May 15^th marks the 54^th anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel. Given the history of conflicts, wars and Palestinian dispossession associated with the event, it is of little surprise that the Arabs have come to refer to that momentous day in 1948 as “Al Nakba,” or “the catastrophe.”

In 1948, in the wake of UN General Assembly resolution 181 partitioning Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, what was to be known as the “Declaration of Independence” was issued by the State Provisional Council on the 14^th of May. This set the stage for the protracted conflict that erupted in the Middle East.

In looking back on 54 years of conflict, it appears that there is a silver lining to the cloud - the persistent voices of the small but vocal academic community commonly referred to as “revisionist historians,” referred to by Norman Finkelstein in Palestine: The Truth About 1948. These are the Israeli scholars who, in the wake of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, sought to question what had hitherto been the accepted version of events in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Many facts about the founding of the Jewish state have thus come to light and entered the realms of scholarly discourse. Prior to their efforts, the Arab discourse on Israeli abuse and crimes were largely discredited as “Arab propaganda.” There is now a wealth of evidence provided by Israeli academia to support Arab claims. These historians, who enjoyed access to Israeli governmental archives and data that no Arab could have gained, have irrevocably shattered many of the myths that had shrouded the creation of Israel.

Rapid advances in the media have also allowed the protestations of a hitherto marginalized community to come to international attention, that being the orthodox Jewish community, which is vehemently opposed to the very existence of an Israeli state, alleging that the Zionist ideology is a crime against Judaism. It is therefore a surprise to many to read the official statements of the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States of America and Canada, which states, among other things:

Consistently, since its inception, our sages and rabbis condemned the Zionist heresy. To this day Torah true Jewry has remained loyal to the heavenly decree of exile… It is only logical that during the Israeli State’s 52 years of existence, its most passionate and consistent opponents have been traditional Torah Jews. Therefore, the ongoing suffering and trail of death unleashed upon Jews and non-Jews by the Israeli state are not the work of the faithful remnant of Torah Jews who have always denounced the state’s very existence. Thus, [the] ultimate heresy of Zionism, its denial of Divine providence over history was [an] inevitable outgrowth of an overall rejection of G-d and Torah which typified the movement’s founders...

Other Jewish and/or Israeli organizations have also come to the forefront, ranging between secular academic or popular calls for reform and a cessation of brutality (Not In My Name, Tikkun, and Gush Shalom) to the religious dogma of the orthodox Jewish rabbis, who condemn the very existence of the state of Israel (Jews Not Zionists, and Neturei Karta). Held in common, though, is the desire to expose Israeli crimes and to distance themselves from the policies of the Israeli government.

An area that has often been subjected to much debate is the Israeli suggestion that Jewish settlers came to an almost uninhabited no man’s land and proceeded to build a civilization where there was none. These allegations, however, would seem to be largely disproved by Moshe Dayan’s statement that:

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the sArab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.

This is glaring testimony to the fact that Palestinian homes were expropriated and occupied by Jewish settlers, contrary to widely held beliefs cultivated by Israel. This allegation, however, ties in with another major point of contention: the Palestinian exodus. The Israelis have long held that Palestinians evacuated their homes in response to broadcast calls by Arab governments. Palestinians, on the other hand, have claimed that the exodus was prompted by attacks by Jewish terrorist organizations such as the Palmach, the Irgun, and the Stern Gang, against Palestinian villages and towns. One notable example often cited is Deir Yassin, where hundreds of Palestinians lost their lives.

While Israel has long held that reports of a massacre in Deir Yassin were fabrications, the account of a Red Cross representative who arrived at the village shortly after the massacre, bears poignant testimony to Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians.

Dayan’s words, however, are merely evidence of a continuation of a long-held strategic goal formulated by the Zionists decades earlier. For this, we turn to the father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, who wrote in 1895:

We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us… We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries. While denying it any employment in our own country… The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly… Let the owners of immovable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us something far more than they are worth… But we are not going to sell them any thing back.

In essence then, the 1948 attacks on Palestinian civilians were the culmination of a policy of acquiring Palestinian land, begun initially through peaceful means, but ending with the brutal methods aptly demonstrated in Deir Yassin. This resulted in the almost complete erasure of any traces of the original Palestinian society, while the original maps of Palestine reveal an overwhelming majority of Palestinians.

Statistics on the number of Palestinian villages destroyed by Jewish militias and settlers will inevitably vary. Some Palestinian groups have undertaken to assess the numbers involved, resulting in a list of an estimated 419 destroyed villages.

Effectively then, what we are witnessing might prove to be the first cracks in the foundation stones of the Israeli state. The myths that had been so carefully nurtured are being slowly, yet systematically and inevitably, destroyed. The dominant Israeli narrative that surrounded that creation of the state has for the most part been discredited, primarily due to the work of Israeli academics. More and more, Jewish and Israeli groups opposed to Israeli policies and brutality are making their voices heard. It is also ironic that the Zionist ideology that has long claimed to find its theological origins in the Torah is coming under vehement attack by the orthodox adherents of Judaism. But these gains cannot detract from the suffering inflicted on countless Palestinian lives by the Israeli state, a suffering that cannot and will not be forgotten. May 15^th is the day Arabs mark the anniversary of the greatest crime that befell them, and renew their pledge to never forgive and never forget.

See Also:

• Palestine: Maps and Facts

• The British Eye Israel Differently

• Who is the Terrorist in a Terrorized Land

• Israel Fights Islam to the Last American

• Live dialogue with Palestinian Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Nabil Shaath

Useful Links:

• Not in My Name

• Jews Not Zionists

• Tikkun.org: A Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture & Society

• Gush Shalom (Peace Bloc)

• Neturei Karta

• Jerusalem Forum

• Jew Watch

• YellowTimes.org: Alternative News and Views.