Captions: 1) Gateway to Kandahar at an intersection of Kabul, Pakistan Highways;
2) Kandahar Arch 3) Afghan goats 4) street scene
Interesting how the 3 main political British leaders avoided mentioning Afghanistan in their first televised political debate. I think the budget for the war in Afghanistan is £4.5bln each year. Quite a tidy sum. If they pulled the soldiers out, they could reallocate that money to health, education, housing, transport, pensions. All those areas need money – they are not looking after their citizens properly. They lack education, they can’t afford proper health care. Many die needlessly from neglect or lack of correct treatment. These citizens also lack a sense of well-being, of hope, of community spirit. They are violent and unemployed. They weren’t born like that.
How can a British government justify spending those billions in Afghanistan when their own citizens are so poorly off?
It was sad to note that the Green Party were not asked to participate in the debate. I think their leader, Caroline Lucas would have done justice to her party. I read their manifesto today. It made good sense. It was straightforward and it looked as though they did know how to balance their sums. They are not just intellectuals, there are many practical and environmentally sound members in their midst. I just don’t know why they are not seizing the moment when the other parties are in such obvious disarray.
Global warming sceptics might be having a less sympathetic audience at the moment as thousands of travellers are stranded at airports in Europe. Obviously the volcanic eruption in Iceland cannot be linked to global warming but it is possible that it might set those stranded travellers thinking about how weather conditions and climate can effect one’s life.
A recent Greenpeace investigation revealed that a Kanzas-based company called Koch industries has been instrumental in hampering or tampering with climate change opinion. It has, in fact been donating large sums of money to conservative groups for them to spread misinformation and attack the work of climate scientists. Koch Industies owns refineries and it operates oil pipelines. Between 1997 and 2008 it has donated nearly ₤32m (3 times as much as ExxonMobil donated … these right-wing groups who oppose the notion of climate change are raking in the dough!) Koch also spent $37m on direct lobbying to support fossil fuels.
Greenpeace has accused these groups of spreading inaccurate and misleading information about climate scientists and clean energy companies. These groups (Americans for Prosperity, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment) have all been accused of ‘spinning’ the University of East Anglia emails scandal.
Koch Industries is a $100bn a year conglomerate dominated by petroleum and chemical interests with operations in 60 countries and 70,000 employees. Its refineries process 8000,000 barrels of crude oil per day in the US. Most of its assets are owned by Charles and David Koch.
In 2000 the Environmental Protection Agency fined Koch Industries $30m for its oil 300 spills.
Captions: 1) one of the gems of wisdom on the 500 step path to the mountain-top temple near to the Nest.
2) at this pont the temple looked impossible to reach in the heat of noon, but we struggled on …3)it was worth the struggle – this is taken from the top of the stupa looking down at where the previous shot was taken 4) inside he stupa 5) stupa ceiling 6) wall detail 7) Apsara 8) Looking towards Burma
Hello again,
If a week is a long time in politics, then two weeks can also be a long time in broadcasting.
On returning to Radio 7 from a two-week break, I certainly expected a few snippets of news, mostly to do with rights clearances and permissions (one of the titles cleared in my absence was for the dramatisation of Mary Poppins, which, I'm pleased to say, you can look forward to hearing on the Bank Holiday Monday, 31st May)
News I wasn't expecting to hear, however, was the announcement that the Controller of Radio 4 and Radio 7, Mark Damazer, is leaving the BBC and "going back to university" to become Head of St Peter's College, Oxford.
With a distinguished career in broadcasting already to his credit, Mark was appointed Controller of Radio 4 and Radio 7 six years ago. He is an inspirational manager, and was instrumental in building the Radio 4 audience to over 10 million, with the station receiving the accolade from the SonyRadioAcademy as "UK Station of the Year" in 2008.
Mark also champions and guides us on Radio 7 of course, unstintingly supportive of new ideas and developments for our young network. Amongst the many plaudits appearing in the press, I rather liked this one: ‘Mark Damazer has been an ambitious and self-effacing channel controller - the sort...who gives the BBC a good name’.
You might be interested to read Mark's blog from this week, and his thoughts on leaving Radio 4: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radio4/2010/04/leaving_radio_4.html
We shall all miss him terribly when he moves on, as he says. "from one great public to another.”
Mary Kalemkerian, Head of Programmes, BBC, Radio 7
Life in the ‘promised land’ would it be living the dream, or facing reality?
While the World Zionist Organisation pursued plans to remove the indigenous population of Palestine the first tentative steps in establishing a Zionist presence in Palestine began in 1882.
Gershon Shafir in his book ‘Land, Labor and the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.1882- 1914’ writes
‘Without the cooperation of Palestinian Arab villagers the earliest Jewish settlers would have been in dire straits. Early immigrants in Hadera, Mishmar Hayarden, Metulla, Machnanayim etc. received part of their agricultural training from their Palestinian neighbors or laborers and frequently they also learned how to perform semi-agricultural and non agricultural tasks from experienced Palestinians. In Galilee they used the traditional Arab nail-plough, drawn by oxen; in many places they took to raising crops that were successfully grown in adjacent Palestinian villages.’[i]
Jewish settlers relied in many ways on Palestinians in the first decade or so but the idealistic settlers realised that in order to provide income enough to fund a European life style they needed to acquire more land. As in all European colonies land ownership would be the issue that became the source of conflict between the settlers and the indigenous population.
The World Zionist Organisation’ in 1901 founded the ‘Jewish National Fund’ which began buying land in Ottoman Palestine. When the JNF began buying land the backwardness nature of the Ottoman land registration and a long history of ‘traditional’ understandings led to many confrontations between the Palestinians and the European settlers. Gershon Shafir believes that much of the conflict was ‘rooted in dispossession, real or intended.
The Palestinians in the early days were unaware of the ultimate goal of Zionism and had no reason to be hostile to the immigrants from Europe and initially maybe even benefited a little from the influx of capital. In addition to the conflicts over land two other factors contributed to rising Palestinian discontent. First was the establishment of the ‘Young Turks’ in Istanbul – which can be seen as the birth of nationalism in the region, and second the increase of Jewish immigration to Palestine, which stepped up in 1925 after the USA changed its immigration regulations. The Palestinians began to resist the increase in the number of European migrants.
One the most powerful effects of the conflict that evolved between the pioneering Zionists from Europe and the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine was that it fed the sense of nationalism in both sides.
All colonised people have discovered that when they rise up against European colonisers they find to that the invaders have endless supplies of people and resources. When Palestinian resistance of 1925 became violent the violence against Jews increased support for the Zionists from World Jewry. In addition to the financial benefits, the Zionists knew how to present the situation to a largely uninformed western Press, particularly the English and American Press. Britain held the power of a Mandate over Palestine, and the Untied States of America was the rising new leader of the western world with a Jewish population of over two million.
British Complicity.
In October 1915 British had promised to the Sharif of Mecca,[ii] that all Arab territory, including Palestine, under the Ottoman Empire would become part of an independent Arab kingdom. This was a trade off for Arab military support against the Ottomans in WW1. (Later, in 1922, the Arabs were further insulted when they were told by one individual General that the British had not really intended to include Palestine in the 1915 agreement.[iii])
Less than a year later, in May 1916, in the secret ‘Sykes-Picot’[iv] agreement, the British also arranged with the French that, post WW1, Palestine would become an International Enclave under joint French and British control. This enclave would form part of an oil rich Middle East that Britain and France planned to divide between them at the end of WWl.
As well as these two agreements with the Sharif of Mecca and the French, the British made a third.
In 1917 whilst struggling for funds to fight the war, the British were strongly lobbied by the British Zionists. In response to the lobbying the British Government sent a letter (which had been prepared for the British by the Zionists) to the Jewish financier and Zionist supporter, Lord Rothschild. The letter (now referred to as the Balfour Declaration) contained the statement that the British Government backed the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It also included the acknowledgement to ‘the civic and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.’[v] The huge Arab ‘majority’ in Palestine is not acknowledged in the letter, nor was the Palestinian people’s political rights. [1]
The Zionists (a small minority of world Jews at the time) had in securing the Balfour declaration garnered their first strong support from a Great Power. The likelihood of an Allied victory in WWI would soon give Britain political and legal control over Palestine and so make it well placed to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland. This was great political victory for the Zionists, especially for Chaim Weizmann who would become the first President of Israel, but it was a major blow to the Palestinians who in 1917 were only just beginning to come to terms with their situation.
All this grandiose Imperialistic planning by the British had not however included them having to fight another World War - a war that would cost them their Empire.
Post- WWII, Britain would no longer be able to afford to maintain the mandate over Palestine. Zionist terrorists in Palestine began to attack the army of this failing world power at a time when calls were being made for Britain to shed the empire it could no longer afford.
Zionists had begun to use the term Arab when discussing the Palestinians. This led to the argument that as ‘all’ the non Jewish Palestinians were ‘arabs’ surely they could go and live in one of the many Arab countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Also by removing the term ‘Palestinia’ when referring to the indigenous population, obliviously the Zionists lessened the Palestinians indigenous connection with Palestine. Arabs could now be portrayed as opportunist migrants (from the 7th century) whilst Jews were portrayed as an ‘ancient race’, a ‘people’, and a ‘nation’ seeking to return to their ’rightful’ place of abode from where they had been exiled by the Romans. (read Shlomo Sand’s book The Invention of the Jewish People).
The Zionists and now the Israeli Government seem not to consider that Jews were just one part of the indigenous population of Judea and Samaria prior to the Babylonian invasion of 586BCE and since the mass exodus of 70AD, a very small part of the indigenous population of Palestine. Nations did not exist in 586BCE or even 70AD.
‘How can Jews, who demand emancipation in Russia, rob rights and act selfishly toward other workers upon coming to Eretz Israel? If it is possible for many a people to hide fairness and justice behind cannon smoke, how and behind what shall we hide fairness and justice? We should absolutely not deceive ourselves with terrible visions. We shall never possess cannons, even if the goyim shall bear arms against one another for ever. Therefore, we cannot but settle in our land fairly and justly, to live and let live. ‘ (Meir Dizengoff (writing as ‘Dromi’) The Workers Question, Hatzvi, September 21, 22, 1909)
When the wastelands are prepared for colonization, when modern technique is introduced, and when the other obstacles are removed, there will be sufficient land to accommodate both the Jews and the Arabs. Normal relations between the Jews and Arabs will and must prevail (Ber Borochov - Eretz Yisrael in our program and tactics - 1917)
Palestine must be built up without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs. Palestine is not Rhodesia ... 600,0000 Arabs live there, who before the sense of justice of the world have exactly the same rights to their homes as we have to our National Home. [vi][
Next week the final part of this story. ‘Victory and Defeat’ - the beginning of a seemingly endless struggle for this small piece of land between the Colonisers and the Dispossessed.
Stephen O’Rourke
Bibliography:
Bethmann, Erich W., Decisive Years in Palestine, 1918-1948, American Friends of the Middle East, New York1957
Davies, Norman, A History of Europe, Pimlico, London, 1997
Elston, D.R., No Alternative-Israel Observed, Hutchinson, London, 1960
Kimmerling, Baruch, Zionism and Territory, University of California, Berkeley, 1983
Mendes-Flohr, Paul & Reinharz, Jehuda (compilers and Editors), The Jew in the Modern World – A Documentary History. (2nd ed.), OxfordUniversity Press, New York, 1995
Pappe, Ilan, A History of Modern Palestine, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 2004
Parkinson, C.Northcote, East and West, John Murray, London, 1963
Rabinowicz, Oskar, K., Fifty Years of Zionism, Robert Anscombe& Co, London, 1950
Said, Edward W., The Question of Palestine, Vintage Books, New York, 1980
Said, Edward W., Orientalism-Western concepts of the Orient, Penguin Books, London.1978
Sands, Shlomo, The Invention of the Jewish People, (Translated Yael Lotan) Verso, London, 2008
Segev, T., One Palestine, Complete – Jews and Arabs under the Mandate, (translated from Hebrew by Hain Watzman), Metropolitan Books, London, 1999
Shafir, Gershon, Land, Labor and The Origins of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1996
Shapira, Anita, Land and Power- The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948, StanfordUniversity Press, Stanford C.A., 1992
Simons, Chaim, International Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895-1947,
Stein, Leonard, The Balfour Declaration, Vallentine-Mitchell, London, 1961
Sternhell, Zeev, The Founding Myths of Israel, translated by David Maisel, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1998 (Electronic book version)
[i] Shafir, Gershon, Land, Labor and The Origins of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1996, pp 199
[ii] Rabinowicz, Oskar, K., Fifty Years of Zionism, Robert Anscombe& Co, London, 1950 pp76
[iii]Bethmann, Erich W., Decisive Years in Palestine, 1918-1948, American Friends of the Middle East, New York1957 pp 6
[v] Balfour Declaration from the copy included in the front section -Stein, Leonard, The Balfour Declaration, Vallentine-Mitchell, London, 1961
[vi]Chaim Weizmann, addressing the Fourteenth Zionist Congress in Vienna, 1925, quoted in Tessler, Mark, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994 p. 181]
Captions: Suitcase containing ‘H’. The false epoxy base is exposed. It contains 2 bags of 1k ‘H’. Other images show a ball of 80g of hashish and 100g of hashish. Mr Mwezi
Easter Saturday was the first Saturday in April, which meant it was also scene ouverte at La Gavotte and it was also the 2nd birthday of scene ouverte. Alain, the patron gave a little speech to mark the occasion and the serveuse took a gateau with candles up to the stage for the band to blow out. We all clapped and cheered and sang Joyeuse Anniversaire.
It’s good because we’re a disparate bunch and it just goes to show that it is possible for something to come out of nothing…. (though I have no great faith that this will be the case when Britain holds its elections on May 6.) Once again, the place was hopping and by the time we left, it was packed and everyone was on their feet dancing. Even better is that it is a grand mixture of French and English. Nice.
There were various mixtures on stage. Dottie sang Frankie and Johnny, Bill Bailley, and St James Infirmary with Dave Temple. She’s got a great presence and was very warmly received ; Keith sang with a friend he hadn’t seen for 25 years; Anvar’s back-up were much more relaxed and she was great. Six of the 7 Sons belted out some great numbers. I love their line-up. Who to watch? They’re all borderline sublime. They rock. They sang We’re the ones, we’re the 7 sons …. the place erupts. It’s cool.
Quaintly, a curious tradition seems to have evolved, whereby the youngest performer has to wait to the very end to get their 15 seconds of glory on the stage. Saturday night was no exception – I believe the young singer guitar player (Enzo?) was 13 years old. He was totally at ease behind the mic, totally confident in front of the audience. He sang in English with a delightfully strong French accent and everybody gave him a great reception. It didn’t apply to him – he was perfectly audible but my advice to any first-timers is make sure the mic is working properly. It is despair-making to watch someone giving their all on-stage and you can barely hear them.
Lastly, 7 Sons are playing again at Hotel Chene Vert, Riberac on Saturday May 15. I’ve got it noted in the agenda.
After a week of getting on and off-line to see whether BA were going to get off and on ground to fly us back to London, all went swimmingly well. After the sheer brutality of the cab ride from SoHo to JFK we were revived with free pre-flight massages and nursed across the Atlantic by a strike-busting husband and wife cabin crew. Nice touch this. Rather like having a live-in in-flight 'couple'.
London was (is) its normal grey self but what a contrast is the ride from LHR to soon-to-be leafy Muswell Hill. Bonaparte's 'Nation of Shopkeepers' is so markedly different from our recently traversed USA where nearly all retail business (New York apart) seems to have moved to out-of-town malls and shopping plazas with massive parking facilities, leaving traditional town centres to struggle on with a mish-mash of tourist- attracting eateries, bars, cafes and hip stores. Indeed all good fun - but just nowhere to nip out for a bag of nails or the odd light bulb. It’s not Crouch End where a walk to the shops can supply all household and family needs, week in week out. A better way perhaps, with added on-foot exercise as a side benefit.
Hampstead Heath has always been, for me, the 8th Wonder of the World (and Central Park more surely the 9th) so, on a brisk Sunday morning we set out for a jet-lag-busting inter-family meeting at Kenwood. Strange how, after thirty-five years of living in North London it took a visiting weekend to discover the treasures that lie within this free-entry mansion bequeathed to the National Trust by Edward Guinness, the first Lord Iveagh in 1925. Behind the Adam facade is the most magnificent library and grand works by Turner and Constable, the most beautiful little Vermeer and a stunning Rembrandt self-portrait. The house overlooks a swath of heathland transformed by Humphrey Repton and although overgrown in recent years, it is slowly being returned to his original conception of lakeside views and wild flowered woodland. And it all for free, unlike the Spaniards Inn across the road where a modest but welcome round of drinks and a few bags of crisps tipped the scales at some thirty quid plus. And, in contrast to free entry to Kenwood House, on the very nearby Bishop's Avenue the grossly vulgar London palaces of the international rich and infamous are being crudely turned into gated communities where their locked and barred mansions are guarded from view and intrusion by sad and bored uniformed figures huddled up with the tabloids and a mug of sweet PG Tips. I know which side of the road I prefer.
And then it was the miracle of computer-booked tickets via the Net and high-speed warm and comfy seats all the way to Angouleme - via a change at Lille. To think when we bought Malardier in 1973 no Auto Route North or South existed, not even a Peripherique around Paris. But then the little auberges off the Route Nationale and schlepping through Paris with lunch in Les Halles were not without their pleasures ....
Richard French
'Home is where the Cat is' Richard French. Traveller and Dilletante.
This is my great grandfather Albert Mougne as photographed by my grandpa Charles Mougne no doubt using his beloved Leica camera for which he had saved every spare penny to buy.
Albert was from the small French village, Saint Laurent l'Abbaye in Bourgogne region east of the Loire not too far from Sancerre. Fond of his local grapes he took a cutting back to London and grew this vine outside of his flat in Cleveland Street. This building was demolished many years ago.
I am writing this to offer readers a background as to how the Zionist organisation was able to go about creating a Jewish state ( Israel) in Palestine when Jews owned just 6% of the land and comprised only 32% of the population – remembering that the vast majority of those 32% had been in Palestine for less than five years.
The fact that they were able to set up a Jewish State on such a flimsy premise is, I believe, the basis for the appalling state of affairs that exists today including the abject misery that most of the Palestinian people endure on a daily basis. A New Zealand psychiatrist, Dr. John Gleisner, who recently spent time as a volunteer in a West BankMental Hospital believes 95% of Palestinians suffer from extreme trauma but have to keep going as there is no other choice.[i]
The State of Israel ……. will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture … The declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, 1948 Shela Neelama
How the Zionists dealt with the indigenous non-Jewish people begins with a long campaign of ‘spin’ to establish the historical/religious ‘right’ of Jews to the land combined with what Edward Said calls the ‘negation’ of the Palestinians. In order to succeed, the Zionists had to instil in the minds of the whole world and its leaders two things. The first was that Jews had a ‘God-given right’ to return to Palestine. The second was that ‘Arabs’ were not really permanent dwellers in Palestine but part of some greater Arab world with, therefore, plenty of choice about where they could live.
Every culture has its creation myths and the creation myths of the Jews are the stories in their book – the bible. David Ben-Gurion, in a clever, even brilliant, performance of Diplomacy, raised the Religious/myth/history question when he addressed The Palestine Royal Commission in 1937 stating ‘Our right in Palestine is not derived from the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration. It is prior to that. The bible is our mandate, the bible which is written by us, in our own language, in Hebrew, in this very country. This is our mandate.’
Ilan Pappe says ‘National historiographical writing, on both sides has assumed that a history of the land is synonymous with its history of nationalism. Nationalism as a concept, is seen as encompassing the lives of everyone in a given land; in reality, it is a story of the few not the many, of men not women, of the wealthy not the poor.’[ii] ‘Nations like narratives lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realise their horizons in the mind’s eye.’
Shlomo Sand in his book The Invention of the Jewish People[iii], argues that there was no ‘nation’ of Jews in 526BCE or 70CE. Jews were not exiled from Palestine as either a ‘nation’ or as a ’people’. Jews left either as slaves or refugees and but some stayed and some returned. This claim of a right of return to Palestine as a ‘nation’ or a ‘people’ is a claim born out of sense of vulnerability coming from the anti-semitism of the Dreyfus case but not out of law.
When the idea of Zionism was first promulgated, many Orthodox Rabbis forbade their followers to have anything to do with the Zionist activists. They viewed Zionism as meddling with God’s will that the Jews should remain in exile until the coming of the Messiah.’[iv] In a 1973 survey 57% of Jewish people felt Jews had a right to be in Palestine/Israel because of the religious connection - whereas in the late 19th century the numbers supporting the Zionists had been less than 10% of world Jewry.
Given that 90% of the indigenous population in Palestine at the time of Theodor Herzl’s first meeting in 1897 was non-Jewish a question arises. How, in fifty years, did the Zionists manage to get the official backing of the world’s most powerful countries not only to subdue but to evict most of the indigenous population?
Theodor Herzl: (June 1895 diary entry)
‘We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries whilst denying it any employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. Let the owners of immovable property believe they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.’
This is a marked contrast to his comments in 1896 when he proposed in an article ‘A solution to the Jewish Question’ published in the Jewish Chronicle. ‘Everything must be carried out with due consideration for acquired rights and with absolute conformity to the law, without compulsion, openly and by light of day, under the supervision of authority and the control of public opinion.’[v]
In Chaim Simons’s book International Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895-1947[vi] ‘ he says ‘Theodor Herzl, David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, (along with many other Zionists) all outstanding Zionist leaders, share a common feature with such diverse personalities as U.S. Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover and British anti-Zionist, Harry St John Philby. All these statesmen – and numerous others- have advanced proposals for the transfer of the Arabs from Palestine.’[vii]
Ben-Gurion (practical Zionist and ‘father’ of Israel) first Prime Minister of Israel said in December 1937 ‘By agreement with the Syrian Government it would be possible to transfer large numbers of tenant farmers and Bedouin to Northern Syria. The land there is cheap and plentiful. If the farmers were to be transferred from the Galilean Hills, the Jewish farmers would be able to establish orchards and grow tobacco there.’[viii]
Ben-Gurion does not specify whether the Bedouin or the farmers would have to give their consent or not. Compare this with his evidence to the Palestine Royal Commission in the same year where he said
‘If Palestine is our country, it is not to the exclusion of other inhabitants; it is also their country, the country of those who are born here and have no other homeland and we can come in without any limit except the limit not to displace existing inhabitants.’[ix]
Chaim Weizmann (political Zionist and first President of Israel) in discussion about Palestine boundaries at a Zionist meeting at New Court in London in September 1941 pointed out ‘The question of boundaries also raised the question of transfer of population. Such a transfer might, of course be entirely voluntary. If, for instance they could transfer those Arab tenants who owned no land of their own (he believed there to be about 120,000 of them) they would be able to settle in their stead, about a million Jews.’[x]
(At this very time only a few hundred miles away European Jews were being transferred from their homes to death camps by German National Socialists.)
The records of the 1937 Palestine Commission [xi] say Weizmann was ‘enthusiastic’ about transfers and that he ‘considered the (Peel) Commission’s recommendation on transfer (compulsory if necessary) to be vitally important. Indeed, Weizmann proposed still more extreme measures than those advocated by the Commission; according to the British colonial secretary, he said that the Jews “will help in getting Arabs out of Galilee into Trans-Jordan.”
(I will show next week how the Zionists ‘helped’ the Palestinians into Jordan.)
Weizmann ignored the advice of the head of British Jewry who warned that this approach to the indigenous population would bring war for 150 years. In his book International Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895-1947 Chaim Simons tells how that many Zionists offered plans and also International non-Jews such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the U.S. in conjunction with Louis D Brandeis, an American Zionist leader who was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, discussed plans for Palestinian Arab transfer [xii] ;Herbert Hoover (31st President of USA continued to work in public service after Presidency.) He worked with Revisionist Zionist, Eliahu Ben-Horin and in 1945 [xiii] suggested a scheme to transfer the entire Arab population to the ‘soon to be’ irrigated southern Provinces of Iraq. The Iraqis in this area were (are) Shiite, and the majority of Palestinian Arabs were (are) Sunni.
The Hoover plan went round and round and finally disappeared into the archives.
The Zionist movement issued a statement which said ‘The Zionist Movement had never advocated the transfer of Palestinians Arab population, but had always maintained that Palestine had room enough for its present population Jew and Arab and for several million more of Jewish settlers.’
The statement went on to say that the Arabs had benefited from the Jews’ arrival and if the Arabs could be persuaded to move to Iraq they would be happy to co-operate with the Great powers and the Arabs in bringing this plan into fruition.[xiv]
Stephen O’Rourke
Bibliography:
Bethmann, Erich W., Decisive Years in Palestine, 1918-1948, American Friends of the Middle East, New York1957
Davies, Norman, A History of Europe, Pimlico, London, 1997
Elston, D.R., No Alternative-Israel Observed, Hutchinson, London, 1960
Kimmerling, Baruch, Zionism and Territory, University of California, Berkeley, 1983
Mendes-Flohr, Paul & Reinharz, Jehuda (compilers and Editors), The Jew in the Modern World – A Documentary History. (2nd ed.), OxfordUniversity Press, New York, 1995
Pappe, Ilan, History of Modern Palestine, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 2004
Parkinson, C.Northcote, East and West, John Murray, London, 1963
Rabinowicz, Oskar, K., Fifty Years of Zionism, Robert Anscombe& Co, London, 1950
Said, Edward W The Question of Palestine, Vintage Books, New York, 1980; Said, Edward W Orientalism-Western concepts of the Orient, Penguin Books London.1978
Shlomo Sands, The Invention of the Jewish People, (Translated Yael Lotan) Verso, London, 2008
Segev, T., One Palestine, Complete – Jews and Arabs under the Mandate, (translated from Hebrew by Hain Watzman), Metropolitan Books, London, 1999
Shafir, Gershon, Land, Labor and The Origins of The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914, University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1996
Shapira, Anita, Land and Power- The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948, StanfordUniversity Press, Stanford C.A., 1992
Simons, Chaim, International Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895-1947,
[v] Mendes-Flohr, Paul & Reinharz, Jehuda (compilers and Editors), The Jew in the Modern World – A Documentary History. (2nd ed.), Oxford University Press, New York, 1995 pp535
[vi] Simons, Chaim, International Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895-1947, Ktav, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1988
[viii] Simons, Chaim, International Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895-1947 pp 12
[ix] Mendes-Flohr, Paul & Reinharz, Jehuda (compilers and Editors), The Jew in the Modern World – A Documentary History. (2nd ed.), OxfordUniversity Press, New York, 1995 pp 605
[x] Simons, Chaim, International Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine 1895-1947 pp 27
R
