Palestine – When Silence is Suicide
Should one remain silent when an eminent Australian expresses political, social and humanitarian viewpoints that are apparently based on factually incorrect or deceptive and misleading statements having their sources in Arab propaganda that appear on the Internet day in and day out?
I believe such opinions should be challenged as I did in the case of Professor Peter Slezak. I am still waiting for Professor Slezak’s response.
Yet another case in question has arisen with the publication of an article by Marty Morrison .
Ms Morrison’s CV attached to the article makes impressive reading:
“Marty Morrison has been an activist in human rights and social justice since her early years in the 1930s. Marty has been a teacher of English for 60 years to foreign students in Australia and overseas countries, including China, the UK, the US, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Cambodia. The wife of former diplomat and Defence Minister in the Whitlam Government, Bill Morrison, Marty has spent the last 10 years in Australia working for “a fair go” for asylum seekers and refugees. She has recently returned from teaching in the West Bank and supporting the Palestinian people in peaceful protests against their oppressive treatment by Israel.”
One would expect such an erudite woman to have checked her facts before writing her article. To the contrary it is full of inaccuracies that I list hereunder to indicate how dangerous it is to let comments such as these pass without comment.
“The sympathy that the world community had for Jews following the horrors of World War II blinded people to the dispossession of the Palestinians.”
In fact world sympathy for the Jews had been established after World War 1 with the creation of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine in 1920 calling for the “reconstitution of the Jewish National Home” in Palestine after thousands of years of exile, antisemitism and pogroms. The Arabs have never recognized this unanimous and binding legal declaration by the League and this has been the source of their misfortune ever since.
- “ historians say the Palestinians have inhabited the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea for more than 13 centuries.
There was no designated group called “Palestinians” until 1964. During the 400 years rule of the Ottoman Empire (1519-1919) the population was divided into “Jews”, “Moslems” and “Christians”. This practice continued during the Mandate (1920 -1948). The Mandate document itself only referred to “the existing non-Jewish communities”. The UN Partiton Plan (1947) only spoke of a “Jewish” state and an “Arab” state.
- “In 1917 at the time of the Balfour Declaration Palestinians comprised 70 per cent of the population and owned more than 90 per cent of the land.”
The Arabs only owned 8% of the land and the Jews 6%. The rest was state land vested in Turkey and forming part of the Ottoman Empire.
- “One way to do this is to stand with the Palestinians and Israeli activists when homes are being destroyed, when more Jewish settlements are being constructed on Palestinian land”
Homes have been destroyed pursuant to court decisions ruling their construction illegal or as a result of the application of Jordanian laws still applicable in the West Bank. The land is not “Palestinian land”. It is at this point of time “no man’s land”. Its legal status is that it forms part of the remaining 5% of the territory of the Mandate for Palestine still unallocated in accordance with the terms of the Mandate. Jews are legally entitled to settle anywhere in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate and article 80 of the UN Charter.
- “One can understand the Palestinians’ frustration and apprehension for the future when one considers that when the United Nations partitioned Palestine into two states in 1947 the Jewish state received 55 per cent of the land and the Arab Palestinians and Christian Palestinians got 45 per cent of the land”
More than 70% of the 55% offered to the Jews comprised the arid and sparsely populated Negev desert. The 45% offered to the Arabs was mostly the fertile and contained the majority of the Arab populated areas. The Arabs rejected the UN offer as they had previously done in 1937 when rejecting the Peel Report recommendations.
The Arabs could have had what they now demand in 2010 – at any time between 1948-1967. Had they been prepared to negotiate and recognize Israel in the five years following the 1967 War the political landscape today would have been entirely different. Their refusal to accept less than 100% of the West Bank and Gaza over the last 17 years and their expressed desire to destroy Israel has seen their position further deteriorate. That is their prerogative but it is a bit late to cry over spilt milk. Their leaders have led them – and apparently well intended persons such as Marty – up the proverbial garden path.
- “In the ensuing war the Israelis captured even more land, so that at the cease-fire the Jews were in control of three-quarters – leaving just 22 per cent of land for the Palestinians (the West Bank and Gaza).”
The Jews only controlled 17%. Transjordan controlled 82%, which it unified into one country renaming it Jordan with the consent of the West Bank Arabs in 1950. Only Great Britain and Pakistan recognized that reunification. The Arabs could have created a separate state out of that 82% at any time between 1948-1967 but did not do so and did not request one. They were the architects of their own missed opportunities.
- “The boundary at this time came to be known as the Green Line.”
There was no boundary – only an armistice line that had been in existence following the end of hostilities in 1949.
- “After the war in 1967 the Israeli army conquered all of Mandated Palestine”
Incorrect. 78% of Mandated Palestine had been granted independence in 1946 and was not conquered by Israel in 1967. The West Bank (Judea and Samaria are the Biblical names for this area) and Gaza – conquered by Israel in 1967 – was only 5% of Mandated Palestine.
- ” I hate to write this but I firmly believe that Israel, by and large, wants the Palestinians to disappear and are therefore deliberately colonising the West Bank”
Israel is clearly failing in this “objective” if Marty only took the time to look at the increasing West Bank Arab population and improvements in their standard of living. Since 95% of the West Bank Arab population is now under total Palestinian Authority administration after the Oslo Agreements in 1993 – Marty’s “firm belief” is a load of nonsense and amounts to racial vilification,
- “Jews are invited to come to live in the West Bank from every country on earth.”
Why does this worry Marty? Jews have this right legally granted to them under the Mandate and article 80 of the UN Charter. They had done this prior to 1948 before they were driven out of the West Bank by six invading Arab armies.
- “Settlers live freely without any of the curtailments of the Palestinians”
The Jews live behind barbed wire and stringent security restrictions with their schools and public places all under security guard protection and for good reason.
- “I realise that the burden of my account is at odds with the information supplied by the skilled Israeli public relations officers and government ministers.”
Marty’s account sure is. She appears to have relied on a whole lot of dishonest material given to her by her Arab hosts. It is a pity she didn’t check the veracity of this material before rushing into print. Had she done so she might have had a better perspective on the conflict between Jews and Arabs that has gone on for the last 130 years.
Can Jews afford to remain silent when history is rewritten in this manner?
David Singer is a Sydney Lawyer and Foundation Member of the International Analysts Network
# David Singer
How nice of you to say such kind things of me, and for your encouragement. I’m not sure it’s deserved because sometimes I lose my rag and use intemperate language. Last year my wife, adult son and I, were in Jerusalem and we stayed at the Mt of Olives Hotel in East Jerusalem – a ‘Palestinian’ area. I often got into conversation with the locals, including the Islamic Wakf ‘minders’ at a Christian Holy site next door to the hotel – the ‘Dome of the Ascension’, the remains of a Crusader church (c1110). They only allow Christians to have services there once a year. I told them how unfair that was to the Christians and how would they like it if Israel restricted worship at the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aksa mosque?
When ‘the Jews’ and Israel were spoken of in hatred, I pointed out their hypocrisy and how they might ‘hate’ the Jews but they loved the shekel, and how they (Palestinians) had never had it so good. They were despised when under Ottoman rule, and virtual slaves under Jordanian rule. When warned I shouldn’t ‘defend’ Israel and talk badly of the PLO and Hamas – I had said to anyone who’d listen that they were being ‘screwed’ by the ‘leadership’ pointing out that Arafat died a multi-millionaire, yet he’d never done a decent day’s work in his life – else I might be targeted. This made me angry and I retorted that if some of the young thugs I saw driving around the village (in cars I couldn’t afford; so much for ‘poor’ Palestinians) attacked an old man, that would just show how cowardly they were, and that Saladin would be ashamed, let alone Mohammad.
When told how moral they, the Islamists, are as compared to ‘the Jews’, that they didn’t drink alcohol and their woman were ‘protected’, I laughed at that one and pointed out that my son and I went to the 7 Arches Hotel just down the road (owned by the Jordanian Royal family) and drank beer and whatever else, they just charged more. On our first day there, my son was offered a woman and I was told I could have a girl or a boy if I wanted. The one who made the offer was the only Palestinian I belted with my heavy wooden walking-stick and called him a sick, degenerate bastard. See what I mean about my language and losing my rag?
#Richard Joachim
Would there were a hundred people like you who were prepared to answer these lies that are propagated every day. Don’t be discouraged. Keep on answering and repudiating these falsehoods.
Thank you, David,
You are right of course, we have to respond to all the garbage these idiots throw, unfortunately. I guess because I’m getting old and I’m so tired of having to refute, refute and refute again. Do they clone these people? Only the wise can see wisdom, and only the honest can see truth. I’m so heartily sick of having to respond to the same old bulls**t, no matter how it’s rewrapped, whether by so-called ‘Palestinians’, ‘supporters’, Iranians, Jihadists, the looney Left, or the ‘ignorant’ or the just plain stupid and antiJewish hatemongers. I think you are probably a much younger man than I and have more fight left in you than I. I applaud your work and efforts. You are much appreciated. G-D Bless and keep you, and more power to your pen.
#Richard Joachim
The trouble is that the more “dotty old dames” with good credentials repeat the lies of Arab propaganda – the more those lies become accepted truths. If they are not exposed everytime they are uttered then the vilification and denigration of Jews will only get worse.
Goebbels and his propaganda machine showed how Jews could be vilified, denigrated and ultimately dehumanised. Arab propagandists have carefully studied and employed the cunning and deceitful methods of the Nazi machine in their bid to wipe out the Jewish National Home.
Jews cannot let them continue to do so by remaining silent.
“…Can Jews afford to remain silent when history is rewritten in this manner?…”
No! To say nothing is to say YES !
Here is an excellent speech by Geert Wilders given in Tel Aviv yesterday.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/12/geert-wilders-in-tel-aviv-israel-is-an-immense-source-of-inspiration-for-me.html
I, and I think many, many others are heartily sick of the absolute crap that people like this old woman, ‘Marty’ Morrison, espouse. In her case maybe we can excuse on the grounds of dementia and selective forgetfulness; when her husband was Defence Minister in the dreadful Whitlam government, he sold out the East Timorese people and his inaction led to the murder and displacement of thousands – she was with him at the time – so how dare she make comment about Israel and the so-called ‘Palestinians’?
Whilst I love David Singer’s analyses of most subjects, I think he and other commentators should stop trying to reason and justify Israel’s position vis-a-vis the Palestinians and the ‘Arab’ nations surrounding Israel – there should only be one response to all these: You people and nations made war on Israel, you have committed uncountable acts of terrorism against Israel and the Jewish people – you made war and you lost, GET OVER IT! You ‘lost’ territory that you didn’t own in the first place. Is Europe going to redraw it’s national borders to some pre-WW2 lines? Is the United States going to give back territories acquired by wars and other dealings? Not bloody well likely!
The terrorists and the lying ‘Arab’ propagandists love dotty old dames, they find them so easy to con.