{"id":6004,"date":"2024-08-08T11:59:15","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T09:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6004"},"modified":"2024-08-08T11:59:15","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T09:59:15","slug":"1948-israel-excuses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2024-08-08\/1948-israel-excuses\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing’s changed since 1948 \u2013 except now Israel’s excuses don’t work"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\"\"\n

The headline above, about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published in yesterday\u2019s Middle East Eye.<\/p>\n

When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes \u2013 what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.<\/p>\n

1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel\u2019s establishment.<\/p>\n

2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom<\/a> to expel Palestinians from their homeland, did so only because they were traumatised by their experiences in Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, these Israelis assumed that, were the Jewish people to survive, they had no alternative but to drive out the Palestinians en masse.<\/p>\n

3. From others, I was told that no ethnic cleansing had taken place. The Palestinians had simply fled at the first sign of conflict because they had no real historical attachment to the land.<\/p>\n

4. Or I was told that the Palestinians\u2019 displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn\u2019t left because of Israeli violence but because they has been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region. In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded<\/a> with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.<\/p>\n

Every one of these claims was nonsense, directly contradicted by all the documentary evidence.<\/p>\n

That should be even clearer today, as Israel continues the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Palestinian people more than 75 years on.<\/p>\n

1. Every Israeli knows exactly what is going on in Gaza \u2013 after all, their children-soldiers keep posting videos online<\/a> showing the latest crimes they have committed, from blowing up mosques and hospitals to shooting randomly into homes. Polls show all but a small minority of Israelis approve<\/a> of the savagery that has killed many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children. A third of them think Israel needs to go further in its barbarity.<\/p>\n

Today, Israeli TV shows host debates about how much pain soldiers should be allowed to inflict by raping their Palestinian captives. Don\u2019t believe me? Watch this from Israel\u2019s Channel 12:<\/p>\n

\n

\ud83d\udd34SHOCKING\ud83d\udd34<\/p>\n

Israel is quite possibly the only nation in the world where it is permissable and commonplace to go on TV and openly declare that the RAPING of prisoners should be a LEGITIMATE and OFFICIAL POLICY of the state and must be widely implemented.
pic.twitter.com\/1PyRXk8fxU<\/a><\/p>\n

— Niz (@NizMhani) August 7, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n