16 aug 2019
The documents were collected from Israel State Archives and taken to locked vaults in the Ministry of Defense. Journalist Hagar Shezaf, from the newspaper Haaretz, discovered this concealment effort when she visited state archives to re-examine documents that had been revealed before and had been cited by some of Israel’s most prominent historians.
She was told that the documents were removed from the archives and she then tracked them down to the Director of Security of The Defense Establishment. This is an institution that is officially charged with protecting Israel’s nuclear secrets, and not with hiding facts that deal with the establishment of the state of Israel.
Here are a few quotes from the hidden documents: “In the village of Safsaf, 52 men were bound in ropes, dangled into a pit where they were shot. In a raid on the village of Safsaf, we blew up 20 houses with everything inside; with people sleeping there, I imagine so. Within 48 hours, I laid these villages flat. Ben-Gurion determined that we must destroy them so they will not have anywhere to go back to. Jewish hostile acts were the main reason for the population’s immigration.”
Security officials that Shezaf interviewed admitted that the documents were hidden in order to prevent them from hurting Israel’s reputation and to cast doubt on the work of historians who cited these documents. One of the historians who has researched and written on the Nakba is Ilan Pappe, who joins us now. He recently wrote an article for the Electronic Intifada titled Israel’s Latest Attempt to Erase Palestine. Ilan is professor at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. His most recent book is titled Israel. Thanks for joining us today, Ilan.
ILAN PAPPE: It’s a pleasure to be on the program.
GREG WILPERT: So in your piece for the Electronic Intifada, you explained that this act of concealment is part of an effort to erase Palestine, not just the history of 1948. What do you mean by that?
ILAN PAPPE: I mean that there is a concerted effort by the American administration and by the present Israeli political elite to depoliticize the Palestine issue, to turn it into an issue of economy, of business, maybe of welfare, but not an issue anymore of national rights, of justice, and of self-determination. And one of the ways in which you can depoliticize a national movement is by destroying its narrative, by undermining its narrative.
And one of the main success that had been achieved in the last 10 or 20 years was the fact that Israeli historians using Israeli documents have substantiated major chapters in the Palestinian narrative, and that this helped to legitimize this narrative and to create the basis for the moral demands of the Palestinians, whether it is for the right of return or for self-determination, or for the decolonization of Palestine.
GREG WILPERT: Now, Palestinian historians rarely have access to Israeli state archives because they need a permit to enter Israel first. Yehiel Horev of the Ministry of Defense specifically spoke about undermining historians, mainly Israeli historians such as yourself, to prevent them from reporting what happened in 1948. What has been the reaction from Israel’s academia to the Ministry of Defense’s effort to undermine historical research?
ILAN PAPPE: Oh, we have a very domiciled academia in Israel nowadays. There was one or two voices of dissent or even anger, but more or less, if one can talk about the academia in general terms, it accepts this position by the Israeli politicians or the officials who are responsible for declassification and censorship.
You have to remember we’re talking about 2019 when the Israeli voices of criticism have long disappeared, and both the academia and the media are very loyal to the national narrative and to the basic explanation that are given by politicians and official that these kinds of revelations can undermine Israel’s international image and can be abused if they are used by the wrong historians. So I think that one, to not expect any outcry from within against this act, as I think most academics would accept it as part of the national interest or as part of defending the national security of the Jewish state.
GREG WILPERT: Now, despite the effort to deny the history and to conceal it, isn’t it true that contemporary Israelis are quite aware of the story of the Nakba? Organizations such as Akevot, Zochrot, and more are working to expose these facts and publish them in Hebrew, and historians such as yourself are providing proof. However, pro-Israel groups outside of Israel seem to be ignorant or feign ignorance and pretend that the Nakba was a myth. How do you explain this contradiction?
ILAN PAPPE: First of all, I would slightly disagree with you about the level of knowledge or even interest among the Israeli Jewish society about 1948. I think it is true to say that many more Israelis today know about the Nakba than before, but I still think that graduates of the Israeli educational system, namely people who are now in high school, would finish high school without knowing anything about what happened in 1948 and would still be taught the fabricated version of events. Yes, among liberals, there is a greater knowledge of 1948, and that’s very encouraging.
So I don’t think there is that much of a difference between the level of knowledge among pro-Israeli groups outside of Israel and among the general public inside Israel. Therefore, I think this is a very important struggle; the struggle against erasure, the struggle against the denial. Because too many people don’t know, or too many people choose not to know.
Luckily, despite this closure of documents, we have enough documents to prove beyond any doubt that the events in 1948 constitute an act of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, which is a crime against humanity. There is enough evidence already gathered, enough documents already scanned and digitized.
We need to collect them properly; we need to catalog them properly. But together with the oral history project that many young Palestinian scholars are engaged with these days, I think that at least this from the perspective of scholarly evidence and the ability to tell the story as it really happened, from this perspective, the Israelis have missed the train. It’s too late to create this kind of reality where you won’t be able to prove beyond doubt the crimes committed in 1948 and the magnitude of the ethnic cleansing operation that Israel perpetrated against the Palestinian people in 1948.
GREG WILPERT: Well, that brings me into another question. I already asked you about the reaction within the Israeli academia, but what about the reaction internationally, from other historians around the world? Have you received support in this effort to uncover it, and it has there been outrage about the reaction or about the actions of the Israeli state with regard to these documents?
ILAN PAPPE: I wish the reaction in the world would have been stronger and more vociferous. I think this is closely associated with the question of the BDS, the campaign of cultural and academic boycott against Israel. This is another proof for the fact that the Israeli academia is not a place where freedom of expression is being respected and much more than that, this is a place that is complacent in the face of attempts for a culturicide and the erasure of collective memory and evidence of the crimes committed in 1948.
It’s not that easy to get the academia around the world to take bold actions such as collective decisions by academic societies, whether it is the associations of the historians around the world that should really take a firm position on this. But not only on this, because this particular episode is just a symptom of the overall campaign of Israel throughout the years to not only erase the Palestine and the Palestinians physically, but also to wipe them out or expunge them from historical memory and from history.
And the Palestinians deserve far more active support and moral support from academics around the world. Until now, too many of them have been either indifferent or too silent about this particular connection between a collective memory, history and the actual existence of people in their homeland.
GREG WILPERT: Okay. Well, we’re going to leave it there for now. I was speaking to Ilan Pappe, professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter. Thanks again, Ilan, for having joined us today.
ILAN PAPPE: Thank you very much. Thank you.
GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.
She was told that the documents were removed from the archives and she then tracked them down to the Director of Security of The Defense Establishment. This is an institution that is officially charged with protecting Israel’s nuclear secrets, and not with hiding facts that deal with the establishment of the state of Israel.
Here are a few quotes from the hidden documents: “In the village of Safsaf, 52 men were bound in ropes, dangled into a pit where they were shot. In a raid on the village of Safsaf, we blew up 20 houses with everything inside; with people sleeping there, I imagine so. Within 48 hours, I laid these villages flat. Ben-Gurion determined that we must destroy them so they will not have anywhere to go back to. Jewish hostile acts were the main reason for the population’s immigration.”
Security officials that Shezaf interviewed admitted that the documents were hidden in order to prevent them from hurting Israel’s reputation and to cast doubt on the work of historians who cited these documents. One of the historians who has researched and written on the Nakba is Ilan Pappe, who joins us now. He recently wrote an article for the Electronic Intifada titled Israel’s Latest Attempt to Erase Palestine. Ilan is professor at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. His most recent book is titled Israel. Thanks for joining us today, Ilan.
ILAN PAPPE: It’s a pleasure to be on the program.
GREG WILPERT: So in your piece for the Electronic Intifada, you explained that this act of concealment is part of an effort to erase Palestine, not just the history of 1948. What do you mean by that?
ILAN PAPPE: I mean that there is a concerted effort by the American administration and by the present Israeli political elite to depoliticize the Palestine issue, to turn it into an issue of economy, of business, maybe of welfare, but not an issue anymore of national rights, of justice, and of self-determination. And one of the ways in which you can depoliticize a national movement is by destroying its narrative, by undermining its narrative.
And one of the main success that had been achieved in the last 10 or 20 years was the fact that Israeli historians using Israeli documents have substantiated major chapters in the Palestinian narrative, and that this helped to legitimize this narrative and to create the basis for the moral demands of the Palestinians, whether it is for the right of return or for self-determination, or for the decolonization of Palestine.
GREG WILPERT: Now, Palestinian historians rarely have access to Israeli state archives because they need a permit to enter Israel first. Yehiel Horev of the Ministry of Defense specifically spoke about undermining historians, mainly Israeli historians such as yourself, to prevent them from reporting what happened in 1948. What has been the reaction from Israel’s academia to the Ministry of Defense’s effort to undermine historical research?
ILAN PAPPE: Oh, we have a very domiciled academia in Israel nowadays. There was one or two voices of dissent or even anger, but more or less, if one can talk about the academia in general terms, it accepts this position by the Israeli politicians or the officials who are responsible for declassification and censorship.
You have to remember we’re talking about 2019 when the Israeli voices of criticism have long disappeared, and both the academia and the media are very loyal to the national narrative and to the basic explanation that are given by politicians and official that these kinds of revelations can undermine Israel’s international image and can be abused if they are used by the wrong historians. So I think that one, to not expect any outcry from within against this act, as I think most academics would accept it as part of the national interest or as part of defending the national security of the Jewish state.
GREG WILPERT: Now, despite the effort to deny the history and to conceal it, isn’t it true that contemporary Israelis are quite aware of the story of the Nakba? Organizations such as Akevot, Zochrot, and more are working to expose these facts and publish them in Hebrew, and historians such as yourself are providing proof. However, pro-Israel groups outside of Israel seem to be ignorant or feign ignorance and pretend that the Nakba was a myth. How do you explain this contradiction?
ILAN PAPPE: First of all, I would slightly disagree with you about the level of knowledge or even interest among the Israeli Jewish society about 1948. I think it is true to say that many more Israelis today know about the Nakba than before, but I still think that graduates of the Israeli educational system, namely people who are now in high school, would finish high school without knowing anything about what happened in 1948 and would still be taught the fabricated version of events. Yes, among liberals, there is a greater knowledge of 1948, and that’s very encouraging.
So I don’t think there is that much of a difference between the level of knowledge among pro-Israeli groups outside of Israel and among the general public inside Israel. Therefore, I think this is a very important struggle; the struggle against erasure, the struggle against the denial. Because too many people don’t know, or too many people choose not to know.
Luckily, despite this closure of documents, we have enough documents to prove beyond any doubt that the events in 1948 constitute an act of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people, which is a crime against humanity. There is enough evidence already gathered, enough documents already scanned and digitized.
We need to collect them properly; we need to catalog them properly. But together with the oral history project that many young Palestinian scholars are engaged with these days, I think that at least this from the perspective of scholarly evidence and the ability to tell the story as it really happened, from this perspective, the Israelis have missed the train. It’s too late to create this kind of reality where you won’t be able to prove beyond doubt the crimes committed in 1948 and the magnitude of the ethnic cleansing operation that Israel perpetrated against the Palestinian people in 1948.
GREG WILPERT: Well, that brings me into another question. I already asked you about the reaction within the Israeli academia, but what about the reaction internationally, from other historians around the world? Have you received support in this effort to uncover it, and it has there been outrage about the reaction or about the actions of the Israeli state with regard to these documents?
ILAN PAPPE: I wish the reaction in the world would have been stronger and more vociferous. I think this is closely associated with the question of the BDS, the campaign of cultural and academic boycott against Israel. This is another proof for the fact that the Israeli academia is not a place where freedom of expression is being respected and much more than that, this is a place that is complacent in the face of attempts for a culturicide and the erasure of collective memory and evidence of the crimes committed in 1948.
It’s not that easy to get the academia around the world to take bold actions such as collective decisions by academic societies, whether it is the associations of the historians around the world that should really take a firm position on this. But not only on this, because this particular episode is just a symptom of the overall campaign of Israel throughout the years to not only erase the Palestine and the Palestinians physically, but also to wipe them out or expunge them from historical memory and from history.
And the Palestinians deserve far more active support and moral support from academics around the world. Until now, too many of them have been either indifferent or too silent about this particular connection between a collective memory, history and the actual existence of people in their homeland.
GREG WILPERT: Okay. Well, we’re going to leave it there for now. I was speaking to Ilan Pappe, professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter. Thanks again, Ilan, for having joined us today.
ILAN PAPPE: Thank you very much. Thank you.
GREG WILPERT: And thank you for joining The Real News Network.
1 aug 2019
An investigative piece published in Haaretz in early July uncovers measures taken by Israeli security forces to bury the history of their war crimes against Palestinians. In 1987, headed by Yehiel Horev, the Israeli military department Malmab (a Hebrew acronym for “Director of Security for the Defence Establishment”) began removing ‘sensitive’ documents from public archives.
The department’s official aim is to remove sensitive information about Israel’s nuclear programme from public archives, but it has emerged that Malmab has also removed hundreds of documents relating to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba, that had previously been declassified.
Unveiled Nakba Massacres
During the Nakba, 800,000 Palestinian people were forcefully evacuated from their homes and became refugees. The Israeli government’s official account of these events maintains that the Palestinian people chose to emigrate, encouraged by Arab politicians and leaders. Malmab has been removing any documents that counter this official narrative from public archives, deeming them a ‘security threat’.
Haaretz found that Malmab has removed accounts of IOF generals about the massacres of civilians and the demolition of villages, as well as evidence of the expulsion of Bedouin communities during Israel’s early years of statehood.
One example of a document that has been removed from public archives is a series of interviews conducted in the early 2000s with former Israeli military figures by the Yitzhak Rabin Center. Haaretz compares the versions of these interviews that are now publically available with the originals. They find large sections to be missing. This missing segment from an interview that historian Boaz Lev Tov conducted with Maj. Gen. Elad Peled, is particularly shocking:
Peled: “Look, let me tell you something even less nice and cruel, about the big raid in Sasa [Palestinian village in Upper Galilee]. The goal was actually to deter them, to tell them, ‘Dear friends, the Palmach [the Haganah “shock troops”] can reach every place, you are not immune.’ That was the heart of the Arab settlement. But what did we do? My platoon blew up 20 homes with everything that was there.”
Lev Tov: “While people were sleeping there?”
Peled: “I suppose so. What happened there, we came, we entered the village, planted a bomb next to every house, and afterward Homesh blew on a trumpet, because we didn’t have radios, and that was the signal [for our forces] to leave. We’re running in reverse, the sappers stay, they pull, it’s all primitive. They light the fuse or pull the detonator and all those houses are gone.
Consequences of Military Operations
Another document removed by Malmab is a 1948 Israeli military intelligence paper titled ‘the emigration of the Arabs of Palestine’, written by an officer of Shia, the precursor to Shin Bet.
The lengthy document intricately describes the ethnic cleansing of 219 villages and four cities. It lists the six principle reasons for Palestinians fleeing their homes:
(1) “Direct Jewish acts of hostility against Arab places of settlement.”
(2) the impact of these acts of hostility on neighbouring villages
(3) operations by breakaway [Israeli terror organisations]”, particularly the Irgun and Lehi gangs
(4) orders issued by Palestinian institutions and leaders
(5) “Jewish ‘whispering operations’ to induce the Arab inhabitants to flee”
(6) “evacuation ultimatums.”
He estimates that 70 percent of the Palestinian refugees fled their homes as a direct consequence of Jewish military operations. The Israeli Zionist historian Benny Morris used this document to write a 1986 article about the Nakba. Soon after, Morris found that this document had been removed from public records.
Censorship of History
Moreover, Malmab is just one cog in a larger censorship wheel: Tuvia Friling, Israel’s chief archivist, notes, “In 1998, the confidentiality of the [oldest documents in the] Shin Bet and Mossad archives expired…When I took over, they requested that the confidentiality of all the material be extended [from 50] to 70 years, which is ridiculous – most of the material can be opened.”
As of February 2018, this confidentiality period is 90 years. Haaretz also quotes the executive director of the Akevot Institute, Lior Yavne, “The IDF Archive, which is the largest archive in Israel, is sealed almost hermetically.
About 1 percent of the material is open. The Shin Bet archive, which contains materials of immense importance [to scholars], is totally closed apart from a handful of documents.”
The Israeli, anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé told The Electronic Intifada that Malmab has removed many of the documents that he and the other ‘New Historians’ used to expose the truth of the 1948 Nakba, including massacres, rapes, pillaging and demolition of homes.
Pappé says that many of the historians working with Nakba-era documents had already realised that Israeli security was removing these documents from public archives: he says, “[these historians] were unable to revisit ‘the village files’, which formed an important proof in my argument that the 1948 war was an act of ethnic cleansing.”
Similarly, in a response to Haaretz’s original article, Morris describes how his recent request to see documents that he had used in 2005 to write about the 1948 massacre in the Palestinian town Deir Yassin, was refused. The IDF offered Morris no explanation other than saying, “now the documents are closed”.
Why Israel is Blocking Access to This Information
Haaretz interviewed Yehiel Horev, who headed Malmab for more than two decades, about the archives project. He told Haaretz that exposing the truth about 1948 could ‘generate unrest among the country’s Arab population’. Many of the documents have already been published by the ‘New Historians’, but Horev hopes their removal will discredit these histories and undermine studies of Palestinian refugees.
Other Israeli proponents of censorship argue that uncovering these facts could weaken Israel’s foreign relations, and result in Israel being tried for war crimes.
‘Eliminating the Native’
Ilan Pappé warns that this censorship “must be understood in a new political climate and [is] not simply an attempt to spare Israeli governments embarrassment”. The reasons that Israeli Security are hiding these documents, Pappé says, are more “profound and alarming” than that they challenge the official Israeli account of the Nakba; he says that “the reasons…are part of a new assault on Palestine and the Palestinians.”
Pappé believes that the censorship of these documents is part of the wider American-Israeli endeavour to depoliticise the ‘Palestinian Question’. He links the censorship to other recent events such as the ‘Nakba law’, the recent settlement expansion and demolitions which represent an annexation of Area C, the 2018 Israeli Nation-State Law and Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Pappé argues that Palestine is now at a dangerous point in its history: Israel is attempting to conclude the ‘elimination of the native’, a term coined by the anthropologist Patrick Wolfe to describe the motive behind settler colonial movements such as Zionism.
This is increasingly possible because Israel is becoming subject to less international criticism: pro-Palestinian politicians are increasingly dismissed as anti-Semites and legislation has been introduced in several countries to protect Israel from activism, including boycotts.
The removal of archival material about the Nakba is clearly one step towards ‘eliminating the native’, but how big is this step?
Pappé argues that a comprehensive understanding of the Nakba is necessary to understand subsequent Israeli policy. It is true that the Palestinian people do not need Israeli archive documents, or the New Historians’ accounts of 1948 that they generated, to remember the Nakba.
However, this archival evidence does expose the blueprint behind the Israeli war crimes of 1948, giving historians a broader understanding of the Zionist movement. On an international stage, they also lend credibility to the testimonies of the Palestinian people.
Therefore, Israel’s removal of these pieces of Palestinian history from public view makes it harder to explain Palestine’s present and change its future.
The department’s official aim is to remove sensitive information about Israel’s nuclear programme from public archives, but it has emerged that Malmab has also removed hundreds of documents relating to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba, that had previously been declassified.
Unveiled Nakba Massacres
During the Nakba, 800,000 Palestinian people were forcefully evacuated from their homes and became refugees. The Israeli government’s official account of these events maintains that the Palestinian people chose to emigrate, encouraged by Arab politicians and leaders. Malmab has been removing any documents that counter this official narrative from public archives, deeming them a ‘security threat’.
Haaretz found that Malmab has removed accounts of IOF generals about the massacres of civilians and the demolition of villages, as well as evidence of the expulsion of Bedouin communities during Israel’s early years of statehood.
One example of a document that has been removed from public archives is a series of interviews conducted in the early 2000s with former Israeli military figures by the Yitzhak Rabin Center. Haaretz compares the versions of these interviews that are now publically available with the originals. They find large sections to be missing. This missing segment from an interview that historian Boaz Lev Tov conducted with Maj. Gen. Elad Peled, is particularly shocking:
Peled: “Look, let me tell you something even less nice and cruel, about the big raid in Sasa [Palestinian village in Upper Galilee]. The goal was actually to deter them, to tell them, ‘Dear friends, the Palmach [the Haganah “shock troops”] can reach every place, you are not immune.’ That was the heart of the Arab settlement. But what did we do? My platoon blew up 20 homes with everything that was there.”
Lev Tov: “While people were sleeping there?”
Peled: “I suppose so. What happened there, we came, we entered the village, planted a bomb next to every house, and afterward Homesh blew on a trumpet, because we didn’t have radios, and that was the signal [for our forces] to leave. We’re running in reverse, the sappers stay, they pull, it’s all primitive. They light the fuse or pull the detonator and all those houses are gone.
Consequences of Military Operations
Another document removed by Malmab is a 1948 Israeli military intelligence paper titled ‘the emigration of the Arabs of Palestine’, written by an officer of Shia, the precursor to Shin Bet.
The lengthy document intricately describes the ethnic cleansing of 219 villages and four cities. It lists the six principle reasons for Palestinians fleeing their homes:
(1) “Direct Jewish acts of hostility against Arab places of settlement.”
(2) the impact of these acts of hostility on neighbouring villages
(3) operations by breakaway [Israeli terror organisations]”, particularly the Irgun and Lehi gangs
(4) orders issued by Palestinian institutions and leaders
(5) “Jewish ‘whispering operations’ to induce the Arab inhabitants to flee”
(6) “evacuation ultimatums.”
He estimates that 70 percent of the Palestinian refugees fled their homes as a direct consequence of Jewish military operations. The Israeli Zionist historian Benny Morris used this document to write a 1986 article about the Nakba. Soon after, Morris found that this document had been removed from public records.
Censorship of History
Moreover, Malmab is just one cog in a larger censorship wheel: Tuvia Friling, Israel’s chief archivist, notes, “In 1998, the confidentiality of the [oldest documents in the] Shin Bet and Mossad archives expired…When I took over, they requested that the confidentiality of all the material be extended [from 50] to 70 years, which is ridiculous – most of the material can be opened.”
As of February 2018, this confidentiality period is 90 years. Haaretz also quotes the executive director of the Akevot Institute, Lior Yavne, “The IDF Archive, which is the largest archive in Israel, is sealed almost hermetically.
About 1 percent of the material is open. The Shin Bet archive, which contains materials of immense importance [to scholars], is totally closed apart from a handful of documents.”
The Israeli, anti-Zionist historian Ilan Pappé told The Electronic Intifada that Malmab has removed many of the documents that he and the other ‘New Historians’ used to expose the truth of the 1948 Nakba, including massacres, rapes, pillaging and demolition of homes.
Pappé says that many of the historians working with Nakba-era documents had already realised that Israeli security was removing these documents from public archives: he says, “[these historians] were unable to revisit ‘the village files’, which formed an important proof in my argument that the 1948 war was an act of ethnic cleansing.”
Similarly, in a response to Haaretz’s original article, Morris describes how his recent request to see documents that he had used in 2005 to write about the 1948 massacre in the Palestinian town Deir Yassin, was refused. The IDF offered Morris no explanation other than saying, “now the documents are closed”.
Why Israel is Blocking Access to This Information
Haaretz interviewed Yehiel Horev, who headed Malmab for more than two decades, about the archives project. He told Haaretz that exposing the truth about 1948 could ‘generate unrest among the country’s Arab population’. Many of the documents have already been published by the ‘New Historians’, but Horev hopes their removal will discredit these histories and undermine studies of Palestinian refugees.
Other Israeli proponents of censorship argue that uncovering these facts could weaken Israel’s foreign relations, and result in Israel being tried for war crimes.
‘Eliminating the Native’
Ilan Pappé warns that this censorship “must be understood in a new political climate and [is] not simply an attempt to spare Israeli governments embarrassment”. The reasons that Israeli Security are hiding these documents, Pappé says, are more “profound and alarming” than that they challenge the official Israeli account of the Nakba; he says that “the reasons…are part of a new assault on Palestine and the Palestinians.”
Pappé believes that the censorship of these documents is part of the wider American-Israeli endeavour to depoliticise the ‘Palestinian Question’. He links the censorship to other recent events such as the ‘Nakba law’, the recent settlement expansion and demolitions which represent an annexation of Area C, the 2018 Israeli Nation-State Law and Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Pappé argues that Palestine is now at a dangerous point in its history: Israel is attempting to conclude the ‘elimination of the native’, a term coined by the anthropologist Patrick Wolfe to describe the motive behind settler colonial movements such as Zionism.
This is increasingly possible because Israel is becoming subject to less international criticism: pro-Palestinian politicians are increasingly dismissed as anti-Semites and legislation has been introduced in several countries to protect Israel from activism, including boycotts.
The removal of archival material about the Nakba is clearly one step towards ‘eliminating the native’, but how big is this step?
Pappé argues that a comprehensive understanding of the Nakba is necessary to understand subsequent Israeli policy. It is true that the Palestinian people do not need Israeli archive documents, or the New Historians’ accounts of 1948 that they generated, to remember the Nakba.
However, this archival evidence does expose the blueprint behind the Israeli war crimes of 1948, giving historians a broader understanding of the Zionist movement. On an international stage, they also lend credibility to the testimonies of the Palestinian people.
Therefore, Israel’s removal of these pieces of Palestinian history from public view makes it harder to explain Palestine’s present and change its future.
30 july 2019
Recent news reports have shed light on the lengths to which Israel’s security establishment is going in order to cover-up the history of the country’s war crimes against Palestinians.
A long piece in Haaretz earlier this month explained that for the best part of two decades, Israel has had a special military department dedicated to removing certain kinds of documents from publicly accessible archives.
The department’s name is Malmab, a Hebrew acronym for “Director of Security for the Defence Establishment”.
The documents targeted for the official cover-up seem to include anything related to the Nakba —Catastrophe — of the creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian territory, which saw the forced expulsion by Zionist militias of some 800,000 Palestinians from 1947 onwards.
Ever since then, Palestinian refugees have been telling their stories to anyone who will listen.
However, due in large part to typically colonial attitudes towards indigenous peoples, Palestinian refugees’ stories were and remain all-too-often unbelieved in the West. Part of the typical racist stereotype imposed upon Palestinians – and indeed Arabs in general – is that they are almost genetically predisposed towards telling lies. One common racial slur is to accuse someone of being a “lying Arab”.
Israel, a settler-colonial nation seeking to endear itself to the West (and indeed to portray itself as a “Western” nation) has always done its best to propagate this smear. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak (who’s currently seeking a return to politics) once claimed that lying was a cultural trait of Arabs. They “don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judaeo-Christian culture,” he claimed.
Such dehumanising myths about Arab people have consequences. Palestinians were for decades usually not believed in the West when they told of being subjected to ethnic cleansing in 1948, despite the overwhelming, documented evidence there was of the Nakba, including the work of pioneering Palestinian and other Arab historians such as Walid Khalidi, Constantin Zureiq and Nur Masalha.
The Israeli propaganda lie that the Palestinians left their own country voluntarily in the late forties, often at the behest of Arab leaders, was predominant in many Western histories for decades.
Then, in the late 1980s when Israeli historians began to look into newly-opened official Israeli archives, what they found essentially confirmed the Palestinian and Arab narrative. The expulsions did happen; the Palestinians did not leave by choice.
While some of these “New Historians”, such as Benny Morris, for example, claimed that the expulsions were almost an accident of war, others like Ilan Pappé pointed to official documents covering “Plan Dalet” and the “Village Files” to prove that there was a more systemic, intentional operation to remove as many Palestinians as possible from Palestine.
Whatever the full reasons, no one disputes the fact that Israel has always made it a primary aim to prevent the refugees and their offspring from returning. In the words of Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, “We must do everything to ensure that they never do return.” Morris – a proud racist – approves of this goal, while Pappé – an anti-Zionist – does not.
It was only after these Israeli historians began to write their histories, that the facts about the Palestinian Nakba started to become more widely accepted in the West.
The lesson that should be learned from this is that indigenous peoples should be believed when they are trying to narrate the facts of their own dispossession. We should not wait for the oppressor societies to admit, even partially, to their own guilt.
Now, though, even that always partial and conditional admission is being systematically covered up by Israel. As Ilan Pappé himself explained last week, the Malmab military archives cover-up unit is removing many of the documents that he and the other “New Historians” relied on to reveal the secrets of how Israel perpetrated the Nakba, including the massacres of children, the mass graves and the rapes.
The content of these documents has almost all been reported in books and articles already, and in many cases they have been copied, scanned or preserved digitally. However, as Haaretz noted after interviewing the former head of the cover-up unit, the aim is to “undermine the credibility of studies about the history of the refugee problem. In [the unit’s] view, an allegation made by a researcher that’s backed up by an original document is not the same as an allegation that cannot be proved or refuted.”
Although the Haaretz investigation has brought Malmab’s efforts to hide the truth to our attention, this has in fact been going on for the best part of two decades. “Those of us working with Nakba documents,” Pappé pointed out, “… were already aware of the removal of these documents. For many years, for instance, historians were unable to revisit ‘the village files’, which formed an important proof in my argument that the 1948 war was an act of ethnic cleansing.”
In attempting to hide the truth, Israel must know that it is too late. The truth is out about its cover-up of Nakba facts, and it’s not going back into the shadows anytime soon, no matter what the Zionist state and its dirty tricks departments get up to.
A long piece in Haaretz earlier this month explained that for the best part of two decades, Israel has had a special military department dedicated to removing certain kinds of documents from publicly accessible archives.
The department’s name is Malmab, a Hebrew acronym for “Director of Security for the Defence Establishment”.
The documents targeted for the official cover-up seem to include anything related to the Nakba —Catastrophe — of the creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian territory, which saw the forced expulsion by Zionist militias of some 800,000 Palestinians from 1947 onwards.
Ever since then, Palestinian refugees have been telling their stories to anyone who will listen.
However, due in large part to typically colonial attitudes towards indigenous peoples, Palestinian refugees’ stories were and remain all-too-often unbelieved in the West. Part of the typical racist stereotype imposed upon Palestinians – and indeed Arabs in general – is that they are almost genetically predisposed towards telling lies. One common racial slur is to accuse someone of being a “lying Arab”.
Israel, a settler-colonial nation seeking to endear itself to the West (and indeed to portray itself as a “Western” nation) has always done its best to propagate this smear. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak (who’s currently seeking a return to politics) once claimed that lying was a cultural trait of Arabs. They “don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judaeo-Christian culture,” he claimed.
Such dehumanising myths about Arab people have consequences. Palestinians were for decades usually not believed in the West when they told of being subjected to ethnic cleansing in 1948, despite the overwhelming, documented evidence there was of the Nakba, including the work of pioneering Palestinian and other Arab historians such as Walid Khalidi, Constantin Zureiq and Nur Masalha.
The Israeli propaganda lie that the Palestinians left their own country voluntarily in the late forties, often at the behest of Arab leaders, was predominant in many Western histories for decades.
Then, in the late 1980s when Israeli historians began to look into newly-opened official Israeli archives, what they found essentially confirmed the Palestinian and Arab narrative. The expulsions did happen; the Palestinians did not leave by choice.
While some of these “New Historians”, such as Benny Morris, for example, claimed that the expulsions were almost an accident of war, others like Ilan Pappé pointed to official documents covering “Plan Dalet” and the “Village Files” to prove that there was a more systemic, intentional operation to remove as many Palestinians as possible from Palestine.
Whatever the full reasons, no one disputes the fact that Israel has always made it a primary aim to prevent the refugees and their offspring from returning. In the words of Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, “We must do everything to ensure that they never do return.” Morris – a proud racist – approves of this goal, while Pappé – an anti-Zionist – does not.
It was only after these Israeli historians began to write their histories, that the facts about the Palestinian Nakba started to become more widely accepted in the West.
The lesson that should be learned from this is that indigenous peoples should be believed when they are trying to narrate the facts of their own dispossession. We should not wait for the oppressor societies to admit, even partially, to their own guilt.
Now, though, even that always partial and conditional admission is being systematically covered up by Israel. As Ilan Pappé himself explained last week, the Malmab military archives cover-up unit is removing many of the documents that he and the other “New Historians” relied on to reveal the secrets of how Israel perpetrated the Nakba, including the massacres of children, the mass graves and the rapes.
The content of these documents has almost all been reported in books and articles already, and in many cases they have been copied, scanned or preserved digitally. However, as Haaretz noted after interviewing the former head of the cover-up unit, the aim is to “undermine the credibility of studies about the history of the refugee problem. In [the unit’s] view, an allegation made by a researcher that’s backed up by an original document is not the same as an allegation that cannot be proved or refuted.”
Although the Haaretz investigation has brought Malmab’s efforts to hide the truth to our attention, this has in fact been going on for the best part of two decades. “Those of us working with Nakba documents,” Pappé pointed out, “… were already aware of the removal of these documents. For many years, for instance, historians were unable to revisit ‘the village files’, which formed an important proof in my argument that the 1948 war was an act of ethnic cleansing.”
In attempting to hide the truth, Israel must know that it is too late. The truth is out about its cover-up of Nakba facts, and it’s not going back into the shadows anytime soon, no matter what the Zionist state and its dirty tricks departments get up to.