?   

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Unlike the analogy drawn here, Mayhew's assertion was upheld in the British High Court.

Do you have any citations for this incident other than the Wikipedia entry (which has no references, and is highly suspect)?  In particular, some credible citations for the statements about the court conclusions. - DvF