A land without a people for a people without a land. Making the desert bloom. The only democracy in the Middle East. These were the false statements that drew, and still continue to draw, Jews all around the world to immigrate to Israel. However, beneath the artificial forests, lie the skulls of thousands of Palestinian families. Beneath the silence, lie the haunting screams of innocent children as they watched their families get massacred before their own eyes. Beneath the glorification of the founding fathers of Israel, lie the reality of criminals who planned and executed the ethnic cleansing of 800 000 Palestinians.
What Is Ethnic Cleansing, Really?
“Ethnic cleansing is a well described policy of a particular group of persons to systematically eliminate another group from a given territory on the basis of religious, ethnic or national origin” . In simple words, it is the process of turning an ethnically mixed area into a pure ethnic space, often using cruel methods such as murder, expulsion, and mass arrests. According to Resolution 47, “The United Nations General Assembly strongly rejects policies and ideologies aimed at promoting ethnic cleansing in any form”. Yet, 85% of member states of the United Nations have diplomatic ties with a state that openly promotes ethnic cleansing in both its policies, and basis of existence.
Zionism: The Engine For Criminal Activities
The ideology behind the ethnic cleansing in Palestine was Zionism. It was a movement that nationalized Judaism in the late 1800s, founded by a man named Theodor Herzl. At a time where antisemitism reached a peak in Europe, Herzl believed that the only way to escape persecution was to create an independent Jewish state. The British not only promised Jews a homeland in Palestine in the Balfour declaration, but they also promised all the Arabs sovereignty over their own lands if they helped them defeat the Ottomans in World War I. All other Arab countries received majoritarian politics except Palestine, who were offered political parity with the Jews despite their 80–90 percent population.
The 1929 and 1936 uprisings were due to British violations of the initial agreement, and caused the exile of Palestinian leadership. The uprisings also marked the beginning of Jewish militarism, as extreme Zionist groups fought alongside the British in these riots, and were later the criminals behind the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The British sergeants, who were supposed to be the protectors of Palestine, showed Israelis tactics to attack villages and even jointly attacked a village between Lebanon and Palestine for practise. As the British began to weaken in the late 40s, they quit the Palestinian case in February of 1947 and transferred it to the UN, who was just two years old at the time.
The Forgotten Catastrophe of 1948
Prior to the British withdrawal, the Jewish military troops and their leader, David Ben-Gurion, had already expressed their desire for Palestinians to disappear, and started researching every single village with detailed names of Palestinian men of military age. Purchasing land would only land them 6%, so they adopted a military philosophy of force, and opportunity to use that force. Their first opportunity was a response to the protests that erupted when the UN announced a partition plan late November 1947. As the majority, Palestinians found this unfair and an academic, Walid Khalidi, phrased their frustration clearly: “The Native people of Palestine, like the native people of every other country in the Arab world, Asia, Africa, America, and Europe, refuse to divide the land with a settler community”.
Palestinians’ rejection of the partition plan made the Zionists take matters into their own hands and determine the boundaries that they wanted by force. Once the British were out of the picture, Plan Dalet was activated: the systematic and total expulsion of native Palestinians from their homeland. Their famous excuse, to deter the Palestinian population from attacking Jewish settlements, was used to hide their motive behind ethnic cleansing and allowed them to freely kill Palestinian leadership, financial supporters, men who resisted in the uprisings and senior Palestinian officers, in addition to damaging transportation and Palestinian agriculture, as well as attacking villages and meeting spots.
As the military leaders of the Zionist movement discussed amongst each other, the evidence is clear as to what their true intentions were for the land. Ben Guirion said, “During the operation there is no need to distinguish between guilty and non guilty”, and “Every attack has to end with occupation, destruction, and expulsion”, because “[w]ithout transfer, there will be no Jewish state”. Yadin said, “We have the upper hand, we should paralyze the Arab transport and their economy, harass them in their villages and cities and demoralise them”. Weitz said, “This is not enough. Is it not now the time to get rid of them? Why continue to keep in our midst those thorns at a time when they pose a danger to us? The only solution is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be let off”. Meeting minutes and diary entries have been academically verified by historians, and are an open secret, yet many remain fooled by the claims that Israel only attacked villages for self defense, or that there were no Palestinians to begin with.
Ethnic cleansing operations began as early as December 1947, with 75 000 Palestinians exiled from cities and villages in one month. Military troops went into each village, one by one, to occupy, destroy, and expel.
Deir Ayyub was a defenseless village whose inhabitants were just celebrating the opening of a new school. Farmers were poor back then, and had finally saved enough money to hire a teacher for their 50 students. The next day, 20 Zionist troops came in and attacked the village. Deir Ayyub was attacked three more times and was ultimately destroyed in April 1948.
Deir Yassin was attacked with sprays of gunfire. The men of the village were gathered in one spot and killed en masse in cold blood, women were raped, 30 babies were killed, and children were sprayed with bullets for “the fun of it”.
Jaffa’s civilians were pushed into the sea and died on overcrowded boats.
Tantura’s men were killed in front of their families.
Typhoid germs were thrust into Acre’s water and caused the hospitalization of Palestinians and British alike.
Haifa was a city with 70 000 inhabitants and Zionists would roll down barrels of explosives, light up oil in the city, kill whoever left their homes, and invite Palestinians to repair their cars, only to blow up the shop moments later.
Ironically, the Palestinian retaliation in the 1948 war was called a second Holocaust, despite the Zionist troops committing horrific atrocities to each village, and outnumbering them by 70 000 when it came time to fight. Just like that, 750 000 Palestinians were exiled from their homes and walked hundreds of miles by foot to nearby refugee camps. The conditions of these camps were devastating, with no proper sewage, water, or nourishment, and left many ill and psychologically distressed. These camps never disappeared and in fact, were built and improved by hand to make the overcrowded neighborhoods in the Gaza strip and West Bank today. While Palestinians suffered just hours away, Israel celebrated their declaration of independence and immediately invited hundreds of thousands of Jews to inhabit the villages that were once home to 800 000 Palestinians.
Behind Closed Doors
Did you know Israel violated at least 28 international laws? According to Article 9, [n]o one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Israel is the only country in the world to put children behind bars, forcefully taking them away from their homes, and in 97 percent of the cases, children had no parent present during the interrogation and had no access to legal counsel. 700 children are annually arrested and 3 out of 4 experience physical violence during arrest and interrogation.
Why?
Some crimes include protesting, throwing rocks in self defense, and holding the Palestinian flag, reasons that are nothing but arbitrary. In fact, on May 24 2021, 500 Palestinian citizens were arrested from their homes for protesting and standing up against the occupation. Where is democracy in that?
Another article, 13/2, states that [e]veryone has the right to leave their country and return, yet Palestinians have never been given that right due to the immediate resettlement of Jews in their robbed homes, and the artificial forests that were planted in their spots. The 3 million Palestinians living in Israel are confined to only 2% of the land, and have no way to come back to the homes they were kicked out from by force. If they try to repurchase their own property, they would not be able to because Israelis are not allowed to sell their property to non-Jews, a clear demonstration of apartheid.
Article 17/2 states “[n]o one shall be deprived of his property”, yet refugees were stripped of all their belongings and land, never to be compensated, and had to cover the expenses of transfer on their own. Any Palestinians who attempted to retrieve their belongings in 1948 were shot, and women were often stripped of whatever gold they had. Palestinians living under occupation had curfews, and in that time, shops and homes were robbed in order to provide resources for new settlers. Prisoners of war were beaten, tortured, and forced into labour. One 12 year old girl was kidnapped and gang raped by 22 different soldiers, and the man who did the killing was the only one to face any real consequence: just 2 years in prison.
Israel is a state built on the foundations of murder, robbery and oppression, and the horrific atrocities they commited against innocent and defenseless civillians in 1948, only prove this premise further. From blindfolding and shooting innocents, destroying homes to stabbing pregnant women and cracking babies’ skulls open, the Zionist military committed every crime possible. Golda Meir, the fourth prime minister of Israel, describes what she saw in Haifa as the horror stories she recalls her family telling her about the Russian brutality towards Jews. Indeed, Zionists became a mirror image of their worst nightmare.
Ethnic Cleansing Continues
As the theoriticans of ethnic cleansing acknowledged later, where an ideology of exclusivity is adopted in a highly charged ethnic reality, there can only be one result: ethnic cleansing. As mentioned earlier, the concept of a Jewish state aims at the depopulation, ethnic cleansing, and transfer of non-Jews from the land they stole in order to maintain a Jewish majority. Their intention was clearly stated when Theoder Herzl wrote in his diary: “We shall endeavour to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed procuring employment for it in the transit countries, but denying it any employment in our country”.
In Ben Gurion’s eyes, over 80% of the population needs to be Jews in order for the Jewish state to be legitimate. Since Palestinians have more children than European Jews, Israel is constantly trying to find ways to control the population, whether that’s arresting young people for legitimately no reason, bulldozing homes, or making life completely unbearable that many are deciding to leave for a dignified life. In the eyes of Zionist leaders, Palestinians are cancer, thorns in the skin, and “cockroaches”, that need to be expelled. In fact, 68% of Israeli Jews wished to see Palestinians co-existing in Israel to be transferred, a clear statistic that puts Palestinians at risk with their own neighbors.
The recent events earlier this year with Sheikh Jarrah and the attacks on Gaza screamed ethnic cleansing louder than ever before. Palestinian families who have been living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for decades, were evicted from their own homes, in order to make space for Jewish settlers and become a parking spot for a temple nearby. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal under international law, yet the Israeli government had the audacity to leave Palestinians homeless and with absolutely no recompensation.
This sparked protests all over the country, which was met with stun grenades, sewage spray, and mass arrests from Israeli police. On the holiest night of Ramadan, Israeli forces barged into the mosque and threw stun grenades, wounding and suffocating hundreds. Hamas, Palestinian’s defense system (recognized as a terrorist organization), threatened to shoot rockets if the disrespect towards Islam’s third holiest site continues. Israeli forces continued, despite the threat, and were faced with rockets that hardly harmed anything due to Israel’s iron dome. In retaliation, Israel dropped bombs on besieged Gaza, targeting civilians and killing over 250 people, 65 of them children.
It takes no courage or a military hero to press a button that will utterly destroy the lives of thousands of innocent families in Gaza. It takes a merciless heart to imprison civilians, block them from visiting other areas in their own country, leave 90% of their water undrinkable, cause power outages for 18 hours daily, and drop bombs on a nation that cannot escape. What is happening currently in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, is blunt oppression, and a violation against human rights that no country should ever take part in funding.
Ending The Oppression: My Proposal
So long as the ideology of exclusivity is the basis of a country, apartheid and murder will continue to exist. A professor of geography at Haifa University said, “…if we want to remain alive, we have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day. […] If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist.” Netenyahu, the previous Prime Minister of Israel, said, “If the Arabs in Israel form 40 percent of the population, this is the end of the Jewish state. But 20 percent is also a problem. If the relationship with these 20 per cent becomes problematic, the state is entitled to employ extreme measures”.
So long as Palestinians continue to be viewed as cockroaches, thorns in the skin, cancer, or a demographic problem, then ethnic cleansing and genocide is bound to happen just like it did when the Nazis viewed Jews in a similar way. My solution is to end the Zionist occupation and restore Palestine with the official religions as Islam, Judaism and Christianity, and the official languages as Arabic and Hebrew. Muslims, Jews, and Christians are to live side by side under Palestinian protection just like they have been doing for centuries. Every Palestinian should have free movement in all parts of the country, and go back to their rightful homes. Jews can either go back to the countries they were forcefully evicted from in the Holocaust, or to be able to stay and obtain citizenship. This process may seem complicated and impossible at first, but it is actually quite simple.
The Staircase To Peace
First, Israelis need to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and the displacement of 7 million Palestinians worldwide. Claims like a land without a people for a people without a land, making the desert bloom, and Palestinians voluntarily leaving the country, need to stop immediately. Every immigrant to the country has the right to know the horrendous atrocities the founders have committed against the indigenous population, and to stop being lied to and told that Arabs are here to kill them.
Second, the siege on Gaza needs to end. The blockade has been occurring for 14 years and destroying the lives of innocent families who do not have access to basic necessities, transportation, or even a way out. The siege violates numerous human rights policies, and acts as a form of collective punishment “which is considered strictly illegal under International Humanitarian Law” (CIDSE).
Thirdly, illegal Israeli settlements and evictions of innocent Palestinian families from their homes need to be sanctioned. It is recognized as illegal by the international community, and is continuing to tamper and violate peace processes. Just imagine if Canadians were occupying half of indigenous reserves; will that consolidate or disintegrate reconciliation efforts?
Finally, all Palestinian refugees should be allowed back to their homes that they have been living in for centuries. The Right of Return needs to be recognized by the Israeli government, because it is a key principle in international law. If one who voluntarily left their land has the right to return, then what about the one who was forcefully exiled? Who has more right to live in a Palestinian home; the rightful owner or a Jewish settler from Russia who never stepped foot in Palestine? The Right of Return is a fundamental human right and cannot be ignored anymore by the Israeli government.
When all these recommendations are put into action, one by one, they will ease the animosity and tension between Palestinians and settlers, allowing for a future where both will be able to live side by side, with equal rights, in one country.
Why The Restoration of Palestine Will Work
I know, the concept of a Jewish state has been over 100 years in the making, with tens of billions of American tax dollars to make it happen. Any effort to dismantle Zionism or the State of Israel, is deemed antisemitic in the public eye, but the truth proves to be quite the opposite.
For starters, Arabs, who are ethnically semites and speak a semitic language, are constantly discriminated against in Israel and are not allowed freedom of speech or movement.
Secondly, the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from the region is a necessity for the Jewish state to exist, as described by the founders of Israel.
Finally, Zionism, when described by Theodor Herzl, was a solution to the “Jewish problem” where Zionist leaders actually partnered with the Nazis in the Haavara agreement to transfer Jews out of Europe, using an ancient biblical homeland story as their means. Eretz Israel, Palestine in Hebrew, was always seen as a place for pilgrimage, and never as a future secular state.
By acknowledging Israel as the only solution to the Jewish problem, as described by Herzl himself, then doesn’t that mean we therefore acknowledge a Jewish problem? Isn’t it antisemitic that we want to put all the Jews in one country? Do we believe they cause a problem to our own countries like how Hitler believed? The creation of Israel was the direct result of rising global antisemitism, so wouldn’t supporting it mean that Jews are an issue for us today?
Another reason to repeal Israel is that by making Jerusalem exclusively Jewish, it would be unfair to the billions of Muslims and Christians who have absolutely no share of the land. According to the Orthodox Church of Sebastia, Palestinians, Christian or Muslim, are deprived [by Israel] of visiting holy sites in Jerusalem. I personally know of Palestinians who are unable to visit the Holy Mosque despite living thirty minutes away. It is just unfair that a religion that only numbers 15–20 million worldwide, gets total control of a city that is holy to two much larger religions.
Thirdly, calling Palestinians a demographic problem in Israel is as inhumane as calling Jews a demographic problem in Germany. Hitler had very strong beliefs about pure-blooded Germans being the master race and in that same way, Israel gives more rights to Jews than Palestinians based on Jewish bloodline, and favours their settlement and satisfaction, even if it means evicting innocent Palestinians or robbing them of their belongings. Once the drive for an exclusively Jewish state ends, so will ethnic cleansing because demographics will no longer be an issue.
Finally, Palestine has always been an ethnically and religiously mixed area. Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze, have lived together in villages and worked side by side to fish, harvest, and operate cities. If it was done by our ancestors for centuries, why can it not be done now?
What Can You Do?
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is not an issue of politics or real estate. Ethnic cleansing is a human issue where every human being has a role to play. Our leaders are a reflection of our collective opinions, so the fact that 85% of member states of the United Nations support Israel, represents a lack of education on our end to what support for Israel really entails.
Funding and supporting Israel means denying Palestinian fundamental human rights and freedoms.
Funding and supporting Israel means condemning the Holocaust and antisemitism, but looking the other way when similar massacres happen to Palestinians on an annual basis.
Funding and supporting Israel means being okay with the silencing of protesters, as young as 10 years old, as they are shot, arrested, and beaten up by Israeli forces.
The first step we can do then, is to educate ourselves about ethnic cleansing operations that occured in 1948 and still occur to this day. Documentaries like Inside Jerusalem by VICE, books like The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappé, and news outlets like TRT World are some ways to get authentic education on Palestine without Israeli propaganda.
The next step is to boycott Israeli products and encourage local MP’s to advocate for the end of the weapons trade agreement. Our tax dollars are going towards the destruction of innocent neighborhoods, death of innocent civilians, and infrastructure for building jails and detaining children. As Israel tries to conceal their war crimes by bombing media buildings in Gaza, we should be putting pressure on social platforms to stop censoring Palestinian voices by giving them one star ratings on app stores.
Another simple way to help is to simply avoid using words like clash, war, or conflict to describe a battle between billion-dollar funded military forces and children with nothing but rocks in their hands. Instead, use the words occupation, ethnic cleansing, police brutality, war crimes, and apartheid, to accurately describe the situation in Palestine.
Support activists and join the activism yourself by attending peaceful protests, making educational posts online, and simply spreading awareness to family, friends, and followers on social media.
Finally, if your country was subject to settler colonialism, take a look at the indigenous issues in your area and fight for their rights, justice, and voice. Hear their stories, teachings, and struggles, for justice needs to be served for all indigenous people.
To conclude, any human being that looks at the two faced racist Israeli government can see that Israel is not a democracy, let alone the only one in the Middle East. Any human being that reads about the Catastrophe of 1948 can realize that Israel did not make the desert bloom, but in fact destroyed 750 000 orange and olive trees that belonged to Palestinian farmers. Finally, any human being that can hear the cries of Palestinian children can acknowledge that Palestine was not a land without a people, but a land full of culture, memories, and millions of inhabitants. So for the children who have been robbed of their childhood, for the protesters whose voices have been silenced by weapons, and for the millions of Palestinians that suffered for the past 73 years, it’s time to speak up.
