Chapter 12: The Israeli State

By the spring of 1947 the British government saw that its presence in Palestine was untenable. The work of the Jewish terrorists had become too successful. It should be noted that it was not Arab terrorism that caused the British to leave Palestine. It was the work of the Jewish terrorists, most notably Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.

The British government gave the Palestinian problem into the hands of the newly-formed United Nations, which debated the resolution from Nov. 21-29, 1947. The Arab states objected that the Jews would be given any land at all in a partitioned state, but this objection was not feasible, since there were by this time hundreds of thousands of Jews already living along the coast of Palestine and could hardly be expelled at this point.

It was well known that immigration and settlement itself was the most effective means of winning a war. It is difficult to displace that many people who are already living in an area. For this reason, Zionism fought fiercely to bring more Jewish settlers to Palestine. For this reason Zionist leaders were even willing to sacrifice hundreds of lowly Jews for the "greater good" of securing the land.

When the U.N. passed the resolution partitioning the land of Palestine, the conflict escalated. Both sides began a battle to obtain more land. Arabs attacked Jewish settlers, and Jewish settlers began to destroy Arab villages and drive out their citizens. One such example was Deir Yassin, whose story we told in Chapter 11. As of today about 400 Arab villages have been destroyed, and many of the survivors still live in refugee camps.

The British troops finally left Palestine on May 13, 1948, and the Jewish Agency leaders (led by Ben-Gurion) immediately declared a Jewish State. The neighboring Arab countries then declared war. In the attempt to end the fighting, the U.N. sent as its official mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, the nephew of the Swedish king. He was also the head of the Swedish Red Cross.

The Assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte

On Sept. 17, 1948 Bernadotte and his aide, Col. Andre Pierre Serot, were assassinated in Jerusalem for advocating the U.N. plan to partition Palestine and internationalize Jerusalem. Yitzhak Shamir, the head of Lehi (Stern Gang), justified this terrorist assassination on the grounds that the U.N. policy "represented a disaster." On p. 75 of his book, Summing Up, he wrote,

"The Bernadotte Plan was a development that would have opened the way, without question, to putting an end to the Jewish state within weeks of its birth.... Lehi took no responsibility for the deed; the idea was conceived in Jerusalem by Lehi members operating there more or less independently. The assassination was attributed to a splinter group, 'The Fatherland Front'. Israel 's Provisional Government acted quickly; it declared Lehi illegal, arrested all the members it could find and broke up the Jerusalem units; for a while it both prosecuted and persecuted us. Gera was imprisoned; Eldad and I went into hiding, outlaws again, back in the underground but determined not to fight the State of Israel."

Shamir does not say specifically who was guilty of Bernadotte's assassination, but Alfred Lilienthal writes on page 360 of his book, The Zionist Connection II, about three men who were responsible for this act of terrorism:

"During a February 1977 press conference marking the publication in Israel of a new book on David Ben-Gurion, The Secret Life of Heinrich Roehm . the late Prime Minister had the names of the three who had carried out the assassination; one of them, Yehoshva Zeitler, was one of Ben Gurion's best friends. Zeitler explained that 'we executed Bernadotte because he was a one-man institution who endangered the status of Jerusalem by his declared intention of turning her into an international city'... The decision to kill Count Bernadotte had been taken by three Stern Gang leaders, Nathan Yelin-Mor, Dr. Israel Eldad-Sheib, and Zeitler, commander of activities in Jerusalem and an immediate friend of the first Prime Minister."

At the time, however, the new Israeli government did not know who had actually committed this murder. They did question Shamir in 1948, however, after he had arranged to negotiate with Shaul Avigur, the Deputy Minister of Defense, for a general amnesty. Avigur wanted to know-for the record-who was responsible, but Shamir refused to reveal their names (p. 75, 76, Summing Up). Soon the assassins that had been arrested were freed. After some negotiations,

"... Ben Gurion cut through the tangle to proclaim a 'general amnesty' and the Provisional Government passed a special law so that all Lehi and Irgun members be released, including those already sentenced." (p. 76)

"Later on, an order was issued which put an end to such judgments by decreeing the destruction of the dossiers of all 'dissidents'-and instructing government offices to treat them like everyone else." (p. 77)

Perhaps the Israeli government was afraid of the Jewish terrorists among them, or Ben Gurion discovered that his friend, Zeitler, was one of the murderers. Whatever the reason, the government decided to assimilate the Lehi and Irgun terrorists into the mainstream of Israeli political and social life, rather than prosecute them for their murderous acts throughout the 1940's. In so doing, they paved the way for the day when these same terrorists, led by Menachem Begin, would form the Likud Party in 1975 and ultimately take over the Israeli government itself.

Zionist Persecution of Iraqi Jews

The Zionists have persecuted their fellow Jews in foreign lands in order to induce them to move to the Jewish State. We have already seen how they were willing to sink the S.S. Patria in 1940, killing hundreds of unsuspecting immigrants. But they have done other things as well. Dr. Israel Shahak wrote on page 47 of his book, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel,

"The Israeli government induced Jewish immigration from Iraq by bribing the government of Iraq to strip most Iraqi Jews of their citizenship and to confiscate their property."

Alfred Lilienthal writes on page 360 of his book, The Zionist Connection II,

"In 1950 Zionist agents in Baghdad threw bombs at a synagogue and at other Jewish targets in order to pressure Jews into emigrating to Israel."

Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi Jew, undoubtedly had no idea that his fellow Zionists would do such a thing. He was part of the Zionist underground in his early years, suffering two years of imprisonment and torture in an Iraqi military camp for his Zionist beliefs. He then escaped and went to the Promised Land, arriving in May, 1950. There he soon discovered the reality of Zionism. I found his story online at http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/iraq.html. He tells how the Labor Office hired him to get Palestinians to sign petitions-written in Hebrew-to the U.N. asking to be transferred out of the Jewish State to Gaza, which was under Egyptian control at the time.

"I read over the petition. In signing, the Palestinian would be saying that he was of sound mind and body and was making the request for transfer free of pressure or duress. Of course, there was no way that they would leave without being pressured to do so. These families had been there hundreds of years, as farmers, primitive artisans, weavers. The Military Governor prohibited them from pursuing their livelihoods, just penned them up until they lost hope of resuming their normal lives. That's when they signed to leave.

"I was there and heard their grief. 'Our hearts are in pain when we look at the orange trees that we planted with our own hands. Please, let us go, let us give water to those trees. God will not be pleased with us if we leave His trees untended.' I asked the Military Governor to give them relief, but he said, 'No, we want them to leave.'

"I could no longer be part of this oppression, and I left. Those Palestinians who didn't sign up for transfers were taken by force-just put in trucks and dumped in Gaza. About four thousand people were driven from al-Majdal in one way or another. The few who remained were collaborators with the Israeli authorities....

"I was disillusioned at what I found in the Promised Land, disillusioned personally, disillusioned at the institutionalized racism, disillusioned at what I was beginning to learn about Zionism's cruelties.

"And I began to find out about the barbaric methods used to rid the fledgling state of as many Palestinians as possible. The world recoils today at the thought of bacteriological warfare, but Israel was probably the first to actually use it in the Middle East. In the 1948 war, Jewish forces would empty Arab villages of their populations, often by threats, sometimes by just gunning down a half-dozen unarmed Arabs as examples to the rest. To make sure the Arabs couldn't return to make a fresh life for themselves in these villages, the Israelis put typhus and dysentery bacteria into the water wells.

"Uri Mileshtin, an official historian for the Israeli Defense Force, has written and spoken about the use of bacteriological agents. According to Mileshtin, Moshe Dyan, a division commander at the time, gave orders in 1948 to remove Arabs from their villages, bulldoze their homes, and render water wells unusable with typhus and dysentery bacteria.

"Acre was so situated that it could practically defend itself with one big gun, so the Haganah put bacteria into the spring that fed the town. The spring was called Capri and it ran from the north near a kibbutz. The Haganah put typhus bacteria into the water going to Acre, the people got sick, and the Jewish forces occupied Acre. This worked so well that they sent a Haganah division dressed as Arabs into Gaza, where there were Egyptian forces, and the Egyptians caught them putting two cans of bacteria, typhus and dysentery, into the water supply in wanton disregard of the civilian population. 'In war there is no sentiment,' one of the captured Haganah men was quoted as saying."

This is a mere sampling of the things that the Zionists have done to the Palestinians in the name of God and supposedly for the good of all Jews. The extremists cannot understand why dissident Jews do not appreciate them for all the "good" that they have done for their country and for Jews in general. They do not understand that not all Jews condone murder, terror, and biological warfare for the good of the state.

Zealot Attitudes Against Peaceful Zionists

The Likud, along with the increasingly violent and radical settlement movement (called the Gush Emunim), has intimidated many more moderate Israelis into silence for fear of their lives. In fact, if the Israeli government itself should dare to suggest making peace with the Arabs, or to limit the number of new Israeli settlements on Arab land, they run the risk of assassination.

This actually occurred in 1995 when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir. In Dan Kurzman's book about Rabin, Soldier of Peace, page 432, he writes about Rabin's campaign promise in 1992,

"He promised to make peace with the Arabs within nine months and stop building 'political' settlements, while strengthening the army he had built and led to victory."

As early as 1975 while Rabin was Prime Minister for his first time, he was busy negotiating peace with Egypt, laying the foundations for the Peace Accord that was ultimately signed by Egypt 's Anwar Sadat and Israel 's Menachem Begin in 1978. A main ingredient of this peace was to return the Sinai to Egypt, where the Israelis had already been busy building settlements in order to make such a return impossible. Kurzman writes on page 323 about this peace agreement:

"For most Israelis, the agreement offered the relief of a violent sandstorm dissipating into a tranquil desert wind. But right-wing extremists, especially members of the Gush Emunim, an extremist religious group, were outraged by the accord. When Kissinger had earlier visited Israel, members 'horrified' Rabin and other Israelis by crying anti-Semitic epithets such as 'Jew-boy', while one rabbi referred to Kissinger as 'the husband of a gentile woman.' They demonstrated before the Knesset, and one rightist journalist wrote that the secretary deserved the fate of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, who was assassinated during the 1948 war. Rabin would later rail:

"I felt so thoroughly shocked and ashamed before Kissinger-indeed, before the whole world-that there were no words to express my anguish. I doubt I shall ever witness more deplorable or misguided behavior on the part of my countrymen.

"He was wrong, of course."

When he wrote that Rabin was "wrong," Kurtzman was referring to Rabin's assassination on Nov. 4, 1995. That act was even more deplorable and misguided. Anyone opposing the terrorist policies or the legalized theft of Arab land is immediately demonized as an "anti-Semite" or "self-hating Jew." Those who must resort to name-calling have lost the argument.

This violent suppression of anyone who speaks out against the injustice of Zionists is not a new phenomenon. In an article written May 26, 2000, G. Neuburger tells about the Jewish organization called Agudath Israel, "Union of Israel," founded in 1912...

"to represent the true Jewish people in the world and to unmask the unwarranted and unjust claims of the Zionists. Rabbis everywhere joined Agudath Israel, as did masses of observant Jews.

"Shortly thereafter, Jacob de Haan, a former distinguished Dutch diplomat who was then leader of Agudath Israel in Palestine, initiated talks with Arab leaders with a view toward the eventual establishments of a state there in which Jews and Arabs would have equal rights. In this way he hoped to forestall the creation of a Zionist state. Despite threats to his life, de Haan, fully aware of the ultimate dangers of a Zionist state, continued his talks and negotiations. On the eve of his departure in 1924 for Britain to meet with authorities there, he was assassinated by the Haganah, the Zionist paramilitary force, in the center of Jerusalem as he came from evening prayers....

"The greatest leader of the Neturei Karta [an offshoot of the Agudath Israel- ed.] was Rabbi Amram Blau, an inspired and dedicated leader whose compassion equaled his courage. He could not keep silent in the face of injustice, immorality or hypocrisy. He was beloved by Jews and respected by Christians and Muslims. Born in Jerusalem, he never left the Holy Land during his entire life. In his writings he stressed many times that Jews and Arabs had lived in harmony until the advent of political Zionism. Rabbi Blau was imprisoned in Jerusalem, not by the Ottoman authorities, not by the British, and not by the Arabs, but by the Zionists."

Thus we see that Zionism has quite a history of repression and even murder of dissenting Jews as early as 1924. The ultimate goal of this violence is to force all Jews into being Zionists and thus to equate Zionism with Judaism. So it is no great surprise that such murder and persecution would occur as early as 1983 with the murder of Emil Grunzweig, when Jews protested the unjust and murderous policies of Ariel Sharon in Lebanon.

Peace Now organized a rally to protest Sharon 's massacre in Lebanon at the camps of Sabra and Shatila, drawing over 400,000 Israelis who demonstrated against Sharon. These advocates for peace were attacked by Sharon 's violent supporters. On page 212 of Zealots For Zion, Robert Friedman writes,

"Several months later, an anti-Lebanon War rally organized by Peace Now in front of the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem was violently attacked by right-wing thugs wearing knitted yarmulkes and chanting, 'Begin, Begin, King of Israel.' Women demonstrators were spit upon and told, 'You are Arab women! You should have been in Sabra and Shatila.' Then a grenade was thrown into the crowd, which included many officers from elite combat units. Emil Grunzweig, a young high school math teacher from Kibbutz Revivim in the Negev, was killed in the blast. Later, at the hospital the injured demonstrators were attacked and beaten, as were the doctors, by Jewish extremists screaming, 'It's a shame that only one was killed!' Not since the clashes between Begin's Irgun and Ben Gurion's Haganah in the 1940's had the danger of serious clashes between Jews in Israel seemed so great.

"In the months following Grunzweig's murder, prominent liberal Israeli academics, artists, and journalists became targets of right-wing violence. Homes and cars were vandalized and firebombed. In one instance, the apartment of a political pollster who reported that a majority of Israelis were ready to trade land for peace was torched. Peace Now founder Dede Zucker was pummeled outside his Jerusalem home by right-wing toughs. Zucker moved to Tel Aviv. The climate of intimidation and fear was encouraged by government officials like Sharon, who publicly labeled members of Peace Now 'defeatists' and 'traitors.' Kahane did the bellicose ex-general one better by calling on his followers to liquidate liberal Jews whose views he found pernicious."

It is apparent that the terrorist mentality of the 1940's is still alive and well, and it has largely taken over Israeli politics today. Those of the Likud Party chanted, "Begin, Begin, King of Israel" as they killed those who objected to the violent side of Zionism.

The terrorists of the 1940's were given full amnesty after establishing their nation, so instead of being brought to justice, they were able eventually to take power and keep all dissenters in line through terror and fear. The terrorists have become statesmen of the Jewish State. They have little moral ground to condemn modern Arab terrorists for doing what they themselves did in the 1940's and 1950's and have continued to do to the present day.

Yitzhak Shamir's definition of a terrorist was given over the radio in 1991, quoted by Jewish author, Robert Friedman, in the introduction to his book, Zealots For Zion, page xxxii,

"Terrorism is a way of fighting that is acceptable under certain conditions and by certain movements," he said, adding that while terrorism was appropriate for Jews fighting for their homeland, it is not for Palestinians who 'are fighting for land that is not theirs. This is the land of the people of Israel '."

This is called a "double standard." In a footnote, it is noted that the Irgun and Stern Gang killed at least 40 Jews to settle personal accounts. Apparently, this too was within Shamir's rights as a "freedom fighter" and does not constitute terrorism or murder.

I suspect that the victims' families might feel differently.