Ari Shavit’s new book My Promised Land: the Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, will be published this week, and tomorrow night the author and David Remnick will have a conversation at the 92d Street Y.
A section of the book dealing with the expulsion of the Palestinian population of Lydda in 1948 was published last month in Remnick’s magazine, The New Yorker, and historian Rashid Khalidi spoke about this piece during his appearance in Brooklyn last week with Brooklyn for Peace. The context for Khalidi’s remarks was praising young Americans for having a more honest engagement than their forebears with the truth about the “systematic theft” of Palestinian land. Though the media are still not in step:
You read something like The New York Times or The New Yorker and you see things that on the face of it simply involve contradictions that are absolutely impossible. I don’t know if anyone saw the piece by Ari Shavit about the massacre and the expulsion of the population in Lyd. What is not said in that article is so much worse than the awful things that are said. He talks about what is, if you read it, clearly a war crime. He never uses the word war crime, and he justifies it. And he doesn’t talk about so much else. It’s not as if those few tens of thousands were the only ones who were forced to flee. The overwhelming majority of the Arab population of Palestine–there were about 1.3 million, between 700 and 800,000 of them, the majority– were forced to flee in similar ways. That’s the background to this.
Right next to Lyd is Ramle. The same thing happened in Ramle. Another several tens of thousands. He never mentions it. It’s one of the most extraordinary pieces the New Yorker ever published. And it is typical of the kind of quotation which is involved in saying I’m pro-Israel. If that’s pro-Israel, you’re pro-war crime. That’s what Shavit is basically saying. He’s saying I’m pro war crime, I recognize that we did these bad things.
Read the article. It’s extraordinarily contradictory in its very essence. And that very much represents I think the way that a lot of people here feel. But it is remarkable that some of these things are finally being talked about. I have friends who say, I’m glad that they’re talking about Lyd at all. In a sense that’s true, I suppose…. At least it’s being talked about. You have glass half full, you have people creeping out and being willing to say some things that they never were before.
Later in Brooklyn, Khalidi responded to a young questioner by remarking on the growing awareness of the facts of the conflict among intellectuals and activists and students, including many Jews:
The media is pretty much occupied territory. Capitol Hill is completely occupied territory. Outside of those very important crucial bastions, I would not like to be fighting the other side of this issue, because they have no moral case whatsoever. There’s not much of a strategic case in my view. And lot of the myths that were so essential to the early decades of Israel’s establishment and expansion and the way in which it fixed itself in the American mind have a lot more of a hold over people in their 70s and 60s and 50s than they do over people in their 20s and 30s. The connection between the Holocaust and Israel, the idea that Israel was on the verge of extermination in the 67 war– these are articles of faith among people much older than you.
“He talks about what is, if you read it, clearly a war crime. He never uses the word war crime, and he justifies it.” Unfortunately those war crimes that happened in 1948 are still going on, the only difference is that they are happening on a smaller scale, but the end game is still the same, albeit by death by a thousand cuts, that way it is easier for the International community to turn a blind eye, or even facilitate it. Far easier and more profitable [in the short term] to defer to the stronger side who have US backing, than to be on the side of truth and justice for the Palestinians, I can only hope that the Palestinian leadership stop being conned [or intimidated] and realize that what’s happening today is just a continuation of 1948, and that this is in the DNA of Zionists and therefore must be resisted.
The social pathology of Ari Shavit creeps out in the article.
He says that after the cleansing, those who were left behind were better of it.
I mean, this almost on the level of a slaveholder saying his slaves are better off after being sent to America from Africa. Sure, they’re not free. But you know, material standards are higher? This is actually an argument a lot of Zionists use.
And there’s also a secondary irony, how can an Ashkenazi Jew like Shavit know how Palestinians feel? If you’ve read Max Blumenthal’s book, and he actually tries to engage them and talk to them and live around them, you know that they are facing the same kind of slow-mo ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are in East Jerusalem. They are being ‘concentrated’ into poorer Arab towns in the periphery.
And that’s just those who stayed behind. As Max also wrote about; they would all have been ethnically cleansed if it wasn’t for a single moral decision by the commander at that time. Ben-Gurion had just waved with his hand on every single community to give the signal to the commander to commence ethnic cleansing. When a single commander refused, Ben-Gurion was forced to put his orders into paper and he refused to leave documentation of any of this. So it was really a fluke that a minority of the people in those areas were spared (to a small extent).
Any and all internal acknowledgements/discussions of the holes in Israel’s founding mythology, however slim, tenuous, and qualified, are as crucial and impactful as the external forces for change such as BDS. Converging dynamics, imho.
My promised land. I think all the violence necessary to keep the jewish grip on the land shows the promise as either an iron age delusion or a test from gd that her people are still incapable of passing.
Mr Khalidi also has selective “memory”. At the same time events described by Ari Shavit were taking place enlightened Europeans were busy committing infinitely greater crimes of “official” ethnic cleansing of 12 mln Germans from vast territories of Eastern Europe. More than 600.000 were killed in this process. Russia simply annexed Konigsberg – the capital of East Prussia where Germans lived for at least 7 centuries. However the main point here is that this was done following the Potsdam conference in which
“The Three Governments, having considered the question in all its aspects, recognize that the transfer to Germany of German populations, or elements thereof, remaining in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, will have to be undertaken. They agree that any transfers that take place should be effected in an orderly and humane manner.[34]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion_of_Germans_(1944%E2%80%9350)
AT THAT TIME these were the norms of conducting wars and dealing with nationals of defeated nations. Israel followed the “norms” set by the big guys.
Another point – there are no demands now to allow the return of the expelled Germans. Not even compensation. In fact such demands are considered “revanschism” by progressive Europeans.
And final point – at the same time ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population from Egypt, Iraq, Jordanian occupied West Bank and Jerusalem and other Arab countries was going on without war hostilities. All in all close to 1 mln Arab Jews were expelled.
Again – this is not to justify anything but to put things into correct proportions. If this blog deals with the “Middle East” – it must deal with the Jewish refugees from Middle Eastern countries too.