Democratic Palestine : 40 (ص 20)
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- Democratic Palestine : 40 (ص 20)
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The Concept of «Transfer»
by Maher Salameh
Transfer - a euphemism for the
expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian
Arabs from Palestine, has been an
inherent component of Zionist ideol-
ogy from its inception until today.
Since the two primary goals of the
Zionist movement have been the
ingathering of world Jewry and the
creation of an exclusive Jewish state in
Palestine, transfer emerged not as a
fleeting phenomenon, nor as an aber-
ration in the history of the Zionist
movement, but rather as a contrived
and calculated scheme. Transfer is the
embodiment of the national
chauvinism which claims that Jews are
a superior race and calls for the estab-
lishment of a «pure» Jewish state,
necessitating the expulsion of the
Palestinian Arabs from the country in
which they have been living for
thousands of years.
The transfer of the Palestinians to
Other countries has preoccupied the
thinking of Zionist leaders since the
inception of the Zionist movement, as
evidenced in their writings and
strategy. Theodore Herzl, the founding
father of political Zionism who was
influenced by Cecil Rhodes and the
ethos of the age of European col-
Onialism throughout the developing
world, warned of the danger of col-
onizing Palestine along with its indi-
genous inhabitants. His plan was to
«spirit the penniless population across
the border by procuring employment
for it in the transit countries, while
denying it employment in our
own»(Theodore Herzl, The Complete
Diaries, Vol. 1, p. 88).
Yosef Weitz, director of the
Jewish National Fund, the organ of the
World Zionist Organization with the
task of land acquisition in Palestine,
expressed the sentiment of his fellow
Zionists very clearly: «Among ourse-
Ives it must be clear that there is no
room for both peoples in this small
country...The only solution is the Land
of Israel(Greater Israel), or at least the
Western Land of Israel(Palestine),
without Arabs. There is no room for
compromise on this point!...and there
is no way besides transferring the
Arabs from here to the neighboring
countries, to transfer them all...And
20
in Zionism
only with such a transfer will the coun-
try be able to absorb millions of our
brothers»(Ilan Halevi, A History of the
Jews, p. 186).
Ironically, the Zionist movement
introduced the slogan «Palestine, a
country without a people, for a people
without a country,» and tried concur-
rently to expel the Palestinian Arabs
from their country. Israel Zangwill, the
author of this infamous phrase and one
of Herzl’s close aids, declared in a
speech in New York city in 1904 that
the Palestinians must be expelled from
Palestine «through the power of the
sword»(quoted in Haaretz, September
23, 1988).
Zangwill was not alone in promul-
gating this myth. Chaim Weizmann,
who served as the head of the World
Zionist Organization and was Israel’s
first president, also claimed that «there
is a country without a people, and on
the other hand, there exists the Jewish
people who have no country»(Halevi,
op. cit., p. 170).
Even after the expulsion of
750,000 Palestinians from their country
in the aftermath of the creation of the
state of Israel, the American-born
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir still
had the chutzpah to perpetuate this
myth.
The Zionist logic justifies such
concepts in the same manner in which
Israel’s former Prime Minister
Menachem Begin described the mas-
sacre of over 250 Palestinians in Deir
Yasin in 1948 as justified, and as a vic-
tory! Jewish terrorist organizations,
whose two most well-known leaders
are the present and former prime
ministers of the Zionist state, carried
out such acts specifically for the pur-
pose of terrorizing the Palestinian
Arabs in order to expedite their mass
expulsion.
In defending Jewish terrorism,
Yitzhak Shamir said, «Neither Jewish
ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqual-
ify terrorism...Terrorism is for us a
part of the political battle being con-
ducted under the present cir-
cumstances and it has a great part to
play»(quoted in Al Hamishmar,
December 24, 1987).
Begin and _ Shamir’s _ terrorist
organizations, the Irgun and LEHI(the
Stern Gang), along with other Jewish
terrorist groups were responsible for
destroying over 400 Palestinian villages
in their drive for an exclusively Jewish
state, «as Jewish as England is
English»(Chaim Weizmann, Trial and
Error, p. 244). This frenzy, along with
countless massacres, culminated in the
uprooting and disenfranchisement of
half the Palestinian population, in what
is referred to by Palestinians as the
nakbeh, or catastrophe. It was the
Palestinian nakbeh which facilitated
aliyah, i.e., Jewish immigration to
Palestine and the creation of Israel.
Jewish terrorism and «transfer»
The exodus of half the Palestinian
nation in 1948 represents a watershed
in Palestinian history and in the history
of the Palestinian-Zionist struggle.
Israeli apologists have always main-
tained that the root cause of this
exodus was the call by Arab leaders
for the Palestinians to leave their coun-
try. Although Palestinian historians,
including Walid Khalidi, — Elias
Shoufani and others have dispelled
these fabrications as part of a con-
certed Israeli disinformation campaign,
new Israeli primary sources have
recently become _ available which
irrevocably dispel the long-standing
Official Israeli version. Michael
Palumbo’s The Palestinian Catastrophe,
Tom Segev’s 1949: The First Israelis,
Simha Flapan’s The Birth of Israel and
Benny Morris’ The Birth of the Pales-
tinian Refugee Problem 1947-49 are
among the more recent books written
by Israelis and Americans who have
utilized the archival material recently
made available by the Israel State Arc-
hives and the Central Zionist Archives.
Despite the shortcomings of these
works, the apologetic tone of some of
them and the careful selection of the
information made available by the
Israeli government, they have,
nevertheless, shed some light on the
crucial period during the years 1947-48
when the Zionist movement was clear-
ing Palestine of as many Palestinians as
possible in preparation for the estab-
lishment of their exclusive state.
Of particular significance is the role
the Haganah, which’ was _ the
mainstream paramilitary Zionist group
and the military arm of the Mapai
party(which became the Labor party in
Democratic Palestine, July-August 1990 - هو جزء من
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