Endnotes back to page main page one
24 Trevor N. Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947-1974 (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), pp. 3-19, 121-125, 146-147, 212-214, 231-244, 333-340, 388-390, 597-605, 623-633; Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), pp. 189-199; Rashid Khalidi, "The Palestinians and 1948: The Underlying Causes of Failure," in Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds., The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 12-36; Haim Levenberg, Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine, 1945-1948 (London: Frank Cass, 1993); Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), chapters 1,3. Idem, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1999), pp. 187- 189, 191-196, 217-223, 235-236, 241-242, 286-291, 311-313, 393-395; Martin Van Creveld, The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense Forces (NY: Public Affairs, 1998), pp. 77-82, 137-138, 179-182. 24
25 Amos Harel, "Israel Maintains Its Strategic Advantage, Says Jaffee Center," Ha’aretz, November 23, 2005. Also see, Uri Bar-Joseph, "The Paradox of Israeli Power," Survival, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter 2004-05), pp. 137-156; Martin Van Creveld, "Opportunity Beckons," Jerusalem Post, May 15, 2003.
26 For three instructive pieces on this matter from the Israeli press, see Amiram Barkat, "Majority of Israelis Are Opposed to Intermarriage, Survey Finds," Ha’aretz, September 15, 2003; Nicky Blackburn, "Better a Jew," Ha’aretz, April 21, 2004; Lily Galili, "Hitting Below the Belt," Ha’aretz, August 8, 2004.
27 See "The Official Summation of the Or Commission Report," published in Ha’aretz, September 2, 2003. For evidence of how hostile many Israelis were to the report’s findings and recommendations, see "No Avoiding the Commission Recommendations," Ha’aretz, September 4, 2003; Molly Moore, "Israeli Report Is Welcomed, Dismissed," Washington Post, September 3, 2003. Also see Bernard Avishai, "Saving Israel from Itself: A Secular Future for the Jewish State," Harper’s Magazine, January 2005. It is also worth noting that the Israel Democracy Institute reported in May 2003 that: 53 percent of Israeli Jews "are against full equality for the Arabs"; 77 percent of Israeli Jews believe that "there should be a Jewish majority on crucial political decisions"; only 31 percent "support having Arab political parties in the government"; 57 percent "think that the Arabs should be encouraged to emigrate." See "The Democracy Index: Major Findings 2003." Imagine the outcry that would occur if a majority of white Americans declared that blacks, Hispanics, and Asians "should be encouraged" to leave the United States. For more recent surveys, which show little change in Israeli attitudes, see Yulie Khromchenko, "Survey: Most Jewish Israelis Support Transfer of Arabs," Ha’aretz, June 22, 2004; Yoav Stern, "Poll: Most Israeli Jews Say Israeli Arabs Should Emigrate," Ha’aretz, April 4, 2005.
28 Quoted in Justin Huggler, "Israel Imposes ‘Racist’ Marriage Law," Guardian, August 1, 2003. Also see James Bennet, "Israel Blocks Palestinians from Marrying into Residency," New York Times, July 31, 2003; "Racist Legislation," Ha’aretz editorial, July, 19, 2004; "Racist Legislation," Ha’aretz editorial, January 18, 2005. Even the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized the legislation, albeit mildly. Nathan Guttman, Yair Ettinger, Sharon Sadeh, "ADL Criticizes Law Denying Citizenship to Palestinians," Ha’aretz, August 5, 2003.
29 The first wave of European Jews to come to Palestine is known as the First Aliyah, and it covers the years from 1882 to 1903. There were slightly more than 15,000 Jews in Palestine in 1882. Justin McCarthy, The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate (NY: Columbia University Press, 1990), p.11, which has excellent data for the years from 1850 to 1915. Also see Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994), p. 124.
30 The total population of Palestine in 1893 was roughly 530,000, of whom about 19,000 were Jewish (3.6 percent). Arabs comprised the vast majority of the remaining population. McCarthy, Population of Palestine, p. 11.
31 Flapan, Birth of Israel, p. 44; Morris, Righteous Victims, p. 186.
32 Flapan, Birth of Israel, p 22. Similarly, Ben-Gurion told his son, "I am certain we will be able to settle in all the other parts of the country, whether through agreement and mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or in another way." He went on to say, "Erect a Jewish State at once, even if it is not in the whole of the land. The rest will come in the course of time. It must come." Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (NY: Norton, 2000), p. 21. Also see Flapan, Birth of Israel, pp. 13-53; Nur Masalah, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), chapter 2; Morris, Righteous Victims, pp. 138-139; Avi Shlaim, The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists, and Palestine, 1921-1951 (NY: Oxford University Press, 1999).
33 Masalah, Expulsion of the Palestinians, p. 128. Also see Morris, Righteous Victims, pp. 140, 142, 168-169.
34 Benny Morris, "A New Exodus for the Middle East?" Guardian, October 3, 2002. On the pervasiveness of transfer thinking among Zionists before Israel was established in 1948, see Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians; Morris, "Revisiting the Palestinian Exodus of 1948," in Rogan and Shlaim, War for Palestine, pp. 39-48; Morris, Birth Revisited, chapter 2; Ari Shavit, "Survival of the Fittest," Ha’aretz, January 9, 2004.
35 Morris, Birth Revisited, provides a detailed account of this event. Also see Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, trans. Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), chapters 3-4. The only remaining debate of real significance regarding the expulsion of the Palestinians from their homeland is whether it was "born of war," as Morris argues, or by design, as Norman Finkelstein argues in Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso, 1995), chapter 3.
36 Erskine Childers, "The Other Exodus," Spectator, May 12, 1961; Flapan, Birth of Israel, pp. 81-118; Walid Khalidi, "Why Did the Palestinians Leave Revisited," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2 ( Winter 2005), pp. 42-54; Idem, "The Fall of Haifa," Middle East Forum, Vol. 35, No. 10 (December, 1959), pp. 22-32; Morris, Birth Revisited.
37 Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, trans. Steve Cox (NY: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), p. 99. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founding father of the Israeli right, made essentially the same point when he wrote, "Colonization is self-explanatory and what it implies is fully understood by every sensible Jew and Arab. There can only be one purpose in colonization. For the country’s Arabs that purpose is essentially unacceptable. This is a natural reaction and nothing will change it." Quoted in Ian Lustick, "To Build and To Be Built By: Israel and the Hidden Logic of the Iron Wall," Israel Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1996), p. 200.
38 See Geoffrey Aronson, Israel, Palestinians, and the Intifada: Creating Facts on the West Bank (London: Kegan Paul International, 1990); Amnon Barzilai, "A Brief History of the Missed Opportunity," Ha’aretz, June 5, 2002; Idem, "Some Saw the Refugees as the Key to Peace," Ha’aretz, June 11, 2002; Moshe Behar, "The Peace Process and Israeli Domestic Politics in the 1990s," Socialism and Democracy, Current Issue Number 32, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Summer-Fall 2002), pp. 34-47; Adam Hanieh and Catherine Cook, "A Road Map to the Oslo Cul-de-Sac," Middle East Report Online, May 15, 2003; "Israel’s Interests Take Primacy: An Interview with Dore Gold," in bitterlemons.org, "What Constitutes a Viable Palestinian State?" March 15, 2004, Edition 10; Nur Masalha, Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion (London: Pluto Press, 2000); Sara Roy, "Erasing the ‘Optics’ of Gaza," The Daily Star On Line, February 14, 2004; "36 Years, and Still Counting," Ha’aretz, September 26, 2003.
39 Rahid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (NY: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 147. Meir also said, "It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist." Masalha, Imperial Israel, p. 47. Rabin said in 1995, two years after signing the Oslo accords, "I seek peaceful coexistence between Israel as a Jewish state, not all over the land of Israel, or most of it; its capital, the united Jerusalem; its security border with Jordan rebuilt; next to it, a Palestinian entity, less than a state, that runs the life of Palestinians …. This is my goal, not to return to the pre-Six Day War lines but to create two entities, a separation between Israel and the Palestinians who reside in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip." Hanieh and Cook, "Road Map." Also see Akiva Eldar, "On the Same Page, Ten Years On," Ha’aretz, November 5, 2005; David Grossman, "The Night Our Hope for Peace Died," Guardian, November 4, 2005; Michael Jansen, "A Practice that Prevents the Emergence of a Palestinian State," Jordan Times, November 10, 2005. It is worth noting that in the spring of 1998, Israel and its American supporters sharply criticized First Lady Hillary Clinton for saying that, "It would be in the long- term interests of peace in the Middle East for there to be a state of Palestine, a functioning modern state that is on the same footing as other states." Tom Rhodes and Christopher Walker, "Congress Tells Israel to Reject Clinton’s Pullout Plan," New York Times, May 8, 1998; James Bennet, "Aides Disavow Mrs. Clinton on Mideast," New York Times, May 8, 1998. 39
40 Charles Enderlein, Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002, trans. Susan Fairfield (NY: Other Press, 2003), pp. 201, 207-208; Jeremy Pressman, "Visions in Collision: What Happened at Camp David and Taba? International Security, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Fall 2003), p. 17; Deborah Sontag, "Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed," New York Times, July 26, 2001; Clayton E. Swisher, The Truth about Camp David: The Untold Story about the Collapse of the Peace Process (NY: Nation Books, 2004), pp. 284, 318, 325. Barak himself said after Camp David that "the Palestinians were promised a continuous piece of sovereign territory except for a razor- thin Israeli wedge running from Jerusalem through from Maale Adumim to the Jordan River," which effectively would have been under Israel’s control. Benny Morris, "Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak)", New York Review of Books, Vol. 49, No. 10 (June 13, 2002), p. 44. Also see the map Israeli negotiators presented to the Palestinians at Camp David, a copy of which can be found in Roane Carey, ed., The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid (London: Verso, 2001), p. 36.
41 See Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003). For a telling critique of Dershowitz’s book, see Norman G. Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). Also see "Dershowitz v. Desch," American Conservative, January 16, 2005.
42 Morris, Righteous Victims, chapters 2-5.
43 Morris, Birth Revisited. It should be noted that many Israeli documents concerning the events of 1948 remain classified; Morris expects "that with respect to both expulsions and atrocities, we can expect additional revelations as the years pass and more Israeli records become available." Morris, "Revisiting the Palestinian Exodus," in Rogan and Shlaim, War for Palestine, p. 49. In fact, he maintains that the reported cases of rape he knows about are "just the tip of the iceberg." See Shavit, "Survival of the Fittest."
44 Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 432. Also see ibid., pp. 126-153, 178-184. For evidence of similar behavior after the 1967 War, see Uri Avnery, "Crying Wolf?" CounterPunch, March 15, 2003; Ami Kronfeld, "Avnery on Ethnic Cleansing and a Personal Note," in Jewish Voice for Peace, Jewish Peace News, March 17, 2003; Katherine M. Metres, "As Evidence Mounts, Toll of Israeli Prisoner of War Massacres Grows," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, February/March 1996, pp. 17, 104-105.
45 During his negotiations with the British and French governments over the launching of the 1956 war, Ben-Gurion proposed a grand plan for reordering the region that would have divided Jordan between Israel and Iraq, transferred all of Lebanon south of the Litani River to Israel, and given Israel portions of the Sinai as well. On Israel’s policies in the 1950s, see Morris, Israel’s Border Wars; Morris, Righteous Victims, chapter 6, especially pp. 289-290; Shlaim, Iron Wall, chapters 3-4, especially pp.184-185; Kennett Love, Suez: the Twice Fought War (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), pp. 589-638; Michael Brecher, Decisions in Israel’s Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), pp. 282-283.
46 Gabby Bron, "Egyptian POWs Ordered to Dig Graves, Then Shot by Israeli Army," Yedioth Ahronoth, August 17, 1995; Ronal Fisher, "Mass Murder in the 1956 Sinai War," Ma’ariv, August 8, 1995 [Copies of these two pieces can be found in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Spring 1996), pp. 148-155]; Galal Bana, "Egypt: We Will Turn to the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague if Israel Will Not Compensate Murdered Prisoners of War," Ha’aretz, July 24, 2002; Zehavat, Friedman, "Personal Reminiscence: Remembering Ami Kronfeld," in Jewish Voice for Peace, Jewish Peace News, September 25, 2005; Metres, "As Evidence Mounts."
47 Avnery, "Crying Wolf"; Robert Blecher, "Living on the Edge: The Threat of ‘Transfer’ in Israel and Palestine," MERIP, Middle East Report 225, Winter 2002; Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War against the Palestinians (London: Verso, 2003), p. 28. Also see Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, p. 97; Morris, Righteous Victims, pp. 328-329; Tanya Reinhart, Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 (NY: Seven Stories Press, 2002), p. 8. Morris reports (p. 329) that 120,000 Palestinians applied to return to their homes right after the 1967 War, but Israel allowed only about 17,000 to come back. Amnesty International estimated in mid-2003 that in the years since Israel had acquired the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it had destroyed more than 10,000 Palestinian homes in those areas. Danny Rubinstein, "Roads, Fences and Outposts Maintain Control in the Territories," Ha’aretz, August 12, 2003. 47
48 "Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut," February 7, 1983. The report is commonly called "The Kahan Commission Report" after its chairman, Yitzhak Kahan.
49 Swedish Save the Children, "The Status of Palestinian Children during the Uprising in the Occupied Territories," Excerpted Summary Material, Jerusalem, 1990, in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Summer 1990), pp. 136-146. Also see Joshua Brilliant, "Officer Tells Court Villagers Were Bound, Gagged and Beaten. ‘Not Guilty’ Plea at ‘Break Bones’ Trial," Jerusalem Post, March 30, 1990; Joshua Brilliant, "‘Rabin Ordered Beatings’, Meir Tells Military Court," Jerusalem Post, June 22, 1990; Jackson Diehl, "Rights Group Accuses Israel of Violence Against Children in Palestinian Uprising," Washington Post, May 17, 1990; James A. Graff, "Crippling a People: Palestinian Children and Israeli State Violence," Alif, No. 13 (1993), pp. 46-63; Ronald R. Stockton, "Intifada Deaths," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Summer 1990), pp. 86-95. Ehud Barak, the IDF’s Deputy Chief of Staff during the First Intifada, said at the time, "We do not want children to be shot under any circumstances …. When you see a child you don’t shoot." Nevertheless, the Swedish Save the Children report estimated that 6,500 to 8,000 children were wounded by gunfire during the first two years of the Intifada. Researchers investigated 66 of the 106 recorded cases of "child gunshot deaths." They concluded that: almost all of them "were hit by directed — not random or ricochet — gunfire"; nearly twenty percent suffered multiple gunshot wounds; twelve percent were shot from behind; fifteen percent of the children were ten years of age or younger; "most children were not participating in a stone-throwing demonstration when shot dead"; and "nearly one-fifth of the children were shot dead while at home or within ten meters of their homes."
50 "Unbridled Force," Ha’aretz editorial, March 16, 2003. For other evidence, see Jonathan Cook, "Impunity on Both Sides of the Green Line," MERIP, Middle East Report Online, November 23, 2005; "When Everything Is Permissible," Ha’aretz editorial, June 6, 2005; "It Can Happen Here," Ha’aretz editorial, November 22, 2004; Chris McGreal, "Snipers with Children in Their Sights," Guardian, June 28, 2005; Idem, "Israel Shocked by Image of Soldiers Forcing Violinist to Play at Roadblock," Guardian, November 29, 2004; Greg Myre, "Former Israeli Soldiers Tell of Harassment of Palestinians," New York Times, June 24, 2004; Reuven Pedatzur, "The Message to the Soldiers Was Clear," Ha’aretz, December 13, 2004; Conal Urquhart, "Israeli Soldiers Tell of Indiscriminate Killings by Army and A Culture of Impunity," Guardian, September 6, 2005.
51 See Swisher, Truth about Camp David, p. 387.
52 According to B’tselem, between September 29, 2000, and December 31, 2005, 3,386 Palestinians were killed by the Israelis, of whom 676 were children. Of those 3,386 deaths, 1,185 were bystanders, 1,008 were killed while fighting the Israelis, and the circumstances of 563 deaths are unknown. During the same period, 992 Israelis were killed by the Palestinians, 118 of whom were children. Of those 992 deaths, 683 were civilians and 309 belonged to Israeli security forces. B’tselem press release, January 4, 2006.
53 Nathan Guttman, "‘It’s a Terrible Thing, Living with the Knowledge that You Crushed Our Daughter’," Ha’aretz, April 30, 2004; Adam Shapiro, "Remembering Rachel Shapiro," Nation, March 18, 2004; Tsahar Rotem, "British Peace Activist Shot by IDF Troops in Gaza Strip," Ha’aretz, April 11, 2003.
54 Molly Moore, "Ex-Security Chiefs Turn on Sharon," Washington Post, November 15, 2003; "Ex-Shin Bet Heads Warn of ‘Catastrophe’ without Peace Deal," Ha’aretz, November 15, 2003. These comments were based on an interview in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on November 14, 2003. For a copy of that interview, see "We Are Seriously Concerned about the Fate of the State of Israel," The Alternative Information Center, December 1, 2003.
55 Bill Maxwell, "U.S. Should Reconsider Aid to Israel," St. Petersburg Times, December 16, 2001.
56 See J. Bowyer Bell, Terror Out of Zion: The Fight for Israeli Independence ( New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996); Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940-1949 (London: Frank Cass, 1995); Bruce Hoffmann, The Failure of British Military Strategy within Palestine, 1939-1947 (Israel: Bar-Ilan University, 1983); Morris, Righteous Victims, pp. 173-180; Segev, One Palestine, pp. 468-486. According to Haim Levenberg, 210 of the 429 casualties from Jewish terrorism in Palestine during 1946 were civilians. The other 219 were police and soldiers. Levenberg, Military Preparations, p. 72. Furthermore, it was Jewish terrorists from the infamous Irgun who in late 1937 introduced the practice of placing bombs in buses and large crowds. Benny Morris speculates that, "The Arabs may well have learned the value of terrorist bombings from the Jews." Righteous Victims, pp. 147, 201. Also see Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir (London: Zed Books, 1984), p. 100; Yehoshua Porath, The Palestinian Arab National Movement: from Riots to Rebellion, Vol. II, 1929-1939 (London: Frank Cass, 1977), p. 238. Finally, Morris notes that during the 1948 war the main Jewish terrorist groups "knowingly planted bombs in bus stops with the aim of killing non-combatants, including women and children." Birth Revisited, p. 80.
57 Bell, Terror Out of Zion, pp. 336-340.
58 Quoted in Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, pp. 485-486. Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol used to call Menachem Begin "the terrorist." Barzilai, "Brief History." On Shamir, see Avishai Margalit, "The Violent Life of Yitzhak Shamir," New York Review of Books, May 14, 1992, pp. 18-24.
59 Moreover, Israel’s claim to a morally superior status is undermined by some of its other policies. Israel once cultivated close ties with apartheid-era South Africa and aided the white minority government’s nuclear weapons program. Peter Liberman, "Israel and the South African Bomb," The Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Summer 2004), pp. 46-80. In 1954, Israeli intelligence forces bombed a U.S. diplomatic facility in Cairo in a bungled attempt to sow discord between Egypt and the United States. Shlaim, Iron Wall, pp. 110-113.
