America and the Founding of Israel: An Investigation of the Morality of America’s Role is well written, with a chronological account in detail followed by a concise summary of the moral issues that are pertinent and how what has been examined relates to them. John Mulhall writes about the sensitive issues surrounding America and the founding of the state of Israel is a straight from the shoulder way. With excellent documentation and quotes from people who had major influence in the events that have shaped our present-day situation, we are presented with American politics that have long escaped attention and public scrutiny.

Chapter 1 discusses the Bible a deed of ownership to Palestine. Conservatives say that the Bible does give Palestine to the twelve tribes of Israel. Biblical reductionists question the historicity of the Bible and so the claim of conservatives. But what is really important is international law and on this the Bible cannot give rights. Chapter 2 considers the moral hereditary right of Jews to Palestine. Mulhull says that there have been Jews in Canaan for the last 3200 years. With only a couple of notable exceptions (in 352 AD and 555 AD), there has been no serious attempt to establish a Jewish state in Palestine and prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, there were more Arabs than Jews in Palestine. In Chapter 3, he writes about the right to immigrate. Theodore Herzl urged Jews to immigrate to a land of their own. But in the early 20th century, some Palestinian Arabs figured out the Zionists intent of statehood.

In short, the author keeps his head cool and the reader benefits, learning how America, trying to do right for one people, supported doing wrong to another people. Mulhall is not presenting America and the Founding of Israel: An Investigation of the Morality of America’s Role with an agenda of his own. Rather he writes to present the issues involved in this debate.

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Jim Miles

Ilan Pappe’s work The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine places him in the forefront of the recent burst of excellent information that critically examines and condemns the Jewish-Zionist actions to eliminate not only the people of Palestine but also to eliminate their history culturally and geographically. Following on his previous well researched and readily accessible work A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples, his latest work, focuses on the concept generated from the very earliest Zionist thought in the Nineteenth century, making the ‘cleansing’ of Palestinian territories a necessity for the survival of the Jewish state.

It is a history made personal. Pappe does not just recount the series of events, and the sequence they occurred in but makes the story become real through the views of Israeli individuals and the views of individual Palestinians. Israel has hidden its war criminals well, out in the open, blatant, the clear majority of their political leaders having served in the military in one capacity or another to facilitate the ‘cleansing’ of their desired state. Using archival references from various Israeli sources as well as the personal diaries of those involved, in particular David Ben-Gurion, a personal encounter with the perpetrators of the genocide is created. That encounter displays a strong-willed double standard that accepted no interference with the ultimate goal of Eretz Israel for Jews only.

It is a history made personal on the Palestinian side, with stories in photos and anecdotes from the dispossessed population, stories of their life style before their evictions or murder and stories of the cultural geography of the many towns and villages that have been erased from both the physical and cultural geography of the larger area.

The Jewish account is the false front expressed through the media, the story of a rugged band of individuals bringing greenness and fruition to a barren and desert land. It denies fully the pastoral and passive lifestyle of the Palestinian people who lived in many towns and villages surrounded with productive croplands and orchards. It denies the increasing wealth and modernization of the area that followed the conclusion of the Second World War, with many ‘modern’ civic infrastructures being brought forward to the Palestinian people. It denies the cultural achievements of the area, the particular forms of landholding and agriculture that developed and were sustainable under varying conditions.

Ethnic cleansing is defined clearly and simply as “the expulsion by force in order to homogenise the ethnically mixed population of a particular region or territory.” This definition is widely accepted across many incidents outside of Palestine and as such is recognized as well as a crime against humanity. Pappe writes “with a deep conviction” that this crime should “become rooted in our memory and consciousness” while at the same time being “excluded from the list of alleged crimes.”[italics in original] What the world has been presented with creates a “deep chasm between reality and representation”, an attempted forced amnesia about the actions taken by Jewish forces against the Palestinian population.

Prior to the ‘war of independence’ many factors had already played into the hands of the Jewish minority. The main feature was the British tacit and complicit support for the creation of the new Jewish state, not surprisingly as the Balfour Declaration had set the stage many years previously. Militarily, the British assisted with the training of the Haganah, the ‘defence’ force of the Jewish community both within Palestine and by providing valuable experience during the Second World War. During the 1936 revolt, “the British had already destroyed the Palestinian leadership and its defence capabilities.” During the first moments of the war, the British stood aside and allowed the Jewish forces to begin the ethnic cleansing, in some instances assisting actively in the process.

The UN played into the Jewish plan as well, with its lopsided proposed partitioning of Palestine giving the larger Palestinian population the minor portion of the land. From the Palestinian perspective they “were at the mercy of an international organization that appeared ready to ignore all the rules of international mediation”, declaring a solution that “was both illegal and immoral.”

A third factor that aided them greatly was the complicity and tactics of the Jordanians who wished to expand their own little empire in the making. While coveting the area of greater Israel, “the Zionist leadership was committed to their collusion with the Jordanians,” who apparently never had much if any sympathy for the cause of Palestine. This collusion had the effect of “ensuring the ethnic cleansing operations” as it “neutralised the strongest army in the Arab world.” Other Arab leaders provided much rhetoric but little in the way of military support from their properly enraged populace.

With an estimated 50,000 well-trained and well-equipped military force the cleansing began against what proved to be a passive Palestinian population and a militarily inactive and ineffective Arab defence force. The Palestinian villagers showed “no wish to fight” and rural Palestine “showed no desire to fight or attack, and was defenceless.” The Jewish forces resorted to terror of various sorts – biological and chemical weapons, murder, rape, and theft of personal property.

From these beginnings in quick order, Pappe details the various elements of the ethnic cleansing. Villages are given life, with brief accounts of their culture and uniqueness; the people are given life with anecdotes about the savageness of events overwhelming them; the Israeli forces are given life, such as it was, in their barbaric actions and satisfaction with the manner in which the cleansing progressed. After the removal of the Palestinians, the ongoing destruction of their heritage is described, the looting of the empty houses and villages, the continued destruction of the housing and infrastructure, the legalized theft of farmland and the erasure of village sites. The over-riding purpose was to “pre-empt the threat of international sanctions” that could include the right of return, given that there was nowhere to return to.

Not only was the Palestinian culture physically destroyed, it was replaced “with a fabricated version of another” culture, supposedly the long history of Jewish settlement in the region. The propaganda that the Jews were “making the desert bloom” and were acting ecologically to “keep the country green” was used effectively to mask the physical destruction of the villages. Ironically, that process relied somewhat on the native cultivation that had been ongoing for centuries within the Palestinian agricultural community.

Finally, Pappe recognizes the various peace proposals and initiatives as being means for avoiding any final settlement, allowing the cleansing to continue under the guise of the settlement policy that developed after the 1967 war. Further along, the events of 9/11 allowed the Jewish state to identify the population not as Palestinians but as Muslims and terrorists. This created more antagonism towards them, at the same time continuing the support of the local population for the process of ‘removal’, a more recently used euphemism for ethnic cleansing, but also a throwback to the original Zionist plans of a century ago.

To recognize their moral responsibility for the terror and illegality of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the Palestinians would require the Israelis to deny “their own status of victimhood”, forcing them to recognize “they have become the mirror image of their own worst nightmare.” A final description of Israel as essentially a failed state, with high social violence, a declining standard of living and a reliance on American military and financial support, leads to questions about the future. Unless Israel can stop its Zionist inspired plan for complete ethnic cleansing and accept a more pluralistic Judaism, then the risk of escalating conflict in the region, from Lebanon through Syria and Iran, is imminent.

The recognition of the nakba, the disaster of ethnic cleansing, is a necessary first step towards a successful resolution of the conflict. Succinct, clearly written, sometimes emotionally overwhelming in its personalized presentation, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine should be put forward as a document serving as a prime witness to the war crimes and the crimes against humanity of the destruction of Palestinian society and cultural geography by the Jewish state.

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Puan Zarina Nalla (MPF)

Dr Azzam Tamimi’s most recent book; Hamas Unwritten Chapters, is indeed very timely. It comes almost 10 months after Hamas; the Islamic Resistance Movement in Palestine, made a sweeping victory in an election that was unequivocally democratic” bewildering political pundits, making political observers sit up, overturning many assumptions both regionally and globally.

The surprise electoral victory has in fact, led to a renewed interest in Hamas. What does the movement stand for? How did it begin? What do the Palestinians see in them? Who was Sheikh Ahmed Yaasin? Are suicide bombers in the context of Palestine, martyrs or not? These are undoubtedly valid and honest pertinent questions , and those who genuinely seek a clearer and accurate picture of the current conflict, will appreciate Dr Tamimi’s book.

He writes objectively and illuminates a subject which has often been described solely from the Israeli and Western perspective whose analyses often betray HAMAS and its genuine struggle towards peace.

The book traces the origin of Hamas from its birth fifteen years ago at the beginning of the first intifada. It meticulously details the influence of its exiled leadership in Syria and elsewhere, and its internal organisational hierarchy and structure.

The rules and conditions of Madrid 1991, Oslo 1993 or The Road Map have denied the Palestinians their inalienable rights and stripped them of any form of humanity and dignity. The late Edward Said in his book titled, “The End of the Peace Process” (1994) highlighted the failures and injustices of Oslo 1993.

Dr. Azzam very carefully describes the “Hudna”; the Long Term Truce; the peace initiatives of the founding fathers of HAMAS, offering to both Zionists and Palestinians alike a truce; a ceasefire enabling a partnership, a joint quest for peaceful engagements within an agreed time frame. This has conveniently escaped, conscious or unconsciously the attention of political commentators of the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

Below I quote 2 excerpts from the book. The first from Chapter 8 “Jihad and Martyrdom”, “Sacrifice or Suicide ?”

It deals with the legitimacy aspect of a tactic Hamas has been identified with and criticised for, not only by Western nations but even by some Muslims,.

“Defenders of martyrdom operations argue that the Islamic code of war applies only in conventional warfare, and refuse to accept that it should apply in the case of Palestine, where the situation is far from conventional. Palestine in such a view, is an exception. The unarmed and defenceless people of Palestine have been invaded and oppressed by a power that is heavily armed with the most modern weapons, which enable them to kill, maim and destroy while well out of the reach of retaliation on the part of their victims. From this viewpoint, whatever the Palestinians do to defend themselves and deter their oppressors is legitimate. It is often argued that only when the Palestinians have access to the sort of weapons possessed by the Israelis will it be illegitimate for them to resort to unconventional means of self defence.”

The second extract is from the 10th and final chapter ” Towards Intifada III”. P 181

“Nothing the Israelis did in Gaza seemed to [be] able to induce Hamas to yield, though the routine, almost daily bombing claimed many lives and destroyed Gaza’s entire infrastructure. While Israeli artillery pounded the border area, Israeli aircraft bombed the Prime Minister’s office, the Ministry of the Economy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Interior Ministry. Aircraft also bombed bridges and main roads across the Gaza Strip, as well power plants and other services, in an apparent bid to cripple completely the Hamas-led government. This confirmed the suspicion that the entire operation was not about rescuing a single Israeli soldier in Palestinian captivity, but was rather a campaign aimed at destroying Hamas’s ability to govern in Gaza.” P 245

The author goes on to say that a third Intifada may be inevitable given the current state of affairs. Such a conflict may even involve other states and actors from the region.

It is the sincere prayer of every Muslim that true reforms and a better society will emerge eventually.

Dr Tamimi, a staunch advocate for the creation of a free, independent and democratic Palestine, has indeed made a valuable contribution with his book.

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Following his #1 New York Times bestseller, Our Endangered Values, the former president, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, offers an assessment of what must be done to bring permanent peace to Israel with dignity and justice to Palestine in his latest work, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid“.

President Carter, who was able to negotiate peace between Israel and Egypt, has remained deeply involved in Middle East affairs since leaving the White House. He has stayed in touch with the major players from all sides in the conflict and has made numerous trips to the Holy Land, most recently as an observer in the Palestinian elections of 2005 and 2006.

In this book President Carter shares his intimate knowledge of the history of the Middle East and his personal experiences with the principal actors, and he addresses sensitive political issues many American officials avoid. Pulling no punches, Carter prescribes steps that must be taken for the two states to share the Holy Land without a system of apartheid or the constant fear of terrorism.

Below some of Carter’s key statements are reproduced.

Most Arab regimes have accepted the permanent existence of Israel as an indisputable fact and are no longer calling for an end to the State of Israel, having contrived a common statement at an Arab summit in 2002 that offers peace and normal relations with Israel within its acknowledged international borders and in compliance with other U.N. Security Council resolutions. (p. 14)

Since 1924, Shebaa Farms has been treated as Lebanese territory, but Syria seized the area in the 1950s and retained control until Israel occupied the Farms–along with the Golan Heights–in 1967. The inhabitants and properties were Lebanese, and Lebanon has never accepted Syria’s control of the Farms. Although Syria has claimed the area in the past, Syrian officials now state that it is part of Lebanon. This position supports the Arab claim that Israel still occupies Lebanese territory. (pp. 98-9)

The best offer to the Palestinians [at Camp David in December 2000]–by Clinton, not Barak–had been to withdraw 20 percent of the settlers, leaving more than 180,000 in 209 settlements, covering about 10 percent of the occupied land, including land to be “leased” and portions of the Jordan River valley and East Jerusalem.

The percentage figure is misleading, since it usually includes only the actual footprints of the settlements. There is a zone with a radius of about four hundred meters around each settlement within which Palestinians cannot enter. In addition, there are other large areas that would have been taken or earmarked to be used exclusively by Israel, roadways that connect the settlements to one another and to Jerusalem, and “life arteries” that provide the settlers with water, sewage, electricity, and communications. These range in width from five hundred to four thousand meters, and Palestinians cannot use or cross many of these connecting links. This honeycomb of settlements and their interconnecting conduits effectively divide the West Bank into at least two noncontiguous areas and multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable, and control of the Jordan Valley denies Palestinians any direct access eastward into Jordan. About one hundred military checkpoints completely surround Palestinians and block routes going into or between Palestinian communities, combined with an unaccountable number of other roads that are permanently closed with large concrete cubes or mounds of earth and rocks.

There was no possibility that any Palestinian leader could accept such terms and survive, but official statements from Washington and Jerusalem were successful in placing the entire onus for the failure on Yasir Arafat. (pp. 151-2)

A new round of talks was held at Taba in January 2001, during the last few days of the Clinton presidency, between President Arafat and the Israeli foreign minister, and it was later claimed that the Palestinians rejected a “generous offer” put forward by Prime Minister Barak with Israel keeping only 5 percent of the West Bank. The fact is that no such offers were ever made. Barak later said, “It was plain to me that there was no chance of reaching a settlement at Taba. Therefore I said there would be no negotiations and there would be no delegation and there would be no official discussions and no documentation. Nor would Americans be present in the room. The only thing that took place at Taba were nonbinding contacts between senior Israelis and senior Palestinians. (p. 152)

In April 2003 a “Roadmap” for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was announced by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on behalf of the United States, the United Nations, Russia, and the European Union (known as the Quartet).The Palestinians accepted the road map in its entirety but the Israeli government announced fourteen caveats and prerequisites, some of which would preclude any final peace talks. (p. 159)

“Imprisonment wall” is more descriptive than “security fence.” (p. 174)

Gaza has maintained a population growth rate of 4.7 percent annually, one of the highest in the world, so more than half its people are less than fifteen years old. They are being strangled since the Israeli “withdrawal,” surrounded by a separation barrier that is penetrated only by Israeli-controlled checkpoints, with just a single opening (for personnel only) into Egypt’s Sinai as their access to the outside world. There have been no moves by Israel to permit transportation by sea or by air. Fishermen are not permitted to leave the harbor, workers are prevented from going to outside jobs, the import or export of food and other goods is severely restricted and often cut off completely, and the police, teachers, nurses, and social workers are deprived of salaries. Per capita income has decreased 40 percent during the last three years, and the poverty rate has reached 70 percent. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food has stated that acute malnutrition in Gaza is already on the same scale as that seen in the poorer countries of the Southern Sahara, with more than half of Palestinian families eating only one meal a day. (p. 176)

The area between the segregation barrier and the Israeli border has been designated a closed military region for an indefinite period of time. Israeli directives state that every Palestinian over the age of twelve living in the closed area has to obtain a “permanent resident permit” from the civil administration to enable them to continue to live in their own homes. They are considered to be aliens, without the rights of Israeli citizens.

To summarize: whatever territory Israel decides to confiscate will be on its side of the wall, but Israelis will still retain control of the Palestinians who will be on the other side of the barrier, enclosed between it and Israel’s forces in the Jordan River valley. (pp. 192-3)

The wall ravages many places along its devious route that are important to Christians. In addition to enclosing Bethlehem in one of its most notable intrusions, an especially heartbreaking division is on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, a favorite place for Jesus and his disciples, and very near Bethany, where they often visited Mary, Martha, and their brother, Lazarus. There is a church named for one of the sisters, Santa Marta Monastery, where Israel’s thirty-foot concrete wall cuts through the property. The house of worship is now on the Jerusalem side, and its parishioners are separated from it because they cannot get permits to enter Jerusalem. Its priest, Father Claudio Ghilardi, says, “For nine hundred years we have lived here under Turkish, British, Jordanian, and Israeli governments, and no one has ever stopped people coming to pray. It is scandalous. This is not about a barrier. It is a border. Why don’t they speak the truth?”

Countering Israeli arguments that the wall is to keep Palestinian suicide bombers from Israel, Father Claudio adds a comment that describes the path of the entire barrier: “The Wall is not separating Palestinians from Jews; rather Palestinians from Palestinians.” Nearby are three convents that will also be cut off from the people they serve. The 2,000 Palestinian Christians have lost their place of worship and their spiritual center. (pp. 194-5)

International human rights organizations estimate that since 1967 more than 630,000 Palestinians (about 20 percent of the total population) in the occupied territories have been detained at some time by the Israelis, arousing deep resentment among the families involved. Although the vast majority of prisoners are men, there are a large number of women and children being held. Between the ages of twelve and fourteen, children can be sentenced for a period of up to six months, and after the age of fourteen Palestinian children are tried as adults, a violation of international law. (pp. 196-7)

The unwavering official policy of the United States since Israel became a state has been that its borders must coincide with those prevailing from 1949 until 1967 (unless modified by mutually agreeable land swaps), specified in the unanimously adopted U.N. Resolution 242, which mandates Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories. This obligation was reconfirmed by Israel’s leaders in agreements negotiated in 1978 at Camp David and in 1993 at Oslo, for which they received the Nobel Peace Prize, and both of these commitments were officially ratified by the Israeli government. Also, as a member of the International Quartet that includes Russia, the United Nations, and the European Union, America supports the Roadmap for Peace, which espouses exactly the same requirements. Palestinian leaders unequivocally accepted this proposal, but Israel has officially rejected its key provisions with unacceptable caveats and prerequisites.
.
The overriding problem is that, for more than a quarter century, the actions of some Israeli leaders have been in direct conflict with the official policies of the United States, the international community, and their own negotiated agreements.Israel’s continued control and colonization of Palestinian land have been the primary obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land. In order to perpetuate the occupation, Israeli forces have deprived their unwilling subjects of basic human rights. No objective person could personally observe existing conditions in the West Bank and dispute these statements. (pp. 207-9)

The United States has used its U.N. Security Council veto more than forty times to block resolutions critical of Israel. Some of these vetoes have brought international discredit on the United States, and there is little doubt that the lack of a persistent effort to resolve the Palestinian issue is a major source of anti-American sentiment and terrorist activity throughout the Middle East and the Islamic world. (pp. 209-10)

The bottom line is this: Peace will come to Israel and the Middle East only when the Israeli government is willing to comply with international law, with the Roadmap for Peace, with official American policy, with the wishes of a majority of its own citizens–and honors its own previous commitments–by accepting its legal borders. All Arab neighbors must pledge to honor Israel’s right to live in peace under these conditions. The United States is squandering international prestige and goodwill and intensifying global anti-American terrorism by unofficially condoning or abetting the Israeli confiscation and colonization of Palestinian territories. (p. 216)

The general parameters of a long-term, two-state agreement are well known, the president writes. There will be no substantive and permanent peace for any peoples in this troubled region as long as Israel is violating key U.N. resolutions, official American policy, and the international “road map” for peace by occupying Arab lands and oppressing the Palestinians. Except for mutually agreeable negotiated modifications, Israel’s official pre-1967 borders must be honored. As were all previous administrations since the founding of Israel, U.S. government leaders must be in the forefront of achieving this long-delayed goal of a just agreement that both sides can honor.

Palestine Peace Not Apartheid is a challenging, provocative, and courageous book.

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The Israeli-Palestinian war has been called the world’s most intractable conflict. It is by now a commonplace that the only way to end the violence is to divide the territory in two, and all efforts at a resolution have come down to haggling over who gets what: Will Israel hand over 90 percent of the West Bank or only 60 percent? Will a Palestinian state include any part of Jerusalem?

Clear-eyed, sharply reasoned, and compassionate, One Country proposes a radical alternative: to revive an old and neglected idea of one state shared by two peoples. Ali Abunimah shows how the two are by now so intertwined—geographically and economically—that separation cannot lead to the security Israelis need or the rights Palestinians must have. He reveals the bankruptcy of the two-state approach, takes on the objections and taboos that stand in the way of a binational solution, and demonstrates that sharing the territory will bring benefits for all. The absence of other workable options has only lead to ever greater extremism; it is time, Abunimah suggests, for Palestinians and Israelis to imagine a different future and a different relationship.

Buy the book here.