Global Intifada

 

Robert Spencer attempts to portray himself as an objective academic attempting to expose the “true” nature of Islam. However, a person truly concerned with objectivity and justice would condemn all injustices, and not single out a particular group of people or religion solely for criticism. In fact, if one scrutinizes any of Spencer’s many projects (books, blogs, speeches) there is very little criticism devoted to any other religion or political entity other than Islam or Muslims. A perfect example is his post on the Nakba. By making an obscure historical reference to an event that occurred 500 years ago that has not been the source of contemporary political issues, Spencer attempts to deemphasize the horrors that Palestinians have been subjected to by Israel. Many historians and human rights activists openly recognize that the conduct of the Israeli government is not only in violation of international law, but it a decent argument can be made that it has engaged in ethnic cleansing against Palestinians. While terrorist organizations, such as HAMAS and Hezbullah, should be rightfully condemned for killing civilians, it should be pointed out that no similar condemnations emanate from the Islamophobic sector with regards to the deaths of Palestinians. Moreover, many of the human rights violations and ethnic cleansing that Israel has committed have occurred before the existence of any organized terrorist movement. Also, while Israel is justified in defending itself against the killing of non-combatant civilians, it is not entitled to killing non-combatant civilians or inflicting collective punishment. The biggest problem I have with his argument is his constant portrayal of Islam as the core issue. The Palestinian question is a humanitarian and human rights issue. It is not a struggle between Islam and Western civilization. It is a struggle between a state that gets unconditional economic, military, and diplomatic from the United States due to a very influential pro-Israel lobby, against a disenfranchised people who have only resorted to religious extremism as a source of liberation theology recently. However, this isn’t the only area where Spencer sensationalizes the issues.

 

Assuming for the sake of argument that everything that Spencer alleges about the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople is true, his analogy to the Palestinian claim of a right to return is still weak. Firstly, the Ottoman Empire doesn’t exist anymore and nothing is really preventing allegedly displaced Byzantines from returning to their purported homeland, unlike Israel which has laws prohibiting such a right to return. Moreover, today, Turkey comprises a nation-state and has the sovereign power to determine who resides within it as opposed to Israel whose boundaries are contested to this day, by Israelis, Palestinians, and the international community. Secondly, only a tiny minority of Byzantines were killed, which is miniscule to the number of Palestinians killed. Conversely, if he wanted to argue that the Byzantines were displaced, that argument carries little weight as many Byzantines were relocated back to Constantinople anyway. Thirdly, if we assume Spencer’s argument that the population was coerced into converting to Islam from Christianity over time, although the historical evidence does not show this, such an argument would not give rise to a claim of return, only a right to revert back to Christianity. You can’t claim a right to return to a place you never left. Unlike the Byzantines, the Palestinian’s claim is based on ethnicity, not religion, which is an immutable characteristic. Moreover, Palestinian’s haven’t accepted statehood anywhere else but still claim a right of return back to their homeland. On all accounts, Spencer’s comparison between the right of return of non-existent Byzantines and existing Palestinians is fallacious. Of course, Spencer’s objective is not to make a serious claim to the right of return for the former residents of Constantinople, his argument is directed at undermining the legitimacy of the Palestinian argument. Spencer’s arguments against the right of return of Palestinians, like his arguments concerning the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople leaves out key information. There are ten key facts that Spencer fails to mention – and won’t mention – because it exposes how flawed his argument is against the right of return of Palestinians.

 

Fact #1: Jews never had a majority of the population prior to declaring independence

 

            In 1893, Arabs comprised 95% of the population and had continuous possession of the land for nearly 1300 years. Jewish immigration happened only within a 75 period and didn’t acquire significant property holdings. In 1948, the number of Jews was 650,000, 35% of the population within the mandate whereas there were 1.2 million Palestinians, 65% of the population. The Israeli claim to sovereignty is limited to areas where the population consented to the formation of the Israeli state or in areas where Jews had property. All other persons and property are by default not within the territorial boundaries of Israel but belong to Palestinians. Thus, the Palestinian argument to a right of return is strong by default since Palestinians formed the majority of the population in 1947.  (p 15 of “1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War” by Benny Morris)

Fact #2: Israelis never owned the majority of property

 

            Another key argument in the mythical narrative of the formation of Israel is that the Arabs forfeited their right to statehood by selling their property lawfully to Jews. This argument is false since the Palestinians did not sell much of their property to Jews. By 1947, Jews only owned 5.8% of the land, an extreme small percentage of the total land which is certainly too insufficient to support the declaration of independent sovereignty. This fact alone strongly establishes the right of return of Palestinians. If they were the legal owners of 94.2% of the property, then how can it be said that they do not have a right of return? This is where the Israeli narrative shifts and attempts to argue that the Palestinians “gave up” their right of return by either opposing the UN plan or by voluntarily fleeing the land due to the war. Let us scrutinize these two arguments.

 (p 30 of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe)

 

Fact #3: The UN Mandate Was Not Fair

           

            The third argument is that the UN two-state solution granted sovereignty to Israel but it was rejected by the Arabs. Of course, if one scrutinizes the UN position, it makes perfect sense for why the native Palestinians would oppose the division of their lawfully owned land with a settler population that had only recently immigrated from the far reaches of the world. According to the UN plan, Palestine was intended to be divided into three parts: (1) 42% of the land would have gone to 818,000 Palestinians which included 10,000 Jews, (2) 56% of the land would have gone to 499,000 Jews with 438,000 Palestinians, and (3) the City of Jerusalem, with a total population of 200,000 was to be equally divided between Arabs and Jews. (p 35 of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe) Although Palestinians comprised a majority of the population within Palestine, they were effectively granted minority of the land for their own state with almost 60% of their population in Israel instead of their own homeland. Given that Palestinians formed the majority of the population and owned the majority of the property within the land and had been in the land for more than a millennium, it makes absolute sense that they would have opposed the UN plan since it wasn’t a representation of the will of the people.

 

Fact #4: The displacement of the Palestinians occurred BEFORE the Arab armies invaded

 

            From the perspective of the Israeli narrative, the Palestinians forfeited their right to return by intentionally leaving their land during the 1948 war. However, this argument fails completely since the population began departing prior to the 1948 war due to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israeli forces that began in March 1948 and ended six months later. By the time of its conclusion, 800,000 people had been forced to migrate, more than half of Palestine’s native population, 531 villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighborhoods forcibly emptied. (p xiii – xv of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe) Moreover, the argument that the population fled as a result of the war is fallacious as almost 250,000 Palestinians had already been expelled during the last months of the British mandate and before May 15^th 1948, when Israel declared independence and was subsequently attacked by the Arab states. This point completely deconstructs the claim that the population fled due to the actions of the Arab governments.

 

            The Israeli forces were more numerous, well-trained, and better armed than the Palestinian population. “All in all, on the eve of the 1948 war, the Jewish fighting force stood at around 50,000 troops, out of which 30,000 were fighting troops and the rest auxiliaries who lived in the various settlements. In May 1948, these troops could count on the assistance of a small air force and navy, and on the units of tanks, armoured cars and heavy artillery that accompanied them. Facing them were irregular para-military Palestinian outfits that numbered not more than 7000 troops: a fighting force that lacked all structure or hierarchy and was poorly equipped when compared with the Jewish forces. In addition, in February 1948, about 1000 volunteers had entered from the Arab world, reaching 3000 over the next few months.” Even during the 1948, the total number of Arab forces never reached 50,000 while the Israeli forces eventually grew to 80,000 troops. (p 44-45 of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe) Thus, prior to the 1948 war, a few thousand irregular Palestinian forces were facing up to 50,000 well-trained, better-armed Israelis. Thus, when the attacks occurred, a largely defensive population really had no other alternative other than to flee.

 

Fact #5: Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay at home

 

In a post dated May 20, 2008, Spencer attempts to argue that the Palestinians left their home on their own volition at the request of elites tied to the invading Arab leaders in order to vanquish Israel. This point is completely rebutted by the fact that the exodus of the Palestinians began several months before the 1948 war even begun. However, textual evidence now shows that the majority of Arab leaders told the Palestinians to stay in their homes, but many Palestinians were forced to flee due to attacks on them by Israeli and Jewish forces. “In fact, most Arab leaders urged the Palestinian population to stay home, but fear of violent death at the hands of Zionist forces led most of them to flee.” (p 95 of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt) If the Palestinians, the majority of the population in 1948 who owned the majority of the property were forced to flee by a powerful Israeli army, then obviously, they have a right to return to their land. Moreover, assuming for the sake of the argument that the Palestinians fled because the Arab leaders told them to or because it of the conditions of war and not because of the actions of Israeli forces, how is it that they wouldn’t have a right to return even if they left voluntarily? Fleeing a war doesn’t mean that one gives up one’s land. Had the Palestinians taken up citizenship in another state, an argument against their right of return might be stronger, but most Palestinians ended up in refugee camps and were not recognized as citizens in most of the Arab states. Furthermore, even if they were given citizenship in another country, it doesn’t undermine their right of return because a person can have dual citizenship – such as many Israelis who often have dual citizenship.

 

Fact #6: Most of the Arabs Haven’t Left but Still Live in the Area

 

            Some will undoubtedly argue that the Palestinians fled to other countries and don’t have a right of return to their original land in Palestine. However, statistical information indicates otherwise since the majority of Palestinians still live in the area the British Mandate. In Israel, there are currently 5.3 million  Jews and 1.36 million Arabs. In the Gaza and West Bank, there are 3.8 million Palestinians. In other words, the total number of Arabs living in the area is approximately 5.16 million, which means there are only 140,000 more Jews than Palestinians living in what used to be called Mandate Palestine. (p 87 of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt) However, if one includes the number of Palestinian refugees living in diaspora who still claim a right of return, the numbers tilt in favor of Palestinians. The three states with the highest Palestinian refugee population are Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. In 2001, there were 1,572,742 Palestinian refugees in Jordan, 370,144 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, 374,521 Palestinian refugees in Syria with a total of 2,317,407 within these three states. (Monde)  If one were to add this to the total number of people of Palestinian descent, that comes to 7,477,407 which means that there are currently, 2,177,407 more Palestinians than Israelis. Thus, their claim to a right of return is still strong given that they are a majority of the people historically or contemporarily. Again, as was mentioned above, assuming for the sake of the argument that the Palestinians have taken up citizenship with other states, such as Jordan, this doesn’t negate their right of return since many Israelis have dual-citizenship and no one would argue that if they leave Israel they automatically lose citizenship or their property within that country.

 

Fact #7: Research has shown a direct link that the land used for building settlements is privately owned by Palestinians

 

            Another source of the claim that the Palestinians have a right of return in addition to the fact that they were largely ethnically cleansed from the area by Israeli is the fact that Israel has appropriated a good portion of Palestinian property. Research has shown that 32% of the land that Israel holds for the purpose of building settlements is privately owned by Palestinians (p 91 of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt) Even if one argued that the majority of Palestinians no longer have a claim to property in Israel since they were born in refugee camps, there cannot be a universal bar against Palestinians to returning to their land when it is clearly shown that Israelis are seizing it and using it for their own.

 

Fact #8: Israel has systematically destroyed Palestinian homes

 

            The Palestinian argument of a right of return is strengthened by the fact that Israel has not only systematically seized Palestinian property but also systematically destroyed Palestinian homes. As pointed out above, Jews owned a little more than 5% of the land on the eve of independence, but by 1962, Israel owned almost 93% of the land within its borders and they were able to acquire this land by destroying some 531 Arab villages and expelling 11 urban neighborhoods of their populace. Such tactics have been used in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. According to Amnesty International, between 1967 and 2003, more than 10,000 homes in the West Bank and Gaza strip have been destroyed by Israel. (p 96-99 of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt). The fact that Israel has historically and contemporarily engaged in the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and then destroyed them firmly establishes a Palestinian right of return since it can be shown that the Israeli seizure of land and destruction of property is unlawful. Israel has justified its destruction of homes usually on the grounds that they were homes of terrorists, but this undermines their moral argument since it is a clear admission of collective punishment and doesn’t seems to have been an effective deterrent to stopping terrorism anyway. Furthermore, even though the Israelis have destroyed Palestinian homes, the underlying claim of the right of return still applies since the land still lawfully belongs to Palestinians.

 

Fact #9: Israeli Leaders Have Committed Gross Human Rights Violations and Terrorism

 

            The Israeli narrative attempts to portray the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the denial of their right of return as a struggle between freedom and tyranny, democracy and dictatorship, or security and terror. However, the argument that Israel is a democracy is at best tenuous since its treatment of the Palestinians amounts to apartheid by reducing them to second-class citizens in their own land and by restricting them to specific zones all the while their human rights to life, liberty, and property are being constantly violated. Israelis will argue that the treatment of Arabs in Israel is a sufficient rebuttal to this claim, but such arguments were used by other states that engaged in ethnic cleansing. For example, America up until the civil war had some states that engaged in slavery and some that didn’t, that didn’t mean that slavery didn’t exist. One could raise similar arguments about Nazi Germany which allowed certain Jews relative freedom of movement but simultaneously engaged in the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, and others. The fact that Israelis are violating the human rights of Palestinians in the Gaza and West Bank isn’t undermined by their purported nice treatment of Arabs within their state.

 

Moreover, the portrayal of Israel as a bulwark of democracy in an undemocratic region is also weak since many of its neighbors have had varying degrees of democratization. The most obvious example, of course, is the Palestinians themselves who have also recently engaged in democratic elections that were fair and free, but the results of this election were not recognized by Israel since groups that were opposed to Israeli hegemony over Palestinian territory won the elections. The Israeli narrative, of course, refuses to recognize HAMAS in spite of winning the elections because it engages in terrorism. While it is undoubtedly true that terrorism should be combated, it is strange for the Israelis to object to negotiating with terrorists when several of their leaders were directly connected to terrorist organizations and have committed gross human rights abuses. “Indeed, terrorism was one of the key tactics that the Zionists used when they were in a similarly weak position and trying to obtain their own state. It was Jewish terrorists from the infamous Irgun, a militant Zionist group, who in late 1937 introduced into Palestine the now-familiar practice of placing bombs in buses and large crowds. Benny Morris speculates that “the Arabs may well have learned the value of terrorist bombings from the Jews.” Between 1944 and 1947, several Zionist organizations used terrorist attacks to drive the British from Palestine and took the lives of many innocent civilians along the way. Israeli terrorists also murdered the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, because they opposed his proposal to internationalize Jerusalem. The perpetrators of these acts were not isolated extremists: the leaders of the murder plot were eventually granted amnesty by the Israeli government and one of them was later to the Knesset. Another terrorist leader, who approved of Bernadotte’s murder but was not tried, was future Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.” (p 102 of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt) While two wrongs don’t make a right, one wrong cannot be used as a pretense to justify committing another wrong. Israel doesn’t want to negotiate with HAMAS for territorial reasons, not moral reasons. In fact, it should be noted that Israel itself had assisted in the rise of HAMAS as an alternative to the secular nationalist groups within Palestine. Its only when HAMAS turned fanatically against Israel that the Israelis had a real big problem with the organization.

 

Moreover, Israel has elected several individuals that engaged in terrorism or committed human rights abuses, such as Menachem Begin (who headed the terrorist organization Irgun and became prime minister) and Ariel Sharon (who was found by an Israeli investigatory commission to bear personal responsibility for the massacring of innocent Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by the Phalangists, a Christian milita, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 yet also elected prime minister.) It is supreme hypocrisy for Israelis to refuse to negotiate with a legally elected government, in spite of it having links to terrorism and human rights violations, while at the same time allowed similar individuals within Israel to become heads of state as well. (p 99, 102 of “The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt)

 

Also, assuming for the sake of argument that Israel can refuse to negotiate with the Palestinian government due to its terrorist links in spite of having a similar history, this still wouldn’t negate the right of return of Palestinians since the basis of their claim is historically unlinked to the current government which they have elected and arises from entirely different moral and legal claims. Arguing that the Palestinian right to return is negated by its form of government is ludicrous. No one would argue that Germans or Japanese lost ownership of their land due to the rise of the Nazism and Fascism. After all, the Israeli claim to the right of the land is based on biblical references in spite of the political governance of the territory having switched hands between the Romans, Arabs, Turks, and British. The right of return of the Palestinian people predates the elections of HAMAS and is a historically independent and unrelated moral claim.

 

 

Fact #10: Israeli Claims to Being a Democracy are Undermined by its Ethnic and Religious Discrimination

 

            As was pointed out above, one of the arguments used to justify Israeli ethnic cleansing and seizure of Palestinian land is that the Palestinians are anti-democratic terrorists whose values fundamentally clash with Western civilization. As was pointed out, such an argument doesn’t justify stealing Palestinian land and destroying their homes. Such an argument is further rebutted by the fact that Palestinians have begun adhering to democracy and this is not negated by the fact that they have elected individuals with terrorist ties since Israel has done the same exact thing. To further rebut the argument that Israeli democracy sufficiently justifies unconditional support, it should be pointed out that the Israeli version of democracy is severely limited by its discriminatory treatment of Israeli Arabs within the boundaries of Israel and its brutal treatment of the Palestinians outside of the boundaries of Israel.

 

Israeli Arabs are discriminated against in a variety of ways, the two most prominent being property and marital restrictions. Although Israeli Arabs make up 17% of the total population, they are allotted only 3% of the land. Of this 3%, they can only build and live on 2% of it since 1% of the land is defined as agricultural land which cannot be built upon. Thus, 1.3 million people are forced to live on 2% of the land that their ancestors had previously 95% control of. (p 222-223 of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe)

 

In addition to this property discrimination, there are marital restrictions on Israeli Arabs designed to control their population such as the “Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law” which prohibits Israeli Arabs from marrying Palestinians. Proponents of the law make contradictory arguments. First, they argue that the law isn’t discriminatory because it doesn’t explicitly mention Israeli Arabs, but when it is pointed out that only Israeli Arabs are likely to marry Palestinians, they justify it on the grounds that it is necessary to prevent terrorist attacks in Israel. The argument that the law is not facially discriminatory is irrelevant since the law is discriminatory in its effect and merely uses cleverly phrased legalese to hide its discriminatory purpose. The argument that the law is intended to protect Israeli national security is undermined by the fact that any children produced from such a marriage may live in Israel up until the age of 12 when they will be expelled. (The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law) Why would a child born from an Israeli Arab/Palestinian marriage that lives in Israel for 12 years suddenly decide to engage in terrorism? If the target was truly to prevent terrorism, it wouldn’t concern children at all – regardless of their age. This shows that the underlying purpose of the law is not to really prevent terrorism – but to control the Arab population within Israel under the guise of preventing terrorism which reveals the inherent discrimination against Arabs within Israel. Population control is an obsession of many proponents of ethnic cleansing and its presence within Israel establishes a mens rea to justify the slaughtering and containment of Palestinians which is exactly what it has been doing in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and in refugee camps such as in Lebanon during its civil war. Israelis will undoubtedly argue that Israeli Arabs are not discriminated against and have certain rights and can vote, get jobs, and do all sorts of things, but the discrimination that they face is not justified by these things any more than Jim Crow laws were justified on similar grounds (such as having literacy tests which were designed to prevent Blacks from voting).

 

            Additionally, Israeli claims to democracy are undermined by its aggressive regulation and destruction of Christian and Muslim religious sites throughout the modern area. For example, after 1948, Israel seized all religious endowments including the properties within them, and “transferred them first to the Custodian, then to the state, and eventually sold them to Jewish public bodies and private citizens.” (p 217 of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe)

 

The following is an incomplete list of religious centers that were destroyed:

(1) Masjid al-Khayriyya destroyed and the city of Givatayim was built upon it,

(2) the rubble of the Birwa is presently beneath the cultivated land of the Jewish settlement of Ahihud,

(3) the 100 year old Mosque in Sarafand was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers on July 25, 2000,

(4) the mosques of Majdal and Qisarya were turned into restaurants,

(5) the Beersheba mosque was turned into a shop,

(6) the Ayn Hawd mosque was turned into a bar,

(7) part of the Zib mosque was turned into a resort village,

(8) the remains of the Ayn al-Zaytun mosque were turned into a milk farm in 2004,

(9) the Nabi Rubin mosque was blown up by Jewish fanatics in 1993,

(10) the Maqam of Shaykh Shehade was burned down in 2002,

(11) the Araba’in mosque of Baysan was ruined by an arson attack in March 2004,

(12) the Al-Umari and al-Bahr mosques in Tiberas were ruined in two similar attacks in June 2004,

(13) the al-Salam mosque in Zarughara was destroyed by bulldozers in 2003,

(14) the Maqam of Shaykh Sam’an near Kfar Saba was demolished in 2005 by unknown assailants,

(15) the Muslims were denied access to the mosque in Khalsa in the development town of Qiryat Shemona,

(16) the people of Kerem Maharal denied access to the mosque in the village of Ijzim, (17) the Wadi Hawarith mosque was ruined.

 

The following mosques or maqams were turned into synagogues:

(1) Wadi Unayn,

(2) Yazur,

(3) Kfar Inan,

(4) Daliyya,

(5) Abassiyya,

(6) Lifta mosque has been turned into a mikweh (Jewish ritual bath for women),

 

(pg 217-218 of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe)

 

In addition to the fairly obvious discrimination Israeli Arabs are subjected to and the destruction of Christian and Muslim religious sites by Israel or Israelis, the brutal suffering of the Palestinians completely undermines the moral authority of Israeli democracy. Palestinians essentially live in essentially a gigantic prison complex complete with high walls, humiliating searches, segregation from family members in other territories, etc. Israeli responses to terrorist acts go well beyond justifiable actions by engaging in collective punishment such as destroying entire homes, bombing power plants, cutting off foreign aid, etc. An entire book could be written about the Israeli oppression of Palestinians and it isn’t my intent to state every single wrong, but to merely point out that not everything that Israel does can be justified by the national security argument.

 

            The discrimination Israeli Arabs face, the destruction of religious sites, and the brutal treatment of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank which amounts to state terrorism and collective punishment are indications that Israel’s human rights record is far from clear. Therefore, it cannot use the human rights abuses or the lack of democracy of the Palestinians as a bar to their claim of a right of return. When one scrutinizes the totally of circumstances surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it becomes clear that the Palestinians have a right of return. Only by leaving out information or skewing important facts – such as how Robert Spencer has done – is the moral and legal argument minimized.

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