Nathan Thrall’s lengthy essay “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama” (The New York Review of Books) has been hailed as an extraordinary piece that breaks new ground, informing readers about the true reality on the ground in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. In reality, the 20,000-word document is a virulent anti-Zionist manifesto that relies on numerous errors, omissions, misrepresentation and misquotes to paint a one-sided image of Israel as a uniquely evil entity that seeks nothing more than the removal and domination of another people. While the personal tragedy of Abed Salama is meaningful, Thrall does not deliver anything new about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He has written similar essays in prior years, conducted little primary research, relied heavily on previously published books such as The Bride and Dowry by Avi Raz and One Palestine Complete by Tom Segev, and parroted tired lines from long used anti-Israel propaganda.
Thrall’s core thesis is that Zionism and the Jewish state from its early origins in the nineteenth century is an immoral expression of nationalism whose main goal has been to ethnically cleanse the true indigenous people of the Holy Land, the Palestinians. As discussed in more detail below, we learn (falsely) that Theodor Herzl was not only the founder of modern Zionism, but also the father of Arab ethnic cleansing. Thrall is certain that the only just solution to cure 140 years of the horrors of Zionism is to grant all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Israeli citizenship so that Israel’s “ethno-nationalist domination” ends.
Thrall advocates for Palestinian rights and statehood while denying Jews similar rights. Thrall does not accept that the Jewish state was formed to allow Jews, indigenous to the region but exiled and subjected to conquest, to escape 2,000 years of expulsion, pogroms, discrimination and eventually genocide. Jewish sovereignty must be given up by 6.9 million Jews because the Palestinians do not have a state – and it’s only Israel’s fault and there is no other solution. He completely ignores Israel’s repeated attempts to end the conflict with offers of statehood with barely a sentence about the Clinton-era peace negotiations.
Thrall does not accept Israel’s status as a democracy within the borders of Israel, claiming that “In more the seventy-two years of statehood, there have only been six months when Israel did not place most of the native population under military rule while it confiscated their land and deprived those people of basic civil rights.” In this formulation, Jews are and were never part of the “native population” as only Arabs are granted such status, and Arab Israelis do not have “basic civil rights.” Both are grossly inaccurate.
In Thrall’s one-sided anti-Zionist narrative we never hear anything about Arab and Palestinian actions, who are only portrayed as innocent bystanders abused by the Jews. In this vision, no war was ever started by Arabs; there was no rejection of partition plans and peace proposals; the word terrorism and Hamas only appear once and only in the context of how pro-Israel lobbyists wrongly portray Palestinians. The Palestinians have never made mistakes and there is nothing they must do to gain statehood.
A key feature of Thrall’s work is the reliance on many dozens of quotes that substitute for historical analysis and supposedly evidence the nefarious intentions of Zionist and Jewish leaders from the Ottoman era through today. As will be shown below, many of the quotes are either outright falsified or taken egregiously out of context. There are no quotes provided from Arabs or Palestinians, as they do not have agency in Thrall’s distorted history of the conflict.
Delegitimization of Zionism
The key concept that Thrall weaves through the entire essay is the inherent illegitimacy of Zionism. Thrall begins by making the case that the original intention of Zionism was not, as commonly believed, to create a safe haven for Jews to escape anti-Semitism, but simply an expression of nationalism. By removing the purported justification for Zionism, which may cause the reader to sympathize with the idea and need for a Jewish state, and instead showing that it was nothing more than an expression of raw tribal ethnocentrism, then of course it follows that Israel as a Jewish state is immoral. All of Thrall’s main conclusions about Zionism are misrepresentations.
Thrall quotes Dr. Michael Stanislawski, the Nathan J. Miller Professor of Jewish History at Columbia University, to support his contention. Thrall deliberately truncates Stanislawski’s text; the full quote is shown below with the removed portion added back and underlined:
The all-too-frequent claim that modern Jewish nationalism was born in response to anti-Semitism or to the outbreak of violent attacks (“pogroms”) against the Jews which began in the Russian Empire in 1881–82 is quite simply wrong: the first expressions of this new ideology were published well before the spread of the new anti-Semitic ideology and before the pogroms of the early 1880s. This is not to deny that the pogroms and the spread of anti-Semitic ideology convinced many Jews of the veracity of modern nationalist, including the Zionist, solutions to the “Jewish Problem.” But once more, it is essential to understand that the fundamental cause of the emergence of modern Jewish nationalism was the rise, on the part of Jews themselves, of new ideologies that applied the basic tenets of modern nationalism to the Jews, and not a response to persecution.”¹
Thrall does not want the reader to know about the “Jewish Problem,” or the spread of anti-Semitic ideology or anything that might provide a hint that Zionism was in large part a direct response to anti-Semitism and the desire for a safe haven for Jews, focusing instead on certain elements of Jewish thought from the 1870s.
Thrall also does not mention that Stanislawski makes a distinction between “modern Jewish nationalism” and “its most important and long-lived offshoot, the Zionist movement.” Thrall also ignores that Herzl’s formulation of Zionism came in large part as a response to one of the most significant anti-Semitic incidents of the nineteenth century, the Dreyfus Affair. Thrall also does not mention that over subsequent decades further pogroms and virulent anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust did directly inform the Zionist cause and the obvious need for a Jewish state.
Thrall further delegitimizes Zionism by pointing out that the movement had mixed support in pre-State decades. He explains that Zionism was “a sect within a dissident sect.” While there is some truth to this, Thrall reduces a complex subject spanning decades into a few soundbites. Many Jews pre-state did not champion Zionism because they were concerned that such support would undermine their position and perceived loyalty to the nations in which they lived. After all, the idea that a Jewish state could actually be achieved was seen as remote. It is one thing to analyze Jewish support for Zionism decades before the formation of the State of Israel; it is another to debate Zionism more than seventy years into the existence of the Jewish state. Thrall prefers not to point out this critical distinction.
Next, Thrall explains that most Jews who escaped persecution from 1882 to 1914 actually went to America and few to the Ottoman Middle East. He also mentions that in 1896 Herzl believed that Jews should not settle in the Holy Land until a state was granted. The subtext in Thrall’s words is as follows: You see, Zionism was not really about escaping persecution or providing a safe haven for Jews because most Jews fleeing persecution did not care to move to the Holy Land, and even Herzl did not believe Jews should settle in the area, therefore the premise of Zionism is false and claims about why a Jewish state should exist are disingenuous.
This thinking is preposterous and demonstrates a rudimentary knowledge of Zionist history. Not mentioned is that prior to World War I the Holy Land was a backwater of the Ottoman Empire, a particularly underdeveloped territory within the “Sick man of Europe,” while the United States was a growing industrial power with much to offer incoming immigrants. Not mentioned is that Jewish entry into the Holy Land was illegal under Ottoman law and the authorities placed significant restrictions on Jewish entry (and similar restrictions were later placed on Jews by the British).² As Dr. Roberto Bachi, one of the leading scholars of Jewish demographics explained, given the opposition to Jewish immigration imposed by the Ottomans, combined with poor conditions in the region at the time, the question one should ask is not why Jewish immigration to the Holy Land was small, but how it existed at all.³ Thrall also omits that after the formation of the Jewish state in 1948 approximately 850,000 Jews were expelled or compelled to leave millennia-old communities in numerous Arab countries merely for being Jewish, a raw outburst of anti-Semitism, and nearly all of them came to Israel as the only welcoming safe haven.
Thrall finalizes his delegitimization of Zionism by pointing out that even today Jews still disagree about Zionism. He notes contrarian thinking between religious Jews and secular Israelis, stating: “…the argument for Oslo undermined the entire basis of Zionism. If Palestinians had a right to self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza, then Jews did not.” Thrall claims that religious Zionists oppose a Palestinian state since it would undermine the entire justification for a Jewish state anywhere in the region. While there may be some more radical religious Zionists who believe this, this thinking is hardly mainstream. Thrall does not reveal that under Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert Palestinians were offered self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza, with the support of a majority of Israelis, who did not believe this plan undermined the rationale for Zionism or a Jewish state. It is Thrall who believes that Zionism is illegitimate, not the overwhelming majority of Jews worldwide.
False Accusations of Transfer Policies
Another central theme that runs throughout Thrall’s essay is that Zionists, Jews and Israelis from the early origins of Zionism had one common goal: transfer out the indigenous Palestinians living in the region to make way for the Jewish state. He claims that Zionism fundamentally was a “license to dispossess” and that “Zionists did not come to Palestine seeking to integrate into local society, but to establish their own exclusive state at the natives’ expense.” These evil intentions, according to Thrall, can be traced back to the father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl. Thrall’s only evidence is a quote snippet from an 1895 entry in Herzl’s diary which has been a feature of anti-Israel propaganda for decades: “We shall try to spirit the penniless populations across the border by procuring employment for them in the transit countries, while denying them employment in our own country.”
Since it is obvious that Thrall did not conduct any original research, he is probably not aware that Herzl did not make any mention of either Arabs or Palestine in this diary entry or that these comments specifically referred to Argentina as a place where Jews might settle. The complete diary entry, beyond the scope of this response, shows that the sentence Thrall quotes is taken out of context. The broader set of diary entries shows that Herzl at this time contemplated Jewish settlement with the acceptance of another nation explaining “we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us” as full sovereignty and control was not seen as possible at the time. Herzl planned to “negotiate with the South American republics” and expected that Jewish settlement would provide economic advantages to the nation that accepted Jews.⁴ As Efraim Karsh explained regarding another writer who claimed the same sentence Thrall cites indicated Herzl’s support for transfer:
There was no trace of a belief in transfer in either Herzl’s famous political treatise, The Jewish State (1896), or his 1902 Zionist novel, Altneuland (Old-New Land). Nor for this matter is there any allusion to “transfer” in Herzl’s public writings, his private correspondence, his speeches, or his political and diplomatic discussions. [The Author] simply discards the canon of Herzl’s life work in favor of a single, isolated quote.”⁵
Dr. Stanislawski, who Thrall cites as an authority on Zionism, notes that Herzl’s solution to the fact that Arabs were living in Palestine was that the economic benefits of Jewish industry would “improve the lot of the Arab population of Palestine immensely” and that they believed “Zionism as beneficial to them as well as Jews.” Herzl specifically endeavored to live with the Arab population and at no time advocated transfer or expulsion.⁶
Thrall next implies that Ben Gurion supported transfers of the Arab population, a common assertion by anti-Zionists, but like Herzl, Ben Gurion’s life work does not show that forced transfer was a policy he supported. The supposed evidence of Ben Gurion’s “transfer” policy is based on fragments of quotations taken out of context or outright fabrications. Actual scholarship into Ben Gurion’s thinking by reviewing his broader canon is that he was consistently opposed to the forced transfer of Arabs.⁷
Thrall explains that when the British plan for a two-state partition was issued in 1937 under the Peel Commission, the most appealing aspect to Ben Gurion was the idea of “population transfers” and cites a snippet of a quote (taken from Segev’s book along with the Herzl quote above) as evidence: “an undreamed of possibility, one which we could not dare to imagine in our boldest fantasies.” Thrall glosses over the fact that it was only the British who suggested land and population exchanges in their plan in order to reduce friction between the two communities, similar to the exchanges between Turkey and Greece after World War I. Forced transfer was not an idea proposed or endorsed by Ben Gurion. A broader examination of the Jewish leadership’s analysis and response to the Peel Commission proposal evidences that it was “opposed to the exercise of any degree of compulsion” in regard to population transfers.⁸
Misquotations
In addition to the examples from Herzl and Ben-Gurion, Thrall’s narrative is littered with false and misleading quotations, all used as part of his portrayal of Israel and its leaders as nefarious occupiers who trample on human rights. Another example is text from a ruling by Dorit Beinisch, the President of the Supreme Court of Israel, which supposedly shows how even this “liberal justice” is willing to allow “humanitarian law” to be “bent” as part of the enduring occupation in the West Bank. However, Thrall deliberately cuts off the quote midsentence (or equally likely simply copied the misquote from a third party source unaware of the error) since the actual statement by Beinisch demonstrates exactly the reverse of what Thrall contends.
The case in question was brought to the court to request that the State of Israel cease quarrying activities in Area C of the West Bank. The full quote from the ruling is shown below, with the removed portion added back and underlined:
As has been held in many occasions under our rulings, the belligerent occupation of Israel in the Area has some unique characteristics, primarily the duration of the occupation period that requires the adjustment of the law to the reality on the ground, which imposes a duty upon Israel to ensure normal life for a period, which even if deemed temporary from a legal perspective, is certainly long-term. Therefore, the traditional occupation laws require adjustment to the prolonged duration of the occupation, to the continuity of normal life in the Area and to the sustainability of economic relations between the two authorities – the occupier and the occupied.“⁹
The ruling affirms that precisely due to the long-term nature of the occupation, Israel has greater duties to provide for the well-being of the Palestinians. Additional language later in the same ruling again notes that lengthy occupation places upon Israel the “responsibility to ensure development and growth in [Area C]…” The judgement ultimately allowed Israel to continue to operate the quarries with a key rationale that it “provided livelihood for a considerable extent of Palestinian residents.” The case does not mention or allude to “humanitarian law” and contains nothing about “bending” any such law. Thrall’s entire premise in this section is false.
In addition to misquotes, Thrall relies on highly selective words of obscure figures or from random events to the complete exclusion of Arab and Palestinian thinking. For example, Thrall quotes relatively unknown A.D. Gordon who died in 1922 but not Haj Amin Al Husseini, the leader of the Palestinians in the 1930s and 1940s who collaborated with Adolf Hitler who said: “Arabs, rise as one mind and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion.”¹⁰
We learn about statements said by Yehuda Blum in 1977 about the legality of settlements, but not that Yasser Arafat told Bill Clinton during the peace negotiations in 2000 that the Jewish temple never stood on the Temple Mount. Thrall provides a multi-paragraph quote from Dani Dayan, Consul General in New York, as if he is the end-all of Israeli thought, but we do not hear about the anti-Semitic doctoral thesis written by Mahmoud Abbas titled “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism” which is still listed on official Palestinian web sites. Thrall relies on Wikileaks to inform us that according to notes of former Ambassador Richard Jones from a 2006 meeting, Deputy Defense Minister Efraim Sneh and an advisor referred to certain roads in the West Bank as “Apartheid Roads”¹¹ but we do not hear the words of Fathi Hamad, one of the leaders of Hamas, who in 2019 said clearly on video: “We must attack ever Jews on the face of the earth, to slaughter and kill them, with the help of Allah.”¹²
The Six-Day War
Thrall devotes major sections of his essay to the purported immoral actions of the Israelis following the 1967 war, most of which are recounted in Avi Raz’s The Bride and the Dowry. As usual, Thrall omits critical context, selectively quoting, and placing the blame for all actions and ills on Israel while treating the Arabs as innocent bystanders.
Thrall neglects to mention that the war was begun by the Arabs, specifically when Egypt blockaded Israeli shipping in the Straits of Tiran and removed UN peacekeepers from the Sinai Peninsula. Thrall does not bother to quote Egyptian President Nasser who said a couple of weeks prior to the war that: “The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel”¹³ or Syrian Defense Minister Hafez al-Assad on who said: “I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.”¹⁴
Thrall explains that soon after the war Israel annexed what had been Jordanian-controlled Jerusalem, but he does not reveal, as Raz does in his book, that Jordan initiated hostilities with Israel, even after Israel specifically sent messages to Jordan that it did not seek to engage in conflict but would respond if attacked. Jordan ignored the message and began shelling Israeli sections of Jerusalem and invaded the demilitarized zone. Israel sent word to King Hussein that if he ceased fire and withdrew they would seek no further action. Once again Jordan refused, leading to Israel’s retaliation and conquest of the West Bank. Yet only Israel, who entered the war against Jordan defensively, is blamed for all the consequences of the conflict.¹⁵
Thrall recounts how on the third day after capturing the West Bank Defense Minister Moshe Dayan received reports that the Palestinians were fleeing and ordered the army to keep the roads open to allow for emigration of Palestinians. While Thrall generously relies on Raz to show how Israel acted to remove Palestinians, some of which is certainly true, Thrall ignores other analysis from the same book that contradict this absolute thinking, because it offers a more balanced conclusion to Israel’s actions in a defensive war. Here is a higher-level view of these events during the war from the same source:
Many residents fled their homes, as people in war zones always do; some left because of fears fed by memories of what happened in 1948. But Israeli troops also played a role in the outflow by applying various methods intended to induce the Palestinians to leave. While nothing in the available records indicates cabinet initiated flight from the occupied territories, there is plenty of evidence that Israeli decision makers, including the army’s top brass, welcomed wholeheartedly the mass outward movement.”¹⁶
Thrall also omits from Raz’s book that “the Israeli government took no policy decision to expel Palestinians from the occupied territories”¹⁷ or that Jordan’s chairman of the Higher Ministerial Committee for Refugees said “Every refugee should return there to help his brothers to continue their political action and remain a thorn in the flesh of the aggressor until the crisis has been solved.”¹⁸ Another dubious quote, also lifted from Raz, states as fact that Bethlehem residents were told they had “two hours to leave your houses and flee toward Jericho and Amman; if not, your houses will be bombarded.” Unlike Raz, Thrall does not reveal that this is a recollection from the diary of a French nun and hardly historical fact.
Thrall explains that several hundred residents of the Moroccan quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem were evacuated and their homes razed to create a plaza for the Western Wall soon after its capture. The residents were compensated, but no doubt the matter could have been handled better. However, Thrall does not provide important historical context that may provide a more balanced assessment of these actions. The Western Wall, the second holiest site in Judaism (after the Temple Mount itself) was closed off to Jews by the Jordanians after capturing the Old City in 1948. The Jordanians expelled all the Jewish residents and razed much of the Jewish quarter. They destroyed dozens of synagogues, including the Hurvat Israel, which traced back its history several hundred years. They restricted access to the Western Wall violating its agreement with Israel. Finally, the Jordanians desecrated the millennia-old Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, destroying thousands of tombstones.¹⁹ It was reasonable for Israel, after 19 years of restricted access to the site and almost 2,000 years under foreign control, to create a large prayer space to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of expected visitors. At the same time, Israel allowed the Muslim Waqf to maintain control of the Temple Mount, which remains the case today and was in direct contrast to how Jordan treated Jewish holy sites. But as usual, only Jewish Israelis can be seen as evil in Thrall’s narrative.
Finally, Thrall fabricates the claim that “Since 1967, Israel’s policy has been to have its occupied subjects pay for their own occupation, primarily through Israeli-collected taxes.” This is false, as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza do not pay taxes to Israel. Under agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians in 1994, only the Palestinian Authority has full powers of taxation over its population.²⁰
Ignoring Peace Deals
Critically and noticeably missing from Thrall’s long narrative is the history of Arab and Palestinian rejectionism. Thrall does not tell the reader that the Yishuv (Jewish Community) accepted the partition plan in 1947 that would have created an independent Jewish state and an Arab state. “Erasure” was not the strategy; in fact, it was the Arabs who announced their goals of Jewish expulsion. Thrall does not mention that Arabs within Palestine and outside rejected the partition plan that would have created an independent Palestinian state. Acceptance of that plan would have meant no Palestinians fleeing or driven from their homes as a result of the war. Arab militias launched attacks against Jewish road traffic and settlements immediately after the partition plan was rejected, followed by the invasion of multiple Arab armies. Contrary to Thrall’s assertion, land after the war was not added to the State of Israel through “confiscation” but as the natural outcome of winning a defensive war.
Thrall does not discuss Camp David or the Clinton Parameters as these completely contradict the narrative of Israel as an expansionist, racist state unwilling to give up any of the land. He does tell us about Rabin’s plan for a Palestinian entity as “less than a state” or Netanyahu calling it a “state minus” but curiously missing are the names Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. Why? Because these would contradict the narrative Thrall weaves. Thrall then rehashes the proven falsehood that Palestinians were only offered “Bantustans,” a charge which chief US negotiator Dennis Ross called a canard noting that the offer was for 97% of the West Bank with no cantons or Bantustans.²¹
The Camp David era peace negotiations with the Palestinians culminated in the Clinton Parameters presented in writing to both sides in December 2000, which granted the Palestinians a sovereign state on nearly 100% of the West Bank (with land swaps), 100% of Gaza, control of the Temple Mount and a capital in East Jerusalem, and return of refugees to the new Palestinian state. As corroborated in recent years by all the key players in the negotiations, Arafat said no while Ehud Barak said yes. While a long list of excuses is commonly made for Arafat’s rejection (e.g., he was under too much “pressure”) the fact of his refusal to accept the parameters is not disputed. Thrall’s only reference to the Clinton Parameters is only to assert that this plan allowed Israel to annex certain settlements.
Further Reading: In Depth: Arafat Rejected Peace in 2000
Situation in Gaza
Thrall falsely portrays Gaza as a place where people live “among ponds of sewage, without drinkable water.” This is false and libelous. While there are certainly significant concerns about sustainable water sources in Gaza, as there are in much of the Middle East, the contention that Gaza does not have drinkable water is preposterous.
The falsehood about drinkable water is typically conflated with the fact that about 95% of the Gazan coastal aquifer is unfit for human consumption due to over-usage. This is a common problem of aquifers worldwide. The aquifer still provides plenty of drinking water, but its usage is not sustainable. Thrall does not reveal that Gaza has 286 desalinization plants of various capacities; most are smaller plants from municipal and private providers, but some are large-scale plants. For example, in 2017 the EU and UNICEF inaugurated the largest desalinization plant in Gaza, which now provides clean water to 75,000 Gazans daily and construction to double the size of the plant is already underway.²² A much larger plant is expected to be completed in 2023 with donors already committed to €460 million of the €580 million project which provides a major sustainable water source.²³ The map below shows the location of some of the key desalinization plants in Gaza.²⁴ Instead of an honest analysis of the water situation in Gaza, Thrall relies on hyperbole.
Similarly, large portions of Gaza, which has an area of about 365 square kilometers, are a bustling urban landscape and the assertion that residents are living in sewage in some sort of vast shanty without roads and sanitation is a lie. Looking at hard data such as infant mortality and maternal mortality rates, which are often used as proxies for the overall health of a population, Gaza ranks in the middle worldwide, above nearly 100 nations including Egypt, Brazil, Morocco and Turkey.²⁵ Life expectancy at birth of 75.1 is also in the midpoint range, ahead of nations like Iran, Indonesia and Russia. While no one denies significant hardships in Gaza the characterization that Thrall implies is false.
Thrall blames Israel for not allowing residents of Gaza to leave the territory and makes much of the Israeli ID system. Somehow, even though Egypt has complete control of its border with Gaza, to Thrall it is still Israel’s fault that Egypt restricts their border. In fact, Ahed Hamada, assistant undersecretary in Gaza’s Ministry of Interior blames the Palestinian Authority for some of these problems, stating: “The Egyptians stopped accepted [sic] zero passports upon a request from the Palestinian Authority.”²⁶ The article also notes that only 23,500 Palestinians in Gaza – about 1% of the population — do not have the required ID. This is supposed evidence that Israel’s occupation has not really ended “despite Israel’s claim.” This is not a claim but actual fact, as there is not a single Israeli in Gaza and Hamas controls everything that happens inside the territory.
Palestinians have zero agency in Thrall’s discussion of Gaza. Hamas does not exist in his worldview. There are no rockets and no tunnels which forced Israel to spend $800 million to build an underground detection system and barrier. There is no mention that Hamas spends an estimated $100 million per year or about 20% of their budget on their military infrastructure instead of on the needs of their residents.²⁷ There is no mention that Israel’s blockade of Gaza began in 2007, two years after Hamas took over in a bloody coup where it killed over 160 Palestinians, as a response to rocket fire. There is no mention that in 2005 Israel removed every settlement from Gaza and placed the area under full Palestinian control, but instead of showing the world that when Israel withdraws Palestinians are ready to live in peace with Israel, Hamas continued its terrorist actions.
Geography and Population
Another method Thrall employs to delegitimize the Jewish state is by citing statistics about population and land percentages. The aim is to show how Jews unfairly took over territory that should have been allocated to Arabs, and therefore Israel is inherently illegitimate. Thrall’s selective usage of statistics is incorrect and ignores much of the complex geographical and demographic history of the region. A more accurate assessment of the numbers actually shows the reverse of what Thrall contends.
Thrall asks why a small number of Jews, eight percent of the population of Palestine in 1918, had the right to take over the area against the will of the native majority. This is a simplistic and anachronistic view of the history of the region. For about 400 years under Ottoman rule there was no such entity known as Palestine, and none of the nations we know of today in the Middle East. The entire region that encompasses today’s Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Israel, West Bank and Gaza were simply administrative regions of the Ottoman Empire carved up into what were known as Vilayets and Sanjaks. The makeup of these Ottoman administrative units bore little relationship to today’s national borders.
After the conquest of the Ottoman Middle East by the French and British in World War I, the two powers carved up the territories based on their own geopolitical interests and rivalries. Historically, geographically and ethnically there was little difference among these territories, as under Ottoman rule the entire region was ethnically comprised of the same Arab people in an area locally known as “Bilad al-Sham” or “Esh Sham” who would have more likely identified themselves as Syrian. During the Ottoman era, there was no population that would have called themselves Palestinian (This is not a denial of the fact that today there is certainly a Palestinian people and nation).
The British were granted at the San Remo Conference in 1920 a mandate to administer the territory, which they called “Palestine” reviving an ancient place name associated with the land of Jesus, that included today’s Jordan, Israel, West Bank & Gaza, specifically with the requirement to create a Jewish homeland in the entire territory. In 1922, Britain unilaterally removed 78% of the Palestine Mandate to create today’s Jordan, for reasons beyond the scope of this response, leaving only 22% to eventually be partitioned between a Jewish State and Arab State. Any measurement of land areas that ignores the creation of Jordan from the original Palestine mandate is historically and geographically incorrect. In 1947 when the UN voted to grant each of the Jews and Arabs a state, the Jewish state comprised only 12% of the original Palestine Mandate and a tiny single digit percentage of the larger Ottoman region. The former Ottoman territory was eventually split into several Arab nations including Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and an Arab state, as well as one sliver of land for a Jewish nation which was considered fair and reasonable by a vote of 33 to 13 at UN. The legality of all the colonial era creations is fair to analyze today, but to characterize the formation of Israel alone as an inherent injustice is ahistorical.
Thrall also cites that Jews only owned 7% of the land a the time of the partition plan, which is also highly disingenuous as it falsely implies that other 93% of the land was owned by Arabs and thus much of the land was unfairly handed over to the Jews. In fact, the vast majority of the land was held by the government in various forms, first Ottoman, and then British. An honest analysis would show that land ownership by both Arabs and Jews was small, with Jews holding approximately 9% and Arabs at most 14%, and the creation of the two states did not transfer ownership of land to Jews or Arabs.²⁸
Conclusion
Thrall’s centerpiece statement is that “For over half a century, Israel’s strategic dilemma has been its inability to erase the Palestinians, on one hand, and its unwillingness to grant them civil and political rights, on the other.” This is patently false and a complete distortion of the conflict, implying that Israel’s sole aim of ethnic domination may even be considered genocide, as the word “erase” could be easily interpreted.
In reality, Israel’s strategic dilemma has been its inability to forge peace with its neighbors and gain acknowledgment of the Jewish right to a state in a small sliver of the Middle East. Israel has always sought peace and compromise with Arabs, beginning with its acceptance of the partition plan in 1947. After the creation of the state in 1948, Israel again sought peace with its neighbors but the Arab states deliberately maintained a state of hostility, refusing to establish borders since this would have been construed as acceptance of the Jewish state. Arabs who remained in Israel were granted full citizenship and comprise 20% of the population today with full freedoms similar to that of any leading democracy, so the charge of ethnic cleansing is libelous. From 1948 to 1967 when the West Bank and Gaza were under Arab control there was no thought to creating a Palestinian state, something which Thrall ignores.
After the Arab aggression in 1967, Israel again sought to gain recognition and believed that its massive territorial acquisitions could be traded for peace and acceptance. However, the Arabs made clear that this would not be the case, issuing their famous statement in Khartoum, “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it…” (Revisionist historians downplay the power of this pronouncement explaining that Arabs did not quite mean it or that Israel should not have taken the phrase at face value.) Once again, in 1973, Arab nations sought to destroy Israel by attacking on the holiest day in Judaism in the hope of catching Israel by surprise.
When finally approached with a true offer for peace by Egypt, Israel gave back the strategic Sinai Peninsula, removing several settlements. A smaller return of land was made to Jordan in return for peace in 1994. The entire history of the 2000 Camp David and Clinton Parameters and 2008 offer of statehood by Ehud Olmert is ignored by Thrall as it does not fit the narrative of Israel as a perpetual occupier. Israel’s detractors ignore that Arafat said no to statehood that offered Palestinians everything that Westerners say the Palestinians want, instead inventing excuses for Arafat. Thrall does not explain that all of the key negotiators have since come out affirming Arafat’s rejection and Barak’s acceptance of the Clinton Parameters, completely demolishing the notion that Israel was not willing to grant Palestinians their rights to statehood. A recent interview with Prince Bandar revealed that Arafat had support from the Saudi and Egyptians on the day Arafat was supposed to provide a response to Clinton. Bandar said at the time that “If Arafat does not accept what is available now, it won’t be a tragedy, it will be a crime.”²⁹
The other element of Israel’s strategic dilemma is its unwillingness to allow itself to be destroyed – by Arab armies in the past and by Iran today; by diplomatic delegitimization in the UN and other foreign bodies; by terrorist actions such as suicide bombings, rockets and tunnels; by the literal implementation of “right of return” or other one-state “solutions” which mask their intention of ending the Jewish state by converting it into another Arab state.
The Abraham Accords were a major breakthrough that alleviated Israel’s strategic dilemma with acceptance as a “Jewish State” by the UAE and Bahrain. A final peace deal will only be achieved when Palestinians accept the reality that these Arab states arrived at: the Jewish state is a permanent entity in the Middle East, the events of 1948 are not an open situation yet to be resolved, and Palestinians will not literally “return” to locations inside Israel. Once this reality is accepted, Palestinians will be ready to accept peace deals similar to what was on the table in 2000 and 2008 – a sovereign state in the West Bank and Gaza with Palestinian refugees allowed to return to this new state and gain equality with the Jewish state.
Salo Aizenberg, one of the leading collectors of Judaica picture postcards, is the author of Postcards from the Holy Land: A Pictorial History of the Ottoman Era, 1880–1918 and Hatemail: Anti-Semitism on Picture Postcards.
Sources
- Michael Stanislawski, Zionism: A Very Short Introduction, September 5, 2020, p. 9
- Kemal H. Karpat, Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History, Selected Articles and Essays, “Jewish Population Movements in the Ottoman Empire, 1862-1914,” p. 146-168; Also see Neville J. Mandel, The Arabs and Zionism Before World War I, p. 1-20.
- Roberto Bachi, The Population of Israel, C.I.C.R.E.D. Series, World Population Year, p. 87
- The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl English Volume I-V, Edited by Raphael Patai
- Efraim Karsh, “Benny Morris’s Reign of Terror, Revisited,” Middle East Forum, Spring 2005, p. 31-42; https://www.meforum.org/711/benny-morriss-reign-of-error-revisited#_ftnref18
- Michael Stanislawski, Zionism: A Very Short Introduction, September 5, 2020, p. 26
- Adam Levick, “No, Ben-Gurion Did Not Say ‘We Must Expel Arabs and Take Their Place,” CAMERA UK, April 26, 2017; https://camera-uk.org/2017/04/26/no-ben-gurion-did-not-say-we-must-expel-arabs-and-take-their-place/
- Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History, p. 39-40. Also see Benny Morris who concludes: “In 1947-1948 there was no a priori intention to expel the Arabs, and during the war there was no policy of expulsion.” (“’Ethnic Cleansing’ and pre-Arab Propaganda,” Haaretz, October 23, 2016; https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-ethnic-cleansing-and-pro-arab-propaganda-1.5452143)
- ICRS, “Israel, High Court of Justice, Quarrying in an Occupied Territory,” December 26, 2011; https://casebook.icrc.org/case-study/israel-high-court-justice-quarrying-occupied-territory
- State of Israel, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “A Century of Terror”; https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/AboutIsrael/Documents/A%20Century%20of%20Terror.pdf
- Wikileaks, “Deputy Defense Minister Sneh Describes to Ambassador Mod Steps to Reduced Obstacles to Movement,” December 29, 2006; https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06TELAVIV4995_a.html
- Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, “Hamas calls for the mass-murder of Jews worldwide,” July 16, 2019; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEgBsU6Mi8
- https://bit.ly/35dydnD
- Eli E. Hertz, Myths and Facts, “Resolution 242: Calling for Peaceful Negotiations,” http://www.mythsandfacts.org/conflict/10/resolution_242.htm
- Avi Raz, The Bride and the Dowry, p. 35-36
- Ibid, p 103-104
- Ibid p. 104-105
- Ibid, p. 130
- Benny Morris, 1948, p. 217-219; also see Isabel Kershner, “Rebuilt Synagogue is Caught in Disputed Over Jerusalem,” The New York Times, March 15, 2010; https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/world/middleeast/16jerusalem.html
- Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Gaza-Jericho Agreement, Annex IV Article V,” https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Peace/Guide/Pages/Gaza-Jericho%20Agreement%20Annex%20IV%20-%20Economic%20Protoco.aspx Also see “Palestine Authority: Banking & Taxation,” Albawaba, February 14, 2000; https://www.albawaba.com/business/palestinian-authority-banking-taxation
- Dennis Ross, “Think Again: Yasir Arafat,” Foreign Policy, November 11, 2009; https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/11/11/think-again-yasir-arafat/
- UNICEF, “EU and UNICEF inaugurate Gaza’s largest seawater desalination plant,” January 19, 2019, https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/eu-and-unicef-inaugurate-gaza-largest-seawater-desalination-plant
- European Investment Bank, “Bringing Water to Gaza,” May 2019, https://www.eib.org/attachments/country/bringing_water_to_gaza_en.pdf
- Mohanlal Peiris, Gregor von Medeazza Zaidan AbuZhury (State of Palestine), “Seawater desalinization transforming the Gaza Strip,” 40th WEDS International Conference, Loughborough, UK, 2017; https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/conference_contribution/Seawater_desalination_transforming_the_Gaza_Strip/9589283
- The World Factbook, CIA, “Infant mortality rate,” https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/infant-mortality-rate/country-comparison
- Rakan Abed El-Rahman and Pam Bailey, “Stuck in limbo: Israel deprives thousands of Palestinian ID cards,” The New Arab, February 12, 2020; https://english.alaraby.co.uk/analysis/israel-deprives-thousands-palestinians-id-cards
- Avi Issacharoff, “Hamas spends $100 million a year on military infrastructure,” The Times of Israel, September 8, 2016, https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas-spends-100-million-a-year-on-military-infrastructure/
- https://www.camera.org/article/nathan-thralls-propaganda-welcomed-at-the-new-york-times/
- Al Arabiya News; “Full transcript: Prince Bandar bin Sultan’s interview on Israel-Palestine Conflict,” October 5, 2020; https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2020/10/05/Full-transcript-Part-one-of-Prince-Bandar-bin-Sultan-s-interview-with-Al-Arabiya
