Americans, who give Israel billions of dollars each year, may be interested to know that May and June are monumentally difficult months in the collective memories of Israelis and Palestinians. Personally, each year when May rolls around I am reminded of the first time I spoke to Palestinians about the events of 1948. It was in the year 2001 or 2002, during a meeting of local Jews and Palestinians in San Diego.
I felt that I knew everything there was to know about that period in our joint history because my father, Matti Peled, was a captain in the pre-state Zionist militia, the Haganah. He fought in what we Israelis call the War of Independence. Then, two decades later he was among the generals who planned and executed the 1967 Six-Day War.
The 1948 war, called the Catastrophe, or Nakba in Arabic, was Israel’s War of Independence, and both are commemorated during the month of May. In June Israelis celebrated the 1967 war, considered a massive victory for Israel. Palestinians mourn what they call the “Naksa,” which means setback in Arabic. Today is the Naksa’s 56th anniversary.
“In 1948 the Zionist forces had outnumbered the Palestinian fighters four to one,” George, a Palestinian who I had just met, exclaimed. “We had about ten thousand men, poorly armed and poorly trained. The Zionists had a well-trained and well-armed militia of close to forty thousand.”
“What? No, no, no! We were David in this David and Goliath scenario.” I had to insist. I remember stories of how we, the few, had defeated the well-armed Arabs. I heard stories from my father and his comrades in arms who participated in the battles.
What I hadn’t yet done at that point was read the writings of Dr. Ilan Pappe and other Israeli historians who had published the history of 1948 based on material released from the Israeli national archives. They describe a campaign of planned ethnic cleansing that included massacres aimed at terrorizing the Arab population. These historians, who became known as The New Historians, showed that for the purpose of creating a Jewish majority in Palestine/Eretz Yisrael, the Arab population was forced out.
But I was not aware of that at this point. Another Palestinian, Ibrahim, told another horror story. His father, a young man in 1948, was taken by the Zionist militia which became the Israeli army in May of 1948, to clean up after a massacre at the Dahmash mosque in the city of Lydd. Lydd, where Ben-Gurion Airport sits today, was occupied in July 1948. After more than one hundred Palestinian civilians took refuge in the mosque, a soldier by the name of Yerachmiel Kahanovich was sent to shoot a Piat anti-tank missile into the mosque.
In a video interview that Kahanovich gave in 2012, he described what he did. He put his thumb and index finger together and showed the size of the hole the missile created in the mosque window. He then went to take a look. “I opened the door and the place seemed empty, the people were splattered all over the walls.” After a few days, the Israeli forces sent imprisoned Palestinians to clean up the remains. Ibrahim’s father was one of them.
I did not know, nor could I believe, that we Israelis did such awful things. So when Zionist Jews today refuse to believe Israel has been committing horrendous war crimes and refuse to accept an Amnesty International report that Israel is engaged in the crime of apartheid, I know what they are going through even though I strongly believe it’s time for them to wake up.
After that conversation, I called my brother Yoav in Tel Aviv. I thought that if anyone would be able to help me make sense of what the Palestinians were saying, it was he. “You should read Ilan Pappe and the other New Historians,” he suggested. “It looks like what the Palestinians are telling you is true.”
So now, during May and June, I feel an internal storm brewing. Similar to what I feel as Palestinians continue to tell me their stories. Never accusing, or waving their finger at me, just telling stories that the world does not want to hear.
Dear Brother Miko,
I pay homage to the beacon of light that you have shone on our Palestinian liberation struggle with your writings, public speaking, social media posts and messaging of our story and suffering to the public. As a son of the Zionist “aristocracy”, you have a unique vantage point that few other Israeli Jews have and you have leveraged that vantage point to tell a very interesting and poignant story. That said, I feel we do not have the luxury of time here in the US to wait for our solidarity movement to politically neutralize the influence of the AIPAC juggernaut and their presstitutes and elected toadies. I know you travel back and forth to the homeland several times a year. While there is historic turmoil in Israeli Jewish society over the present far-right coalition in power and sustained protests against it, I ask you if it is possible for people like yourself to talk to the Palestinian community leaders an activists on the ground that you mingle with and try to convince them to organize in parallel to the Israeli protest demonstrations, a country wide general strike by all the Palestinians living between the River and the Sea? The May 2021 Unity Intifada general strike was amazing and if it is sustained, especially at this moment, Allah only knows what the impact might be in beginning the process of disintegration of the Zionist apartheid regime. I note localized general strikes each time the Zionist army commits an atrocity or violation of our people’s rights and dignity, but nothing country wide. This is a shame since the general strike is one of the most powerful weapons in an oppressed people’s arsenal.
And still not done covering up with lies. And so much of the world still not done looking the other way. RACISTS!!!
The world is finally “hearing” historical and contemporary truths. What steps or objectives could lead to the sharing Jerusalem and that land? How can it be made to work?