Smooth Stone

An excerpt from the excellent, must-read essay by Seth Frantzman, currently in the doctoral program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and whose master’s thesis was on the 1948 war, in a counterpoint rebuttal of Ilan Pappe, a communist anti-Zionist self-loathing Jewish historian at Haifa University who has defended a student, Teddy Katz, for written essays documenting a fictitious Israeli massacre at the village of Tantura in 1948, and presenting it as truth. Via JPost:

It has become fashionable in recent decades to frame the 1948 war as one in which the Arabs were victims of Zionist aggression. Anti-Zionist scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Rashid Khalidi and Ilan Pappe have presented the war as if the only important events were Deir Yassin and the flight or expulsion of Arabs from Haifa, Acre, Tiberias, west Jerusalem, Jaffa and numerous villages.

These views are those of the “new historians” – leftist scholars who in the 1980s began to reinterpret Israeli and Palestinian history. He is the author of six works on the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Middle East. In his recently released book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappe claims that Israel prepared a special plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine’s Arab population known as Plan D for dalet. Pappe’s “evidence” is derived from his interpretations of files found in the Hagana and Israel state archives.

But Pappe makes one egregious mistake. He never bothers to ask the same question of the Arabs he does of the Jews: What about their lists, their intelligence reports and their ethnic-cleansing plans? What were Arab intentions in the five months between the passage of the UN partition plan on November 29, 1947, and the birth of Israel?

The archives of The Palestine Post, now The Jerusalem Post and then the newspaper of record of Mandatory Palestine, provide some of the answers and tell a very different story from the one presented by Pappe.

– Sixty-two Jews were murdered by Arabs in the first week after the UN partition plan was passed, and by May 15, 1948, a total of 1,256 Jews had been killed, most of them civilians. These deaths were caused by Arab militias, gangs, terrorists and army units which attacked every place of Jewish inhabitation in Palestine.

The attacks succeeded in placing Jerusalem under siege and eventually cutting off its water supply. All Jewish villages in the Negev were attacked, and Jews had to go about the country in convoys. In every major city where Jews and Arabs lived in mixed neighborhoods the Jewish areas came under attack. This was true in Haifa’s Hadar Hacarmel as well as Jerusalem’s Old City.

Massacres were not uncommon.

– Thirty-nine Jews were killed by Arab rioters at Haifa’s oil refinery on December 30, 1947. On January 16, 1948, 35 Jews were killed trying to reach Gush Etzion. On February 22, 44 Jews were murdered in a bombing on Jerusalem’s Rehov Ben-Yehuda. And on February 29, 23 Jews were killed all across Palestine, eight of them at the Hayotzek iron foundry.

– Thirty-five Jews were murdered during the Mount Scopus convoy massacre on April 13. And 127 Jews were massacred at Kfar Etzion on May 15, 1948, after 30 others had died defending the Etzion Bloc.

– In Arab countries more than 100 Jews were also massacred and synagogues were burned in Aleppo and Aden, driving thousands of Jews from their homes.

Back in Palestine many small kibbutzim were subjected to attacks, including Gvulot, Ben-Shemen, Holon, Safed, Bat Yam and Kfar Yavetz – all in December. In January and February, it was the turn of Rishon Lezion, Yehiam, Mishmar Hayarden, Tirat Zvi, Sde Eliahu, Ein Hanatziv, Magdiel, Mitzpe Hagalil and Ma’anit.

In March and April these attacks culminated with an assault on Hartuv by 400 Arabs based in the village of Ishwa and an attack on Kfar Darom by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Arab attackers also bombed The Palestine Post in February. In March, the Jewish Agency, the Solel Boneh building in Haifa and an Egged bus were also bombed.

Some of today’s scholars prefer to present every massacre of Jews as a “response” to some Jewish deed, and to portray as a “myth” the very idea that Israel struggled desperately for existence in 1948.

But it was no myth.

The fact is 1,256 Jews were killed in five months. Even before the first Arab villages were captured in April, 924 Jews had already been killed.

Ilan Pappe should have pondered what might have been if those Jews had not been slaughtered.

For more on the scourge known as Illan Pappe, see this, this and this.

Click here to read the full essay, Ethnic cleansing in Palestine?

From “Rectify Injustice” Against Israel, Cotler Tells U.S:

Former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler and other Canadian scholars presented the U.S. Congress Thursday with its first testimony on Jews driven from Arab lands following Israel’s creation in 1948. The group was among experts helping U.S. lawmakers decide on a pair of bills that would oblige the Bush administration to actively oppose the Arab-led practice in Middle East peace efforts to speak only of Palestinian refugees. General discourse for decades has all but ignored tens of thousands of Jews, Christians and other minorities who were similarly turned into refugees. “The time has come to rectify this historical injustice,” Cotler told members of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in Washington.

From INN: On the day most Israelis will be celebrating the 59th Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence Day, some Arab and left-wing Jewish citizens will march against the foundation of the state.

The Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (ADRID) is planning to hold its tenth annual Procession of Return. The march, which last year drew hundreds of participants, is set to take place Tuesday, April 24, in the village of Al-Lajjun, adjacent to the northern Arab-Israeli city of Umm Al-Fahm. ADRID was established with the goal of returning Arabs to the houses and villages they or their families left during and after the 1948 War of Independence.

In the 2006 Procession of Return, Arab and left-wing marchers waved PLO flags and black flags “as a clear and decisive statement in the face of the Independence Day celebrations across other Jewish areas of the country,” according to Ido Tzvieli, writing in the website of the Israel-based Jewish-Arab Zochrot organization. Zochrot, which will be taking part in the procession in Al-Lajjun, is dedicated to promoting the Arab view of the establishment of the State of Israel as a “day of catastrophe” (Al-Nakba).

Leading Middle East researchers, however, note statements on the issue made by Arab leaders and spokespeople during and after the War of Independence, indicating that Arabs in the land of Israel mostly fled due to Arab propaganda. The Arab leadership promoted libelous accusations against the Jews of Israel and warned Arab villagers to make way for conquering Arab armies.

For example, the New York-based Lebanese daily Al-Hoda wrote that in 1948, Arab League secretary Azzam Pasha “assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade…. Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property, and to stay temporarily in neighbouring fraternal states.”

Also during the War of Independence, hundreds of Jews were forced to abandon towns and communities that were conquered by Jordanian, Egyptian and other Arab forces, such as in Jerusalem, Gaza, Hevron and other parts of Judea and Samaria. The lands and homes abandoned by Jews were quickly taken over by Arab soldiers and civilians. In most cases, the properties taken over by Arabs have remained in their possession, even after the 1967 Six Day War, when Israeli forces returned to the areas in question. In addition, in the aftermath of the War of Independence, acts of official and unofficial retaliation against Jewish communities in Arab countries forced upwards of 700,000 Jews to flee their homes and emigrate to Israel and the West, in most cases leaving their possessions behind.

Be berry, berry qwiet. Don’t look now, but Jordan wants to resume its re-occupation of Jerusalem that it had previously occupied from 1948 to 1967, where no Muslim, Jew, or Christian was allowed to pray, with no peep of outrage from the international community. Yet, when Jews are in their indigenous homeland, and open up the Temple Mount so that Muslim, Jew and Christian could pray, the world is infuriated. Arab occupation of Jewish land = good. Jewish occupation of Jewish land = bad. That’s Arabist logic for you. Not surprising from a culture whose greatest gift to civilization is their claim to inventing the number zero. From WND:

Jordan has been quietly purchasing real estate surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in hopes of gaining more control over the area accessing the holy site, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.

The officials confirmed to WND the Jordanian Kingdom has been using shell companies during the past year to purchase several apartments and shops located at key peripheral sections of the Temple Mount.

The officials said Jordan also set up a commission to use the companies to petition mostly Arab landowners adjacent to eastern sections of the Temple Mount to sell their properties. They said profits from sales at any purchased shops would be reinvested to buy more real estate near the Mount and in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods. The shell companies at times have presented themselves as acting on behalf of the Waqf, the Muslim custodians of the Temple Mount, WND has learned.

Sheik Azzam Khateeb, who was installed last month as the new manager of the Waqf, is known to be close to the Jordanian monarchy. The previous Waqf manager, Sheik Adnon Husseini, was loyal to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and had relations with Israel and some Jewish groups.

The Israeli and Palestinian officials said Jordan recently placed a bid to purchase Jerusalem’s Intercontinental Hotel, which is situated on an important road that leads to an ancient cemetery on the Mount of Olives, adjacent to the Temple Mount. Informed sources tell WND the hotel is owned by groups representing the Israeli government and is leased every 10 years to a new company. The last lease was signed in 1997 and expires later this year. It was not immediately clear whether Jordan’s bid was accepted.

The Mount of Olives is site of many biblical events and is considered important to Judaism and Christianity.

Real estate ownership in Jerusalem’s Old City is widely considered a sensitive matter. Previous Israeli-Palestinian peace proposals tentatively divided parts of the city based on Jewish or Arab residence.

Jordan previously controlled eastern Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from 1948 until Israel liberated the territory in the 1967 Six Day War. During the period of Jordanian control, Jews were barred from the Western Wall and Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest sites, and hundreds of synagogues were destroyed. Jordan constructed a road to the Intercontinental Hotel that stretched across the Mount of Olives, bulldozing hundreds of Jewish gravestones.

Jordan the past few months has boosted its public profile on the Temple Mount. The appointment of Khateeb as the new Waqf manager for the Temple Mount was widely seen as a nod to Jordan.

More proof that anti-Zionism is racism. An excellent article from the excellent New York Sun, Gall of the Hashemites:

Jordan’s King Abdullah II, speaking before a joint meeting of Congress Wednesday, seemed to blame Israel for all the world’s problems. “The denial of justice and peace in Palestine,” the king said, “is the core issue. And this core issue is not only producing severe consequences for our region, it is producing severe consequences for our world.”

Balderdash is the kindest way to describe it. If the terrorists are upset about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, why are they setting off bombs in Indonesia and Spain and Saudi Arabia and Iraq, which are hardly in the vanguard of support for Israel? Given that the terrorists state publicly that their end goal is to make all of Europe and America subject to Islamic law, why should we believe that in fact they have the far more modest goal of merely seizing land belonging to the Jewish state?

The gall of the son of King Hussein, who perpetrated what the Arabs call Black September on the Palestinians [when Jordan expelled the PLO in 1970], to lecture the Americans on Palestinian Arab dispossession is astounding. Abdullah well knows that Jordan controlled the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem between 1948 and 1967. If the Palestinian Arabs were dispossessed during that period, it was no one’s fault but the Hashemites’, who didn’t exactly use those decades to establish a Palestinian Arab state.

Abdullah made reference to a Saudi proposal from 2002 that he described as the “Arab Peace Initiative.” That plan would be more accurately described as the Arab Destruction of Israel Initiative. Its aim was to give the Palestinian Arabs half of the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, [force an Israeli] retreat to militarily indefensible borders, and absorb within those borders enough Arab “refugees” so that its character as a Jewish state would be eradicated.

One of the effects of the Islamist terrorist onslaught of recent years is that more Americans have thought more deeply about these matters. They will not be gulled by a foreign potentate
offering up Israel as a scapegoat for troubles that originate with the failings of the Arab and Islamic world and their nondemocratic leaders, Abdullah among them.

Received by email, from David Bedein, Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency:

At a time when a Palestinian Arab sovereign state is so widely discussed, very few have taken the time to consider the consequences of establishing such an entity. Here are questions that every citizen can bring to the attention of the US government which conceptualizes the idea and to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which seems ready to swallow such an idea:

1. Encirclement. Will a proposed sovereign Palestine not swallow up Jordan , most of whose population is Palestinian, leaving Israel with a hostile state from the Iraqi border to the Mediterranean Sea , with a corridor across the Negev between Gaza to Hebron ?

2. Israeli Arabs: Will the Arabs of the Galilee and the Triangle not sue for “autonomy,” and then l demand the fulfillment of UN Resolution 181-an Israeli withdrawal to the 1947 borders (evacuation of Nahariya, Acre, Nazareth, Jaffa, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Kiryat Gat and Beer Sheva)?

3. Terror. Why will a new Palestinian entity disband terrorist organizations? After all, Machmud Abbas has so far refused to dismantle or disband the Al Aksa Brigades of the Fateh which continue to fire missiles into the Western Negev.

4. Armament. Why should there be any expectation that a sovereign Palestine will uphold any commitment for demilitarization, since the Palestinian Authority never upheld any such commitment since the Oslo accords?

5. Refugees. Based on Israel ’s surprising agreement to view the Saudi plan as a basis for a state, does that not mean that Israel will have to absorb descendents of refugees and displace thousands of Israelis from places like Haifa, Tfzat and Jaffa and 80 kibbutzim which rest on Arab neighborhoods or villages from where Arabs fled in 1948?

6. Air space. Will the Israel Air Force be forbidden from flying over the “West Bank,” just as it was banned from the Lebanese skies?

7. Alliances. Based on diplomatic experience with the Palestinian Authority, will a Palestine not violate every prohibition on signing military agreements with countries hostile to Israel, placing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on Israel’s borders?

8. Water. Like the Palestinian Authority before it, will a sovereign Palestine not carry out pirate drillings, and threaten the mountain aquifer of Judea and Samaria?

9. Jewish sovereignty. Will the momentum of a Palestine not erase the right of the Jews to the land of Israel in international consciousness?

10. Loss of independence. Will Israel not become a protectorate that is subject to the Quartet – the US, the EU, the US and the UN?

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas would meet with her for a three-way informal discussion of issues that must be cleared away to establish a Palestinian state, we learn that Palestinian terror groups in the West Bank have recently obtained high-grade explosives that have significantly improved the effectiveness of roadside improvised explosive devices (IED) used against IDF patrols.

Folks, it is no secret that Palestinians will demand that Israel dismantle and evacuate every single Jewish community built since 1967 on lands owned by no one, where not a single soul was dispossessed.

If and when Jerusalem, G-d Forbid, is split in two, which side will get the Temple Mount?

To those of us who know better, a Palestinian state is, in reality, an appeasement to cede land to barbarians who have fabricated a history, a culture, and a society in order to institute a kleptocracy.

The Jew’s roots are in Israel, in the archaelogy, the language, the currency, the rocks and in the words of the Bible. There was never a nation called Palestine, it was merely a region, just like Siberia is a region today. There were never borders, currency, or even a Palestinian language. To offer murderers a state just to quell their murderous rage is an intolerable solution.

The Palestinian Arabs were offered a partition of ample land in 1948. In fact they were offered 78% more land than the Britains offered the Palestinian Jews. The difference is the Jews accepted the partition and the Arabs didn’t. Why? Because the Arabs hated non-Arabs and their hatred goes back more than 100 years. Arabs murdered 67 Jews while they were praying in their synagogue in the JewishHoly City of Hebron in 1929. Why did that happen? Why were Jews killed in 1929 while they were praying? There was no “occupation” then.

See, the onus is not on Israel or Israelis to have to provide a solution to this conflict. The Jews can only defend themselves. In spite of the skill of Hanan Ashwari’s rhetoric and propaganda, Arafat and other Arab mass murderers to convince others of alleged Palestinian victimhood, Israelis, Jews and Christians everywhere in the Middle East are the real victims of Arab hatred and xenophobia.

The fact of the matter is that Jews and Christians threaten the tradition of Arabian ethnocentrism. We remind them that they are not superior. Palestinians will never accept Israel as a legitimate nation. Western liberal democracies are blind. They are, unfortunately, willing to accommodate the Palestinians and the pan-Arabian nation even tho Arabs are exploiting the tolerance of democratic societies.

Look at what is happening in Europe. Europe has opened the doors to Muslims and now Muslims are demanding Sharia- obedience to Muslim law and not to their host nation’s law. Europe is now the object of Islam’s long-term plan to subvert and destroy. The conflict in the world today is a conflict between belief and unbelief. The war between Israel and Palestinians, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Algeria, in Chechnya, and in the Philippines, is the same war.

This is Islam’s aim at its core – the eradication of all opposing thought and the establishment of Islam’s world wide domination. Islam is hell bent on the destruction of the Judeo-Christian world and Christians, too, are their prime targets. Yes, it seems the focal point of the Islamist is Israel but the ultimate target is to eradicate all non-Muslims. Israel is not at war with Palestinians. Instead, Islam is at war with the rest of the world. The goal of a Palestinian state is to supplant Israel, not to live side by side with it.

The goal of the Palestinian people should be to prevent themselves from being led by rulers who are tyrants, by rulers who terrorize, by tribal leaders who intimidate, and by Muslim warlords who repress. But one thing is certain: there are no leaders without followers.

There will be no solution to Muslim terror until Islam reforms and models itself upon human standards of civilization. Beyond that, non-Muslims will either kill the Muslim enemy or continue to be killed by them. Until then, we must say no to a Palestinian Muslim theocracy-kleptocracy.

While Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas would meet with her for a three-way informal discussion of issues that must be cleared away to establish a Palestinian state, we learn that Palestinian terror groups in the West Bank have recently obtained high-grade explosives that have significantly improved the effectiveness of roadside improvised explosive devices (IED) used against IDF patrols.

Folks, it is no secret that Palestinians will demand that Israel dismantle and evacuate every single Jewish community built since 1967 on lands owned by no one, where not a single soul was dispossessed.

If and when Jerusalem, G-d Forbid, is split in two, which side will get the Temple Mount?

To those of us who know better, a Palestinian state is, in reality, an appeasement to cede land to barbarians who have fabricated a history, a culture, and a society in order to institute a kleptocracy.

The Jew’s roots are in Israel, in the archaelogy, the language, the currency, the rocks and in the words of the Bible. There was never a nation called Palestine, it was merely a region, just like Siberia is a region today. There were never borders, currency, or even a Palestinian language. To offer murderers a state just to quell their murderous rage is an intolerable solution.

The Palestinian Arabs were offered a partition of ample land in 1948. In fact they were offered 78% more land than the Britains offered the Palestinian Jews. The difference is the Jews accepted the partition and the Arabs didn’t. Why? Because the Arabs hated non-Arabs and their hatred goes back more than 100 years. Arabs murdered 67 Jews while they were praying in their synagogue in the JewishHoly City of Hebron in 1929. Why did that happen? Why were Jews killed in 1929 while they were praying? There was no “occupation” then.

See, the onus is not on Israel or Israelis to have to provide a solution to this conflict. The Jews can only defend themselves. In spite of the skill of Hanan Ashwari’s rhetoric and propaganda, Arafat and other Arab mass murderers to convince others of alleged Palestinian victimhood, Israelis, Jews and Christians everywhere in the Middle East are the real victims of Arab hatred and xenophobia.

The fact of the matter is that Jews and Christians threaten the tradition of Arabian ethnocentrism. We remind them that they are not superior. Palestinians will never accept Israel as a legitimate nation. Western liberal democracies are blind. They are, unfortunately, willing to accommodate the Palestinians and the pan-Arabian nation even tho Arabs are exploiting the tolerance of democratic societies.

Look at what is happening in Europe. Europe has opened the doors to Muslims and now Muslims are demanding Sharia- obedience to Muslim law and not to their host nation’s law. Europe is now the object of Islam’s long-term plan to subvert and destroy. The conflict in the world today is a conflict between belief and unbelief. The war between Israel and Palestinians, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Algeria, in Chechnya, and in the Philippines, is the same war.

This is Islam’s aim at its core – the eradication of all opposing thought and the establishment of Islam’s world wide domination. Islam is hell bent on the destruction of the Judeo-Christian world and Christians, too, are their prime targets. Yes, it seems the focal point of the Islamist is Israel but the ultimate target is to eradicate all non-Muslims. Israel is not at war with Palestinians. Instead, Islam is at war with the rest of the world. The goal of a Palestinian state is to supplant Israel, not to live side by side with it.

The goal of the Palestinian people should be to prevent themselves from being led by rulers who are tyrants, by rulers who terrorize, by tribal leaders who intimidate, and by Muslim warlords who repress. But one thing is certain: there are no leaders without followers.

There will be no solution to Muslim terror until Islam reforms and models itself upon human standards of civilization. Beyond that, non-Muslims will either kill the Muslim enemy or continue to be killed by them. Until then, we must say no to a Palestinian Muslim theocracy-kleptocracy.

An excerpt from American Thinker: Why Europe Abandoned Israel: Why is Israel viewed so differently in Europe than in the U.S.? Prior to the Six-Day War in 1967, it was France which was Israel’s primary military supplier. In the War of Independence in 1948-49, it was arms smuggled from Czechoslovakia that enabled the Zionists to fight on. Most European nations, including some Soviet satellites, supported the partition resolution in the General Assembly in November 1947. European nations supported Israel at the UN through the late 1960s and in some cases well beyond then. Clearly, some of this support was a reflection of European guilt over the murder of six million Jews in their midst. Today, that residue of sympathy for the plucky underdog nation of Israel has disappeared.

Western Europeans want to believe that all international disputes can be resolved amicably, or as they call it, diplomatically, and multilaterally.

One explanation for this is that Europe is militarily and spiritually weak and willing to appease those who might threaten the European life style.

There are a number of factors that explain European behavior towards Israel. I have identified seven of them:
– Europe’s dependence on Middle East oil
– Europe’s rivalry with the US
– The growing number of Muslims and their militancy
– The small number of Jews, and their passivity
– The role of elites in Europe’s politics
– Europe’s long term disease of anti-Semitism, and
– The decline of Christianity in Europe.

Click here to read the article in full.

In a speech yesterday commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the founding of his Fatah party, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Palestinian factions to put an end to weeks of infighting and instead “raise rifles against the Israeli occupation.”

“Shooting at your brother is forbidden. Raising rifles against the occupation is our legitimate right, but raising guns against each other is forbidden. We should put our internal fighting aside and raise our rifles only against the Israeli occupation,” said Abbas in a speech in Ramallah attended by WND.

The worst of this, folks, is that Abbas’ call to arms was not reported by most major media outlets featuring articles on the Palestinian predator’s speech.

Fatah was founded in 1964 with Arafat; unless causality has no meaning, the Muslim resistance to Israel was born with no reference to 1967 but, rather, with Israel’s birth in 1948 and, indeed, with the return of Jews in the land in the 19th century, keeping in mind that Jews had never left the land entirely in their 5000+ year old history.

The fact remains that Israel has every reason not to trust Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, nor Abbas; all have vowed the destruction of Israel in their charter documents and when speaking in Arabic although sometimes denying it in English.

There is no law on earth that requires the Jewish people to accept the revision of their history nor their own demise merely because Muslims say we should.

It is outrageous in the extreme that the world would accept a scheme that would permit Arabs to have an ethnically cleansed geographical region where no Jews can live.