But will anyone listen? by Melanie Phillips

[Nannette]

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001437.html

A new pamphlet by David Meir-Levi provides an essential corrective to the myths that have accumulated around the establishment of the State of Israel, the most poisonous of which is the claim that the Jews deliberately drove out the Arabs and thus the very foundation of the state was illegitimate. What Meir-Levi brings forward is the evidence – none of it new, but all of it overlooked or denied in today’s climate of profound ignorance and malice – that the Arab refugee problem was caused by the Arabs and that the flight of Arabs from Palestine was largely the result of being told to flee by the Arabs, who at around the same time forced out, often at gunpoint, some 800,000 Jews from Arab lands who had been living there peacefully for hundreds of years but were ethnically cleansed from countries which even today practice racist restrictions against any Jewish entry, a fact which goes unremarked by a majority opinion which portrays instead the Jews of Israel, the victims not the perpetrators of aggression – and who include those refugees from Arab lands and their descendants – as racist aggressors.

One of the most striking features of his narrative is the way he sets the record straight over Deir Yassin, the iconic 'massacre' of Arab villagers in 1948 which is invariably used as a stick with which to beat up the Jews of Israel but over which the facts are hotly disputed. Meir-Levi presents evidence that, while many died at Deir Yassin, it was not a massacre but a military battle:

'...the Red Cross, which was called in to assist the wounded and civilians, found no evidence of a massacre. In fact, even the most recent review of the evidence (July 1999), by Arab scholars at Beir- Zayyit university in Ramallah, indicates that there was no massacre, but rather a military conflict in which civilians were killed in the crossfire. The total Arab dead, including the Iraqi soldiers, according to the Beir Zayyit calculation, was 107.

‘So where did the idea of a massacre come from? The same Arab sources that confess to having urged the Arabs to flee have also acknowledged that Arab spokespersons at the time cynically exaggerated the casualties of the Deir Yassin battle, making up stories of gang rape, brutalizing of pregnant women, killing unborn children cut from their mothers’ wombs by blood-thirsty Jews, and massive murders with bodies thrown into a nearby quarry. The same Arab sources admit that their purpose in these lies was to shame the Arab nations into entering the conflict with greater alacrity, so that the Jews would be destroyed by the overwhelming numbers of Arab invaders.

'The plan backfired. As a result of this propaganda, Arab civilians panicked and fled by the tens of thousands. This was confirmed in the 1993 PBS documentary called The Fifty Years of War in which Deir Yassin survivors were interviewed. They testified that they had begged Dr. Hussein Khalidi, director of Voice of Palestine (the Palestinian radio station in East Jerusalem) to edit out the lies and fabrications of atrocities that never happened. He told them: "We must capitalize on this great opportunity!"

'The flight of Arabs had begun many months before Deir Yassin. So Deir Yassin cannot account for those hundreds of thousands of Arabs who sought refuge prior to April 9, 1948. Moreover, while current Arab propaganda asserts that Deir Yassin was one of many examples of Jewish massacre and slaughter, there is not one other documented example of any such behavior by the Jews. By any standard, Deir Yassin was not an example, but an exception. In sum, it was not what happened at Deir Yassin that caused the flight of tens of thousands of Arabs; it was the lies invented by the Arab High Command and Dr. Hussein Khalidi of the "Voice of Palestine" radio news channel that caused the panic. One can hardly blame Israel for that.

'Moreover, we have information from a famous source, Yassir Arafat himself (his authorized biography, by Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peace Maker) that the Deir Yassin lies were spread "like a red flag in front of a bull" by the Egyptians. Then, having terrorized them with these stories, the Egyptians proceeded to disarm the Arabs of the area and herd them into detention camps in Gaza (today’s Gaza refugee camps). Why did the Egyptians do this? According to Arafat, it was to get the Arabs out of the area because the Egyptians wanted a free hand to wage their war. Egypt had every intention of conquering the Negev and southern part of the coastal plain. They wanted no interference from the local Arabs. Deir Yassin was not a massacre; nothing even vaguely akin to what the Jews are accused of ever happened. We don’t know how many Arabs fled as a result of the Arab propaganda over Deir Yassin. Several hundred thousand is a good estimate. Most of them ended up in the Egyptian detention camps in Gaza.'

Of such myths are the world’s tragedies made.
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He who is merciful with the cruel, will end-up being cruel to the merciful
- Kohelet Rabba 7:16