P F Tinmore, et al,
The Ilan Pappa book, “The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” has become the holy grail for pro-Palestinians who grab the notion of Ethnic Cleansing as a the Palestinian complaint of the day.
It is only 60 Miles from Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean Coast to Jericho and the nearby Jordan River
(four hour drive at the snail pace of 15 miles an hour). The importance of this, is that if you draw an arch, 75 miles out - on center with Tel Aviv, you will be beyond the Forward Edge of the Battle Area (FEBA) on which the Green Line was drawn. That means that the Jewish militia could not have forcibly deported any Arabs outside the Territory to which the Mandate Applied.
"Deportation or forcible transfer of population" means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law;
Article 7(2d) ICC Rome Statutes.
- 23.Location of Military Objectives outside Densely Populated Areas
- 24.Removal of Civilians and Civilian Objects from the Vicinity of Military Objective
Professor Pappe is very dramatic in his dissertation: quite good, well worth the time spent reading. It starts off with:
ON A COLD WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON , 10 March 1948, a group of eleven men, veteran Zionist leaders together with young military Jewish officers, put the final
touches on a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. That same evening, military orders were dispatched to units on the ground to prepare for the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from vast areas of the country. The orders came with a detailed description of the methods to be used to forcibly evict the people: large-scale intimidation; laying siege to and bombarding villages and population centers; setting fire to homes, properties, and goods; expelling residents; demolishing homes; and, finally, planting mines in the rubble to prevent the expelled inhabitants from returning. Each unit was issued its own list of villages and neighborhoods to target in keeping with the master plan. Code-named Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew), this was the fourth and final version of vaguer plans outlining the fate that was in store for the native population of Palestine. The previous three plans had articulated only obscurely how the Zionist leadership intended to deal with the presence of so many Palestinians on the land the Jewish national movement wanted for itself.
Professor Pappa is also a principle advocate that Israel should be compare to South Africa; forwarding the notion of “Apartheid.”
I am starting a new thread base on one of Rocco's posts.
UN Passes Five Resolutions In Favor Of Palestine | Page 3 | US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum
There is no "ethnic Cleansing? What are you an idiot?
Although there is no legal definition of ethnic cleansing, from its widely accepted non-technical definition [
23] , it is possible to deduce some common elements. Firstly, what can be considered as a subjective element of ethnic cleansing is the fact that it is systematically carried out with a clear intent to create an ethnically homogeneous area by removing another group of people from their own territory by using force or intimidation or any other method. Secondly, the objective element of ethnic cleansing is that it is perpetrated against a particular group of people, according to their racial, ethnic, national, religious or other characteristics, which involves mass deportations or forceful transfer of people, intimidations by different methods, murder, torture, arbitrary detention, etc.
Ethnic cleansing is not about numbers. It is about location. It is about moving people out of areas where they are not wanted. Israel does commit the violations listed above.
House demolitions and forced evictions are
among Israel’s most heinous practices in the
Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In
2011, a record year of displacement, a total of
622 Palestinian structures were demolished by
Israeli authorities, of which 36% (or 222) were
family homes; the remainder were livelihood-
related (including water storage and agricultural
structures), resulting in 1,094 people displaced,
almost double the number for 2010.
http://icahdusa.org/multimedia/downloads/2012/04/Judaization-of-Palestine.pdf
Of course similar practices have been carried out in "Israel proper" since 1948 and they continue to today.
(COMMENT)
Professor Pappa, a notable pro-Palestinian, was thought to have moved from Israel to England under the shadow of death threats; which many believe were a publicity invention to boost book sales for his controversial books that had little appreciation in Israel; and to expand the potential for more paying anti-Israeli speaking engagements.
"But, I'm a historian, and this is the truth the way I see it: The story of a victim and a victimizer. And the victim is the Palestinians. Without idealizing the Palestinians -victims are not necessarily nice people, but they are still victims."
Professor Pappe defines “Ethnic Cleansing” by saying that: “the U.S. State Department defines the term as “the systematic and forced removal of the members of an ethnic group from communities in order to change the ethnic composition of a given region.” The report goes on to document numerous cases, including the depopulation within twenty-four hours of the western Kosovar town of Pec in spring 1999.” The report he refers to is the
Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: An Accounting, Prepared by the U.S. Department of State, 1999. And while the Report did say that the Serbian forces and paramilitaries implemented a systematic campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo—aspects of this campaign include Forcible Displacement of Kosovar Albanian Civilians; the Professor missed the part where the Report Said: ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte told the U.N. Security Council that her office had received reports of more than 11,000 killed in 529 reported mass grave and killing sites in Kosovo. The Prosecutor said her office had exhumed 2,108 bodies from 195 of the 529 known mass graves. This would imply about 6,000 bodies in mass graves in Kosovo if the 334 mass graves not examined thus far contain the same average number of victims.
In fairness, the US State Department Report did say that Over 1.5 million Kosovar Albanians—at least 90 percent of the estimated 1998 Kosovar Albanian population of Kosovo—were forcibly expelled from their homes. Tens of thousands of homes in at least 1,200 cities, towns, and villages have been damaged or destroyed. During the conflict, Serbian forces and paramilitaries implemented a systematic campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo—aspects of this campaign include the following:
• Looting of Homes and Businesses
• Widespread Burning of Homes
• Use of Human Shields
• Detentions
• Summary Executions
• Exhumation of Mass Graves
• Rape
• Violations of Medical Neutrality
• Identity Cleansing
There is very little questions that somewhere in the neighborhood of 700,000 Hostile Arab Palestinians (HoAP) were displaced prior the Declaration of Independence. But, “Ethnic Cleansing” (as our friend P F Tinmore” points out) is nor than just the numbers. And, of course, there probably were some displaced to in order to change the ethnic composition of a given region, not all of the displaced HoAP were for that single purpose. Some were voluntarily moved at the recommendation of the Arab League, some were removed from various vicinities and locations in anticipation of military operations (Customary IHL), and some were removed to provide the Israelis rear area protection (an essential military need).
Yes, I have to agree that in any War of Independence between two factions of a common population [(Arabs ‘vs’ Jews)(Citizens of the Palestine Government under Mandate)] have probably violated some customary IHL at one point or another during the course of a near century old dispute that started with the Balfour Declaration (1917). And the magnitude of the questionable events comes nowhere near that of the Holocaust,
South Sudanese conflict,
Central African Republic conflict.
or the issue with the Armenians during
World War I.
Professor Ilan Pappa’s most important crutch is the statement written by David Ben-Gurion, from the 1937 letter to his son that said: “The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war.” The letter is quite famous and is sighted over and over again as it is authentication that there was an “official program” --- Plan D (Dalet); as if it could not possibly be a personal idea, unique to him. What needs to be uncover is the evidence of a conspiracy within the ruling elite. And even that, would not change history, or rollback the effects. No one is going to hand a Jihadist and Fedayeen group (or any other radicalized Islamic group), which has no history of success in government, a country when there is no reasonable expectation that they would successfully develop the country further and grant the same level of freedoms and protection to the Jewish People as they enjoy now.
Most Respectfully,
R
