From my inbox.

Wonderful question. Read and enjoy!

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Who is Pushing Whom into the Sea?
by William Martin

"We Must Expel the Arabs and Take Their Place"
--David Ben Gurion, Israel's First Prime Minister

On 11 October 1961 Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion
declared in the Israeli Knesset: 'The Arabs' exit from
Palestine, began immediately after the UN resolution,
from the areas earmarked for the Jewish state. And we have
explicit documents testifying that they left Palestine
following instructions by the Arab leaders, with the Mufti
at their head, under the assumption that the invasion of
the Arab armies at the expiration of the Mandate will
destroy the Jewish state and push all the Jews into the
sea, dead or alive'.

Thus, Mr. Ben Gurion is asserting that it is his perception
that 1) there were directions from the neighboring Arab
states and the Mufti in Jerusalem for the indigenous Arabs
of Palestine to evacuate their homes and lands on the
promise that the Arab armies would destroy the nascent
Jewish state, and, further, 2) that those armies intended
to "push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive".

The phrase "push all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive"
has acquired a life of its own as it is invoked by Zionist
supporters on a daily basis in order to justify the
aggressive policies of Israel as well as its recalcitrance
in continuing the occupation of the Palestinians of the
West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

It is a highly emotive phrase invoking images of the
Holocaust, though adapted to a Mediterranean setting.
Mr. Ben Gurion gives no attribution for this phrase, nor
does he claim that it is a quote from an Arab source. It
is expressed here as if it is his personal surmise as to
the Arab army's intentions.

The phrase has been variously attributed by Zionist
supporters to Yasser Arafat, Gamel Abdul Nasser, or any
other of Israel's enemies, but none whom I have challenged,
including U S Congressman Henry Waxman who made the claim
in a letter to me, attributing the phrase to Nasser, have
been able to provide any documentation of support for their
claim.

This 1961 speech certainly predates Arafat's 1968 ascension
to the head of the PLO. The phrase is very much entrenched
in the thinking of Israel supporters and is taken as a
factual basis for an Arab intent of Genocide and of their
own potential for peril.

The speech by Mr. Ben Gurion appears to be the origin of
the phrase. A search of the speeches of Gamel Abdul Nasser
fails to reveal it, nor does it reveal any other than a
pragmatics approach to his dealing with Israel. This phrase
is sufficiently dramatic and threatening so that if it was
in fact uttered by a significant Arab leader, it would be
prominent and easily found in any competent historical
treatment, which it is not. The phrase, thus, has a Jewish
origin and not an Arab origin. Mr Ben Gurion is the
originator of the phrase, in all likelihood.

Mr. Ben Gurion's first claim that the Arab exodus from
Palestine was provoked by directives from the leaders of
the surrounding Arab states has been shown by overwhelming
historical research to be false.

Since the early 1980's a new generation of professional
historians, many, though not all, Israeli, and recognized
as professionally competent within their own society, as
well as to a wider audience, and aided in no small measure
by the opening of many historical and military documents
archived by the Israel, and British governments, and to a
lesser extent, Arab governments, have provided a revised
historical perspective as a challenge to the official
Israeli history of the origin of the state of Israel. These
newly released documents have been systematically mined by
Ben Gurion University Professor of History, Benny Morris,
as well as others.

One telling document uncovered by Professor Benny Morris
is "The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period
1/12/1947 - 1/6/1948" dated 30 June, 1948 and was produced
by the Israeli Defense Forces Intelligence Service during
the first weeks of the truce (11 June ¬ 9 July) of 1948.

It analyzes the numbers of refugees, the stages of the
exodus, the causes, destination and problems of absorption
in the host countries. The appendix contains the village
by village breakdown in terms of numbers of initial
inhabitants, their destinations and the causes of their
flight.

On the eve of the UN Partition Plan Resolution of 29 Nov
1947, according to the report, there were 219 Arab villages
and four Arab, or partly Arab, towns in the area designated
for the Jewish state, with a total Arab population of
340,000 Arab residents.

By June 1, 180 of these towns had been evacuated, with
239,000 Arabs fleeing the areas of the Jewish state. A
further 152,000 Arabs, from 70 villages and three towns
(Jaffa, Jenin, and Acre), had fled their homes in the
areas designated for Palestinian Arab statehood in the
Partition Resolution. Thus by June 1, according to the
report, the refugee total was 391,000, with an error of
10 to 15%.

The UN gives a figure of 750,000 - 800,000 Palestinian
refugees by the end of 1948, so that the period covered
by the Intelligence Service Report is one in which roughly
one half the refugee population was generated.

The report then outlines eleven (I will list five) of what
the IDF Intelligence Service regarded, in June 1948, as
the factors which precipitated the exodus, listing them
in order of importance as:

a. Direct hostile Jewish [Haganah/IDF] operations against
Arab settlements. (The Haganah was the army of the Yeshuv,
or Jewish community in Palestine, and was the precursor of
the Israeli Defense Force, or IDF.)

b. The effect of our [Haganah/IDF] hostile operations on
nearby Arab settlements (especially ¬ the fall of large
neighboring centers).

c. Operations of the Jewish dissidents [Menachem Begin's
Irgun and Yitzhak Shamir's Stern Gang, also known as the
Irgun Tzvai Leumi and the Lehi, resp.].

d. Jewish whispering operations [psychological warfare]
aimed at frightening away Arab inhabitants.

e. Ultimate expulsion orders [by Haganah/IDF].

The Intelligence Service then gives a detailed breakdown
and explanation of these factors, stressing that "without
doubt, hostile [Haganah/IDF] operations were the main cause
of the movement of the population". The wave of emigration
in each district, explains the report, "followed hard upon
the increase and expansion of our [Haganah/IDF] operations
in that district.

The departure of the British of course, helped the Arab
evacuation, but it appears that the British withdrawal
freed our hands for action more than it influenced the
Arab immigration directly."

The report cites "surprise, protracted mortar barrages, and
the use of loudspeakers broadcasting threatening messages,
factors which had a strong influence in precipitation
flight". "An attack on one village or town often affected
its neighbors. The evacuation of a certain village because
of an attack by us prompted in its wake many neighboring
villages to flee", the report states. "The fall of
Tiberias, Safad, Samakh, Jaffa, and Acre engendered in
their wake many waves of emigrants."

The report concludes that "It is possible to say that at
least 55% of the total of the exodus was caused by our
Haganah/IDF operations and by their influence. the effects
of the operations of the dissidents Jewish organizations
[the Irgun and the Stern Gang] directly caused some 15%
of the emigration." The Intelligence Service states that
the activities of the Irgun and Stern were especially
important in the Jaffa-Tel Aviv area, in the coastal plain
to the north, and around Jerusalem. The report cites the
"special effect" of the Irgun and Stern Gang operations in
Deir Yassin.

The action at Deir Yassin, especially greatly affected the
thinking of the Arabs; not a little of the immediate flight
during our [Haganah/IDF] attacks, especially in the central
and southern areas was due to this factor which can be
described as a decisive accelerating factor.

Recall that the Deir Yassin massacre, which occurred on
April 9, 1948, claimed the lives of about 240 men women
and children of this peaceful village and included rapes
and mutilations. See, The Deir Yassin Massacre. There
were other massacres, perhaps two to three thousands,
essentially defenseless, Palestinians were massacred,
according to Haifa University historian Ilan Pappe,
however the Deir Yassin massacre was widely publicized
and became, in some ways, the signature of the Irgun and
the Stern Gang.

Altogether the report states, Jewish [Haganah/IDF, Irgun,
Stern] military accounted for 70% if the Arab exodus from
Palestine.

In direct contradiction to Ben Gurion, the report states
"the Arab institutions attempted to struggle against the
phenomenon of flight and evacuation, and to curb the
waves of emigration". The Arab Higher Committee imposed
restrictions, and issued threats, punishments, and
propaganda in the radio and press to curb the emigration,
and also tried to mobilize the governments in the neighbor-
ing Arab states to assist in this effort, as both shared
the same interest.

"More than once", the report states, "[Haganah/IDF units
were forced] to expel inhabitants [after they had returned
to their homes]".

Thus in sum, this document, which is only one of many to
have surfaced in consequence of the historical research of
the last 20 years completely refutes Ben Gurion's claim
and reveals it to have no basis in fact.

Mr. Ben Gurion was lying through his teeth, to put it
plainly.

It should be observed that the Jewish agency in Palestine
declared itself a state on May 14, 1948. It was the next
day, May 15 that the first of five Arab armies or
contingents of armies entered Palestine. Thus, approximate-
ly half of the 1948 refugees fled or were extirpated before
the first foreign Arab soldier set foot in Palestine.

The time line is important: the Deir Yassin Massacre
occurred on April 9, the expulsion of Arabs from the cities
of Jaffe, Haifa, Tiberias, and Safid occurred at the end of
April and in the first days of May. The flight of the
Palestinian refugees, thus, was not set in motion by the
entrance of the Arab armies as is often claimed.

Nor should we take from Mr Ben Gurion's statement that the
concept of Palestinian evacuation was confined to the years
1947 - 1948. The concept of transfer of the indigenous Arab
population to make way for a Jewish state was intrinsic to
the thinking of the Zionist leaders from its initial
inception.

Thus Theodor Herzl, founder of the World Zionist
Organization, said in 1892: [We shall] spirit the penniless
population across the frontier by denying it employment.
Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the
poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.

And in 1937, Ben Gurion stated:
The compulsory transfer of Arabs from the valleys of the
proposed Jewish state could give us something which we
never had, even when we stood on our own feet during the
days of the First and Second Temple.

And in a letter to his son, also in 1937, he stated:
We must expel the Arabs and take their places and if we
have to use force, to guarantee our own right to settle
in those places - then we have force at our disposal.

And in early 1948 Ben Gurion wrote in his War Diary,
"During the assault we must be ready to strike the decisive
blow; that is, either to destroy the towns or expel its
inhabitants so our people can replace them."

And in February 1948, Ben Gurion told Yoseph Weitz,
director of the settlement of the Jewish National Fund
and head of the official Transfer Committee of 1948:
The war will give us land. The concept of 'ours' and 'not
ours' are peace concepts, only, in war they lose their
whole meaning.

In fact, the concept of transfer, a euphemism for
expulsion, was embraced by the entire Jewish leadership
from the earliest stages of Zionism until the 1948
extirpation of the indigenous population. Transfer
committees were actually set up from 1937 on until 1948
in order to study ways of riding Palestine of as many
Arabs as possible.

By the end of the 1948 War, hundreds of Arab villages had
been completely depopulated. Their house and buildings
were bulldozed of blown up primarily for the purpose of
preventing the return of their owners. Benny Morris lists
369 Palestinian villages and towns destroyed, while
Professor Walid Khalidi, leading a team of field research-
ers, in an exhaustive study, describes the destruction of
each of 418 villages or hamlets which are listed on an
index of Palestinian cities of 1945.

Quoting from Ilan Pappe's book, A History of Modern
Palestine: [W]hen winter was over and the spring of 1949
warmed a particularly frozen Palestine, the land which we
have described - reconstructing a period stretching over
250 years - had changed beyond recognition. The country-
side, the rural heart of Palestine, with its colourful
and picturesque villages was ruined. Half the villages
had been destroyed, flattened by Israeli bulldozers which
had been at work since August 1948 when the government had
decided to either turn them into cultivated land or to
build new Jewish settlements on their remains. A naming
committee granted the new settlements Hebraized versions
of the original Arab names.

David Ben Gurion explained that this was done as part of
an attempt to prevent future claim to the villages. It
was also supported by the Israeli archeologists, who had
authorized the names as returning the map to something
resembling 'ancient Israel'. Of equal importance, in
engendering what Arafat called an Israeli "Masada complex"
is the common pro-Zionist interpretation of the 1968 PLO
Charter as calling for the destruction of the state of
Israel in which the term "destruction" is interpreted as
"pushing all the Jews into the sea, dead or alive."

Though the document calls for armed struggle, there is
nothing in it incompatible with the establishment of a
secular democratic state which recognizes and respects
the three major religions.

Indeed, article 16 of the document states:
The liberation of Palestine, from a spiritual viewpoint,
will prepare an atmosphere of tranquility and peace for
the Holy Land in the shade of which all the Holy Places
will be safeguarded, and freedom of worship and visitation
to all will be guaranteed, without distinction or
discrimination of race, colour, language or religion.

And article 19 states:
The partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment
of Israel is fundamentally null and void, because it is
contrary to the wish of the people of Palestine and its
natural right to a homeland, and contradicts the principles
embodied in the Charter of the UN, the first of which is
the right of self-determination.

Under American pressure, Arafat and the PLO eventually
amended the PLO Charter so as to accept the reality of a
Jewish state on 80% of historical Palestine leaving room
for a Palestinian state on the remainder. However, one
democratic state based on non-discrimination with equal
rights for Jews, Christians and Moslems is closer to
American values than a state created specifically for one
ethnicity whose laws uphold the superior rights of one
race or ethnicity, namely the Jewish one, over that of
another, namely the minority Palestinian citizens of
Israel.

In amending the PLO Charter so as to accept the two state
solution, we have actually moved away from basic American
values of non-discrimination based on race. Those liberals
who worked for the dissolution of the white supremacists
governments of Rhodesia and South Africa need to explain
their slavish devotion to the state of Israel which is
based on Jewish supremacy.

The Zionists did not drive the Palestinians into the sea,
but they did drive them from their homes and villages and
ancestral lands and from Palestine and into squalid refugee
camps, and in the process massacred two to three thousand.
The irony of Ben Gurion's statement should not escape us.
Ben Gurion and the Zionists demand deference for a
fictitious intention on the part of the Palestinian and
Arabs while ignoring or denying the very real expulsion
of the Palestinians.

Much of the perception of Israel and much of its popular
support rest on the myth of the purity of Israel and much
of that can be traced directly to David Ben Gurion's
distortions of truth. The unambiguous historical evidence
is that the state of Israel was founded upon terrorism and
the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arab population.
There is nothing pure or righteous about that.

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William James Martin teaches in the Mathematics Department
at the University of Florida.

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