Commentary

Book & Author
Ismail Zayid: Palestine — A Stolen Heritage
By Dr Ahmed S. Khan
Chicago, IL

Palestine — A Stolen Heritage by Ismail Ziyad chronicles the history and plight of the people of Palestine. The author narrates the story by connecting an array of themes: The Land and the People, Conflicting Promises, Palestine under British mandate, After World War Two, The Palestinians Evicted, Continuing Aggression, The Arabs Under Israeli Rule, The 1967 War, More Refugees, The Aftermath of the 1967 War, Israeli Expansionism Revealed, Anti Semitism, What Now? Zionism, Superior race, UN resolutions and Israel, Population and Land data. The booklet was published in 1974 by the Middle East Action Committee to narrate the other side of the Palestine story which the media outlets seldom show.

In the introduction, highlighting the objective of the booklet and the background of the author, K. Siddque, observes: “One of the great ironies of this age of mass media is the unavailability of factual reports to the common man. Manipulation of the sources of information and the political orientation of those who control the media makes ‘truth’ a rare commodity indeed. Only a serious researcher can know the subtle but incessant efforts made by interested quarters to place a curtain of falsehood between the people of the Middle East and the people of North America and Europe. This little booklet is presented in the sincere hope and desire to bridge the gap of misinformation between the people of the West, particularly Canada and the US, and the suffering multitudes of the Middle East, specifically Palestine. The author of this booklet has presented a fully documented report on the history of the Palestine problem. The facts published here cannot be challenged or ignored if one is interested in reality and does not wish to live in the fictitious world created by 26 years of unremitting propaganda. If this booklet creates greater understanding of the Palestinian cause and helps dispel some of the fog of misunderstanding between the people of America and the Mid-East, it will have served its purpose. The author, Dr Ismail Zayid, who has taken great pains to achieve objectivity, is a Jordanian university professor who has worked in England and in Canada.” Dr Ismail Ziyad (b. 1933 in the village of Beit Nuba in Palestine) has also authored Zionism the Myth and the Reality (1980).

Reflecting on the bias of the news media, the author states: “News reporters speak of war between Arabs and Israelis, oil stoppages by the Arabs causing economic unrest in the world and a 'tiny Israel' surrounded by hordes of enemies refusing to recognize it or negotiate with it. These reports, however, present one side of the story only; the other side, which they suppress or of which they are themselves ignorant, is that this 'tiny Israel' is a country which came into being by putting an end to the existence of another country, Palestine. Israel is a country that has continued, since its creation, to develop and utilize its military power for territorial expansion at the expense of its neighbors, to flout all universally-accepted principles of international law and to defy and hold in contempt the United Nations, the very organization that created it. Its people, collected from different lands, forcibly displaced the indigenous people, the Palestinians, who have been dispersed into a dozen lands; its land is a land occupied, but not owned nor otherwise rightfully acquired, by its present occupants. This is, in brief, the Palestine `problem.' Fifty-six years ago there was no such 'problem;' there was only Palestine itself and its people forming an integral part of the Arab homeland. Today, in the land of Palestine, a new state has been created. The original inhabitants have been expelled, their country and their lands have been usurped by an alien people. A great deal of falsification of history by the Zionists, through their control of much of the Western World's communications' media, continues to misinform public opinion and condone this injustice. How this has succeeded has been graphically described by William Zukerman in the Jewish Newsletter, December 7, 1958: "To this observer, nothing demonstrates more sharply the terribly uncanny power of modern propaganda to control minds, sway emotions and brutalize people than the Zionist propaganda on the Arab refugees during the last decade. It literally succeeded in turning black into white, a big blatant lie into a truth, a grave social injustice into an act of justice glorified by thousands. It has turned clever people with more than average intelligence into starry-eyed fools, believing every-thing they are told; and has converted kindly and gentle men and women with a strong sense of mercy into callous fanatics, insensible to the suffering of any people except their own. In no other way can this writer explain the many paradoxes which the Arab refugee problem has created in Jewish life."

Expounding on the historical context of Palestine, the author states: "The name of Palestine is derived from the Philistines who lived there since history began. The present people of Palestine, the Palestinians, are the Arabized descendants of the Philistines, the Canaanites and other tribes who inhabited Palestine long before the Israelites first came to Palestine after their exodus from Egypt in the 12th century BC. Professor Maxime Rodinson, of the Sorbonne in Paris and himself Jewish, stresses that ‘the Arab population of Palestine was native in all the senses of the word and their roots in Palestine can be traced back at least forty centuries.’ Thus, the Palestinians' claim to their country is firmly based on long continued possession of the land, the only claim that entitles, by international law, any people to their country. Jewish claims to Palestine, based on long-extinct historical connections, would make complete chaos in our present world, if taken seriously. Another, equally incredible, claim to Palestine, often used by Zionists, is that the Arabs have failed to develop the land to its best advantage, and they are themselves capable of ‘making the desert bloom’ and thus more entitled to it. If this criterion was to be allowed, we would be again back in the infamous Nazi ‘Drang nach Osten’ era, entitling the super race to other people's land.”

Continuing the historical context, in the section titled “Conflicting Promises” the author sheds light on the role of the British in creating Israel: “During the First World War, Palestine like many other countries was part of the Muslim Khilafat based in Turkey. In 1915, Great Britain encouraged the Arabs to join with her against Turkey, promising them independence after the war. In 1916, however, Britain, in complete contradiction with her earlier agreements with the Arabs, made a secret agreement with France and Russia, known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, by which the Allies would split between themselves the Arab countries and part of Turkey. In 1917, in an attempt to keep Communist Russia in the war on the side of the Allies, amongst other reasons, Britain, hoping to use the strong Jewish influence in the Bolshevik party, issued a letter written by Arthur Balfour, the then British Foreign Secretary and addressed to Lord Rothschild stating: ‘His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people…, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.' To refer to the Arabs who constituted, at the time, 92% of the population of Palestine as the non-Jewish communities is not merely preposterous but deliberately fraudulent. This extraordinary and contradictory letter, later dignified by the title ‘Balfour Declaration,’ written by a British Foreign Secretary to an individual British Jew, was later to become the basis of the modern Jewish claim to Palestine. It is clear that this declaration has no shred of legality, under international law, and it is worth pointing out the following facts: 1. In 1917 the Jews constituted 8% of the 700,000 population of Palestine. 2. When the Declaration was made, British troops had not yet set foot on Palestinian soil and Britain did not have any claim, by right or even conquest, to Palestine to be able to give it away to a third party. 3. The famous British historian, Professor Arnold Toynbee, described the British action in issuing this Declaration in these words: ‘We were taking it upon ourselves to give away something that was not ours to give. We were promising rights of some kind in the Palestinian Arabs' country to a third party.’ 4. Arthur Koestler, the well-known Jewish writer, summed up the Balfour Declaration as a document in which ‘one nation promised a second the country of a third.’”

Reflecting on the British Mandate of Palestine, the author observes: “In 1922, Palestine was placed, by the League of Nations, under British Mandate. Despite its assurances to protect Arab rights in Palestine, Britain proceeded, having appointed British Zionist Jews to the top and key positions in the Administration governing Palestine, to enact laws assisting Jewish immigration to Palestine and acquisition of land by Jews. By 1935, subsequent to the rise of Hitler to power in Nazi Germany, the Jews had come to form nearly 30% of the population. The Arabs, dismayed that they were being slowly swamped in their own country by foreign immigrants, rose more than once in revolt against the immigration policy of the British Government. Finally, an all-out rebellion broke out between 1936-1939. The British Government was forced to issue its 1939 ‘White Paper’ limiting Jewish immigration into Palestine.”

Describing the post WWII Palestine, the author states: “Soon after 1945, the USA Government took over, from Britain, the role of guardian of the Zionist movement, which had been conducting a savage campaign of terror against their erstwhile protector, Britain. The Zionists took every action to prevent the settlement of the Jewish survivors of the Nazi horrors in America or elsewhere and, capitalizing on the world's sympathy for the survivors, flooded Palestine with illegal immigrants. President Truman applied pressure on Britain which, feeling war-exhausted, handed back in 1947 her mandate over Palestine to the League of Nations' successor, the United Nations. The US Government took the lead in sponsoring the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine, by partitioning the country. At the time the population of Palestine was estimated at about 2 million. The Jews constituted 34% of the population and owned less than 6% of the land area of Palestine. The devised Partition Scheme, before the UN, remarkably allotted 56% of the land to a Jewish state, 42% to an Arab state and 1% including Jerusalem as an international sector. Not surprisingly, the Arabs refused, while the Jews accepted the scheme. A two-thirds majority vote was required by the General Assembly to pass the resolution, but twice, when the vote was due, a postponement was called. It was obvious that the proponents (USA and USSR) did not have the necessary votes. Frenzied lobbying and pressure by the USA was undertaken. The Liberian delegate, when approached to support the partition, replied that he considered the method of approach as ‘attempted intimidation.’ Later the Liberian and Philippines Governments changed their opposition to a vote of support for the scheme. Sumner Welles affirmed: ‘By direct order of the White House, every form of pressure, direct or indirect, was brought to bear by American officials upon those countries outside the Moslem World, that were known to be either uncertain or opposed to Partition.’ On 29th November 1947, the partition resolution was passed by the General Assembly. James Forrestal, then US Secretary of Defense, wrote: ‘The methods that had been used to bring coercion and duress on other nations in the General Assembly bordered closely on scandal.’”

Expounding on the eviction of Palestinians, the author notes: “As from 29th November 1947, a state of tension had been created between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The British Government announced its plans to withdraw from Palestine on 15th May 1948. The State of Israel had been all but born and it now only remained for the Zionists to make sure that when it came into official being, on 15th May1948, it should be as Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first President, promised in 1921 that ‘Palestine will be as Jewish as England is English.' So, they set to work on the unarmed defenseless Palestinian Arabs to ‘persuade’ them to leave their homes. Jewish terrorist groups such as Irgun Zwei Leumi were brought in when other methods failed. On 9th April 1948, the Irgun Zwei Leumi led by Menachem Beigin, until recently an Israeli Cabinet Minister and at present leader of the Opposition in the Israeli Parliament, attacked the small Arab village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem. An account of this barbaric massacre was given by Jacques de Reynier, the Chief Delegate of the International Red Cross, who was able to reach the village and witness the aftermath of the massacre: ‘Three hundred persons’ he said, ‘were massacred ... without any military reason or provocation of any kind; old men, women, children, newly-born were savagely murdered with grenades and knives by Jewish troops of the Irgun, entirely under the control of their chiefs.’ Dov Joseph, one time Governor of the Israel sector of Jerusalem and later Minister of Justice, called the Deir Yassin massacre ‘deliberate and unprovoked attack.’ Arnold Toynbee described it as comparable to crimes committed against the Jews by Nazis. But Menachem Beigin said, ‘The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yassin.’ Unashamed of their deed and unaffected by world condemnation, the Zionist forces, using loud-speakers, roamed the streets of cities warning Arab inhabitants ‘The Jericho road is still open,’ they told Jerusalem Arabs - ‘Fly from Jerusalem before you are killed, like those in Deir Yassin.’ The objective behind the Deir Yassin massacre was to terrify the Arab civilian population, and force them to flee to secure for the Zionists the land without the people. The plan succeeded and they fled in terror, to save their lives.”

Elaborating further on the eviction of Palestinians, the author notes: “Before May 15th, 1948, while the British Government was still responsible, the Jews had occupied many purely Arab cities like Jaffa and Acre and scores of villages—that were in the territory assigned by the UN Resolution for the Arab State—and evicted more than 300,000 inhabitants from their homes. In an attempt to stem this tide, the neighboring Arab states sent their armies on 15th May 1948 into Palestine. On 15th July 1948 the UN imposed a final truce between Israel and the Arabs, by which time Israel had occupied an even larger part of the territory allotted to the Arab State in Palestine. Despite the truce and in defiance of UN orders and in violation of the final- Armistice Agreement between Israel and Egypt on 24th February 1949, the Israelis, utilizing their military superiority, attacked the Egyptian army and occupied still more territory. This included, for interest, the Arab village of Urn Rashrash, where the port of Eilat on the Gulf of Akaba was later built, which was occupied on 10th March 1949. Yet, years later, the 'right' of free passage to it was to be demanded not only by Israel but, amazingly, by the unknowing misinformed world public opinion. By 1949, Israel had occupied 78% of the land of Palestine and evicted or caused to flee more than 750,000 Palestinian refugees. It is the plight of the Palestinian refugees, who now number 1.5 million, and the fate of the Palestinians, who now number 2.5 million, as a people, which have remained the most pressing problems.”

In the section titled “Continuing Aggression “the author observes: “The State of Israel owes its existence to a resolution of the UN General Assembly. Ironically, however, it has, since its creation, continued to hold in contempt and defy the resolutions and will of this world body. All UN. efforts and resolutions to settle the Palestinian conflict faltered because of Israel's defiant determination not to withdraw to the frontiers assigned to it by the 1947 UN partition resolution or to allow the refugees to return home. Israel's policy was, from the outset, to impose itself by force and to cow the neighboring Arab States by brutal raids and reprisals, killing hundreds of civilians in retaliation for individual infiltrators who crossed the new military border—that separated the Arab villagers from their fields and orchards—to pick the fruit of the trees they themselves planted and to see their homes. These villagers initially went across unarmed, but later, after being attacked, carried personal arms and used them.”

In the section titled “The Arabs Under Israeli Rule” the author states: “Not only did the Israelis refuse to allow the return of the refugees to their homes, but they consummated the tragedy by seizing all their property in one of the greatest acts of plunder in modern history. The confiscation of Arab land was not confined to the holdings of the refugees but extended to the 200,000 Palestinians, who remained in their homes in 1948, by a series of extraordinary laws and regulations of legalized robbery. These included ‘The Land Acquisition Law,’ ‘The Abandoned Areas Ordinance, 1949,’ ‘The Absentee Property Regulations, 1948’ and others. The injustices, to which the Arabs in Israel were subjected, went far beyond the expropriation of their farms and property, and included flagrant infringement upon their basic human rights and civil liberties…The height of this inhumanity is clearly portrayed in the massacre of Kara Qassim+, an Arab village in Israel. On 29th October 1956, 52 villagers, men, women and children, were shot individually at point blank range on returning at the end of the day to the village from their fields, with their cattle or on bicycles and trucks. Their 'crime' was that a curfew was imposed on their village an hour earlier, and was never communicated to them. At the time of shooting the murderous police officers fully knew this fact.”

Reflecting on the 1967 War, the author states: “A day after firm assurances, by USA and USSR to Egypt that Israel in turn will not attack, Israel on 5th June 1967 struck massively in a surprise attack destroying Egyptian and Syrian air forces on the ground. This lightning attack was followed by occupation of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank of Jordan and the Syrian Golan Heights…As in 1948, the war resulted in the displacement of more Palestinians. 350,000 people were forced out by terror, expelled or left from fear. The Security Council and the General Assembly called on Israel on 14th June 1967 and 14th July 1967 to facilitate the return of these refugees. Israel pretended to comply, allowing 14,000 to return—while during the same period evicting 17,000 others—then would not accept any more.”

Discussing the aftermath of the 1967 War, the author observes: “Contrary to Israel's expectations, her massive victory did not whisk the Palestinians out of existence, nor enable her to impose her dictate upon the Arabs. The Palestinians, having waited for 20 years in their miserable refugee camps hoping to move world conscience and trusting in the UN to allow them to return to their homes and restore their legitimate rights in their homeland, found it all in vain. The UN passed resolutions but did not enforce them, when they conflicted with the wishes of Israel and her guardian the US world public opinion was deaf to the Palestinian cries while it was all ears to Zionist propaganda and demands to import 3,000,000 Russian Jews.”

Describing the tragedy of the people of Palestine the author states: “Since the creation of the State of Israel in Palestine, 25 years ago, the Middle East has been a cauldron of simmering conflict interrupted by full-scale wars that threaten the peace of the world. For this reason alone, not to mention principles of right and justice, it is incumbent upon every state and individual to exert the limit of their influence to secure a lasting and just settlement of this conflict. This requires the restoration, to the Arab States, of their territory and to the Palestinian people their legitimate and national rights in their country. It is Israel's denial of these rights that form the fundamental cause of this whole conflict. Bertrand Russell, in his last words before he died, spoke of these rights in his message to the International Conference of Parliamentarians held in February 1970: ‘The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was 'given' by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.’”

The author concludes the narrative by observing: “Here lies the crux of the matter, the national rights of the Palestinians in their country. It is for these rights that the Palestinians have paid the heavy price in blood and tears during their long struggle, since 1917. Without the restoration of these usurped just rights, it is certain that the struggle will continue and there will be no peace without justice in the Middle East.”
Palestine — A Stolen Heritage by Ismail Zayid chronicles the history of Palestine and plight of its people — from ancient to contemporary times —based on facts and figures. It is essential reading for all interested in discovering the other side of Palestine history which the media outlets seldom present.

[( Dr Ahmed S. Khan - dr.a.s.khan@ieee.org - is a Fulbright Specialist Scholar, 2017-2021. Professor Khan has 35 years of experience in Higher Education as professor of Electrical Engineering. He is the author of many academic papers, technical and non-technical books, and a series of books on Science, Technology & Society (STS); his most recent books are Mashriq-o-Mugrib Ki Mumtaz Shaksiaat ( Prominent Personalities of the East and the West), and Nanotechnology: Ethical and Social Implications.)]