"Albert Einstein - "'I should much rather see reasonable agreement
with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation
of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of
the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State,with
borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest.
I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain'...
"Professor Erich Fromm, a noted Jewish writer and thinker, [stated]...'In
general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses
his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is
de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy
than the Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable
by confiscation of property, and by being barred from returning to the
land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus,
the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic claim.
If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers
had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse...I believe
that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely,
the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the
Arabs - not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete
moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitants of Palestine'...
"Nathan Chofshi - 'Only an internal revolution can have the power
to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred...It
is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then will the old and young
in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable
Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought here
from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest;
the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose
cities that we robbed we put up houses of education, charity, and prayer,
while we babble and rave about being the "People of the Book"
and the "light of the nations"'...
"In an article published in the Washington Post of 3 October 1978,
Rabbi Hirsch (of Jerusalem) is reported to have declared: 'The 12th principle
of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will gather the Jewish exiled
who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world. Zionism is diametrically
opposed to Judaism. Zionism wishes to define the Jewish people as a nationalistic
entity. The Zionists say, in effect, 'Look here, God. We do not like exile.
Take us back, and if you don't, we'll just roll up our sleeves and take
ourselves back.' 'The Rabbi continues: 'This, of course, is heresy. The
Jewish people are charged by Divine oath not to force themselves back to
the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there.'" Sami
Hadawi, "Bitter Harvest."
Jewish Criticism - continued
"A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression
[is] not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt
to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education,
and good will, [is] worth a great deal even though the attempt should fail."
Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
quoted in "Like All The Nations?", ed. Brinner & Rischin.
Martin Buber on what Zionism should have been
"The first fact is that at the time when we entered into an alliance
(an alliance, I admit, that was not well defined) with a European state
and we provided that state with a claim to rule over Palestine, we made
no attempt to reach an agreement with the Arabs of this land regarding
the basis and conditions for the continuation of Jewish settlement.
This negative approach caused those Arabs who thought about and were
concerned about the future of their people to see us increasingly not as
a group which desired to live in cooperation with their people but as something
in the nature of uninvited guests and agents of foreign interests (at the
time I explicitly pointed out this fact).
"The second fact is that we took hold of the key economic positions
in the country without compensating the Arab population, that is to say
without allowing their capital and their labor a share in our economic
activity. Paying the large landowners for purchases made or paying compensation
to tenants on the land is not the same as compensating a people. As a result,
many of the more thoughtful Arabs viewed the advance of Jewish settlement
as a kind of plot designed to dispossess future generations of their people
of the land necessary for their existence and development. Only by means
of a comprehensive and vigorous economic policy aimed at organizing and
developing common interests would it have been possible to contend with
this view and its inevitable consequences. This we did not do.
"The third fact is that when a possibility arose that the Mandate
would soon be terminated, not only did we not propose to the Arab population
of the country that a joint Jewish Arab administration be set up in its
place, we went ahead and demanded rule over the whole country (the Biltmore
program) as a fitting political sequel to the gains we had already made.
By this step, we with our own hands provided our enemies in the Arab camp
with aid and comfort of the most valuable sort - the support of public
opinion - without which the military attack launched against us would not
have been possible. For it now appears to the Arab populace that in carrying
on the activities we have been engaged in for years, in acquiring land
and in working and developing the land, we were systematically laying the
ground work for gaining control of the whole country." Martin Buber,
quoted in "A Land of Two Peoples" ed. Mendes-Flohr
Israel's new historians now refute myths of the founding of the state
"Since the 1980's,.....Israeli scholars [have] concurred with their
Palestinian counterparts that Zionism was...carried out as a pure colonialist
act against the local population: a mixture of exploitation and expropriation...
"They were motivated to present a revisionist point of view to
a large extent by the declassification of relevant archival material in
Israel, Britain and the United States. [For example,]...
Challenging the Myth of Annihilation - The new historiographical
picture is a fundamental challenge to the official history that says the
Jewish community faced possible annihilation on the eve of the 1948 war.
Archival documents expose a fragmented Arab world wrought by dismay and
confusion and a Palestinian community that possessed no military ability
with which to frighten the Jews...
Israel's responsibility for Refugees - The Jewish military advantage
was translated into an act of mass expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian
population. The Israeli forces, apart from rare exceptions, expelled the
Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases,
this expulsion was accompanied by massacres [of civilians] as was the case
in Lydda, Ramleh, Dawimiyya, Sa'sa, Ein Zietun and other places. Expulsion
also was accompanied by rape, looting and confiscation [of Palestinian
land and property]...
The Myth of Arab Intransigence - [The U.N.] convened a peace
conference in Lausanne, Switzerland in the spring of 1949. Before the conference,
the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution that in effect replaced
the November 1947 partition resolution. This new resolution, Resolution
194 of December 11, 1948, accepted [U.N. Mediator] Bernadotte's triangular
basis for a comprehensive peace: an unconditional return of all the refugees
to their homes, the internationalization of Jerusalem, and the partitioning
of Palestine into two states. This time, several Arab states and various
representatives of the Palestinians accepted this as a basis for negotiations,
as did the United States, which was running the show at Lausanne...Prime
Minister David Ben Gurion strongly opposed any peace negotiations along
these lines...The only reason he was willing to allow Israel to participate
in the peace conference was his fear of an angry American reaction...The
road to peace was not taken due to Israeli, not Arab, intransigence.
Conclusions - The new Israeli historians...wish to rectify what
their research reveals as past evils...There was a high price exacted in
creating a Jewish state in Palestine. And there were victims, the plight
of whom still fuels the fire of conflict in Palestine." Israeli
historian, Ilan Pappe in "The Link", January, 1998.
"It is no longer my country"
"For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished...I
can't bear to see it anymore, the injustice that is done to the Arabs,
to the Beduins. All kinds of scum coming from America and as soon as they
get off the plane taking over lands in the territories and claiming it
for their own...I can't do anything to change it. I can only go away and
let the whole lot go to hell without me." Israeli actress (and
household name) Rivka Mitchell, quoted in Israeli peace movement periodical,
"The Other Israel", August 1998.
The effect of Zionism on American Jews.
"The corruption of Judaism, as a religion of universal values,
through its politicization by Zionism and by the replacement of dedication
to Israel for dedication to God and the moral law, is what has alienated
so many young Americans who, searching for spiritual meaning in life, have
found little in the organized Jewish community." Allan Brownfield,
"Issues of the American Council for Judaism", Spring 1997.