We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel, writes Jonathan Cook. It was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.
Expulsion of Tantura civilians following the Tantura massacre in May 1948. (Benno Rothenberg /Meitar Collection / National Library of Israel / The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
“Israel army issues new displacement order from northern Gaza.” That headline, about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published Thursday in Middle East Eye.
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 — what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.
1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel’s establishment.
2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom 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.
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.
4. Or I was told that the Palestinians’ displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn’t left because of Israeli violence but because they had been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region.
In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.
Every one of these claims was nonsense, directly contradicted by all the documentary evidence.
That should be even clearer today, as Israel continues the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Palestinian people more than 75 years on.
Every Israeli knows exactly what is going on in Gaza — after all, their children-soldiers keep posting videos online 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 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.
Today, Israeli TV shows host debates about how much pain soldiers should be allowed to inflict by raping their Palestinian captives. Don’t believe me? Watch this from Israel’s Channel 12:
?SHOCKING?
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— Niz (@NizMhani) August 7, 2024
If the existential fears of Israelis and Jews still require the murder, rape and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians three-quarters of a century on from the Holocaust, then we need to treat that trauma as the problem — and refuse to indulge it any longer.
The people of Gaza are fleeing their homes — or at least the small number who still have homes not bombed to ruins — not because they lack an attachment to Palestine. They are fleeing from one part of the cage Israel has created for them to another part of it for one reason alone: because all of them — men, women and children — are terrified of being slaughtered by an Israeli military, at best, indifferent to their suffering and their fate.
The official death toll in Gaza is a lie. The casualty numbers are far, far higher.
In my latest article, I explain how the trick has been pulled off: https://t.co/WfH4wt1bJM pic.twitter.com/qI0NFfRL8v
— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) July 31, 2024
No serious case can be made today that Israel is carrying out any of its crimes in Gaza — from bombing civilians to starving them — with regret, or that its leaders seek the best for the Palestinian population.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the world’s highest court precisely because the judges there suspect it has the very worst intentions possible towards the Palestinian people.
We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was always a settler colonial project. And like other settler colonial projects — from the U.S. and Australia to South Africa and Algeria — it always viewed the native people as inferior, as non-human, as animals, and was bent on their elimination.
What is so obviously true today was true then too, at Israel’s birth. Israel was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.
We in the West abetted its crimes in 1948, and we’re still abetting them today. Nothing has changed, except the excuses no longer work.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021.He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support.
This article is from the author’s blog, Jonathan Cook.net.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Discussing rape as a viable tactic on their national TV….can someone please tell me what world I’m living in where that is tolerated???
The single greatest fact about the Middle East is this: Other than having stolen the name, 1948 political “Israel” is NOT in any way, shape or form related to Biblical Israel!
It must be added that long ago the Romans stole a monotheistic religion to turned it into a sting using a new religion create to defame theirs and weaponize it probably for an occupation or centuries later against refugees in Rome. The slaves became recruits and it became a new form of transnational empire and used those people as scapegoats too over the centuries of pogroms and massacres of other indigenous people. Weaponized war using divine monotheistic permissiveness of ones own imagination.
Clever weapoization of human imagination could lead to our extinction.
hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/24/the-treachery-of-the-nazi-zionist-alliance/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=9e85f78f-0ba8-487b-a29f-c9968ca51eae
By collaborating with the Nazis, a small group of Zionists weakened anti-fascist resistance and contributed to the genocide of Europe’s Jews, writes Stefan Moore.
100% in agreement with this piece
There will be a time in the future (provided we don’t wipe ourselves out in the next few years) where man will look back on this genocide with more disgust and disbelief than any other, primarily because this one is happening in full view of everyone.
Our western governments are just modern versions of the Third Reich
Agree 100%
Thank you, Jonathan Cook, for this expose of the lies of Israel’s primitive tribalists.
Their tribalism did not originate in WWII but was amplified then, and has consumed their humanity.
The social and economic dependencies within tribes always lead to fear of leaders.
The tyrant personalities then see the perfect opportunity to demand power as defenders of the tribe.
So in peacetime the tyrant must create an external enemy to market his wares to those he tyrannizes.
I thought this an interesting history lesson:
When Jewish Refugees Were a Problem No One Wanted to Solve
Xxxx://www.jta.org/2020/10/28/ideas/when-jewish-refugees-were-a-problem-no-one-wanted-to-solve
And of course the good old fundamentalist Christians, particularly the Zionist fundamentalist Christians, have always been thrilled at Jews, the so-called “chosen people of God”, returning to their ancient biblical homeland as fulfillment of Bible prophecy, starting the timetable to the return of Jesus Christ (but not before Armageddon). And opposing or not supporting Israel is thus tantamount to standing in the way of God’s plan.
I remember coming across this thinking when I was a college student in the early 1970’s and became briefly involved with the fundamentalist organization Campus Crusade for Christ. I first assumed that if they were about Christianity and Jesus Christ they had to be good people. It was through them that I was introduced to Hal Lindsey and his book The Late Great Planet Earth and this business of the supposed “Rapture” that many Christians were excited about. And yes, Hal Lindsey was a quintessential Zionist Christian.
Christians of that persuasion believe that a person can be “saved” and be let into heaven by “accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior”, and only by doing so, and only by doing so in this present life. Too bad for those who miss their chance in this life, for whatever reason, and too bad for those who guess wrong by adhering to a religion other than Christianity (including Jews who do not come to “accept Jesus Christ”). Such people are condemned to an eternity of torment in hell, according to the fundamentalist Christian beliefs. So believing in that kind of God it is not surprising that they would have no problem with the sufferings of the Palestinians, whom they consider to be merely pawns in God’s plan (along with also Jews who do not come to “accept Jesus Christ”).
As Thomas Paine said, belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man (or cruel woman, or cruel person).
Actually it is only in recent years, I think some time after the year 2000, that I really became fully aware of the absolute evil that the Israelis had always been doing to the Palestinians. For a long time it did not occur to me to think that Christians could be on the wrong side of things in such a blatant and obvious way (even if I might have had trouble with some of their beliefs).
But, but Dersh, Mark Levin and Benny Shapiro tell me every time they get the chance that the Palestinians are really Jordanian or Egyptian and there was never any such thing as a Palestine. What gives? Are Dersh, Levin and Benny lying?
we also were told that it was ‘a land without people for a people without land’. And many other lies.
I’ve been writing to my congressional representatives for more than 30 years about the problem with Israel without a cognitive reply. Richard Nixon in an interview with Ted Kopel seemed to dismiss the danger of Israel getting a nuclear bomb. Israel lied about their peaceful pursuit of nuclear power even after Mordicai Vanunu blew the whistle to the British Press many years ago. Now the whole world is in a pickle because of it. Why are so many people such fools?
Nixon may well have been clueless to the entire NUMEC incident and Salmon Shapiro’s assistance to Israel by the diversion of special nuclear materials, SNM, to Israel. The man did seem to be totally ignorant of the machinations behind the scenes of CIA and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission allowing for the covert exchanges that took place between NUMEC and Israel.
Horatio I’m very happy to see someone besides myself who challenges the “two party line”, the unified front prosecuted by both the republican and the democrat Zionist on this subject. This is one helluva story no one seems to have the guts to expose.
But then we all know too well intestinal fortitude is a rare commodity in D.C.! Check out what the Honorable J. William Fulbright had to say about the subject in 1973. On April 15, 1973, Fulbright said on Face the Nation, “Israel controls the U.S. Senate.”
This it matters to me but at his wiki the Political and Foreign Views section, at the end of the section the last entry is Israel and Zionism the quote above is written. As well as info from John Mearsheimer & Steven Walt AIPAC waslargely responsible for Fulbright’s failure to be reelected.
You may wish to peruse the IRmep’s Israeli Lobby Archive at IRmep lots of source references there.
Thanks Robert for your mention of the NUMEC affair. Also, I appreciate your quote by William Fullbright. In that light, I highly recommend “They Dare to Speak Out” by Paul Findley (1985).
As I connect the dots, Fullbright made his statement a brief 10 years after Nov. 1963,… a time when the nuclear monster that Israel has become could have been tamed…and we had a President that was willing to do so.
Paul Findley as you well know was defeated by Democrat Dick Durbin, staunch Israeli supporter, Nov 1982.
Never forget that JFK was adamantly opposed to Israel having the a-bomb.
I commented on another article correcting an individual on who and when the use FARA was attempted to rein in interference by Israeli interests. 1962 by JFK & RFK the info can be found at the IRmep Israel Lobby Archive there. The date. Oct 8 2008 was when the material was declassified.
We know what happened to them don’t we!
Short of bombing Israel ourselves, which I absolutely do not advocate, I don’t see we have any way to stop their ongoing holocaust against the Palestinian people. But we can certainly refuse to sponsor, fund and, apparently planned for the future, fight at their side in the ongoing and spreading carnage. Stop the money and weapons gifts, bring the troops and their equipment home along with the ambassadors, our businesses and our commerce. Denounce Israel in the United Nations and help the ICC arrest and prosecute these war criminals…who include Joe Biden and all the Congress people who voted and continue to support the US committing war crimes in lockstep with what should be a pariah nation.
I agree.
totally agree with the statement by Kathleen!
Ditto….Fed up and disgusted with the USA over their decision to continue to support Israel.
‘How to stop Israel’ isn’t the problem – it will stop the moment the US stops funding, arming and shielding them from punishment.
A very good historical article .
“Israel was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.”
I would add that Israel was born with lies and continues to live with lies .
Thank you Johnathan Cook .
I read this and other commentaries such as Caitlin Johnstone’s continuing substacks and wonder aloud “how can my country (the U.S.A.) do this?” Yes, my country – our country – provide the massacre weapons to this genocidal Zionist regime? How do we live with ourselves? What lies must the powers that be tell themselves to justify their support and welcoming of the genocidal maniac Nentanyahu into our Congress and applaud him like he is some kind of God speaking truth when all he gives them are lies so they will continue to provide the genocidal weapons and warships to quote: “help Israel defend itself”? And you have provided how they lie to themselves. I am ashamed and angry beyond belief at how they can do this.
That certainly is the conclusion to which I have come. Sin is the perfect word for anyone who subscribes to the core teachings of Christ and the central teachings of all the great spiritual traditions. Sin is a simple concept: one ignores the humanity of those against whom one commits sin for one’s own (imagined) advantage. Nothing complicated here. Israel was, indeed, born in sin and continues in sin because it ignores the common, sacred humanity of ALL people to pursue its own racist and exclusive ethno-religious aims. This flies in the face of everything that promotes peace and human understanding of our single, common humanity: the same mistake the Nazis and every other “superior” culture made. After much needless death and misery, perhaps catastrophe, it will fail. Israel is ensuring its own destruction. Will the world go down with it?
Yet to be explained and just as unfathomable are reasons for the attack on the USS Liberty.
IMHO, the best books for beginning an in-depth study of the origins of the State of Israel and its history after 1948 are: Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” and Jacques Baud’s “Operation Al-Aqsa flood: The Defeat of the Vanquisher”. Their video interviews are also hugely informative.
I am currently reading Pappe’s latest book. He is a fountain of historical information. I always knew that the invasion of Palestine was a crime on the part of Zionism, and even my Jewish friends were anti-Zionist, but for the U.S. to be supporting and arming a genocide is beyond anything I have ever known this century, and that includes the Holocaust in Europe. It seems to me that the Zionists not only failed to learn the lesson of Hitler’s crimes, on the contrary they have been trying to out-do him.
The reality I perceive is that Israel and the Zionists can’t claim they didn’t know the evil that is occurring. It is obvious the we and especially our leaders are co-conspirators and should be charged with war crimes to make a point even if the charges are dropped by the UN.
If there no consequences for the violators of international law then make that point!
I would add the book “State of Terror” by Thomas Suarez to that list.