Adam Raz has a good article in the most recent Haaretz news magazine investigating the debate that raged among Zionism’s leadership immediately after the 1948-49 War, when Israel declared its “independence,” over the future status of Palestinians remaining within the borders of the new state.
I have excerpted selected paragraphs below to give you a sense of the attitudes held by these men. If you want to know more, you can find the entire article here.
There were early Zionist leaders who possessed the remnant of a
humanitarian conscience. Men such as Moshe Sharett.
Although, frankly, any leader who failed vociferously to protest against the ethnic cleansing committed by Israel’s military forces in that war – which includes all of the men mentioned here — has abdicated any right to be respected, in my book.
Nevertheless, the article does a good job of showing that Israel did not have to end up where it is today: an oppressive apartheid state. There were alternatives on the table at the time. There were men advocating for a multi-ethnic state where Palestinians would have been fully integrated into Israeli society.
Sadly, those humane voices were a minority, and they lost the argument.
The iron-fisted racism of David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Dayan and their equally savage ilk won the day, dooming both Palestinians and Israelis to the catastrophe that is Israel/Palestine today.
For those who are interested, I highly recommend a book by the Jewish, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel (Yale, 2011).
“(Pinhas Lavon, minister of Defense,) insisted, ‘The State of Israel cannot solve the question of the Arabs who are in the country by Nazi means, he stated, adding, Nazism is Nazism, even if carried out by Jews…’
“’It is impossible to work among them if the policy is to oppress Arabs – that prevents concrete action. What is being carried out is a dramatic and brutal suppression of the Arabs in Israel…’
“(Moshe) Sharett maintained that Ben-Gurion had not given consideration to the root of the problem. ‘Terrible things were being done against Arabs in the country,’ he warned. ‘Until a Jew is hanged for murdering an Arab for no reason, in cold blood, the Jews will not
understand that Arabs are not dogs but human beings…’
“(Knesset member David Hocohen argued), ‘These laws that we are coming up with in regard to Israel’s Arab residents cannot even be likened to the laws that were promulgated against the Jews in the Middle Ages, when they were deprived of all rights. After all, this is a total contrast between our declarations and our deeds.’..
“’Zalman Aran compared the situation of the Arabs in Israel with the situation of Jews in other countries. On the basis of what we are doing here to the Arabs, there is no justification for demanding a different attitude toward Jewish minorities in other countries. I would be contemptuous of Arabs who would want
to form ties with us on the basis of this policy. We would be lying…we are lying to ourselves and we are lying to the nations of the world…
“He (David Ben Gurion) added, ‘We view them [Palestinian Arabs] like donkeys. They don’t care. They accept it [their subjugation] with love… To loosen the reins on the Arabs would be a great danger,’ he added: ‘You and your ilk – those who support the abolition of the military government or making it less stringent – will be responsible for the perdition of Israel.’”
Let me make two observations on these citations.
First, the hard-line, political Zionists like Ben-Gurion make it very clear from the beginning that they envisioned a nation for Jews only. There was no room for anyone else to have equal rights in Zionist Israel.
Here we see the essentially racist heart of political Zionism, the strain of Zionism that won these early contests and has controlled Israeli political life ever since. For nearly twenty years Israel enforced two different sets of laws for its citizens. Jews were governed by the state’s normal, civil legislation. Palestinians, on the other hand, were governed by draconian military law stripping them of their civil rights.
When the United Nations passed Resolution 3379 in 1975 declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” they were absolutely correct insofar as “Zionism” was represented on the world stage exclusively by Israel.
Second, notice that drawing comparisons between Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews and Zionist Israel’s treatment of Palestinians has a very long history. Many Jewish critics of political Zionism have made the comparison, as you can see in this article. It is not, in and of itself, an anti-Semitic slur, but a simple, fair-minded observation of “facts on the ground,” as Israeli politicians like to say.
