Distorted Quotes to Defend Distorted Maps

Henry Clifford branches out from distorted maps (above) to distorted quotes

Henry Clifford, the man who brought distorted Israel/Palestine maps to the Metro-North Railroad stations in New York State, is now defending those maps with bogus and distorted Zionist quotes. Writing in the Journal News, he claims that Zionist leaders wrote or said the following:

* False Quote: David Ben-Gurion: ‘We will expel the Arabs and take their place.” The original text of this letter shows that Ben-Gurion actually wrote the opposite: “We do not want to and we do not have to expel the Arabs and take their place. . . ”

* Distorted Quote: Theodor Herzl: “We shall have to spirit the penniless population (the Arabs) across the border . . . while denying it any employment in our country.”

As Efraim Karsh has ably shown, this is a truncated quote. The more complete quote is:

When we occupy the land, we shall bring immediate benefits to the state that receives us. We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly … It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion. This is another area in which we shall set the entire world a wonderful example … Should there be many such immovable owners in individual areas [who would not sell their property to us], we shall simply leave them there and develop our commerce in the direction of other areas which belong to us.

Thus, Herzl spoke of trying to move out poor inhabitants by finding them employment in other countries, and he spoke of the benefits that he believed locals would receive. He also indicated that those who could not be convinced to sell their land could simply stay.

* Out of Context: Ben-Gurion: “I favor partition because when we become a strong power we will abolish partition and spread throughout Palestine.” In fact, in the meeting in question Ben-Gurion stressed that expansion would occur via “mutual understanding and Jewish-Arab agreement.” The relevant part of the actual protocol reads:

Mr. Ben-Gurion: The starting point for a solution of the question of the Arabs in the Jewish State is, in his view, the need to prepare the ground for an Arab-Jewish agreement; he supports [the establishment of] the Jewish State [on a small part of Palestine], not because he is satisfied with part of the country, but on the basis of the assumption that after we constitute a large force following the establishment of the state – we will cancel the partition [of the country between Jews and Arabs] and we will expand throughout the Land of Israel.

Mr. Shapira [a JAE member]: By force as well?

Mr. Ben-Gurion: [No]. Through mutual understanding and Jewish-Arab agreement. So long as we are weak and few the Arabs have neither the need nor the interest to conclude an alliance with us… And since the state is only a stage in the realization of Zionism and it must prepare the ground for our expansion throughout the whole country through Jewish-Arab agreement – we are obliged to run the state in such a way that will win us the friendship of the Arabs both within and outside the state. (from Efraim Karsh, “Falsifying the Record: Benny Morris, David Ben-Gurion and the ’Transfer’ Idea,” Israel Affairs, V4, No. 2, Winter 1997, p52-53)

* Distorted/Truncated Quote: Moshe Dayan: “There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” In the full quote, Dayan makes clear that the much of the land were purchased, not that the Palestinians were dispossessed:

We came to a region of land that was inhabited by Arabs, and we set up a Jewish state. In a considerable number of places, we purchased the land from Arabs and set up Jewish villages where there had once been Arab villages. You don’t even know the names [of the previous Arab villages] and I don’t blame you, because those geography books aren’t around anymore. Not only the books, the villages aren’t around. Nahalal was established in the place of Mahalul, and Gvat was established in the place of Jibta, Sarid in the place of Huneifis and Kfar Yehoshua in the place of Tel Shaman. There isn’t any place that was established in an area where there had not at one time been an Arab settlement.

* Questionable, Unverified Source: Clifford claims that Ben-Gurion wrote: “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That it natural, we have taken their country.” In fact, according to Nahum Goldmann, Ben-Gurion allegedly said this to him. Goldmann was an adversary of Ben-Gurion, and he came out with this alleged quote, verbatim, in his book published two decades later (The Jewish Paradox, 1978), five years after Ben-Gurion died. There was no recording of the quote, and Ben-Gurion was no longer around to dispute it.

And, finally, here’s a real Ben-Gurion quote that Clifford chose not to share:

In our state there will be non-Jews as well — and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without any exception; that is: the state will be their state as well. …The attitude of the Jewish State to its Arab citizens will be an important factor—though not the only one—in building good neighbourly relations with the Arab States. If the Arab citizen will feel at home in our state, and if his status will not be the least different from that of the Jew, and perhaps better than the status of the Arab in an Arab state, and if the state will help him in a truthful and dedicated way to reach the economic, social, and cultural level of the Jewish community, then Arab distrust will accordingly subside and a bridge to a Semitic, Jewish-Arab alliance, will be built… (Ba-Ma’Araha Vol IV, Part 2, pp. 260, 265, quoted in Fabricating Israeli History, Efraim Karsh, p.67)