MenuIncreasingly, this argument has become the response of many Israelis and Zionists to the Palestinian Right of Return. Slowly but surely, the argument that Palestinians left their homes based on their free will (click here to read our response) has been losing ground to newly discovered historical facts, thanks to Israeli revisionist historians, who based their research on declassified Israeli and Zionist archives.
It's misleading to compare the population transfer that occurred in the aftermath of WW II to the one that came upon the Palestinian people for the following reasons:
- Population transfer indeed occurred in Europe in the aftermath of WW II. However, it was neither politically motivated nor enforced by armed might. It should be noted that many Displaced Persons (D.P.) refugee camps sprang up all over Europe soon after the war. However, that was mostly done for economic and not for political reasons. Soon after the war, Europe's economy and infrastructure were devastated, and to stabilize it, the U.S. sponsored the Marshal Plan to help Europe help itself.
Non-politically motivated population transfer was and still is happening worldwide, and it is not restricted to Europe only. On the other hand, "transferring" a whole minority (actually, in the case of Palestinians, it was the 2/3 majority that was "transferred" by the "Jewish minority") to achieve political objectives is nothing but sheer TERROR. If this is not accepted, then,
What were the war crimes perpetrated in Bosnia and Kosovo?
Why, when Slobodan Milosevic used such excuses, was he condemned and tried as a war criminal?
Since "population transfer" allegedly occurred in Europe during WWII, and it's excusable for the "Jewish minority" in Palestine to use such forced "transfer" of a people to become the majority, then:
Why the same excuse can't be used by the Slavic majority to "transfer" the "unwanted" Albanian Muslim minority? - Soon after the 1948 war, the Palestinian people lost almost everything they owned, such as farms, businesses, buses, factories, railroads, boats, banks, ... etc.. Above all, they lost their political and civil rights. None of the European nations (such as the German, French, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian, etc.) had their political, economic, and civil rights removed. What's fundamentally unique about what happened to the Palestinian nation is that their political, civil, and economic rights as a people have been all removed in favor of the "Jewish minority."
- Assuming that forcible population transfer occurred in Europe, the questions that beg to be asked are:
Should such policies be the norm or the exception?
If the alleged forcible population transfer happened in Europe, would it be excusable to practice such policies?
Is "forcible population transfer" a war crime? - Assuming for the moment that the act of forcible population transfer is not a war crime, then
Would you condone such practices against other people?
If the conundrum has not yet been comprehended, then would you accept such policies against the Jewish citizens of Russia, Poland, Germany, ... etc.?
It's worth noting that when Israel tried Adolf Eichmann for atrocities committed as a Nazi leader, it included charges of forcible expulsion (ethnic cleansing), which was classified as a war crime and a crime against humanity.
It should be emphasized that, even before the population transfer which resulted from WW II, the Zionist leaders were keen on creating a "Jewish State" based on a "Jewish majority" by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine, primarily European Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany. When a "Jewish majority" was impossible to achieve, based on Jewish immigration and natural growth, Zionist leaders (such as Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann) concluded that "population transfer" was the only solution to what they referred to as the "Arab Problem."
Year after year, the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people became known as the "transfer solution". David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli Prime Minister, eloquently articulated the "transfer solution" as follows:
- In a joint meeting between the Jewish Agency Executive and Zionist Action Committee on June 12th, 1938:
"With compulsory transfer, we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it." (Righteous Victims p. 144). - In a speech addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut on December 30, 1947:
"In the area allocated to the Jewish State, there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority .... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 176 & Benny Morris p. 28) - And on February 8th, 1948, Ben-Gurion also stated to the Mapai Council:
"From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema [East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood]. . . there are no [Palestinian] Arabs--one hundred percent Jews. Since the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, it has not been Jewish as it is now. In many [Palestinian] Arab neighborhoods in the west, one sees not a single [Palestinian] Arab. I do not assume that this will change. . . . What had happened in Jerusalem. . . . is likely to happen in many parts of the country. . . in the six, eight, or ten months of the campaign, there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 180-181) - In a speech addressing the Zionist Action Committee on April 6th, 1948:
"We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area ..... I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 181) - Click here for more "Transfer" (Ethnic Cleansing) quotes from Zionist leaders.
Often Israelis and Zionists view WW II population transfer as a legal precedent, however, when asked to put up the details, they fail to come up even with one example which is not already a war crime. On the contrary, after considering the compulsory population transfer that Josef Stalin perpetrated against the people of the Caucasus during WW II, the truth cannot be more of a paradox. In 1943-44, Stalin ordered the whole population of the Caucasus to be expelled to Siberia as a collective punishment for their collaboration with the Nazis. However, the same people were allowed to return home in 1958 when the scale of the war crime became known to the Soviet premier at the time. So if the people of the Caucasus were allowed to return to their homes under Communist rule, how come Palestinian refugees cannot use this return as a legal precedent to return to their homes, farms, plantations, businesses, boats, banks, ports, ...etc. under Israeli rule?
Finally, it must be emphasized that the "Jewish people," of all peoples, should deplore such lame arguments. Ironically, European Jews were the first victims of politically motivated population transfer (Ethnic Cleansing), and it's the ultimate hypocrisy when Israelis and Zionists use such an excuse to practice and promote Ethnic Cleansing. If such war crimes were practiced against Jews in the past, that's no excuse to practice or attempt to justify similar war crimes against the Palestinian people.
Related Links
Over 700 Oral History interviews (including 3,500+ hours of recording) can be viewed online.
Post Your Comment
*It should be NOTED that your email address won't be shared, and all communications between members will be routed via the website's mail server.
...
“Even David Ben-Gurion’s sympathetic biographer acknowledges that Ben-Gurion did nothing practical for rescue, devoting his energies to post-war prospects. He delegated rescue work to Yitzak Gruenbaum, who [stated]...’They will say that I am anti-Semitic, that I don’t want to save the Exile, that I don’t have a varm Yiddish hartz...Let them say what they want. I will not demand that the Jewish Agency allocate a sum of 300,000 or 100,000 pounds sterling to help European Jewry. And I think that whoever demands such things is performing an anti-Zionist act.’
2. Politically motivated armed population transfer is common in Africa.
So they expelled the entire German population of Konigsberg and the surrounding area called East Prussia. They also arbitrarily moved the eastern border of Poland several hundred miles westward, and the Polish border with Germany that same amount westward into areas that had been German for centuries. The Soviets and Poles then ethnically cleansed this new Polish "territory" of Germans, and replaced them with Polish colonists. The total amount displaced was well over five million Germans in total.
Do the Germans deserve a "Right of Return" to these areas, and who among them deserves it, if they do? Only the actual victims? Their families?
This is ultimately the problem I have with the idea of the Right of Return for all the refugees. Most of them wouldn't be "returning" - they'd be immigrating, as much so as would any Germans returning to the stated areas in Poland and Russia, since most of them have never lived in the areas in question. Most of the actual victims of the original ethnic cleansing at Israel's foundation are in their 70s and 80s, meaning you're dealing with their children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren.
I've just started reading some of your articles. I'm a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause I found the following sentence astonishly counter-factual.
It's true that population transfer occurred in Europe in the aftermath of WW II, however, it was neither politically motivated nor enforced by armed might.
The massive movement of German and German-speaking people from eastern Europe to Germany was certainly enforced by armed might. To ignore that event is just asking for any reader aware of post-war history to think of it and wonder if the rest of your material contains similar non-facs.
I wish you all the best.