Re: what really happened in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (#137051)
by N. Friedman on September 17, 2009 at 3:43 PM

Professor,

You write: "you have mentioned many times about arab war aims, but you seem to assume that the zionist/israel leadership was going to just let 70,000 palestinians live in the middle of the jewish state ..." You cite Professor Morris in support of this view.

I think you have misread Professor Morris, at least his more recent work (e.g. 1948) which includes substantial correction to his earlier works on the basis, according to him, of additional documents and errors previously made. His view is that the Jewish side came to accept partition by the end of the 1930's. Moreover, his view is that transfer was simply not the policy followed of the Jewish side but that, as he said in an interview, if someone comes to kill you, better him than you; which is to say, the displacement of Arabs, according to Morris, was largely a matter of circumstance, not planning.

I thus reject your argument that Jews were not about to live with Palestinian Arabs among them as - to be frank - not supportable from the record you cite - namely, Professor Morris' findings. Further and if nothing else, the fact is that Jews have lived with Arabs in Israel - and for more than 70,000 Arabs mentioned by you in your tendentious comment - from the time of Israel's founding. In fact, going by Hillel Cohen's interesting book, Army of Shadows, the Arabs who remained in Israel were those who stayed put and manifested an intention of not picking up arms to fight. In other words, such people believed in live and let live.

Further, your view is that Zionism was an inherent threat to Palestinian Arabs, which accounts for the views of local British officials. Other writers, e.g. Elie Kedorie, have examined the British role in great detail and have concluded that there was quite a bit of anti-Jewish prejudice by many on the British side, although this was not the only motive. He also concludes that the British took an historically stupid position - a folly, on his telling - which resulted in Britain losing most of its influence in the Arab region, most particularly as a result of how it mishandled the uprising of the late 1930's, allowing other Arab states to play a role.

Lastly, I reject your view that Zionism was inherently something reasonably to be fought by Arabs. Hillel Cohen's noted book shows that your position is not supported by the facts. Rather, rejectionism was one of many views among Arabs and it reason for gaining prominence was that it killed off and otherwise terrorized those who sought accommodation or common cause with Jews. Hence, it was historic circumstance, not the nature of Zionism, that led to the rise of Arab rejectionism.

It seems to me that anytime there is a large migration, there will be some degree of objection from the "native" population. If that is what you mean, I agree with you. Such rejectionism exists, for example,in the US regarding Mexican immigrants - even legal immigrants - today and in the past regarding Eastern Europeans. That is also the case in Europe today regarding Muslim immigrants. So, I can understand that existing among Arabs. However, the total rejectionism that was built is due to other factors, not primarily Zionism.

There is a word for those among native population who adopt the view that opposes immigrants: they are called racists!!! And, as shown by substantial scholarship by a number of writers, there is substantial contemptuous view of Jews that is, in fact, native to the Arab regions and that existed long before there were Zionists. That view, which has its roots in religion, is also a major reason for Arab rejection of Jews in Israel. That, not Zionism, is the main issue.

Re: what really happened in Tel Aviv and Jaffa (#137096)
by Elliott Aron Green on September 21, 2009 at 12:21 PM

--this comment was meant to go here, although it also appears above--

Prof LeVine,
we differ on many points, large and small. As to Meir Zamir's articles in HaArets in 2008, I would point out that he is a professor like you [at Ben Gurion univ, in the ME dept]. His articles in HaArets were based on his research in French and Israeli archives, and other sources. At least that's what he says. I have not seen his documents. However, if you doubt him, then one might respond that peer review might not mean all that much if the peer reviewers for a journal are one's friends, cothinkers, members of the same coterie or set, etc. This is said hypothetically but is a possibility. Zamir's two articles were highly praised by some readers of HaAretz. Here for instance:

אימפריה מאוסה

המאמר "בגידת בריטניה, נקמת צרפת" הוא
אחד המאמרים המרתקים שקראתי בשנים האחרונות (מוסף "הארץ" 1.2). תוכנית בריטית צינית סודית נחשפה במלוא כיעורה לעיני הצרפתים בעוד כבשני אושוויץ עשנים. על פי אותו מערך כלי שחמט חדשים אמורים הפיון המארוני בלבנון, והפיון היהודי בפלשתינה, להיעלם מהלוח יחד עם שלל שליטים אזוריים ובכללם האמיר עבדאללה והמופתי אל-חוסייני, בדרך ליצירת "הפדרציה הערבית" תחת הגמוניה בריטית.

I accept Zamir's thesis because it fits much that was already known to me, as I mentioned above. Such as Brit encouragement/prodding to Arab states to form the Arab League. One of Eden's pan-Arabist speeches was delivered a day or so in time from the Farhud massacre of Jews in Baghdad in 1941 which Brit troops outside Baghdad could have stopped. French permission for Jewish refugee ships to sail for the Land of Israel from French soil, such as the Exodus ship, whose passengers were caught and later shipped to Germany by the British navy. The 1939 British White Paper on Palestine. The avoidance by the BBC of reporting on the Holocaust as it was taking place. The decision of the Allies not to prosecute Haj Amin el-Husseini as a war criminal, which was mainly driven by the UK govt, as far as I know.

As to Arab policemen in the British service taking part in the 1921 Jaffa pogrom, I have read it in several places, most recently in a column by the knowledgeable Jerusalem Post columnist Sarah Honig. The reason that I did not state it more definitely was because I did not have a source handy. Likewise, that Arab mobs chanted al-Dawla ma`ana during anti-Jewish pogroms, I have seen in a number of accounts. One of them was by Pierre van Paassen. I must wonder at your statement that British police cooperated with Tel Aviv police in 1936, whereas the pogrom that I am referring to took place in 1921. The Jewish police in Tel Aviv were also under British supervision.

You also say that Arab-Muslim institutions [you use the word "Palestinian"] were suppressed by the British. But the British created a new Arab-Muslim power base, the Supreme Muslim Council, to which they appointed Haj Amin el-Husseini as its head. They knew that Husseini was a fervent anti-Zionist when they appointed him both Mufti of Jerusalem and head of the Supreme Muslim Council.

And then UK officers in the OETA-South, organized Muslim-Christian associations throughout the country in order to combat the Jews/Zionism [see Yehoshua Porat]. Some of the British officers in the country were under the influence of the Judeophobic fogery-cum-plagiarism, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
- - - - - -

My chief objection to your conclusions is that, I feel, your article does not take into account two major events/facts that, if they were taken into account, would logically lead to different conclusions.

1) the Ottoman expulsion of Jews from Tel Aviv in 1917, without food or shelter provided, albeit the Jews were allowed to leave behind 12 men to watch over their property. This would seem to vitiate your conclusion that
the Jews were especially privileged in the late Ottoman Empire. I am sure that you would agree that before the Tanzimat reforms [ca. 1839-1864] the Jews [and other dhimmis] were quite oppressed, quite inferior in rights, in the empire, etc., albeit some Jews prospered [i.e., Hayim Farhi]. Furthermore, how can traditional Muslim Judeophobia be overlooked as a motivational factor?

2) the British 1939 "White Paper on Palestine" which essentially canceled out Jewish rights in the country, as well as Zionism, without League of Nations approval. Indeed, the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League ruled that this White Paper was in violation of Britain's mandate to govern the country. This WP also foreclosed the Land of Israel as a refuge for Jews from the Nazis, whether these Jews came from Tunisia and Libya, where the preliminary stages of the Holocaust were begun, or from Germany, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Greece, etc. Now, just how does one get this White Paper to fit in with the notion that the British were pro-Zionist?