The HyperTexts
The Curious Blindness of Abba Eban
by Michael R. Burch,
an editor and publisher of Holocaust and Nakba poetry
Contents
Abba Eban Quotes
Abba Eban Epigrams
Abba Eban Biographical Material
Abba Eban, the Self-Named "Father" of the Modern State of Israel
Abba Eban's Pro-Israel Apologetics Analyzed and Discussed
Introduction
"I discovered [in 1946] that across the world the Zionist movement
was maintaining what it called "propaganda" offices. There was even a special
department of Zionist propaganda." ― Abba Eban, from his
autobiography, "Personal Witness"
Please don't get me wrong, or let my title mislead you. In certain ways I admire Abba Eban, who was
perhaps the most eloquent of all Israel's apologists (an impressive achievement
considering their superfluity), and I certainly believe we can learn
valuable lessons from him. But one of the things we can and must learn in these
perilous times is the danger of the
blind leading the gullible into the ditch.
My observations and arguments are based on the words of the great man himself, having been
extracted from Abba Eban's autobiography: Personal Witness, Israel Through My Own
Eyes. Nothing is damning to Israel's current irrational
rationalizations
than the words of its leading lights and founding fathers: Eban being high, if
not foremost, among them. Only if Israel regains
(or, more properly, gains) its moral center and compass, can Israel avoid
wrecking itself like another "unsinkable" Titanic on a
gargantuan iceberg
of racism, brutality, hubris, hypocrisy and injustice. But before we explore
what went wrong, and what must be done to repair the damage, I will provide some background information on Abba Eban, who
was truly unique among 20th century diplomats.
Before I proceed, please allow me to point out that I do not mean the terms
Zionism and Zionist to be taken negatively. I don't see Zionism as being
inherently negative, in theory. If Jews had found some place to occupy
other than Palestine, most Palestinians would not have such highly negative
opinions of Zionism (although the other people the Jews displaced most certainly
would). It was not the dream of a Jewish homeland that led to the Nakba
("Catastrophe") of the Palestinians, per se. It was the implementation
of the dream of Zionism that led to the Nakba, which in turn led to 9-11 and the
subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Please keep this in mind as we discuss
who Abba Eban was, and why he became such a pivotal, monumental figure: a
Juggernaut, if you will, of Zionist rhetoric and apologetics. His dream was not
Dr. Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality for all children, but a dream
of a homeland for the children of one race, which became a living nightmare for
the children of all other races (since the resulting foment in the Middle East
now threatens the entire world.)
"In the ensuing years, many Israelis became so hypnotized by the heroic
dignity of the resistance fighters that they tended to avoid selective
discussion of their assignments, not all of which were useful or well guided. As
recently as 1988 we find Prime Minister Yitshak Shamir, who had been a Lechi
resistance leader, speaking with candor of his own support of the assassination
of Lord Moyne." ― Abba Eban [Lord Moyne was a
high-ranking British minister who had expressed the opinion that Arabs would not
willingly surrender their land and self-government to Jews, and that it was an
"impracticable dream" for Jews to return to Palestine in large numbers without
horrific violence and bloodshed. He was, of course, absolutely correct.]
Bio
Abba Eban was born Aubrey Solomon Meir to a Jewish family in South Africa in 1915.
His father died of cancer when he was a toddler, and his family relocated to
England where his mother eventually married Isaac Eban, a London doctor. In England
young Aubrey Eban received a superior education which
included Queens' College, Cambridge, where he earned a "triple first,"
specializing in Classics
and Oriental Languages.
Towards the end of his undergraduate studies, Eban concentrated on Arabic
literature and history, of which he said, "I came to be impressed by its large visions and exuberant resources ... the
Islamic Arabic poetry and the histories, geographies, and literary and
philosophical treatises of the caliphate periods were intellectually and
emotionally stirring ... My deep immersion in that legacy made it impossible
for me thereafter to adopt the routine Zionist stereotype that regarded
Arabs with intellectual condescension."
Eban became active in politics as a young man, editing an ideological journal
called The Young Zionist. In 1939, he worked briefly for Chaim
Weizmann (later Israel's first Prime Minister) at the World
Zionist Organization headquarters in London.
During World War II, Eban served British intelligence in Egypt and Palestine, where
he rose to the rank of major and became the first director of the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, a
training ground for spies and diplomats. While in Egypt
he met and married Suzy Ambache, the daughter of a Jewish engineer employed by the
Suez Canal Company.
When the war ended, Eban remained in Palestine, joining the Jewish Agency
headed by David
Ben-Gurion. There Eban became one of the founding fathers of the modern state of Israel
as it emerged, phoenix-like, from the ashes of history in 1948. For the next
sixty years, Eban would be one of Israel's most influential politicians.
Initially posted as a liaison to the United Nations, he lobbied for the
partition of Palestine and for Israel's admission to the UN, with remarkable
success. Eban was fluent in ten languages and could be a spellbinding speaker.
His linguistic and oratorical abilities, combined with his knowledge and
understanding of history, made him an influential presence in a conference of
nations that was generally skeptical of Israel. Having won Israel member status
at the UN, Eban then served as
Israel's
first ambassador to the UN and simultaneously as Israel's
ambassador to the United States. In 1952, he was elected Vice President of the
UN General Assembly. After returning home, he was elected to the
Knesset (the Israeli parliament) in 1959 and served successively as Minister without Portfolio, Minister
of Education and Culture, Deputy Prime Minister (to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol) and Foreign Minister.
He was also president of the prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science from 1959 to
1966.
At the end of his life, Eban suffered from Alzheimer's disease. When Israel acknowledged his contributions
in 2001 by awarding him its highest
honour, the Israel Prize, his wife received it on his behalf.
Upon his death in 2002, Eban was called a "diplomatic giant"
who had "dominated
the first decade of Israeli diplomacy" by BBC News. Binyamin Netanyahu eulogized him
as the "founding father of Israeli diplomacy" who had "added an intellectual
lustre to Zionism and established the foreign service of a fledgling state."
Abba Eban's powers of persuasion helped Israel become a nation. Without his
ability to influence the United Nations and the United States, the state of
Israel might not exist today.
"Churchill embarked on a long process of sulky indignation [after the
assassination of Lord Moyne by Jewish terrorists] that lasted throughout all the
remaining part of the war [WWII], thus aggravating the unfavorable situation of
Israel in the international system." ― Abba
Eban [Winston Churchill had told Abba Eden, "Our Zionist cause is going well.
Moyne is now on our side." just two days prior to Lord Moyne's assassination.]
"Churchill promised [Chaim] Weizmann, in what was almost a ceremonial
oath-taking, that he would "see Zionism through after the end of hostilities.
Unfortunately, he had not taken effective steps to see himself through." ― Abba
Eban [Churchill, who was a self-avowed Zionist, lost the 1945 election.]
Abba Eban's Claim to be the Father of the Modern State of Israel
In 1947, Eban succeeded in attaining UN approval for the
partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab regions (Resolution 181). He then changed his first name to the Hebrew word Abba, which means "Father",
in effect nominating himself as the father of the modern nation of
Israel!
"Nothing else so much threatened Anglo-U.S. relations as Palestine." ― Abba Eban
Accolades
Conor Cruise O"Brien called him "the
most brilliant diplomat of the second half of the 20th century." Never one
for false humility or to be daunted
by flattery, Eban rejoined, "Who was so brilliant
in the first half?"
He was also renowned
for his oratorical talents. Henry Kissinger said, "I have never
encountered anyone who matched his command of the English language. Sentences
poured forth in mellifluous constructions complicated enough to test the
listener’s intelligence and simultaneously leave him transfixed by the speaker’s
virtuosity."
One one occasion the Irgun retaliated by taking two young British officers,
innocent of any anti-Jewish action, one of them indeed being Jewish, and hanging
them and leaving their bodies booby-trapped. This horrifying action, for which
[future Prime Minister of Israel] Menachem Begin took personal responsibility
..." ― Abba Eban [What other "democracy" has been
headed by self-avowed terrorists and mass murders like Menachem Begin, Ariel
Sharon and Yitshak Rabin?]
Political Views
Eban was considered a
"dove" and he deemed it vital for Israel to return captured territories in
exchange for peace with Israel's Palestinian and other Arab neighbors. As Israel's Foreign Minister,
he played an important role in the shaping of UN Resolution 242 in 1967. That
resolution, which was adopted unanimously by the UN Security Council, calls for
Israel to return occupied territories in exchange for peace, and it requires a
just resolution of the Palestinian refugee crisis. But of course Israel has
never complied with this resolution. In his autobiography, Eban
repeatedly discussed the pressing need for Israel to recognize and respect
the human rights of Palestinians. Unfortunately, to this day Israel has
repeatedly ignored and violated the human rights of Palestinians. (If you doubt
me, please investigate what great humanitarians like Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson
Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Jimmy Carter and Albert Einstein have said and written on
the subject. I have created an index of their observations, which you can access
by clicking here.)
I reflected that a man [Chaim Weizmann] who in 1917 to 1920 had persuaded
the world's governments that it would be in their interest and cause no trouble
for them to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine must be capable of
persuading anybody of anything. ― Abba Eban
Abba Eban's Role in Zionism and History
As Abba Eban states in the Acknowledgments of his autobiography, he was a witness
of and a participant
in the events which led to the creation of the state of Israel. He admits "some responsibility" for transmitting the "emotions
and calculations" of Israel's founders to his readers. My main purpose here is to ask what
those founders, including Eban himself, would have made of Israel's current state
of affairs, and how this state of affairs relates to the 9-11 attacks and
subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Eban begins his book by admitting that the Zionist idea was "ninety percent fantasy and
ten percent reality." But what exactly was this "Zionist idea" and if it was so
loopy, why did Eban become its main apologist?
Let's be honest. Without turning Jews into demons or angels, let's
confront the bald truth. The "Zionist idea" was that, after nearly 2,000 years of
not having lived in Palestine except in marginal numbers, Jews would suddenly "return" and take over,
usurping the rights of the people who lived there in vastly larger numbers: the
Palestinians.
My father is American and I'm an American citizen who lives in the United States. If Norwegians suddenly claimed
that their distant ancestors had
been with Leif Ericsson when he established a North American colony, and they
announced to the world that they were planning to "return" and repossess my land and property because Thor had
"given" it to their forefathers, should I dutifully hand them my keys,
pack up my belongings and walk meekly away, leaving my family homeless?
Of course not!
My mother is English. If a group of Italians claimed to be descended from Romans
who had invaded and conquered England in the remote past, and they announced to
the world that
Jupiter now wanted them to possess and rule England, should my English family meekly accede to their demands?
Of course not!
Was the "Zionist idea" in any way just, righteous or reasonable? According to many (but not
all) Jews, yes. According to many (but not all) Christians, yes. According to
virtually everyone else, hell no!
So who is right? Was Abba Eban right simply because he was a wonderful,
charismatic orator? Hitler was a wonderful, charismatic orator who convinced millions of
Germans that it was "the will of God" for them to rule over other, "inferior"
people, but today all sane people agree that Hitler was nuttier than a fruitcake.
Here's what Eban said himself: "In order to seize the ears and the
imagination of the world, Zionism has always found it necessary to employ a
Utopian rhetoric. This is a natural condition of new communities established in
an atmosphere of revolutionary passion." That's what Hitler, Lenin and Fidel
Castro would have said. But shouldn't a true democracy be based on honest
ideals, which can be stated and discussed honestly? In reality, the
Zionists had an anti-democratic goal (minority rule of Palestine by Jews), but
they had to convince the democratic Western powers that they too were democrats.
Hitler and the Nazis pretended to be democrats, but once they were in power,
they treated minorities like dirt. Unfortunately, once the Jews were running the
show in Palestine, they treated the majority like dirt, and that
majority included multitudes of women and children.
Because the Palestinians had a clear majority of the population, the Zionists
soon came to the conclusion that they would have to evict large numbers of
Palestinians, and keep them evicted, if they were going to have a "democracy."
This would be like American Hispanics deciding to evict most of the Caucasians
from the United States, in order to establish a Hispanic "democracy."
I was late for an appointment with Suzy in the King David Hotel, where I was
due to have a haircut. On this occasion I found unpunctuality to have a
life-saving consequence, and I have been recommending it ever since. As I came
down the Bethlehem Road toward the hotel I heard a vast explosion. By the time
that I got near the King David I could see a flaming mass of dust and ruins. The
Irgun [commanded by future Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin] had blown up
the hotel that was the headquarters of the British military and civil
administrations."― Abba Eban [Albert Einstein wrote a
letter to the New York Times in which he called Menachem Begin the preeminent
terrorist in the Middle East and warned about dire consequences if he came to
power. The King David Hotel bombing left 91 people dead and 46 wounded, none of
them being the "real architects" of the policy that had limited Jewish
immigration, according to Eban. Jimmy Carter would later point out the "sea
change" in Israeli policy that occurred when Begin became prime minister,
confirming Einstein's prediction.]
The Lesser Injustice
Abba Eban intuitively and intellectually understood the terrible dilemma of
Zionism: if Jews insisted on establishing superior rights to Arabs, this would
mean establishing inferior rights for Arabs and dehumanizing them, just as Nazis
had dehumanized Jews. Eban also understood that Zionism was inherently
anti-democratic, saying,
"To deny the Zionist claim would have been to
affirm that Arabs must be free and sovereign everywhere [since they had an
overwhelming
majority of the population] and the Jews nowhere, not even in the land that past history and
contemporary law had designed as their abode. But this robust defense [his
defense is hardly "robust"] of
basic Zionist claims did not mean that I was oblivious of a moral dilemma
...
For me a turning point in the moral history of Zionism had come with Weizmann's
remark in a majestic speech to a [British] Royal Commission in which he declared
that the fulfillment of the Zionist purpose would be the 'the lesser injustice.'
Injustice, because the Palestinian Arabs, were it not for the Balfour
Declaration and the League of Nations, could have counted on eventual
independence [like every other British colony] either as a separate state or in
an Arab context acceptable to them ... If they had submitted to Zionism with
docility they would have been the first people in history to have voluntarily
renounced their majority status [thus becoming the willing serfs of a 'superior
race' of foreign invaders].
When Zionists speak of having a Jewish state which is also "democracy," they're
speaking out of both sides of their mouths. A Jewish state is obviously a racist
state, by definition. A democratic state cannot be racist, by definition
("demos" means "people" and a democracy is a government of all its people, not
just those of some favored class). If Chinese Americans overthrow the U.S.
government and create a Chinese state, it will not be a "democracy." How can a
Jewish state be a democracy, when the majority of the population is non-Jewish
and when its laws are Jim Crow laws and its courts are kangaroo courts?
Abba Eban's starring role in the history of Israel is that of an eloquent
apologist for racism, apartheid and injustice. Like many Jews, he was a fervent
democrat when Jewish minority rights were at stake in other countries,
like the United States, but he was a fervent racist when Palestinian
majority rights were at sake in Israel. More than one expert on the
region has noted that when Jews leave Israel for the United States, they become
liberal democrats, but when they leave the United States for Israel they become
something else entirely.
"[Chaim Weizmann] would develop an intimate friendship with president
Truman, to whom no other Zionist friendships were acceptable." ― Abba Eban [With Churchill out of office, the hopes
of Zionism now fell on Harry Truman. But Truman, his senior advisors and the
State Department all realized that partitioning Palestine would result in war.
So Truman had decided to veto the partitioning of Palestine. But an
ex-business-partner of Truman persuaded him to meet with Weizmann, who turned on
the charm and persuaded Truman to change his mind. Thus the charisma of Weizmann
and the hubris of Truman combined like sparks and oil to set the Middle East
aflame. What right did Truman have, to make a decision affecting millions of
people, simply because he "hit it off" with Weizmann? Truman was otherwise so
opposed to Zionism that he refused to even discuss it with any Jew other than
Weizmann.]
Religious and Ethical Conundrums: Judging the Tree by Its Fruit
Are Jews and Christians in the "right" as so many of them seem to believe, simply because they worship the "correct" God?
Must the rest of the world bow to their wishes and demands, however hubristic?
Jesus Christ spoke of judging a tree by its fruit, so if the "fruit" of Judaism and
Christianity is the suffering and premature deaths (i.e., murders) of multitudes
of completely innocent Palestinian women and children, what should we conclude
about the religions? What can we
conclude about the various Catholic Crusades and Inquisitions, except that they were the result
of religion gone mad? But then what about this modern Crusade and Inquisition
which allows Israel to
condemn Palestinian babies at birth for being born into the "wrong" race and the
"wrong" creed?
When Jews and Christians insist that God "gave" the land of Palestine and
infinitely superior rights to Jews, by authorizing Moses, Joshua, Caleb and King
David to murder and enslave women and children (yes, the Bible clearly says such
things, time and time again, throughout the Old Testament), they forfeit any
claim to believe in a God who is loving, compassionate, wise and just. What sort
of God orders the murders of defenseless women and children (Numbers 31), or
commands that girls who have been raped must be stoned to death or sold to their
rapists so they can be raped "legally" the rest of their lives (Deuteronomy 22)?
These are not isolated verses: there are hundreds of such verses in the Bible,
which is awash with vile commandments which supposedly issued from God. But if
Jesus was correct, how can a good God produce such horrific fruit? I agree with
Mark Twain, who said it wasn't the Bible verses he didn't understand that
bothered him, but the the ones he understood all too well. How can modern human
beings with functional hearts and brains believe that God "gave" Palestine to
the Jews, when according to the Bible they clearly took it via ethnic cleansing
and genocide, the "slaying of everything that breathes"?
And what sort of world must we live in, if someone can "return" after 2,000
years of living somewhere else, saying some bloodthirsty, unjust God wants him
to have all the land, then starts abusing and killing anyone who refuses to "believe"
what he believes? What sort of world must we live in, if babies
can be discriminated against from birth, because one person
says, "I worship the proper God, and your parents worship the improper God!"
Won't we necessarily live in a world where events like 9-11 occur, and
lead to wars like those in Afghanistan and Iraq?
"In expressing contempt for partition [British Foreign Secretary Ernest]
Bevin observed that it would mean the subordination of 400,000 Arabs to Jewish
rule."― Abba Eban {In his curious blindness Abba
Eban continually failed to "understand" Bevin, but of course Bevin was right to
insist that in a democratic solution the majority should determine the system of
governance. As was its wont, the Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin, planned to
assassinate Bevin, but the plot was foiled by the British M15. Bevin would
accuse the Zionists of plotting against Great Britain and himself personally.
From what Eban wrote in his autobiography, and from what I have read elsewhere,
it seems Bevin was probably justified. For anyone to express the opinion that
the Arab majority was entitled to its self-evident right of self-determination,
seemed to raise the hackles of the "democratic" Zionists.]
The Curious Blindness of Abba Eban
The curious of blindness of Abba Eban and men like him led to 9-11 and the
subsequent wars. This curious blindness begins with what I call the "Chosen Few
Sin-drome." The "China Syndrome" was a movie about the meltdown of a nuclear
reactor. The "Chosen Few Sin-drome" is the meltdown of the nucleus of the human
family. Albert Einstein, the great Jewish scientist, intellectual and
humanitarian, called nationalism the "infantile disease" of the human race,
pointing out that human beings are essentially identical (this has been
confirmed by genetics). Einstein was a Zionist, but in a spiritual sense. When
he saw how Jews were treating Palestinians, he was horrified, and said it was
far more important for Jews to be on good terms with their Arab neighbors, than
to have a political state and military power. But men like Chaim Weizmann, David
Ben-Gurion and Abba Eban were intent on founding a political state backed by
massive military power. They were funded by rich "uncles" in other nations
(particularly the United States and Great Britain) and those rich "uncles" also
had great influence in the halls of world power. Perhaps the Zionists created
the nation of Israel for the same reason men scale Mount Everest: for the
challenge. It's hard to say why intelligent men go willingly to war. Once a man
has dedicated himself to an important proposition, it may be difficult or
impossible for him to back down, even when he realizes that innocents must
suffer the consequences of his actions. Did Alexander the Great, or Napoleon, or
Hitler ever stop to consider the consequences of their actions to multitudes of
women and children? Did Abba Eban ever stop to reflect and consider what the
consequences of his eloquent flourishes of language might be, for future
generations of children all around the globe?
Perhaps the most curious thing about the blindness of Abba Eden was that he and
other Israeli apologists used the Jewish Shoah ("Catastrophe") to excuse the
Palestinian Nakba ("Catastrophe"). But if what the Germans did to the Jews was
wrong, then clearly what the Jews did to the Palestinians was also wrong.
When Nazis showed up on the doorsteps
of Jews, claiming to be the "chosen few" and demanding that the Jews
forfeit their
houses and thus become homeless and destitute, according to the Jews, the Nazis were demons. But when Jews did
exactly the same things to Palestinians, there was only a slight Jewish twinge of
conscience, only a slightly befuddling "moral dilemma," as Abba Eban
put it. Now, today, any chance of world peace is being held hostage by this endlessly
strange claim of Zionism: that anti-Semitism practiced against Jews is
a terrible evil (which it undoubtedly is), but that anti-Semitism (most
Palestinians and Arabs are also Semites) if practiced by Jews is hunky-dory.
How can I prefer Jewish babies to Palestinian babies, if I am not a racist?
Abba Eban at least understood the problem, whereas many other Zionists ignored
it completely. But what Eban did, essentially, is act like the bank clerk who steals
money from the till, knowing robbery is wrong but intending to "make it right"
someday. Before long, the clerk has stolen far more money than he can ever hope
to repay, so he lives in a la-la land in which his good intentions somehow
justify his crimes. But of course the road to hell is famously paved with good
intentions, and in this case the road to 9-11 was paved with the "good
intentions" of men like Abba Eban.
Here where I live in Tennessee, we have a saying: "The proof is in
the pudding." If you show me a nation called Israel that discriminates
against babies because they were "born wrong," I will show you a nation based on
racism and injustice. According to the American Declaration of Independence, any
government that denies the God-given rights of human beings to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness is an illegal government, and the people who are denied
their rights have the right and duty to rise up against that government and
destroy it, just as the American founding fathers rose up and destroyed the
colonial appendages of the feudalistic British monarchy.
Americans ought to study the Declaration of Independence. What it says, in
effect, is that when the British monarchy denied Americans equal rights and
representative government, the Americans had the right and the duty to start
killing Englishmen. And of course that's exactly what the great heroes of the
American Revolution did: they started killing Englishmen, and they didn't stop
until they finally had equal rights and representative government.
So if the governments of Israel and the United States collude to deny
Palestinians equal rights, what should we expect Muslim men to do, play
tiddlywinks or fiddle while their Rome burns to the ground?
It was a deadly game of cat and mouse that Abba Eban chose to play with human
rights, when he used his golden tongue to persuade Americans to favor the
minority rights of Jews over the majority rights of Palestinians. If Americans
had not been so gullible, and so easily deceived into betraying their highest
ideals, 9-11 and two horrendous wars could have been avoided. (Of course living
up to our American ideals would also have meant paying the going price for oil,
rather than using the CIA and our military to "secure" oil fields; "securing"
oil fields never worked and only drove the price of oil sky-high.)
"The idea of a family of nations united in a covenant of law and peace is,
in its origins, a Hebrew idea."― Abba Eban [I
find this idea hard to credit, although one might find a basis for such an idea
in the end-times visions of the Hebrew prophets. But even so, Israel as a modern
nation has at best paid lip-service to equal rights, democracy and
self-determination. The only rights Israel acknowledges are those of Jews to be
more equal than any other race on the planet.]
The Ludicrous Enterprise and the Reasonable Solution
If you showed up on my doorstep claiming that Thor, Jupiter or Jesus Christ "gave"
you my house, of course I would slam
the door shut in your face. And that entirely reasonable reaction was
the response of Arabs to the news
that "God" had "given" their land and homes to foreign invaders.
If the word of God was not given as the reason for Jews "owning" land they
hadn't seen for millennia, the next best argument was the history of the Jews in
ancient Palestine. But what nation on earth bases current-day ownership of
anything on what happened thousands of years ago? Neither argument is capable of
holding an ounce of water.
Being the main apologist for such a ludicrous enterprise makes Abba Eban's role
in history a curious one, to say the least. If there is any hope for Zionists
today, it
lies in the idea that possession is nine-tenths of the law. No one can deny that
what Zionists did to Palestinians was morally wrong. But no one can deny the
fact that millions of Jews now live in Palestine. Rather than pretending
that what happened was justifiable, we need to face the bald
facts: what happened was morally wrong, but it is in the best interests of
Israeli Jews, Palestinians and other Arabs to achieve peace rather than engage
in incessant hostilities. Unless millions of Palestinians choose to leave
Palestine, or millions of Jews choose to leave Palestine, the reality is that
millions of Jews and millions of Palestinians must agree to co-exist peacefully.
And that means Israel must establish fair, non-racist laws and courts, since
only Israel has the authority and power to do that today.
While Abba Eban was a man capable of deep thought and reflection,
where justice was concerned he exhibited a curious blindness. This curious
blindness seems common to many Jews and Christians. According to them, Jews are
entitled to "special privileges" to which Palestinians are not entitled, because
of the "history" of the Jews. But why should I be deprived of my rights because
of someone else's history? Neither the religious defense or the historical
defense make any sense, whatsoever.
But, if only for the sake of argument, let's consider what Abba Eban had to say
for himself, and the nation of Israel.
As Eban explains early on in the genesis of his book, the modern state of Israel
was largely the product of the personal charisma of Chaim Weizmann (in much the
same way that Nazi Germany was the product of the personal charisma of Hitler).
Weizmann had a "formidable persuasive talent" which he used to convince
powerful men like
Winston Churchill and Harry Truman to help Jews gain an unfair advantage over
Palestinians. Was this in any way "just" to
the Palestinians who became homeless and destitute as a result? Of course not. But glory to
Jesus and Jehovah, who cares about suffering, starving, dying children, when
celebrities are able to exude charisma?
According to Eban,
Weizmann was "universally acknowledged to be the architect of
this wondrous new turning point in Jewish history," so who the hell should
care about
the rights of Palestinian children? Certainly not Jesus, Jehovah, the Pope,
Billy Graham, or American politicians whose constituents include large numbers
of well-off
Jews and virtually no Muslims. To what can we attribute the creation of the
state of Israel: democracy and justice, or religious hypocrisy and political
expedience?
The question is, of course, rhetorical.
If Judaism and Christianity are true religions, their adherents should be
capable of remorse, and repentance. But how many Jews and Christians are willing
to admit that causing babies and children to suffer and die by depriving their
families of the land and water they need to live, is a terrible sin: a sin
exacerbated when it is committed in the name of God and religion.
Such is the curious blindness of the great man Abba Eban, and of the Popes, Evangelists, Rabbis and Politicians who, despite their
presumably magnificent
religious beliefs,
cannot grasp the altogether obvious: it is wrong for men to steal
the stuff of life from the mouths of utterly innocent women and children. So
what are their beliefs worth, really, if they are so profoundly blind?
This blindness would lead to 9-11 and two
fruitless, unwinnable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And yet the American public
remains clueless, as does the Jewish public. According to them, the
"real problem" is that Muslims hate and despise the "values" of Jews and
Christians. But if those "values" cause us to harm and murder innocent women and
children, how are Muslim men wrong to despise such "values"?
Aye, there's the rub. We can tell a tree by its
fruit. Religions and governments that are fueled by hypocrisy get their
advocates killed, in the end. When we see innocent children suffering and dying
needlessly, we can be sure that bad religion and bad government are to blame.
"The talent of living and working together has never been cited by
historians as a salient Jewish attribute." ― Abba
Eban
Trick or Treat?
According to Abba Eban, Chaim Weizmann's great achievement was the "last and perhaps
the only instance in diplomatic history of persuasion without power." But
didn't Hitler rely on the power of persuasion?
Should we celebrate the fact that one charismatic Jew was able to
persuade the superpowers of his day (Great Britain, France, Russia and the
United States) to allow him to defraud multitudes of Palestinians of their land,
farms and homes? We don't celebrate, but mourn, the fact that Hitler's personal charisma enabled him to
defraud Jews and send them to their doom. We mourn the fact that Hitler was a racist madman.
Should we then, perhaps, consider the possibility that Chaim Weizmann was also a
racist, charismatic
madman? After all, his charismatic histrionics produced the same results
for multitudes of Palestinian children, as Hitler's charismatic histrionics produced
for multitudes of Jewish children.
According to Eban, other people "stood a good chance of being charmed into
unwanted compromise or exhausted by the temper of his [Weizmann's] intense but
controlled emotions."
Is that a good thing, if innocent children suffered and died as a result? Should
we celebrate the fact that Weizmann was able to charismatically persuade Harry
Truman to ignore the dictates of his own conscience, and help create a Jewish
state in Palestine when Truman and his senior advisors knew this would lead to
ever-increasing violence in the region? Should we celebrate the hubris of
Weizmann and the hubris of Truman? Should we celebrate the fact that their
hubris eventually led to 9-11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
The curious blindness of Abba Eban is not limited to his being unable to see the
similarities between Hitler and Weizmann. Eban comments more than once on the
wisdom of Reginald Coupland, who suggested the partitioning of India and Pakistan.
But it was Coupland who stressed the need for a separate Palestinian homeland,
pointing out that the Jews and Palestinians were "totally separate and distinct
peoples who held no ends in common, so that for one of them to rule the whole
country would entail savage repression."
And of course anyone who is willing to be honest today knows that Israeli Jews
rule the Palestinian people with savage repression. But what did Abba Eban ever
do, really, to put an end to this savage repression? When did he ever stand
before the UN and call Israel to account for what it had not done, that it
should have done? When did he ever use his powers of persuasion on behalf of
millions of Palestinians? Never, as far as I can tell, except here and there in
a book he wrote long after the fact.
"Gromyko had become a Zionist hero."― Abba
Eban [While Israel postured itself as a buttress of democracy against communism
during the Cold War, the simple reality was that Israel would always be on the
side of anyone who preferred Jewish rights to Arab rights. Zionist politics does
indeed make for strange bedfellows.]
How Abba Eban Misled Americans, and the World
The quotations below are taken from a very perceptive article on Abba Eban's
speech to the UN Security Council on June 6, 1967. I have been unable to
determine the article's author, but he/she is obviously knowledgeable and rivals
Eban in eloquence:
Some people make history; Abba Eban preferred to invent a skewed version of
history suited to Israel's purposes. After all, he considered himself to be
Israel's "father" and obviously considered it his duty to protect her, whether
she was right or wrong, perhaps erroneously believing that even when she was
horrendously wrong she would eventually reform. But in any case, as Israel’s foreign minister
during
the war of 1967, Eban delivered a speech to the UN Security Council which has
been said to rank "as
the most erudite, sophisticated fraud ever heard by the world body." Eban "stood
history on its head and the non-Arab world was only too willing to embrace his
dissembling and deceit." What he said was carefully contrived to please and
appease Americans, especially those American Jews who behaved like rich,
magnanimous uncles, plowing money into Israel and rejoicing whenever the Israeli
military crushed an Arab opponent. Unfortunately Americans lapped up Eban's
fabrications, but it was hardly the milk of human kindness.
Eban was "an easy man to like, respect and believe, because he was cultured and
thoroughly Western.
Compared to the brutal gangsterism of Begin, Sharon,
Shamir, Olmert, and Netanyahu, Eban stands like a colossus of conspicuous
decency. Unfortunately, the comparison is purely relative. For all of his
dovishness and diplomatic acumen Eban was still a Zionist, and therefore an
apologist for [Israel's] aggression."
Eban’s "dissembling
speech" to the UN Security Council, was a "masterpiece of rhetorical
fraud that established the twin myths of Israeli vulnerability and Arab
provocation." The speech was so convincing that "its message is still invoked
today to rationalize the Occupation [of the West Bank] and justify the creeping theft"
of Palestinian land. Even today,
Eban’s "looking-glass reality" is continually given new life by Israel's
apoligists who "dutifully
reinforce the founding myths of the war." To this day, people who point out the errors and
"tendentious
arguments" in Eban’s speech are likely to remain either unheard or ignored. But Eban’s speech must be
re-examined and held up to close scrutiny, because "a polite liar is still a
liar, and the fruit of this particular lie is the genocide" of the Palestinian
people.
Eban insisted that
Israel’s existence was threatened. He said: “Two days ago … an army, greater than any force
ever assembled in history in Sinai, had massed against Israel’s southern
frontier. Egypt had dismissed the United Nations forces which symbolized the
international interest in the maintenance of peace in our region. Nasser had
provocatively brought five infantry divisions and two armoured divisions up to
our very gates; 80,000 men and 900 tanks were poised to move … As time went on, there was no doubt that our margin of
general security was becoming smaller and smaller. Thus, on the morning of 5
June, when Egyptian forces engaged us by air and land, bombarding the villages
of Kissufim, Nahal-Oz and Ein Hashelosha we knew that our limit of safety had
been reached, and perhaps passed. In accordance with its inherent right of self-defence
as formulated in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, Israel responded
defensively in full strength. Never in the history of nations has armed force
been used in a more righteous or compelling cause.”
But Eban’s doom-and-gloom propaganda was later refuted by
Israel’s generals and politicians:
Mordechai Bentov, an Israeli cabinet minister: “This story about
the danger of extermination has been a complete invention and has been blown up
a posteriori [after the fact] to justify the annexation of new Arab territories.” (Le
Monde, June 3, 1972)
Menachem Begin, a future Prime Minister of Israel: “In June 1967 we
again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches did
not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with
ourselves. We decided to attack him.” (New York Times, Aug. 21, 1982)
General Matityahu Peled: “To pretend that the Egyptian
forces massed on our frontiers were in a position to threaten the existence of
Israel constitutes an insult not only to the intelligence of anyone capable of
analyzing this sort of situation, but above all an insult to the Zahal [Israeli
army].” (Ha’aretz, March 19, 1972)
Was Israel’s use of force the most righteous and compelling in
history, or was Eban engaging in "sanctimonious hyperbole" for a specific
purpose: to pull wool over the eyes of gullible sheep? After all, Eban
completely failed to mention
Israel’s repeated border violations against Syria, which precipitated the
conflict because Egypt and Syria had signed a mutual defense agreement.
In reality,
Israel provoked the war by seizing Syrian land in the demilitarized zone
between the two countries. There were also armed clashes over valuable water
sources within Syria's borders. From 1948 to 1967, Syria reported more than 1,000
armed incursions. In a 1976 interview, Moshe Dayan admitted that Israel
provoked most of the conflicts:
“We would send a tractor to plow some [disputed] area ...
and we knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t
shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the
Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later
the air force also, and that’s how it was ... I made a mistake in allowing the
conquest of the Golan Heights. As defense minister I should have stopped it
because the Syrians were not threatening us at the time.”
Therefore, Nasser’s "provocative" build-up of forces on the
Sinai had far less to do with aggression against Israel than with Egypt coming to
Syria’s aid if Syria was attacked by Israel. Moreover, Nasser had
sent 100,000 of his best troops to fight in Yemen’s civil war and was in no
position to start hostilities.
Nasser did evict the UN peacekeeping force, and he did
close the Red Sea port of Eilat, but Eban blew these actions out of proportion and repeatedly invoked
Eilat as justification for invasion: “There was in this wanton act a quality of
malice. For surely the closing of the Strait of Tiran gave no benefit whatever
to Egypt except the perverse joy of inflicting injury on others. It was an
anarchic act, because it showed a total disregard for the law of nations.” But
what about Israel's disregard for the law of nations, which precludes one nation
from continually violating another nation's borders, stealing its land, blowing
up its waterworks, etc.?
Eban insisted that the “central point remains the need to secure
an authentic intellectual recognition by our neighbours of Israel’s deep roots
in the Middle Eastern reality. There is an intellectual tragedy in the failure
of Arab leaders to come to grips, however reluctantly, with the depth and
authenticity of Israel’s roots in the life, the history, the spiritual
experience and the culture of the Middle East … There are not two categories of
States. The United Arab Republic, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon
― not one of
these has a single ounce or milligram of statehood which does not adhere in
equal measures to Israel itself.”
But
Eban fails to mention the Palestinians, who were the clear majority of the
population of Palestine and therefore the rightful determiners of the nature of
the state to be established there.
Israel’s equivalence with other Middle Eastern states is merely asserted, not
proven, and sounds like Shakespeare's lady who protested too much. If any other
group of people had tried to reclaim land their forefathers had left 2,000 years
before, they would have been met with looks of scorn and derision. Eban's
"robust defense" of Israel's claim to the land was, in reality, a con job. The
only legitimate claim Israel has to any of the land is that millions of Jews now
live within the borders of Israel. How they got there probably doesn't really
matter. But what does matter, a lot, is that the Palestinians still vastly
outnumber the Jews and have been denied basic human rights for more than sixty
years, and counting.
Less than two weeks after he addressed the Security
Council, Eban gave a much more accurate account of Israel’s contempt for
international law: “If the General Assembly were to vote by 121 votes to 1 in
favor of Israel returning to the armistice lines [pre-1967 borders]
Israel would refuse to comply with the decision.” (New York Times, June 19, 1967.)
In other words, when the UN agreed with Israel, Israel's policies and actions
were legitimized and vindicated. When the UN failed to agree with Israel, the UN
could go to hell. Therefore, the UN was merely a tool in the superhero Abba
Eban's utility belt.
Today the world cannot deny the physical presence of millions of Jews in
Palestine. But at the same time we cannot live in a fantasy world where
everything Israel does is somehow "justified" by irrational rhetoric and bald
lies, however genteelly and eloquently delivered. At some point, Israel and the
United States must admit the truth: what happened to the Palestinians was wrong
and cannot be "justified." Today Jewish babies are born with vastly superior
rights to Palestinian babies, who are born outcasts and pariahs on their own
native soil. This is an abomination. It is past time for Israel to become a
civilized nation, to abandon Jim Crow laws and kangaroo courts, and either make
the Palestinians fully equal citizens of a single state or allow them to become
citizens of a separate, fully independent Palestinian state. Whatever land
Israeli Jews keep, they will have taken at a terrible price, for which
multitudes of Palestinians, other Arabs and Muslims, and now Americans have paid
dearly. But why should my children and grandchildren suffer and die, paying some
future terrible price, for the sake of a nation called Israel, when it refuses
to treat Palestinian babies as human beings?
It is past time to understand why Abba Eban said what he said. His goal was to
father a new nation called Israel. To accomplish this, he felt he had to
dissemble and lie, and in so doing he brought the world to the brink of ruin. If
we want peace, it's past time to call his bluff, and Israel's bluff, and
confront and deal with the Truth. Yes, a nation called Israel exists. Yes,
millions of Jews live there. No, not everything Israel says and does can be
justified, and the price of believing fabrications and outright lies is more
events like 9-11 and more wars like the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"The Arabs were committed to the doctrine that the end of the British
Mandate could be followed by nothing except the establishment of an Arab
Palestine. The idea that their rights and claims were equal to that of the
Zionist establishment was an affront."― Abba Eban [But
why? The Arabs had a clear majority of the population. The Zionists claimed to
believe in democracy. Who but a racist would object to the majority determining
the nature and form of government? Why did the Zionists continually insist that
they were superior in every way to the Arabs?]
Abba Eban Quotations
"History teaches us that men and nations only behave wisely
once they have exhausted all other alternatives."
I think Abba Eban is correct, and especially so when it comes to Israel and its
incredible follies. It seems Israel will only embrace real democracy if the rest
of the world demands it.
"Tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss."
Once again, I agree with Eban. What Israel has continually missed, resulting in
so much human tragedy, is the "prime directive" of the Hebrew prophets: the
pressing need for compassion and social justice in human relationships.
"The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of
what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be."
Yes, but what about the duties of Israeli society towards its minorities (which
actually constitute the majority, since there have always been more Palestinians
than Israeli Jews)?
"In order to seize the ears and the imagination of the world, Zionism has always
found it necessary to employ a Utopian rhetoric. This is a natural condition of
new communities established in an atmosphere of revolutionary passion."
Perhaps, but it is up to every civilized nation, once it has secured its
borders, to establish fair (i.e., nonracist) laws and courts. Israel has never
done this and instead has a system of Jim Crow laws and kangaroo courts designed
to keep Palestinians in chains. What sort of modern "revolution" has as its main
goal a feudal system based on a "superior" race dominating an "inferior" race?
"In our times, if a novelist were to describe the structure and environment
of our mission, the critics would accuse him of taking his fantasies beyond the
point of credibility."― Abba Eban
The Biltmore Resolution and the Excesses of Zionism
This section contains information provided by
Ami Isseroff.
A 1939 British White Paper had closed Jewish immigration to Palestine and
limited Jewish land purchases. Effectively, the White Paper had rescinded the Balfour
Declaration and reneged on the British commitment to a Jewish national home in
Palestine. [While this undoubtedly seemed "unfair" to Jews who wanted to seize
control of Palestine, the British were aware that the majority of the population
strongly opposed Zionism and might choose to side with the Axis powers if they
believed the Allies were going to allow their land to be taken from under their
feet.] This White Paper brought to question and intense dispute and refutation the
methods of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the President of the Zionist Organization who had been
"the architect of the
Zionist policy of cooperation with the British, and who had been instrumental in
obtaining the Balfour declaration." Millions of Jews were trapped in
Nazi-controlled Europe, and the Zionists were
desperately and completely understandably seeking ways to get them out. Toward
this end, Zionist leaders met at the Biltmore
Hotel in New York on May 6-11, 1942. They included Chaim Weizmann, David Ben-Gurion
and Nahum Goldman. The conference adopted a series of resolutions calling for:
"the fulfillment of the original purpose of the Balfour
Declaration and the Mandate "
"to found there [Palestine] a Jewish Commonwealth"
"unalterable rejection of the White Paper of May 1939"
"that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth
integrated in the structure of the new democratic world"
While it is completely understandable that the Zionists wanted to help the Jews
trapped in Europe, they chose a solution that soon would have them emulating the
Nazis: denying the rights of people of other races, pretending
for the most part that they didn't really exist, and herding them into terrible
ghettoes and refugee and concentration camps. In trying to avoid one Holocaust, the Zionists created the genesis of another: the Nakba
of the Palestinians.
Abba Eban said himself,
"In our times, if a novelist were to describe the structure and environment of
our mission, the critics would accuse him of taking his fantasies beyond the
point of credibility." He pointed out that "the Biltmore resolution implied that Zionism
would govern the entire 'commonwealth' in spite of the inconvenient fact that
the Jews were a minority of the population." So it makes no sense to accuse
Palestinians and other Arabs of reacting irrationally to the news that the
Zionists were coming. Everyone "in the know" on both sides understood the
reality. If the Zionists were successful, they would control all Palestine and
multitudes of Palestinians would become their slaves or serfs.
The primary goal of Zionism was incompatible with its profession to be part of
"the new democratic world." Zionism had become a colonial enterprise based on
the premise that an oligarchy of Jews would rule over as large a territory as
possible, even though that territory was primarily Arab in population and
culture. The Zionists were simply copying the methods of
Great Britain, which used superior firepower to take over "less sophisticated"
countries like India, then have their way with the natives. But at the same time
Great Britain was divesting itself of its colonies, and the civilized world was
moving increasingly towards self-determination and democracy for indigenous
people everywhere around the globe.
And the British "had
always stated that it was their intention to make Palestine a Jewish National
Home, and NOT a 'commonwealth' or independent state as Weizmann had sometimes
stated informally." Though Lord Balfour himself and Winston Churchill "had both made
statements privately receptive of the idea of a Jewish state, neither had said
so in any public statement, and neither had any other British official." And up
to this point "Zionist
officials had been careful to steer away from a concrete demand for a state
except when it was offered in the Peel Commission Report." [In other words,
Great Britain had been in favor of establishing a region in Palestine where Jews
could live together, but had said nothing officially about Jews ruling over
Arabs anywhere in Palestine.]
Beginning with the Churchill White Paper of 1922, the British had "emphasized that a Jewish national home would be
formed in Palestine, that is, in a part of Palestine." But the Biltmore resolution now declared that all
Palestine would be a Jewish "commonwealth." A fundamental shift had occurred,
and the Arab world would understand that shift and its implications.
The Biltmore Program was "a very important turning point in the
development of the Zionist movement, which increasingly saw itself as opposed to
Britain rather than a collaborator of Britain. It officially set the goal of an
independent Jewish state as the goal of the Zionist movement, and it determined
that henceforth Ben-Gurion and Zionist executive in Palestine, rather than
Weizmann, would lead the Zionist movement and determine policy toward the
British. [The shift of power to Ben-Gurion is important, as he would adopt a
strategy of relying on force rather than diplomacy, and of "saying one thing and
doing another," which soon became par for the course, to the befuddlement of the
American public.]
The announcement of the intention to form a state was not new, since
the Zionists had accepted the Peel Commission Report which had called for
creation of two states in Palestine. However, it was the first time that Zionist
and non-Zionists alike had called for establishment of a Jewish state.
There was, likewise no intention to remove the Arabs of
Palestine implied in this declaration. It was not part of any sinister
international Jewish conspiracy as some assert, but rather a desperate attempt
to save the trapped Jews of Europe. In 1942, there were still about five or six
million Jews living in Western Europe, and it was still possible to believe that
immigration of some of these Jews to Palestine would create the majority needed
for the Jewish commonwealth as well as saving them from Nazi persecution." The
resolutions included a conciliatory paragraph:
"...The Jewish people in its own work of national redemption
welcomes the economic, agricultural and national development of the Arab peoples
and states. The Conference reaffirms the stand previously adopted at Congresses
of the World Zionist Organization, expressing the readiness and the desire of
the Jewish people for full cooperation with their Arab neighbours."
["Cooperation" seems to have meant "capitulation" on the part of Arabs.]
The Biltmore resolutions were "designed to appeal to American Jews, who
had supported Jewish statehood since the Peel plan of 1937, and they did appeal
to American Jews." Weizmann was "at least willing to live with the program, which
in fact had been drafted by his close aid, Meir Weisgal, and which he supported
in a speech in December 1942. He viewed it however as a maximal and theoretical
demand, not as a program for action." Soon after the Biltmore meetings, Ben-Gurion
"tried to unseat Weizmann as president of the Zionist organization, arguing that
he was too conciliatory and pro-British, but his arguments were rejected as
baseless by American Zionists." However, Ben-Gurion would eventually replace
Weizmann as the primary leader of the Zionists, and he would be followed in turn
by even harder and fiercer men dedicated to the proposition of wresting all the
land of Palestine from the Palestinians. Men like Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon
and Benjamin Netanyahu would increasingly allow Jewish robber barons to steal
and plunder land and water resources from increasingly homeless and destitute
Palestinians, while the Muslim world watched on in horror.
The Arabs "in any case believed the
worst as far as Zionist intentions were concerned, and did not need the Biltmore
programme to confirm their suspicions. In the last resort Biltmore was not a
policy but a symbol, a slogan, reflecting the radicalization of the
Zionist movement as the result of the war and of the losses suffered by the
Jewish people. It foreshadowed the bitter postwar conflict with the British
government." (Walter Lacquer, A History of Zionism, 2003, pages 548-549).
The Zionist movement could not "control the fate of
European Jewry, nor did it have the armed force to compel the British to keep
the letter and spirit of the mandate and the Balfour declaration. However, the
Biltmore declaration was crucial nonetheless. It planted a flag that united
Zionists around a common cause and made possible the understood common purpose
of the post-war Jewish revolt. It explained the purpose of the Zionist struggle
to the world and it provided the moral backing for that purpose in the framework
of the struggle against Fascism. It made the cause of the Jewish State into a
moral issue that could be recognized (and then denied) by the British Labor
Party and it it made it into a viable public issue that could be brought before
the President of the United States as well as the United Nations when the time
came." But the Biltmore declaration seems to have marked a turning point of
sorts within the Zionist movement, away from democracy and toward autocratic
minority rule of all Palestine by Jews. The "problem" the Arabs posed to Jews
was similar to the "problem" Jews posed to Nazis. But in Germany the Jews were
the decided minority, while in Palestine the Jews were the decided minority.
"Might this [establishing a Jewish state in Palestine] not kindle a
permanent war?" ― Abba Eban [Yes, and it would also
kindle 9-11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well.]
Abba Eban's Comments on Zionism, the "Lesser Injustice"
Abba Eban intuitively and intellectually understood the terrible dilemma of
Zionism: if Jews insisted on establishing superior rights to Arabs, this would
mean establishing inferior rights for Arabs and dehumanizing them, just as Nazis
had dehumanized Jews. Eban also understood that Zionism was inherently
anti-democratic, saying,
"To deny the Zionist claim would have been to
affirm that Arabs must be free and sovereign everywhere [since they had an
overwhelming
majority of the population] and the Jews nowhere
[since they did not have a majority of the population anywhere on the planet], not even in the land that past history and
contemporary law had designed as their abode. But this robust defense [his
defense is hardly "robust"] of
basic Zionist claims did not mean that I was oblivious of a moral dilemma
...
For me a turning point in the moral history of Zionism had come with Weizmann's
remark in a majestic speech to a [British] Royal Commission in which he declared
that the fulfillment of the Zionist purpose would be the 'the lesser injustice.'
Injustice, because the Palestinian Arabs, were it not for the Balfour
Declaration and the League of Nations, could have counted on eventual
independence [like every other British colony] either as a separate state or in
an Arab context acceptable to them ... If they had submitted to Zionism with
docility they would have been the first people in history to have voluntarily
renounced their majority status [thus becoming the willing serfs of a 'superior
race' of foreign invaders].
But that terrible "lesser injustice" would eventually turn into a new Holocaust,
the Nakba ("Catastrophe") of the Palestinians, affecting millions of completely
innocent Muslim women and children.
Eban goes on to say that "not a single government in the world" would have voted
for a society based on the principle of minority rule, and yet that is exactly
what Zionism was "all about," since the Zionists wanted to rule as much of
Palestine as possible (and eventually all Palestine) despite the presence of
vastly more Arabs who had lived there continuously for thirteen centuries.
Eban also points out that among the Jews there was "no public or national
awareness" of what was about to happen to the Palestinians, that the view of the
region he had been transmitted by other Zionists was "preposterously
misleading," and that the "soothing doctrine" that Zionism would be "beneficial"
for Arabs was "total nonsense." In other words, Zionism was anti-democratic and
based on bald lies and pie-in-the-sky fabrications.
Eban calls the idea that anyone would willing barter independence for economic
benefits "a typical colonialist illusion." This colonialist illusion was the
root cause of the Vietnam War: the Vietnamese people did not want French and
American rulers telling them where and how to live on their own land. The same
colonialist illusion led to 9-11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, because a small group of Muslim men decided that if Palestinian women and
children were going to suffer and die at the hands of Jews and Americans, they
would respond in kind. Because Jews and Americans don't want to admit the horror
of what their governments did to millions of innocents, they must fabricate an
"alternate reality" in which they are the victims rather than the oppressors.
Abba Eban was honest enough to admit the moral dilemma, but not objective enough
to see that the Zionists were just as wrong to colonize Palestine as the French
were to colonize Vietnam.
"Some things in Jewish history are too terrible to be believed, but nothing
in Jewish history is too terrible to have happened." ― Abba Eban [The Jewish Shoah was too terrible to be believed, but so is the
Palestinian Nakba. The Shoah is thankfully over. The Nakba unfortunately
continues. The Shoah cannot and does not excuse the Nakba. A man who was beaten
as a child cannot continually beat his own children, or the law must intervene.
The excuses of Zionism are just that: excuses. Every civilized nation is
responsible for establishing fair laws and courts, but the laws of Israel are
Jim Crow laws, and the courts of Israel are kangaroo courts. Israel cannot
insist that the tactics of the Nazis were evil, then use the same tactics
against Palestinian women and children. The civilized nations of the world must
tell Israel to either let the Palestinians go, so that they can have an
independent state of their own, or make them fully equal citizens of a single
democratic state.]
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