From: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au (Brendan McKay)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: All Arabs are guilty
Date: 10 Jan 1993 07:22:29 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
Distribution: world
Reply-To: bdm@cs.anu.edu.au
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.23.70

In article 1@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu, ifaz706@utxvms.cc.utexas.edu () writes:
>In article <1984@spam.ua.oz>, jaskew@spam.ua.oz (Joseph Askew) writes:
>> In article <1992Dec27.233559.25590@nysernet.org> astein@nysernet.org (Alan Stein) writes:
>>>ilyess@ECE.Concordia.CA (Ilyess Bdira) writes:
 
>>>There is enough land there for everyone.  The early Zionists
>>>anticipated living together in peace with the few Arabs who were
>>>already there;

Sounds like the old massive-Arab-immigration-on-Zionist-development myth.
 
>> Which early Zionists might these be? Herzl never recognised or perhaps
>> even knew about the Arabs in Palestine so he's out. The only people I

>	Not quite. Herzl was probably quite late in recognizing
>	the fact that Arabs live in Palestine, and even then was
>	not fully aware of what Zionism might mean for them. But 
>	he did recognize it nonetheless. For examle, in Altneuland
>	Herzl put the following exchange of words between a Jewish
>	and an Arab characters:

>	[Jew]: "We Jews brought civilization to the country 
>		[Palestine]."

>	[Arab]: "Your pardon if I contradict you, my friend, but 
>		there were oranges before your time. Even my own 
>		father had large orange groves."

Yes, it is silly to imagine that early Zionists like Herzl, who were
educated people after all, were unaware that Palestine was inhabited.
On the other hand, it is very noticable how little of Herzl's writing
is concerned with the subject.  The little I've seen suggests that
Herzl held the same colonialist-imperialist attitude towards
"primitive peoples" that most Europeans seem to have held at the time.
I am making an MEQ out of it.

>> know who addressed the issue referred to displacing the Arabs through
>> various forms of purchase. No peaceful coexistence there. Ben Gurion
>> spelt it out by saying that a 40% Arab minority was unacceptable and
>> would threaten the very basis of the Jewish State. 

>	I think you are patently wrong here. If I had the time
>	(or the right incentive :-)) I would bring you three
>	Ben Gurion declarations of peacful coexistance on any
>	one you bring to the contrary.  I think that BG's view
>	of the Arab-Jewish relations is complex, evolved over 
>	time, and certainly cannot be dismissed as rejecting 
>	peacful coexistence.

>	Shabtai Tevet cites from BG's memoirs: "Palestine is
>	not an empty country... on no account must we injure
>	the rights of its inhabitants." (Ben Gurion and the 
>	Palestinian Arabs, p.37)

I don't think that BG's public statements of his own attitudes are
a good source on what he really believed.  This is quite clearly
brought out in Teveth's book.  When speaking to closed meetings,
or writing in his private diary or to his children he sometimes
embraced "transfer" options quite enthusiastically.  He did this
not (according to Teveth, but remember that Teveth regards BG as
some sort of God) without moral scruples but for pragmatic reasons.
To quote Benny Morris, BG was "a consummate statesman and practitioner
of Realpolitik, a man, like Lenin (whom Ben-Gurion, incidentally,
greatly admired), who knows what must be done and how to get it done".

>>In short I think
>> you are wrong, if you know of an early Zionist who really expected
>> peaceful coexistence then I would like to know his/her name!

>	I'm sure, Joseph, that when you find the time to look for
>	them you'll be able to find many such Zionists.  But let 
>	me make clear once again that the attitudes of early 
>	Zionists towards Arabs (and probably of Arabs leaders
>	towards early Zionism) are not as simple as a peaceful /
>	no-peaceful coexistence.

There were many early Zionists who were convinced that the Arabs
would enthusiasticaly welcome the Zionist development of
Palestine.  I've read stuff that sounds like the glowing words
that appeared in the English press when British gunboats were 
bringing the wonderful world of civilisation to the unwashed
masses of the great Subcontinent.
 
>Noam

Brendan.