War Guilt in the Middle East

War gilt in the Middle East by Murray and Rothbard.

A selection from left and right,

a journal of libertarian thought,

Spring to Autumn, 1967.

The chronic Middle East crisis goes back

as do many crises to World War I.

The British, in return for mobilizing the Arab peoples

against their oppressors of Imperial Turkey,

promised the Arabs their independence when the war was over.

But at the same time, the British government,

with characteristic double-dealing,

was promising Arab Palestine as a national home

for organized Zionism.

These promises were not on the same moral plane.

For in the former case, the Arabs were being promised

their own land freed from Turkish domination.

And in the latter, World Zionism

was being promised the land most emphatically, not its own.

When World War I was over,

the British unhesitatingly chose to keep the wrong promise,

the one-two-world Zionism.

Its choice was not difficult.

If it had kept its promise to the Arabs,

Great Britain would have had to pull gracefully

out of the Middle East and turn that land over to its inhabitants.

But to fulfill its promise to Zionism,

Britain had to remain as a conquering,

imperial power ruling over Arab Palestine.

That it chose the imperial course is hardly surprising.

We must then go back still further in history

for what was World Zionism.

Before the French Revolution,

the Jews of Europe had been largely encased in ghettos

and they emerged from ghetto life

a distinct Jewish cultural and ethnic

as well as religious identity with Yiddish as the common language,

Hebrew being only the ancient language of religious ritual.

After the French Revolution,

the Jews of Western Europe were emancipated from ghetto life

and they then faced a choice of where to go from there.

One group, the heirs of the Enlightenment,

chose and advocated the choice of casting off narrow,

parochial ghetto culture on behalf of simulation

into the culture and the environment of the Western world.

While assimilationism was clearly the rational course

in America and Western Europe,

this route could not easily be followed in Eastern Europe

where the ghetto walls still held.

In Eastern Europe, therefore,

the Jews turned toward various movements

for preservation of the Jewish ethnic and cultural identity.

Most prevalent was Bundism,

the viewpoint of the Jewish Bund,

which advocated Jewish national self-determination.

Up to and including a Jewish state

in the predominantly Jewish areas of Eastern Europe,

thus, according to Bundism,

the city of Vilna in Eastern Europe

with a majority population of Jews

would be part of a newly formed Jewish state.

Another less powerful group of Jews,

the territorialist movement,

despairing of the future of Jews in Eastern Europe,

advocated preserving the Yiddish Jewish identity

by forming Jewish colonies and communities,

not states in various unpopulated virgin areas of the world.

Given the conditions of European Jewry

in the late 19th and turn of the 20th centuries,

all of these movements had a rational groundwork.

The one Jewish movement that made no sense was Zionism,

a movement which began blended with Jewish territorialism.

But while the territorialists simply wanted

to preserve Jewish Yiddish identity

in a newly developed land of their own,

Zionism began to insist on a Jewish land in Palestine alone.

The fact that Palestine was not a virgin land

but already occupied by an Arab peasantry

meant nothing to the ideologues of Zionism.

Furthermore, the Zionists,

far from hoping to preserve ghetto Yiddish culture,

wished to bury it and to substitute a new culture

and a new language based on an artificial,

secular expansion of ancient religious Hebrew.

In 1903, the British offered territory in Uganda

for Jewish colonization.

And the rejection of this offer by the Zionists,

polarized the Zionist and territorialist movements,

which previously had been fused together

from then on, the Zionists would be committed

to the blood and soil mystique of Palestine.

And Palestine alone while the territorialists

would seek virgin land elsewhere in the world.

Because of the Arab's residents in Palestine,

Zionism had to become in practice

and ideology of conquest.

After World War I, Great Britain seized control of Palestine

and used its sovereign power to promote, encourage,

and abet the expropriation of Arab lands

for Zionist use and for Zionist immigration.

Often old Turkish land titles would be dredged up

and purchased cheaply, thus expropriating the Arab peasantry

on behalf of European Zionist immigration.

Into the heart of the peasant and nomadic Arab world

of the Middle East, their thus game is colonists.

And on the backs and on the bayonets of British imperialism,

a largely European colonizing people.

While Zionism was now committed to Palestine

as a Jewish national home, it was not yet committed

to the aggrandizement of an independent Jewish state

in Palestine.

Indeed, only a minority of Zionists favored a Jewish state

and many of these had broken off from official Zionism

under the influence of Vladimir Jabotinsky

to form the Zionist revisionist movement

to agitate for a Jewish state to rule historic ancient Palestine

on both sides of the Jordan River.

It is not surprising that Jabotinsky

expressed great admiration for the militarism

and the social philosophy of Mussolini's fascism.

At the other wing of Zionism were the cultural Zionists

who opposed the idea of a political Jewish state.

In particular, the Iehud Unity movement

centered around Martin Boober and a group

of distinguished Jewish intellectuals

from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

advocated when the British should leave,

a binational Jewish Arab state in Palestine

with neither religious group to dominate the other,

but both to work in peace and harmony

to build the land of Palestine.

But the inner logic of Zionism was not to be brooked

in the tumultuous world Zionist convention

at New York's hotel built more in 1942.

Zionism, for the first time, adopted the goal

of a Jewish state in Palestine, and nothing less.

The extremists had won out.

From then on, there was to be permanent crisis

in the Middle East, pressured from opposite sides

by Zionists, anxious for a Jewish state

and by Arabs seeking an independent Palestine,

the British finally decided to pull out after World War II

and turn the problem over to the United Nations.

As the drive for a Jewish state intensified,

the revered Dr. Judah Magnus, president

of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,

and head of the Iehud movement, bitterly denounced

Zionist totalitarianism, which, he charged,

is trying to bring the entire Jewish people

under its influence by force and violence.

I have not yet seen the Zionist terrorists

called by their rightful names, killers, brutalized men

and women.

All Jews in America share in the guilt,

even those not in accord with the activities

of this new pagan leadership, but who sit at ease

with folded hands.

Shortly afterward, Dr. Magnus felt it necessary

to exile himself from Palestine and emigrate the United States,

under unbelievably intense pressure from the United States,

the UN, including enthusiastic US and USSR,

reluctantly approved a Palestine partition plan

in November 1947, a plan that formed

the basis of the British pullout and the Israel declaration

of existence on May 15th of the following year.

The partition plan granted the Jews

who had a negligible fraction of Palestine's land,

almost half the land area of the country.

Zionism had succeeded in carving out a European Jewish state

over Arab territory in the Middle East,

but this is by no means all.

The UN agreement have provided a,

that Jerusalem be internationalized under UN rule

and b, that there be an economic union

between the new Jewish and Arab Palestine states.

These were the basic conditions under which

the UN approved partition.

Both were promptly and brusquely disregarded by Israel,

thus launching an escalating series of aggressions

against the Arabs of the Middle East.

While the British were still in Palestine,

the Zionist paramilitary forces began

to crush the Palestinian Arab armed forces

in a series of civil war clashes.

But more faithfully, on April 9th, 1948,

the fanatical Zionist revisionist terrorists

grouped in the organization Irgun Zvielomi

massacred 100 women and children in the Arab village

of Dair Yassin.

By the advent of Israel's independence on May 15th,

the Palestinian Arabs demoralized,

were fleeing in panic from their homes

and from the threat of massacre.

The neighboring Arab states then sent in their troops.

Historians are want to describe the ensuing war

as an invasion of Israel by the Arab states,

heroically rebuffed by Israel.

But since all of the fighting took place on Arab territory,

this interpretation is clearly incorrect.

What happened, in fact, is that Israel managed

to seize large chunks of territory,

assigned to the Palestinian Arabs by the partition agreement,

including the Arab areas of Western Galilee,

Arab West Central Palestine as corridor to Jerusalem,

and the Arab cities of Jaffa and Bershiba.

The bulk of Jerusalem, the new city,

was also seized by Israel and the UN Internationalization Plan,

discarded.

The Arab armies were hampered by their own

inefficiency and disunity,

and by a series of UN imposed trusses,

broken only long enough for Israel

to occupy more Arab territory.

By the time of the permanent armistice agreement

of February 24th, 1949 then,

600,000 Jews had created a state which had originally

housed 850,000 Arabs out of a total Palestinian Arab population

of 1.2 million.

Of these Arabs, three-quarters of a million

had been driven out from their lands and homes,

and the remaining remnant was subject

to a harsh military rule, which two decades later

is still in force.

The home's lands and bank accounts of the fleeing Arab refugees

were promptly confiscated by Israel and handed over

to Jewish immigrants.

Israel has long claimed that the three-quarters

of a million Arabs were not driven out by force,

but rather by their own unjustified panic

induced by Arab leaders.

But the key point is that everyone recognizes

Israel's adamant refusal to let these refugees return

and reclaim the property taken from them.

From that day to this for two decades,

these hapless Arab refugees, their ranks now

swollen by natural increase to 1.3 million,

have continued to live in utter destitution

in refugee camps around the Israeli borders,

barely kept alive by meager UN funds and care packages,

living only for the day when they will return

to their rightful homes.

In the areas of Palestine originally assigned

to the Arabs, no Palestinian Arab government remained.

The acknowledged leader of the Palestinian Arabs,

their grand Mufti Haj Amin El Hussaini,

was summarily deposed by the long-time British tool,

King Abdullah of Transjordan,

who simply confiscated the Arab regions

of East Central Palestine, as well as the old city of Jerusalem.

King Abdullah's Arab legion had been built, armed, staffed,

and even headed by such colonialist British officers

as Glob Pasha.

On the Arab refugees, Israel takes the attitude

that the taxpayers of the world,

that is, largely the taxpayers of the United States,

should kick in to finance a vast scheme to resettle

the Palestinian refugees somewhere in the Middle East.

That is somewhere far from Israel.

The refugees, however, understandably have no interest

in being resettled.

They want their own homes and properties back, period.

The armistice agreement of 1949 was supposed to be policed

by a series of mixed armistice commissions,

composed of Israel and her Arab neighbors.

Very soon, however, Israel dissolved the mixed armistice commissions

and began to encroach upon more and more Arab territory.

Thus, the officially demilitarized zone of El Aoya

was summarily seized by Israel.

Since the Middle East was still technically in the state of war,

there was an armistice but no treaty of peace.

Egypt, from 1949 on, continued to block the strait of Tehran,

the entrance to the Gulf of Akhaba,

to all Israeli shipping, and to all trade with Israel.

In view of the importance of the blocking of the Gulf of Akhaba

in the 1967 war, it is important to remember

that nobody griped at this Egyptian action.

Nobody said that Egypt was violating international law

by closing this peaceful international waterway.

Making any waterway open to all nations,

according to international law, requires two conditions,

Consent by the powers of budding on the waterway

and be no state of war existing between any powers on the waterway.

Neither of these conditions obtained for the Gulf of Akhaba.

Egypt has never consented to such an agreement,

and Israel has been in a state of war with Egypt since 1949,

so that Egypt blocked the Gulf to Israeli shipping unchallenged

from 1949 on.

Israel's history of continuing aggression had only begun.

Seven years later in 1956, Israel,

conjoined to British and French imperialist armies,

jointly invaded Egypt, and oh how proudly Israel consciously

imitated Nazi blitzkrieg and sneak attack tactics,

and oh how ironic that the very same American establishment

that had for years denounced Nazi blitzkriegs

and sneak attacks was suddenly lost in admiration

for the very same tactics employed by Israel.

But in this case, the United States momentarily abandoning

its intense and continued devotion to the Israeli cause,

joined with Russia enforcing the combined aggressors

back from Egyptian soil.

But Israel did not agree to pull its forces out of the Sinai Peninsula

until Egypt agreed to allow a special UN emergency force

to administer the Charm-L-Shake fortress

commanding the state of Tehran.

Characteristically, Israel scornfully refused the UNEF permission

to patrol its side of the border.

Only Egypt agreed to allow access to the UN forces,

and it was because of this that the Gulf of Akhaba

was open to Israeli shipping from 1956 on.

The 1967 crisis emerged from the fact that

over the last few years, the Palestinian Arab refugees

have begun to shift from their previous bleak and passive despair

and begun to form guerrilla movements which have infiltrated the Israeli borders

to carry their fight into the region of their lost homes.

Since last year, Syria has been under the control of the most

militantly anti-imperialist government

that the Middle East has seen in years.

Syria's encouragement to the Palestinian guerrilla forces

led Israel's frenetic leaders to threaten war upon Syria

and the conquest of Damascus.

Threats punctuated by severe reprisal raids against Syrian

and Jordanian villages.

At this point, Egypt's premier,

Gamal Abdel Nasr, who had been an anti-Israel blowhard for years,

but had concentrated instead on demagogic

status measures that wrecked Egypt's domestic economy,

was challenged by the Syrians to do something concrete to help.

In particular, to end UNEF control, and hence continuing Israeli shipping,

in the Gulf of Akhaba, hence Nasr's request for the UNEF to leave.

Pro-Israeli griping at Uthans' swift compliance is grotesque.

When we consider that the UN forces were there only at Egyptian request,

and that Israel has always adamantly refused to have the UN forces

on its side of the border.

It was at that point with the closing of the Strait of Tehran

that Israel evidently began to set the stage for its next blitzkrieg war.

While giving lip service to peaceful negotiation,

the Israeli government finally knuckled under to hawk pressure within the country,

and the appointment of the notoriously war-mongering,

General Moshe Dayan, as Minister of Defense, was obviously the signal

for the Israeli blitz attack that came a few days later.

The incredibly swift Israeli victories, the press glorification of Israeli tactics and strategy,

the patent unreadiness of the Arab forces despite the hoopla.

All this indicates to all, but the most naïve, the fact that Israel launched the war

of 1967, a fact that Israel scarcely bothers to deny.

One of the most repellent aspects of the 1967 slaughter is the outspoken admiration

for the Israeli conquest by almost all Americans, Jew and non-Jew alike.

There seems to be a sickness deep in the American soul that causes it to identify with aggression

and mass murder. The swifter and more brutal, the better.

In all the spate of admiration for the Israeli march, how many people were there to mourn the

thousands of innocent Arabs' civilians murdered by the Israeli use of napalm?

As for Jewish chauvinism, among so-called anti-war people on the left,

there is no more sickening demonstration of a total lack of humanity than that displayed by

Margot Hentoff in the left liberal village voice. Is there any war you do like? If so, are you Jewish?

Lucky. What a time to be Jewish. Have you ever known any Jewish pacifists? Did you know any last

week? Besides, this was a different war. An old kind of war, a kind of war in which death

was life-giving, and Arab deaths didn't count. What a pleasure to be, once again, in favor of a war.

What a good clean wholesome feeling to cheer those jeeps,

careening across the television screen, filled with tough, lean, hard-faced,

gun-bearing Jewish soldiers. Look at them go, wow, zap! Nothing's going to stop them now,

said an old-time radical pacifist. This is an army of Jews. Another whose major contribution

to Judaism until now has been to write articles disowning Israel and announcing that Judaism

is dead and deserves to be, spent the week confusing his nationality. How are we doing,

he kept asking? How far have we gotten now? What a clean wholesome feeling indeed when Arab deaths

don't count. Is there any difference at all between this kind of attitude and that of the Nazi

persecutors of the Jews whom our press has been attacking? Day in and day out for well over 20 years.

When this war began, the Israeli leaders proclaimed that they were not interested in one inch of

territory. Their fighting was purely defensive. But now that Israel sits upon its conquests,

after repeated violations of UN ceasefires, it sings a very different tune. Its forces still occupy

all of the Sinai peninsula. All of Palestinian Jordan has been seized, sending another nearly

200,000 hapless Arab refugees to join their hundreds of thousands of four-learn comrades.

It has seized a goodly chunk of Syria, and Israel arrogantly proclaims that it will never,

never return the old city of Jerusalem or internationalize it. Israeli seizure of all of Jerusalem

is simply not negotiable. If Israel has been the aggressor in the Middle East, the role of the

United States in all this has been even more unlovely. The hypocrisy of the US position is almost

unbelievable, or would be if we were not familiar with US foreign policy over the decades.

When the war first began, and it looked for a moment as if Israel were in danger, the US rushed

into a vow its dedication to the territorial integrity of the Middle East. As if the borders of 1949

to 67 were somehow embalmed and holy writ, and had to be preserved at all costs. But as soon as it

was clear that Israel had won and conquered once again, America swiftly shed its supposed

cherished principles. Now there is no more talk of the territorial integrity of the Middle East.

Now it is all realism and the absurdity of going back to obsolete status quo borders and the

necessity for the Arabs to accept a general settlement in the Middle East, etc. How much more

evidence do we need that an approving United States has always stayed in the wings, ready to come

to the aid of Israel if necessary? How much more evidence do we need that Israel is now the ally

and satellite of the US, which in the Middle East as in so many other areas of the world has assumed

the mantle once worn by British imperialism? The one thing that Americans must not be lured into

believing is that Israel is a little underdog against its mighty Arab neighbors. Israel is a European

nation with a European technological standard battling a primitive and undeveloped foe.

Furthermore Israel has behind it feeding it and financing it the mast might of countless

Americans and West Europeans as well as the Leviathan governments of the United States and its

numerous allies and client states. Israel is no more a gallant underdog because of numerical inferiority

than British imperialism was a gallant underdog when it conquered far more populist lands in India,

Africa and Asia. And so Israel now sits occupying its swollen territory, pulverizing houses and

villages containing snipers, outlawing strikes of Arabs, killing Arab youths in the name of

checking terrorism. But this very occupation, this very elephantiasis of Israel, provides the

Arabs with a powerful long-range opportunity. In the first place as the militant anti-imperialist

regimes of Syria and Algeria now see the Arabs can shift their strategic emphasis from hopeless

conventional war with a far better armed foe to a protracted mass people's guerrilla war.

Armed with light weapons the Arab people could carry out another Vietnam, another Algeria,

another people's guerrilla war against a heavily armed occupying army. Of course this is a long run

threat only because to carry it out the Arabs would have to overthrow all of their stagnant

reactionary monarchies and form a united pan-Arab nation for the splits into nation states in the Arab

world are the consequence of the artificial machinations and depredations of British and French

imperialism. But for the long run the threat is very real. Israel therefore faces a long run dilemma

which she must someday meet either to continue on her present course and after years of mutual

hostility and conflict be overthrown by Arab people's guerrilla war or to change direction drastically

to cut herself loose completely from the Western imperial ties and become simply Jewish citizens

of the Middle East. If she did that then peace and harmony and justice would at last reign in

that tortured region. There is ample precedent for this peaceful coexistence. For in the centuries

before 19th and 20th century Western imperialism, Jew and Arab had always lived well and peacefully

together in the Middle East. There is no inherent enmity or conflict between Arab and Jew.

In the great centuries of Arab civilization in North Africa and Spain Jews took a happy and

prominent part in contrast to their ongoing persecution by the fanatics of the Christian West.

Shorn of Western influence and Western imperialism, that harmony can reign once more.

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