OBAMA AND THE MUSLIMS: WHICH TRUTHS MUST BE SPOKEN?
Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Centre for Research and Globalization
June 8 2009
Canada
If there was one passage in the speech that President Barack Obama gave
in Cairo on June 4, that alarmed Israelis aligned with the Netanyahu
government, and destablized Rush Limbaugh, Liz Cheney and a host of
American neocons, it was neither his insistence on halting Israeli
settlements, nor his declared readiness to negotiate with Iran without
preconditions, nor his acknowledgement of Hamas as a political force,
but a statement that broke a fundamental taboo regarding official
Israeli historiography. After reviewing the persecution of Jews
throughout history, culminating in the holocaust, Obama went on
to state:
"On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people –
Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For
more than 60 years, they’ve endured the pain of dislocation. Many
wait in refugee camps …. They endure the daily humiliations – large
and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt. The
situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America
will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for
dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own."
Then, he referred to the "displacement [of Palestinians] brought
about by Israel’s founding…."
Although cloaked in the ultimate euphemisms, of "dislocation"
and "displacement," contrived by his creative speech-writers,
Obama’s reference to Palestinian expulsion as an integral part of
the process leading to the establishment of the state of Israel in
1948 is not only historically significant but immediately relevant
to the internal dynamic unfolding inside Israel today. It is not a
matter that U.S. presidents routinely refer to.
The late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said insisted that the events
of 1947-1948 must be viewed in terms of "different but intertwined
histories." We could witness this in commemorations last year: If the
Israelis celebrated the 60th anniversary of their state in 2008, the
Palestinians worldwide mourned six decades of exile, provoked by the
deliberate expulsion of their people from their land, under the command
of then-Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion. The term they use is "Nakba,"
or "catastrophe," a bit more apt than the euphemisms "dislocation"
and "displacement." But, call it what you will, what occurred was
massive expulsions, or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people
from their historic lands. Once the United Nations had decreed the
partition on November 29, 1947(with questionable legal validity), the
Zionist forces under Ben-Gurion launched the operational phase of their
project to de-Arabize not only the land allotted to a Jewish state,
but also other land they coveted. From late November until May 14,
1948, the date the complicit British had set for their withdrawal,
the Zionists succeeded in moving, with military precision, to drive
the native inhabitants from their land.
If one reads the accounts of these events, written by and about
Ben-Gurion, one finds no trace of such a scheme. Instead, their
fairy tale version has it that the Zionists would have welcomed
Arab cooperation in building the new state, but the Palestinians
preferred to leave; that force was never exerted to drive them out;
that if any violence occurred, it was in only response to anti-Zionist
attacks. And, besides, recounts Ben-Gurion in his memoirs, the Arabs
who had been there for centuries, had been lazy do-nothings, had not
cultivated the land or developed industry; therefore, it was better
for the Zionists to take over. Moreover, the Jews, he wrote, had a
biblical mandate to the land, having been there thousands of years
before, whereas Arab nationalism was a recent phenomenon.(1)
In 1961, Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi published a major
exposé of the real story, entitled, "Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the
Conquest of Palestine." In it, he detailed how the Zionist movement
had carefully planned the expulsions, according to Plan D (Dalet)
and executed them. In 1988, on the fortieth anniversary of the Nakba,
Khalidi’s groundbreaking research was reprinted in the Journal of
Palestine Studies, and the text of the Zionists’ project, the original
Plan Dalet, was published in English for the first time. In the 1980s,
in response to his exposés, a number of Israeli historians, dubbed
the "new historians," made their debut, reviewing, or revising the
official Zionist version of events. Among these scholars are Tom Segev,
Simcha Flapan, and others.
Most recently, one extremely courageous "new historian," Ilan Pappe,
published his research on the Nakba, in a volume entitled (without
euphemisms), The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which has also
happily been issued in German. Pappe documents in painstaking detail
how Ben-Gurion and his "Consultancy" (the general staff group he put
together for the task), planned the Nakba. With geographical-strategic
profiles of the cities and towns, their political, religious and
ethnic composition, their economic activities, and so forth, they drew
up a master plan for attacking, occupying, emptying and destroying
one locality after the other. They gave specific orders to their
armed bands (Haganah, Stern Gang and Irgun) to attack Palestinian
cities and towns, terrify the residents, round up the civic leaders,
executing some, blow up homes and other buildings, in order to cause
the panicked residents to flee. The documentation he provides from
primary sources like Ben-Gurion’s diaries, is as unassailable as it is
chilling. And it confirms, in spades, the research of Walid Khalidi,
this time from an Israeli source.
All this has been known to Palestinians and other Arabs, who lived
through these traumatic events, for decades. It has also been known
to those Israelis involved, but has been deliberately covered up by
the official, mythological account.
Now, in walks an American President who, in an address to the Muslims
of the world, touches upon the Nakba. To be sure, not in so many
words, but, a rose by any other name is still a rose, and anyone
who knows anything about the history of Israel, knows what he was
referring to. He did not speak of 1967 as a landmark, but referenced
"60 years," i.e. going back to 1948.
Thus, the hysterical reaction by Rush Limbaugh and Liz Cheney,
to Obama’s having presented the suffering of the Jews and of the
Palestinians as "morally equivalent." Bush’s former speech-writer
David Frum, the man credited with having coined the provocative term
"axis of evil," was also apoplectic. This is taboo: although it has not
been so openly debated in the U.S. media, the issue of the Nakba is
fundamental for Arabs. And it carries with it the issue of the right
of return, i.e. the right of those Palestinians driven out in 1948,
to return to their homes in what is present-day Israel.
Obama’s mention of this highly sensitive issue should have an impact
inside Israel. In fact, in the last weeks, the Nakba has become a
political football. A number of Knesset members presented a bill in
late May, calling for any commemoration of the Nakba to be banned
and punishable by a penalty of up to three years in prison. The move,
subsequently watered down to deny government funds to anyone honoring
the Nakba, was supported by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This
is interesting, indeed. Whenever a political body, be it a government
or parliament, calls for something to be penalized, one must take a
closer look at it, and ask why. This bill bears uncanny similarities
to a law on the books in Turkey, to wit, the infamous Paragraph 301
of the Constitution, which makes it illegal to state or write anything
about the genocide against the Armenians in 1915. This law has proven
impotent in front of the growing ranks of Turkish intellectuals,
among them murdered editor Hrant Dink, who have spoken out, to say
the genocide occurred and demand it be dealt with by the Turkish
political class and people.
The same is true in Israel. The Nakba occurred, and no law on
the books can erase that fact. Herein lies the significance of
Obama’s reference. Yes, the Israeli settlements must be frozen,
as per prior agreements; in fact, to conform to international law,
all the settlements on Palestinian land should be dismantled. And,
yes, there must be a return to the negotiating table. The existing
blueprints for peace (the Arab peace plan of 2000, the Road Map,) not
to mention peace agreements already signed, provide workable solutions
to end the conflict. But even if the new U.S. Administration were to
wield the political clout it possesses, perhaps by withholding funds
from Israel (as Washington did in 1991, to force Shamir to go to the
Madrid peace conference) to extract an agreement, this would not mean
peace. The historical truth must be acknowledged.
The current Israeli government is, at any rate, the least likely
candidate to buckle under to U.S. pressures. Netanyahu, after all,
is the man for whom the American neo-conservative faction of Richard
Perle, et al, drafted a policy in 1996, one which he only too readily
accepted. This was the "Clean Break" doctrine, which called for a
"clean break" with the Oslo accords and everything they implied. The
"Clean Break" document explicitly urged Israel to tear up the earlier
agreements with the Palestinians, to engage in "hot pursuit" against
them in the Occupied Territories as well as Gaza, and to promote
regime change, in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, all to the greater
glory of a Greater Israel, the new nuclear-armed hegemon in the
region.(2) Judging from past performance, and recent statements, the
Netanyahu-Lieberman government will under no circumstances acquiesce
to any reasonable offer coming from the Arabs and backed by Washington.
There will have to be a political change inside Israel, before such
a peace plan could even be sketched on the agenda.
Even in the improbable case that Netanyahu, under duress, were to sign
on the dotted line, such an agreement would be no more than a piece
of paper. As earlier treaties, with Egypt and Jordan, have shown,
peace is not merely the absence of war. It is a qualitatively new
relationship between former adversaries, whereby each views the other
as an equal human being, something which can certainly not be said
of the way Egyptians, Jordanians and Israelis view one another today.
The peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended centuries of religious
conflict, was forged on the basis of two noble concepts: that each
side embrace the commitment to "forgive and forget" whatever atrocities
occurred during conflict; and, that each strive to work to secure the
benefit, or interest, of the other. Several nations in Europe, among
them France and Germany, embraced this principle in making peace after
having fought each other in two catastrophic world wars in the last
century. Former enemies can become allies – if they face the truth.
In the Israeli-Palestinian case, this means that the historical
record must be recognized. The Israeli policy has been to "forget"
only too readily, in the sense of eradicating any record of what
happened. But, to be able to "forgive and forget," one must first
acknowledge the wrongs done; Israel, its government and people must
own up to the Nakba and to recognize its injustice. Then, and only
then, could it be possible for Palestinians, three generations later,
to pardon those responsible for their crimes.
Despite the loud noises coming from the extremist camps in Israel
against any such development, there is the movement of the "new
historians," of Israeli intellectuals who have used their access
to primary sources in the state archives, to document the ugly
story of the ethnic cleansing that paved the way for the founding
of the Israeli state. There is also the Zochrot, an organization
committed to making the truth about the Nakba known. Not to mention the
plethora of journalists, freedom activists, and cultural initiatives,
spearheaded by Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, who
are working to establish a new understanding between the two peoples,
as a prerequisite to peace.
These processes are in motion, and can become powerful forces for
change in political direction inside Israel. The shock of the war
Israeli waged against Gaza at the end of 2008 into January 2009,
fuelled this dynamic inside Israel, and abroad. That brutal aggression
against a hapless civilian population, ripped up the taboos reigning
in Europe, against any questioning of the wisdom or morality of Israeli
policy. Ongoing investigations, sparked by the United Nations entities
there (which were treated as an enemy force by Israel), will yield
their fruits. Pressure will continue to mount, to bring to light
the truth about that war, and the policy thinking behind it. Israel
will continue to reject any cooperation with such investigations and
to issue reports whitewashing the Israeli Defense Forces’ behavior
in Gaza. Official Israel will continue to balk at any initiative to
shed light on the Nakba. But to no avail. Truth has a way of making
itself known.
Once the historical record of 1947-1948 becomes a matter for open
public debate inside Israel, and internationally, then there will
be hope that this centuries-long conflict, manufactured by imperial,
geopolitical forces on a much higher level, may be overcome. If the
American President contributed in any way to initiate this process
of truth-seeking, he has done his part.
(As a postscript, it might be added that another, not insignificant
comment that Obama made in Cairo, addressed the method of struggle
in the resistance. Acknowledging Hamas as a political force with a
Palestinian following (which also raised the blood pressure of some in
Tel Aviv and Washington), Obama drew the comparison to the civil rights
struggle of American Blacks, which was waged through the non-violent
resistance of Martin Luther King and others. That resistance movement
succeeded because it challenged the oppressor with a morally superior
attitude, which proved to be unassailable. Obama’s brief reference
here again echoed the lessons of Westphalia.)
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
