A GUIDE TO 'ANTI-SEMITISM'

So extreme is the political atmosphere surrounding the Israel-Palestine conflict, that to even suggest that Israel may be committing acts of terrorism, genocide and widespread breaches of international law is to run the risk of being branded 'anti-semetic.' The idea that criticism of the excesses of a military force occupying a foreign territory should stray into the realms of racism is, frankly, preposterous. This in mind, the following quotes and articles are very revealing about racist ideologies and extremism, and exactly who has them at the heart of policy.

"There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy."
- Israeli president Moshe Katsav, The Jerusalem Post, May 10th 2001

"The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more"....
- Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time - August 28th 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30th 2000

"[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs."
- Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, 'Begin and the Beasts' New Statesman, 25th June 1982

'The Palestinians " ...would be crushed like grasshoppers ... heads smashed against the boulders and walls." '
- Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers, New York Times April 1st 1988

"When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."
- Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14th April 1983

"How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."
- Golda Meir, Israeli Prime Minister, March 8th 1969

"There was no such thing as Palestinians, they never existed."
- Golda Maier, June 15th 1969

"The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war."
- Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha'aretz, 19th March 1972

"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"
- David Ben Gurion, first Israeli Prime Minister, quoted by Nahum Goldmann in 'Le Paraddoxe Juif' ('The Jewish Paradox'), pp12

"We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget."
- David Ben Gurion, 1948

"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves."
- Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."
- Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3rd 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one centimeter of Eretz Israel... Force is all they do or ever will understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians come crawling to us on all fours."
- Rafael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces - Gad Becker, Yediot Ahronot 13th April 1983, New York Times 14th April 1983

"We must do everything to ensure they [the Palestinian refugees] never do return"
- David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157

"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai."
- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From 'Ben-Gurion, A Biography', by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
- Israel Koenig, 'The Koenig Memorandum'

"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 Arab 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 Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."
- Moshe Dayan, address to the Technion, Haifa, reported in Haaretz, April 4th 1969

"In strategic terms, the settlements (in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) are of no importance."
- Binyamin Begin, son of the late Menahem Begin and a prominent voice in the Likud party, writing in 1991, quoted in Findley, 'Deliberate Deceptions'p 159

"We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said 'Drive them out!'"
- Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23rd October 1979

"We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters"
- Uri Lubrani, PM Ben-Gurion's special adviser on Arab Affairs, 1960, from "The Arabs in Israel" by Sabri Jiryas

"There are some who believe that the non-Jewish population, even in a high percentage, within our borders will be more effectively under our surveillance; and there are some who believe the contrary, i.e., that it is easier to carry out surveillance over the activities of a neighbor than over those of a tenant. [I] tend to support the latter view and have an additional argument:...the need to sustain the character of the state which will henceforth be Jewish...with a non-Jewish minority limited to 15 percent. I had already reached this fundamental position as early as 1940 [and] it is entered in my diary."
- Joseph Weitz, head of the Jewish Agency's Colonization Department. From 'Israel: an Apartheid State' by Uri Davis, p.5.

"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours. [....] Everything we don't grab will go to them."
- Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15th 1998

"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple."
-Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 21st February 1997

"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands."
- Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, 14th July 1972

"Spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment. [....] Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."
- Theodore Herzl, founder of the World Zionist Organization, speaking of the Arabs of Palestine, Complete Diaries, June 12th 1895 entry

"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism. Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple."
-Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 21st February 1997

"Any political empowerment of Palestinians must be limited and monitored by Israel, [because] Palestinian history and destiny are secondary to Jewish history and destiny."
- Marc Ellis, Jewish-American political scholar and professor at Baylor University, as quoted in 'Before There Was Terrorism' by Kathleen Christison, Counterpunch, May 2nd 2002

"We are stronger than you. You are weak. You are all alone. No one will come and help you."
- Unidentified Israeli Defence Force patrol, driving down the streets of Nablus with loudspeakers, as reported by International Solidarity Movement member Beth Daoud to Nancy Stohlman in East Jerusalem, April 9th 2002

Quotes compiled by the 'Rapprochement Centre' 1st May 2002 pcr@p-ol.com

Posted by Bill Thomson PhD, on his MID EAST URGENT ACTION newsletter

The following articles delve deeper into the ideology of the Israeli leadership and supporters.

Priests and Palestinians: Extreme Solutions (Excerpts)
by
Alexander Cockburn
Counterpunch; May 3, 2002
www.counterpunch.org

Two years ago less than eight per cent of those who took part in a Gallup poll among Jewish Israelis said they were in favor of what is politely called "transfer" - that is, the expulsion of perhaps two million Palestinians across the River Jordan. This month that figure reached 44 per cent. This week the US Congress sent an explicit message: Make our day. Professor Martin van Creveld is Israel's best known military historian. On April 28 Britain's conservative newspaper The Telegraph, published an article outlining what Van Creveld believes Sharon's near-term goal: "transfer", otherwise known as expulsion of the Palestinians.

According to Van Creveld, Sharon's plan is to drive two million Palestinians across the Jordan using the pretext of a US attack on Iraq or a terrorist strike in Israel. This could trigger a vast mobilization to clear the occupied territories of their two million Arabs. Van Creveld notes that In September 1970, Van Creveld recalls, King Hussein of Jordan attacked the Palestinians in his kingdom, killing perhaps 5,000 to 10,000. Sharon, serving as Commanding Officer, Southern Front, argued that Israel's assistance to the king was a mistake; instead it should have tried to topple the Hashemite regime. Sharon has often said since that Jordan, which, according to him, has a Palestinian majority even now, is the Palestinian state, and thus a suitable destination for Palestinians to be kicked out of his Greater Israel.

Van Creveld writes that Sharon has always nourished the idea of driving all Palestinians out.A US attack on Iraq sometime this summer would over appropriate cover. Sharon himself told Secretary of State Colin Powell that nothing happening in Israel should delay a US attack on Iraq. Other pretexts could include an uprising in Jordan, followed by the collapse of King Abdullah's regime or a major terrorist outrage inside Israel. Should such circumstances arise, according to Van Creveld, then Israel would mobilize within hours. "First, the country's three ultra-modern submarines would take up firing positions out at sea. Borders would be closed, a news blackout imposed, and all foreign journalists rounded up and confined to a hotel as guests of the Government. A force of 12 divisions, 11 of them armored, plus various territorial units suitable for occupation duties, would be deployed: five against Egypt, three against Syria, and one opposite Lebanon. This would leave three to face east as well as enough forces to put a tank inside every Arab-Israeli village just in case their populations get any funny ideas."

In Van Creveld's view (he does say flatly that he is utterly opposed to any form of "transfer"), "The expulsion of the Palestinians would require only a few brigades. They would not drag people out of their houses but use heavy artillery to drive them out; the damage caused to Jenin would look like a pinprick in comparison. He discounts any effective response from Egypt, Syrpia, Lebanon or Iraq. "Saddam Hussein may launch some of the 30 to 40 missiles he probably has. The damage they can do, however, is limited. Should Saddam be mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction, then Israel's response would be so 'awesome and terrible' (as Yitzhak Shamir, the former prime minister, once said) as to defy the imagination."

But what about international reaction? Van Creveld thinks it would not be an effective deterrent. "If Mr Sharon decides to go ahead, the only country that can stop him is the United States. The US, however, regards itself as being at war with parts of the Muslim world that have supported Osama bin Laden. America will not necessarily object to that world being taught a lesson - particularly if it could be as swift and brutal as the 1967 campaign; and also particularly if it does not disrupt the flow of oil for too long."

Israeli military experts estimate that such a war could be over in just eight days," Van Creveld writes."If the Arab states do not intervene, it will end with the Palestinians expelled and Jordan in ruins. If they do intervene, the result will be the same, with the main Arab armies destroyed. Israel would, of course, take some casualties, especially in the north, where its population would come under fire from Hizbollah. However, their number would be limited and Israel would stand triumphant, as it did in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973."

Top Lawyer Urges Death For Families Of Bombers
Lewin: 'A Policy Born of Necessity'
By
AMI EDEN
FORWARD STAFF

A prominent Washington attorney and Jewish communal leader is calling for the execution of family members of suicide bombers.

Nathan Lewin, an oft-mentioned candidate for a federal judgeship and legal advisor to several Orthodox organizations, told the Forward that such a policy would provide a much-needed deterrent against suicide attacks. Under the proposal, which Lewin unveiled in the current issue of the opinion journal Sh'ma, family members would be spared if they immediately condemned the bombing and refused financial compensation for the loss of their relative. (Lewin's article appears on the web at <http://www.shma.com/may02/nathan.htm>.)

While a 20-month spate of suicide bombings has been met in the Jewish community with calls for increasingly Draconian preventive measures, Lewin appears to be the first Jewish communal leader to approve publicly of the concept of executing innocent civilians in the hopes of curbing terrorism. "If executing some suicide-bomber families saves the lives of even an equal number of potential civilian victims, the exchange is, I believe, ethically permissible," wrote Lewin, who served as president of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists and is a vice president of the Orthodox Union. "It is a policy born of necessity - the need to find a true deterrent when capital punishment is demonstrably ineffective."

Lewin argued that the biblical injunction to destroy the ancient tribe of Amalek serves as a precedent in Judaism for taking measures that are "ordinarily unacceptable" in the face of a mortal threat. His proposal, however, was rejected by an Israeli diplomat in New York, and discounted, in terms ranging from mild to condemnatory, by a range of commentators, terrorism experts and Jewish communal leaders from across the American political spectrum.

"The State of Israel is determined to respond to every Palestinian provocation," said Ido Aharoni, consul for media and public affairs at Israel's New York consulate. "Israel's military approach is to pursue the perpetrators and those who seek to carry out acts of terrorism against innocent Israelis. Within that framework, Israel is trying to minimize, if possible to eliminate, the number of innocent lives lost."

Several leading Jewish figures, including Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, argued that the plan represented a legitimate if flawed attempt to strike a balance between preventing terrorism and preserving democratic norms. But the proposal was strongly condemned by the head of the Reform movement, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, and the executive vice chairwoman of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Hannah Rosenthal.

"The opinion is utterly reprehensible and totally contrary to the most fundamental principles of the Jewish religious tradition and everything the State of Israel has been about since its founding," said Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. "I've said it, and everyone realizes, that in a war all of our standards on civil liberties may not apply. But to say that you need to make common-sense compromises is a long way from saying we are going to kill innocent people to bring about deterrence."

Yoffie rejected Lewin's reference to Amalek as a possible justification for killing innocents. He argued that for nearly 2,000 years talmudic sages and other rabbinic commentators have argued that the lessons of Amalek could not be applied to contemporary times. In an article that appeared in the Sh'ma journal alongside Lewin's essay, Brandeis University Jewish studies professor Arthur Green wrote, "I only wonder how long it will take [Lewin], by the force of this proof-text, to go all the way and suggest that the Palestinian nation as a whole has earned the fate of Amalek."

Green, former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, wrote that his first desire upon reading Lewin's essay was to "tear my garments, as a sign of mourning on hearing the desecration of God's name." The criticisms of Lewin were taken one step further by Jeremy Burton, a member of Sh'ma's advisory board and executive director of AMOS: The National Jewish Partnership for Social Justice. Burton argued, in his own name, that the attorney should now be blackballed from organized Jewish life, just as the late Rabbi Meir Kahane was ostracized for calling for the mass deportation of Arabs from Israel.

Rosenthal, whose organization serves the national network of local Jewish community relations councils and a range of national organizations, said that Jewish groups need to condemn any talk in their community of justifying the killing of civilians. "I can't begin to tell you how many meetings I've been in with colleagues across the country where the words of spokespersons for various Muslim and Arab causes are being parsed," Rosenthal said. "We look at words and decide which side of the line you are on."

Dershowitz and Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, rejected the notion that Lewin should be elbowed out of communal life. They argued that his proposal represented a legitimate attempt to forge a policy for stopping terrorism. Foxman declined to take a stand on the actual proposal, citing his policy of deferring to Jerusalem on Israeli security issues.

Though they declined to endorse the controversial proposal, top officials at the O.U. and Agudath Israel of America, for whom Lewin has done legal work, expressed sympathy for Lewin's efforts to curb what they described as an unprecedented wave of suicide attacks in Israel. "[Lewin] is not a Kahanist; he is not a nut," said Richard Stone, chair of the O.U.'s Institute of Public Affairs. Stone noted that Lewin, a member of the institute's executive committee, was not advocating the mass deportation of Arabs, rather a limited method of fighting terrorists.

Rabbi William Altshul, headmaster of the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school in Washington, D.C., told the Forward that he did not regret the decision to honor Lewin this week at the school's annual dinner. "I haven't read the article," Altshul said. "But Nat has always been known for his outspoken opinions, and I respect him for it." Even as several observers rejected the notion of blackballing Lewin, they offered substantive critiques of his argument. Dershowitz, author of "Why Terrorism Works" (Yale University Press, 2002), and terrorism researcher Steven Emerson, who both favor the limited use of torture to extract information about an impending terrorist attack, said that they balked at the execution of innocent civilians. Still, Emerson added, "all bets are off" if terrorists were to target thousands of people with non-conventional weapons.

Dershowitz argued that the same level of deterrence could be achieved by leveling the villages of suicide bombers after the residents had been given a chance to evacuate (an idea Lewin disparagingly likened to "using aspirin to treat brain cancer").

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Orthodox Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, N.J., a trained lawyer known for hawkish views on Israeli security issues, argued that a policy of mass deportations, rather than executions, could serve as an effective, but less deadly, deterrent against future attacks. Several observers defended Lewin by noting that the United States killed tens of thousands of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Yoffie warned against such parallels.

"If we are going to start looking for historical justifications for us to kill innocent people, then we are destroying the moral basis of our argument, which is ultimately our most effective weapon," the Reform leader said. "Don't go down that road because it is wrong, self-defeating and dangerous for Israel."

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