[Peace-discuss] "1948"

[David Green]

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/05/make-sure-you-r.html
   
  This comment on Israeli historian Benny Morris's new book is linked to on Juan Cole's website, who writes "The review repeats a lot of old discredited chestnuts about the 1948 war. The Arab governments did not call on the Palestinians to leave, guys. There is no transcript of any such transmission in any archive. Nor would it make sense to deprive their armies of sympathetic locals who could offer food and information. Etc., etc. But Zionist propaganda, like other nationalist propaganda, has immense staying power in the face of contrary evidence."
   
  It's really too bad that this stuff has to be re-done again and again, not only 20 years since the revisionist school of thought largely dispensed with the mythology, and even 47 years after the myth of "Arab broadcasts" was dispensed with in 1961.
   
  But this is the sort of thing that allows so-called "moderates" like the guy who spoke at Hillel on April 1st to begin his talk by summarizing 100 years of Zionism as "the Jews came in peace, but the Arabs wanted war."
   
  While Mearsheimer overestimates the power of the Israel Lobby in his book of the same name, his general antipathy towards Israeli policies is well grounded. The books mentioned serve as essential texts, and it should be understood that the perspective taken at Hillel would not be taken seriously in the history department on this campus, or in any history or Middle East studies department in this country. 
   
  If we want to consider why this nonsense is perpetuated at Hillel (and beyond that, how it is perpetuated in the name of "moderation"), it's important to understand why it survives at the NY Times. As Norman Finkelstein has commented recently, 1948 is no longer a topic of serious historical controversy, because the facts on the ground resulting from 1948 are no longer politically relevant--Israel has it's 78% of mandatory Palestine, and it's internationally acknowledged that they get to keep it. 1967 is still a subject of some controversy, although it shouldn't be, because resolution of the conflict relates to occupation and settlement of land beyond that 78%, all of course which is illegal.
   
  But the wholesale propaganda goes on and on, because any chink in the armor of Zionist mythology is seen as threatening to the whole fable (and indeed the American imperial fable), and indeed it should be. It's like when something spills on your kitchen floor, and while cleaning it up you realize the whole thing is filthy anyway.
   
  So let's just keep spilling stuff, historically speaking, so everybody can waste time on cleaning up mess after mess. It's both Sisyphean and Kafkaesque, it that's possible.
   
  DG
   

       
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