Israel's Original Sin

As part of our series of opinion articles marking the 60th anniversary of
Israel, Jeet Heer offers a radically different --and less celebratory --perspective.

Sixty years ago, a 12-year-old boy witnessed the slaughter of his family. His
name was Fahim Zaydan, and he lived in the Arab
village of Deir Yassin in Mandate Palestine, which was attacked
on April 9, 1948, by Irgun and Stern Gang troops, paramilitary
forces allied with the right-wing of the Zionist movement.
These troops swooped into the village and started machine
gunning civilians. Those that survived this initial attack were
then forced by the troops to gather outside.

"They took us out one after the other," Zaydan recalled. "Shot an old
man and when one of his daughters cried, she was shot too. Then
they called my brother Muhammad, and shot him in front of us, and
when my mother yelled, bending over him -- carrying my little sister
Hudra in her hands, still breastfeeding her -- they shot her too."

Irgun commander Ben Zion-Cohen offered a more succinct
account of what happened: "We eliminated every Arab that
came our way." This statement glosses over the fact that
some of the Arab women were raped by Irgun and Stern
Gang troops before they were killed. At least 93 civilians
in the village were murdered that day, not just women
and children but also babies.

The massacre at Deir Yassin is one of the most famous atrocities
of 1948, but it was not the only one nor the largest. In fact, if one
were cynical one could argue that Deir Yassin gets publicized only
because its perpetrators were Irgun and Stern Gang troops, easy
scapegoats who can be blamed for the violence in order to make the
mainstream Labor Zionism of David Ben-Gurion look more respectable.

Deir Yassin was in fact a microcosm of what happened
in Palestine as a whole in 1948: Zionist troops, including
those under Ben-Gurion's command, used terror tactics
to force the indigenous population to flee. Israel was
founded through an act of ethnic cleansing, of a type all
too familiar in recent history.

The creation of the State of Israel was both a triumph and a tragedy.
The triumph is well known: how the fledgling and precarious Zionist
movement, still recovering from the horrors of the Holocaust, waged
a war of national liberation in Palestine, creating a new Jewish state while
fending off hostile Arab armies. It's an inspiring story of a scrappy
underdog who wins against the odds. This triumph is often celebrated
in religious and mythical terms (think of the title of Leon Uris's hugely
popular novel Exodus, evocative of Moses).

But there was a tragic side to Israel's founding. The ethnic cleansing that
allowed Israel to emerge was a terrible trauma for the Arab victims, and
it continues to haunt the Jewish state to this day. The external war against
Arab armies was mirrored by an internal war against Arabs living inside
Palestine. Because of this tragic legacy, uncritically celebrating 1948 does
a disservice to Jews and Arabs alike.

I know many readers will be shocked by my use of the words
"ethnic cleansing," which seem so harsh to those raised on
the myth-making of Leon Uris. But the fact is that the best
recent historians of Israel's founding, some of whom are ardent
Zionists, have made it clear that the events of 1948 were an
ethnic cleansing. The only serious debate is whether this
ethnic cleansing was a deliberate policy by Zionist leaders or
an accidental byproduct of the fog of war.

To understand what happened, consider the situation that the Zionist
movement faced in Palestine before 1948: They had too few Jews
(less than half the population of Mandate Palestine), too little land
(Jews owned less than 6% of the land) and too many Arabs.

In 1938, David Ben-Gurion told the Jewish Agency Executive,
"I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it."

Ben-Gurion and his followers were remarkably successful in this policy
of "compulsory transfer." By 1949, more than 700,000 Palestinians had
been made into refugees, more than 500 villages had been destroyed
and many Arab urban neighbourhoods were depopulated. As Israeli
military commander Yitzhak Pundak recalled in 2004 of events he
participated in, "There were 200 villages and these are gone. We had
to destroy them, otherwise we would have had Arabs here
[in the Southern part of Palestine] as we have in Galilee. We
would have had another million Palestinians."

If you look at Zionism from a Western perspective, its logic is clear
and compelling. Anti-Semitism has deep roots in European history
and the Holocaust demonstrated what happens to Jews when they
don't have the protective shield of their own state. And the guilt for
the Holocaust belongs not just to the Germans, who were the
primary perpetrators, but also their many collaborators in Poland,
Ukraine, France and elsewhere. Nor were the English-speaking peoples
innocent: England, Canada, the United States and the other members
of the anglosphere made extraordinary efforts to keep out Jewish
refugees. Western civilization committed terrible crimes in the 1930s
and 1940s, and the West owes the Jews a state.

But if you look at Zionism from a global perspective, one that
acknowledges that Arabs are human beings, then the morality
becomes much murkier. Unlike the peoples of Europe, the Palestinians
weren't direct participants in the Holocaust. Why should Palestinians
lose their land because of crimes committed by Germans, Poles,
Ukrainians and other Europeans? It's difficult to look at the founding of
Israel, the displacement of the indigenous population and the ongoing
occupation, and not conclude that the Palestinians are paying a huge
price for other people's sins.

In an interview with the newspaper Haaretz, the historian Benny Morris,
a mainstream Labour Zionist, offered a partial justification of the ethnic
cleansing of 1948. "There is no justification for acts of rape," he admitted.
"There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But
in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the
expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without
breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

Morris went on to say: "There are circumstances in history that justify
ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the
discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between
ethnic cleansing and genocide -- the annihilation of your people --
I prefer ethnic cleansing." (One might question whether in 1948 the
indigenous Arab population of Palestine, a peasant population far
less organized than their Jewish rivals, wanted genocide or were even capable of it.)

The events of 1948 continue to shape Israel's destiny. In many ways, Israel
has been a remarkably successful nation. When I visited it in 2004 I was
struck by the good humour and decency of Israel's citizens, the liveliness
of its political culture, its prosperity and its cultural achievements. Still,
Israel is very different from what the original Zionists wanted. Their
dream was that it would become a normal nation, a Jewish counterpart
to England, France or Canada.

But in fact, because of its unique security situation, Israel is far from a
normal country. Politically, socially and economically, it is hugely militarized
(arguably, its recent economic boom has come in part from the new market
for arms created by global instability). Like ancient Sparta, the citizen-soldiers
of Israel have to constantly be on guard lest the helots revolt. The Arab
population, both those who live in Israel as citizens and those under
military occupation, are a constant source of worry. Israel's greatest
point of pride, its claim to be a democracy, is undermined by the
decades old occupation of Palestinian lands, a situation that resembles
apartheid-era South Africa.

Moreover, Israel is completely dependent for its survival on the goodwill
of the United States, a diminished imperial power. If the United States
were ever to turn its back on Israel, as the superpower did to other
controversial allies such as South Vietnam and apartheid-era South
Africa, the Jewish state would face a friendless world.

Throughout the globe, Israel is losing legitimacy. This can be seen among
young Jews in Canada and the United States, who are much colder
toward Zionism than their parents and grandparents.

Despite all its great achievements, Israel's situation 60 years after its founding
is deeply problematic. The best solution for Israel's problems is to make
restitution for the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and help create a viable Palestinian state.
Only when this happens will the dream of Israel as a normal nation be fulfilled