The Basel Congress - Zionism�s foundational act - was initially denounced as a form of anti-Semitism by this universalist Jew from Vienna who was Karl Kraus: �These two forces would privately aspire to an alliance,� because �they share a common objective indeed: to expel Jews from Europe.� At any raten Theodor Herzl�s ethnic-religious essentialism only persuaded a tiny minority, and this is proved by the fact that only a few thousand Zionists emigrated to Palestine before 1933. Only the convergence of three factors external to the history of the region can explain the presence of 600,000 Jews at the moment of partition. The first one was the Nazi persecution, which forced millions of Jews to flee Germany and the territories occupied by it. The second one was the unscrupulous exploitation of this genocide by the Zionist organization, more concerned about colonizing Palestine than about saving human beings: �If I am given the possibility to save all Jewish children from Germany taking them to England or to save only half of them transporting them to Eretz Israel - declared Ben Gurion in 1938 - I would opt for the second alternative.� The third one was England�s imperialistic greed from the 1917 Balfour Declaration on, because through a Machiavellian migratory policy it interpreted in its favor all the advantages of Herzl�s racist proposals: �For Europe, we shall be there (in Palestine) a section of the wall against Asia. We shall do pioneer service for culture against barbarism.� 
 

Partition and expansion 

Contrary to what we tend to believe, Palestinian justice was not alone in opposing the partition: Zionist injustice also opposed it. In 1948 Menachem Begin - leader of the terrorist group Irgun and future Nobel Peace Prize winner - declared that �the partition won�t deprive Israel of the rest of the territories.� On 19 March of that same year Ben Gurion - head of Haganah and founding father of Israel - insisted in that �the Jewish State won�t depend on UN policies but on its military force.� That military force, articulated in the Plan Dalet, expelled 800,000 Palestinians from their lands through terror and violence during a large-scale ethnic cleansing operation whose span and objectives have been clearly highlighted by Israeli historian Benny Morris (an ultra-Zionist whose only complaint by the way is that Ben Gurion was not radical enough). That�s how Middle East�s �only democratic� State was created on 18 May, 1948 on over 77% of the Palestinian territory. The constitution of this �Jewish� State is the well-known 1950 Law of Return. This law - not poised on decency nor reason or history - allows the �return� to Palestine of any �Jew� of the world, based upon an ambiguous racial-religious definition. People given this right include the descendants of Jewish parents or grandparents as well as converts to Moses� religion (but excluding those who convert away from Judaism and those who question the �Jewish� character of the State of Israel).
 

11 July, 1948: Israeli Army expelled Lydda�s 19,000 inhabitants as well as the more than 20,000 Palestinians who had taken refuge in the town. Today Lydda�s name is Lod and only 20% of its population is Arab. 418 towns were emptied. 
 

Source: http://www.diagonalperiodico.net/article4859.html 

Original article published on  15 November 2007

About the author

Spanish writer and translator Manuel Talens is a member of Cubadebate, Rebeli�n and Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. His most recent novel is La cinta de Moebius (Alcal� Grupo Editorial). Mary Rizzo is editor of Peacepalestine and a member of Tlaxcala. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and reviser are cited.