The Tragic Story of Palestine - Part 11: The "David vs Goliath" Myth (1/2)

6 months ago (Edited)

This post is part of a long series I plan about Palestine as a country, culture, and humans across multiple communities in hopes that I spread the word about Palestine and what is happening there.

The fact that I am an Arab obviously comes with perceived bias which is a perception that I accept considering that most of the people on this platform are not Arabs. As much as I believe it is something I am able to refute using my own history, I prefer to keep the focus of this series on Palestine itself and let the series speak for itself.

However, considering the aforementioned fact of my identity, I have challenged myself and limited myself to use mostly sources that are outside of the Arab world when it comes to facts. Therefore, all the events mentioned here come from non-Arab sources which you will be able to verify yourself by reading the sources below. In fact, I implore you to check out those sources regardless of the series.

Image source

The UN issued the Partition Resolution 181, it is among one of the most cited deals rejected by Arabs, so it is important to talk about it before going further. The resolution divided Palestine into 7 regions, 3 as the Arab State, 3 as the Jewish State, and Jerusalem was to be under International Supervision. Now, there's a lot of talk about how the Arabs were the ones who rejected it, and they did, I am not here to deny that they rejected it, however, Zionists didn't accept it either.

In the book, "Original Sins", written by Israeli Higher Education professor, Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, he noted that Israel accepted only one element of the resolution, the establishment of a Jewish state. Another part that supports my statement is the fact that both parties rejected the Morrison–Grady Plan which was basically the same as this one only a year earlier. The following part is crucial to understanding why both parties rejected it.

The Arab rejection came simply because of the fact that the resolution divided the land and gave 56% of the land to the Jewish state. Most land was going to the Jewish state even though the Palestinian population wasn't only outnumbering Jews, but it was double. In, 1947, Palestinians were 1.2 million while Jews made 600 thousand. Not only that, Palestinians owned, legally, 94% of the land, and 80% of the agricultural land. That's a bigger population, and more land ownership, yet, 56% of the land was going to be given to the Jewish state which only owned 6% of the land that they bought from people who weren't even living in the country.

Now, Israel's rejection. The resolution may have given the Jewish state more lands, but it couldn't, simply couldn't, give them cities that were ethnically homogeneous. Yes, it gave them cities like Jaffa and Haifa, however, those cities were mostly populated by Palestinians. That just doesn't work because Zionism is built on the country being a Jewish-only state, the second best was that Jews would be the vast majority, and there is no third best.

Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian who I have cited a lot here, said, "No one in the world could have imagined that a national liberation movement in Palestine would share the land with its settlers". Remember, the Zionist goal is that Jews wouldn't live with others or would need to be the vast majority. And remember, the Zionist dream grew from a country in a part of Palestine into the entirety of Palestine and beyond.

These are simply not my words, here's Hiezl's description of Zionism's main goal

Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the Earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people, and then we will do the rest!

A Look At David

Now, let's assess both sides of the David vs Goliath battle or the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. David is Israel and Goliath is Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Palestine Arabs. It sounds scary and impossible for Israel, doesn't it? Well, not when you look at the facts of what has been going on.

When General D'Arcy was asked about the Palestine situation he said that after Britain had left, the Jewish Agency had control over the entirety of Palestine. The Haganah was an organized military group of 35,000 soldiers, Palmach had more than 10,000 soldiers, along with Irgun and Stern they made great, organized, military groups who had experience in fighting alongside Britain in the Second World War as mentioned previously.

That's who David was

A Look at Goliath

The Arab front was far from organized and systematic. Arab countries had just gotten out of a war and hadn't recovered yet, tired armies and conflicted interests. Volunteering doors were opened by Arab countries to save Palestine to have an improvised army of 4,000 volunteers. That army was called the Liberation Army. Soldiers in this army were loyal and dedicated, but it was still an unorganized army.

Even inside Palestine, efforts were scattered, they were separate forces, not united in their actions. Different visions by different leaders like Abdul Qader Al-Husseini, Fawzi Al-Qauji, and Hassan Salama. Those separate forces conducted separate operations that were largely insignificant. Those were the Arab and Palestinian attempts to reject the division.

On the side of the Zionists, something more dangerous was happening. Before we get to it, I would like to remind you that we haven't gotten to the point of Israel declaring itself as a state yet, nor have we gotten into the actual war in 1948, we are still at the end of 1947.

The Villages File Project

It's important to end this part of the series on this detour as it is important to note and dispute certain myths about this war.

The Haganah gang was having intense meetings over their operations. Do you remember the "Villages Files Project" I brought up in Part 9 were Zionists gangs were collecting information about all Palestinians villages? That project turned into a famous plan called "Plan Dalet. A complete ethnic cleansing plan on paper, ready to go.

However, that plan required a trial, a rehearsal. The rehearsal took place on February 15th 1948 when the Palmach leader Yitzhak Rabin, a Nobel Peace Prize winner by the way, led an attack on the village of Caesarea in Haifa district, kicking 1500 people out of the village. The Zionists attacked 5 different villages to ensure the efficiency of their fighters. Also, to ensure that the remainder of British soldiers wouldn't interfere.

The gangs started organized attacks on the villages surrounding Jerusalem. If you've paid attention, then you'd know that Jerusalem was not of the Jewish state in the partitioned area. This is the point where it is all made clear. David Ben Gurion was once asked about Israel's border, to which he answered and said that the best definition of Israel's borders is defined by the farthest place an Israeli soldier can reach. This is why I said, "into the entirety of Palestine and beyond.", it is literally still unclear where the Israeli borders would stop.

The Zionism movement, since its beginning, was a movement that took a piece of land and expanded around it. Why would they commit to borders that didn't exist before their arrival, but they created? Borders are everchanging, they had 6% once, and at the time, they had 55%, who knows how much more they'd have if they kept moving?

Either way, the right use of force would make the world accept anything you do. This ideology is what controlled and has been controlling the Zionist movement from birth until now.

The beginning saw the strategy being besieging villages from 3 sides, leaving only one escape route for the villagers to leave and become refugees elsewhere. Where would they go? Where would they go? Well, the Zionist movement didn't give a fuck. That approach was still better than the occasional need those gangs had to show off their muscles by leaving no escape route. That's what happened in Deir Yassin on the 9th of April, 1948.

A Terrorism Demonstarion

Dier Yassin was a tranquil village inhabited by 700 residents, farmers, merchants, a mosque, two schools, and a sports club. In only one day, 250 people were murdered, a third of the village. People saw their families die in front of them while standing helplessly and knowing they were next. This is despite the fact that the British Police Office, the same police that constantly shut down Palestinian protests and revolts in the name of peace was 3 Kilometers away, THREE. FUCKING. KILOMETERS. It was a terrorist demonstration.

This demonstration forcibly pushed 75,000 Palestinians out of their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem and ran away. The ethnic cleansing didn't stop at expulsion and eradication, but also, as we saw in the first part of this series, its goal was to erase any memory of that place. Deir Yassin, Tantura, Caesarea, hundreds of villages simply didn't exist.

One kilometre away from the Dier Yassin massacre, the Yad Vashem was built. If you don't know what that is, it is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, it is just to twist the knife further to confirm what Emile Habibi once said "Your Holocaust... Our Catastrophe".

While Gangs were seizing villages using force and terrorism, the British Mandate, as it was ending, handed them ports, 2,700 governmental buildings, 50 train stations, 3000 kilometres of roads, and 37 camps equipped with weapons and spare parts, the British basically built Zionists a country and left.

According to the Zionist narrative, the crisis of Palestinian refugees was caused by Arab armies calling citizens to move in preparation for those armies to enter, however, that simply wasn't true. The simple fact is that half of those immigrants were forced to leave before the war even started. The war began in May, which as you can see and verify yourself, all of the above dates predate that war.

Among 530 villages destroyed in the Nakba (The Catastrophe), half of those were ethnically cleansed, again, that happened before May 1948. Avi Shlaim, an Israeli-British historian confirms that the refugee crisis commenced in the first half of 1948 but wasn't caused by the war.