Ben-Gurion was no angel, and neither was Golda Meir, but the context of Zionism was a war, and for survival.

Begin was a terrorist, no question and absent a state of war should have been disqualified from running.

As to elect Marwan Barghouti currently would be to elect a former terrorist.

Following the rationally vigorous war for Israeli survival, now that Israel is strong, there is no excuse for current cruelty. (There are real and undeniable bases for defense.)

It takes skill and genuine humanity to distinguish.

We must expel Arabs and take their places.”
– David Ben Gurion, 1937, Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs, Oxford University Press, 1985.

“We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.”

– David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.

“There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
– Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp. 121-122.

“Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”

– David Ben Gurion, quoted in The Jewish Paradox, by Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.”
– David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

“If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
– David Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth’s Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation).

David Ben Gurion
Prime Minister of Israel
1949 – 1954,
1955 – 1963
____________________________________________
And then there are these gems showing the ‘modern’ Zionist thinking. Without the ‘excuse’ of Palestinian demands or imminent ‘war’ from the outside. Much as Sharon’s formulation of the exit from Gaza: to ‘freeze’ the ‘peace process’ doe the settlement and complete subjugation of the West Bank:

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.”
– Golda Meir, statement to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

“How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.”
– Golda Meir, March 8, 1969.

“Any one who speaks in favor of bringing the Arab refugees back must also say how he expects to take the responsibility for it, if he is interested in the state of Israel. It is better that things are stated clearly and plainly: We shall not let this happen.”
– Golda Meir, 1961, in a speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner, October 1961

“This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.”
– Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971

As you can see, the Zionist have never been interested in a ‘peaceful coexistence’ with the Palestinians, not then and not now. Any other whitewashing is merely that: putting the proverbial ‘lipstick on a pig’. Tell me Richard, what was the sanction imposed by the state of Israel on the killers at Deir Yassin? I seem to remember that Menachem Begin was elected to the Prime Minister-ship of Israel. And what of the countless other thefts, killings and maimings of civilians? None as far as I can tell. What Israeli democracy? A democracy for Jews and a ‘Jewish’ state for everyone else? Grow up Richard.For to paraphrase Faulkner: The past is not really past. For me, the most galling part of this mess is that it continues. The Israeli Jews continue with the ‘ethnic cleansing’ and brutality with nary a sanction is sight. So, what are you defending with denial or belittlement of the Nakba?

You ill-serve good intent by one-dimensional reasoning. It prohibits decisions, instead relying on conformity to an overly simplistic party line.

And, it throws Israeli democracy to the wind, in the renunciation of efforts to persuade for a plausible mutual benefit.

Hitler could have used a propagandist like you. Let’s see: Jews “started it” when Jewish lawyers implemented Versailles and Grynzpan shot Von Rath. Jewish hostility mandated that we expel all Jews from Germany, confiscate their property and prevent their return.

BTW, my Jewish grandmother was in the old city of Jerusalem – not a hair on their head was touched as she had lived in peace with her Arab neighbors long before the Zionist invasion which mandates that a Jew cannot live peacefully with an Arab. She was evacuated by Jewish forces, but she was never at risk of anything.

Either way, I do not hold double standard like yourself, I believe that every person whether Jewish or Palesinian should get their property and residence back that they have lost in a war. These are also the rules of the Geneva Convention which you try to subvert in your favor to deny the obvious: that Israel prevents refugees rights because of demographic concerns, not security ones. If you deny this, you might as well write a book on how water is actually dry or the sun is cold.

What is subject to discussion is the interpretation of the events. To claim that 1947-9 was only an Israeli, now escalated to Jewish, act of ethnic cleansing ignores three critical realities.

1. Ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank was accomplished by the Palestinians, affirmed and completed by the Jordanians. During the 1948 war, there was a determined siege of Jerusalem, a siege not primarily on Zionists, but on the long-resident Palestinian Jewry that primarily resided in Jerusalem.

2. That following the 1948 war, the Arab population of then Israel comprised 18% of the total population of Israel, a significant minority. And, those 18% (now over 20%) do have nearly full civil rights in Israel proper. The issues that are often cited as discrimminatory are also areas that many Jewish Israelis that aren’t related to an administrator experience. (You want a building permit. Who do you know?)

3. That in actual documentation of every citation of indignity to Palestinians, of ethnic cleansing, there is some demonstratively documented qualification to each claim.

Deir Yassin for example.

The Irgun undertook a massacre. Orthodox neighbors of the Deir Yassin community confronted the Irgun (too late, obviously and sadly), and stopped the massacre from killing a hundred more.

Plan Dalet. Plan Dalet was NOT a roadmap to ethnic cleansing, so much as a contingency plan in a political circumstance.

Even the 49-51 laws prohibiting return, day in court, and then annexation of “abandoned” lands, existed in the context of formal repeated statements following the war by Palestinian exiles and solidarity of their less than benevolent intentions towards the Israeli/Jewish civilians in Israel (military or not). Confirmed by repeated and repeated incidents of snipering, shelling of towns.

The prohibition from return in that context was arguably not even a violation of international law, as the Geneva laws (1949, after the 1948 war), was set “following cessation of hostilities”.

Contact me when you grow a conscience.

You prove XYZ’s point. Is that your intention, to prove that hostilities have not ended yet even, that the Geneva laws then do not even yet apply?

The Nakba is not an “ideology”. If you were honest, would you claim that the Holocaust is a sinister ideology? Apparently, a crime to you is only one that is committed against Jews and which the world must commemorate and compensate. When Jews commit a crime against others, it becomes a “sinister ideology”. I can’t help but be disgusted at this duplicity and hypocrisy. Contact me when you grow a conscience.

Don’t get distracted. Keep your eye on the prize.