Israel's Border Wars - Is CENSORED really defending itself in 2023

[José]

The first few posts are based on an old thread I started but never finished. I hope I will this time.

Aside for the curious: in case you're wondering "censored" refers to an expression that was deemed "inflamatory" by the powers that be.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

One of the unshakeable certainties shared by almost everybody, not only in western countries, but the entire non-arab, non-muslim world is the idea that Palestinians are the aggressors in the present phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (that extends from the first months-the second half of 1948 to 2020).

The narrative that presents palestinians as aggressors is represented by an iconic image familiar to all, even to people with the most cursory knowledge about the conflict, that shows the chronological sequence of events:

Palestinian militants launch a volley of rockets.

After a few minutes, hours, days or weeks
comes the inevitable israeli retaliation

This narrative that presents palestinians as a community or a quasi-state committing unprovoked violence against a neighboring state for the last 70 years is practically an article of faith in countries and regions as diverse as America, China, Africa, Latin America, etc...

Depending on how you count generations, you already have two or three generations raised on this undisputable fact. The social confirmation of the palestinian aggression comes from multiple sources.

For the past 70 years almost the whole world was bombarded by a massive propaganda campaign echoed by virtually all media accusing the palestinians of aggression.

The combined effect of the portrayal of Palestinians as the aggressive, belligerant part by the world's most important political leaders, echoed by the global media is the transformation of this idea into a dogma, an article of faith whose veracity is not even open for discussion.

 

[José]

The historic events that unfolded in Palestine during the first months of 1948 and the following years were exaustively researched by the legendary israeli historian Benny Morris:

Just a humorous aside to lighten up things:

Morris is a fanatic dog lover.

When journalists from around the world go to Israel to interview him they all say Morris' dogs were walking around his home all the time. They say Morris had to interrupt the interview several times to intervene in their playful (and destructive) skirmishes.

His friends often say his two passions are:

1 The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

2 Dogs.

but not necessarily in this order.

His most famous work describes the 1948 armed conflict that involved arab militias-guerrillas, and later arab armies and the zionist "militias" that constituted a real army in all but name and the uprooting of 700,000 palestinian arabs, the vast majority of them illiterate peasants:

But Morris also wrote a kind of sequence to his most famous work, the infinitely less known but no less important:

in which he delivers a detailed (and gruesome) survey of the border situation in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 war and the following years.

Israel's Border Wars describes the clash the gave origin to the present palestinian armed struggle, a clash that pitted the IDF, no longer against the arab militias and arab armies of the 1948 war, but against the hundreds of thousands of displaced palestinian peasants trying to resume their normal lives during and after the war (in what became the new state of Israel but what they continued to see as their homeland)

The basic message of the book is that the mental image that most people have about the conflict:

Palestinians attack Israel, Israel retaliates is based on a grotesque distortion of this post-1948 period described by Morris.

So let's make an exploratory journey into the pages of "Israel's Border Wars" and try to find an answer to the question that gave this thread its title:

"Is the Jewish Racial Dictatorship really defending itself in 2023?"

 

[José]

Morris presents an overview of the situation post-1948 war:

Israel's Border Wars​

The Middle East was traumatically transformed in 1948. A Jewish state had emerged in the middle of the Muslim Arab world, and against that world's deepest wishes. The Arab states were humiliatingly defeated, and the people they had, at least in part, intervened to protect, the Palestinians, had been crushed, with some 700,000 driven into exile and another 150,000 left under Israeli rule. A dazed, disunited Arab world rubbed its eyes in appalled disbelief. (Pag. 426)

The 1948 war left in its wake not only a refugee problem but also an infiltration problem. Each year between 1949 and 1956, thousands of Palestinian Arabs illegally crossed the border into Israel from Jordan's West Bank, the Egyptian-controlled Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula, Lebanon, and Syria. In 1952, when the marauding peaked, there had been, according to the IDF, some 16,000 cases of infiltration. Israel police figures show a gradual drop after 1952, to '7.018' in 1953, '4.638' in 1954, '4.351' in 1955. No doubt many infiltrations went completely unnoticed and unrecorded. (Pag. 28)

COMMENT:

If Morris said there was 16.000 episodes of infiltration in 1952 (or any other year, for that matter) you can easily double or triple this figure (30.000-45.000 cases) to get to the real number because as Morris himself say "many infiltrations went completely unnoticed and unrecorded".

 

[José]

Israel's Border Wars
​

Some 600,000 - 760,000 Palestinians - or roughly half the pre-1948 Palestinians - lost their homes and lands in the war, and left the territory that became Israel, turning into refugees. Most of them settled in areas adjacent or close to Israel's borders. Most wanted to return to their homes; many sought to cross the frontier at least to retrieve abandoned goods and crops from the Jews, their usurpers and dispossessers. Almost all were destitute. Inevitably, as with the West Bank border villagers, many turned to infiltration to suplement their livelihood; some infiltrated to resettle in Israel or visit relatives; some, to take revenge. (Pag. 4)
...

But the majority of observers looked to more specific and recent causes. The infiltration problem was, and was immediately understood to be, closely bound up with the refugee problem: many of the infiltrators were refugees, former inhabitants of Arab villages and towns in the areas that had become the Jewish State.

The mass exodus of Arabs from Palestine by summer 1948 had severed some 300,000-400,000 people from their native land, homes, fields, and family members who had been left behind. Many left behind ripening or ripe crops. The summer harvest of 1948 was both the cause and the focus of the first wave of Palestinian infiltration into Israeli-held territory. Large-scale infiltration began in early June 1948 and grew steadily during the weeks of the First Truce (11 June - 8 July), when the front-lines were largely quiet.

Both rural and urban refugees almost immediatelly began to feel the bite of privations, including hunger. And the places in which they initially settled were almost all no more than three or four hours' walk from their abandoned homes, villages, and towns, and some were much nearer.

COMMENT:

Morris correctly qualifies the refugees' attempt to return:

"Large-scale infiltration began in early June 1948..."

Large-scale return began in June but you already had small groups trying to return as early as January 1948.

 

[José]

Now comes the most shocking revelation of the entire book.

The initial flow of refugees back to their villages, towns and cities in 1948 was 100% civilian, unarmed and peaceful and for the most part continued to be so for the next 7 years.

Israel's Border Wars​

The vast majority of the infiltrators during the second half of 1948, 1949, and 1950 came unarmed, which would suggest that their purpose was not political-terrorist. (PAG 51).

... during 1949-56. The evidence suggests that the vast majority were unarmed; the overwhelming majority had infiltrated for economic or social reasons. (Pag. 452)

COMMENT:

Where are the fedayeen, the intifadas, the suicide bombings, the rockets, where is all the Palestinian aggression that according to the politicians, the international press, according to the whole world gave origin to the present phase of the conflict and against which they say Israel is retaliating?

The 48 war had already ended.

There was no arab soldier invading Israel.

No ALA guerrilla fighter (Arab Liberation Army).

No Palestinian armed struggle yet...

Just a civilian, mainly peasant population, peaceful, urnarmed, who just wanted to resume their normal lives, tend their crops, raise their livestock...

Their return to their homeland was not followed by any aggression against Israel, their return to their villages was nothing Israel had to defend itself from...

The only "crime" they commited was not belonging to the "official" ethnicity of the supremacist state that had just been imposed on them by brute force.

 

[Donald H]

It's not looking all that good. America may need to quickly become militarily involved if the invasion is seen by the rest of the world to be criminal by the Zionists.

The rest of the world isn't getting into step with the pity the Zionists always need when they set out to start a war.

Moving on........................

Who/what countries will shoot back against America when the huge buildup of US forces are applied?

Biden's urging of restraint by Netanyahu is critical to prevent the 'hot' war that's on everybody's minds.

 

[Donald H]

This isn't good news!

US to divert shells for Ukraine to Israel – Axios

The Pentagon will supply Israel with tens of thousands of artillery shells originally set aside for Ukraine, Axios has reported

www.rt.com

Do the Zionists really want to get themselves into a war in which heavy artillery will be flying back at them?

 

[rylah]

It's not looking all that good. America may need to quickly become militarily involved if the invasion is seen by the rest of the world to be criminal by the Zionists.

The rest of the world isn't getting into step with the pity the Zionists always need when they set out to start a war.

Moving on........................

Who/what countries will shoot back against America when the huge buildup of US forces are applied?

Biden's urging of restraint by Netanyahu is critical to prevent the 'hot' war that's on everybody's minds.

How much is Brahat,

of the "rest of the world"?

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

The historic events that unfolded in Palestine during the first months of 1948 and the following years were exaustively researched by the legendary israeli historian Benny Morris:

Just a humorous aside to lighten up things:

Morris is a fanatic dog lover.

When journalists from around the world go to Israel to interview him they all say Morris' dogs were walking around his home all the time. They say Morris had to interrupt the interview several times to intervene in their playful (and destructive) skirmishes.

His friends often say his two passions are:

1 The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

2 Dogs.

but not necessarily in this order.

His most famous work describes the 1948 armed conflict that involved arab militias-guerrillas, and later arab armies and the zionist "militias" that constituted a real army in all but name and the uprooting of 700,000 palestinian arabs, the vast majority of them illiterate peasants:

But Morris also wrote a kind of sequence to his most famous work, the infinitely less known but no less important:

in which he delivers a detailed (and gruesome) survey of the border situation in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 war and the following years.

Israel's Border Wars describes the clash the gave origin to the present palestinian armed struggle, a clash that pitted the IDF, no longer against the arab militias and arab armies of the 1948 war, but against the hundreds of thousands of displaced palestinian peasants trying to resume their normal lives during and after the war (in what became the new state of Israel but what they continued to see as their homeland)

The basic message of the book is that the mental image that most people have about the conflict:

Palestinians attack Israel, Israel retaliates is based on a grotesque distortion of this post-1948 period described by Morris.

So let's make an exploratory journey into the pages of "Israel's Border Wars" and try to find an answer to the question that gave this thread its title:

"Is the Jewish Racial Dictatorship really defending itself in 2023?"

ISIS Approves of This Message

 

[José]

Morris also addresses the reaction of the zionist leaders to the spontaneous return of the refugees.

Israel's Border Wars​

From the first, Israel clearly appreciated the hazards mass infiltration posed for the new state. As Israeli intelligence put it in June 1948: 'The infiltration of individual Arabs, ostensibly for reaping and threshing, alone, could in time bring with it the re-establishment [of the refugees] in the villages, something which could seriously endanger many of our achievements during the six months of war.' On 11 June, the day the First Truce started, Yosef Weitz, of the JNF, called Ben-Gurion's aide, Levi Eshkol (then Shkolnik), and asked:

'"What's going to be our position on Arabs who infiltrate back...
They may return in multitudes to their conquered villages,
and we're forbidden to shoot [by the truce]? What the fuck is that?"

Yosef Weitz​

He [Eshkol] said that this was indeed a poser, and he would bring it before Ben-Gurion this morning.' (Pag. 118)

COMMENT:

Weitz never said: "What the fuck is that?". This was my invention... although it conveniently expresses his (depraved) "indignation". But the rest of the quotation provided by Morris (the part that really matters) is absolutely truthful. Morris even provided the source:

FOOTNOTE 2: Weitz Diary, entry for 11 June 1948.

Notice how both the Israeli intelligence ("The infiltration... could seriously endanger many of our achievements during the... war") and Weitz' diary entry (They may return in multitudes and we're forbidden to shoot?) are tacit, implicit admissions of the ethnic cleasing the Israeli government was busy promoting as those words were being written in 48 (the "achievements" being the emptying of arab villages, i.e, ethnic cleasing).

 

[José]

Israel's Border Wars​

Weitz and IDF intelligence were pressing for a clear-cut decision to bar all refugee infiltration into Israel, be it with the aim of permanent resettlement or cultivation and collection of abandoned possessions. There was an instinctive fear that the latter would naturally evolve into the former. Even before the Truce, IDF units had received order to use fire to prevent infiltration and harvesting along and behind the lines. On 16 June the Cabinet, steered by Ben-Gurion and Sharrett, formally decided against the return of the refugees. Orders went out to all front-line units to bar the passage of Arab civilians through the lines, whether those turned back were seeking to resettle or had come on brief foraging expeditions. (Pag. 118)

COMMENT:

The excerpt of Border Wars reproduced above may give you the misleading impression that the decision to murder palestinians peasants was taken in mid-48 after an awful lot of discussion among Israel's political leaders but an informal, de facto policy of shooting palestinians was already in place since much earlier in the year, as Morris himself admits:

"Even before the Truce, IDF units had received order to use fire to prevent infiltration and harvesting along and behind the lines."

And it makes all the sense in the world... at least, as far as the depraved logic of racial dictatorships is concerned...

The jewish forces started attacking palestinian urban centres and villages and scaring the inhabitants into fleeing in December-January.

But what would be the purpose of ordering the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi to promote the de-arabisation of the country just to allow the refugees to return a few days, weeks or months later?

The ethnic cleasing itself and the policy of shooting to kill any returning refugees were two faces of the same coin, two complementary measures that simply couldn't exist and last without the other.

 

[Roudy]

Once again, barbaric Muslim savages attack, Israel retaliates, and then Israel is called the aggressor. What else is new. Come up with new bullshit, we heard this joke narrative before.

 

[José]

Roudy, a.k.a, Keanu Reeves refuses to take the red pill and chooses to remain inside the computer simulation created by the western press where Israel does not target civilians, citing unbearable pain caused by Morris' disclosure that the beacon of democracy in the Middle East is in reality a murderous supremacist state.

Once again, barbaric Muslim savages attack, Israel retaliates, and
then Israel is called the aggressor. What else is new. Come up with
new bullshit, we heard this joke narrative before.

 

[José]

The analogy between the simulated reality depicted in The Matrix series and the false narrative that palestinians attack and Israel retaliates but does not target civilians is almost perfect:

The press narrative is the Matrix:

Benny Morris is Laurence Fishburne:​

Israel's Border Wars is the red pill:​

And Keanu Reeves... well, Reeves is just about the entire board:

The Duke, westwall, Lord Long Rod, Coyote, Dogmaphobe, Richard-H, xyz, toomuchtime, Backagain, Lisa, 1srelluc, shockedcanadian, Foxfyre, leftwinger, White 6, Old Man Clanton, JGalt, esdraelon, Fort Fun Indiana, whitehall, buttercup, shusha, Yarddog, braalian, beagle9, Godboy, Strolling Bones, JonhDB, Hector, etc, etc...

 

[Roudy]

Roudy, a.k.a, Keanu Reeves refuses to take the red pill and chooses to remain inside the computer simulation created by the western press where Israel does not target civilians, citing unbearable pain caused by Morris' disclosure that the beacon of democracy in the Middle East is in reality a murderous supremacist state.

Once again, barbaric Muslim savages attack, Israel retaliates, and
then Israel is called the aggressor. What else is new. Come up with
new bullshit, we heard this joke narrative before.

Jose aka Abdul Mohammad Bin Khara lives in a parallel Islamic universe that Muslims aren’t the barbaric religious supremacists that target civilians, but the Jews are. Ha ha ha.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The first few posts are based on an old thread I started but never finished. I hope I will this time.

Aside for the curious: in case you're wondering "censored" refers to an expression that was deemed "inflamatory" by the powers that be.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

One of the unshakeable certainties shared by almost everybody, not only in western countries, but the entire non-arab, non-muslim world is the idea that Palestinians are the aggressors in the present phase of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (that extends from the first months-the second half of 1948 to 2020).

The narrative that presents palestinians as aggressors is represented by an iconic image familiar to all, even to people with the most cursory knowledge about the conflict, that shows the chronological sequence of events:

Palestinian militants launch a volley of rockets.

After a few minutes, hours, days or weeks
comes the inevitable israeli retaliation

This narrative that presents palestinians as a community or a quasi-state committing unprovoked violence against a neighboring state for the last 70 years is practically an article of faith in countries and regions as diverse as America, China, Africa, Latin America, etc...

Depending on how you count generations, you already have two or three generations raised on this undisputable fact. The social confirmation of the palestinian aggression comes from multiple sources.

For the past 70 years almost the whole world was bombarded by a massive propaganda campaign echoed by virtually all media accusing the palestinians of aggression.

The combined effect of the portrayal of Palestinians as the aggressive, belligerant part by the world's most important political leaders, echoed by the global media is the transformation of this idea into a dogma, an article of faith whose veracity is not even open for discussion.

What's with the fake picture?
Show the rockets they fire from next to hospitals, schools and mosques.

 

[José]

A very brief explanation of what "no man's land" meant in the context of the 1948 war:

Armistice lines were determined in November 1948. Between the lines territory was left that was defined as no man's land because it was not controlled by either Israel or Jordan in 1948–1967.

No man's land in Jerusalem, between Israel and Jordan, circa 1964

No man's land - Wikipedia

 

[José]

Israel's Border Wars​

The IDF had already instituted a broad range of measures to combat infiltration, including patrols and ambushes (on both sides of the line), and mine fields, during the 1948 war. The front lines effectively became free fire zones and troops were usually ordered to shoot to kill.

COMMENT:

Israel's leadership had to issue 2 orders to the Haganah-IDF exactly at the same time:

The expulsion of the arab population and the immediate execution of any returning refugee.

One without the other would be totally useless.

Notice this specific part ("on both sides of the line"). What Morris is saying is that Haganah fighters-IDF soldiers didn't even wait for a given palestinian or group of palestinians to enter israeli territory.

Scores of refugees (or even Palestinians from the border towns and villages who were just tending their crops and didn't even want to enter Israel) were shot or blown up by land mines while still in Jordan or in no man's land.

 

[José]

Morris expands on this topic:

Israel's Border Wars​

During the second half of 1948 and the first months of 1949, before the signing of the Israel-Arab armistice agreements, Israeli troops had standing orders to fire at any arabs between their positions or near the front lines, whether during combats or truce periods. Infiltrators - most of them harvesters or scavengers - were killed and wounded in their dozens along the lines. Many of the incidents occurred in or near no man's land, whose exact configuration was always in dispute. Israeli troops adopted a 'better-safe-than-sorry' approach, for infiltrating Arab cultivators and shepheds might be spies or saboteurs... UN observers' reports furnish a stream of descriptions of IDF machine-gunners and snipers killing and wounding (and, ocasionally, detaining) Arab harvesters and scavengers (and pack animals) along the truce lines during late 1948 and early 1949.

COMMENT:

The shoot-to-kill policy was not only instituted before the Arab-Israeli war but it also survived the war and the turn of the century.

 

[José]

This is Morris, just a few paragraphs below, conceding the fact that during the armed conflict the war was merely used by the israeli government as a pretext to bar the return of hundreds of thousands of harmless peasants and urban workers:

Israel's Border Wars​

The IDF policy of shooting at infiltrators along and near the front lines, initially adopted in June 1948, remained in force along all the borders after the signing of the armistice accords in 1949. The fact that the agreements, which fell far short of peace treaties, had converted a wartime truce into de facto non-belligerency did nothing to diminish Israel's resolve to preserve every inch of its territory from trespass. If anything, this resolve seems to have been reinforced, in so far as Israel had at last achieved recognized, if not everywhere clearly defined, frontiers which needed to be reaffirmed on a day-to-day basis. If arab shepherds or farmers were given an inch, they would in short order take a mile, and much of the frontier - large sections of which were bereft of Israeli settlements - would be rolled back and restored to de facto Arab possession. As an American observer explained in 1952, Israel was 'well aware' of the hardship suffered by many dispossessed West Bank farmers 'but prefers killing Arabs harvesting no man's land rather than give up any legal rights to her claim [to] full sovereignty [over] land in question in any future settlement'.

COMMENT:

"The IDF policy of shooting at infiltrators" not only "remained in force after the armistice accords in 1949" but it's still in force as you read this text in 2020, because it would be impossible to create and maintain a lasting jewish majority even on the territory allocated by the UN without the expulsion of the native population and the shooting of returnees.

In 2020 the idea that arab countries represent any kind of danger to israel is as ridiculous as saying Cuba represents a threat to the United States or Taiwan poses a threat to China, but despite Israel's massive military superiority palestinians are still not allowed to return to their homeland.

Every israeli Prime Minister, from Gurion to Netanyahu, has repeated the mantra that no matter how strong Israel may become, the refugees will never be allowed back (Sharon used to repeat it 3 or 4 times a month).

The policy of expelling and shooting refugees survived the 1948 war and still exists today because it had nothing to do with the war in the first place.

It has everything to do with Israel's very existence and survival as a jewish racial dictatorship.

Israel is the palestinians' exile and the palestinians' exile is Israel.

One cannot exist without the other, one would immediately cease to exist without the other.