“For Palestinians, Zionism is the dispossession, displacement, and dehumanization of our people.” — Linda Sarsour, 2019.
1948 never ended for Palestinians and those who support the notion of the return to Palestine as a one state for all. Regardless of the fact that pre-1948 partition of Palestine, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other minorities were considered Palestinians by nationality, the term has morphed into an ethnic indicator of both those who live in Gaza and the West Bank, as well as those whose families have long gone from the region and are now multiple generations of Arab Muslims and Christians living in other nations.
The continuous attempt to associate Zionism with brutal colonialism, racism, and ethnic cleansing, is a story told in little pieces, often missing their counterparts. The story of Israel does not begin in 1948. It begins thousands of years prior, when Jews were a majority of people living in the land and continued so with multiple expulsions, massacres, wars, forced conversions, and displacement.
Palestine’s population in 1882 was recorded at around 320,000 people, 25,000 of whom were Jewish. “Native” Jews were often referred to as abnaa al-balad (sons of the country), ‘compatriots’, or Yahud awlad Arab (“Jews, sons of Arabs”). Majority of the Arab population under Ottoman rule saw themselves as subjects and the few revolts that broke out, centered around rejection of conscription brought on by Egyptian landlord who served as local proxies for the Turks. Most of the local Arabs were farmers and saw conscription as certain death and not within their interest. It wasn’t until 1920 when Palestinian Arab nationalism began to take shape as a reaction to the Nebi Musa riots, the San Remo conference and the failure of Faisal to establish the Kingdom of Greater Syria.
When I think of colonialism, I think of the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Turks, British, and Arab nations that have brutally conquered the land and continuously oppressed the locals to enrich and empower their empires.
The various history tellers talk about Jewish migration to Palestine as some sort of invasion of foreigners while migration of Arabs from neighboring countries is not only unspoken, but taken as a given. For them, history begins at a convenient moment.
During Ottoman period, 18th century, significant Egyptian migration to Palestine happened due to severe famine. Several waves of Egyptian immigrants came even earlier due to natural disasters such as droughts and plagues, government oppression, and unbareable taxes. In the 19th century, Egyptians fled to Palestine to escape the military conscription and forced labor projects in the Nile Delta under Muhammad Ali. The First Egyptian-Ottoman War saw the Egyptian conquest of Palestine, where more Egyptians were brought to Palestine as forced laborers.
Following the Second Egyptian-Ottoman War, which saw Egyptian rule in Palestine terminated, massive numbers of soldiers deserted during the Egyptian army’s retreat from Palestine to permanently settle there. They settled mainly in Jaffa, the Coastal plain, Samaria and Wadi Ara.
During the British Mandate, it was estimated that approximately 100,000 Arabs immigrated to Palestine between 1922 and 1948 (p.167). These numbers are constantly debated but it is clear that when discussing Arab population in Palestine, we aren’t only discussing native born. These same people relate to Palestine as a country when the entire area was conquered land by multiple established nations and empires.
Arabs, Jews, and Christians have all suffered from the various colonialists forces. The Turks, British and French are the primary forces that entangled the Middle East into its modern conflict, and never seem to own up to their part in the events that took place. The British and French efforts to beat the Ottoman Empire included manipulating and betryaing both zionists and Arabs in the region with empty promises of sovereignty and independence.
Modern Palestinian nationalism roots grew from increase in literacy rates during British rule. It wasn’t manifested as the Palestinian identity we speak of today. It was pan Arabism and was emulated later on by leaders such as Yassar Arafat, an Egyptian born Palestinian leader, in the early 1960's. Though Arafat was a founding member of Fatah in 1959, he had no qualms with Jordan and Egypt holding on to “Palestinian Land”, as stated via The Palestinian National Covenant, article 24, 1964:
This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields.
The goal was always to “liberate” Israel proper. Neither country was considered colonialist or occupiers of Palestinian land. This concept takes flight and accelerates only after Israel takes hold of these regions after a 6 day battle on all fronts.
Current day Palestinians have a painful story to tell. This is a story of great abuse and treachery, that begins with an actual colonialist force. It is the story of British rule that starved the Falahim while their elite sold the land Falahim worked on. It is the story of the British, as rulers of the area, never bothered with their employment and survival for the goal of maintaining dignity. The opposite was true. Denying Arab farmers work was sanctioned and endorsed by the British.
It is not a well known fact that Arabs were told that the British government is held by Zionist powers and are just executing orders from the Jews, and in fact implanting modern tropes of European Antisemitism in the minds of Middle Eastern peasants who only wanted to survive on their lands.
We must tell the story how by 1930’s after a decade of poverty, lack or poor representation, broken promises, lies and escalation of tensions between the Jews and the Arabs, the British went on a merciless campaign to crush the Arab mobs and guerrilla warfare that they have helped foster. Eighty Jews were murdered by terrorist acts during the labor strike, and a total of 415 Jewish deaths were recorded during the 1936–1939 Arab Revolt. The toll on the Arabs was estimated to be roughly 5,000 dead, 15,000 wounded, and 5,600 imprisoned. The British response was a large amount of brutality including beatings, torture and extrajudicial killings. Large number of prisoners were “shot while trying to escape”. Several incidents involved serious atrocities, such as massacres at al-Bassa and Halhul.
We must tell the story of the torture, murder, looting, burning of villages, suicide of Arab prisoners to avoid one more minute of pain, collective punishment, and then pinning it all on the evil powerful Zionists just as Jews are rounded up in Europe and western allies sipped champagne in Évian-les-Bains, France, saying how badly they feel about not saving the Jews from Hitler.
The history of Palestine is complex, painful, filled with deceit, lies, reimagining, brutality, and lack of humanity. The British Empire had the power. Seemingly advancing the idea of a Jewish state, while behind the scenes, arming and encouraging the Arab leaders to go to war against Israel, to reduce its territory. As Sasson, Ben-Gurion’s Arab affairs adviser, warned in a meeting in December 1949, “We have an enemy that is far stronger than the Arabs — the British.”
It is no secret that early militant Zionists from Eastern Europe were adamant about creating a safe nation for Jews as they fled pogroms and continuous discrimination in the 1920’s. Where Zionism was always a part of the Jewish identity for thousands of years, the urgency of Zionism to establish the Jewish state was a direct reaction to the dire state of the Jew in diaspora.
The accumulation of events leading up to and ending in the Holocaust, left no doubt in the minds of millions of Jews around the world that a safe haven must be established and it had to happen immediately.
But what did that mean for the local Arab population that at this point, have spent the better part of that century fighting both the British and Zionist?
The story of the Nakba can be told in two distinctive parts:
First stage:
Soon after the declaration of partition of Palestine by the UN, in November 1947, Arabs found themselves in areas earmarked for jewish settlements. The fighting around was a major incentive to pick up and leave. At this point, it was a defensive war fought on the side of Hagana. Nearly 1,200 Jews were killed in the first four months of the war by Arab militias, over half of them civilians. During December 1947 and up until March 1948, wealthy as well as middle class Arab families who had the means, left to Beirut, Nablus, and neighboring nations. The bulk of leadership class of Palestinian people sensed that it would be better to leave than stay and deal with localized attacks on convoys and settlements.
Many of those families expected to be able to return at the end of the fighting. There was no expulsion or no return policy on the side of the Israelis. But the mass violence erupting, called for a change of course on the side of the Jews who now realized, they must turn to the offensive. Around 75,000 Arabs left the new Jewish state to neighboring nations.
Palestinian Arab militias took control of several key points along the Jerusalem — Tel-Aviv road, which severed the Jewish supply chain to Jerusalem and isolated around 100,000 Jewish residents from the rest of the Jewish population.
Second stage:
Starting April 1948 -May 1948 The Hagana was no longer interested in just defending the Jewish enclaves, but decided to go on the attack in order to deter a threat to Jewish presence in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
David Ben-Gurion gave the order to launch Operation Nachshon, the first full scale military operation carried out by the Haganah, aimed to break the siege of Jerusalem. The operation began on April 5, 1948, and was the first implementation of Plan D — the Haganah’s plan to “gain control of the areas of the Hebrew state and defend its borders.” Some 1,500 Haganah troops from the Palmach and the Givati and Alexandroni Brigades took part in the operation.
On May 12, 1948, two days before the proclamation of the State of Israel, thousands of Arabs and Arab Legionnaires attacked the Etzion Bloc. The fighting went on for three long days, and 30 defenders were killed. On Friday, the day that the state was proclaimed, they could no longer hold out. They surrendered. In the massacre of Kfar Etzion, the Arabs murdered 127 men and women.
Bodies lay in the fields for a year-and-a-half, until Transjordan allowed Israel to retrieve the corpses and bury them at Mount Herzl. The remainder were taken prisoner to Transjordan. The four kibbutzim were totally destroyed. 240 settlers, Haganah and Palmah fighters were killed at the Etzion Bloc during five-and-a-half months of war. Many, survivors of the Holocaust.
Mass flight began to take place in April 1948 jews began to move to the offensive. In some cases, Arab leaders have implicitly encouraged flight, such as the Haifa case on April, 22nd, 1948. Jews began conquering clusters of Arab villages. An atmosphere of transfer was felt across the country as all expected Arab states to invade, which they did on May 15th, 1948.
The Arab side had militias and armies from Egypt, TransJordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon,Saudi, and Yemen, with volunteers from the Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan, and Sudan. The Jewish side had the Hagana with additional small underground militias. Hagana did most of the fighting as they consisted of 90% of the force.
Dissidents militias represented the right and had an impact on Arab departure from villages near Deir Yassin outside Jerusalem. 100 Arabs were killed in Deir Yassin on April 9th that year. That was highlighted in a broadcast in British and Arab media which caused despondency and Arab flight. Between April, May, and June two to three hundred thousands Arabs have fled, expelled, or told to leave. Transmissions from Arab broadcasts that are eager to report jewish atrocities, have inadvertently assisted in mass flight that eventually led to Israeli victory.
The Zionist establishment saw it fit to exaggerate stories to instill fear in the local Arab communities and encourage their flight. This stage saw further aggression from smaller more extreme groups such as LHI and IZL who were promptly dismantled and removed from the Hagana who became the IDF after the establishment of Israel.
400 Arab villages were conquered during the war. 700,000 Arabs were now displaced. 1/3 of them ended up in Jordan syria, and Lebanon, and 2/3 in the West Bank and Gaza. At the same time, close to 100,000 Jews were displaced from their hometowns but later resettled in Israel, and 800,000 Jews were expelled and/or fled Arab and Muslim nations from North Africa and the Middle East to be resettled as refugees in Israel.
“Arab warfare against the Jews in Palestine … had always been marked by indiscriminate killing, mutilating, raping, looting and pillaging. This 1947–48 attack on the Jewish community was more savage than ever. Until the Arab armies invaded Israel on the very day of its birth, May 15, 1948, no quarter whatsoever had ever been given to a Jew who fell into Arab hands. Wounded and dead alike were mutilated. Every member of the Jewish community was regarded as an enemy to be mercilessly destroyed….
[T]he Arab population of Palestine anticipated nothing less than massacres in retaliation if the Jews were victorious. Measuring the Jewish reaction by their own standards, they simply could not imagine that the Jews would not reply in kind what they had suffered at Arab hands. And this fear played a significant role in the Arab flight.” — Joseph Schechtman
Though no official policy can be traced regarding expulsions of Arabs, local generals have ordered a few towns, such as Lydda, to have their Arab population leave after bloody battles took place. Part of a record to UNSCOP by Ben Gurion on July 7th, 1947: “There was such a view held by the Labour Party…that in order to make more room for Jews the Arabs should be encouraged to transfer to other countries. We did not accept it even then…”
Claims of ethnic cleansing have become the norm in the Israeli Palestinian debate, a false description of a brutal war that saw equal parts devastation and death on both sides. 6,373 Jews and 3,000–10,000 Arabs lost their lives in the War of Independence. About half a million Arabs fled and/or forcibly left their homes and moved to either Gaza (then held by Egypt), or the West Bank (held by Jordan).
Furthermore, in this page 3/4 of President Chaim Weizmann of Israel writing to President Truman on June 24, 1949 on Israel’s self-initiated, voluntary repatriation of Palestinian refugees. Weizmann details admitting at least 25,000 Palestinian refugees back right after 1948.
There are volumes upon volumes of books detailing the history of Israel, Palestine, Jews, and Arabs from beginning of time. The idea that Zionism is simply the dispossession of another people, is the erasure of the history of both people. Today, 97 precent of Jews consider themselves Zionists. 97 precent of Jews also hold various conflicting ideas regarding the policies of Israel through its 70 years of existence, the unfolding of events for Jews in diaspora and in Israel, and the solution to a long and bloody conflict that saw its roots from early 1920’s reemergence of Jewish presence in their ancestral land. Much like the idea of Ummah, one cannot simply define Zionism as displacement of another people.
Arab Palestinian rejection of a Jewish state saw its roots under Hajj Amin al-Husayni, who consistently rejected any solution in the 1930’s and 40’s. Arab and Palestinian leaderships were given seven opportunities, since then, in sharing the land with the Jews.
Between two of those offers, a second intifada was launched and 1400 Israelis were killed. The second Intifada was vastly different from the first. While the first had the aim of shaking off Israeli rule, it was clear that the aim of the second Intifada was to murder Israelis en mass. To destroy Israel, not to end occupation in all of Palestine. You can say this was the only consistency in Palestinian politics.
Since the birth of Israel, close to 4,000 Israelis were killed due to Palestinian terror attacks. Around 2,000 Palestinians were also killed by Palestinians. 850,000 Jews had to flee North African and Middle Eastern nations as a result of escalation of maltreatment of Jews. Palestinian hatred of Zionism and Muslim antisemitism is not something that will vanish simply by leaving the West Bank.
Linda Sarsour provides a daily reminder of the broken discourse and its present danger. Her reference to Jews as supremacist, her revile of Zionism and Israelis, her positioning of Jews as white European colonial force out there to get her and harm her people, her reference to “Jewish Media”, are all too familiar statements one often gets to hear from the likes of David Duke. Somehow, the magical hijab allows these statements to be filtered and appear progressive and veiled as justice. She does it all without once providing any historical reference, any critique on the Palestinian leadership who wish to annihilate the Jewish state from the river to the sea. A group of Holocaust denying, terror inflicting, human rights violating, corrupt leaders, get a permanent pass from sister Linda as a nation that has their own constitution with Arabic as an official language, Islam as their religion, and Sharia as their basis of laws. But heaven forbids a Jewish nation with 25 percent of its population being none Jews, dares to maintain a Jewish character in a region where fifty nations are Muslim majority nations. To Linda, that is supremacy.
Linda Sarsour supports a one state solution where Jews will once again become a minority in a Muslim majority nation. This is a wink a nudge to your average Jew hater. For a person who claims they dedicate their lives for the advancement and protection of human rights, she fails to denote what will be the fate of women, Jews, Christians, LGBT, and other minorities in said new Muslim nation of Palestine. She brazenly states it will be a liberal, equal rights for all, kind of Palestine. Where she managed to imagine this utopia, one will never know. Linda Sarsour has provided us with ample examples of her dishonest and hateful character. It boggles the mind that a Jewish presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, hires this woman for a second time to be his surrogate after being exposed as the fraud and antisemite that she is. This is not about Israel and its policies or history, this is about Jew hatred that is no different from that of the far right.