Genocide, Variations on a Theme #I

Part Thirteen, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine #5

Genocide, Variations on a Theme #I

Part Thirteen, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine #5

When faced with serious and difficult resistance the Zionists resorted to unconventional weapons. Whereas Pappé is tentative Naeim Giladi is clear: “The Haganah put typhus bacteria into the water going to Acre, the people got sick, and the Jewish forces occupied Acre.”

According to Salman Abu-Sitta: “The Zionists injected Typhoid in the aqueduct at some intermediate point, which passes through Zionist settlements ... It was determined that the infection is ‘water borne’, not due to crowded or unhygienic conditions as claimed by the Israelis. In his other reports, de Meuron mentioned 55 casualties among British soldiers, who were spirited away to Port Said for hospitalization.”

De Meuron, who was an ICRC delegate, mentioned other horrors: “He spoke of ‘a reign of terror’ and the case of the rape of a girl by several soldiers and the killing of her father. He also wrote that all male civilians were taken to concentration camps and considered ‘prisoners of war’ although they were not soldiers. This left many women and children homeless, without protection, subject to many acts of violence.”

Pappé is more categorical about a second incident: “A similar attempt to poison the water supply in Gaza on the 27th of May was foiled. The Egyptians caught two Jews, David Horin and David Mizrachi, trying to inject typhoid and dysentery viruses into Gaza’s wells...”

This was the work of the secretive chemical and biological war unit Hemed Beit.

Between the 30th of March and the 15th of May, Pappé points out, 200 villages fell victim to attacks: “This fact must be repeated, as it undermines the Israeli myth that the ‘Arabs’ ran away once the ‘Arab’ invasion began”. More to the point: it is a clear indication of British collaboration in this crime against humanity. Without clear British collusion the ethnic cleansing could not have taken place.

Interesting also is Pappé‘s detailing of the international response to these atrocities. Most important of all: the international media stayed silent and did its best to cover up these crimes. This explains the widespread ignorance, which remains a key problem in this day and age.

Jordan joined the public chorus of outrage but quickly negotiated with the Zionists. Unlike the other Arab states however it offered something more than token resistance when its interests were actually threatened.

The Jordanians saved the lives of a quarter of a million Palestinians, who otherwise would have been either massacred or expelled. Most interesting of all is the complete absence of the UN, which was supposed to take control of Palestine as part of Resolution 181. The international community threw the women and children of Palestine to the wolves.

On 14th of May 1948 “due to domestic Zionist pressure” America recognized Israel (it was the only country to do so). The ethnic cleansing continued unabated.

One of the villages attacked was Tantura. Pappé relates an account by a survivor: “On the night of the 22nd to the 23rd of May the Jews attacked from 3 sides and landed in boats from the seaside. We resisted in the streets and houses and in the morning the corpses were seen everywhere. I shall never forget this day all my life. The Jews gathered all women and children in a place, where they dumped all the bodies, for them to see their dead husbands, fathers and brothers and terrorize them, but they remained calm. They gathered men in another place took them in groups and shot them dead. When women heard this shooting, they asked their Jewish guard about it. He replied: ‘We are taking revenge for our dead.’ One officer selected 40 men and took them to the village square. Each four were taken aside. They shot one and ordered the other three to dump his body in a big pit. Then they shot another and the other two carried his body to the pit and so on.”

In another village Nizar al-Hanna recounted: “My maternal grandmother was a teenager when Israeli troops entered Bassa and ordered all the young men to be lined up and executed in front of one of the churches. My grandmother watched as two of her brothers, one 21, the other 22 and recently married, were executed by the Haganah.”