> Some 56 years have passed, and they are again
> fleeing in fear of the
> Israeli attackers.
>
> And the attackers adopt the same tactics, spread
> rumors and fire
> warning shots; and when the residents flee out of
> fear, they claim
> that they are not responsible for the flight, but
> then destroy the
> homes, for "after all, they are empty and deserted."
When I read these words I couldn't help but be reminded of Benny Morris's interview with Haaretz earlier this year.
BM: "Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."
Benny Morris, for decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948?
BM: "There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."
We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society.
BM: "A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it's better to destroy."
There is something chilling about the quiet way in which you say that.
BM: "If you expected me to burst into tears, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will not do that."
So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?
BM: "I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don't think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn't have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being."
You do not condemn them morally?
BM: "No."
(...)
http://www.rense.com/general47/ben.htm
Simon
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