AUTHOR: Santiago ALBA RICO
Translated by Manuel Talens. Revised by Mary Rizzo
Second World War’s true winner was neither the alliance of nations which fought Nazi Germany nor a United States strengthened by the weakening of Europe, and even less was it the millions of Jews who were victims of Nazism: The true winner of the Second World was the Zionist movement founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. For that reason, the true loser of the war was not Germany, Japan or Italy or even a Soviet Union condemned to disappearing 40 years later. The true loser - together with the millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust - was the Palestinian people, radically innocent and totally alien to both European anti-Semitism and its anti-imperialist struggles. The unjust UN Resolution 181, that in 1947 established the partition of Palestine - an ignominious combination of illegitimate interests and bad conscience - nowadays preserves all its destructive power. Marek Edelman, who in 1943 was one of the heroic defenders of the Warsaw ghetto, was perfectly aware of the reasons for it: “Israel has been created thanks to an agreement between the UK, the US and the USSR but it was not to expiate the six million Jews murdered by Europe but rather to be share businesses of the Middle East amongst themselves.” Today the results are before the eyes of everyone: the world is hopelessly bleeding through that small crack.
The Basel Congress - Zionism’s foundational act - was initially denounced as a form of anti-Semitism by this universalist Jew from Vienna who was Karl Kraus: “These two forces would privately aspire to an alliance,” because “they share a common objective indeed: to expel Jews from Europe.” At any raten Theodor Herzl’s ethnic-religious essentialism only persuaded a tiny minority, and this is proved by the fact that only a few thousand Zionists emigrated to Palestine before 1933. Only the convergence of three factors external to the history of the region can explain the presence of 600,000 Jews at the moment of partition. The first one was the Nazi persecution, which forced millions of Jews to flee Germany and the territories occupied by it. The second one was the unscrupulous exploitation of this genocide by the Zionist organization, more concerned about colonizing Palestine than about saving human beings: “If I am given the possibility to save all Jewish children from Germany taking them to England or to save only half of them transporting them to Eretz Israel - declared Ben Gurion in 1938 - I would opt for the second alternative.” The third one was England’s imperialistic greed from the 1917 Balfour Declaration on, because through a Machiavellian migratory policy it interpreted in its favor all the advantages of Herzl’s racist proposals: “For Europe, we shall be there (in Palestine) a section of the wall against Asia. We shall do pioneer service for culture against barbarism.”
Partition and expansion
Contrary to what we tend to believe, Palestinian justice was not alone in opposing the partition: Zionist injustice also opposed it. In 1948 Menachem Begin - leader of the terrorist group Irgun and future Nobel Peace Prize winner - declared that “the partition won’t deprive Israel of the rest of the territories.” On 19 March of that same year Ben Gurion - head of Haganah and founding father of Israel - insisted in that “the Jewish State won’t depend on UN policies but on its military force.” That military force, articulated in the Plan Dalet, expelled 800,000 Palestinians from their lands through terror and violence during a large-scale ethnic cleansing operation whose span and objectives have been clearly highlighted by Israeli historian Benny Morris (an ultra-Zionist whose only complaint by the way is that Ben Gurion was not radical enough). That’s how Middle East’s “only democratic” State was created on 18 May, 1948 on over 77% of the Palestinian territory. The constitution of this “Jewish” State is the well-known 1950 Law of Return. This law - not poised on decency nor reason or history - allows the “return” to Palestine of any “Jew” of the world, based upon an ambiguous racial-religious definition. People given this right include the descendants of Jewish parents or grandparents as well as converts to Moses’ religion (but excluding those who convert away from Judaism and those who question the “Jewish” character of the State of Israel).
11 July, 1948: Israeli Army expelled Lydda’s 19,000 inhabitants as well as the more than 20,000 Palestinians who had taken refuge in the town. Today Lydda’s name is Lod and only 20% of its population is Arab. 418 villages were emptied.
Every time that Israel bombards cities, builds walls, uproots olive trees or imposes hunger and illness to millions of human beings, both the US and the EU remind everyone again and again of its right to defend itself - even if they sometimes regret “the disproportionate use of force.” Nobody should be shocked if I say that it is absurd to invoke Israel’s right to defense when the real matter is its right to existence. Every time that both the US and the EU promote some “peace initiative”, its discussions turn around what to do with Palestinians and what to grant to Palestinians, as if they were the intruders and occupants. Nobody should be shocked if I say that the true question is to know what we shall do with Israelis and what we shall grant to Israelis. Justice is impossible if it is not based upon fair principles. Therefore it is necessary to reverse those principles - that we consider absurdly natural - if we want to reach not even justice but a minimally unjust solution. I am sure that both pragmatism and pity would lead the Palestinians to be generous with Israelis, if the world openly declares who has justice on its side and acts accordingly to it. But as long as both the US and the EU - the only two keys to end the conflict - politically, economically and militarily support the rights of racism, fanaticism, messianic nationalism and colonial violence, mankind will continue hopelessly bleeding through that crack opened up in Palestine.
Note by Diagonal: The refugee problem
After the expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, 350,000 in 1967 and the constant leak of Palestinians who have left and continue leaving the country during the last 60 years, the number of refugees amounts to approximately six million. More than four million live in the Occupied Territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. More than a million live in refugee camps. And more than 250,000 are displaced inside Israel as “present absentees.” The return of refugees, key to the end of the conflict supported by the UN Resolution 194, is rejected by Israel outright.
Source: http://www.diagonalperiodico
Original article published on 15 November 2007
About the author
Spanish writer and translator Manuel Talens is a member of Cubadebate, Rebeliَn and Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. His most recent novel is La cinta de Moebius (Alcalل Grupo Editorial). Mary Rizzo is editor of Peacepalestine and a member of Tlaxcala. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and reviser are cited.
URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=4141&lg=en
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