Is censored really defending itself in 2020?

[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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_man's_land#Israel–Jordan

 

[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:

Another confirmation of what I said above.

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

I don't know why Morris seems to subtly hint that the "shoot-to-kill" policy had anything to do with the 1948 war ("before the signing of the Israel-Arab armistice agreements, Israeli troops had standing orders to fire at any arabs etc...").

The policy was not only instituted before the Arab-Israeli war but it also survived the war and even 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.

 

[José]

This excerpt makes you wonder whether Yigal Allon and Moshe Dayan are Israel's or South Africa's national heroes, but this comparison is extremely unfair... to South Africa...

The white supremacist state never had a policy of murdering undocumented black south africans for not having a valid passport or pass to be in the country. They were simply arrested and sent back to their "countries" (read, bantustans) of origin.

ISRAEL'S BORDER WARS​

In private conversations and internal correspondence, Israeli officers made no bones about the policy of shooting infiltrators, armed or unarmed, bent on harvesting, grazing, resettlement, or sabotage.

On 4 June 1949, OC Southern Command General Yigal Allon said that he had declared an eight-kilometre-deep strip along the Israeli side of both the Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Egyptian borders 'military area: every stranger found in [them] will be shot, without interrogation'. (He claimed that his had reduced infiltration.)

A month later, on 3 July 1949, Dayan, OD Jerusalem District, wrote that 'our army has an order to shoot at anyone trying to cross the [Israeli-Jordanian] border to our side and at everyone found in "the security zone" (several kilometres deep along the border) who is not in possession of a special pass'. Dayan felt that the Jordanians had no right to 'interfere' with 'our tough [keshiha] behaviour towards infiltrators'. The following month, Dayan's assistant on the IJMAC declared: 'I did not commit myself that we would arrest rather than shoot trespassers. In previous instances, I informed the Legion representative that anyone crossing the border was endagering his life.'

Or, as the American military attaché in Tel Aviv put it, simply: the 'Israel defense policy is shoot to kill all Arabs violating frontiers'.

COMMENT:

They talked openly about the shoot-to-kill policy "in private conversations and internal correspondence", not in front of the international or even the Israeli press because even they were too embarrassed and ashamed to admit the carnage.

 

[José]

Any person with a bare modicum of human decency has to hold his nose to read this passage:

ISRAEL'S BORDER WARS​

To a certain extent the 'shoot-to-kill' policy was egged on by pressure from below - from the military units manning the lines. They discovered that, in face of the virtual floodtides of infiltrators, there was no point in catching and pushing them back over the frontier as they would merely try again a day or two later. Harsher measures were in order or, as Capt. Yisrael Krasnansky, the security officer of the Military Government in Western Galilee, put it, what was needed was an 'efficient guarding of the border, continuous ambushes along the frontier... and hitting [i.e., shooting] the infiltrators without warning'.

This outlook was apparently shared by officers in the south as well. Yoav Zuckerman, the military governor of Majdal (Ashkelon) and its environs, already on 12 April wrote to OC Southern Front (later, Command):

The infiltration to the town is steadely increasing... There are close to 50 new infiltrators in our gaol today, who will most certainly be sent back across the borders tomorrow... It is necessary to send them back immediately after their capture. What is happening, then, is that the Arabs come by foot to see their families and we send them back in great honour [comfort?] in motor cars...

COMMENT:

Unbelievable!!

I had to read this passage twice because I couldn't believe my eyes. What Morris is basically saying is that Israel's leadership considered that just arresting and "deporting" the refugees is not enough so we have to kill them to get the job done!!

And this is Morris' attempt to (at least in part) shift the blame for the shoot-to-kill police putting part of is on the shoulders of israel's military:

"To a certain extent the 'shoot-to-kill' policy was egged on by pressure from below - from the military units manning the lines."

If the implementation of the "shoot-to-kill" policy were a demand coming from israeli soldiers, Israel's history would have been entirely different:

Let's say:

From February 1948 to July 1949 Israel didn't murder a single returning refugee they were just arrested and sent back to Jordan, Lebannon and Gaza. But the policy was a total failure with most refugees trying to return again a few days later.

The IDF then begged Israel's political leaders to institute the more effective shoot-to-kill policy..."

But this is not the real history of the state of Israel.

Morris is clearly contradicting his previous claim that the shoot-to-kill policy was implemented from day 1:

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

COMMENT:

Since people don't see palestinians (refugees or not) as fully humans, I'm fully aware many users won't even blink at the atrocities described by Morris in Israel's Border Wars, so let's create a similar scenario involving the hispanic or black american population since they are perceived in America as entitled to all the rights those who are entirely human deserve.

Let's imagine the hispanic population of El Paso, San Diego or the black people living in Detroit fled a war and tried to return a few weeks later.

Just imagine the tremendous social commotion in America if these refugees were detained instead of being received with open arms by the american government.

Now let's take our analogy a step further, and say that instead of being arrested the american army, ICE, border police started shooting the returnees and killing them by the thousands claiming that "just arresting them is not solving the problem".

The US government's shoot-to-kill policy would have the effect of a nuclear bomb on the amerian society.

Can you imagine RoccoR, Coyote, FY436 and Shusha saying things like these in regards to the United States:

Israel is currently considered a "parliamentary democracy;" the only democracy of any type in the MENA Region, making it unique among its neighbors.​

I am not saying Israel is not a good place.

While there is injustice and inequality occurring in the treatment of Palestinians and Arab Israeli's - comparing it to Apartheid is dishonest and buries the real issues.​

Israel is a vibrant democracy.​

FY436​

The whole idea that Israel can't be both Jewish and
"democratic" is just typecasting in order to demonize Israel.​

SHUSHA​

America could never get away with murdering its native hispanic and black population because they are fully humans, but Israel is "a vibrant democracy", "the only democracy of any type in the Greater ME region", a "good place that only dishonest people compare to Apartheid" and a "victim" of "demonization" while doing exactly the same to the subhuman native arab population.

 

[member]

RE: What will it take for peace?
⁜→ José, et al,

A very illuminating posting. I loved the pictures. I really like to think of myself in that posture, more than a decade ago (wow, how time flys).

The idea that the Arab Palestinians had a "defensive position"
of any sort, is nonsense. They were not defending anything.

(COMMENT)

I do believe I made this comment, and stand by this comment. It certainly sounds like something I would say. The Arab Palestinians had not real sovereignty of any sort in the time before the Oslo Accords. So they did not defend Arab Palestinian territory.

And today, the most they could defend is Area "A;" but then again, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed that "Israel will continue to carry the responsibility for defending (the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) against external threats, as well as the responsibility for overall security of Israelis for the purpose of safeguarding their internal security and public order." That defense pact was established over a quarter-century ago and is just as true today as it was when the ink was still wet.

When the Arab Palestinians claim the right of self-defense and talk about invaders, I would like to remind you that by agreement with the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in any Palestinian territory that is liberated, the responsibility rests with the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). If the PLO (Mahmoud Abbas) believes that the West Bank or Gaza Strip is being invaded advise the Joint Israeli-Palestinian Liaison Committee immediately.

Israel has NO reason to attack Palestinians other than
to defend Israel from further attacks or to retaliate.

(COMMENT)

I'm not at all sure I said exactly that, but the sentiment is clear.

Anytime protected persons (the Arab Palestinians) commit an offense intended to harm the Occupying Power (the State of Israel), they become a criminal and are apprehended (if possible) and prosecuted IAW Geneve Convention. This includes damage to the property of the occupying forces or administration or the installations used by acts of sabotage against the military installations of the Occupying Power.

BTW, Rocco, what people, besides the Palestinians, have no right to defend themselves?

(COMMENT)

All people have the "Right of Self-Defense."

IF the Israelis have Sovereign Territory and some other entity threatens that Sovereignty -
THEN Israel hold the "Right of Self-Defense" in the protection and security of that Sovereignty.

IF the Arab Palestinians have no Sovereignty -
THEN the Arab Palestinians are on the "Offense" and NOT the "Defense."​

However you want to characterize the way in which the Israelis acquired control of the West Bank or Gaza Strip, it is over and done with. Israel has made peace with both the Jordanians and the Egyptians.

The Arab Palestinians have the "Right to Self-Defense." The questions are:

What are Arab Palestinians defending?
What sovereignty (1) do Arab Palestinians have? (Some territorial integrity they have sole power or authority.)
What sovereignty (2) was taken from Arab Palestinians? (Some territorial integrity they had sole power or authority but that the Israelis had taken from them.)
​

It cannot be either the West Bank - including Jerusalem - and the Gaza Strip...

The West Bank and Jerusalem were acquired by the Israelis from the Jordanians.
The Gaza Strip was acquired from the Egyptian Military Governorship.​

I ask this because I have not found an Arab Palestinian yet, who can answer: What are they fighting for in the defense role?


Most Respectfully,
R

"I ask this because I have not found an Arab Palestinian yet, who can answer: What are they fighting for in the defense role?"




wtfk?

 

[ForeverYoung436]

Any person with a bare modicum of human decency has to hold his nose to read this passage:

ISRAEL'S BORDER WARS​

To a certain extent the 'shoot-to-kill' policy was egged on by pressure from below - from the military units manning the lines. They discovered that, in face of the virtual floodtides of infiltrators, there was no point in catching and pushing them back over the frontier as they would merely try again a day or two later. Harsher measures were in order or, as Capt. Yisrael Krasnansky, the security officer of the Military Government in Western Galilee, put it, what was needed was an 'efficient guarding of the border, continuous ambushes along the frontier... and hitting [i.e., shooting] the infiltrators without warning'.

This outlook was apparently shared by officers in the south as well. Yoav Zuckerman, the military governor of Majdal (Ashkelon) and its environs, already on 12 April wrote to OC Southern Front (later, Command):

The infiltration to the town is steadely increasing... There are close to 50 new infiltrators in our gaol today, who will most certainly be sent back across the borders tomorrow... It is necessary to send them back immediately after their capture. What is happening, then, is that the Arabs come by foot to see their families and we send them back in great honour [comfort?] in motor cars...

COMMENT:

Unbelievable!!

I had to read this passage twice because I couldn't believe my eyes. What Morris is basically saying is that Israel's leadership considered that just arresting and "deporting" the refugees is not enough so we have to kill them to get the job done!!

And this is Morris' attempt to (at least in part) shift the blame for the shoot-to-kill police putting part of is on the shoulders of israel's military:

"To a certain extent the 'shoot-to-kill' policy was egged on by pressure from below - from the military units manning the lines."

If the implementation of the "shoot-to-kill" policy were a demand coming from israeli soldiers, Israel's history would have been entirely different:

Let's say:

From February 1948 to July 1949 Israel didn't murder a single returning refugee they were just arrested and sent back to Jordan, Lebannon and Gaza. But the policy was a total failure with most refugees trying to return again a few days later.

The IDF then begged Israel's political leaders to institute the more effective shoot-to-kill policy..."

But this is not the real history of the state of Israel.

Morris is clearly contradicting his previous claim that the shoot-to-kill policy was implemented from day 1:

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

COMMENT:

Since people don't see palestinians (refugees or not) as fully humans, I'm fully aware many users won't even blink at the atrocities described by Morris in Israel's Border Wars, so let's create a similar scenario involving the hispanic or black american population since they are perceived in America as entitled to all the rights those who are entirely human deserve.

Let's imagine the hispanic population of El Paso, San Diego or the black people living in Detroit fled a war and tried to return a few weeks later.

Just imagine the tremendous social commotion in America if these refugees were detained instead of being received with open arms by the american government.

Now let's take our analogy a step further, and say that instead of being arrested the american army, ICE, border police started shooting the returnees and killing them by the thousands claiming that "just arresting them is not solving the problem".

The US government's shoot-to-kill policy would have the effect of a nuclear bomb on the amerian society.

Can you imagine RoccoR, Coyote, FY436 and Shusha saying things like these in regards to the United States:

Israel is currently considered a "parliamentary democracy;" the only democracy of any type in the MENA Region, making it unique among its neighbors.​

I am not saying Israel is not a good place.

While there is injustice and inequality occurring in the treatment of Palestinians and Arab Israeli's - comparing it to Apartheid is dishonest and buries the real issues.​

Israel is a vibrant democracy.​

FY436​

The whole idea that Israel can't be both Jewish and
"democratic" is just typecasting in order to demonize Israel.​

SHUSHA​

America could never get away with murdering its native hispanic and black population because they are fully humans, but Israel is "a vibrant democracy", "the only democracy of any type in the Greater ME region", a "good place that only dishonest people compare to Apartheid" and a "victim" of "demonization" while doing exactly the same to the subhuman native arab population.

Have you ever been to Israel? Have you ever seen how Israeli Arabs live and work in Israel? Have you ever heard of Mohammed Zoabi?

 

[Spartacactcus]

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:

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 important 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.

They are all Morris' children but "The Birth" grew up to be a renowned surgeon while "Border Wars" became a mere janitor in terms of both academic and popular impact.

Weird analogies aside, 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).

This clash, as Benny himself said, "set patterns of behavior that were to characterize the Arab–Israeli conflict for decades to come."

When American presidents, British prime ministers say "the state of Israel has a right to defend itself" they are referring to the stage of the conflict that started and was defined by the facts presented by Morris in Border Wars.

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.

Surprisingly enough (bear in mind I can't say anything about works available only in Hebrew or Arabic) the period immediatelly after the 1948 war is a "black hole" in the historiography of the conflict, comparatively less studied than the war itself and little discussed and understood by people with a mild and even a strong interest in the conflict, despite its fundamental, enormous importance.

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 2020?"

" Is the Jewish Racial Dictatorship really defending itself in 2020?"

Only from the people it is seeking to crush imo

 

[José]

Have you ever been to Israel?

1 - No.

Have you ever seen how Israeli Arabs live and work in Israel?

2 - Since Israeli Arabs only live and work in Israel when they are in Israel, I obviously haven't seen it first hand.

Have you ever heard of Mohammed Zoabi?

3 - Quite superficially. I know he's a pro-Israel israeli Palestinian and that's all.

 

[Spartacactcus]

Have you ever been to Israel?

1 - No.

Have you ever seen how Israeli Arabs live and work in Israel?

2 - Since Israeli Arabs only live and work in Israel when they are in Israel, I obviously haven't seen it first hand.

Have you ever heard of Mohammed Zoabi?

3 - Quite superficially. I know he's a pro-Israel israeli Palestinian and that's all.

Evidently the poster you are replying to thinks if you haven't been to a place you cannot comment on it with any accuracy. Something which is utter hogwash and easily shown to be such.

I think your OP post is correct insomuch that many in the West are held in thrall by the Israeli propaganda system and tend not to see the ridiculous double standards and misrepresentations contained within it.

For example we have been conditioned to see the cycle of violence as being an Israeli response to an Arab provocation without seeing that the Arab action is a response to an ongoing crimes/crimes served against them by , firstly Zionism , and then the state of Israel itself.

It's like the occupation is invisible or worst still legitimate. That the settlers are somehow legal instead of illegal. That the mass violations of the Palestinians are acceptable for Israeli security because there are no other options available etc etc

Keep up the good work in showing how false that narrative is