Henry Clifford, the 83-year-old Connecticut man who funded a billboard a New York MTA train line illustrating Israel’s expanding control over historic Palestine, responded to his critics in a letter to the lower Hudson Valley Journal News:
As the sponsor of the ads displayed at Metro-North Railroad stations, allow me to respond to the article by Scott Richman and Larry Grossman of the American Jewish Committee/Westchester.
It would require volumes to recount the history of Palestine, the Jewish settlement there and the creation of the State of Israel, so I will focus only on the subject matter illustrated by the maps referenced in my ads — using, not my words, but those of Zionist and Israeli leaders.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote: “We shall have to spirit the penniless population (the Arabs) across the border … while denying it any employment in our own country.”
Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, said: “Palestine is to become as Jewish as England is English.”
David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, wrote: “I favor partition because when we become a strong power we will abolish partition and spread throughout Palestine.”
He also said: “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … we are the aggressors and they defend themselves”; and wrote this: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural, we have taken their country.”
Also, in a letter to his son: “We will expel the Arabs and take their place.”
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first foreign minister and second prime minister, is quoted in “Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict” as saying: “We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it.”
Moshe Dayan, Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff and later defense minister, was a straight talker: “There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”
Richman and Grossman tell us that in 1967, “the Arab world threatened Israel with destruction.” Here’s what then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin said in 1982: “In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentration in the Sinai approaches did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
The Arabs did not initiate the war, Israel did.
The quotes included in his letter are very powerful. Without doubting their authenticity, is there a place or does anyone know of a place where there is a reference to the actual documents containing the quotes? Thanks!
Speaking of quotes, here is one from Vladimir Jabotinsky, father of Revisionist Zionism: “The Arabs loved their country as much as the Jews did. Instinctively,
they understood Zionist aspirations very well, and their decision to resist them
was only natural ….. There was no misunderstanding between Jew and Arab, but
a natural conflict. …. No Agreement was possible with the Palestinian Arab;
they would accept Zionism only when they found themselves up against an ‘iron wall,’ when they realize they had no alternative but to accept Jewish settlement.”
I saw somewhere an account of a speech that Moshe Dayan gave, back in the ’50’s, at a funeral of an Israeli killed in a terrorist attack. I wish I could find the source. But his speech was described as starting out sounding like an eloquent defense of the right of Palestinians to resist. He talked of how they lost land and homes, and spoke poignantly of what it must be like to look across a border at your home, but not be allowed to go back to it. But then he went on to say basically what Jabotinsky said – some version of, “They may have a right to fight us but we have to win.”
As I frequently point out in arguments about the history of the I/P situation, such quotes prove that the facts are not really in dispute. No serious historian believes that the Zionists just settled on empty land, or even that the Palestinians didn’t have valid reasons to resist. The dispute is all about values. Benny Morris was one of the first Israeli mainstream historians to expose the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (Palestinian historians, of course, were saying this from the beginning). But Morris then concludes by saying basically the same thing as Ben Gurion, Jabotinsky, Dayan and the others – “Yeah, we did it, but it was necessary and we had to win.”
It is both necessary to be educated about the facts, as well as to look at with what system of values we view them. Thankfully, we have the Henry Cliffords, the Phil Weiss’s and the Adam Horowitz’s of the world around to remind us of both.
These statements by Zionist leaders remind me so much of the Europeans justification for the genocide of Native Americans. There was an article in Newsweek, republished on Daily Beast, last fall which gives me hope that there will be another way in Palestine before it is too late.
Moshe Dayan’s Widow Ruth: Zionist Dream Has Run Its Course
These startling words were uttered last week in Tel Aviv by 95-year-old Ruth Dayan, widow of one of Israel’s founding fathers
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/30/moshe-dayan-s-widow-ruth-zionist-dream-has-run-its-course.html
Henry Clifford is a mensch.
He’s great. When it’s time to run new ads to counter the counterads, he can use these quotes. And an billboard debate–which seems to exist now despite the efforts of, etc. — has got be a net win.