The excellent Israeli historian Ilan Pappe writing on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and why Israel cannot face up to her crimes.  Worryingly Pappe states that ‘The moral implication [of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine] is that the Jewish State was born out of sin—like many other states, of course—but the sin, or the crime, was never admitted. Worse, among certain circles in Israel, it is acknowledged and, in the same breath, advanced as a future policy against Palestinians wherever they are.’

For Israelis, 1948 is the year in which two things happened, one of which contradicts the other.

On the one hand, in that year the Jewish national movement, Zionism, claimed it fulfilled an ancient dream of returning to a homeland after 2,000 years of exile. From this perspective, 1948 is a miraculous event, the realization of a dream that carries with it associations of moral purity and absolute justice. Hence the military conduct of Jewish soldiers on the battlefield in 1948 became the model for generations to come. And subsequent Israeli leaders were lionized as men and women devoted to the Zionist ideals of sacrifice for the common cause. It is a sacred year, 1948, the formative source of all that is good in the Jewish society of Israel.

On the other hand, 1948 was the worst chapter in Jewish history. In that year, Jews did in Palestine what Jews had not done anywhere else in their previous 2,000 years. Even if one puts aside the historical debate about why what happened in 1948 happened, no one seems to question the enormity of the tragedy that befell the indigenous population of Palestine as a result of the success of the Zionist movement.

In normal circumstances, as Edward Said noted in his “Culture and Imperialism,” the painful dialogue with the past should enable a given society to digest both the most evil and the most glorious moments of its history. But this could not work in a case where moral self-image is considered to be the principal asset in the battle over public opinion, and hence the best means of surviving in a hostile environment. The way out for the Jewish society in the newly founded state was to erase from its collective memory the unpleasant chapters of the past and to leave intact the gratifying ones.

Because so many of the people who live in Israel lived through 1948 this was not an easy task. That year is not a distant memory and the crimes are still visible on the landscape. Above all, there are victims still living to tell their story and when they are gone, their descendents will pass on their accounts to future generations. And, yes, there are people in Israel who know exactly what they did, and there are even more who know what others did.

The authorities in Israel, to be sure, have succeeded in eliminating these deeds totally from society’s collective memory, as they struggle relentlessly against anyone who tries to shed light on them, in or outside Israel. If you look at Israeli textbooks, curricula, media, and political discourse you see how this chapter on Jewish history—the chapter of expulsion, colonization, massacres, rape, and the burning of villages—is totally absent. It is replaced by chapters of heroism, glorious campaigns and amazing tales of moral courage and military competence unheard of in the historiographies of any other state in the 20th century.

It would be useful, therefore, to begin this essay with a short reference to the denied chapters of those events that took place 60 years ago.

The Erased Chapters

The 1948 war’s diplomatic maneuvers and military campaigns are well engraved in Israeli Jewish historiography. What is missing is the chapter on the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Jews in 1948: 500 Palestinian villages and 11 urban neighborhoods were destroyed, 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes, and several thousands more were massacred. Why did it happen?

In November 1947, the U.N. offered to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The scheme was problematic from its inception for three reasons.

Firstly, it was presented to the two warring parties not as a basis for negotiation but as a fait accompli, even though the U.N. knew the Palestinian side would reject it. Palestinians regarded the Zionist movement as the Algerians regarded the French colonialists. Just as it was unthinkable for the Algerians to agree to share their land with the French settlers, so was it unacceptable for the Palestinians to divide Palestine with Zionist settlers. The cases were different, to be sure—even the Palestinians recognized this; but the better option, as a few U.N. members had proposed, and as the U.S. State Department later recognized, would have been a longer period of negotiations.

Secondly, the Jewish minority (660,000 out of two million) was offered the larger part of the land (56 percent). Thus the imposed partition was to begin with an unfair proposal.

Thirdly, because of the demographic distributions of the two communities—the Palestinians and the Jews—the 56 percent offered to the Jews as a state included an equal number of Jews and Palestinians, while few Jews resided in the remaining 44 percent designated for an Arab state. Zionist leaders, from left to right, all concurred on the need to attain a considerable Jewish majority in Palestine; in fact, the absence of such a solid majority was regarded as the demise of Zionism. Even a cursory knowledge of Zionist ideology and strategy, should have made it clear to the U.N. architects that such a demographic reality would lead to the cleansing of the local population from the future Jewish state.

In May 1947, the Jewish Agency, which functioned as the Jewish government within the mandatory government, had already drawn a map which included most of Palestine as a Jewish state, apart from the West Bank which had been granted to the Transjordanians.

On March 10, 1948, the Hagana, the main Jewish underground in Palestine, issued a military blueprint preparing the community for the expected British evacuation of Palestine. On that same day, a plan was devised to take over the parts earmarked by the Jewish agency, which constituted 80 percent of Palestine.

The plan, called Plan D (or Dalet in Hebrew), instructed the Jewish forces to cleanse the Palestinian areas falling under their control. The Hagana had several brigades at its disposal and each one of them received a list of villages it had to occupy and destroy. Most of the villages were destined to be destroyed and only in very exceptional cases were the forces ordered to leave a village intact.

In between December 1947 and well into the 1950s, the ethnic cleansing operation continued. Villages were surrounded from three flanks and the fourth one was left open for flight and evacuation. In some cases it did not work, and many villagers remained in the houses—here is where massacres took place. This was the principal strategy of the Judaization of Palestine.

The ethnic cleansing took place in three stages. The first one was from December 1947 until the end of the summer of 1948, when Palestinian villages along the coastal and inner plains were destroyed and their population evicted by force. The second stage took place in the autumn and winter of 1948/9 and included the Galilee and the Naqab (Negev).

By the winter of 1949 the guns were silenced on the land of Palestine. The second phase of the war ended and with it the second stage of the cleansing terminated, but the expulsion continued long after the winds of war subsided.

The third phase was to extend beyond the war until 1954, when dozens of additional villages were destroyed and their residents expelled. Out of about 900,000 Palestinians living in the territories designated by the U.N. as a Jewish state, only 100,000 remained on or nearby their land and houses. Those who remained became the Palestinian minority in Israel. The rest were expelled or fled under threat of expulsion; a few thousand died in massacres.

The countryside, the rural heart of Palestine, with its picturesque one thousand villages was ruined. Half of the villages were erased from the face of the earth, run over by Israeli bulldozers at work since August 1948 when the government decided either to turn them into cultivated land or to build new Jewish settlements on their ruins.

A committee for naming gave the new settlements Hebrewized versions of the original Arab names—thus Lubya become Lavi and Safuria was turned into Zipori. David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, explained that this was done as part of an attempt to prevent future claims to these villages. It was also an act supported by the Israeli archeologists who had authorized the names not as a takeover of a title but rather as poetic justice which returned to “ancient Israel” its old map. From the bible they salvaged geographical names and attached them to the destroyed villages.

Urban Palestine was torn apart and crushed in a similar way. The Palestinian neighborhoods in mixed towns were cleansed, the emptied homes left to be populated later by incoming Jewish immigrants from Arab countries.

The Palestinian refugees spent the winter of 1948 in tent camps provided to them by voluntary agencies; most of these locations would become their permanent residence. The tents were replaced by clay huts that became the familiar feature of Palestinian existence in the Middle East. The only hope for these refugees, at the time, was the one offered by U.N. Resolution 194 (December 11, 1948) promising them a quick return to their homes—one of but numerous international pledges made by the global community to the Palestinians that remains to this day unfulfilled.

This tragedy would be remembered in the collective memory of Palestinians as the Nakba—the catastrophe—and it would restore their national movement. Its self image would be that of an indigenous population led by a guerilla movement wishing to turn back the clock, with little success.

The Israelis’ collective memory would depict the war also as a national liberation movement, one fighting both British colonialism and Arab hostility, and winning against all odds. The loss of one per cent of the Jewish population would cloud their joy, but not their determination to Judaize Palestine and turn it into the future haven for world Jewry.

Israel, however, turned out to be the most dangerous place for Jews to be living in the second half of the 20th century. Most Jews preferred to live outside the Jewish state, and quite a few did not identify with the Jewish project in Palestine, nor did they wish to be associated with its dire consequences.

But a vociferous minority of Jews in the United States continued to give the impression that the majority of world Jewry condoned the cleansing of 1948. This illusion dangerously complicated the status of Jewish minorities in the Western world, particularly in those places where public opinion since the first Intifada in 1987 has grown increasingly hostile towards Israel’s policies in Palestine.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea said all reports reaching NATO indicated that what was happening in Kosovo was a well-organized master plan by Belgrade. He said the reported pattern of violence was that Serb tanks were surrounding villages, then paramilitaries are going in rounding up civilians at gunpoint, separating young men from women and children. The women and children are then expelled from their homes and then sent forward towards the border. After they have left the villages, the homes are looted and then systematically torched.—CNN, March 30, 1999

Those operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their debris) … or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state. —Plan Dalet, March 10, 1948

Until recently the Israeli-Zionist narrative of the 1948 war has dominated the academic world and, probably for that reason, it has influenced the public’s general recollection of the Nakba.

This meant that the 1948 events were described as an overall war between two armies. Such an assumption calls for the expertise of military historians, who can analyze the military strategy and tactics of both sides. Actions and atrocities are part of the theater of war, where things are judged on a moral basis quite differently from the way they would be treated in a non-combat situation. For instance, within the context of warring armies, the death of civilians—collateral damage, we call it—is accepted as an integral part of the overall attempt to win the war (although even within a war there are exceptional atrocities which are treated as illegitimate in military historiography).

Such a view also entails the concept of parity in questions of moral responsibility for the events unfolding on the ground, including, as in our case, the massive expulsion of an indigenous population. Using the two-army paradigm, the moral balancing between the two sides seemed to be “academic” and “objective.” However, using the Palestinian narrative, namely, that there were in 1948 not two equally armed and equipped armies, but rather an expeller and those expelled, an offender and the victims, the two-army paradigm is seen as sheer propaganda.

I suggest that the events that unfolded after May 1948 in Israel and Palestine should be viewed from within the paradigm of ethnic cleansing and not only as part of military history. Historiographically, this means that the deeds were part of domestic policies implemented by a regime against civilians. Indeed, in many cases, given the fact that the ethnic cleansing took place within the designated U.N. Jewish state, these were operations conducted by a regime against its own citizens.

This was not a battlefield between two armies, it was a civilian space invaded by military troops. Ethnic ideology, settlement policy and demographic strategy were the decisive factors here, not the military plans. Massacres, whether premeditated or not, were an integral, not exceptional, part of ethnic cleansing, although, in most cases, expulsion was preferred to killing.

The ethnic cleansing paradigm explains why expulsions and not massacres are the essence of such crimes. As in the 1990s’ Balkan wars, within the act of cleansing, sporadic massacres were motivated more by revenge than any clear-cut scheme. But the plan to create new ethnic realities was assisted by these massacres no less than by systematic expulsions.

The Jewish operation in 1948 fits the definition of ethnic cleansing offered in the U.N. reports on the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The U.N. Council for Human Rights linked the wish to impose ethnic rule on a mixed area—the making of Greater Serbia—with acts of expulsion and other violent means. The report defines acts of ethnic cleansing as including separation of men from women, detention of men, explosion of houses and repopulating with another ethnic group later on. This is precisely the repertoire of the Jewish soldiers in the 1948 war.

As others have shown, the massive expulsion of Palestinians was the inevitable outcome of a strategy dating back to the late 19th century. This ideology of transfer emerged the moment the leaders of the Zionist movement realized that the making of a Jewish state in Palestine could not be materialized as long as the indigenous people of Palestine remained on the land.

The presence of a local society and culture had been known to the founding fathers of Zionism even before the first settlers set foot on the land. Theodore Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, already predicted that his dream of a Jewish homeland in Palestine would necessitate expulsion of the indigenous population as did the leaders of the Second Aliya, a kind of a Zionist Mayflower generation.

Two means were used to change the reality in Palestine and to impose the Zionist interpretation on the local reality: the dispossession of the indigenous population from the land and its re-population with newcomers—i.e. expulsion and settlement.

This colonization effort was pushed forward by a movement that had not yet won regional or international legitimacy and had to buy land to create enclaves within the indigenous population. The British Empire was very helpful in bringing this scheme into reality. Yet from the very beginning the leaders of Zionism knew that settlement was a very long and measured process, which would not be sufficient to realize the revolutionary dreams of the movement to alter the realties on the ground and impose its own interpretation on the land’s past, present and future. For that, the movement needed to resort to more meaningful means such as ethnic cleansing and transfer.

Transfer and ethnic cleansing as means of Judaizing Palestine had been closely associated in Zionist thought and practice with “historical opportunities,” i.e., times in history when the world would be indifferent to what happened in a foreign land, or “revolutionary conditions” such as war.

This link between purpose and timing had been elucidated very clearly in a letter David Ben-Gurion had sent to his son Amos in July, 1937: “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as war.” This notion will reappear in Ben-Gurion’s addresses to his MAPAI party members throughout the Mandatory period, up until an opportune moment arises—in 1948.

And, as we shall see, the idea of ethnic cleansing —or transfer, to use the preferred euphemism—is alive and well in today’s Israel as still offering the best way of dealing with the Palestinian “problem.”

The Struggle Against Nakba Denial

The Nakba denial in Israel and the West was helped by the overall negation of the Palestinians as a people—the notorious declaration by Israel’s Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1970, “There are no Palestinians,” epitomized this attitude.

Towards the end of the 1980s, as a result of the first Intifada, the situation improved somewhat in the West with the humanization of the Palestinians in the media and their introduction into the field of Middle Eastern Studies as a legitimate subject matter.

In Israel, Palestinian affairs in those years, academically or publicly, were still discussed only by those who had been intelligence experts on the subject, and who maintained close ties with the security services and the Israeli Defense Force. This perspective erased the Nakba as a historical event, preventing local scholars and academics from challenging the overall denial and suppression of the catastrophe in the world outside the universities’ ivory towers.

The mechanisms of denial in Israel are effective because they cover the citizen’s life from cradle to grave. They assure the state that its people do not get confused by facts and reality, or view reality in such a way that it does not create moral problems.

Cracks in this wall of denial first appeared in the 1980s. Since 1982, with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the wide exposure of Israeli war crimes raised troubling questions in Israel and the Western media about the Jewish State’s self-image of being the only democracy in the Middle East, or as a community belonging to the world of human rights and universal values.

But it was the emergence of a critical historiography in Israel in the late 1980s, known as the “new history,” which re-located the Nakba at the center of academic and public debate about the conflict, legitimizing the Palestinian narrative after it had been portrayed for years as sheer propaganda by Western journalists, politicians and academicians.

The challenge to the Zionist presentation of the 1948 war appeared in various areas of cultural production: in the media, academia and popular arts. It affected the discourse both in the U.S. and Israel, but it never entered the political arena. The “new history” was no more than a few professional books written in English, only some of them translated into Hebrew, which made it possible for anyone wishing to do so to learn how the Jewish State had been built on the ruins of the indigenous people of Palestine, whose livelihood, houses, culture and land had been systematically destroyed.

In Israel, only in the media and through the educational system were people directed hesitantly towards taking a new look at the past; the establishment did everything it could to quash these early buds of self-awareness and recognition of Israel’s role in the Palestinian catastrophe.

Outside the academic world, in the West in general, and in the U.S.A. and Israel in particular, this shift in the academic perception had little impact. In America and in Jewish Israel, terms such as “ethnic cleansing” and “expulsion” are still today totally alien to politicians, journalists and common people alike. The relevant chapters of the past that would justify categorically such definitions are either distorted in the recollection of people, or totally absent.

In several European countries, new initiatives appeared in the 1990s by pro-Palestinian N.G.O.s to recast Israel’s role in the plight of Palestinian refugees; their effect on government policies is still too early to judge.

A similar movement emerged in the United States, where in Boston in April 2000 the first ever American Right of Return Conference was convened with over 1,000 representatives from all over the country in attendance. But so far their message has failed to reach Capitol Hill, The New York Times or the White House. The events of September 11, 2001 have put an end to the new trend and have revived the old anti-Palestinianism in America.

The Peace Process

Even before the U-turn in American public opinion after 9/11, the new history of 1948’s ethnic cleansing had no impact on the Palestine/Israel peace agenda.

At the center of these peace efforts was the Oslo Accord that began in September 1993. The concept behind this process was, as in all previous peace endeavours in Palestine, a Zionist one. The Oslo Accord was conducted according to the Israeli perception of peace—from which the Nakba was totally absent. The Oslo formula was devised by Israeli thinkers from the Jewish peace camp, people who ever since 1967 were playing an important role in the Israeli public scene. They were institutionalized in a popular movement “Peace Now” that had several parties on their side in the Israeli parliament. In all their previous discourses and plans they had totally evaded the 1948 issue and sidelined the refugee questions. They did the same in 1993 and this time with the dire consequences of raising hopes of peace as they seemed to have found a Palestinian partner to a peace plan that buried 1948 and its victims.

When the final moment came, and the Palestinians realized not only that there would be no genuine Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, but that there would be no solution to the refugee question, they rebelled in frustration.

The climax of the Oslo negotiations—the Camp David summit meeting between then Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat in the summer of 2000—gave the false impression that it was offering an end to the conflict. Palestinian negotiators had put the Nakba and Israel’s responsibility for it at the top of their list of demands, but this was totally rejected by the Israeli team that succeeded in enforcing its point of view on the summit.

To the Palestinian side’s credit, we should say that at least for a while the catastrophe of 1948 was brought to the attention of a local, regional, and to a certain extent global, audience. Yet its continued denial in the peace process stands as the main explanation both for its failure and for the ensuing second uprising in the occupied territories.

Indeed, the Nakba had been so efficiently kept off the agenda of the peace process that when it suddenly appeared on it, the Israelis felt as if a Pandora’s box had been pried open in front of them. Their worst fear was that Israel’s responsibility for the 1948 catastrophe would now become a negotiable issue. The “danger” was immediately confronted. In the Israeli media and parliament, a consensus was reached that no Israeli negotiator would be allowed even to discuss the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees to the homes they had occupied before 1948. The Knesset passed a law to this effect, and Barak made a public commitment to it on the stairs of the plane that was taking him to Camp David.

Now, after the events of September 11, 2001 and the outbreak of the second Intifada with its waves of suicide bombers, an unholy coalition of neo-conservatives, Christian Zionists and the pro-Israeli lobby in the States has maintained a firm grip over the American media’s presentation of the conflict in Palestine. This coalition helps Israel to get away with policies, past and present, which, if pursued by other nations, would brand them as pariah states.

Looking Ahead, As We Look Back

As one who has been personally involved in the struggle against the denial of the Nakba in Israel, I look back over the attempts that I and others have made to introduce the Nakba onto the Israeli public agenda with mixed feelings.

I detect cracks in the wall of denial that surrounds the Nakba in Israel, cracks that have come about as a result of the debate on the “new history” in Israel and the new political agenda of the Palestinians in Israel. This atmosphere has also been helped by a clarification of the Palestinian position on the refugee issue towards the end of the Oslo peace process.

As a result, after more than 60 years of repression, it is today more difficult in Israel to deny the expulsion and destruction of the Palestinians in 1948. This relative success, however, has brought with it two negative reactions:

The first reaction has been from the Israeli political establishment, with the Sharon government, through its minister of education, beginning the systematic removal of any textbook or school syllabus that refers to the Nakba, even marginally. Similar instructions have been given to the public broadcasting authorities.

The second reaction has been more disturbing and has encompassed wider sections of the public. Although a considerable number of Israeli politicians, journalists and academics have ceased to deny what happened in 1948, they continue to justify it publicly, not only in retrospect but also as a prescription for the future. The idea of “transfer” has entered Israeli political discourse openly for the first time, gaining legitimacy as the best means of dealing with the Palestinian “problem.”

Indeed, were I asked to choose what best characterizes the current Israeli response to the Nakba, I would stress the growing popularity of the Transfer Option in Israeli public mood and thought.

The Nakba now seems to many in the center of the political map as an inevitable and justifiable consequence of the Zionist project in Palestine. If there is any lament, it is that the expulsion wasn’t completed in the early years.

The fact that even an Israeli “new historian” such as Benny Morris now subscribes to the view that the expulsion was inevitable and should have been more comprehensive helps to legitimize future Israeli plans for further ethnic cleansing.

Transfer is now the official, moral option recommended by one of Israel’s most prestigious academic centers, the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Herzeliya, which advises the government. It has appeared as a policy proposal in papers presented by senior Labor Party ministers to their government. It is openly advocated by university professors, media commentators, and few now dare to condemn it. Even the former leader of the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, Dick Armey, said he believed that Palestinians living in the West Bank should be removed.

A circle has thus been closed. When Israel took over almost 80 per cent of Palestine in 1948, it did so through the ethnic cleansing of the original Palestinian population. The country’s politics are now dominated by three parties, Likud, Labor and Kadima, all of whom share the same view about what to do with the rest of Palestine. They wish to strangulate the Gaza Strip and annex half of the West Bank, while bisecting the other half into small cantons into which the Palestinians from the annexed part would eventually be transferred.

This is ethnic cleansing by other means, and it seems that all the politicians who subscribe to it enjoy wide public support. Judging from the most recent actions taken by the Israeli Knesset, such as prohibiting married Palestinians who come from both sides of the Green Line to settle in Israel, and the new legislation aimed at denying citizenship to anyone who doubts the Jewish character of the state, it seems that the politicians sense, and they may not be wrong in this, that the public mood in Israel would allow them to go even further, should they wish to repeat the ethnic cleansing of 1948.

And this ethnic cleansing extends not only to the Palestinians in the occupied territories but, if necessary, to the one million Palestinians living within Israel’s pre-1967 borders.

Since the 40th anniversary of the Nakba in 1988, the Palestinian minority in Israel has associated its collective and individual memories of the catastrophe with the general Palestinian tragedy in a way that it never did before. This association has been manifested through an array of symbolic gestures, such as memorial services during Nakba commemoration day, organized tours to deserted or formerly Palestinian villages in Israel, seminars on the past, and extensive interviews with Nakba survivors in the press.

Through its political leaders, NGOs and media outlets, the Palestinian minority in Israel has been able to force the wider public to take notice of the Nakba. All this public debate cannot help but undercut future peace plans built on denial of the Nakba, such as the Annapolis summit, the Road Map, the Ayalon-Nusseibah initiative, and the Geneva agreements.

Call It What It Is

For many years, the term Nakba seemed a satisfactory term for assessing both the events of 1948 in Palestine and their impact on our lives today. I think, however, it is time to use a different term: the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

The term Nakba does not imply any direct reference to who is behind the catastrophe—anything can cause the destruction of Palestine, even the Palestinians themselves. Not so when the term ethnic cleansing is used. It implies direct accusation and reference to culprits, not only in the past but also in the present. More importantly, it connects policies such as the ones that destroyed Palestine in 1948 to an ideology which is still the basis of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.

Ethnic cleansing is a crime and those who perpetrate it are criminals. In 1948, the leadership of the Zionist movement, which became the government of Israel, committed a crime against the Palestinian people. That crime was ethnic cleansing.

This is not a casual term but an indictment with far reaching political, legal and moral implications. Its meaning was clarified, as we have noted, in the aftermath of the 1990s civil war in the Balkans. Any action by one ethnic group meant to drive out another ethnic group with the purpose of transforming a mixed ethnic region into a pure one is ethnic cleansing. An action becomes an ethnic cleansing policy regardless of the means employed to obtain it. Every method—from persuasion and threats up to expulsions and mass killings—justifies the attribution of the term to such policies. Consequently, the victims of ethnic cleansing are both people who left out of fear and those forced out as part of an on-going operation.

The above definitions and references can be found in the American State Department and United Nations websites. These are the principal definitions that guided the international court in the Hague when it was set to try those responsible for planning and executing ethnic cleansing operations as people who perpetrated crimes against humanity.

The Israeli objective in 1948 was clear and was articulated without any evasions in Plan Dalet that was adopted in March 1948 by the high command of the Hagana. The goal was to take as much land as possible from the territory of Mandatory Palestine and the removal of most of the Palestinian villages and urban neighborhoods from the coveted future Jewish State.

The execution was even more systematic and comprehensive than the plan anticipated. In a matter of seven months, 531 villages were destroyed and 11 urban neighborhoods emptied. The mass expulsion was accompanied by massacres, rape and imprisonment of men (defined as males above the age of ten) in labor camps for periods over a year.

Such a policy is defined in international law as a crime against humanity which the U.S. State Department believes can only be rectified by the repatriation of all the people who left, or were expelled, as a result of the ethnic cleansing operations.

The political implications of such a statement is that Israel is exclusively blameable for the making of the Palestinian refugee problem and bears legal as well as moral responsibility for the problem.

The moral implication is that the Jewish State was born out of sin—like many other states, of course—but the sin, or the crime, was never admitted. Worse, among certain circles in Israel, it is acknowledged and, in the same breath, advanced as a future policy against Palestinians wherever they are.

All these implications were totally ignored by the Israeli political elite and instead a very different lesson was derived from the 1948 events: you can, as a state, expel most of Palestine’s population, destroy half its villages and get away with it. The consequences of such a lesson were inevitable: the continuation of the ethnic cleansing policy by other means. In Israel proper, between 1948 and 1956, Palestinian citizens were expelled from dozens of villages, 300,000 Palestinians have been transferred to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and a measured, but constant, cleansing is still going on in the Greater Jerusalem area.

As long as the political lesson is not learned, there will be no solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The issue of the refugees will fail any attempt, successful as it may be in any other parameters, to reconcile the two conflicting parties. This is why it is so important to recognize the 1948 events as an ethnic cleansing operation, so as to ensure that a political solution will not evade the root of the conflict: the expulsion of the Palestinians.

The acknowledgement of past evils is not done in order to bring criminals to justice, but rather to bring the crime itself to pubic attention and trial. The final ruling will not be retributive—there will be no punishment—but rather restitutive—the victims will be compensated. The most reasonable compensation for the Palestinian refugees was stated clearly in December 1948 by the U.N. General Assembly in its resolution 194: the unconditional return of the refugees and their families to their homeland (and homes where possible).

As long as the moral lesson is not learned, the state of Israel will continue to exist as a hostile enclave at the heart of the Arab world. It would remain the last reminder of the colonialist past that complicates not only Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians, but with the Arab world as a whole.

When and how can we hope for these lessons to be learned and absorbed into the effort to bring peace and reconciliation in Palestine? First, of course, not much can be expected to happen as long as the present brutal phase of the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continues. And yet alongside the struggle against the occupation—with the positive development of the B.D.S. option (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) being adopted as the main strategy forward by civil society in the occupied territories and by the International Solidarity Movement—the effort to relocate the 1948 ethnic cleansing at the center of the world’s attention and consciousness has to continue.

On the 60th anniversary we—Palestinians, Israelis and whoever cares for this land— should demand that Israel’s 1948 crime against humanity be included in everyone’s history books so as to stop the present crimes from continuing before it is too late.

The UCU has passed its 3 motions in favour of solidarity with Palestine (that also question links with Israeli academic institutions) by an overwhelming majority [I hear it was 250 to 30 but I've yet to have this confirmed].  To read the motions in full see Lenin’s Tomb, for one of the better articles on the topic look to the Guardian and if you want to laugh (or cry depending) try reading the rantings of that well known loon Melanie Philips (whose article is titled ‘The Universities Witch-hunt Against The Jews’).  Below is the UCU Press release.

On a rather different note its interesting how groups like Stop the Boycott, the Israeli media etc are only interested in academic freedom in defence of the state of Israel and not when that state is silencing critics such as Norman Finkelstein.  Finkelstein was recently arrested by the Israeli authorities when trying to visit the occupied Palestinian Territories (not Israel) and was deported back to the US without any outcry.  This is an example of how Palestinian academic life is interfered with: as visitors to their Universities can be refused, travel of Palestinian academics abroad can be denied and travel internally is often blocked by checkpoints.  Finkelstein’s case is just another example of how academic freedom is only important when it serves Israel not Palestine.

Delegates at the University and College Union (UCU) congress this afternoon (Wednesday) reaffirmed their commitment to helping international colleagues denied the freedoms they enjoy. A series of motions called for greater links and solidarity with trade unionists from Darfur, Zimbabwe, Palestine and Burma. Delegates debated the Palestinian motion at length and passed one which supported solidarity with Palestinian academics and did not call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Commenting on the motions passed this afternoon, Sally Hunt said: “Delegates in Manchester for UCU congress this week have the freedom to debate a whole host of issues. They can do this without worrying about being arrested, beaten and even killed. There are trade unionists around the world that are not so fortunate and we must never take our freedom to debate, whatever the issue, for granted.

“Because of the constant misreporting of the motions considered by UCU’s Congress, I feel I have to state that we have passed a motion to provide solidarity with the Palestinians, not to boycott Israel or any other country’s academic institutions. I made clear to delegates that the union will defend their right to debate this and other issues. Implementation of the motion will now fall to the national executive committee (NEC).”

Sally Hunt had earlier told delegates that educators were often singled out for the harshest treatment in those countries that denied trade unionists freedom. In her keynote speech she said: “Freedom of thought and the freedom to learn are rights that are at the heart of democratic civil society. Our international obligation is to provide meaningful solidarity wherever we can, whether to teachers in Columbia in fear of their lives; lecturers in Zimbabwe warned to shut up or face the consequences; or students and staff in Palestine unable to get through checkpoints in order to continue study.”

The following by Keith Hammond from the excellent site Palestine Think Tank.

The UK’s University and College Union is moving into its May 28th 2008 Congress.  Everyone in British Universities and Colleges is watching the proceedings carefully as everyone listens for news of the academic boycott.  It is absolutely clear that the UCU membership is keen on a boycott of Israeli institutions who support or remain silent on the occupation of Palestine and yet claim ‘humane’ credentials in the international world of academia. This situation is upsetting many academics.  What will be really interesting about this Congress is the way Anti-Zionist feeling amongst the rank and file translates to Congress decisions when the big stick of the law is being waived by the pro-Israeli group within the union that is threatening such a move.  (I have seen documents of their legal threats…. Pages and pages of them. editor’s note).

The Zionist lobby within the UCU has never been as desperate.  They have seen the UCU at all levels throb with arguments and counter-arguments about Israel and its sordid institutions of higher education that service the occupation.  Argumentation has not gone the Zionists’ way – how could it?  And the result has been that they have reminded everyone constantly of the legal consequences should the union go ahead with its anti-Zionist campaign.  The tactic has been seen by many to show exactly what Zionism is all about – using law in the most disgusting way to further an endless campaign of violence and injustice against the Palestinians and now it would seem, a legal campaign any union in the UK that tries to organise real support for the Palestinians.  What has proved to be the downfall of the Zionists however is that this very tactic has back-fired as the perverted possibility of using anti-racist laws against those who speak out for Palestine has been witnessed by the full membership and everyone seems to have had enough.

The prospect of an academic boycott has brought out constant debate.  The debate has shown no signs of diminishing – it is more constant than ever.  Whatever this 2008 Congress decides, the UCU membership is looking to support Palestine.   Support may be formalised at this Congress or it may be formalised at the next.  But it is coming!  The boycott at some point is a definite course of action because regardless of happens at this Congress, the UCU membership are very unhappy with Israeli institutions supporting the violent occupation of Palestine.  Israeli academics know this and fewer and fewer are coming to international conferences in the UK.  These Israeli academics know that the debate is going to go on until it translates into a real boycott and Israeli academics get the message that the Zionist project is unacceptable.  Other unions are watching this UCU gathering.  They are waiting to push through similar actions.  Once one British trade union moves, it will be like the border controls at Rafah!  Watch this space!!!!

While not calling for an organisational boycott the UCU is asking members to learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict.  It hopes to appeal to freedom of conscience, that once academics realise Israel is a criminal state they will refuse to work with it and personally boycott it.

However the Stop the Boycott campaign is threatening that appealing to academics freedom of conscience is illegal due to discrimination on a national and religous basis.  It seems odd that anti-racist laws are being used to defend a racist colonial state.  Was the boycott against apartheid in South Africa anti-white?  Anti-South African?  Or just anti-oppression?

I’m not sure what Stop the Boycott want?  That we can discuss Israel-Palestine, conclude Israel’s a criminal state (as did the International Court of Justice), but do nothing for fear of being sued?  I’ve been boycotting Israel goods and going to protests for several years now including Stop the War marches.  Does that mean I’m discriminating against Israeli’s and my fellow Brits?  Clearly not, I’m using democratic freedoms to pressure Governments to try and produce positive changes.  They also argue that the discrimination is not just to Israeli’s as it would ‘expose Jewish members of the union to indirect discrimination’ too.  A topic I’ve tackled previously here.

The fact that the legal advice suggests talking about boycotting Israel is anti-Jewish discrimination suggests they are clutching at straws and merely trying to smear and scare the campaign.  I can’t imagine theres a strong legal case against the boycott and I hope the UCU continues even if legal action is taken.  Having Israel’s crimes and status as an apartheid state going through the courts would be a big success – a McLibel 2.0.

For more news coverage on the Stop the boycott legal advice see the Guardian, Jewish Chronicle and Jerusalem Post.

I find the following article by Lyon Symons to be pretty poor and think many areas need clarifying.

Anti-semitism is obviously a serious issue and I find it hard to believe the MP who says ‘for the first time, antisemitism has been taken seriously’ I mean really?  This is the first time?  I would be deeply shocked if it was its seems very unlikely.  Racism of all kinds is taken very seriously on campus.

Now that asside I think theres another important issue at play and thats criticism of Israel being associated with anti-semitism.  On my university course this year theres an American girl and in some respects I feel sorry for her.  You see, she associates criticism of the US Government with anti-Americanism.  In Europe we find this concept hard to understand as unlike the US where critics of the Government are often considered unAmerican we have no such thing as an unScottish Scotsman.  Its normally clearly understood that people can love their country and hate its Government.  Anyway this girl took every criticism of the States personally, but being strong dealt with it and tried to get on with things (hard for her as every professor and student was critical of Bush and constantly making jokes).  I’m pretty sure she felt like a ‘pariah’ and thats why I felt sorry for her – no one was out to upset her, no one was being critical of her, she just took it that way.  One solution of course is that everyone near her never utters a bad word about George Bush or US global hegemony.  But what if I get offended by people talking badly about Tony Blair and his war in Iraq too?  Then no one can mention him badly in front of me either?  Then were is freedom of speech and democracy?

I think something similar is happening with criticism of Israel – some people are taking it personally when really its just legitimate criticism of a Government like any other.  Does that mean we should throw the baby out with the bathwater?

What we should be concerned with is anti-semitism where it exists and not where supporters of Israel feel like pariahs.  Theres every reason for a supporter of illegal military occuaption (whether British, American or Israeli), Apartheid, illegal settlement, colonialism and aggression to feel like a pariah.  Whereas theres no reason for Jewish people to feel like pariahs.  However if they associate the two thats something they need to deal with.  Likewise if a critic associates Israeli Government crimes with Jewishness thats also something that needs to be resolved.

For more on the UK Government’s Parliamentary All-Party Inquiry into Antisemitism read Norman Finkelsteins Kill Arabs, Cry Anti-semitism.

Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks has called on university vice-chancellors to take greater action to defend Jewish students who are made to feel like “pariahs” on campuses around the UK.

He told the JC this week that vice-chancellors “must defend freedom of speech on all sides and all arguments. It must never be students of this or that faith who feel vulnerable or at risk or like pariahs on a university campus.

“We hope that university vice-chancellors will recognise the feeling of vulnerability that Jewish students have expressed at many university campuses. Part of the essence of a university is that everyone enters in an atmosphere in which they are accepted.”

Sir Jonathan’s comments followed a meeting at the House of Commons on Monday when he addressed a meeting on the government’s progress report on the response, one year on, to the Parliamentary All-Party Inquiry into Antisemitism’s 35 recommendations.

The government report highlighted antisemitism on university campuses as one of three areas “which remain of concern and require further work”. The other two were hate crimes and prosecutions, and the internet.

The Chief Rabbi praised the work of the all-party committee to the gathering of MPs, peers, communal leaders and members of other ethnic minorities. But then he went on to tell them he was shocked that there were campuses “where some Jewish students were too afraid to show any outward signs of their Jewish identity.

“I am shocked that this is happening so soon after the Holocaust. I am also shocked that it is happening despite some so-called strong action by university vice-chancellors.”

The government’s 40-page report listed 14 achievements including the establishment of an inter-departmental working group covering nine Whitehall departments that meets senior communal bodies; the Schools’ Linking Network; spreading their work to Europe; and security in schools and communal buildings.

John Mann, Labour MP for Bassetlaw and chair of the all-party group, applauded the government’s progress. He described the committee’s task as a “work in progress” and said there was still “a lot more to be done”.

He predicted there would be “further major announcements” in other key areas during the summer.

Liverpool Labour MP Louise Ellman said: “For the first time, antisemitism has been taken seriously and the government has looked at political measures to combat it.”

Community Security Trust chief executive Richard Benson said he was satisfied with the government’s progress and went on: “We welcome this report which again demonstrated the Government’s commitment to addressing and tackling antisemitism today.

“We appreciate that the internet is an especially complex environment to police, but the campus remains a growing problem that requires urgent and proper focus from all of the relevant authorities. Regarding prosecutions, we value the highly detailed report recently submitted by the Crown Prosecution Service and hope to improve witness protection and confidence in the judicial process.”

Union of Jewish Students’ campaigns director Yair Zivan said: “I am encouraged by the ongoing high level engagement between UJS and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills but now we have to work hard to ensure that is transformed into real action over the next 12 months.

“We will be looking for specific progress on dealing with campus-based antisemitic incidents, the presence of racist speakers on campus, timetable clashes and general provision for Jewish students.”

A report commissioned by the Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom), a leading ‘promoter’ (of Israeli propaganda), shows little damage to the UK economy if an academic boycott were to take place.  Its a huge glaring error on their part.  Although the report says ‘the proportion of UK GDP accounted for by economic links with Israel is small — £1.7 billion is just 0.1 per cent of UK GDP’ Jonathan Hoffman (whose credentials are vague) claims this ‘grossly underestimates the loss.’  According to him, not the report, other institutions globally would start to boycott the UK universities.  I’m not sure what the evidence of this is?  I doubt any large scale boycott would happen and this seems more like a scare story now that the report has been a positive result for those in favour of a boycott.

Even asking the question of the cost is ridiculous in the first place.  When we ended slavery a similar argument of economic loss was presented, similarly with child labour and I’m sure the same happened when the UK boycotted South Africa under Apartheid.  It’s always been a disgusting argument and always will be.  We should not support oppression no matter what the financial benefit.  The UCU is correct to confront Israeli oppression especially when extends into the Palestinian education system.

A leading economist has said that the UK economy and employment in Britain would suffer badly in the event of an academic boycott of Israel.

Commenting on a new report highlighting the financial impact on Britain if last year’s aborted academic boycott against Israel had gone ahead, Jonathan Hoffman, who has worked for the Bank of England and other major financial institutions, said: “The UK economy would suffer in the event of a hypothetical academic boycott.

“There would be third party repercussions — for example, from US foundations and companies pulling out of Britain, perhaps with legal encouragement from Congress, which would magnify the impact.”

The report, which has been issued as a new boycott is threatened by the University and College Union, concentrates on figures for 2006 and shows that Israel contributed directly about £1.7 billion towards Britain’s gross domestic product on a per capita basis. This made Israel the UK’s 26th most important trading partner per capita, ahead of the USA, Japan and South Africa.

It reveals that there were more than 200 academics and almost 1,000 Israeli students working here. It also examined the jobs Israelis take as well as tourism and cultural and sporting links. The report estimates that there were roughly 14,000 Israelis living in Britain, who contributed around £600 million to GDP in 2006.

The report was commissioned by the Britain-Israel Communications and Research Centre (Bicom) and was written by business analysis organisation Oxford Economics. The JC understands that Bicom commissioned it last year to highlight the effect that a full academic boycott could have had, not just on academia but on economic links between the two countries.

Bicom decided to go ahead with the study despite UCU dropping, on legal advice, its boycott plans. The UCU is reviving the boycott issue at its conference at the end of this month.

Commenting on the report, Mr Hoffman said: “The UK’s population is more than eight times that of Israel, so it is not surprising that the proportion of UK GDP accounted for by economic links with Israel is small — £1.7 billion is just 0.1 per cent of UK GDP. But this grossly underestimates the loss that the UK economy would suffer.

“Institutions from other countries — for example, Canada, Australia and the European Union — would quickly get drawn in. All in all, I believe there would be a significant loss to UK GDP and to employment if the UCU was foolish enough to try again to introduce a boycott of Israeli academics.”

Apart from economic information, the report reveals that the vast majority of Israelis live in London and the South-East.

It further reveals that in 2006, more than 40 per cent of British-based Israelis were employed as managers and senior officials and 24 per cent in professional occupations.

The report also offered a comprehensive list of joint Anglo-Israeli projects in a number of fields, notably science.

Anthea Lipsett has written a terrible article in the Guardian linking the UCU boycott with antisemitism.  You may wonder why I’ve written Guardi-yawn; well its because I’ve been following the Israel-Palestine conflict for many years now and I’m getting bored of EVERY critic of Israel being called an antisemite.  The shine has most certainly worn off.  Where is the evidence of this antisemitism?  Theres none but being a critic of Israel – which is all the evidence that seems to be required.  We have to forget that there are legitimate reasons to criticise Israel such as its illegal military occupation of the Palestinian Territories and Apartheid conditions.  This is a dangerous abuse of the term antisemitism as we all know what happened to the boy who cried wolf.  As for the All-Party Inquiry into Antisemitism I suggest reading Norman Finkelsteins Kill Arabs Cry Antisemitism.  In it he says:

Although claiming that, in the struggle against anti-Semitism, “none of those who gave evidence wished to see the right free speech eroded,” and “only in extreme circumstances would we advocate legal intervention,” the report recommends that university authorities “take an active interest in combating acts, speeches, literature and events that cause anxiety or alarm among their Jewish students”.

If not enough is being done I wonder what this means?  People are still speaking freely about Israeli crimes?  I hope so.

Antisemitism in universities remains a major concern and the government needs to do more work to address it, an all party group of MPs has warned.

A progress report (pdf) one year after the government’s response to the All-Party Inquiry into Antisemitism suggests the Department for Innovation, Universities and Science has failed to do enough to tackle antisemitism on campus.

“Although we can point to significant progress against many of the Inquiry’s 35 recommendations there are still areas which remain of concern and require further work, this includes… antisemitism on university campuses,” the report says.

It is up to individual universities to make sure campuses are free from harassment and discrimination, the report states. But the group says it will consider setting up a sub-group on antisemitism in relation to higher education in discussion with higher education sector bodies and Jewish community bodies.

The report comes amid fears that a potential boycott of Israeli academics by university lecturers has resurfaced. The University and College Union will debate the proposal at its annual congress later this month.

Yair Zivan, campaigns officer for the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), said: “The situation on campus is certainly not getting better. The Community Security Trust recorded 59 incidents of antisemitism on campus in 2007. This year that number will be dramatically exceeded.”

He urged Dius to take the lead and create a task force for antisemitism on campus.

“The work on campus related antisemitism hasn’t been moving as far as we would like, partly because of university autonomy, but we have asked Dius to take more of a lead on this and issue guidelines rather than just dialogue.”

These would give universities advice on Jewish religious festivals clashing with exam timetables and helping with barriers to Jewish students going to higher education, such as lack of kosher food in some university towns.

It would also clarify the role and responsibility of student unions under the Race Relations Act and whether they act autonomously from the university.

Dius issued updated guidelines on dealing with extremism on campus earlier in the year. But Jewish students want specific guidelines on antisemitism on campus.

Zivan said: “Islamist organisations are not the only source of antisemitism on campuses by any stretch of the imagination. Antisemitism from the far left and the far right are not dealt with, which are particularly big sources of antisemitism for us.

The report commends Dius for engaging the sector in a debate on academic freedom and how it can be used to challenge and undermine extremism.

Zivan agreed that ministers had increased dialogue but said there was an issue of “how far academic freedom trumps discrimination”.

The higher education minister, Bill Rammell, said: “We are committed to tackling racism and discrimination in all its forms and to encouraging higher education institutions to do the same.

“We issued updated and revised guidance on ensuring good campus relations in January this year aimed at helping universities break down segregation amongst different student communities, ensure student safety and campuses free from bullying, harassment and intimidation.

“I meet regularly with the UJS and we are committed to work together with universities to tackle antisemitism. I and the department took a very strong stand against the proposed UCU academic boycott of Israel which was widely welcomed by many Jewish students.”

A small window into how the Apartheid system – using military occupation – affects education for Palestinian children. Thanks to Sabbah’s Blog.

An article and title from The Press Association:

Controversial calls for British academics to consider boycotting Israeli universities are set to resurface later this month, threatening to re-ignite a row that spread worldwide.

Members of the University and College Union (UCU) will discuss whether to continue links with Israeli academic institutions in the light of the “humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza by Israel”.

A motion passed at the union’s annual conference last year provoked outrage from academics and politicians in Britain and overseas.

The UCU annual meeting at the end of this month in Manchester is set to reopen the row with a similarly worded motion.

Backed by the UCU branches at the universities of Brighton and East London, the new motion urges members to consider their consciences before collaborating with Israeli academics.

It says that union members should “be asked to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions”.

It calls for “a wide discussion by colleagues of the appropriateness of continued educational links with Israeli academic institutions”.

The motion states that “criticism of Israel or Israeli policy are not, as such, anti-Semitic”.

It notes the “continuation of illegal settlement, killing of civilians and the impossibility of civil life, including education” as a result of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. And the motion criticises previous attempts to stop UCU members “debating (a) boycott of Israeli academic institutions”.

Last year, Jewish leaders condemned the motion – which was passed by three votes to two – as a “frightening” assault on academic freedom. Before the vote, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg cancelled a planned visit to the UK in protest at the boycott calls.

We care about Academic freedom – just don’t mention the boycott, don’t mention crimes against Palestinians, don;t mention military occupation, curfews, blocks on education and above all don’t mention Apartheid.  We will contact our lawyers.  More from Polly Curtis in the Guardian:

Academics are today accused of attempting to revive the academic boycott of Israel by calling for lecturers to consider their links with Israeli institutions and lobby contacts over the Israeli occupation.

The University and College Union (UCU) annual conference this month will debate a motion which falls short of a full-blown boycott but asks members to “consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions” in the light of the “humanitarian catastrophe imposed on Gaza by Israel”.

Anti-boycott groups claimed it was an attempt to revive the issue after legal advice issued last year suggested a boycott would be discriminatory and illegal.

The issue has dominated the union’s annual conferences since 2002 but its leadership had hoped that the legal advice had laid the issue to rest.

Previous attempts at a boycott have caused international outcries, especially in Israel and the US.

When the union backed a boycott in February 2005, the story hit the front pages in Europe, North America and Asia. The debate raged for several weeks when a delegation of Israeli academics put pressure on the union by touring UK campuses.

The boycott motion in 2005 was subsequently overturned at an emergency conference.

The new move, if backed by the union annual conference, also calls on academics “to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating”.

The union insists the motion is not a boycott and is in line with its legal advice, which suggests a boycott would be illegal, and that it is simply encouraging free academic debate about the issues.

An amendment being put forward also opposes the boycott, saying: “A boycott of Israeli academic institutions at this time is unlikely to maximise and unify international solidarity.”

A spokesman for Stop the Boycott said it was seeking legal advice about the new motion.