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Israel and Palestine - Some...

David Flood
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SubjectIsrael and Palestine - Some myths exploded? (was Re: Republicanism still an offence in England?)
FromDavid Flood
Date2002-04-15 00:03 (2002-04-14 23:03)
Message-ID<a9d1i6$28a0v$3@ID-121201.news.dfncis.de>
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Newsgroupsalt.fan.tolkien
Follows?jevind L?ng
FollowupsFlame of the West (5h & 33m)
Flame of the West (5h & 36m)
Russ (1d, 3h & 44m) > David Flood
"?jevind L?ng" <ojevind.lang@swipnet.se>wrote in message news:Lt9u8.1258$iB4.3474@nntpserver.swip.net...

?jevind L?ng
paulh wrote:

paulh
On Sat, 13 Apr 2002 02:56:01 -0400, Flame of the West

?jevind L?ng
<jsolinasNoSpam@erols.com>

paulh
wrote:

?jevind L?ng
[snip]

Flame of the West
Actually, the Palestinians left voluntarily in 1948.

paulh
No they FLED voluntarily. They didn't happily give up their land. They

?jevind L?ng
fled.

paulh
I don't think they had good cause to flee.. but thats in hindsight.

?jevind L?ng
They fled because of the intimidating behaviour of the Zionist forces,

which

told them to leave. The Zionists even massacred the inhabitants of one village to encourage the other Palestinans to bugger off. The village was called Dair Yassin.

There was a letter in the Sunday Tribune (probably the best source of good journalism in this country) today - which, if the claims in it are true, painted a startling new picture about the 'history' of the situation, at least to me.

(* * represent bold, _ _ represent italics in the original text)

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~#

READER TAKES ISSUE OVER ISRAELI HISTORY

To correct some inaccuracies in your "Road to Intifada" timeline (World News, 7 April):

a) Israel was not successful in 1949 "against all the odds and the numbers". Nor were Arab armies "threatening on all sides". This is merely Zionist propaganda which has been accepted without question. A memo from US army intelligence to the Chief of Staff dated 18 May 1948, and quoted by Jewish writer Ron David in his book _Arabs and Israel for Beginners_, stated that the combined total of *all* attacking Arab armies came to no more than 30,000 poorly armed and trained men, as against 90,000 well armed and trained Zionists under a unified command and supported by modern fighter and bomber planes.

These figures are accepted by Israeli historian and IDF officer Avi Shlaim in his history of the conflict, _The Iron Wall_. Moreover, in his book, _The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities_, Simba Flapan shows that the Arabs agreed to a US-sponsored ceasefire before entering Palestine. The Israelis refused.

b) you miss out the six-month period between the partition of Palestine and the Israeli declaration of independence. During that time, the Israelis were ruthlessly pursuing "Plan Dalet" a so-called "land clearing operation" designed to drive Arabs off their land and into exile. This "land clearance" did not stop at the boundary of the UN partition but continued right into the 45% of the country supposedly reserved for Arabs. It was carried out with shocking brutality.

Contrary to the received wisdom, the massacre at Deir Yassin was not an isolated excess of war, but a deliberate part of the organised ethnic cleansing of Palestine under Plan Dalet. After it was done, the Irgun sent out the order to all its commands, "As at Deir Yassin, so everywhere". It was only after six months of this and the Israeli ceasefire that the Arab nations felt constrained to take some action on behalf of the Palestinians.

c) the Israeli attack which captured the West Bank was not a "pre-emptive strike". Stephen Green in his book, _Taking Sides_, quotes extensively from US State Department sources to show that not only was the Israeli army much stronger than the combined Arab forces, but the Israelis were looking for a fight since at least 1965. Menachem Begin himself stated that "the Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him".

I am somewhat unsure why you have included the murder of the holocaust victims in your timeline. Zionism may attempt to hold itself out as the moral heir of Hitler's victims, but how many of your readers are aware that in 1941 agents of the Irgun approached the German embassy in Turkey with an offer to Hitler to set up a Jewish state in Palestine along Nazi lines and to protect German interests in the Middle East in return for guns to kill British soldiers? Or that in 1993 the World Zionist Organisation, through its financial arm, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, broke the worldwide Jewish boycott on the Nazi state and helped to stabilise Hitler in power? Or that Betar, the Zionist youth movement in Palestine in the 1930s, actively modelled itself on the European fascists, complete with goosesteps?

Presumably, terrorism is only terrorism when the other guy does it.

David Smith, Harmonstown Road, Artane, Dublin 5

#~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~#

Russ and FotW, discuss.

David

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