P F Tinmore
Diamond Member
- Dec 6, 2009
- 79,807
- 4,414
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History may be written by the victors, as Winston Churchill is said to have observed, but the opening up of archives can threaten a nation every bit as much as the unearthing of mass graves.
That danger explains a decision quietly taken last month by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend by an additional 20 years the countrys 50-year rule for the release of sensitive documents.
The new 70-year disclosure rule is the governments response to Israeli journalists who have been seeking through Israels courts to gain access to documents that should already be declassified, especially those concerning the 1948 war, which established Israel, and the 1956 Suez crisis.
The states chief archivist says many of the documents are not fit for public viewing and raise doubts about Israels adherence to international law, while the government warns that greater transparency will damage foreign relations.
The new material was explosive enough. It undermined Israels traditional narrative of 1948, in which the Palestinians were said to have left voluntarily on the orders of the Arab leaders and in the expectation that the combined Arab armies would snuff out the fledging Jewish state in a bloodbath.
Instead, the documents suggested that heavily armed Jewish forces had expelled and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before the Jewish state had even been declared and a single Arab soldier had entered Palestine.
One document in particular, Plan Dalet, demonstrated the armys intention to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. Its existence explains the ethnic cleansing of more than 80 per cent of Palestinians in the war, followed by a military campaign to destroy hundreds of villages to ensure the refugees never returned.
Ethnic cleansing is the common theme of both these Israeli conquests. A deeper probe of the archives will almost certainly reveal in greater detail how and why these cleansing campaigns were carried out which is precisely why Mr Netanyahu and others want the archives to remain locked.
The Secrets in Israel's Archives
That danger explains a decision quietly taken last month by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend by an additional 20 years the countrys 50-year rule for the release of sensitive documents.
The new 70-year disclosure rule is the governments response to Israeli journalists who have been seeking through Israels courts to gain access to documents that should already be declassified, especially those concerning the 1948 war, which established Israel, and the 1956 Suez crisis.
The states chief archivist says many of the documents are not fit for public viewing and raise doubts about Israels adherence to international law, while the government warns that greater transparency will damage foreign relations.
The new material was explosive enough. It undermined Israels traditional narrative of 1948, in which the Palestinians were said to have left voluntarily on the orders of the Arab leaders and in the expectation that the combined Arab armies would snuff out the fledging Jewish state in a bloodbath.
Instead, the documents suggested that heavily armed Jewish forces had expelled and dispossessed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians before the Jewish state had even been declared and a single Arab soldier had entered Palestine.
One document in particular, Plan Dalet, demonstrated the armys intention to expel the Palestinians from their homeland. Its existence explains the ethnic cleansing of more than 80 per cent of Palestinians in the war, followed by a military campaign to destroy hundreds of villages to ensure the refugees never returned.
Ethnic cleansing is the common theme of both these Israeli conquests. A deeper probe of the archives will almost certainly reveal in greater detail how and why these cleansing campaigns were carried out which is precisely why Mr Netanyahu and others want the archives to remain locked.
The Secrets in Israel's Archives