Ilan Pappé on Zionism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians

The Nakba is a bit of a misleading term because it means in Arabic "a catastrophe."  It really, what the Palestinians suffered, was not a natural catastrophe, rather ethnic cleansing, which is a clear policy motivated by clear ideology.  And that policy was part - and a total part - of the Zionist program for Palestine from the very inception of the movement in the late 19th century.

Of course very early on they didn't have the capacity to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homeland.  But already in the mid 1920s, when the Zionist community in Palestine was still very small, it was able, through purchase of land on which there were many Palestinian villages, to convince the British Mandatory power to evict thirteen Palestinian villages, and that was between 1925 and 1926.  And then slowly this process of buying land and evicting the people who lived on this for hundreds of years brought the Zionist movement where it purchased at least 6% of the land of Palestine, which was of course not enough.  

And then they went to the big ethnic cleansing of 1948.  But as we know, it didn't stop in 1948.  Israel continued to expel Palestinian villages between '48 and '67 [which formed to move] the Palestinian minority in Israel which were allegedly citizens of Israel.  Israel expelled 300,000 Palestinians during the Six-Days War in June 1967.  And since June 1967 until today about 600,000 Palestinians, in one way or another, were dislocated and uprooted by Israel.  

And of course now we have a case of ethnic cleansing that even overtakes the magnitude of the ethnic cleansing during 1948.  So there is not one moment in the history of the Palestinians in Palestine since the arrival of Zionism in Palestine in which Palestinians are [not] potentially under danger of losing their home, their fields, their businesses and their homeland.

~ Ilan Pappé, "Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé on Interrogation at U.S. Airport and 'Collapse of the Zionist Project'," Democracy Now!, 6:25 mark, May 22, 2024

Jeremy Hammond: "Zionism itself is a racist ideology"

Zionism itself is a racist ideology, the whole concept being, going back to the Mandate era again, and looking at what they wanted and what the movement was and what the Zionist project was, [it] was a settler colonial project aimed at displacing the Arab population and subjecting the Arabs to Jewish domination.  And Israel exists today in accordance with the original Zionist movement and its original aims.  It exists today as an unashamedly as a Jewish supremacist state.  

And we need look no further to establish that, uncontroversially, we need look no further than the Jewish Nation State Law passed in 2018, which is part of its Basic Law, which is Israel doesn't have a constitution, but they have what's called a Basic Law, which is - you can think of it as their constitutional law - it's basically their supreme law of the land, which literally defines self-determination in the territory under Israel's control as a right exclusive to Jews.  So it's a Jewish supremacist state, openly.

~ Jeremy R. Hammond, video clip on Twitter/X, May 23, 2024

Alan Futerman on anti-Zionism and antisemitism

You could say that anti-Zionism is different from anti-Semitism, but now, after the state of Israel exists and you have one-third of the Jewish people living in Israel - more even - and it's the Jewish state and you read the Jewish books and the Jewish calendar is followed and the Jewish language is spoken and every Jew is related in one way or another with the state of Israel, etc., you cannot be against the only Jewish state in the world and not be antisemitic.  So I think the distinction has to be made between those things: to say, "ok, theoretically you could be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic," but today the practical consequences of making the state of Israel to disappear would be the mass murder of an important part of the Jewish people.

~ Alan Futerman, "Is Zionism a Libertarian Movement?," (interview with Gilad Alper), 1:16:00 mark, May 18, 2024

Theodor Herzl on displacing Arabs in Palestine

We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.

~ Theodor Herzl, 1895

Mike Whitney on how Zionists view the Arab population

As an American, diversity might not seem like such a big deal.  But to many Israelis, it’s pure strychnine.  Zionists, in particular, see growth in the Arab population as a “demographic time-bomb” that threatens the future of the Jewish state.  And that’s what the Gaza fracas is really all about; getting rid of the people but keeping the land.  In fact, the last 75 years of conflict can be reduced to just 8 words, “They want the land, but not the people.”

[...] 

Demographics are considered a national security issue, an existential issue, and an issue that will decide the future of the Jewish State.  Is it any wonder why the reaction has been so extreme?  Is it any wonder why people refer to the fact that there is a large population of Palestinians in Palestine as the “Arab problem”?  And, of course, once the indigenous population is regarded as a “problem”, then it is incumbent on the political leaders to conjure-up a solution.

So, what exactly is the solution to the Arab problem?

Why fewer Arabs, of course.  Which is why the idea of expelling the Palestinians has a long pedigree in Zionist thinking dating back a full five decades before the establishment of the Jewish state.  As it happens, the Arabs were always a problem even when the Jews represented less than 10 percent of the population.  Go figure?  Check out this comment by the ideological father of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote the following: 

We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country… expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. 

Shockingly, Herzl wrote those words in 1895, 50 years before Israel declared its statehood.  And many of the Zionist leaders who followed him shared that same world view, like Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion who said: 

You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund’s] activity in this respect.  Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out.  In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin.  Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale. (1948) 

And here’s Ben-Gurion again in 1938:

I support compulsory transfer.  I don’t see anything immoral in it.

See how far back this line of reasoning goes?  The Zionists were tweaking their ethnic cleansing plans long before Israel had even become a state.  And for good reason.  They knew that the numbers did not support the prospects for an enduring Jewish State.  The only way to square the circle was through compulsory resettlement, otherwise known as “transfer.”  And while that policy might have been repugnant to a great many Jews, a far larger number undoubtedly believed it was a cruel necessity.

~ Mike Whitney, "The War in Gaza: It's Not About Hamas. It's About Demographics," The Unz Review, December 16, 2023

Neil Rogall on Palestinian landownership under Ottoman and British rule and rise of conflicted Palestinian leadership

Palestinian fellahin (peasants) viewed the land they cultivated as their birthright.  They might not formally own it but that was somewhat beside the point.  Landlordism had only really taken off in Palestine with the Ottoman Land Code of 1858.  Many peasants failed to register their land under the new laws.  They often couldn’t afford the registration fee or didn’t want their names on government documents for fear of conscription into the Ottoman army.  In these cases the land was registered in the name of the local notable.  The fellahin believed that this way they would hold onto ‘their’ land.  Elsewhere the Ottoman government simply seized land claiming it was needed for security reasons or that it wasn’t being cultivated properly.  Such land was then put up for sale and often bought by wealthy men from Beirut.

City of Bethlehem during the Ottoman Empire, 1880

The result was that many cultivators lost control of their land.  The dispossessed ended up as sharecropping tenants on what had been their own land.  When Zionist settlers purchased such land from the landlords, they evicted the fellahin.  As early as 1883, peasants were attacking these new Jewish settlements.  This affected not just the fellahin but also the nomadic Bedouin who were no longer able to graze their animals on what had been seen as common land.  In response the Ottoman government often called out the army to remove peasants who had occupied their old lands or were refusing to leave.  Such resistance continued into and throughout the entire period of British rule. 

Peasant unrest pushed the local elite into protesting about Zionist immigration.  Such protests were pretty feeble, and began to undermine the relationships between the notables and their followers.  Many of these elite figures hoped that Palestine would be incorporated into Syria following the end of the war.  When this didn’t happen, a distinctive Palestinian nationalism begins to develop.

[...]

In reality none of the notables were able to play an effective role as a nationalist leadership.  They were far too compromised.  Some had good jobs in the colonial government.  They couldn’t defend the peasants from the settlers who were evicting them from their land because it was they, the a’yan who were selling the land to the Zionists.  Nor could they offer any political progress to their supporters, as the British were hostile to any democratic reforms that would relegate the Jewish settlers to a minority position.  They were totally incapable of providing any serious leadership to ordinary Palestinians faced with the growing settler threat. 

Colonial policies helped ruin the countryside.  The drive to commercial agriculture, the encouragement of land sales to the settlers and the sheer greed of landlords wretched rural Palestine. 

By 1930 some 30% of all Palestinian villagers were landless, while as many as 75% to 80% of the remainder didn’t have sufficient land to meet their needs.  On top of this, colonial taxation policies hit Palestinian peasants far harder than the Jewish agricultural enterprises.  Such taxes were of course used to pay for British rule and its support of the settlers.

[...]

The impoverishment of the rural Palestinian population accelerated with the global depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street Crash.  This was made worse by the increasing number of settlers who arrived following Hitler’s appointment as German Chancellor in 1933 and the growth of an increasingly deadly anti-Semitism in Poland.  Peasant indebtedness led to many selling their land to pay their debts.  Simultaneously the big landlords made huge killings selling their estates to the Jewish National Fund.

The bankruptcy of the notables’ policies was therefore increasingly apparent: they had made no progress toward achieving national independence, and were incapable of stemming the Zionist tide of increasing population, land settlement and economic development.

In these circumstances the a’yan class themselves splintered.  The Nashashibi family clan turned against the policies of the Arab Executive, dominated by the Husseini family.  The Nashashibis called for compromise with the British and the settlers.  This followed from their class interest: the Nashashibis were the wealthiest landowners, the largest citrus exporters and greatest sellers of land to the settlers.

~ Neil Rogall, "The birth of Palestinian Resistance and the 1936 uprising," rs21, September 12, 2014

Wikipedia on how early Zionist movement discriminated against Arab workers

The Zionist movement tried to find work for the new immigrants who arrived in the Second Aliyah [1904-1914].  However, most were middle class and were not physically fit or knowledgeable in agricultural work.  The Jewish plantation owners had previously hired Arab workers who accepted low wages and were very familiar with agriculture.  The leaders of the Zionist movement insisted that plantation owners (those who arrived in the First Aliyah) only hire Jewish workers and grant higher wages.  The conquest of labor was a major Zionist goal. However, this caused some turmoil in the Yishuv for there were those who felt that they were discriminating against the Arabs just as they had been discriminated against in Russia.  The Arabs became bitter from the discrimination despite the small number of Arabs that were affected by this.

~ Wikipedia, "Yishuv: Beginning of modern Aliyah"

Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.  David Ben-Gurion estimated that 90% of the Second Aliyah "despaired of the country and left."

~ Wikipedia, "Second Aliyah"

Jewish yishuv in Rishon Levion, 1882

Murray Rothbard on the early Zionist movement

[W]hat was world Zionism?  Before the French Revolution, the Jews of Europe had been largely encased in ghettoes, and there emerged from ghetto life a distinct Jewish cultural and ethnic (as well as religious) identity, with Yiddish as the common language (Hebrew being only the ancient language of religious ritual).  After the French Revolution, the Jews of Western Europe were emancipated from ghetto life, and they then faced a choice of where to go from there.  One group, the heirs of the Enlightenment, chose and advocated the choice of casting off narrow, parochial ghetto culture on behalf of assimilation into the culture and the environment of the Western world.  While assimilationism was clearly the rational course in America and Western Europe, this route could not easily be followed in Eastern Europe, where the ghetto walls still held.  In Eastern Europe, therefore, the Jews turned toward various movements for preservation of the Jewish ethnic and cultural identity.  Most prevalent was Bundism, the viewpoint of the Jewish Bund, which advocated Jewish national self-determination, up to and including a Jewish state in the predominantly Jewish areas of Eastern Europe.  (Thus, according to Bundism, the city of Vilna, in Eastern Europe, with a majority population of Jews, would be part of a newly-formed Jewish state.)  Another, less powerful, group of Jews, the Territorialist Movement, despairing of the future of Jews in Eastern Europe, advocated preserving the Yiddish Jewish identity by forming Jewish colonies and communities (not states) in various unpopulated, virgin areas of the world. 

Given the conditions of European Jewry in the late 19th and turn of the 20th centuries, all of these movements had a rational groundwork.  The one Jewish movement that made no sense was Zionism, a movement which began blended with Jewish Territorialism.  But while the Territorialists simply wanted to preserve Jewish-Yiddish identity in a newly developed land of their own, Zionism began to insist on a Jewish land in Palestine alone.  The fact that Palestine was not a virgin land, but already occupied by an Arab peasantry, meant nothing to the ideologues of Zionism.  Furthermore, the Zionists, far from hoping to preserve ghetto Yiddish culture, wished to bury it and to substitute a new culture and a new language based on an artificial secular expansion of ancient religious Hebrew. 

In 1903, the British offered territory in Uganda for Jewish colonization, and the rejection of this offer by the Zionists polarized the Zionist and Territorialist movements, which previously had been fused together.  From then on, the Zionists would be committed to the blood-and-soil mystique of Palestine, and Palestine alone, while the Territorialists would seek virgin land elsewhere in the world.  

Because of the Arabs resident in Palestine, Zionism had to become in practice an ideology of conquest.

~ Murray Rothbard, ""War Guilt in the Middle East," Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought, Spring-Autumn 1967

The first Aliya, early Jewish immigrants to
Ottoman Palestine, 1882-1903

Menachem Begin on launching a preemptive war against the Arab States (1955)

I deeply believe in launching a preventive war against the Arab States without further hesitation.  By doing so, we will achieve two targets: firstly, the annihilation of the Arab power; and secondly, the expansion of our territory.

~ Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun and founder of the Herut (“Freedom”) party, speaking before the Knesset on October 12, 1955

(As quoted in "Ayn Rand v. Murray Rothbard: A deep dive into the Libertarian view of Israel/Palestine," Daily Kos, March 31, 2015

Anonymous Arab Israeli on Zionism

I never had a problem with Jews.  The Palestinian cause is not about Jews.  There are Palestinian Jews and there are Arab Jews from the Arab world so it was never about Jews.  I think it's about the... exclusionary concept of Zionism, the establishment of a state only for the Jewish people, which I think is unjust, as simple as that.  And I also think it's unjust for Jewish people.  That's perhaps an immediate solution that Europeans saw following the Holocaust, to expel all Jews, which is ironic, right, because when you speak to a German they say, "Yeah, Jews deserve their own state."  No, what they deserve is to live anywhere they want without being politically persecuted or massacred.

~ anonymous Arab Israeli, "Arab Israelis: Why did you surrender to the Jews in 1948?," The Ask Project, 3:00 mark, June 4, 2023

Sheldon Richman on the UN partition plan for Israel

By mid-November 1947 the Truman administration was firmly in the Zionist camp.  When the State Department and the U.S. mission to the United Nations agreed that the partition resolution should be changed to shift the Negev from the Jewish to the Palestinian state, Truman sided with the Jewish Agency, the main Zionist organization, against them.  The United States also voted against a UN resolution calling on member states to accept Jewish refugees who could not be repatriated.

As the partition plan headed toward a vote in the UN General Assembly, U.S. officials applied pressure to--and even threatened to withhold promised aid from--countries inclined to vote against the resolution.  As former under-secretary of state Sumner Welles put it: 

By direct order of the White House every form of pressure, direct and indirect, was brought to bear by American officials upon those countries outside of the Moslem world that were known to be either uncertain or opposed to partition. Representatives or intermediaries were employed by the White House to make sure that the necessary majority would at length be secured.

Eddie Jacobson recorded in his diary that Truman told him that "he [Truman] and he alone, was responsible for swinging the vote of several delegations."

While the plan was being debated, the Arabs desperately tried to find an alternative solution.  Syria proposed that the matter be turned over to the International Court of Justice in The Hague; the proposal was defeated.  The Arab League asked that all countries accept Jewish refugees "in proportion to their area and economic resources and other relevant factors"; the league's request was denied in a 16-16 tie, with 25 abstentions.

On November 29 the General Assembly recommended the partition plan by a vote of 33 to 13.  The Soviet Union voted in favor of the resolution, reversing its earlier position on Zionism; many interpreted the vote as a move to perpetuate unrest and give Moscow opportunities for influence in the neighboring region. 

The period after the UN partition vote was critical.  The Zionists accepted the partition reluctantly, hoping to someday expand the Jewish state to the whole of Palestine, but the Arabs did not.  Violence between Jews and Arabs escalated.  The obvious difficulties in carrying out the partition created second thoughts among U.S. policymakers as early as December 1947.  The State Department's policy planning staff issued a paper in January 1948 suggesting that the United States propose that the entire matter be returned to the General Assembly for more study.  Secretary Forrestal argued that the United States might have to enforce the partition with troops.  (The United States had an arms embargo on the region at the time, although arms were being sent illegally by American Zionists, giving the Jews in Palestine military superiority, at least in some respects, over the Arabs.)

On February 24, 1948, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Warren Austin, made a speech to the Security Council hinting at such second thoughts.  His proposal to have the five permanent council members discuss what should be done was approved, but they could not agree on a new strategy.  The United States, China, and France reported to the full council that partition would not occur peacefully.  The apparent weakening of U.S. support for partition prompted the Zionist organizations to place enormous pressure on Truman, who said he still favored partition.  However, the next day at the United Nations, Austin called for a special session of the General Assembly to consider a temporary UN trusteeship for Palestine. 

On April 16 the United States formally proposed the temporary trusteeship.  The Arabs accepted it conditionally; the Jews rejected it.  The General Assembly was unenthusiastic.  Meanwhile, the Zionists proceeded with their plans to set up a state.  Civil order in Palestine had almost totally broken down.  For example, in mid-April, the Irgun and LEHI (the Stern Gang), two Zionist terrorist organizations, attacked the poorly armed Arab village of Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, and killed 250 men, women, and children.  The Arabs retaliated by killing many Jews the next day.

Before the British left in May, the Jews had occupied much additional land, including cities that were to be in the Palestinian state. 

Something else was working in favor of continued support for the emerging Jewish state: U.S. domestic politics.  The year 1948 was an election year and, according to memoranda in the Harry S Truman Library and Museum, Jacobson, Clifford, and Niles expressed fear that the Republicans were making an issue of their support for the Jewish state and that the Democrats risked losing Jewish support.  Clifford proposed early recognition of the Jewish state. 

His position had been strongly influenced by a special congressional election in a heavily Jewish district in the Bronx, New York, on February 17, 1948.  The regular Democratic candidate, Karl Propper, was upset by the American Labor party candidate, Leo Isacson, who had taken a militantly pro-Zionist position in the campaign.  Even though Propper was also pro-Zionist, former vice president Henry Wallace had campaigned for Isacson by criticizing Truman for not supporting partition, asserting that Truman "still talks Jewish but acts Arab."  The loss meant that New York's 47 electoral votes would be at risk in the November presidential election, and the Democrats of the state appealed to Truman to propose a UN police force to implement the partition, as Isacson and Wallace had advocated. 

The administration's trusteeship idea soon became academic.  On May 14 the last British officials left Palestine, and that evening the Jewish state was proclaimed.  Eleven minutes later, to the surprise of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations, the United States announced its de facto recognition.

The significance to the Arabs of the U.S. role in constructing what they regard as another Western colonial obstacle to self-determination cannot be overstated.  Dean Rusk, who at the time was a State Department official and would later become secretary of state, admitted that Washington's role permitted the partition to be "construed as an American plan," depriving it of moral force.  As Evan M. Wilson, then assistant chief of the State Department's Division of Near Eastern Affairs, later summarized matters, Truman, motivated largely by domestic political concerns, solved one refugee problem by creating another.  Wilson wrote: 

It is no exaggeration to say that our relations with the entire Arab world have never recovered from the events of 1947- 48 when we sided with the Jews against the Arabs and advocated a solution in Palestine which went contrary to self-determination as far as the majority population of the country was concerned.

~ Sheldon Richman, "'Ancient History': U.S. Conduct in the Middle East Since World War II and the Folly of Intervention," Cato Institute, August 16, 1991

Dave Smith on the creation of the state of Israel

In 1947 - this is right in the aftermath of World War II and the British empire was basically crumbling and they had been ruling the territory of Palestine under a Mandate - they basically washed their hands of the situation.  There had been issues for years already and they kicked it over to the United Nations and the United Nations was a brand new organization - a year old or something like that - and they had no authority to create states out of nowhere.  It was a recommendation.  They go "We recommend this partition plan" that would've given 56% of the land to the Jews for a Jewish state and 44% of the land to the Arabs to have an Arab state.  And at the time, the Jews, the Zionist settlers there, they owned about 10% of the land.  And so this recommendation was that they get 56% of the land.  And so immediately, the Zionist settlers accepted.  They went "Yes, great deal, we'll take 56% of this."  And the Arabs were like "No, that's not a fair deal at all."

There's a great book by Sheldon Richman called Coming to Palestine if you're interested in the topic.  Immediately after that, a bunch of essentially Zionist militias started kicking Arabs off of the land, like "Hey, the UN said this part's ours."  And at first a civil war broke out, and in this process hundreds of thousands - between 1947 and 1948 the total number's around 750,000 - Arabs who were forced out or fled.  And then in 1948, Israel declared independence.  And then, in response to that, outside Arab nations invaded, got involved in the fight.  Israel won and then after Israel won the war, they seized about 80% of the land.

So they were offered 56%... they won a war and took 80%...  At the end of the war, the portion that is Palestinian territories today, that was the West Bank and East Jerusalem, that was controlled by Jordan and Gaza was controlled by Egypt.  And then in 1967, Israel launched a preemptive war and they won again.  And then the just took 100% of it.  And then they just took control of the West Bank, all of Jerusalem and Gaza.  And they've had it ever since.

~ Dave Smith, "Joe Rogan on NAKBA 1948 with Dave Smith," JustForPeace, 4:40 mark, November 23, 2023

CJPME on British policy on Jewish immigration to Palestine from 1919 to 1948

What was the British policy on Jewish immigration? 

British policy regarding Jewish immigration into Palestine evolved during the mandate period, as did the Jewish European response to it. 

A policy favouring it from 1919 to 1930: The British were in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.  The first Zionists, under the Ottoman Empire, had been able to establish themselves in the country under the protection of foreign consulates, notably British ones.  Nonetheless, in the wake of the increase in immigration during the 20th century’s first decades, Arab Palestinians began pressuring Great Britain, which found itself in the political crossfire.  From the 1930s on, the British authority began providing fewer immigration certificates than there was a demand for.  But the real change in policy took place in 1939. 

Restrictions and criminalisation of Jewish immigration to Palestine from 1939 on: In an attempt to mollify the Arab Palestinian population, Great Britain emitted in 1939 a “white paper” restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine to 75,000 people over five years and limiting the purchase of land by Jews.  The creation of an independent Arab state within 10 years was also intended.  However, the policy did not really slow Jewish immigration, because it opened the door to illegal immigration at a moment when the persecution of Jews in Europe was only intensifying. Until WWII began, and even after, tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine.  Despite the interception of some ships by the British, many immigrants were able to establish themselves in Palestine. 

The immigrants also found out how to establish themselves in Palestine thanks to gaps in the British system of regulation.  For example, given that students were not obliged to have an immigration certificate to study in Palestine, many people enrolled at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem then remained in the country. Some young women entered the country declaring fictitious marriages to Palestinians.  Still others arrived as tourists and never left.  In the end, between 1939 and 1948, 118,228 Jews reached Palestine, despite the British restrictions. 

After the war, Great Britain jailed thousands of the illegal immigrants in detention camps in Cyprus.  This attempt to staunch immigration failed, and Britain was reproached for it in the post-Holocaust context.

~ Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, "Jewish Immigration to Historical Palestine," CJPME Factsheet 181, November, 2013

CJPME on the increase in Jewish immigration to Palestine after World War I

Why did Jewish immigration increase again after WWI?

Stronger immigration: The third and fourth aliyot brought 35,000 Jews from the Soviet Union, Poland and the Baltic countries between 1919 and 1923, and 82,000 Jews from the Balkans and the Near Orient between 1924 and 1931, respectively.  By the end of 1931, 174,600 Jews were living in Palestine, 17 percent of the population.  During this period, 15 percent of the transoceanic Jewish migration was to Palestine.  There were many reasons for this surge in migration.

The Balfour Declaration: At the end of WWI, the Ottoman Empire was dismantled and Palestine came under the British mandate.  Great Britain was in favour of establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.  In a letter written in 1917, Lord Balfour expressed this agreement, with the proviso that “… nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine ...”.  The Balfour Declaration gave a legal basis for Jewish immigration, thus encouraging it. 

The rise of anti-Semitism and Nazism: The increase in anti-Semitism in Europe led many Jews again to leave their countries.  At the same time, the US Immigration Act of 1924 would greatly slow immigration from Europe by setting strict quotas per country.  Diverse limitations on immigration were also implemented in Europe.  This also explains in part Jewish migrants’ choice of Palestine.  From 1932 on, with the Nazi victory in Germany and the intensification of persecution in Austria and Czechoslovakia, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased dramatically.  Between 1932 and 1939, Palestine absorbed 247,000 newcomers, 46 percent of Jewish emigration from Europe.  In the European political context, this fifth aliya constituted a flight rather than a “Zionist choice.”

~ Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, "Jewish Immigration to Historical Palestine," CJPME Factsheet 181, November, 2013

CJPME on the beginning of Jewish immigration to Palestine

When did Jewish immigration to historical Palestine begin? 

An ancient community: There was already an indigenous Jewish population in Palestine during the Ottoman Empire and before.  Its members were concentrated principally in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron.  Nonetheless, the Jewish presence in Palestine, prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, had fluctuated through time, with various communities appearing and disappearing.  Regardless, in 1880, before immigration began, Palestine’s Jewish population numbered about 25,000, and had been deeply rooted there for several generations. 

The beginning of Zionism and immigration: The beginning of modern, national-minded Jewish immigration coincides with the foundation of the modern Zionist movement. Zionism as a political movement is conventionally dated to 1882.  Small groups of Jews dispersed through Europe began to cooperate to establish agricultural colonies in historical Palestine.  These groups met officially for the first time in 1897, for the first Zionist conference, in Basel, Switzerland. 

The first two waves of immigration took place under the Ottoman Empire.  The first aliya, between 1882 and 1903, brought 20,000 to 30,000 Russians fleeing Czarist Russia’s pogroms. Between 1903 and 1914, during the second aliya, 35,000-40,000 more Russians, most of them socialists, established themselves in Palestine.  The newcomers were very active in the building of Tel-Aviv and also founded kibbutzim (collective villages). 

Marginal immigration: This immigration remained small relative to both the total Palestinian population and the other destinations of the migrants.  In fact, on the eve of WWI, the 80,000 Jews of Palestine constituted only a tenth of the country’s total population. Moreover, Jewish immigration to Palestine constituted only 3 percent of the transoceanic Jewish migration during that period.  By way of comparison, of the 2,367,000 Jews who left Europe then, 2,022,000 established themselves in the US.

With WWI and the subsequent famine, Palestine’s total population dropped.  Its Jewish community now numbered only 60,000.

~ Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, "Jewish Immigration to Historical Palestine," CJPME Factsheet 181, November, 2013

Avi Shlaim: "Zionism lost its way" after the Six-Day War

[Although Shlaim agrees that it was a defensive war, he argues that – in the ease of the victory and in the national sense of joy – opportunities were lost, not least for a wider peace.]

Zionism lost its way in 1967, that’s the crucial thing.  The main aim of the Zionist movement before the war was the establishment of an independent Jewish state in Palestine.  But by the eve of the war that objective had already been achieved.  The victory in 1967 reopened the old question of the territorial aims of Zionism. 

And the two trends that emerged cut across party lines... the big division after 1967 was between those who accepted the division of Palestine as a solution and those saying the West Bank was an integral part of the land of Israel.  And in an Israeli society split down the middle, the government resolved the dilemma by deciding not to decide.

~ Avi Shlaim, author of The Iron Wall, an acclaimed study of Israel’s military policies

(As quoted in The Guardian, "The six-day war: why Israel is still divided over its legacy 50 years on," May 20, 2017.)

2000

Murray Rothbard on the Six-Day War

Why the wave of adulation and admiration that greeted the blitzkrieg war of conquest by Israel against the Arab countries?  That greeted the conquest, that is, in the United States; most of the rest of the world was stunned and appalled.  Has a sickness eaten its way deep into the American soul?  Do we all simply love a winner — even if he wins by means of fire-power, surprise attack, and mobile blitzkrieg tactics?  Even if he wins, as Israel did, by napalming innocent women and children in Arab villages?  Have we lost all sense of moral principle, all sense of justice? 

Two major reasons have been advanced for the acclaim heaped by American public opinion on the state of Israel.  One is that it is a “bastion of anti-Communism in the Middle East.”  This is an odd argument, since, in the first place, none of the Arab countries is Communist or anything like it; all are governed by deeply religious Moslems.  Sure, the Arabs accepted military aid from Soviet Russia, but only after they found that they could not get such aid from the U.S., which was arming Israel instead. And, furthermore, the Arab countries are certainly no more socialist than Israel: Israel has been governed, since its inception, by an avowedly socialist party (the Mapai); it has a very large proportion of its economy in government hands; and it has a fantastically strong labor union movement (the Histadrut) which, as a virtual State within a State, controls and owns a large chunk of the economy of Israel in its own right.  And, what is more, there exist in Israel the famous kibbutzim, which are communes, in which communism (in its true sense of virtual absence of private property) is practiced on a scale far more intense than in any Communist country in the world (with the exception of China).  And while membership in the kibbutzim is generally voluntary, there are also many Israeli refugees literally enslaved to the kibbutzim, and who cannot leave them until they “pay back” the Israel government the passage money from Europe to Israel.  Furthermore, since their pay in the kibbutzim is very low, it is almost impossible for them to work out their term, and so they remain, often with great reluctance, in forced labor on the Israel communes. 

The other common argument is that Israel is “little,” compared to its Arab neighbors, and therefore deserves admiration as an underdog surrounded by giants, as Davids surrounded by Goliaths.  The “littleness” here is a complete misreading of world affairs; it would be just as absurd to hail Britain when she conquered India quite easily.  Are we to consider the British Empire as the “underdog,” since India’s population outnumbered England by a huge multiple?  Certainly not: clearly the technological level and relative standards of living were so disparate, that the “smaller” nation could easily conquer and dominate the larger.  The same is true for “little” Israel.  The rulers of Israel are not Middle Eastern, like their Arab neighbors; they are largely European, and furthermore, they are financed very heavily by wealthy European and American Zionists.  These, then, were Europeans who came, on the backs of and in collusion with, the British Empire (from the end of World War I to the end of World War II), with European technology, wealth and know-how, to seize the lands and homes of Arabs, and themselves to colonize Palestine.  To think of these Zionists and Israelis as “underdogs,” in the light of the true situation, is nothing less than grotesque — as can be seen by the swift wars of conquest fought by Israel in 1948, 1956, and now today.

~ Murray Rothbard, "'Little' Israel," 1967

(As appeared in Never a Dull Moment: A Libertarian Look at the Sixties, pp. 35-36.)

Six-Day War

Balfour Project on the British Mandate in Palestine from 1917-1948

Angry Arab crowds soon massed in Jerusalem denouncing the Balfour Declaration and demanding the self-determination that had been promised by Britain and France in 1918.  Having made conflicting promises, Britain now had to face up to their consequences.  She had created a contradiction.  Just unworkable this situation was, it took her 30 years to accept.  Both communities, Jews and Arabs, believed they had been promised land.  

As the Zionists swiftly began to implement their objectives, the Arabs were the first to conclude they had been deceived.  Riots broke out in 1920.  In 1921, there was even greater violence as Arabs attacked Jews and the British tried to regain order.  After a period of relative calm, mutual suspicion between the Arab and Jewish communities flared up again in 1929 and rapidly escalated into mob violence with horrific consequences.  133 Jews and 116 Arabs were killed.

Britain's response was slow and inadequate.  Calm was finally restored by a show of British force.  Meanwhile, the Jewish community was forging ahead under the umbrella of the British Mandate, securing major economic concessions and establishing its own elected assembly and institutions of government.  The Arab majority, on the other hand, felt left behind economically and politically.  To be granted democratic representation they were effectively required to accept the Balfour Declaration.  But the Arabs rejected this fearing that a Jewish national home would lead to the creation of a Jewish state in their land.  For their part the British feared that an elected Arab majority would oppose Jewish demands for land and immigration.  And so they held back the democratic progress they were supposed to foster under the Mandate.  Britain was upholding the first part of the Declaration, to establish a home for the Jewish people, but the second undertaking in the Declaration, to protect the rights of the Arab population, proved to be hollow.

Arab alarm grew still further in the 1930s when increasing numbers of Jews sought sanctuary in Palestine as the specter of antisemitism grew in Nazi Germany.  As more and more land passed into Jewish hands, the sense of Arab disposession grew.  By May 1936, Palestine was in open rebellion and it was not just Jewish communities who were being attacked.  It was the British, too.

Increasingly losing control, the British authorities resorted to ruthless methods to put down the revolt including hangings, house demolitions and the use of civilians as human shields.  For a period, British and Jewish men fought jointly in a counter-insurgency force known as the Special Night Squads.  By 1939, the rebellion was suppressed, leaving the Palestinian leadership weakened for years to come.

To try to address the underlying deadlock between Arabs and Jews, London had responded with a succession of inquiries and commissions through the 1930s.  Their dilemma was that any attempt to placate one community would provoke the anger of the other.  At a loss for a solution, the Peel Commission of 1937 proposed to partition Jews and Arabs into two states.  But Arab opinion, led by the [inaudible] anti-Zionist Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, denounced any idea of conceding territory to Jews as "unthinkable."

However, as Europe slid towards war the British government changed course.  A government white paper of 1939 abandoned partition and proposed that in ten years Palestine would become independent, representatively governed by Arabs and Jews.  Controls were now put in place over how many Jews could immigrate to Palestine and how much land could pass into Jewish hands.  For the first time Arabs were to be given a say over Jewish immigration.

The reason Neville Chamberlain's government swung in favor of Arab opinion at this point was the prospect of war.  London feared that in a global conflict the Arab world might turn against Britain while the support of Jews would be guaranteed in view of their persecution by the Nazis.

Jewish opinion immediately condemned the white paper as an act of British betrayal and retreat from the Balfour Declaration.  There was fury that Jewish people would restricted from finding sanctuary at their hour of greatest need.  Nevertheless, Britain upheld the limits on Jewish immigration into Palestine right through the war.  As refugees fleeing the Holocaust were arrested trying to enter Palestine, [inaudible] even sent back to Germany, in the case of the Exodus [in 1947].

The Jewish community turned against Britain and the Mandate.  Sections of Jewish opinion became increasingly militant and violent, and Britain suffered heavy losses from terrorist attrocities.  In February 1947, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin stated that Britain was referring responsibility for the Palestinian problem to the United Nations.  By September, as the situation continued to worse, Britain announced that she would terminate her Mandate for Palestine in May 1948.

The U.N. solution to the Palestine problem was partition.  But this was again rejected by the Arabs.  As British forces beat an ungainly retreat and the mandate came to an end, partition was abandoned, leading Jews and Arabs to an undeclared war for domination.

On the 14th of May, 1948, Israel declared itself a state and was immediately recognized by America.  The events of this time are known to some as the War of Independence and to others as the Nakba, or the catastrophe when about 60% of the Palestinian population became refugees as they fled or were expelled.  Today's conflict between Israelis and Palestinians had begun.

~ Balfour Project, "Britain in Palestine: 1917-1948," 9:30 mark, April 11, 2023

Brianha Joy Gray on Ben Shapiro's extreme Zionist position

Ben Shapiro is a noted, very insistent Zionist.  He has gotten in trouble in the past for saying things that have been interpreted as at best disrespectful to Palestinian lives, at worst fully Islamophobic.  He tweeted, of course famously, in 2010, "Israelis like to build, Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.  This is not a difficult issue.  #settlementsrock."  The settlements in the West Bank are, of course, illegal.  It's individual citizens of Israel and sometimes the United States who are literally armed by the Israeli government to expand that territory, which again, they're illegally occupying.  And there've been almost 200 documented killings in the West Bank, where there is no Hamas, even since the events of October 7th.

~ Brianha Joy Gray, "FIGHT: Ben Shapiro ATTACKS Candace Owens On Israel/Palestine; ‘Absolutely Disgraceful’," The Hill, 4:45 mark, November 15, 2023

Ilan Pappé on coalition that won the Israeli elections in November 2022

Do remember what kind of a government the Israeli electorate voted for in November 2022.  They voted for a coalition that its main pillar were - not even Zionist Jews - were Messianic Jews that grew up in the settlements., who don't care about international opinion.  They think that God is on their side, and a very cruel, ruthless god is on their side.  History is on their side.  Their main problem is not just the world, but also weaklings like myself and you maybe, among the Jewish people, self-hating Jew, call them what you want.  

It's interesting how they read this event on the 7th of October.  They don't take any responsibility for this.  They say it will be a wakeup call for liberals as well to understand you cannot rely on anyone.  At the same time they're very happy that American sent two [aircraft] carriers into the Mediterranean.  

It's a moment of reckoning that we should not be misled by the optical illusions of the immediate reactions.  We have to wait and see whether these... misunderstandings about what the world has reacted to whether they will... penetrate this shield of Messianic Zionism, this extreme Zionism, that Israeli voters seem to like, judging be the results of the last elections.

~ Ilan Pappé, "Declassified Israeli Documents Reveal Dark Truths," The Majority Report, 15:30 mark, Novemer 5, 2023