May 4, 2008
THOSE WHO FORGET HISTORY:
Endless War: a review of 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War By Benny Morris ( DAVID MARGOLICK, NY Times Book Review)
In late August 1948, during a United Nations-sanctioned truce, Israeli soldiers conducting what they called Mivtza Nikayon — Operation Cleaning — encountered some Palestinian refugees just north of the Egyptian lines. The Palestinians had returned to their village, now in Israeli hands, because their animals were there, and because there were crops to harvest and because they were hungry. But to the Israelis, they were potential fighters, or fifth columnists in the brand new Jewish state. The Israelis killed them, then burned their homes.As much as in any other scene in this meticulous, disturbing and frustrating book, the ineffable tragedy of Israelis and Palestinians resides in that brutal, heartbreaking image. On the one hand, the Jews were fighting for a safe haven three years after six million of them had been murdered. Undoubtedly some of those soldiers on patrol that day were survivors themselves, who’d lost their entire families in Europe and been handed rifles after washing ashore in Haifa or Tel Aviv.
And then there were the Palestinians, who had watched in horror over the past 75 years as these aliens first trickled, then poured, into their homeland. Were he an Arab leader, David Ben-Gurion once confessed to the Zionist official Nahum Goldmann, he, too, would wage perpetual war with Israel. “Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them?” he asked. “There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: We have come here and stolen their country.”
If you don't slay the Canaanites.... Posted by Orrin Judd at May 4, 2008 8:04 AM
Or the Wampanoags.
Posted by: Lou Gots at May 4, 2008 8:40 AMThere is no Palestine.
Posted by: Bartman at May 4, 2008 8:46 AMThe Palestinians believe there is one, so there is.
Posted by: oj at May 4, 2008 9:19 AMIf they really believed it, they would already have a 'country'. They love other things more than country, and their leaders are perfectly happy to keep their people in squalor to pursue those things.
Posted by: jim hamlen at May 5, 2008 7:59 AMThey're nationalists. They'll never have a country.
Posted by: oj at May 5, 2008 11:13 AM