in may two thousand and eight i woulda the palestine right to return coalition post of the sixth annual international convention in anaheim california to mark the sixtieth year of a knockabout which is arabic for the catastrophe and refers to the events of among his publications are britain and the arab israeli conflict the making of the arab israeli conflict the modern history of palestine one land two peoples the modern middle east and the ethnic cleansing of palestine  fulcrum of a group of historians and political scientists at the cornwall campus of exeter university working on twentieth century ethno politics the following is the speech delivered by dr in line poppy at the opening ceremony of the allowed a convention it but i'm feel a bit embarrassed about this change because actually i wrote a whole book in which i claimed that the ten not buy is not a good ten so you really got me into trouble here but  would say that they willingly changed it in order to face these raids but i would change it back to my original type of so that i could give the next to that they wanted to give and one of the reasons i find that i'm not disappointing in a way of though i can fully understand its significance and its power galvanizing for ages and generations the palestinian memory and activity is that kinds of these asters and what in the human psyche associates was disaster usually is that nobody is responsible for it everybody is a victim off it and this is not what happened in ninety forty eight it was not that kind of a disaster what happened in nine hundred forty eight is a crime so that criminals and as those who are victims victims of that crime and therefore the term i chose for my book the ethnic cleansing was to trick attention to the crime itself and to say this happened because a certain group of people decided to do it and it affected the certain group of people and all of these people those who decided to commit the crimes those who were affected by the crime are all known to us and for sixty years we didn't even name them we name the victims but we never named the people who committed the crime yes we called it sometimes a zionist movement we called it the jewish people we call them the israelis but it's far more precise than that in fact it's more justified and more politically sound to talk about the people who decide it upon the crime and to find out what ideology motivated them to commit the crime rather than have vague concepts that usually do not allow us to focus our a divinity in the right direction i would like to night to pay attention and focus on three aspects of what happened in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and have a dialogue conduct a dialogue with you with the present i would go back and for from the past to the present on three different levels in order to find why the memory of what happened i will talk about the zionist ideology as it appears in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight i will talk about the international community reaction to the events of nine hundred forty eight and i will carefully say something about the palestinian politics in nineteen forty eight and what can we learn from it today as well let me start with the zionist ideology in one hundred forty eight and its relevance to what we see today which stated that there is no hope for ex excess food zionist colonization of palestine without the s the cleansing of the palestinians this concept was not born in one day it was not always there at the very beginning of zionism although there were some fluid ideas about it it was evidence exactly who where the people who formulated these ideas who were the ones who put forward in a very clear language with a very clear thinking the  plan to expel by force as many palestinians as possible from as much of palestine as possible the importance of these names is that they are the heroes of israel today they all can be found in the pantheon of israeli heroism in order to understand what we are facing when we deal with the estee cleansing is a crime and the people who directly conceived it directed it commanded not only the people who executed it on the ground but the people who who really thought out all the details  and had the terrible foresight that it can work when we think about the people who are involved when we mention the names we have to understand that we are counting but we are pointing out to the people who are who are at the heart of the zionist consensus today these are people that most americans i know by heart and reveal them as great heroes of humanity democracy and lightman and more than modernity and this is very important and i think this is why it's so important to know who they where and i will mention just one of them because the others appeared in my book the founding father of modern israel david ben gurion is the ox criminal he is the one who really led the whole operation from beginning to end ended with the destruction of more than five hundred palestinian villages eleven towns and the disposition of so many people from their homeland so the zionist ideology is the motivating force but you needed human beings you needed people who would have who would execute who would translate the ideology into actions on the ground and as it is important to fight an ideological mindset it's also important to know who are the people who are captivated by this ideology and to seeing to see if today we can identify who is behind these really policies of ethnic cleansing that continue rather than talk generally about israel zionism jews and so on i think for the sake of building the future state that i think we all want to build we should be very careful not to generalize and rather focus on the people as much as we don't want to think everybody in the world that president bush represents americans wherever they are so i think in this respect it's very important to study one thousand nine hundred eighty eight in mean you'd details not just as a general story to find out when where and who was involved in the crime as good detectives to do in any kind of a crime the ideological into potations of zionism that these leaders and generals had was that you need very particular circumstances in order to be able to commit a crime of this magnitude it's not expelling one village it's not destroying one town it's not  throwing out one hundred people one thousand people from the houses it is a decision to uproot a whole country very few politicians and general in modern history and even in ancient history where that bold to believe that they're out that powerful that they can be that cruel to decide to take a whole country and depopulated we have to ask ourselves how come jews three years after the holocaust could have been so  determent in committing a crime of such a magnitude what is so powerful about the ideology of zionism so i think the first lesson we learn by looking at the connection between the zionist ideology the people who decided about the as the cleansing and the operation on the ground the first lesson i learned at least from the history which is relevant to today is that we should focus our complain on names and people and not be satisfied with vague concepts we are not fighting something which we cannot see of course we are i am an  say we are fighting zionism we are fighting israel maybe we are fighting a certain group of jews and so on but we should be much more specific of what we are doing we are fighting people who are criminals and we know their crimes and we are going to be professionals about it not just emotional about it there was one moment of grace in britain which i think showed us the way when general morgue who was the chief commander in the gaza strip and came to a shopping journey to oxford street in london had to stayed with the cleaners on the airplane because  professional group of activists told the british authorities that they would ask for his arrest for war crimes and he didn't want to risk it so we should learn the nature of the crimes today as we know the nature of the crimes of yesterday yesteryear's we should know the names of the people involved in it because we have very little chance of moving forward if we will adopt a very vague language about who is doing what to whom we should know the name of the victims we should know the name of the location where the crimes of being committed we should appear i think to be very serious about it and to tell people that like the spanish judge who haunts haunted nominees that haunted pinochet on every corner in europe and tried to bring him to justice we will haunt the people the moment we would know who they are we want the names of the were on the names of the pilots who drop bombs on the palestinians in gaza strip we are not fighting these really folks we want the name of the pilots we want the name of the and nobody here knows i can assure you nobody here knows the names of the israeli commander of the falls but he is an arch criminal and you don't know his name you should know his name as much as you should know the names of his victims if you want to succeed politically it's not enough to talk about israel is committing crimes it's not talking about america committing crime it never moved anything these vague languages i think we should we should know that it's easier to do it as a historian for nine hundred forty eight i admit but i think there is a model here that we should adopt for activity and action in the present and in the near future the second point of view second aspect ground there were join the lists there were represented tears of the united nation of the international red cross there were people who whose role and task and mission was to report to their relevant headquarters whether or not peace is being achieved in palestine after the united nation adopted the petition resort lucian on the twenty ninth of november nine hundred forty seven and they knew that instead of peace from the first of february nine hundred forty eight jewish troops were going from one house to the other from village to village and were expelling by force people massacring them when they resisted and looting everything they had from their material possessions to their cultural heritage such as books pictures photographs anything they had like a  have eaten everything that they had found in their way and this was seen by many many people who were not jews and were not arabs whose who were sent to palestine to report back home and they reported back on we have the reports in the archives they reported very genuine it's very genuine report i can say this is a professional historian i think that they have a very they had a very clear picture of the magnitude of the crime that was committed about the against the people on the ground but their headquarters and it doesn't matter whether it was an ad they had authorial board of the new york times which had a very industrious journalist working for them at the time who was he he was embedded as you would call it today with the jewish forces and he reported very genuine reports about what was going on so whether  of the new york times whether it was the headquarters of the international cross in geneva all the united nations secretary it in new york at the time they all have received had received genuine reports of what was going on and they made a political decision not to publish these reports they made a very conscious decision not to portray the reality on the ground in palestine because it was the only because there was only one way of the picturing it a crime and an ethnic cleansing and it doesn't matter whether they would have used the term  however they would have chosen to represent or summarize the information that they had received from the ground there was only one simple story to tell the jewish forces they too are on the israeli forces were systematically expelling the palestinians from their homes fields and businesses nobody in the western world wanted to report that story and w play about it they were silenced there it was suggested to them that so few years after the holocaust it's not a good idea to portray the jews as and colonise this was a conscious decision by the political elites of the west to atone for what europe did to the jews in the second world war the price was very clear the dispossession of palestine this was the price it was a simple deal instead of facing the real victims the real jewish victims of the nazi holocaust which  very difficult it was much better to deal with the state of israel instead it's because the state of israel wanted only one thing in return for the atonement of the political elites of the west and longing for the soviet days it was granted by the soviet union as well in fact the soviet union produce provided the arms with which the ethnic cleansing was commit there was an interesting get between the political and other politically there was an interesting get between the palestinian political elite and the behavior of the palestinian people on the ground in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight which should teach us a lesson leaders who were they were mostly in exile found it very difficult to have a united language in the united position and more or less surrounded their surrendered i'm sorry surrendered the land of palestine would have listened to the palestinian politicians in one hundred forty eight was would have happened when i was to say the truce they had no idea what to do th didn't know what to say to their people even those who had some communication with their people and they found it very difficult to formulate a position towards an event they did not anticipate of course people now know what can happen this is the big advantage that we have on nine hundred forty eight we know what zionism is all about i think we understand that the the strategy of all the governments of israel of all the political parties of israel regardless of their position in this charade of israeli rainbow five years which doesn't really exist and we still don't have a united palestinian leadership we don't have an address i've been an activist for the palestine cause i think for more than a quarter of a century even before that and if i have to answer questions especially in initial meetings with people i want to recruit to the palestinian cause and i would have to give them an address who should they write to phone fax or text so that they would know what the palestinian leadership wants us to do what does it expects us to do do you know the address i don't know that situation where when i go and call for boycott of israel in london the palestinian embassy calls me to say that basically i'm right but they're not sure this is the right direction so i have to ask what is the palestinian leadership position on balakot what is the palestinian leadership position on the right of return what is the palestinian leadership position on the one state solution how far do they want us to go in the struggle against zionism and israel do they want us to support the peace process do they want us to support the next annapolis conference we have to solve these problems we cannot be bystanders whoever we are jews palestinians americans if we are part of that impulse to change the reality the oppressive reality in palestine we all have to say that we need a compass we all have an individual compass i'm sure some of us have spiritual compass which is good we should all have them but we need a compass for all of us and we don't have it they palestinians didn't have it in one hundred forty eight and they still don't have it in two thousand and eight so when we learn the history of nine hundred forty eight we also should learn and i don't have a formula for you i don't have a magic formula for you all to do it but i'm saying we have to learn the need to find the compass and some people say and i think i understand where it comes for let's put aside the debate between two states and one state let's put aside the debate between the hamas and fatah let's put aside the debate between the inside and the outside let's put aside the debate of what kind of a state we want if we continue to put all these debates outside we will be outside as well eventually i think this is part of the struggle not to defeat each other if we don't agree about something but to find the golden mean how to work together on this but not to hide these things to find a compass for the next generation of the people who would form the next solidarity committee with palestine if something is to be learned from very important and i say this because i really really really believe that a clear orientation and clear answers to these questions which we keep saying we'll put aside because we have to move forward real answers to these questions will also help us to realise our dream of return of ending the zionist regime of creating a new reality in palestine for all of us i really believe in it because i think that it's not enough and it is important it is to feel that eventually evil projects comes to an end which is true but for the sake of the people of gaza for the sake of the people in janine we don't have the luxury of waiting for this is sturrock a lesson to happen just by itself for the sake we should find the energy and the power to overcome the internal strife so to find a direction that would suit all of us even if we'll take a whole year to discuss it and to tell ourselves that we have the kind of leadership we all want and we all need in order to change the reality for all of us thank you very much