From: Damien R. Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 20 2002 - 12:55:28 MDT
On Thu, Apr 18, 2002 at 10:11:38AM -0700, David Lubkin wrote:
> In high school in Israel, I was taught this version of history as well.
> This may have occurred to some extent, but there are now revisionist
> histories that argue that there is credible evidence that Jewish
> Palestinians in the Haganah and later, Zahal, did violently "encourage"
> Arabs to leave their homes during the 1948 establishment of Israel.
Not to mention Irgun:
On April 9, 1947, a group of Irgun commandos raided the Arab
village of [24]Dayr Yasin (modern Kefar Sha'ul), killing all 254 of
its inhabitants.
(Encyclopedia Brittanica)
> If this is true, I don't have a problem with it.
I find _that_ line appalling.
> First, one could argue that it was a pre-emptive strike to increase the
> likelihood of Israel surviving an imminent massive attack that, in
> hindsight, might have made the difference, considering how under-armed
One could argue such behavior made the massive attack more imminent.
> Second, war is always ugly and no state I know of has ever been peaceably
> established. I'm fine if you want to rage against all states. But in a
One thing to take away from that might be that states shouldn't be
established, at least not as a primary goal.
And there have been peaceful secessions, actually: the Soviet Union, the
breakup of Czechoslovakia, Iceland's departure from Denmark, and maybe
Norway's secession from Sweden, although I can't swear to a total
absence of Norwegian terrorism. And weren't a lot of the African and
Arab countries in fact established peacefully by the departing colonial
powers? "We're out of here, you're in charge, enjoy." Given the
starting point of the British in charge of former Ottoman territory,
there's no a priori reason a state there couldn't have been peacefully
carved out and formed. Of course, it probably wouldn't have been a
Zionist state.
> scale of state offenses, Israel's rank fairly low, even compared with
> events in America's history (like the near-genocide of American Indians,
But Israel's are in living memory.
-xx- Damien X-)
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