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The 'end of the beginning' on
Shariah
by Frank Gaffney, Jr.
http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/?p=5794
As
I looked out at the thousands of people assembled near Ground Zero on Sunday to
oppose the construction of a megamosque there, I was reminded of Winston
Churchill's famous line that enspirited Britain at the first sign the tide was
turning in World War II: ”Now, this is not the end. It is not even the
beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
To
be sure, the rally held two blocks from the World Trade Center was not a
decisive defeat of the enemy like that dealt by the storied British “Desert
Rats” to Hitler's Afrika Korps in November 1942. But there was something
pivotal about the fact that throngs of ordinary Americans – many of them family
or friends of those who died on 9/11 – had come together to stand for hours in
an intermittent rain not just to contest the construction of a megamosque at a
wholly inappropriate location, but in informed opposition to the impetus behind
that mosque: shariah.
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Israel
National News (IsraelNN.com)
INN Editorial: The Freedom to Build in
Jerusalem
by Rachel Sylvetsky
(IsraelNN.com)
Karl Marx accused his fellow Jews of being a “cosmopolitan” people who
could not develop roots in any specific area of the world. No Jew
lover, he wrote his barbed phrase as though it was an inherent Jewish
characteristic, along with usury and other unproductive occupations,
without taking into account that it might be an acquired one. After
all, Jews could hardly be expected to plant roots when history was
replete with banishments, expulsions, pogroms and ghettoizing that
hardly served to make the Jewish populace in most countries feel at
home.
The Jew’s image in the Diaspora was also that of the People of the
Book, a more positive, and continuing, pursuit than that attributed to
them by Marx. Intellectualism made up for a normal nations’
construction, farming and production, denied to them for
centuries.
However, the Jewish people certainly had a history of building. It
began when they first constructed permanent dwellings in Egypt, but not
for their personal use. They were the slaves who build the cities of
Pithom and Raamses, but who, once freed on Passover, were satisfied
with the tents Balaam described in Numbers 24:5 as “goodly”. This
newly- formed people spent forty years in the desert in temporary
“booths” where, while they complained about the monotony of their manna
menu, they did not demand less flimsy residences for their families.
For
them, it was G-d’s cloud of glory that provided the permanence and
security a home usually symbolizes. Their central place of ritual in
the desert was a portable, curtained Tabernacle, which was brought to
Shiloh once they entered Israel.
This was in sharp contrast to what transpired when the Jews had a
monarchy in the land of Israel. This was when roots of construction,
farming and production were planted in the Promised Land. King David
described himself as living in a permanent home, feeling guilty because
G-d ‘s Ark had only a temporary one. His son King Solomon spent many
years building the First Temple and his own palace, enlisting the help
of experts from Lebanon. His people, too, built permanent homes in the
land of their forefathers.
When the first group of Jews was exiled to Babylon, the prophets
Jeremiah and Ezekiel had to tell them that they were to build homes
there. That symbolized permanence to them, and so strong was
their yearning for Zion, that they wanted to stay sojourners in their
land of exile awaiting the rebuilding of their beloved Temple in
Jerusalem.
Throughout the ages, even when their status allowed for beautiful
residences, the Jewish people was willing to abandon them for a week
and return to those temporary booths, Sukkahs, that reminded them of
G-d’s guarding presence in the desert, so longed for during their
sufferings in exile. In fact, Rav Tzvi Hirsh Berliner was once asked by
the Prince of Mannheim why children don’t ask four questions on Sukkot,
as moving into a booth is just as unusual as the Passover seder. He
answered that the opposite is true, for leaving one’s home hastily for
a temporary haven is the most commonplace of occurrences in the
Diaspora with which even a child is familiar.
Construction is the symbol of permanence. A “guarding wall and
lookout tower” were what early Zionists built with Haganah help to
create settlements during the memorable period in which they countered
1936-39 Arab insurgency by creating “facts on the ground”. It is
tragic to think that their offspring did not internalize the difference
between a people at home and the wandering Jews of Marx and were
willing to destroy Jewish homes in Israel and send thousands of Katif
Bloc residents to temporary booths as if they were back in the desert
of the Diaspora.
It
is true that in the Diaspora, when Jews lived in places that were good
to them, they built homes, communities and public buildings, such as
the hospitals with Jewish names that dot the USA, for the good of the
countries who treated them kindly. History showed most tragically
that this does not help Jews achieve permanence. Perhaps all the Jews,
even those living most comfortably in the Diaspora, expressed this
truth subliminally when they sang “Next year in rebuilt Jerusalem” at
the close of the Seder each year.
“Rebuilt
Jerusalem”--
Those words once meant the exiles’ hope to return to rebuild the city,
but after it was reunited in 1967and the sounds of construction filled
the air as Jerusalem grew and expanded naturally in all directions, it
seemed to be happening in our time. Jews still sang those words
hoping for the Redemption, when they could rebuild the Holy Temple in
the “city in which King David settled”, as Jerusalem is called in a
poem of longing and idealism written by Rabbi Avraham Yitschak HaKohen
Kook, Israel’s first Chief Rabbi.
“Rebuilt Jerusalem” has taken on another level of meaning these past
few weeks. It seems the joyous rebuilding of the past forty three years
is not seen as natural growth by much of the rest of the world. The
ancient words of the song now are an assertion of the Jewish people’s
right to build everywhere in their holy city and a demand for it to be
recognized as rightfully theirs.
Let
us sing those words with redoubled fervor this year. Jews are building
in their own land, as in days of yore. The other nations are mouthing
the words attributed to Esau’s—not Ishmael’s-- descendants, Edom, said
by our Sages to be “known to hate Jacob”, at the time of the Temple’s
destruction: “Destroy, destroy, unto the very foundations” of Jerusalem
(Psalm 137).
The
psalmist tells G-d to “Remember what the sons of Edom did on the day of
Jerusalem” in the previous verse. We too will remember. And we will
keep on building, because we have come home.

For
Zion’s Sake
A Christian View
By Dr.
Richard Booker
The Voice of Scripture
Shalom! Like all people of goodwill, Christian Zionists are deeply
concerned about truth, justice and compassion for all people. We
understand that we are all created in God’s image which makes us have
the highest regard for the sanctity of life. As such, we desire that
people be given the opportunity to live their lives with honor,
dignity, freedom and peace. We truly want to listen to every legitimate
voice that shares these values.
Are there biblical, historical, or moral voices to guide us? As a
concerned Christian and citizen of our world, this author has spent
twenty-five years listening, studying, and traveling to Israel in order
to learn the various views of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I want to
share with you what I have learned.
As “people of the Book,” Jews and Christians must look to God’s holy
word as the voice of truth regarding the problems between Israel, the
PLO, and the surrounding Moslem and Arab countries. What does the voice
of Scripture say?
Approximately four thousand years ago, the God of the Bible made an
eternal covenant decree in which He gave the Promised Land to Abraham
and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob. This is recorded so many
times in the Bible, there is no confusion about the will of the
Almighty concerning the land. If we listed all of the relevant
Scriptures, they would fill an entire book.
The Lord said to Abraham, “I will establish My covenant between Me and
you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an
everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you.
Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you
are a stranger; and I will be their God” (Genesis 17:17-18).
The Lord considered this promise of the land to Abraham of such great
importance that He made a sacred oath with Himself to uphold His
decree. Anyone interested may read this in the Tanakh. We find the same
presentation in the New Testament which says, “For when God made a
promise to Abraham, He could swear by no one greater, He swore by
Himself” (Hebrews 6:16).
When Abraham fathered Ishmael, he believed that God’s promise would be
fulfilled through him. While the Lord promised to bless Ishmael
(Genesis 16:10), He made it clear that His covenant to Abraham
regarding the Promised Land would be passed to Isaac and Jacob, not
Ishmael and Esau.
God stated that His covenant promise and oath would be forever in time,
“He remembers His covenant forever, the word which He commanded, for a
thousand generations, the covenant which He made with Abraham, and His
oath to Isaac, and confirmed it to Jacob for a statue, to Israel as an
everlasting covenant (Psalm 105:8-11).
The Bible makes it clear that God was not against Ishmael (Genesis
21:17-18), but His promise of the land was to the Jewish people.
Likewise, Christian Zionist support for Israel does not mean that we
are anti-Arab. It is just the opposite. We desire that the Arab people
find the fullest blessings of the Almighty.
We know that the Lord loves all people the same and so should we. But
we also recognize that the God of the Bible has different plans and
purposes for different people groups. With this understanding, we
believe that the Arab people will not experience the fullest measure of
God’s blessing until they acknowledge His covenant with Israel and the
land. Until then, we pray and work for the peace of Jerusalem.
Dr.
Richard and Peggy Booker
are the Founding Directors of the Institute for Hebraic-Christian
Studies
(IHCS), a non-proselytizing, Christian Zionist educational
organization. They
have dedicated their lives to educating Christians in their
Judeo-Christian
heritage and the holocaust, building relations between Christians and
Jews, and
working tirelessly to give comfort and support to the people of Israel.



February 14, 2010 Newton, Massachusetts
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Who Was Responsible for Decisive Aid to Israel in 1948 and Who Caused the Palestinian Arab “Nakba” ?
by Norman Berdichevsky
The world has been inundated with a tsunami of propaganda and crocodile
tears shed for the “Palestinians” who have reveled in what they refer
to as their Catastrophe or Holocaust (“Nakba” in Arabic). Their plight
has been accompanied by unremitting criticism that the United States
was the principal architect that stood behind Israel from the very
beginning with money, manpower and arms. The fact is that President
Truman eventually decided against the pro-Arab “professional opinion”
of his Secretary of State, General George Marshall and the Arabists of
the State Department. He accorded diplomatic recognition to the new
Jewish state but never considered active military aid. His own memoirs
recall how he felt betrayed by State Department officials and the
American U.N. Ambassador, Warren Austin who pulled the rug out from
under him one day after he promised Zionist leader Chaim Weitzman
support for partition. American Jewish voting in the 1948 Presidential
election leaned heavily for President Truman but also cast a
substantial number of votes for third party “Progressive” leader Henry
Wallace who had spoken out even more strongly on behalf of American
support for the Zionist position and aid to Israel. It was actually not
until the administration of President John Kennedy in the early 1960s
that American arms shipments were made to Israel.
Soviet Diplomatic Support
The struggle of the Jewish community in Palestine was endorsed
completely by what was then called “enlightened public opinion,” above
all by the political Left. Andrei Gromyko, at the UN, asserted the
right of “the Jews of the whole world to the creation of a state of
their own”, something no official of the U.S. State Department has ever
acknowledged. Soviet support in the U.N. for partition brought along an
additional two votes (the Ukrainian and Bielorussian Republics within
the USSR and the entire Soviet dominated block of East European states.
Taking (as always) their lead from Moscow, the (hitherto anti-Zionist)
Palestinian communist organizations merged their separate Arab and
Jewish divisions in October, 1948, giving unconditional support to the
Israeli war effort and urging the Israel Defense Forces to “drive on
toward the Suez Canal and hand British Imperialism a stinging defeat”!
World Wide Support from the Left
The most famous and colorful personality of the Spanish Republic in
exile, the Basque delegate to the Cortes (Spanish Parliament), Dolores
Ibarruri, who had gone to the Soviet Union, issued a proclamation in
1948 saluting the new State of Israel and comparing the invading Arab
armies to the Fascist uprising that had destroyed the Republic. Just a
few months earlier, the hero of the American Left, the great
Afro-American folk singer, Paul Robeson had sung in a gala concert in
Moscow and electrified the crowd with his rendition of the Yiddish
Partisan Fighters Song.
Jewish Attempts to Buy Arms and Czech Collaboration
The major Arab armies who invaded the newly born Jewish state were
British led, equipped, trained and supplied. The Syrian army was
French-equipped and had taken orders from the Vichy government in
resisting the British led invasion of the country assisted by
Australian troops, Free French units and Palestinian-Jewish volunteer
forces in 1941. In their War of Independence, the Israelis depended on
smuggled weapons from the West and Soviet and Czech weapons.*
The leaders of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine), already in
the summer of 1947, intended to purchase arms and sent Dr. Moshe Sneh
(the Chief of the European Branch of the Jewish Agency, a leading
member of the centrist General Zionist Party who later moved far
leftward and became head of the Israeli Communist Party) to Prague in
order to improve Jewish defenses. He was surprised by the sympathy
towards Zionism and by the interest in arms export on the side of the
Czech Government. Sneh met with the Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir
Clementis, who succeeded the non-Communist and definitely pro-Zionist
Jan Masaryk. Sneh and Clementis discussed the possibility of Czech arms
provisions for the Jewish state and the Czechs gave their approval,
In January, 1948 Jewish representatives were sent by Ben-Gurion to meet
with General Ludvik Svoboda, the Minister of National Defense, and sign
the first contract for Czech military aid. Four transport routes were
used to Palestine all via Communist countries; a) the Northern route:
via Poland and the Baltic Sea, b) the Southern route: via Hungary,
Yugoslavia and the Adriatic Sea, c) via Hungary, Romania and the Black
Sea, d) by air, via Yugoslavia to Palestine.
At first, a “Skymaster” plane chartered from the U.S. to help in
ferrying weapons to Palestine from Europe was forced by the FBI to
return to the USA. By the end of May the Israeli Army (IDF) had
absorbed about 20,000 Czech rifles, 2,800 machine-guns and over 27
million rounds of ammunition. Two weeks later an additional 10,000
rifles, 1,800 machine-guns and 20 million rounds of ammunition arrived.
One Czech-Israeli project that alarmed the Western intelligence was
the, so called, Czech Brigade, a unit composed of Jewish veterans of
"Free Czechoslovakia", which fought with the British Army during WWII.
The Brigade began training in August 1948 at four bases in
Czechoslovakia.
Czech assistance to Israel's military strength comprised a) small arms,
b) 84 airplanes - the outdated Czech built Avia S.199s, Spitfires and
Messerschmidts that played a major role in the demoralization of enemy
troops; c) military training and technical maintenance. On January 7,
1949, the Israeli air-force, consisting of several Spitfires and Czech
built Messerschmidt Bf-109 fighters (transferred secretly from Czech
bases to Israel), shot down five British-piloted Spitfires flying for
the Egyptian air-force over the Sinai desert causing a major diplomatic
embarrassment for the British government. According to British reports,
based on informants within the Czech Government, the total Czech dollar
income from export of arms and military services to the Middle East in
1948 was over $28 million, and Israel received 85% of this amount. As
late as 1951, Czech Spitfires continued to arrive in Israel by ship
from the Polish port of Gydiniya-Gdansk (Danzig). Since May, 2005 the
Military Museum in Prague has displayed a special exhibition on the
Czech aid to Israel in 1948.
In contrast, the American State Department declared an embargo on all
weapons and war material to both Jews and Arabs in Palestine, a move
that only had one effect in practice. There was no Arab community in
North America to speak of and given the fact that a substantial and
overwhelmingly sympathetic Jewish community in the United States was
anxious to aid the Jewish side, the embargo simply prevented a large
part of this intended aid from reaching its destination. The small
trickle of supplies and arms reaching Israel from North America was
accomplished by smuggling. The U.S. vote in favor of partition was only
de facto reflecting the State Department’s care not to unnecessarily
offend the Arab states whereas the Soviet vote recognized Israel de
jure. Nevertheless, the universal belief endorsed by the media and
never challenged by all those who shed crocodile tears for the
Palestinian Arabs is that the United States was wholly or largely
responsible for fully supporting Israel on the ground from the very
beginning of its independence in May, 1948.
Even with Czech weapons and Soviet aid, Israel would undoubtedly have
been unable to halt the Arab invasion without a massive inflow of
manpower. The United States, Canada and Europe provided no more than
3000 volunteers, many of them combat hardened veterans from both the
European and Pacific theaters of war plus a few score idealistic
youngsters from the Zionist movements with no combat experience or
training. But their numbers were a drop in the bucket compared to more
than 200,000 Jewish immigrants from the Soviet dominated countries in
Eastern Europe, notably, Poland, Bulgaria (almost 95% of the entire
Jewish community) Romania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the former
Baltic States and even the Soviet Union who emigrated to Israel
arriving in time to reach the front lines or replenish the depleted
ranks of civilian manpower. Without both the arms and manpower sent
from the “Socialist Camp”, to aid the nascent Israeli state, it would
have been crushed.
The About-Face of The Party Line on Zionism
Jewish Marxist theoreticians the world over including several high
ranking Party activists, all dedicated anti-religious and anti-Zionist
communists had followed the Party Line and even praised a vicious
pogrom by Muslim fanatics carried out against ultra-Orthodox Jews in
the town of Hebron in Palestine in 1929. The Party Line then was that
the Arab masses were demonstrating their anti-imperialist sentiment
against British rule and its sponsorship of Zionism. In 1947, when
Stalin was convinced that the Zionists would evict the British from
Palestine, the Party Line turned about face. Following Soviet
recognition and aid to Israel in 1948-49, both the Daily Worker and the
Yiddish language communist daily in the U.S. Freiheit (Freedom) outdid
one another to explain the new party line in that…. “Palestine had
become an important settlement of 600,000 souls, having developed a
common national economy, a growing national culture and the first
elements of Palestinian Jewish statehood and self-government.”
A 1947 CP-USA resolution entitled “Work Among the Jewish Masses”
berated the Party’s previous stand and proclaimed that “Jewish Marxists
have not always displayed a positive attitude to the rights and
interests of the Jewish People, to the special needs and problems of
our own American Jewish national group and to the interests and rights
of the Jewish Community in Palestine”. The new reality that had been
created in Palestine was a “Hebrew nation” that deserved the right to
self-determination. Remarkably, the Soviet propaganda machine even
praised the far Right underground groups of the Irgun and “Stern Gang”
for their campaign of violence against the British authorities.
Church Support in the U.S.
The Jewish cause in Palestine enjoyed the support of a large section of
mainstream and liberal Protestant churches and not primarily the
“lobby” of Protestant Fundamentalists as is often portrayed today by
critics of Zionism. As early as February 1941 and in spite of the
wholehearted desire of the American Protestant establishment not to
risk involvement in World War II, Reinhold Niebhur spoke out
convincingly through the journal he founded “Christianity and Crisis”
and sounded a clarion call of warning about Nazism. Its final goals
were not simply the eradication of the Jews but the extirpation of
Christianity and the abolition of the entire heritage of Christian and
humanistic culture. This is the only kind of “World Without Zionism”
that the Iranian and Arab leaders long for. Niebhur based his views not
on any literal “Evangelical” interpretation of Biblical promises but
the essentials of justice for the nations and also called for some form
of compensation to those Arabs in Palestine who might be displaced if
their own leaders refused to make any compromise possible.
Nazi and Reactionary Support for the Arabs
There was nothing "progressive" about those who supported the Arab
side. The acknowledged leader of the Palestinian Arab cause was the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had fled from
Palestine to Iraq to exile in Berlin where he led the "Arab office,"
met with Hitler whom he called "the Protector of Islam," served the
Germans in Bosnia where he was instrumental in raising Muslim
volunteers among the Bosnians to work with the SS. At the end of the
war, the Yugoslav government declared him a war criminal and sentenced
him to death. Palestinian Arabs still regard him as their original
supreme leader. Lending active support to the Arab war effort were
Falangist volunteers from Franco's Spain, Bosnian Muslims and Nazi
renegades who had escaped the Allies in Europe.
The close relationship between the Nazi movement and the German
government under Hitler in courting the Arab Palestinian and Pan-Arab
attempt to act as Fifth column in the Middle East has been thoroughly
researched by Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers’ in their new
book Halbmond und Hakenkreuz. Das "Dritte Reich", die Araber und
Palästina, (Crescent Moon and Swastika: The Third Reich, the Arabs, and
Palestine) It was published in September, 2006 and has yet to appear in
English translation. It documents the Arab sympathies for Nazism,
particularly in Palestine and German attempts to mobilize and encourage
the Arabs with their ideology, especially the Muslim Brotherhood, and
the forces around the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
in Palestine.
Nazi radio broadcasts to the Arabs between 1939 and 1945 constantly
proclaimed the natural German sympathy for the Arab cause against
Zionism and the Jews. German Middle East experts stressed "the natural
alliance" between National Socialism and Islam. And such experts as the
former German Ambassador in Cairo, Eberhard von Stohrer, reported to
Hitler in 1941 that "the Fuhrer already held an outstanding position
among the Arabs because of his fight against the Jews."
Cüppers and Mallmann quote many original documents from the Nazi
archives on this close relationship. From the late 1930s, the planning
staffs dealing with the external affairs of the Reich in the Head
Office of Reich Security (RSHA, Reichssecuritathauptamt, originally
under the monstrous Gestapo-chief Reinhard Heydrich), sought to engulf
the Arabian Peninsula and win control of the region‘s oil reserves.
They dreamt of a pincer movement from the north via a defeated Soviet
Union, and from the south via the Near East and Persia, in order to
separate Great Britain from India.
Thanks to the counteroffensive of the Red Army before Moscow in
1941/1942 and at Stalingrad in 1942/1943, and the defeat of the German
Africa Corps with El Alamein, the Germans never managed to actively
intervene in the Middle East militarily although they helped spark a
pro-Axis coup in Baghdad in 1941.
Britain and the Abstentions
In the vote on partition in the UN, apart from the states with large
Muslim minorities (like Yugoslavia and Ethiopia), the Arabs managed
only to wheedle a few abstentions and one lone negative vote out of the
most corrupt non-Muslim states. These included Cuba (voted against
partition) and Mexico (abstained) eager to demonstrate their
independence of U.S. influence and Latin American countries whose
regimes had been pro-Axis until the final days of World War II such as
Argentina and Chile (both abstained).
All the West European nations (except Great Britain) voted for
partition as well. No other issue to come before the U.N. has had such
unanimous support from the European continent or cut across the
ideological divide of communist and western sectors. The Jewish state
was even supported by Richard Crossman, a member of the Anglo-American
Committee of Inquiry on Palestine who had been handpicked by Britain’s
anti-Zionist Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin. Crossman, taking a
principled stand, refused to endorse the Labor Party Line.
He had visited the Displaced Persons camps in Germany where Jews who
had sought entry into Palestine were being detained. He realized that
their sense of desperation derived from a world with no place which
they as Jews could truly call home. He wrote that when he started out
he was ready to believe that Palestine was the “problem,” but his
experiences made him realize that it was the “solution.”
Convenient Amnesia
Today’s media never attempt (not even the History Channel) to explain
how it was Soviet and East Block aid and not American support that was
the crucial factor which brought both essential weapons and manpower to
the beleaguered newborn Israeli state in 1948-49 and enabled it to turn
the tide of battle and justifiably hand the Palestinian Arabs and their
allies their “Nabka.” Soviet hopes that they might eventually pressure
the new and profoundly democratic Israeli state to side with them in
the Cold War were hopelessly naïve*. The Arabs cannot admit the truth
of Soviet aid to Israel as it would rob them of their psychological
advantage that they are victims who have the right to continually
browbeat Western and especially American public opinion as responsible
for their catastrophe. Amnesia is a common malady among politicians.
Democrats and others who have soured on American intervention in Iraq
now have great difficulty remembering Iraqi aggression against Iran,
Kuwait and the atrocities committed against the Kurds, Assyrians, Marsh
Arabs and all opponents of the regime. Even President Bush and his
supporters seem to suffer from amnesia and are reluctant or incapable
of setting the record straight about 1948.
Two recent works of superb scholarship that directly deal with the full
range of contemporary PRIMARY SOURCES of the Arab Central Committee in
Arabic, the Jewish Agency Executive in Hebrew and the British Mandate
authorities reveal a very nuanced picture of the Arab reaction to
Zionism and cooperation with Jewish neighboring settlements that
challenges the accepted conventional wisdom of total hostility towards
the Zionist enterprise (see review of “Army of Shadows; Palestinian
Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948” by Hillel Cohen. Translated by
Haim Watzman, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2008 reviewed
in New English Review, February, 2009) and the just published
“Palestine Betrayed” by Ephraim Karsh, Yale University Press, New
Haven. 2010)
The Actual Hostilities on the Ground; Palestinian Arab Passivity
The blame and ultimate responsibility for the Nakba and Arab flight
from Palestine during 1947-48 rests squarely on the divided and corrupt
Arab leadership that should be held up to scrutiny in the light of what
the world has witnessed during the last ten months of civil war in
Lebanon. Mass atrocities, mutilations, indiscriminate killing,
blackmail, arson, looting, and mass flight were and remain the norm in
inter-Arab conflicts. The Arab civil population of Haifa and Jaffa
realized long before April 1948 that their lives and property were in
jeopardy from the poorly disciplined, irregular, and corrupt Arab
expeditionary forces from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and
“irregular volunteers” as much as from the prospect of a Jewish
military victory.
Dr. Herbert Pritzke was an escaped German prisoner of war who served as
Chief Medical Officer for the Arab forces in Jaffa. His eyewitness
account, Bedouin Doctor (Dutton, 1957) is the objective reporting of a
foreign volunteer:
”There was no discipline,
no military police. no muster rolls, no list of personnel. No one ever
knew who belonged to which unit or where the different units were. This
incurable disorder was shamelessly exploited.
Things happened as they
were bound to happen under such leadership. By the end of April, the
Jaffa front was completely disintegrated. The town was almost deserted.
Less than a tenth of the 80,000 inhabitants remained in their homes,
and even this remnant was trying by all means possible to get out of
the town. Fear of their own bullying and cruel compatriots spurred them
to leave home and property, not less than the imminent occupation of
the town by the Jewish besiegers. More-over, bandits, more dangerous
than the occupying force, were roaming through the town singly and in
groups robbing and murdering.
It was clear that the
depopulated and demoralized town must soon be overrun by the Jews. We
Germans, who met almost daily in my room in the hospital, found
ourselves in a very precarious situation. As representatives of law and
order, we could to some extent check the depredations of the bandits
and looters, which did not make us popular with them. At the same time,
we felt that we were hated by the embittered citizens because we could
not save their town. If we managed to survive the final chaos, we could
look forward to no prospect of future but captivity. The Arabs
themselves no longer showed any keenness to fight for their country.”
Dr. Pritzke makes no mention whatsover regarding Deir Yassin but bears
out the contention endorsed by all observers at the time that “It was a
dirty, nasty little war fought at close quarters by intertwined
populations” and that at the outset of the war the Arab side possessed
a clear superiority in firepower.
*For a more detailed account of Czech aid to Israel during the War of
Independence, see Israel Between East and West; Israel’s Foreign Policy
Orientation, 1948-56. Uri Waller. Cambridge University. 1990. 302 pages
ISBN 0521362490
_____________________________
Norman Berdichevsky,
a geographer, historian and linguist, is a contributing editor at New
English Review. His published works include, Spanish Vignettes: An
Offbeat Look Into Spain's Culture, Society & History, and Nations,
Language and Citizenship. A new book, Danish Delights, will be
published in early 2011 by the Danish Free Press Society.
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