EDITOR: The Norwegian bomber has interesting inspiration
Below you can see that Melanie Philips has inspired the madman from Norway. Not that surprising. What is interesting is her claim that she is only mentioned 2 times in 1500 pages… really, he should have mentioned her more often… normally, I would think twice before quoting Phillips here, but this is too good to miss…
A wider pathology: Melanie Phillips blog
A concerned reader has sent me a post by Sunny Hundal on the Liberal Conspiracy blog. Hundal brings us what he clearly considers to be the most important news about the Norwegian atrocity. This is that, in the ‘manifesto’ reportedly published by the terrorist suspect Anders Behring Breivik, two of my articles are quoted.
Golly. Is Hundal suggesting that my writing provoked the mass murder of some 93 Norwegians? Doubtless with one eye on the law of libel, he piously avers:
…there is no suggestion that his actions were inspired by Melanie Phillips, nor am I making that claim.
Yet apart from a glancing reference to Jeremy Clarkson, whose remark about the flag of St George is also cited in this ‘manifesto’, I am the only person to whom Hundal refers to in this blog post, quoting at some length both my article and Breivik’s comments on it. He therefore gives the impression that I play a major role in this supposed ‘manifesto’, which he describes as warning of the ‘Islamic colonisation of western Europe’.
But in fact, there are only two references to me or my work in its 1500 pages. Those references are to two articles by me published in the Daily Mail, a mainstream British paper — one on mass fatherlessness in Britain, and the other on the revelation by a former civil servant of a covert Labour government policy of mass immigration into Britain. There is no reference whatever to my writing on Islamisation.
Not only that, Breivik name-checks a vast number of mainstream writers and thinkers, including Bernard Lewis, Roger Scruton, Ibn Warraq, Mark Steyn, Theodore Dalrymple, Daniel Hannan, Diana West, Lars Hedegaard, Frank Field, Nicolas Soames, Keith Windschuttle, Edmund Burke, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Hayek, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Ghandi, George Orwell and many others; indeed, it’s a roll call of western thinking and beyond, past and present.
So why doesn’t Hundal refer to any of these people who have also been thus name-checked? Why has he singled me out in this way? It looks like yet another crude attempt to smear me by a writer who has long displayed an unhealthy obsession with my work (see here and here and here for example).
The supposed beliefs of the Norway massacre’s perpetrator has got the left in general wetting itself in delirium at this apparently heaven-sent opportunity to take down those who fight for life, liberty and western civilisation against those who would destroy it. On Twitter and the net and in the liberal media, the forces of spite, malice and venom have been unleashed in a terrifying display of irrationality.
After all, we don’t even know yet whether Breivik acted alone. We don’t know whether this ‘manifesto’ was indeed written by him or indeed what it is: as Mark Steyn observes here, it reads like as weird kind of cut-and-paste job. If it is indeed the work of a psychopath, it doesn’t bear examination for a single minute. And yet the words of a deranged individual are being cited by people like Hundal who are taking them entirely seriously. Since when did people ever use the ravings of a madman in public debate? As Steyn writes:
…when a Norwegian man is citing Locke and Burke as a prelude to gunning down dozens of Norwegian teenagers, he is lost in his own psychoses. Free societies can survive the occasional Breivik. If Norway responds to this as the left appears to wish, by shriveling even further the bounds of public discourse, freedom will have a tougher time.
Already, through the selective and distorted use of this document and the amplification of such malevolence through Twitter and the net, a blood-lust is building. Thus I am receiving emails such as one from Carsten T Holst-Lyngaard who says:
I congratulate you on your part in the Norway massacre;
or this from Taper Collins:
blood on your hands. hope you’re happy with the effects of your anti-everyone vitriol. abhorrent.
Breivik may be one unhinged psychopath – but what is now erupting as a result of the Norway atrocity is the frenzy of a western culture that has lost its mind.
Compare Phillips now to her writing after 7/7: Liberal Conspiracy
by Sunny Hundal
July 26, 2011 at 5:59 pm
You may have noticed that Melanie Phillips wrote a reply to my news piece earlier about how she was mentioned and quoted by the Oslo terrorist Breivik.
Phillips took time to go through Liberal Conspiracy to dredge up other times we had mentioned her, but didn’t even bother reading the front-page. She isn’t the only one I mentioned from the manifesto of course – we also pointed that the English Defence League was admired by him in internet postings.
I also pointed out that the manifesto frequently links to and mentions people such as Robert Spencer, another person that Phillips has quoted approvingly in the past. On Twitter I have pointed out links to several other groups such as the Hindu far-right in India.
Anyway. Yesterday, Melanie Phillips wrote on her blog:
After all, we don’t even know yet whether Breivik acted alone. We don’t know whether this ‘manifesto’ was indeed written by him or indeed what it is: as Mark Steyn observes here, it reads like as weird kind of cut-and-paste job. If it is indeed the work of a psychopath, it doesn’t bear examination for a single minute.
And yet the words of a deranged individual are being cited by people like Hundal who are taking them entirely seriously. Since when did people ever use the ravings of a madman in public debate?
Odd. Melanie Phillips wasn’t so afraid to ask questions and link the actions of a few ‘madmen’ (a term offensive to some) to Muslims straight after the terrorist attacks of 7/7.
Here is what she said then: (h-t Chris Brooke):
Above all, this poses the most urgent questions about the Muslim community from which this monstrous act has sprung. It is absolutely essential that we all find the answer to such questions if we are to have any hope at all of preventing further such atrocities.
…
In doing so, it has been taking its cue from the Muslim community itself which seems to be in the deepest denial. Yes, it has certainly condemned the atrocity in the strongest terms. But in the very next breath, its leaders have effectively washed their hands of it by repeating like a mantra that anyone claiming to be a Muslim who commits such an act is not a proper Muslim, because Islam is a religion of peace.
She also wasn’t averse to using that tragedy to attack the left broadly:
These lies emanating from extremists in the Muslim world have been further inflated by support from those in the wider community in Britain – mainly on the left – whose obsessive repetition of such falsehoods and disproportionate attention to the misdeeds of the west while ignoring Muslim atrocities have helped turn grievance into hysteria.
Breivik didn’t act alone – he had plenty of people agreeing with him on what the problem was and who was causing it.
Melanie Phillips’ response yesterday reminds me of this widely circulated poster on Facebook
Melanie Phillips ‘smeared’ over Breivik’s manifesto: Jewish Chronicle
By Jennifer Lipman, July 26, 2011
Journalist and commentator Melanie Phillips has criticised crude smear tactics after she was linked to the man behind the Norway massacre because he had quoted from her in his “manifesto”.
Ms Phillips, who writes a column for the Jewish Chronicle, responded to a post on the website Liberal Conspiracy, in which Sunny Hundal highlighted the fact that Anders Breivik had quoted from two separate pieces she had written for the Daily Mail.
Mr Hundal acknowledged that there was no suggestion that his actions, which led to the deaths of more than 90 people, were inspired by the writer.
But on her personal blog Ms Phillips said his post still gave that impression and pointed out that as she was one of many people quoted in Breivik’s 1,500 page missive – others included Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Jeremy Clarkson and George Orwell – it was wrong to single her out.
“It looks like yet another crude attempt to smear me,” she said, adding that the political left was delighted by “this apparently heaven-sent opportunity to take down those who fight for life, liberty and western civilisation against those who would destroy it”.
She said of the manifesto: “If it is indeed the work of a psychopath, it doesn’t bear examination for a single minute.
“And yet the words of a deranged individual are being cited by people like Hundal who are taking them entirely seriously. Since when did people ever use the ravings of a madman in public debate?”
She also said that the “distortion” of her place in Breivik’s writings had prompted supporters of his actions to write and congratulate her.
Report: Norwegian Shooter Loves Israel: ICH
By Israel National News
July 25, 2011 “Israel National News” — Anders Behring Breivik, the man being held for Friday’s shooting at an island off the coast of Norway, expressed anti-Islamic sentiments in English in the past and was an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, according to a Sunday-evening report by Channel 2 television. Breivik’s 1,500 page book attacks the European political establishment because he sees it as an ally of the Muslims against Israel, and praises Israel for not giving Muslims the same rights they enjoy in different European countries.
Breivik says, “The time has come to stop the stupid support of the Palestinians…and to start supporting our cultural cousins – Israel.” The sight of the massacre was a camp which demanded, days earlier, that Israel “finish the occupation.” Anti-Israel, pro-Arab signs were hung in the camp. The death toll in the shooting and the explosion of a bomb in downtown Oslo stands at 93.
The grumpy diplomats of the rogue state: The Electronic Intifada
Ilan Pappe, 22 July 2011
The Israeli ambassador to Spain, Raphael Schutz, has just finished his term in Madrid. In an op-ed in Haaretz’s Hebrew edition he summarized what he termed as a very dismal stay and seemed genuinely relieved to leave.
This kind of complaint now seems to be the standard farewell letter of all Israeli ambassadors in Western Europe. Schutz was preceded by the Israeli ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, on his way to his new posting at the United Nations in New York, complaining very much in the same tone about his inability to speak in campuses in the United Kingdom and whining about the overall hostile atmosphere. Before him the ambassador in Dublin expressed similar relief when he ended his term in office in Ireland.
All three grumblers were pathetic but the last one from Spain topped them all. Like his colleagues in Dublin and in London he blamed his dismal time on local and ancient anti-Semitism. His two friends in the other capitals were very vague about the source of the new anti-Semitism as both in British and Irish history it is difficult to single out, after medieval times, a particular period of anti-Semitism.
But the ambassador in Madrid without any hesitation laid the blame for his trials and tribulations on the fifteenth century Spanish Inquisition. Thus the people of Spain (his article was entitled “Why the Spanish hate us”) are anti-Israeli because they are either unable to accept their responsibility for the Inquisition or they still endorse it by other means in our times.
This idea that young Spaniards should be moved by atrocities committed more than 500 years ago and not by criminal policies that take place today, or the notion that one could single out the Spanish Inquisition as sole explanation for the wide public support for the Palestinian cause in Spain, can only be articulated by desperate Israeli diplomats who have long ago lost the moral battle in Europe.
But this new complaint — and I am confident that there are more to come — exposes something far more important. The civil society struggle in support of Palestinian rights in key European countries has been successful. With few resources, sometimes dependent on the work of very small groups of committed individuals, and aided lately by its biggest asset — the present government of Israel – this campaign has indeed made life quite hellish for every Israeli diplomat in that part of the world.
So when we come and assess what is ahead of us, we who have been active in the West are entitled to a short moment of satisfaction at a job well done.
The three grumpy ambassadors are also right in sensing that not only has Israeli policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip come under attack, but also the very racist nature of the Jewish state has galvanized decent and conscientious citizens — many of them Jewish — around the campaign for peace and justice in Palestine.
Outside the realm of occupation and the daily reality of oppression all over Israel and Palestine, one can see more clearly that history’s greatest lesson will eventually reveal itself in Palestine as well: evil regimes do not survive forever and democracy, equality and peace will reach the Holy Land, as it will the rest of the Arab world.
But before this happens we have to extricate ourselves from the politicians’ grip on our lives. In particular we should not be misled by the power game of politicians. The move to declare Palestine, within 22 percent of its original being, as an independent state at the UN is a charade whether it succeeds or not.
A voluntary Palestinian appeal to the international community to recognize Palestine as a West Bank enclave and with a fraction of the Palestinian people in it, may intimidate a Likud-led Israeli government, but it does not constitute a defining moment in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine. It would either be a non-event or merely provide the Israelis a pretext for further annexation and dispossession.
This is another gambit in the power game politicians play which has led us nowhere. When Palestinians solve the issue of representation and the international community exposes Israel for what it is — namely the only racist country in the Middle East — then politics and reality can fuse again.
And slowly and surely we will be able to put back the pieces and create the jigsaw of reconciliation and truth. This must be based on the twofold recognition that a solution has to include all the Palestinians (in the occupied territories, in exile and inside Israel) and has to be based on the construction of a new regime for the whole land of historical Palestine, offering equality and prosperity for all the people who live there now or were expelled from it by force in the last 63 years of Israel’s existence.
The obvious discomfort the three diplomats felt and expressed is not due to any cold shoulder shown to them in local foreign ministries or governments. And therefore while many Europeans can make their lives miserable, their respective governments can still look the other way.
Whether it is financial desperation and external Israeli and American pressure that bought Greece’s collaboration against the Gaza Freedom Flotilla or it is the power of intimidation that silences even progressive newspapers like the Guardian in the West, Israel’s immunity is still granted despite its diplomats’ misery.
This is why we should ensure that not only Israeli ambassadors feel uncomfortable in European capitals, but also all those who support them or are too afraid to confront Israel and hold it to account.
Ilan Pappe is Professor of History and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. His most recent book is Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (Pluto Press, 2010).
Demonising the fly-in: Israel’s strategy in action: Jews4big
Posted on 23 July 2011
J-BIG member Les Levidow was one of the London-based activists whose plan to travel to Bethlehem via Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on July 8 was thwarted by a hysterical security clamp-down by the Israel authorities. After returning from several days detention in Givon Prison, Levidow wrote this analysis of Israeli attempts to stigmatise participants, first as “provocateurs” and “hooligans” and then as “terrorists”.
The ‘Welcome to Palestine’ initiative aimed to challenge Israel’s blockade on Palestinians receiving foreign visitors. They have been effectively barred from Palestine unless pretending to be tourists or Christian pilgrims. Even prisoners have some rights to receive visitors, but the Israeli prison known as ‘the West Bank’ keeps out pro-Palestinian visitors.
To challenge this restriction, several hundred of us planned to arrive at Ben Gurion airport on 8th July for a week-long programme of events. In the publicly advertised plan, we would openly declare our intention to visit Bethlehem and to be hosted by the Al-Rowwad Cultural Centre there. This initiative came to be called the fly-in. Some mass media called it the flytilla, by analogy to the Gaza flotilla being simultaneously blocked by Greece, though our week-long programme had been planned several months earlier.
Nearly all of us were blocked enroute to Palestine (see below), resulting in high-profile mass- media coverage in Israel and Europe. This achieved a major aim of the initiative, said Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh:
The local organizers of the “Welcome to Palestine” campaign, while sad about our continuing isolation from the international community, are pleased that this episode and brutal Israeli assault removes one of the last illusions about “Israeli Democracy.”
Blocking hooligans?
Just before 8th July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denouncedus as ‘provocateurs’ intending to cause disturbances and criminal damage. ‘Our intelligence says some of these people want to cause confrontation’, he said. He personally inspected prison facilities for detaining us. Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharomowitz warned, ‘We will block these hooligans from entering the state.’
Pre-emptive actions ensued. Israel sent airline companies a list of banned individuals, who the day before received email messages barring them from their flights, e.g. from Paris, Brussels, Frankfurt and Geneva. On 8th July protests at those airports were filmed and posted on YouTube with the title ‘Israeli checkpoint’. A spokesperson for the fly-in said, ‘Charles de Gaulle Airport is under Israeli occupation.’
The Israeli government encouraged such a view of its political influence in Europe. Commenting to the mass media, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that Israel’s diplomatic efforts led to the airlines’ cooperation in preventing the departure of the activists. This political basis was denied by airlines: ‘The fact that we prevented the activists from boarding the planes is no evidence of our supporting the State of Israel against the activists, or the opposite.’ According to Lufthansa, their action was legally constrained: airlines are obliged to block anyone ‘whose entry is refused by the destination country, as in this case’.
We learned about the Europe-wide blockages on the day before our departure and so anticipated problems at London’s Luton airport on Friday morning 8th July. Fortunately, we smoothly boarded our Easyjet flight (except for one well-known activist who had been interviewed on Israeli radio). As we proceeded to the passenger area upstairs, some of us were stopped by a British official – probably from MI5, the political police. He asked to see our boarding passes, apparently to identify anyone on the Tel Aviv flight, and then asked exactly where we planned to go or whether we planned to attend a demonstration. When one womansaid no, she was accused of lying. Here the UK government was turning Luton airport into an Israeli checkpoint, acting on the paranoia and lies of the Israeli government.
Arriving at Ben Gurion airport, when we told passport control that we intended to travel to Bethlehem, 14 of us were detained – but were never questioned by Israeli authorities.
(Another UK participant was allowed through passport control, soon received a phone call about our detention, tried to protest, was arrested and then was detained with the rest of us.)
Delegates arriving earlier from other countries had a similar experience; only a few of them were questioned. We all had stated our travel destination in order to challenge the blockade.
Nevertheless the government attributed subterfuge and deception to us. An official told the mass media that ‘most of the activists were identified and taken in for questioning during the afternoon hours’, implying that they had a great task to identify us.
Moreover, the Prime Minister later commented: ‘We stopped the defiant fly-in against the state of Israel. Israel will continue to frustrate provocations and attempts to break through our borders, whether by land, sea or air.’ Such paranoic language attributes physical force to people seeking to enter the country in the normal way. If openly visiting Palestinians is ‘against the state of Israel’, then what kind of the state is it?
While awaiting transfer from the airport to prison, at least 60 of us were crowded into an office of the Border Police. Officials there seemed unprepared for dealing with us, even embarrassed at detaining us. After a couple hours, 21 soldiers and police stormed in, grabbed some activists and dragged them downstairs to a police vehicle, where handcuffs were waiting and applied.
Meanwhile the police were filming us, perhaps hoping to get a violent response to show the mass media, though we simply huddled together for protection. We would have appeared as implausible hooligans, especially given our social composition: more than half were women, and approx. one-third were more than 50 years old. Without physical resistance, the rest of us walked downstairs to the police vehicles, which took us to Givon Prison near Ramle. There a wing had been allocated to us, with separate sections for the men and women. This prison is normally used to detain people who are classified as ‘illegal immigrants’, originating mainly from the global South.
Returnees from Givon Prison at Luton airport, 12 July. Women had written on their prison-issue t-shirts: ‘Prisoner of Israeli Democracy’. Credit: Alan Wheatley, London Green Party
We never received an official explanation for why we were detained. According to the UK consulate’s second-hand account from the Israeli government, officially we had never entered Israel and so were still ‘in transit’, despite being imprisoned 30 km from the airport. Although Israel has formal rules and rights for illegal immigrants, ‘You are in another dimension’, the Givon Prison chief told us. In response to the blockage, the Welcome to Palestine organisers stated: ‘Over 120 internationals attempting to visit Palestine are still being illegally detained – kidnapped – in two Israeli detention centers, in Ramle and in Beer Al-Saba’ (Beersheva).’
Demonising Arab-European activists
After our imprisonment, the Israeli authorities attempted to salvage their original storyline that the fly-in posed a violent threat. Here is how…
The day after we arrived in the prison, a couple Border Police officials visited the prison with an offer – initially to me: ‘For humanitarian reasons, you can go to Bethlehem if you sign a document promising not to visit any place where there is conflict with the Army.’ I asked, ‘Couldn’t there be conflict with the Army anywhere?’ They clarified that the restriction meant places such as Bilin, Silwan, Jayous, etc. – i.e., flashpoints around the Apartheid Wall. As they also clarified, this offer was open to all the prisoners more than 55 years old.
After discussion among the older men, we agreed to accept the travel restriction – if the offer was extended to all the prisoners, regardless of age. We discussed our idea with the younger men, who supported our counter-proposal. Then we put this to the Border Police officials, who gave no verbal response.
Why the age limit in the Israeli proposal? Youth was being used as a marker for the dangerous Other: the French and Belgian younger men (approx. 30-50 years old) were mainly of North- African Arab descent, while only one older man was. The Border Police aimed to use the older men for a political aim: if we accepted their offer, then the ethnically Arab-European men could be isolated and stigmatised. Israel more widely uses youth as a marker for danger, e.g. in its 2009 ruling that only the under-15s and the over-50s males could go pray in Al Aqsa during Ramadhan and for a few weeks afterwards.
The Israeli offer to us was repeated several times. It was put individually to some older prisoners during our four days there. And was put again to eight of us (Brits and Americans) when brought back to Ben Gurion airport on Tuesday 12th July. An hour before our London flight, the Border Police repeated the offer. ‘We can take you to Jerusalem this evening’, one said half-jokingly.
In my final opportunity to probe the rationale of the Border Police, our interchange went as follows:
Q: Why is this offer only for the older people?
A: We first made this offer especially to you.
Q: Why me?
A: Because we know that you won’t act in a violent way.
Q: When we proposed to accept your offer if it was open to all the prisoners, why didn’t you agree?
A: Because our intelligence agency has information about the others.
Q: What information?
A: Involvement in terrorism.
So the original threat was upgraded – from provocateurs and hooligans to terrorists. Supposedly the Israeli officials had such information yet had not warned airlines about ‘terrorists’ on passenger lists.
(A Zionist website tried another demonization tactic, saying that older members of the delegation had been ‘flirting with fascism’, e.g. by effectively supporting Hamas or Hizbollah via involvement in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign)
Colluding with the Occupation
Non-violence was a central principle of the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ fly-in.16 As peace-keepers, international solidarity activists often join Palestinians in trying to protect their houses or their olive crops against pressures from illegal settlements. Sometimes the presence of internationals helps to deter terrorist activities by the IDF and settlers. So, how could Israel label the fly-in participants as hooligans or terrorists? Like its precedents in European colonialism, the Zionist state has generally projected its terrorist activity onto its colonial subjects, thus portraying its own crimes as self-defence against ‘terrorism’.
Unfortunately, this strategy has ideological resonance with EU laws conflating terrorism with any resistance to oppression and even verbal solidarity. Under EU law, a vaguely defined ‘terrorism’ encompasses offences committed with the aim of ‘unduly compelling a Government or international organisation to perform or abstain from performing any act’, anywhere in the world. On this basis, the EU banned a list of organisations (e.g. Hamas) as ‘terrorist’ and even authorised penalties against anyone associated with ‘terrorism’, as a means to deter European solidarity with resistance against oppression abroad.
In particular, bank accounts in Europe can be denied or frozen, simply on grounds of suspicion. This happened to the UK’s Viva Palestina convoy, though eventually it found an alternative bank. A Muslim charity providing aid to Palestine has been disrupted by three investigations about supposed links to terrorism, on the basis of no credible evidence.
By contrast to those political targets, the EU’s allies are never subjected to the vague definition of terrorism. For example, President Sarkozy is sponsoring a September 2011 conference on victims of terrorism. The organisers emphasise attacks on Israelis but remain silent about their attacks on Palestinians.
In those ways, the EU political-legal system encourages Israel to portray its war crimes as self- defence by an innocent victim. When the Border Police attempted to isolate Arab-European men from other European delegates, this attempt complemented the EU’s ‘counter-terror’ regime. The European fly-in became another target of Israel’s racist apartheid system, especially its demonization of resistance.
In the future we may face more systematic collusion between the EU and Israel in protecting its Occupation of Palestine against international solidarity. How best to anticipate and challenge this collusion?
==================================================
Author’s note
Thanks to the following: the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ network for organising the event, Scottish PSC for coordinating the London Easyjet contingent, fellow delegates for helpful comments on an earlier draft and of course the Givon Prison residents for camaraderie.
Bio-note: Les Levidow has been opposing the Israeli Occupation through various UK campaigns since the 1980s. These include: the ‘Return’ petition against the Israeli Law of Return (late 1980s), Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews Against Zionism (JAZ), Jews for Boycotting Israel Goods (J-BIG), and the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP). He also participates in the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), which opposes ‘anti-terror’ powers of the EU and UK.
Irene Gendzier: September 2011 and May 1948 – the great fear, now and then: ZCommunications
23 JULY 2011
Irene Gendzier
What will the Palestinians do at the UN in September? The question appears to haunt Washington and Tel Aviv as they prepare to block Palestinian attempts to obtain UN recognition, as though the very idea of such action represents a form of political impudence that merits the harshest international rejection. Sober accounts by Palestinians of what they may expect from a trip to the UN have done little to allay the dark cloud of suspicion that is fostered in mainstream accounts. The same can be said of references to the refugee problem whose origins are regularly shrouded in distortions if not simply deleted. The combination is invariably offered by Washington and Tel Aviv as further proof of the efforts to ‘delegitimize’ the state of Israel. Admittedly from their perspective, opening of discussion of these questions is unacceptable since it constitutes a risk, the risk that the American public may discover that the problems at the root of the great fear that looms over September are not new. They have been part of the conflict over Palestine at least since 1948, as has the U.S.A.
It was in 1948 and not in 1967 that the ‘special relationship’ between the U.S. and Israel originated. That relationship, from the outset, was forged in the broader context of Washington’s oil interests and accompanying military ambitions in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East more generally. U.S. officials openly recognized that Palestine was an inseparable part of this. By 1948 they were on record as committed to the UN Partition Plan though wary of the effects of escalating violence in Palestine on U.S. interests. That wariness increased in direct proportion to the acceleration of conflict generated by UNGA Res. 181 and its plan to partition Palestine, which led U.S. officials to call for a reconsideration of the question.
What follows is an abridged account of what led to this point and away from it, a period in which then-President Truman and the policy-making elite confronted the Jewish Agency for Palestine’s expansionist policies and its violent attacks on Palestinians as well as Palestinian and Arab rejection of partition. The record was clear as to the nature of the aggravated causes of continued conflict, including the conditions that led to the refugee problem, which Washington criticized — at least ostensibly. This is one part of the history that is discussed in the pages that follow. The other, which I have elaborated elsewhere,[1] is that U.S. officials concluded that Israel’s triumph of force, which Washington lamented as inadequate for long term peace, was more than adequate for the protection of U.S. interests. The resulting policies trumped support for Palestinian refugees as well as the attempt to curb Israeli expansion.
As the date of Britain’s departure from Palestine as the Mandatory Power approached, the level of tension visibly increased in the White House, and between the White House and various government departments (the State Department, including its Policy Planning Staff, the Defense Department, the CIA, and the U.S. delegation to the UN. The great fear was that chaos would descend on Palestine as the colonial power made its exit, with obvious risks to U.S. interests in the Arab East where U.S.-controlled Saudi oil concessions fueled the Marshall Plan.
What was to be done? By the winter of 1948 State and Defense Department officials agreed that the escalation of conflict could no longer be ignored as U.S. and international officers bore witness to its destructive consequences. U.S. officials in Palestine had been sending reports of increasing violence and an escalation of the conflict between Jewish forces in the Hagana, Irgun and Stern Gang, whose movements the Hagana could not control or in which it acquiesced. They were also apprised of the hostility of Palestinian and Arab leaders towards partition, but they recognized that their military capacity was no match to that of the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Palestine, contrary to the later myth of David and Goliath.
In Palestine, meanwhile, Arab forces carried out attacks against Jewish settlements as a result of which the Irgun retaliated. According to the expose published by the Israeli National Secretary of Mapam and the Director of its Arab Affairs Department in 1987, “the Irgun used a car bomb to blow up the government center in Jaffa, killing twenty-six Arab civilians. Three days later, they planted explosives at Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, and another twenty-five Arab civilians were killed. A pattern became clear, for in each case the Arabs retaliated, then the Hagana — while always condemning the actions of the Irgun and LEHI — joined in with an inflaming ‘counterretaliation.’”[2]
According to the January 1948 diaries of David Ben-Gurion, “the strategic objective [of the Jewish forces] was to destroy the urban communities, which were the most organized and politically conscious sections of the Palestinian people.”[3] The result was the “collapse and surrender of Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, Safed, Acre, Beit-Shan, Lydda, Ramleh, Majdal, and Beersheba. Deprived of transportation, food, and raw materials, the urban communities underwent a process of disintegration, chaos, and hunger, which forced them to surrender.”
The impact on U.S. officials in Palestine was sobering. The Consul in Jerusalem conceded that “any hopes we may have held that the disturbances immediately following the UN decision represented a passing phase, and that more tranquil times would soon return, have now been dispelled.”[4] The number of deaths was reported to have reached over a thousand, with twice that number wounded. As to the Palestinian government still under British control, it was “in a state of disintegration,” with disruption of services near government offices a reflection of the absence of cooperation between Arabs and Jews. Plans for the UN Commission to visit and assess the situation were in question. Yet, as the U.S. Consul affirmed, “Jewish officials say they have no doubts about their ability to set up their state,” or to defend the line between Haifa-Tel Aviv, unlike the Eastern Galilee and the Negev, and the future of the 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem about which they were concerned.[5] The U.S. Consul pointedly concluded that neither Arab attacks, nor UN or U.S. doubts about ongoing developments would fundamentally alter the objective of the Jewish Agency.
In the same period, Dean Rusk, who was then Director of the Office of UN Affairs, sent a memorandum to the Under-Secretary of State, Robert Lovett, proposing a “Shift to New Position on Palestine,” that meant reconsideration of partition. His was not an isolated voice. George F. Kennan had long been skeptical of the burdens that Washington was assuming in accepting partition. George C. Marshall, Robert Lovett, and Warren Austin were well aware of the risks, as was the newly-formed CIA that provided an assessment of the overall situation in Palestine alerting Washington to the incompatible positions of the Arabs and the Jews. The former, the Agency declared, were mobilizing and would oppose creation of a Palestinian state under the aegis of the Partition Plan; the Yishuv was unable to control extremist groups such as the Irgun and Stern Gang. The news was grim, save that the CIA recognized that the Saudis were not prepared to jettison U.S. oil contracts.
As for the Jewish Agency, it responded to news that Washington was considering bringing the Palestine question back to the United Nations with an intensified mobilization of its supporters. In addition, the head of the Jewish Agency in the U.S. developed a new and more ambitious strategy that involved developing closer relations with U.S. oil interests.
At another level, U.S. officials attempted to break the impasse in Palestine by reaching out to those it identified as Arab moderates and their Jewish counterparts, pointing to advocates of Arab-Jewish bi-nationalism and the supporters of a unitary state of Palestine that would recognize minority rights for Jews.
In a meeting with Secretary of State Marshall at the beginning of May 1948, Judah Magnes, a U.S.-born Reform Rabbi and President of the Hebrew University, urged the Secretary of State to apply financial sanctions against the Yishuv in an effort to curb its military activities, confident that as a result, “the Jewish war machine in Palestine would come to a halt for lack of financial fuel.”[6] Magnes recommended that financial contributions to Arab states be cut off as well.
No such policies were introduced or even contemplated. By March the decision was made to recommend an urgent cease fire, truce and trusteeship for Palestine to be implemented immediately following Britain’s departure. The response was categorical rejection by the Jewish Agency, which denounced what it viewed as Washington’s betrayal of its commitment to partition, and proceeded to organize for the immediate establishment of a provisional government in Palestine. On the Arab side, the question of truce was considered acceptable, on condition that it signified Washington’s formal rejection of partition, which was not the case.
U.S. officials amenable to reopening the discussion of partition circulated a draft on trusteeship that was not to be made public to U.S. missions in Paris, London and the Middle East. But its circulation coincided with the worsening of conditions in Palestine, as the U.S. Consul reported on the role of the Irgun in the massacre at Palestinian men, women and children in the village of Deir Yassin, and the expulsions and flight of Palestinians from Haifa and then Jaffa, among other places.
In Washington, news of the atrocities only served to increase anxiety over Britain’s imminent departure as opposition to Truman’s support for trusteeship increased. Views were mixed on this. Some officials argued that it was irrelevant given that a Jewish state existed in all but name and delaying its recognition would give the Soviet Union an advantage in Palestine and the Middle East, as it was on record as supporting partition and statehood was known to follow. Others, and they included the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary, insisted that for the U.S. to recognize the Jewish state while the U.S. and the UN were on record supporting a truce, with the U.S. on the Truce Commission, and the UNGA Partition Resolution still operative, in principle, Washington would be in an untenable position. Marshall and the State Department cadre working on Palestine were in accord that Washington should remain steadfast in its support for a truce and even trusteeship, with the knowledge that such was designed as a temporary solution only, thus not blocking future support for Jewish statehood. But this did not dispel the antagonism between State Department officials and others, such as Clark Clifford, Truman’s legal counsel and one of his trusted advisors on Palestinian matters, that came to a head on May 12, days before Israel moved to declare its independence on the departure of the British. Clifford, in fact, encouraged the head of the Jewish Agency to make the move, instructing him on how to formulate the announcement to be given the U.S. President, recommending that it be framed in terms of its adherence to the 1947 UN Partition Plan, advice which Ben-Gurion proceeded to ignore save when it suited him to claim otherwise.
Ben-Gurion later recalled this period and claimed that:
“We acted as we did because we doubted whether Marshall was willing to utilize the forces he represented to prevent the establishment of the State of Israel. The State was set up in opposition to Marshall, and the American Army was not used against us. Had it been, the State would have been destroyed at once. However, the very opposite happened; the United States immediately accorded de facto recognition to the State of Israel….”[7]
Ben-Gurion’s assessment was echoed by others who similarly believed that Washington would not publicly buck the Jewish Agency’s position. The impact of the Second World War and the Holocaust could not be forgotten; nor could the extent of support for the Jewish state in the U.S. But there were other considerations that carried weight in policy-making circles as the reassessment of the Palestine question in 1948 revealed. Those who had previously opposed or, at the least, been skeptical of the effects of partition on U.S. policy, now reconsidered and determined that the new state could be useful in the protection of U.S. interests, unlike the backward and militarily inferior Arab states.
The die was cast but not without continuing troubles, including the situation of the Palestinian refugees.
The new Israeli government declared its position on the refugee crisis in July 1948, when it announced that it was not responsible for the creation of the refugee problem, insisting that the flight of the Palestinians was entirely due to Arab orders. The response became the standard position of Israel and its supporters and remains so, despite the contrary evidence presented by Palestinians and Israelis. In 1948 and 1949 accounts of the refugee crisis were routinely sent to the Secretary of State as well as the U.S. President, who responded with efforts to persuade Israel to accept responsibility and to accept Palestinian refugee repatriation.
The CIA was on record as considering the problem as “the most serious population upheaval since the termination of World War ll.” Nearly a year after Israel’s declared independence, then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson referred to the “800,000″ Palestinian refugees as the “source of greatest immediate concern to the President,” insisting that they constituted a major problem capable of eroding “the good order and well-being of the Near East.”[8] The estimated number of refugees varied, but Washington’s position remained steady in its insistence on the principle of repatriation.
According to U.S. sources the number and location of Palestinian refugees at the end of 1948 was as follows:
“160,000-220,000 Northern Palestine
200,000-245,000 Southern Palestine
75,000-80,000 Transjordan
100,000-110,000 Syria
90,000 Lebanon
5,000 Iraq
8,000 Egypt
7,000 Israel”[9]
On December 11, 1948, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194 (lll) affirming that those refugees seeking repatriation and willing to live in peace be permitted to return when deemed practicable or receive compensation for property damage. Passage of the Resolution led to the establishment of the Palestine Conciliation Commission, to which Truman appointed Mark Etheridge as the U.S. delegate. Writing from the Lausanne Conference held in the early summer of 1949, Etheridge denounced Israel’s attitude on the refugee question as “morally reprehensible and politically short-sighted.”[10]
In the spring of 1949 the State Department claimed that following the British withdrawal from Palestine and the establishment of Israel, “almost the entire Arab population of Palestine fled or was expelled from the area under Jewish occupation.” The Department’s Policy Paper declared:
“Furthermore, Israeli authorities have followed a systematic program of destroying Arab houses in such cities as Haifa and in village communities in order to rebuild modern habitations for the influx of Jewish immigrants from DP camps in Europe. There are, thus, in many instances, literally no houses for the refugees to return to. In other cases incoming Jewish immigrants have occupied Arab dwellings and will most certainly not relinquish them in favor of the refugees. Accordingly, it seems certain that the majority of these unfortunate people will soon be confronted with the fact that they will not be able to return home. Unless some alternative is prepared and some hope offered them of an improved life in the future, it is certain that the political, to say nothing of the social, repercussions of this discovery will be very great.”[11]
Decrying what it viewed as Israeli intransigence, the U.S. urged Israel to “accept the principle of repatriation of an agreed number or category of refugees, with provision by Israel for appropriate safeguards of civil and religious rights and on condition that those repatriated desire to live at peace within Israel and to extend full allegiance thereto….”
The State Department also recommended the “permanent settlement in Arab Palestine” for as many of the refugees as could be accommodated, it being understood that such settlement would take place under the aegis of Transjordan and that it should include cooperation with Israel on such matters as water resources. In short, the U.S. endorsed the transfer of Palestinians, while simultaneously calling for their repatriation, but within recognized limits. The State Department Policy Paper recognized that “Israel has no intention of taking back more than a portion of the refugees.” Eliahu Elath (formerly Eliahu Epstein), Israel’s first Ambassador to the U.S., indicated that “he thought that maybe the Christian Arabs might be permitted to return but that the Moslem Arabs would be an intractable element who could not assimilate in Israel.”[12]
The UN General Assembly established a $32 million relief fund for Palestinian refugees to which member states were asked to contribute, while in the U.S. Truman authorized $16 million for Palestinian refugee relief, maintaining that it was essential given that “seven hundred thousand refugees are living almost on starvation level.”[13]
U.S. officials, up to and including the U.S. President, continued to meet with Israeli officials insisting that they make some move on the question of repatriation and return of property, but to no avail. At the end of March 1949 Truman was reported as “disturbed over the uncooperative attitude being taken [by Israel] and said that we must continue to maintain firm pressure.”[14] The U.S. President, in a secret May 28, 1949, message to Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion declared that:
“The Govt of Israel should entertain no doubt whatever that the U.S. Govt relies upon it to take responsible and positive action concerning Palestine refugees and that, far from supporting excessive Israeli claims to further territory within Palestine, the U.S. Govt believes that it is necessary for Israel to offer territorial compensation for territory which it expects to acquire beyond the boundaries of the Nov 29, 1947 res of the GA.”[15]
There was increasing recognition that it was unlikely that Israel would consider full repatriation, hence the suggestion that, in accord with economic conditions, some Palestinian refugees be settled in “Arab Palestine and that balance must be distributed between Syria and Transjordan.”[16] These states were to be ready to accept some 400,000 refugees.
Meanwhile, from Jerusalem, U.S. Consul William C. Burdett cabled the Sec of State on July 6, 1949 describing Palestinian refugees in terms of “despondency, misery, lack of hope and faith,” with the “destruction of former standards of values,” rendering them apt victims of communist propaganda.[17] Burdett continued, predicting that Israel “has no intention of allowing the return of any appreciable number of refugees except, perhaps, in return for additional territory…. Arab houses and villages, including those in areas not given Israel by the partition decision, have been occupied to a large extent by new immigrants. Others have been deliberately destroyed. There is practically no room left. Arab quarters in Jerusalem, until recently a military zone, are now almost full and new immigrants are pouring in steadily.”[18] And as Burdett concluded, “Israel eventually intends to obtain all of Palestine, but barring unexpected opportunities or internal crises will accomplish this objective gradually and without the use of force in the immediate future.”
Burdett also reported, along the same lines as Ben-Gurion in the earlier statement cited above, that on the basis of past experience Israelis were persuaded that Washington would not carry out its demands with respect to territory or refugees. Burdett cited the Israeli press as indicating “the effectiveness of organized Jewish propaganda in the U.S.” In his recommendations for U.S. and UN action, Burdett suggested that “punitive measures against Israel” be applied in order to oblige the government to “consent to a reduction in territory and repatriation of refugees.” But he was quick to add that no such measures could be anticipated even as Truman continued to support Palestinian repatriation in his discussions with Israeli leaders.
There were other factors affecting U.S. policy that increasingly took precedence and that eventually marginalized the refugee question to the extent possible. Those factors defined the nature of U.S. support for Israel in the context of Washington’s expanding interests in the Middle East. They constituted the core elements of what would later be referred to as the ‘special relationship,’ one in which a different record of U.S. policy was embedded and forgotten.
What then is the connection between the Great Fear regarding September 2011 and U.S. policy in 1948? The record is a reminder that Washington recognized the origins of the Palestinian demand for recognition and independence in 1948 much as it recognized the causes of the Palestinian refugee problem. Evidence of its confrontations with the Jewish Agency over its expansionist policies and with the new state of Israel over the condition of the Palestinian refugees is a reminder of what Washington knew and chose to forget, or more accurately, to subvert in deference to its own interests and the new state of Israel’s role in protecting them.
The resulting package is not about ‘delegitimizing’ the state of Israel but confronting an early part of the record of U.S. policy and its connection with the history that has led to the UN in September 2011.
Irene Gendzier is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Boston University; she is also a member of the IOA Advisory Board.