[R-G] 60 Years Later: Canada and the Origins of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

[Anthony Fenton]

60 Years Later: Canada and the Origins of the Israel-Palestine  
Conflict, Part 1 of 3
May 06, 2008
By Dan Freeman-Maloy
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17552

The year 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the  
State of Israel, and should be the occasion for a serious re- 
evaluation of international policy towards the conflict that has  
ensued. Political Zionism, and after 1948 the Israeli state, has  
consistently drawn crucial political, economic and military support  
from Europe and North America. With this support comes a heavy burden  
of responsibility for its consequences.

These consequences are much too severe to be ignored or tolerated. In  
Gaza today, 1.5 million people - mostly refugees from 1948 - are being  
collectively punished and starved in line with a policy of what  
Israeli officials call "economic warfare," approved by Israel's  
Supreme Court and accompanied by continuous air strikes, artillery  
attacks and ground incursions. When Palestinian citizens of Israel  
demonstrated in solidarity with Gaza this March following a series of  
Israeli attacks that left 269 Palestinians wounded and 120 dead, a  
member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) Foreign Affairs and Defense  
Committees heckled them with threats of expulsion from the country.  
Neither Israeli legal structures nor Jewish Israeli public opinion  
seem to pose any serious obstacle to Israel's intensifying war against  
the Palestinians. Western policy, meanwhile, continues to help prevent  
constructive international intervention.

While there is much guilt to go around, Canada is operating in  
particularly crude alignment with Israel against the Palestinians.  
Within the framework of the "war on terror," the Canadian government  
has criminalized nearly all major Palestinian political parties by  
designating them as "terrorist groups" (under Bill C-36), even as it  
cultivates ever more intimate trade, security and diplomatic relations  
with the Israeli state. On the United Nations Human Rights Council,  
Canada has emerged as the staunchest opponent of meaningful criticism  
of Israeli human rights violations and war crimes.

Under these circumstances, many in Canada could find it tempting to  
fall into a kind of nostalgia - for an Israel that was more liberal  
and democratic, or for a Canadian foreign policy that was more even- 
handed. To be sure, Israeli political culture has, in important  
respects, shifted to the right in recent decades, and Israeli regional  
ambitions have expanded and taken on new significance. In recent  
Canadian history, the policy shifts initiated under the Paul Martin  
Liberals (from late 2004), and extended by the Stephen Harper  
Conservatives, have sharpened Canadian alignment with Israel against  
the Palestinians.

But the Israeli war against indigenous Palestinians is not novel. Nor  
is Canadian rejection of Palestinian rights to political self- 
representation, or official indifference to the well-being and very  
survival of the Palestinian people. A broad, vigorous challenge to  
these policies is imperative. Such a challenge can only be weakened by  
a refusal to own up to the history from which these policies extend,  
or by an under-estimation of how rooted they are in longstanding  
Canadian perceptions and practices.

The 60th anniversary of the war of 1948, which was perhaps the  
defining moment of the Israel-Palestine conflict, affords us the  
opportunity to explore this track-record of Canadian complicity and  
strengthen the challenge to its continuation. This article aims to  
contribute to this process. It falls considerably short of a  
comprehensive exploration of the Canadian record on this issue.  
Instead, it reviews some basic historical aspects of Canadian  
interaction with Israel/Palestine, focusing on the landmark event that  
is at the centre of a series of upcoming celebrations: the mass ethnic  
cleansing of 1948.

Early Zionist Colonization, Canada, and the ‘Transfer' of Palestinians:

Wadi al-Hawarith and Beyond

The history of Canadian interaction with Israel/Palestine can be  
understood in relation to two conflicts. The first of these is the  
specific clash between the political Zionist movement and indigenous  
Palestinian Arabs. The second is broader, between the imperial  
ambitions of Western powers (including Canada, Britain, and the United  
States) and the aspirations of people in the Middle East for genuine  
independence and decolonization - this as connected to the wider  
international struggle between the major world powers and regional  
liberation movements. While this article focuses on the first of these  
conflicts, it bears emphasis that the two are in fact inseparable.

This article centres on the events of 1948, but the processes which  
led up to these events - and which we still live with today - did not  
emerge overnight. It may be useful, then, to review the roots of the  
conflict that culminated in 1948, and the nature of early Canadian  
interaction with it. The first part of this article is devoted to this  
task.

Roots of the Conflict, Early Canadian Orientations

These roots can be traced to late 19th century Europe. The  
intensification of anti-Semitism during this period - notably, the  
sustained outburst of violence in Russia following the assassination  
of Czar Alexander the II in 1881 - provoked a process of widespread  
Jewish migration which, in addition to laying the basis for much of  
the contemporary Canadian Jewish community, also produced the first  
wave of modern Jewish immigration to Palestine. In the coming years,  
these circumstances combined with the upsurge of nationalism across  
Europe to strengthen calls for a specifically Jewish nation-building  
project. In an era of massive European imperial expansion, the option  
of concentrated Jewish settlement overseas as a means of pursuing this  
project and as a purported solution to Europe's "Jewish problem"  
became a topic of serious consideration. In 1897, the World Zionist  
Organization (WZO) was established as an instrument to carry it out.*

The European colonial campaigns which marked this period, most  
infamously including the colonization of much of Africa, directly  
encroached upon what we now know as the Middle East: in 1882, for  
example, British troops occupied Egypt. It was the extension of this  
process to Palestine which determined both the fortunes of the  
political Zionist movement, and the terms of Canadian interaction with  
it.

The critical moment came with the First World War. In 1918, Allied  
forces operating under the British General Edmund Allenby conquered  
Palestine from the Ottoman Turks and subjected it to an Occupied Enemy  
Territory Administration (OETA). The previous year, British foreign  
secretary Arthur James Balfour had declared his government's support  
for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish  
people." This declaration was prompted by an odd mixture of imperial  
geopolitics, Christian Zionism, and misperceptions of international  
Jewish political clout - those interested can refer to Maxime  
Rodinson's Israel and the Arabs, Roger Adelson's London and the  
Invention of the Middle East, and Sabeel's recent volume, Challenging  
Christian Zionism: Theology, Politics and the Israel-Palestine  
Conflict. In any event, as of 1918, the Zionist movement enjoyed  
considerable support from the major world power (Britain) in effective  
control over Palestine - a power, moreover, under whose flag the  
Canadian government had long operated.

The impact on Canadian Zionism was considerable. The WZO's inaugural  
conference in 1897 had committed the movement to "[t]he organization  
and binding together of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate  
institutions, local and international, in accordance with the laws of  
each country"; in Canada, a Federation of Zionist Societies (precursor  
to the Zionist Organization of Canada, ZOC) had been duly established  
in 1899. Canadian Zionist activities had long received official  
encouragement, with Prime Ministers and other prominent supporters  
even attending the occasional Zionist conference from as early as  
1906. Bolstered by the prestige of British imperial endorsement,  
Canadian Zionism now operated within a still friendlier atmosphere.

The Canadian Zionist movement had long focused on fundraising. This  
was coordinated by the World Zionist Organization, and directed in  
large part towards the WZO's land-acquisition and colonization arm,  
the Jewish National Fund (JNF), established by the 5th Zionist  
Congress in 1901. Following WWI and the British occupation of  
Palestine, the Zionist movement as a whole expanded and was  
restructured. As part of this process, its fundraising activities in  
Canada were reorganized, and escalated considerably.


The British Mandate's "Appropriate Jewish Agency"

Even with the British occupation of Palestine in 1918, Britain's  
declaration of support for a Jewish "national home" in Palestine was  
just that: a unilateral government declaration. The post-war  
diplomatic settlement and establishment of the League of Nations,  
however, involved the creation of a mandates system as "a means of  
lawfully incorporating the former colonial peoples of the losing side  
in World War I into the colonial empires of the victorious allies  
without explicitly extending colonialism as such."(Falk, 40) This was  
viewed as a betrayal across the Arab east, where resistance to Ottoman  
rule had been mounted in relation to the Allies' wartime promises of  
post-war independence. The situation was particularly dramatic in  
Palestine, where the League of Nations conferred a sort of legal and  
diplomatic legitimacy upon Zionist colonization by formally  
incorporating the Balfour declaration into the terms of the British  
mandate.

Additionally, Article 4 of the British mandate stated that "[a]n  
appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public body for the  
purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration of  
Palestine," and that the WZO, "so long as its organization and  
constitution are in the opinion of the Mandatory appropriate, shall be  
recognized as such agency."(Shaw, 5)

As its new official status was setting in, the WZO was busy  
restructuring its fundraising institutions. A new organization was  
established, called the Keren Hayesod (Foundation Fund), to function -  
in the words of the relevant WZO resolution - "as the central fund of  
the Zionist Organization under the control of the Zionist Congress."  
When a distinct "Jewish Agency" constitution was ratified in 1929, it  
affirmed that "unless and until otherwise determined ..., the  
Palestine Foundation Fund shall be the main financial instrument of  
the Agency for the purpose of covering its budget."(Stock, 27 & 88)

In North America, financial support for the Keren Hayesod (to be used  
at the discretion of the WZO/Jewish Agency executive) and for the  
Jewish National Fund specifically (which was also ultimately under WZO  
direction) was organized in close coordination under the umbrella of a  
combined fundraising campaign, the United Palestine Appeal (UPA).

And so, in association with a revamped fundraising apparatus - and in  
an atmosphere of British imperial endorsement - Canadian support for  
political Zionist colonization efforts intensified.


Perceptions of Pre-Colonization Palestine: "A Land Without a People"

Before exploring some of the noteworthy aspects of direct Canadian  
interaction with Zionist colonization in Palestine, the basic  
political Zionist orientation towards Palestine's indigenous  
population deserves attention. Here, a convenient starting point is  
offered by the memoirs of an individual whose name will come up  
repeatedly below: Ben Dunkelman (1913-1997). His father David was the  
founder of the retail giant Tip Top Tailors; his mother Rose the  
Ontario leader of the women's Zionist organization Hadassah. A veteran  
of the Second World War, Ben Dunkelman is today a much-revered figure  
amongst Canada's Israel-linked Jewish community leadership. He was  
also a notable Canadian culprit in the ethnic cleansing of 1948.

Visitors to Toronto's Lipa Green Building, headquarters of the United  
Israel Appeal Federations Canada (UIAFC) - the umbrella operation for  
the Canadian Jewish Congress and Canada-Israel Committee, and  
successor to the United Palestine Appeal - can today view Dunkelman's  
autobiography, Dual Allegiance, cased in a glass display as a monument  
to the author and the history he represents. The text is a credible  
reference-point in exploring the outlook of the Canadian Zionist  
establishment.

Dunkelman describes the circumstances prevailing at the time of the  
British occupation of 1918 as follows: "At the time, the total  
population of Palestine was about one million, and the Jews were a  
small minority, numbering no more than 160,000. But Jewish settlements  
were springing up all over the country - small and isolated, but  
veritable oases in a landscape which was otherwise largely barren  
wilderness."(19)

Dunkelman's population figures are a bit off. In a detailed study  
published by Columbia University Press, Justin McCarthy puts  
Palestine's total population in 1918 at approximately 750,000,  
including a Jewish community of slightly less than 60,000 people.  
About 8% of the population was Jewish, then - up from approximately 3%  
before the immigration of 1882 onwards, but in any event, as Dunkelman  
puts it, "a small minority." His approach to the non-Jewish indigenous  
majority is both representative and highly revealing.

In describing this populated territory as "largely barren wilderness,"  
Dunkelman is essentially echoing the classic Zionist slogan: "A land  
without a people for a people without a land." This slogan is  
sometimes taken to suggest that Palestine was literally uninhabited,  
but this was obviously not the understanding. As the detailed work of  
the Palestinian scholar Nur Masalha shows, the slogan was, instead,  
part of a conscious effort to undermine indigenous rights to the land.  
Consider the blunt words of Israel Zangwill, who coined and  
popularized this classic slogan. Zangwill also declared: "[We] must be  
prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in  
possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a  
large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries  
to despise us."(Masalha '92, 10) It was not that Palestine did not  
have inhabitants, but that it did not have a people worthy of the  
land; that "there is at best an Arab encampment," as Zangwill put it.  
(Masalha '97, 62)

And so it was for Dunkelman: "The [Jewish] colonies were well tended  
and green, standing out in contrast to the wasteland all around. The  
Arab villagers also tilled their land, of course, but they were  
terribly exploited by absentee landlords, disease-ridden, and tied to  
agricultural methods that were primitive and ineffective."(19)

Dunkelman, who briefly settled in Palestine in 1931-32, thus depicts  
his efforts to rid Palestinians of their traditional existence as  
almost humanitarian. At the same time, he points to what it was about  
Zionist land ownership and settlement that would come to produce such  
anger amongst Palestinians. He relates an anecdote from his work as  
part of a Zionist settlement on absentee-owned land in Palestine. This  
involved confrontation with Palestinians trying to drink water and  
otherwise make use of land which had not previously been subjected to  
such exclusive control. "Till that time," Dunkelman writes, "there had  
been a kind of unwritten agreement whereby the Arabs were permitted to  
come into our groves and cut the grass growing between the trees. But  
I thought we should hold on to that grass, for use as fertilizer, or  
to sell for fodder."(40) This provoked a physical confrontation - but  
despite being "a hell of a long way from Upper Canada College,"  
Dunkelman "could punch, wrestle, kick, butt, and gouge as well as any  
man," and laid down the new rules.(4)

One may infer from Dunkelman's writing that he simply tended to be  
somewhat of a thug. But such acts of aggressive exclusion were not  
restricted to a few overzealous settlers. Regarding the mainstream  
Zionist policy, and sticking to instances of prominent Canadian  
involvement, the case of Wadi al-Hawarith is instructive.


Canada's Patch of "Uninhabited Sand and Swamp"

Formally, significant portions of Palestine were owned by absentee  
landlords. This was a fact that the Zionist movement, with the support  
of British legislative reforms, leveraged to its advantage. Purchase  
of absentee-owned land, combined with efforts to displace its  
inhabitants, was a major preoccupation of the Zionist movement through  
the 1920s and 1930s. Naturally, this was an approach which relied upon  
the heavy participation of international fundraising networks.

It was in accord with this model that the WZO acquired title to the  
lands of Wadi al-Hawarith, a stretch of coastal territory located at  
about equal distances south of Haifa, and north of Jaffa and Tel Aviv.  
Spanning some 30,000 dunams (one dunam is roughly equal to one square  
kilometer) Wadi al-Hawarith was home to a Bedouin community with a  
population estimated by the British at 1,000 to 1,200 people, with  
livestock of 3,200.(Adler, 204) In 1928, legal title to the land was  
acquired by the JNF with the support of Canadian Zionist fundraisers.

This purchase was a major focal point for Canadian Zionist activity,  
and often comes up in histories of the movement. Its implications,  
however, are rarely discussed. Take the work of Gerald Tulchinsky,  
whose book Branching Out: The Transformation of the Canadian Jewish  
Community provides a lively account of many workers' struggles,  
campaigns against immigration restrictions, and other important  
chapters of the history at issue. Unfortunately, on issues of Zionism  
and Palestine, he succumbs to the familiar dogma. Of the push to  
secure title to Wadi al-Hawarith, he writes: "JNF officials were  
anxious to acquire this large tract of uninhabited sand and swamp when  
it became available in the mid-1920s."(165) In fact, not only was Wadi  
al-Hawarith inhabited, but the struggle over the fate of its tenants  
became a significant issue for the Zionist leadership, the British  
authorities, and the Palestinian national movement alike.

The designation "tenants" requires some clarification. Technically,  
according to the Ottoman land registry inherited and reformed by the  
British, the people of Wadi al-Hawarith did not themselves have title  
to the land which they worked. But this had previously had very little  
impact on their lives. Tenancy was permanent, and could be inherited.  
The nominal owners - in this case, originally a Lebanese Maronite who  
had lived in Jaffa, and mortgaged the land to an individual in France  
- were entitled to rent; but as in Wadi al-Hawarith, many owners  
collected rarely if at all.(Adler, 204)

In this instance, the owner's heirs, spread across a number of  
continents, had failed to meet the original owner's debts. The JNF  
applied a combination of pressure and bribery to ensure that the land  
was put to public auction. And so, as leading JNF official Yosef Weitz  
would later write, "the President of the Jewish National Fund,  
M[enachem] Ussishkin, packed his bags and sailed off to Canada to  
arouse the dispersed Jews and encourage them to contribute to the  
redemption of this valley". Canadian Zionists committed to raising  
$1,000,000 for the effort, and worked for the better part of the next  
decade paying it off. (Adler, 200; Kimmerling, 70; Tulchinsky, 166)

For four years following the issuance by British authorities of the  
first eviction notice in 1929, the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith  
maintained an impressively unified struggle to preserve their  
community from displacement. The first attempt to physically evict  
them was resisted with sticks and stones. As Walid Khalidi explains:  
"The insistence of the people of Wadi al-Hawarith to remain on their  
land came from their conviction that the land belonged to them by  
virtue of their having lived on it for 350 years. For them, ownership  
of the land was an abstraction that at most signified the landlords'  
right to a share of the crop."(Khalidi '92, 564)

This insistence collided head-on with the political Zionist position,  
as crudely expressed in 1930 by JNF president Ussishkin (the main  
broker of this deal, but referring to the issue in Palestine as a  
whole): "If there are other inhabitants there, they must be  
transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a  
great and nobler ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of  
fellahin." (Masalha '92, 27)

The British rejected a proposal from the Jewish Agency to transfer the  
tenants to Jordan. However, they continued to try and remove them from  
this coastal territory and to transfer them elsewhere in Palestine:  
"in my opinion," the Assistant District Commissioner in Nablus  
explained, "this pocket of primitive Semi-negroid Beduin ... is a  
nuisance and only serves to impede the proper development of a very  
valuable area."

(Altran, 734)

The struggle peaked in 1933. In Nablus, a general strike was organized  
in solidarity with the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith. On the anniversary  
of the Balfour declaration, the tenants themselves marched to join  
demonstrations in Tulkarem, and were prevented from doing so only by  
coordination between police units and low-flying RAF planes which  
dispersed the demonstrators. (Adler, 215)

As Raya Adler (Cohen) writes: "The convergence of the tenants'  
resistance against their displacement with the general political  
struggle briefly turned the Wadi Hawarith affair into an event of  
national important that resonated beyond the borders of Palestine."  
Eventually, most tenants were evicted and dispersed; some managed to  
stay on small patches of the land until 1948; and popular anger around  
the case "merged into the general wave of discontent." (215 & 213)

Adler (Cohen) continues: "Had the JNF compromised with the tenants and  
allowed them to cultivate part of the land as they demanded (and as  
was proposed by a Jewish peasant journal), the affair might have ended  
differently. But the JNF's goals were national rather than economic:  
it could not content itself with legal ownership; Jewish settlers had  
to replace the Arab tenants. The displacement of the Bedouin violated  
the customs of Arab society and united the community in protest  
against this blatant injustice."(216)

In Canada, meanwhile, Zionist fundraising for this project continued,  
receiving a prominent official rubber-stamp just as the struggle over  
this case was at its height. Zionist Organization of Canada president  
A.J. Freiman - interlocutor with Ussishkin on the Wadi al-Hawarith  
case - was joined in a radio broadcast for the United Palestine Appeal  
1933 by Prime Minister R.B. Bennett. Referring to "the promises of  
God, speaking through His prophets," the Prime Minister declared:  
"Scriptural prophecy is being fulfilled. The restoration of Zion has  
begun."(Gottesman, 91)


Building on Precedent: "Transfer the Arabs"

Political Zionist ambitions of ethnically cleansing Palestine were not  
restricted to incremental land acquisition, enclosure, and settlement  
from abroad. Already in 1919, Winston Churchill had noted that the  
Zionists "take it for granted that the local population will be  
cleared out to suit their convenience."(Masalha '92, 15) For the  
mainstream political Zionist leadership, this remained a core objective.

Throughout the 1920s and the early '30s, the relative weakness of the  
Zionist movement, and the overall isolation of indigenous Palestinian  
resistance by the British authorities, kept concrete discussion of how  
to pursue this objective fairly broad and abstract. But in 1936, the  
eruption of a large-scale Palestinian Arab rebellion prompted a  
detailed consideration of this issue in mainstream Zionist bodies.

On the one hand, the eviction of tenants and the displacement of  
peasants during the course of Zionist settlement was a central cause  
of the indigenous rebellion. On the other, it was recognized by  
Zionist strategists as a positive precedent for "compulsory transfer."  
In 1937, for example, JNF National Committee member Eliahu (Lulu)  
Hacarmeli argued that if the Zionist movement were to engage in  
widespread "transfer, even if it were to be carried out through  
compulsion - all moral enterprises are carried through compulsion - we  
will be justified in all senses. And if we negate all right to  
transfer, we would need to negate everything we have done until now:  
the transfer from Emek Hefer [Wadi al-Hawarith] to Beit Shean, from  
the Sharon to Ephraem Mountains etc." (Masalha '92, 73)

The establishment by the Jewish Agency in late 1937 of a Population  
Transfer Committee is notable not simply because, alongside JNF  
heavyweight Yosef Weitz and others, it included Dov Yosef - the former  
head of Canadian Young Judea, one of the Canadian groupings that  
advocated direct settlement - but because it indicates how formally  
mainstream Zionist institutions were coming to grapple with this  
question.

A detailed exploration of these discussions is provided by Nur Masalha  
(Expulsion of the Palestinians: the concept of "transfer" in Zionist  
political thought, 1882-1948), and need not detain us here. But a  
diary entry by Yosef Weitz from 1940 does outline the severe  
conclusion which key Zionist leaders reached:

"The Zionist work so far, in terms of preparation and paving the way  
for the creation of the Hebrew state in the Land of Israel, has been  
good and was able to satisfy itself with land-purchasing but this will  
not bring about the state; that must come about simultaneously in the  
manner of redemption (here is the meaning of the Messianic idea). The  
only way is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries,  
all of them, except perhaps Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Old Jerusalem.  
Not a single village or a single tribe must be left." (Masalha '92,  
131-132)


A Dose of British Civilization for Palestine

What followed the eruption of the Palestinian Arab rebellion in 1936  
was not only a detailed discussion of political Zionist strategies for  
dealing with Palestine's indigenous majority; there also occurred a  
shift in power which helped set the stage for their successful pursuit  
in 1948. British policy was central in effecting this shift.

The British responded to the revolt with the advanced military means  
at their disposal.

20,000 British troops, operating with considerable air power, were  
deployed to crush the rebellion. The leading institutions of the  
Palestinian Arab national movement - eg., the Arab Higher Committee  
and the National Committee - were declared to be illegal and forcibly  
dismantled. Waves of British military operations, executions and  
deportations left Palestinian Arab society thoroughly weakened. (See  
for example Hirst, Nachmani & Shaw, cited below.)

At the same time, not only did the Jewish Agency and associated  
institutions continue to operate, but their military capabilities were  
given a tremendous boost. Technically, the Jewish Agency's military  
arm, the Hagana, was illegal. In practice, the Hagana received regular  
financing - and not only thanks to international fundraising anchored  
by the Keren Hayesod. The British government itself helped to arm,  
pay, and train forces selected by the Jewish Agency (mostly Hagana  
units), with which they then coordinated in repressing the uprising.  
(Shaw, 590-1)

In an article titled "Britain's Contribution to Arming the Hagana,"  
David Ben-Gurion, executive of the Jewish Agency from 1935 to 1948  
(and then Israeli Prime Minister), explained: "The appearance of  
thousands of Jewish young men with legalized arms immediately improved  
our defence position."(372) The article continues: "The most  
successful and complete co-operations between the Jews and the British  
was achieved with the establishment of the Special Night Squads by a  
distinguished British Officer, Captain Charles Orde Wingate. This was  
a practical step towards the establishment of a Jewish military force  
within the framework of the British Army." (375)

British journalist Leonard Mosley gives the following account of the  
first Special Night Squads raid on an Arab village. Wingate apparently  
fired into the village, drawing the local militia out into a trap  
which saw 5 militia members killed and 4 captured:

"Wingate came back, carrying a Turkish rifle over his shoulder. He  
looked calm and serene. ‘Good work. You are fine boys and will make  
good soldiers,' he said.

He went up to the four Arab prisoners. He said in Arabic: ‘You have  
arms in this village. Where have you hidden them?'

The Arabs shook their heads, and protested ignorance. Wingate reached  
down and took sand and grit form the ground; he thrust it into the  
mouth of the first Arab and pushed it down his throat until he choked  
and puked.

‘Now,' he said, ‘where have you hidden the arms?'

Still they shook their heads.

Wingate turned to one of the Jews and, pointing to the coughing and  
spluttering Arab, said, ‘Shoot this man.'

The Jew looked at him questioningly and hesitated.

Wingate said, in a tense voice, ‘Did you hear? Shoot him.'

The Jew shot the Arab. The others stared for a moment, in  
stupefaction, at the dead boy at their feet. The boys from Hanita were  
watching in silence.

‘Now speak,' said Wingate. They spoke." (Hirst, 105)

While British-Hagana military coordination did not last, Ben-Gurion  
explains that "Wingate's work was not in vain. The Hagana's best  
officers were trained in the special Night Squads, and Wingate's  
doctrines were taken over by the Israel Defence Forces, which were  
established twelve days after the birth of the Jewish State."(387)

It was in this spirit - in line with an increasingly resolute  
commitment to deal with indigenous Palestinians not by means of  
political agreement, but by means of force - that the political  
Zionist leadership approached the lead-up to 1948. The point was put  
rather bluntly by Michael Comay, a former South African intelligence  
officer and the leading Zionist diplomat to Canada in '48, when asked  
whether the Zionist movement could not have pursued some form of  
serious negotiations with indigenous Palestinians rather than merely  
seeking international support in the fight against them. "No," Comay  
replied simply: "the only way we can succeed is to ram our state down  
the throats of the Arabs. Then they'll accept it." (Bercuson '85, 195)



On to Part 2: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17553
Part 3: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17554


/ Part 3

*This is intended as a political rather than an academic article, and  
is only casually referenced. Sources are referred to (mostly in  
instances of direct quotes or facts that are at least potentially  
contentious) by author, page number, and where more piece by the same  
author is used, year of publication. A list of sources follows Part 3  
of this article.