Blaming the Victims
Encyclopedia
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, is a collection of essay
s, co-edited by Palestinian scholar and advocate Edward Said
and journalist and author Christopher Hitchens
, published by Verso Books
in 1988 (ISBN 0-86091-887-4). It contains essays by Said and Hitchens as well as other prominent advocates and activists including Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky
, Norman G. Finkelstein, Christopher Hitchens
, Rashid Khalidi
.
In his introduction, Said says he believes that the establishment of Israel
occurred partly because the Israelis "acquired control" of the land, and partly because they had won the "political battle for Palestine
in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue." He returns again to this theme, remarking on the "dominance of the Zionist
viewpoint in Western cultural discourse..." In describing this viewpoint he notes what he calls Zionism's "spurious, often flagrantly preposterous arguments." Said says there is an "official Zionist discourse", and "unofficial Zionist work", citing for some praise the "revisionist historians"
such as Tom Segev
and Benny Morris
. Said criticizes American Zionists whose "shameless adulation of Israel is almost limitless."
Said remarks a pattern in Israel supporters. They "reproduce the official party line on Israel or they go after delinquents who threaten to disturb the idyll." Critics and opponents of the Zionists "take it as their tasks first to decode the myths, then to present the record of facts in as neutral a way as possible." The Zionist viewpoint has "its peculiar blindnesses, its ideological weaknesses to say the least, its outrageous falsifications..." (p 13) Said notes that Western scholarly writing about the Middle East "is adversely affected by the Zionist-Palestinian conflict." Much work has been done by talented Arab scholars and writers, and non- or anti-Zionist Jews, but still needs to be done to expose and uncover the myths.
Concluding his introduction, Said says (page 19),
Blaming the Victims is divided into four parts, with a number of essays comprising each part. The parts are entitled, The Peters Affair, Myths Old and New, The Liberal Alternative, and Scholarship Ancient and Modern.
and her book, From Time Immemorial
. Peters thesis is that what is referred to the Palestinian refugee
problem is actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
and that many of those who came to consider themselves Palestinians, she argues, had in fact immigrants to Palestine from other parts of the Arab world in the early 20th century.
. Hitchens refers to Benny Morris
´s then newly published article "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Service Analysis of June 1948", which was first published in January 1986 in the Middle Eastern Studies
in which Hitchen's quotes Morris as saying that the IDF intelligence report 'thoroughly undermines the traditional official Israeli "explanation" of a mass flight ordered or "incited" by the Arab leadership for political-strategic purposes.' (page 75)
According to Hitchens this confirmation "by an Israeli historian using the most scrupulous and authentic Zionist sources, at last allows us to write finis to a debate which has been going on for a quarter of a century [...] between Erskine B. Childers
and Jon Kimche
."
Hitchens then goes on to describe the exchange of letter between Erskine Childers and Jon Kimche in The Spectator
following the publication of Childers' article of 12 May 1961.
Childers wrote of what Hitchens calls "the best-known Israeli propaganda claim" that the Palestinians had been urged to flee by their own leadership:
Hitchens notes that Childers was "intrigued enough" to go on and examine the original (October 2) 1948 issue of the Economist, which had been cited as a source for the claim that Arab evacuation orders had in fact taken place. It turned out that the report, "which made vague reference to announcements made over the air" by the Arab Higher Committee
, had been written from Cyprus
by a correspondent who had used an uncorroborated Israeli source. Hitchens remarks: "It hardly counted as evidence, let alone first-hand testimony." (page 76)
The essay goes on to examine the rest of Childers' argument, and to agree that Childer's had made his case that no such radio announcements were ever made.
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, is a collection of essay
s, co-edited by Palestinian scholar and advocate Edward Said
and journalist and author Christopher Hitchens
, published by Verso Books
in 1988 (ISBN 0-86091-887-4). It contains essays by Said and Hitchens as well as other prominent advocates and activists including Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky
, Norman G. Finkelstein, Christopher Hitchens
, Rashid Khalidi
.
In his introduction, Said says he believes that the establishment of Israel
occurred partly because the Israelis "acquired control" of the land, and partly because they had won the "political battle for Palestine
in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue." He returns again to this theme, remarking on the "dominance of the Zionist
viewpoint in Western cultural discourse..." In describing this viewpoint he notes what he calls Zionism's "spurious, often flagrantly preposterous arguments." Said says there is an "official Zionist discourse", and "unofficial Zionist work", citing for some praise the "revisionist historians"
such as Tom Segev
and Benny Morris
. Said criticizes American Zionists whose "shameless adulation of Israel is almost limitless."
Said remarks a pattern in Israel supporters. They "reproduce the official party line on Israel or they go after delinquents who threaten to disturb the idyll." Critics and opponents of the Zionists "take it as their tasks first to decode the myths, then to present the record of facts in as neutral a way as possible." The Zionist viewpoint has "its peculiar blindnesses, its ideological weaknesses to say the least, its outrageous falsifications..." (p 13) Said notes that Western scholarly writing about the Middle East "is adversely affected by the Zionist-Palestinian conflict." Much work has been done by talented Arab scholars and writers, and non- or anti-Zionist Jews, but still needs to be done to expose and uncover the myths.
Concluding his introduction, Said says (page 19),
Blaming the Victims is divided into four parts, with a number of essays comprising each part. The parts are entitled, The Peters Affair, Myths Old and New, The Liberal Alternative, and Scholarship Ancient and Modern.
and her book, From Time Immemorial
. Peters thesis is that what is referred to the Palestinian refugee
problem is actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
and that many of those who came to consider themselves Palestinians, she argues, had in fact immigrants to Palestine from other parts of the Arab world in the early 20th century.
. Hitchens refers to Benny Morris
´s then newly published article "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Service Analysis of June 1948", which was first published in January 1986 in the Middle Eastern Studies
in which Hitchen's quotes Morris as saying that the IDF intelligence report 'thoroughly undermines the traditional official Israeli "explanation" of a mass flight ordered or "incited" by the Arab leadership for political-strategic purposes.' (page 75)
According to Hitchens this confirmation "by an Israeli historian using the most scrupulous and authentic Zionist sources, at last allows us to write finis to a debate which has been going on for a quarter of a century [...] between Erskine B. Childers
and Jon Kimche
."
Hitchens then goes on to describe the exchange of letter between Erskine Childers and Jon Kimche in The Spectator
following the publication of Childers' article of 12 May 1961.
Childers wrote of what Hitchens calls "the best-known Israeli propaganda claim" that the Palestinians had been urged to flee by their own leadership:
Hitchens notes that Childers was "intrigued enough" to go on and examine the original (October 2) 1948 issue of the Economist, which had been cited as a source for the claim that Arab evacuation orders had in fact taken place. It turned out that the report, "which made vague reference to announcements made over the air" by the Arab Higher Committee
, had been written from Cyprus
by a correspondent who had used an uncorroborated Israeli source. Hitchens remarks: "It hardly counted as evidence, let alone first-hand testimony." (page 76)
The essay goes on to examine the rest of Childers' argument, and to agree that Childer's had made his case that no such radio announcements were ever made.
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, is a collection of essay
s, co-edited by Palestinian scholar and advocate Edward Said
and journalist and author Christopher Hitchens
, published by Verso Books
in 1988 (ISBN 0-86091-887-4). It contains essays by Said and Hitchens as well as other prominent advocates and activists including Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky
, Norman G. Finkelstein, Christopher Hitchens
, Rashid Khalidi
.
In his introduction, Said says he believes that the establishment of Israel
occurred partly because the Israelis "acquired control" of the land, and partly because they had won the "political battle for Palestine
in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue." He returns again to this theme, remarking on the "dominance of the Zionist
viewpoint in Western cultural discourse..." In describing this viewpoint he notes what he calls Zionism's "spurious, often flagrantly preposterous arguments." Said says there is an "official Zionist discourse", and "unofficial Zionist work", citing for some praise the "revisionist historians"
such as Tom Segev
and Benny Morris
. Said criticizes American Zionists whose "shameless adulation of Israel is almost limitless."
Said remarks a pattern in Israel supporters. They "reproduce the official party line on Israel or they go after delinquents who threaten to disturb the idyll." Critics and opponents of the Zionists "take it as their tasks first to decode the myths, then to present the record of facts in as neutral a way as possible." The Zionist viewpoint has "its peculiar blindnesses, its ideological weaknesses to say the least, its outrageous falsifications..." (p 13) Said notes that Western scholarly writing about the Middle East "is adversely affected by the Zionist-Palestinian conflict." Much work has been done by talented Arab scholars and writers, and non- or anti-Zionist Jews, but still needs to be done to expose and uncover the myths.
Concluding his introduction, Said says (page 19),
Blaming the Victims is divided into four parts, with a number of essays comprising each part. The parts are entitled, The Peters Affair, Myths Old and New, The Liberal Alternative, and Scholarship Ancient and Modern.
and her book, From Time Immemorial
. Peters thesis is that what is referred to the Palestinian refugee
problem is actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
and that many of those who came to consider themselves Palestinians, she argues, had in fact immigrants to Palestine from other parts of the Arab world in the early 20th century.
. Hitchens refers to Benny Morris
´s then newly published article "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Service Analysis of June 1948", which was first published in January 1986 in the Middle Eastern Studies
in which Hitchen's quotes Morris as saying that the IDF intelligence report 'thoroughly undermines the traditional official Israeli "explanation" of a mass flight ordered or "incited" by the Arab leadership for political-strategic purposes.' (page 75)
According to Hitchens this confirmation "by an Israeli historian using the most scrupulous and authentic Zionist sources, at last allows us to write finis to a debate which has been going on for a quarter of a century [...] between Erskine B. Childers
and Jon Kimche
."
Hitchens then goes on to describe the exchange of letter between Erskine Childers and Jon Kimche in The Spectator
following the publication of Childers' article of 12 May 1961.
Childers wrote of what Hitchens calls "the best-known Israeli propaganda claim" that the Palestinians had been urged to flee by their own leadership:
Hitchens notes that Childers was "intrigued enough" to go on and examine the original (October 2) 1948 issue of the Economist, which had been cited as a source for the claim that Arab evacuation orders had in fact taken place. It turned out that the report, "which made vague reference to announcements made over the air" by the Arab Higher Committee
, had been written from Cyprus
by a correspondent who had used an uncorroborated Israeli source. Hitchens remarks: "It hardly counted as evidence, let alone first-hand testimony." (page 76)
The essay goes on to examine the rest of Childers' argument, and to agree that Childer's had made his case that no such radio announcements were ever made.
Hitchens concludes the essay with the observation that even as he was writing the article, he noticed a full-page advertisement from CAMERA
, which said:
Hitchens says he wrote to CAMERA on 20 February 1987, asking for an authenticated case of such a broadcast. He did not receive any reply. And he concludes with a prediction:
tells of his collaboration with the Canadian Ben Dunkelman
in 1974 ghostwriting the latter's autobiography Dual Allegiance. Dunkelman had fought for Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
as a commander of the 7th Brigade, the country's best-known armored brigade. He had participated in Operation Dekel
, leading the 7th Brigade and its supporting units as it moved to capture the town of Nazareth
between July 8 and 18, 1948. Nazareth capitulated July 16, after little more than token resistance. The surrender was formalized in a written document that agreed that the inhabitants would cease hostilities in return for promises that no harm would come to the civilian population. A few hours later Dunkelman was given an oral order to evacuate the civilian population of Nazareth which he refused to obey. Dunkelman had told Kidron that believed the Arab inhabitants in Nazareth were not forced to evacuate because of his refusal to follow that order. In the end, Dunkelman decided not to use this episode in his autobiography, but Kidron felt that this was important evidence that Israel had forcibly expelled the Palestinian Arabs, and he made a copy of it.
Kidron goes on to relate how he in 1978-79 translated Yitzhak Rabin
´s memoir, Soldier of Peace, into English. While doing so he had access to the part of Rabin's memoirs which related to the expulsion of Arabs from Lod
and Ramle in the middle of July 1948 ("Operation Larlar"). While the Israeli military censor passed the manuscript, a special ministerial commission struck out several portions of the translation, including this section where Rabin had written:
After some soulsearching, Kidron passed both the Dunkelman story and the Rabin story to the New York Times. They published the story as "Israel bars Rabin from Relating ´48 Eviction of Arabs", on 23 October 1979.
Kidron's conclusion:
and Ronald Reagan
as "two of the world's leading terrorist commanders," whose "shared conception of 'peace' furthermore, excludes entirely one of the two groups that claim the right of national self-determination." (Palestinian Arabs) He refers to Americans as "racist." He bemoans that Israel denies the Palestinians the right to elect their own representatives to peace negotiations. He presents documentation of what he calls "atrocities" committed by Israelis, likening Israeli prisons to those of the Gestapo
. He supports the thesis that the Israelis created and manipulated the conflict between Lebanese Christians and Muslims. Chomsky refers to Israel as a "client state
" that "inherits from its master [the United States] the 'right' of terrorism, torture and aggression." Chomsky is particularly contemptuous of claims that criticism of Israeli tactics is a manifestation of anti-Semitism, saying such charges are false, and that the media "bends over backwards" to see things from the Israeli perspective.
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, co-edited by Palestinian scholar and advocate Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
and journalist and author Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, published by Verso Books
Verso Books
Verso Books is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of New Left Review. The company claims "global sales approaching $3 million per year and over 350 titles in print," possibly making it "the largest radical publisher in the English-language...
in 1988 (ISBN 0-86091-887-4). It contains essays by Said and Hitchens as well as other prominent advocates and activists including Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod was a Palestinian academic, characterised by Edward Said as "Palestine's foremost academic and intellectual" and by Rashid Khalidi as one of the first Arab-American scholars to have a really serious effect on the way the Middle East is portrayed in political science and in...
, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Norman G. Finkelstein, Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, Rashid Khalidi
Rashid Khalidi
Rashid Ismail Khalidi , born 1948, a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.-Family, education and...
.
In his introduction, Said says he believes that the establishment of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
occurred partly because the Israelis "acquired control" of the land, and partly because they had won the "political battle for Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue." He returns again to this theme, remarking on the "dominance of the Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
viewpoint in Western cultural discourse..." In describing this viewpoint he notes what he calls Zionism's "spurious, often flagrantly preposterous arguments." Said says there is an "official Zionist discourse", and "unofficial Zionist work", citing for some praise the "revisionist historians"
New Historians
The New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history, including Israel's role in the Palestinian Exodus in 1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in 1988 by one of the leading New Historians, Benny...
such as Tom Segev
Tom Segev
Tom Segev is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's so-called New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives.-Early life:Segev was born in Jerusalem in 1945...
and Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
. Said criticizes American Zionists whose "shameless adulation of Israel is almost limitless."
Said remarks a pattern in Israel supporters. They "reproduce the official party line on Israel or they go after delinquents who threaten to disturb the idyll." Critics and opponents of the Zionists "take it as their tasks first to decode the myths, then to present the record of facts in as neutral a way as possible." The Zionist viewpoint has "its peculiar blindnesses, its ideological weaknesses to say the least, its outrageous falsifications..." (p 13) Said notes that Western scholarly writing about the Middle East "is adversely affected by the Zionist-Palestinian conflict." Much work has been done by talented Arab scholars and writers, and non- or anti-Zionist Jews, but still needs to be done to expose and uncover the myths.
Concluding his introduction, Said says (page 19),
Blaming the Victims is divided into four parts, with a number of essays comprising each part. The parts are entitled, The Peters Affair, Myths Old and New, The Liberal Alternative, and Scholarship Ancient and Modern.
"The Peters Affair"
This section of the book contains two essays, one by Said and one by Finklestein concerning Joan PetersJoan Peters
Joan Peters is a former CBS news producer of otherwise unnamed documentaries, and the author best known for a number of theses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, put forward in her book From Time Immemorial, published in 1984 in which she claims that the Palestinians are largely not indigenous...
and her book, From Time Immemorial
From Time Immemorial
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.According to the book a large...
. Peters thesis is that what is referred to the Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugees or Palestine refugees are the people and their descendants, predominantly Palestinian Arabic-speakers, who fled or were expelled from their homes during and after the 1948 Palestine War, within that part of the British Mandate of Palestine, that after that war became the...
problem is actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
and that many of those who came to consider themselves Palestinians, she argues, had in fact immigrants to Palestine from other parts of the Arab world in the early 20th century.
"Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial" (Norman G. Finkelstein)
"Broadcasts" (Christopher Hitchens)
The "broadcast" issue relates to whether or not the Palestinian Arab population who were dispossessed were induced or incited to run away by their own leadership during the 1948 Palestinian exodus1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
. Hitchens refers to Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
´s then newly published article "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Service Analysis of June 1948", which was first published in January 1986 in the Middle Eastern Studies
Middle Eastern studies
Middle Eastern studies is a name given to a number of academic programs associated with the study of the history, culture, politics, economies, and geography of the Middle East, an area that is generally interpreted to cover a range of nations extending from North Africa in the west to the Chinese...
in which Hitchen's quotes Morris as saying that the IDF intelligence report 'thoroughly undermines the traditional official Israeli "explanation" of a mass flight ordered or "incited" by the Arab leadership for political-strategic purposes.' (page 75)
According to Hitchens this confirmation "by an Israeli historian using the most scrupulous and authentic Zionist sources, at last allows us to write finis to a debate which has been going on for a quarter of a century [...] between Erskine B. Childers
Erskine Childers (UN)
Erskine Barton Childers was a writer, BBC correspondent and United Nations senior civil servant. He was the eldest son of Erskine Hamilton Childers and Ruth Ellen Dow Childers...
and Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche was a journalist and historian . A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young man. In 1934–35, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and he later managed the ILP's bookshop at 35...
."
Hitchens then goes on to describe the exchange of letter between Erskine Childers and Jon Kimche in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
following the publication of Childers' article of 12 May 1961.
Childers wrote of what Hitchens calls "the best-known Israeli propaganda claim" that the Palestinians had been urged to flee by their own leadership:
Hitchens notes that Childers was "intrigued enough" to go on and examine the original (October 2) 1948 issue of the Economist, which had been cited as a source for the claim that Arab evacuation orders had in fact taken place. It turned out that the report, "which made vague reference to announcements made over the air" by the Arab Higher Committee
Arab Higher Committee
The Arab Higher Committee was the central political organ of the Arab community of Mandate Palestine. It was established on 25 April 1936, on the initiative of Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and comprised the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans under the mufti's...
, had been written from Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
by a correspondent who had used an uncorroborated Israeli source. Hitchens remarks: "It hardly counted as evidence, let alone first-hand testimony." (page 76)
The essay goes on to examine the rest of Childers' argument, and to agree that Childer's had made his case that no such radio announcements were ever made.
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, is a collection of essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, co-edited by Palestinian scholar and advocate Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
and journalist and author Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, published by Verso Books
Verso Books
Verso Books is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of New Left Review. The company claims "global sales approaching $3 million per year and over 350 titles in print," possibly making it "the largest radical publisher in the English-language...
in 1988 (ISBN 0-86091-887-4). It contains essays by Said and Hitchens as well as other prominent advocates and activists including Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod was a Palestinian academic, characterised by Edward Said as "Palestine's foremost academic and intellectual" and by Rashid Khalidi as one of the first Arab-American scholars to have a really serious effect on the way the Middle East is portrayed in political science and in...
, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Norman G. Finkelstein, Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, Rashid Khalidi
Rashid Khalidi
Rashid Ismail Khalidi , born 1948, a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.-Family, education and...
.
In his introduction, Said says he believes that the establishment of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
occurred partly because the Israelis "acquired control" of the land, and partly because they had won the "political battle for Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue." He returns again to this theme, remarking on the "dominance of the Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
viewpoint in Western cultural discourse..." In describing this viewpoint he notes what he calls Zionism's "spurious, often flagrantly preposterous arguments." Said says there is an "official Zionist discourse", and "unofficial Zionist work", citing for some praise the "revisionist historians"
New Historians
The New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history, including Israel's role in the Palestinian Exodus in 1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in 1988 by one of the leading New Historians, Benny...
such as Tom Segev
Tom Segev
Tom Segev is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's so-called New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives.-Early life:Segev was born in Jerusalem in 1945...
and Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
. Said criticizes American Zionists whose "shameless adulation of Israel is almost limitless."
Said remarks a pattern in Israel supporters. They "reproduce the official party line on Israel or they go after delinquents who threaten to disturb the idyll." Critics and opponents of the Zionists "take it as their tasks first to decode the myths, then to present the record of facts in as neutral a way as possible." The Zionist viewpoint has "its peculiar blindnesses, its ideological weaknesses to say the least, its outrageous falsifications..." (p 13) Said notes that Western scholarly writing about the Middle East "is adversely affected by the Zionist-Palestinian conflict." Much work has been done by talented Arab scholars and writers, and non- or anti-Zionist Jews, but still needs to be done to expose and uncover the myths.
Concluding his introduction, Said says (page 19),
Blaming the Victims is divided into four parts, with a number of essays comprising each part. The parts are entitled, The Peters Affair, Myths Old and New, The Liberal Alternative, and Scholarship Ancient and Modern.
"The Peters Affair"
This section of the book contains two essays, one by Said and one by Finklestein concerning Joan PetersJoan Peters
Joan Peters is a former CBS news producer of otherwise unnamed documentaries, and the author best known for a number of theses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, put forward in her book From Time Immemorial, published in 1984 in which she claims that the Palestinians are largely not indigenous...
and her book, From Time Immemorial
From Time Immemorial
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.According to the book a large...
. Peters thesis is that what is referred to the Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugees or Palestine refugees are the people and their descendants, predominantly Palestinian Arabic-speakers, who fled or were expelled from their homes during and after the 1948 Palestine War, within that part of the British Mandate of Palestine, that after that war became the...
problem is actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
and that many of those who came to consider themselves Palestinians, she argues, had in fact immigrants to Palestine from other parts of the Arab world in the early 20th century.
"Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial" (Norman G. Finkelstein)
"Broadcasts" (Christopher Hitchens)
The "broadcast" issue relates to whether or not the Palestinian Arab population who were dispossessed were induced or incited to run away by their own leadership during the 1948 Palestinian exodus1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
. Hitchens refers to Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
´s then newly published article "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Service Analysis of June 1948", which was first published in January 1986 in the Middle Eastern Studies
Middle Eastern studies
Middle Eastern studies is a name given to a number of academic programs associated with the study of the history, culture, politics, economies, and geography of the Middle East, an area that is generally interpreted to cover a range of nations extending from North Africa in the west to the Chinese...
in which Hitchen's quotes Morris as saying that the IDF intelligence report 'thoroughly undermines the traditional official Israeli "explanation" of a mass flight ordered or "incited" by the Arab leadership for political-strategic purposes.' (page 75)
According to Hitchens this confirmation "by an Israeli historian using the most scrupulous and authentic Zionist sources, at last allows us to write finis to a debate which has been going on for a quarter of a century [...] between Erskine B. Childers
Erskine Childers (UN)
Erskine Barton Childers was a writer, BBC correspondent and United Nations senior civil servant. He was the eldest son of Erskine Hamilton Childers and Ruth Ellen Dow Childers...
and Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche was a journalist and historian . A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young man. In 1934–35, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and he later managed the ILP's bookshop at 35...
."
Hitchens then goes on to describe the exchange of letter between Erskine Childers and Jon Kimche in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
following the publication of Childers' article of 12 May 1961.
Childers wrote of what Hitchens calls "the best-known Israeli propaganda claim" that the Palestinians had been urged to flee by their own leadership:
Hitchens notes that Childers was "intrigued enough" to go on and examine the original (October 2) 1948 issue of the Economist, which had been cited as a source for the claim that Arab evacuation orders had in fact taken place. It turned out that the report, "which made vague reference to announcements made over the air" by the Arab Higher Committee
Arab Higher Committee
The Arab Higher Committee was the central political organ of the Arab community of Mandate Palestine. It was established on 25 April 1936, on the initiative of Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and comprised the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans under the mufti's...
, had been written from Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
by a correspondent who had used an uncorroborated Israeli source. Hitchens remarks: "It hardly counted as evidence, let alone first-hand testimony." (page 76)
The essay goes on to examine the rest of Childers' argument, and to agree that Childer's had made his case that no such radio announcements were ever made.
Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, is a collection of essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s, co-edited by Palestinian scholar and advocate Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...
and journalist and author Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, published by Verso Books
Verso Books
Verso Books is a publishing house based in London and New York City, founded in 1970 by the staff of New Left Review. The company claims "global sales approaching $3 million per year and over 350 titles in print," possibly making it "the largest radical publisher in the English-language...
in 1988 (ISBN 0-86091-887-4). It contains essays by Said and Hitchens as well as other prominent advocates and activists including Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod was a Palestinian academic, characterised by Edward Said as "Palestine's foremost academic and intellectual" and by Rashid Khalidi as one of the first Arab-American scholars to have a really serious effect on the way the Middle East is portrayed in political science and in...
, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, Norman G. Finkelstein, Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens is an Anglo-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the...
, Rashid Khalidi
Rashid Khalidi
Rashid Ismail Khalidi , born 1948, a Palestinian-American historian of the Middle East, is the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and director of the Middle East Institute of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs.-Family, education and...
.
In his introduction, Said says he believes that the establishment of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
occurred partly because the Israelis "acquired control" of the land, and partly because they had won the "political battle for Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
in the international world in which ideas, representations, rhetoric, and images were at issue." He returns again to this theme, remarking on the "dominance of the Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
viewpoint in Western cultural discourse..." In describing this viewpoint he notes what he calls Zionism's "spurious, often flagrantly preposterous arguments." Said says there is an "official Zionist discourse", and "unofficial Zionist work", citing for some praise the "revisionist historians"
New Historians
The New Historians are a loosely-defined group of Israeli historians who have challenged traditional versions of Israeli history, including Israel's role in the Palestinian Exodus in 1948 and Arab willingness to discuss peace. The term was coined in 1988 by one of the leading New Historians, Benny...
such as Tom Segev
Tom Segev
Tom Segev is an Israeli historian, author and journalist. He is associated with Israel's so-called New Historians, a group challenging many of the country's traditional narratives.-Early life:Segev was born in Jerusalem in 1945...
and Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
. Said criticizes American Zionists whose "shameless adulation of Israel is almost limitless."
Said remarks a pattern in Israel supporters. They "reproduce the official party line on Israel or they go after delinquents who threaten to disturb the idyll." Critics and opponents of the Zionists "take it as their tasks first to decode the myths, then to present the record of facts in as neutral a way as possible." The Zionist viewpoint has "its peculiar blindnesses, its ideological weaknesses to say the least, its outrageous falsifications..." (p 13) Said notes that Western scholarly writing about the Middle East "is adversely affected by the Zionist-Palestinian conflict." Much work has been done by talented Arab scholars and writers, and non- or anti-Zionist Jews, but still needs to be done to expose and uncover the myths.
Concluding his introduction, Said says (page 19),
Blaming the Victims is divided into four parts, with a number of essays comprising each part. The parts are entitled, The Peters Affair, Myths Old and New, The Liberal Alternative, and Scholarship Ancient and Modern.
"The Peters Affair"
This section of the book contains two essays, one by Said and one by Finklestein concerning Joan PetersJoan Peters
Joan Peters is a former CBS news producer of otherwise unnamed documentaries, and the author best known for a number of theses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, put forward in her book From Time Immemorial, published in 1984 in which she claims that the Palestinians are largely not indigenous...
and her book, From Time Immemorial
From Time Immemorial
From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine is a 1984 book by Joan Peters about the demographics of the Arab population of Palestine and of the Jewish population of the Arab world before and after the formation of the State of Israel.According to the book a large...
. Peters thesis is that what is referred to the Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugee
Palestinian refugees or Palestine refugees are the people and their descendants, predominantly Palestinian Arabic-speakers, who fled or were expelled from their homes during and after the 1948 Palestine War, within that part of the British Mandate of Palestine, that after that war became the...
problem is actually a population exchange that resulted from the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
and that many of those who came to consider themselves Palestinians, she argues, had in fact immigrants to Palestine from other parts of the Arab world in the early 20th century.
"Disinformation and the Palestine Question: The Not-So-Strange Case of Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial" (Norman G. Finkelstein)
"Broadcasts" (Christopher Hitchens)
The "broadcast" issue relates to whether or not the Palestinian Arab population who were dispossessed were induced or incited to run away by their own leadership during the 1948 Palestinian exodus1948 Palestinian exodus
The 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
. Hitchens refers to Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
´s then newly published article "The Causes and Character of the Arab Exodus from Palestine: The Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Service Analysis of June 1948", which was first published in January 1986 in the Middle Eastern Studies
Middle Eastern studies
Middle Eastern studies is a name given to a number of academic programs associated with the study of the history, culture, politics, economies, and geography of the Middle East, an area that is generally interpreted to cover a range of nations extending from North Africa in the west to the Chinese...
in which Hitchen's quotes Morris as saying that the IDF intelligence report 'thoroughly undermines the traditional official Israeli "explanation" of a mass flight ordered or "incited" by the Arab leadership for political-strategic purposes.' (page 75)
According to Hitchens this confirmation "by an Israeli historian using the most scrupulous and authentic Zionist sources, at last allows us to write finis to a debate which has been going on for a quarter of a century [...] between Erskine B. Childers
Erskine Childers (UN)
Erskine Barton Childers was a writer, BBC correspondent and United Nations senior civil servant. He was the eldest son of Erskine Hamilton Childers and Ruth Ellen Dow Childers...
and Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche was a journalist and historian . A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young man. In 1934–35, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and he later managed the ILP's bookshop at 35...
."
Hitchens then goes on to describe the exchange of letter between Erskine Childers and Jon Kimche in The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
following the publication of Childers' article of 12 May 1961.
Childers wrote of what Hitchens calls "the best-known Israeli propaganda claim" that the Palestinians had been urged to flee by their own leadership:
Hitchens notes that Childers was "intrigued enough" to go on and examine the original (October 2) 1948 issue of the Economist, which had been cited as a source for the claim that Arab evacuation orders had in fact taken place. It turned out that the report, "which made vague reference to announcements made over the air" by the Arab Higher Committee
Arab Higher Committee
The Arab Higher Committee was the central political organ of the Arab community of Mandate Palestine. It was established on 25 April 1936, on the initiative of Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and comprised the leaders of Palestinian Arab clans under the mufti's...
, had been written from Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
by a correspondent who had used an uncorroborated Israeli source. Hitchens remarks: "It hardly counted as evidence, let alone first-hand testimony." (page 76)
The essay goes on to examine the rest of Childers' argument, and to agree that Childer's had made his case that no such radio announcements were ever made.
Hitchens concludes the essay with the observation that even as he was writing the article, he noticed a full-page advertisement from CAMERA
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is an American non-profit pro-Israel media watchdog group. The group says it was founded in 1982 "to respond to the Washington Post's coverage of Israel's Lebanon incursion", and to respond to what it considers the media's "general...
, which said:
Hitchens says he wrote to CAMERA on 20 February 1987, asking for an authenticated case of such a broadcast. He did not receive any reply. And he concludes with a prediction:
"Truth Whereby Nations Live" (Peretz Kidron)
In his essay Truth Whereby Nations Live, Israeli journalist and translator Peretz KidronPeretz Kidron
Peretz Kidron was an Israeli pacifist, writer, journalist, and translator.-Biography:Born in Vienna, his family moved to Great Britain following the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. After completing his secondary education he emigrated to Israel, where he lived for 20 years in Kibbutz...
tells of his collaboration with the Canadian Ben Dunkelman
Ben Dunkelman
Benjamin Dunkelman was a Canadian Jewish officer who served in the Canadian Army in World War II and the Israel Defense Forces in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. In Israel, he was called Benjamin Ben-David....
in 1974 ghostwriting the latter's autobiography Dual Allegiance. Dunkelman had fought for Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
1948 Arab-Israeli War
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, known to Israelis as the War of Independence or War of Liberation The war commenced after the termination of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of an independent Israel at midnight on 14 May 1948 when, following a period of civil war, Arab armies invaded...
as a commander of the 7th Brigade, the country's best-known armored brigade. He had participated in Operation Dekel
Operation Dekel
Operation Dekel , was the largest offensive in the north of Israel after the first truce of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It was carried out by the 7th Armoured Brigade, a battalion from the Carmeli Brigade along with some elements from the Golani Brigade between 8–18 July. Its objective was to...
, leading the 7th Brigade and its supporting units as it moved to capture the town of Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
between July 8 and 18, 1948. Nazareth capitulated July 16, after little more than token resistance. The surrender was formalized in a written document that agreed that the inhabitants would cease hostilities in return for promises that no harm would come to the civilian population. A few hours later Dunkelman was given an oral order to evacuate the civilian population of Nazareth which he refused to obey. Dunkelman had told Kidron that believed the Arab inhabitants in Nazareth were not forced to evacuate because of his refusal to follow that order. In the end, Dunkelman decided not to use this episode in his autobiography, but Kidron felt that this was important evidence that Israel had forcibly expelled the Palestinian Arabs, and he made a copy of it.
Kidron goes on to relate how he in 1978-79 translated Yitzhak Rabin
Yitzhak Rabin
' was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974–77 and 1992 until his assassination in 1995....
´s memoir, Soldier of Peace, into English. While doing so he had access to the part of Rabin's memoirs which related to the expulsion of Arabs from Lod
Lod
Lod is a city located on the Sharon Plain southeast of Tel Aviv in the Center District of Israel. At the end of 2010, it had a population of 70,000, roughly 75 percent Jewish and 25 percent Arab.The name is derived from the Biblical city of Lod...
and Ramle in the middle of July 1948 ("Operation Larlar"). While the Israeli military censor passed the manuscript, a special ministerial commission struck out several portions of the translation, including this section where Rabin had written:
- What would they do with the 50,000 civilians in the two cities ... Not even Ben-Gurion could offer a solution, and during the discussion at operation headquarters, he remained silent, as was his habit in such situations. Clearly, we could not leave [Lydda's] hostile and armed populace in our rear, where it could endanger the supply route [to the troops who were] advancing eastward. ... Allon repeated the question: What is to be done with the population? Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture that said: Drive them out! ... 'Driving out' is a term with a harsh ring ... Psychologically, this was one of the most difficult actions we undertook. The population of LodLodLod is a city located on the Sharon Plain southeast of Tel Aviv in the Center District of Israel. At the end of 2010, it had a population of 70,000, roughly 75 percent Jewish and 25 percent Arab.The name is derived from the Biblical city of Lod...
did not leave willingly. There was no way of avoiding the use of force and warning shots in order to make the inhabitants march the 10 to 15 miles to the point where they met up with the legion. The inhabitants of Ramleh watched and learned the lesson. Their leaders agreed to be evacuated voluntarily...
After some soulsearching, Kidron passed both the Dunkelman story and the Rabin story to the New York Times. They published the story as "Israel bars Rabin from Relating ´48 Eviction of Arabs", on 23 October 1979.
Kidron's conclusion:
"Middle East Terrorism and the American Ideological System" (Noam Chomsky)
Chomsky's essay is a indictment of Israeli and American military operations during the 1980s in the Middle East and Central America, respectively. It is a critique of the role of the Western media in covering these operations up and in painting a picture of the Arabs as inveterate terrorists. He describes Shimon PeresShimon Peres
GCMG is the ninth President of the State of Israel. Peres served twice as the eighth Prime Minister of Israel and once as Interim Prime Minister, and has been a member of 12 cabinets in a political career spanning over 66 years...
and Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
as "two of the world's leading terrorist commanders," whose "shared conception of 'peace' furthermore, excludes entirely one of the two groups that claim the right of national self-determination." (Palestinian Arabs) He refers to Americans as "racist." He bemoans that Israel denies the Palestinians the right to elect their own representatives to peace negotiations. He presents documentation of what he calls "atrocities" committed by Israelis, likening Israeli prisons to those of the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. He supports the thesis that the Israelis created and manipulated the conflict between Lebanese Christians and Muslims. Chomsky refers to Israel as a "client state
Client state
Client state is one of several terms used to describe the economic, political and/or military subordination of one state to a more powerful state in international affairs...
" that "inherits from its master [the United States] the 'right' of terrorism, torture and aggression." Chomsky is particularly contemptuous of claims that criticism of Israeli tactics is a manifestation of anti-Semitism, saying such charges are false, and that the media "bends over backwards" to see things from the Israeli perspective.
"Michael Walzer's Exodus and Revolution: A Canaanite Reading" (Edward W. Said)
"Palestine: Ancient History and Modern Politics" (G. W. Bowersock)
"Territorially-Based Nationalism and the Politics of Negation" (Ibrahim Abu-Lughod)
"Palestinian Peasant Resistance to Zionism before World War I" (Rashid Khalidi)
"A Profile of the Palestinian People" (Edward W. Said, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Abu-Lughod, Muhammad Hallaj and Elia Zureik)
See also
- Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol 18 no. 1, (Aut. 88):pp 51-70. Erskine Childers, Walid KhalidiWalid KhalidiWalid Khalidi is an Oxford University-educated Palestinian historian who has written extensively on the Palestinian exodus. He is General Secretary and co-founder of the Institute for Palestine Studies, established in Beirut in December 1963 as an independent research and publishing center...
, and Jon Kimche 1961 Correspondence in The SpectatorThe SpectatorThe Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
on “Why the Refugees Left” [Originally Appendix E of Khalidi, Walid, “Plan Dalet Revisited: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine”.