Thomas, I am sorry, but these citations have no historical backing, period. I happen to have been raised opposite one such village in a Kibbutz. As kids, we were indoctrinated in keeping the abandoned house on the other side of the road clean and unmolested and restrain the "kids instincts" in us to vandalize empty structures. We were told: "Our neighbors will soon come back, and we want to keep their homes untouched". That, stayed that way until I left that place in 1957. As a curious kid, I asked the adults, why did the "neighbors leave", they actually kept in the the Kibbutz' library some of the leaflets signed by the Mufti of Jerusalem urging those people to leave. I am not saying that there were not "nudging here and there", apart of Dir Yassin, I was not aware of any. Believe me, the Kibbutz were I grew was as left as can be (our bible was "Das Kapital", not the Old Testament), it belonged to what was then called "Hashomer Hatzair", which today, what's left of it, is Meretz, or the "Dove party" in Israel, and since I was always a curious kid, I asked about all the various parties in the conflict, where did they come from why did they do what they did. Naturally, I received the most pro-Aab responses (and anti "Herut", the party that preceded the Likud, responses, that is when I learned about Dir Yassin, a stain on the predecessors of Herut) then prevailing in Israel. Taking expressions out of context (such as few sentences that Ben Gurion allegedly might have expressed), is simply lying, even those trying to paint that image admit quite squarely that it was never the policy of the elected government to carry on what you call "ethnic cleansing". On the other hand, you easily gloss over the constant rambling we heard from over the borders how they were going to throw us to the sea. That was the unifying policy of all the neighboring Arab countries. What is that "throwing them to the sea" if not a battle cry to "ethnic cleansing", or worst, a second holocaust? It was so bad in the early 50', that as a youth, I started collecting arms and hidding them in "slicks" in the event that in few years, I'll have to become a "Partisan" and fight from the mountains (chalk it to misplaced idealism of a fearful youth, too young to be a "Partisan" ten years earlier). After the Sinai Campaign, filling my slick became quite easy (one trip to the Sinai was enough to collect whatever you wanted, if you could stand the stench of decomposing bodies, ng), though, no longer necessary.
It is quite simple, if you threaten to kill me, tell your people that sure enough you are going to kill me, incite your people to hate me and kill me, and then assemble an army to kill me and then remove the buffer UN troops so you can come and kill me, well, I'll do my best to kill you.
Zeev |
