Setting The Facts Straight: 1948

Tel Aviv University Professor Carlo Strenger wrote a piece for the Guardian that discussed the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the 1948 war.  While I disagree with many of his comments, a couple of paragraphs stand out.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is more than 100 years old. Israel is, no doubt, not doing what it should to end the occupation of the territories conquered in 1967. Along with many others in Israel I am committed to ending it. But there are many Palestinians and others who endorse their just cause who take every opportunity to return to what happened in 1948 – which is not constructive.

I think the first step is to get history right. Palestinians were not just passive victims in what they call the Nakba, as if it had been something like a natural catastrophe. Far from being only victims, they made decisions like choosing to follow Muhammad Amin al-Husseini who formed close ties with Nazi Germany. Arab rejection of the Jewish presence created a zero-sum-game that made the attempts of Jewish leaders like Magnes and Buber to seek cooperation and coexistence with Palestinian Arabs irrelevant.

It is important to remember that Palestinians made choices (and it is often conveniently repressed by them and their proponents). They could have accepted the UN partition plan of 1947. They chose not to. Let us not delude ourselves: if the Arab armies that attacked the fledgling state of Israel had won, not a single Jew would have been allowed to stay in Palestine, and countless would have been killed. Israel won the 1948 war, and, as is well documented now, used the chaos of war to expel 750,000 Palestinians from Israel. This is a tragedy for the Palestinians, but they are not the only ones who pay a heavy price for losing wars.

This great article is written for the 100th anniversary of the founding of Tel Aviv.  I suggest you read the whole thing at the Guardian.  Maybe the Palestinians will stop complaining and work to move forward.  While I hate Kadima, the Palestinians could learn something from the word’s meaning.  It means to move forward.  Quit living in the past and work to make your life and your kids lives better.  Fighting is getting us nowhere.