the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict: An Introduction
As Khalid Rashidi has written "It is axiomatic that history is written by the victors" but something unique has happened, the history of the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict is being written by the losers, on social media, in the press and academia. Google is so swamped with pro-Palestinian propaganda that contradictory facts cannot be found. The history can be so complex, with so much information and so many ethical, cultural and religious viewpoints that I believe only by cutting the story to the barebones can it be understood.
The Palestinian Propaganda-Industrial Ccmplex is rewriting the surprising defeat of Muslim-Arab society by the Zionist Jews as a Modern Morality Play, a Nationalist 'resistence' against the British and American Empires, a speaking truth to power. There is now (post 2020) an uncountable army of academics, Ph.D. students, journalists, NGOs, Youtubers and Tik-Tokers selling this story in the apparent hope that they will demonstrate that the history of Israel is so evil that the land will be taken from the current Israelis and given to the descendants of Muslims who lived there prior to 1948 or 1914 … But by whom?
In the 19th and early 20th century Palestine was a total shithole. A small elite of families of 'notables', 'effendis', a land owning class who claimed descent from Arabian conquerors ruled as agents of the Turkish Ottoman Empire over tribes of (fellaheen): dirty, illiterate, ignorant, desperately poor, permanently indebted, violent peasants. Lice, mosquitos, fleas and faecal borne diseases were common, infant mortality was very high and life expectancy was around 35. European tourism to Palestine increased in the 19th century because it was the "Holy Land" of Christianity. Those who recorded their visits, including Mark Twain, all agreed that it was a nearly empty desert, worthless except for its religious history and that armed guards were a necessity for protection from the 'natives'.
In the 19th century European countries became the dominant financial, manufacturing and military powers with Britain the most powerful. In this time the Levant or Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Empire though it's sharia, medieval, guild controlled Islamic society was unable to compete with Europe and Russia and was making efforts to 'reform' ie Europanize itself.
Palestinians spoke Arabic having been conquered and converted in the 7th century when they were Byzantine Christians but are genetically descendants of ancient Canaanites as are the Zionist Jews. It's quite remarkable that in 1905 Ben Borochov (1881-1917), a Socialist Zionist wrote: The Fellahin in Eretz-Yisrael are the direct descendants of the remnants of the Jewish and Canaanite agricultural community, with a very slight admixture of Arab blood; … Thus the ethnic difference between the Jews of the Diaspora and the fellahin of Eretz-Yisrael is no greater than the difference between the Ashekenazi and the Sephardi Jews. The local people are neither Arabs or Turks.24
In the late 19th century some Jews began leaving Europe and migrating to Palestine in response to terrible oppression in Eastern Europe. They were Zionists, seeking to create a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine. There did not seem there was any possibility that this could be accomplished. They were not very many and they were not very successful. They relied on Jews in other countries financing them. Their migration was legal and they bought land and settled. By 1914 there were app. 600,000 Arabs (mostly Muslim 3,000 notables) and 80,000 Jews. The Ottomans did not maintain a reasonable rule of law in the area and the Jews were greeted with criminal attacks by the local fellaheen. They were so hopeless at self defence that they often hired guards to protect themselves from the very villages attacking them.
Jews are descendants of ancient Canaanite people, the Israelites, who lived in the area currently now known as Israel and the West Bank for 2,000 years until the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 AD. Hadrian then expelled the Jews. They recorded their history in the Tanahk (Jewish Bible) aka the Old Testament. Judaism has evolved from the time of the Diaspora but a return to Zion, the Holy Land, was always part of it. However, there was no right of return then, or now.
Britain had a Great Power interest in Palestine, it was close to the Egypt and Suez Canal but there was also a quirky religious tradition, a wide-spread British-Israelism movement with which many upper-class Victorians identified and a belief known as Christian Restorationism which taught that return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land must occur before Christ could return to earth. The British had no interest in the wishes of the Palestinians. Joseph Balfour, the Foreign Secretary famously said "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country." The British were racist, they believed the British were the epitome of evolved human beings and God was on their side. The Palestinians were racist, they believed non-Muslims were kuffar unbelievers who should live as 'dhimmis' second class citizens to Muslims. The Jews were racist but they didn't talk about it openly, or else ….
In 1917, with the outome of WW1 uncertain, the British government published the Balfour Declaration supporting a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine. This was a decision made by a small group of old men in London for which there were no rational grounds but quite a number of mistaken ones. Britain and its allies did win the war and in 1922 their administration was formalised under a Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations including the establishment of this Jewish "home."
There were always some religious Jews living in the Jerusalem area but in the late 19th century a new and increasing number of Jews, the Zionists, began to arrive and purchase land and settle in towns and create farming settlements. They were escaping persecution and they had a dream, if they could create a Jewish state, a Jewish country, then Jews would be safe. The Zionists were Jews but a different type of non-submissive Jew, outsiders, feranghi, Crusaders, Europeans, Russians, etc. There were two classes of 'Palestinians' whose interests were incompatible. There was a very small elite whose families "possessed income, wealth, property, landownership, reputation, ascriptively acquired social status, or a combination of all these.1 They held enormous economic control over a highly fragmented, illiterate, and impoverished rural population,2 and almost all of them inherited their wealth and status through family ties and wealth in land that had been accumulated from the middle of the 19th century forward. Control of land meant either collecting rents and benefitting from the vast indebtedness of the peasantry …" Their wealth and power had been greatly increased since the 1850s by corruptly manipulating the Ottoman land tenure system and usury laws.
The people of Palestine were not famous for their welcoming attitude, they quickly developed a paranoid fear that the Zionists would replace them even before they had reached 10% of the total population. This reflected either paranoia or a deep understanding of their social and cultural weakness. Replacing the dominant Muslim and Christian 90% was clearly impossible …
- unless there was a world war and Turkey chooses the losing side which ends the Ottoman Empire
- unless a desperate Britain gives away the Middle East and millions of pounds to an Arab pretender who can only assemble a few thousand tribesmen to go looting
- unless a desperate Britain promises a Jewish home in Palestine in a forlon fantasy driven by old men with weid religious ideas
- unless a newly created world body approves this Jewish homeland
- unless the Palestinians are ruled by one man whose only competence is maintaining his control of them by any means necessary and driving them to their ruin
- unless a crazed dictator rules Germany and forces hundreds of thousands of Jews to flee Europe
- unless the Arabs begin a rebellion against the British and lose
- unless the Arab rebellion convinces the British government to end Jewish immigration to Palestine in fear of the coming world war
- unless the Arabs support Germany in the second world war and Germany loses but kills 6 million Jews
- unless Jews become so incensed that radical groups begin a Zionist terrorist insurgency that forces the British to leave Palestine in the hands of the UNO
- unless the UNO decides on partitioning Palestine into two possible states and the Jews accept
- unless the Arabs start a civil war against the Jews and lose
- unless the woefully unprepared Arab nations start a war against Israel and lose
- unless the MENA Arab nations expel their Jewish citizens and over 800,000 are forced to emigrate to Israel
but what are the odds that that chain of events could occur …
There was an argument made when I was a boy that the Jews had suffered so much that they deserved to have a state. Today, there is an argument made that the Palestinians have suffered so much and the British and Jews have lied so much that Israel should not be allowed. Somehow the first argument was replaced by the second one while I was at the beach one summer and didn't notice. I do not attempt to consider the suffering, pain and heartache felt by any of the people involved in or affected by these events.
I am not a believer in any religion. I ascribe no value to Jewish religious ideas about JHWH giving the land of Canaan to the Jews or that their past history gives them any right of return. Neither do I accept Muslim views of Palestine as a blessed land, al Quds, al Buraq, etc from where Mohammed rose to the 7th heaven. I only care about facts on the ground. Where possible I have taken the facts from pro-Palestinian sources or, at least, compared them to the formerly dominant history.