"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.