Two Letters from MECC Chair Stanley Heller |
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Published in the New Haven RegisterCharles Krauthammer in celebrating the "miracle" of Israel recently claimed the Palestinian situation a problem of "fanatical leadership" that "repeatedly chose war to conciliation". Foolish Arabs, all they had to do was accept a "Jewish state". Why did they oppose it? Perhaps it was because the movement for a Jewish state, the Zionist movement, had made it plain for decades it was going to take all of Palestine for itself and kick out the Palestinians Arabs. The Biltmore Plan of 1942 engineered by future Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion and adopted by the Zionist movement summed it up. The plan was that "Palestine be established as a Jewish commonwealth". But didn't the Zionists accept partition just six years later? The UN General Assembly in November 1947 voted to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. As is well known Arabs opposed it. They naturally didn't want to be expelled from their land in the Jewish state or be made 2nd class citizens. Even those who favored conciliation found it hard to swallow that Jews who owned 7% of the land of Palestine were to be given 55% of the land for their state. But it's a myth that only the Arabs rejected the UN plan. Actually both sides rejected it. According to Israeli scholar Simcha Flapan, Ben Gurion accepted only the parts of the plan that favored the Yishuv (Jewish community). He rejected the borders of the UN plan, the economic union over all of former Palestine, the provision that Jerusalem was to be an international city, and most importantly the idea that there would be an independent Palestinian state. On the later point the Zionist leadership had been involved with talks with King Abdullah of Jordan and had agreed with his plan to seize the land the UN had set aside for Palestinian Arabs. Once the UN plan was voted Palestinian Arabs held protest strikes. Violent outrages took place on both sides and then outright civil war. Zionist forces were far superior (laden with arms smuggled in from the US, Europe and Soviet Czechoslovakia) and they conquered and depopulated over 200 villages and committed over 30 massacres (including an infamous one at Deir Yassin in April 1948). The addition of armies from Arab armies in the mix after Israel declared independence in May increased the killing, but changed little on the ground. By the time of the armistice in 1949, 530 Palestinian towns and villages had been completely destroyed and their inhabitants expelled or fled. Despite UN demands they've never been allowed them to return. Zionism in Palestine has produced more a shanda (Yiddish for shame) than a miracle. The Hartford Courant Wouldn't Touch This OneUnfortunately Lieberman's association with a cleric who explains/justifies the near extermination of European Jewry as the necessary price of Israel's birth is not unprecedented. If one reads the history of the Zionist movement one repeatedly sees the "sacrifice" of Jews for the good of the cause. Whether it was Theodore Herzl's negotiations with the violently anti-Semitic Russian Minister Plevhe, the World Zionist Organization's breaking of the anti-Nazi boycott in the '30's, the betrayal of Hungarian Jews by the Zionist leader Kasztner during the Holocaust, or the inaction of the Israeli government in the 1970's while the Neo-Nazi government of Argentina tortured Jews, Zionist policy was and is to preserve organizational/state interests above the rights and lives of average Jewish people. The bigger scandal in this Lieberman Affair is that his ally, Pastor John Hagee, is doing all he can to bring about war with Iran as a precursor to World War III. This he thinks is a good thing as it will bring on the End of the World with God's select entering heaven. So he demands that Israel make no withdrawals from the Occupied Territories, spurred on the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, and actively encourages an immediate US military strike against Iran. It's Hagee's business if he thinks he can be raptured to heaven, but it's our business if his lobbyists and friends in government act to bring catastrophe to Israel/Palestine and to this nation. Lieberman should be denounced for speaking at a conference of lunatics who want to bring this country into world war. |
