Israeli teens to Netanyahu: We ain’t serving IDF; free Palestine first

…by Jonas E. Alexis

Sixty-three Israeli students were brave enough to sign a letter saying they “would defy mandatory military service despite the risk of jail. Citing the occupation of Palestine, the letter criticizes the policies of Israel’s ‘racist government.’”[1]

The letter states in part that the Israeli army “implements the policy of a racist government that violates basic human rights, which applies one law to Israelis and another to the Palestinians in the same area.”

The students declare that they wrote the letter largely because they “decided not to take part in the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, which separates people into two hostile camps. Because as long as people live under occupation that denies them human rights and national rights we will not be able to achieve peace.”[2]

These Israeli teens are obviously challenging the entire Zionist narrative, which has sucked the blood of the Palestinians since its inception. To give you a little historical background.

The establishment of Israel in 1948 was a sort of “survival of the fittest” process: thousands upon thousands of Palestinians had to be systematically uprooted, slaughtered, and deported from their homes. Christians in the region suffered as well.[3]

Even David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, conceived the point that injustice had been done to the Palestinians, when he told Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, that

“If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country…there has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?”[4]

Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, who considers himself “a super-Zionist,” declares that

“In fact, from the beginning, a sense of urgency gave the first Zionists the profound conviction that the task of reconquering the country had a solid moral basis. The argument of the Jews’ historical right to the land was merely a matter of politics and propaganda.”[5]

He moves on to say that “Whereas the conquests of 1949 were an essential condition for the founding of Israel, the attempt to retain the conquests of 1967 had a strong flavor of imperial expansion.”[6] Moreover, “None of the major leaders of the labor movement believed that the Palestinians deserved the same rights” as the Jews.[7]

Theodor Hertzl, founder of the Zionist movement, noted in 1895 that “Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor [Palestinians] must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”[8]

Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund, likewise declared at the dawn of the twentieth century, “It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country…There is no room for compromise on the point!…We must no leave a single village, not a single tribe.”[9] Similarly, David Ben-Gurion once again declared, “We will expel the Arabs and take their place.”[10]

It is estimated that “more than half of Palestine’s native population, close to 800,000 people, had been uprooted, 531 villages had been destroyed, and eleven urban neighborhoods emptied of their inhabitants.” The 1948 plan, writes Jewish historian Ilan Pappe, “was a clear-cut case of an ethnic cleansing operation, regarded under international law today as a crime against humanity.”[11]

Other Jewish historians such as Avi Shlaim estimated that the number of Palestinians who have been uprooted from their homes is close to 730,000.[12] Israeli historian Benny Morris conceives the point that the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinians was cruel and atrocious.[13]

Palestinian Christians also suffered greatly during that time. Many of those Christians were separated from their families.[14] Jewish historian Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht estimated that there were about 900,000 Arabs in Palestine; when the dust was settled, 750,000 of those Arabs fled or were largely expelled from the land.

The late Israeli military leader and politician Moshe Dayan noted that

“We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish state here…Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages…There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.”[15]

Vladimer (also known as Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, a founding father of right-wing Zionism, introduced the concept of “The Iron Wall” in 1923, which had for its premise that

“all colonization must continue in defiance of the weill of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the local population can never break through. To the hackneyed reproach that this point of view is unethical, I answer, ‘absolutely untrue.’ This is our ethic. There is no other ethic.”[16]

After the war, several branches of Zionism began to blossom in new waves such as socialism and communism. A brand new Zionist movement that had its roots during the 1967 Six-Day War was Messianic Zionism, which espoused views such as Arabs are certainly the Amalekites who must be expunged.[17]

We see the same sort of ethnic cleansing through the years. Even the IDF confessed during the Gaza invasion that

“the lives of Palestinians, let’s say, is something very, very less important than the lives of our soldiers…You see people more or less running their life routine, taking a walk, stuff like that. Definitely not terrorists.

“I hear from other crews that they fired at people there. Tried to kill them… People didn’t seem to be too upset about taking human lives…We were allowed to do anything we wanted. Who’s to tell us not to?…You are allowed to do anything you want…for no reason other than it’s cool.”[18]

Put simply, the Zionists were ethnically slaughtering the Palestinians in 1948, and that Talmudic process has never died out over the past few decades. So it is good news to see that Israeli teens are waking up from their “dogmatic slumber.”

1. [1] “Israeli teens tell Netanyahu they won’t serve in IDF, slam occupation of Palestine,” Russia Today, December 29, 2017.
2. [2] Ibid.
3. [3] See for example Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: One World, 2007), 180-183.
4. [4] Quoted in John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 96.
5. [5] Zeev Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 338.
6. [6] Ibid., 336.
7. [7] Ibid.
8. [8] See for example Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: One World Publications, 2006). Israeli historian Benny Morris has made similar arguments; see Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah, 5, 14.
9. [9] oberta Strauss Feuerlicht, The Fate of the Jews: A People Torn Between Israeli Power and Jewish Ethics (New York: Times Books, 1983), 243.
10. [10] Quoted in Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code, xxiii.
11. [11] Pappe, Ethnic Cleansing, xiii.
12. [12] Avi Shalim, Israel and Palestine (New York: Verso, 2009), 54.
13. [13] Ibid., 55.
14. [14] Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code, xxiv.
15. [15] Feuerlicht, 245.
16. [16] Quoted in Baylis Thomas, The Dark Side of Zionism, 17.
17. [17] Stephen Sizer, Christian Zionism, 18.
18. [18] Quoted in Norman Finkelstein, This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion (New York: OR Books, 2010), 88.

Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor

Jonas E. Alexis has degrees in mathematics and philosophy. He studied education at the graduate level. His main interests include U.S. foreign policy, the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the history of ideas. He is the author of the book, Kevin MacDonald’s Metaphysical Failure: A Philosophical, Historical, and Moral Critique of Evolutionary Psychology, Sociobiology, and Identity Politics. He teaches mathematics in South Korea.

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