Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Middle East
Dec 4, 2007
Columnist Dyer has come far - but not far enough
Gwynne Dyer is a syndicated UK columnist published in the Otago Daily Times, New Zealand Herald and other Kiwi papers. He has tended to blame Israel for most or all of the Mideast problems, and his column was recently discontinued by the Jerusalem Post and many Canadian newspapers. Recently, however, he has become more even-handed, but his anti-Israel bias still shows, as in a column published on Dec. 4. KBRM wrote the following letter to the editor of the New Zealand Herald (not published):
Gwynne Dyer has come a long way since his ‘blame Israel for everything’ days, but his statement (4/12/07) ‘most of the Palestinians who lived within what is now Israel fled or were driven out during the 1948-49 war, and in order to ensure that the new state had an overwhelming Jewish majority Israel never let them return’ is wrong on three counts.
First, no Arabs were ‘driven out’; they fled voluntarily from a war that their Arab brethren started. Second, Israel offered to take back 100,000 Arabs if there were meaningful peace negotiations; even though this didn't happen, 35,000 were allowed to return anyway. Third, Israel's stated reason for not allowing the rest to return was the threat to its security, a reason that Mr. Dyer himself endorses in his latest book.
Rodney Brooks, Chairman
The KBRM chairman also wrote directly to Gwynne Dyer, including references for his statements:
In your 12/4/07 column in the Otago Daily Times you said ‘most of the Palestinians who lived within what is now Israel fled or were driven out during the 1948-49 war, and in order to ensure that the new state had an overwhelming Jewish majority Israel never let them return.’
According to the first five web sites that I googled (see below), this sentence contains three errors.
- First, very few, if any, were ‘driven out’.
- Second, some DID return. According to Palestine Facts (the fourth web site), ‘In 1949, Israel offered to admit 100,000 Arab refugees, with the understanding that their repatriation would be linked to meaningful peace negotiations... 35,000 Arabs eventually returned...’
- Third, the reason the remainder were barred was not to ensure a Jewish majority but because of security and other concerns, as documented in the fifth web site — an actual memorandum from 1948 by Count Folke Bernadotte!
Of course I realize that everything you read on the web is not necessarily correct, but I doubt that these five web sites could all get it wrong. I respect your erudition and concern for accuracy, and I hope you will correct these errors.
Rodney Brooks, Chairman
Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Mideast
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~samuel/refugees.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html
http://www.mideastweb.org/refugees1.htm
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_independence_refugees_arabs_what.php
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/2ee9468747556b2d85256cf60060d2a6/371a6c8cc1ab115485256a5b00665cb0!OpenDocument'
Dec 6, 2007
Surprisingly, Mr. Dyer responded to the letter. (The attachment contained Chapter 8 from his new book, ‘The Mess They Made’.):
Dear Mr Brooks,
The controversy over how and why the great majority of the Palestinians who lived on the territory that is now Israel left in 1948-49 and never returned is a lengthy one which will never be settled to everyone's satisfaction. That is why I carefully wrote ‘fled or were driven out.’ You deserve a full reply, but I honestly don't have the time to write one. Would you therefore accept instead the attached document, which is a chapter of a recent book I have written on the Middle East. It contains most of the points I would offer in response to your protest, albeit embedded in a larger argument about Israel's streategic situation in the past and present.
Best wishes,
Gwynne Dyer
Dec 7, 2007
KBRM wrote back as follows:
Dear Mr. Dyer,
It was very kind of you to answer my letter. I read your chapter — at least the relevant parts, and I compliment you on it.
Incidentally, I found a typo. On the 8th page you left the date unfinished: ‘it was illegal for any Israeli to have contact with the PLO until 19XX’.
However I believe that my claim of errors in your recent article is actually supported, not contradicted, by what I read.
- I did not see one example or allegation of Arabs being ‘driven out’. Even Benny Morris, a historian who is not loath to take the Palestinians' side, refers only to Arab ‘fright and flight’ and does not, at least insofar as you quoted him, allege that any were ‘driven out’. Fright and flight are one thing; being driven out is another. (Incidentally, are you aware that the Dir Yassin ‘massacre’, like the Jenin "massacre", turned out to be a non-massacre when all the facts were known?)
- I found nothing in the chapter to contradict the fact that Israel allowed 35,000 refugees to return.
- While you offer evidence that Israel wanted to "ensure that the new state had an overwhelming Jewish majority", you also support Israel's stated reason of security when you say ‘No Jewish state would be possible in Palestine unless there was a mass displacement of its Arab inhabitants, who would otherwise constitute a huge fifth column in its midst’. To cite only one reason in your article is, I think, an error.
In short, while I applaud your scholarship and your even-handed approach, I think you occasionally lapse into anti-Israel statements. I still hope that you will correct these three examples.
Rodney Brooks, Chairman
Dec 17, 2007
KBRM was even more surprised to receive a lengthy reply from Mr. Dwyer. It is included in the following response written by KBRM:
Dear Gwynne,
First on a personal note, may I recommend a book (assuming you have time to read books)? It is Amos Oz's memoir ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’. Apart from its literary and humanistic merit, it paints a vivid picture of growing up in Palestine/Israel during the 40's. Two relevant excerpts: ‘...in 1948, when the Arab Legion was shelling Jerusalem, another friend of my mother's... was also killed, by a direct hit from a shell. She had only gone outside to fetch a bucket and floorcloth.’ ‘[Aunt] Greta Gat was killed in the siege of Jewish Jerusalem in 1948. An Arab Legion sniper, with a diagonal black belt and a red keffieh, fired an accurate shot at her from the direction of the Police Academy that was on the ceasefire line.’
Please take the time to read my responses (in red) below. I think you will see that we agree on most facts, but disagree on the words you use to describe them and the conclusions you draw. I hope you will consider these points in your future writings.
=======Dear Mr Brooks,
It's not just Deir Yassin, which I know has been questioned. There is
actually quite a lot of evidence that some of the massacres Morris refers
to in that quote were committed with the explicit purpose of getting the
Palestinians moving.
OK. I admit that ‘getting the Palestinians moving’ was ONE of the motives held by SOME Jewish fighters. But remember, there are civilian casualties and atrocities in any war (especially when there is no clear distinction between civilians and combatants). Arabs were massacring Jews both before and after the 1948 war broke out (see above quotes), and most of the 11 Israeli ‘massacres’ listed by Wikipedia were either disputed or were done in retaliation. ** The number of refugees ‘driven out’ is surely less than 0.1%, so your phrase ‘fled or were driven out’, while technically correct, doesn't give a fair picture.
The reason I didn't go into it, apart from sheer space
considerations, is that it is actually irrelevant. Even if the
Palestinians had all left entirely voluntarily to avoid the fighting, it
would still be ethnic cleansing if Israel refused to let them return to
their homes when the fighting stopped. And it did refuse, apart from a few
tens of thousands (out of perhaps 800,000 Arabs who had been living in what
is now Israel, west of the green line, in early 1948).
Excuse me. I have seen no definition of ‘ethnic cleansing’ that includes refusing to let people who voluntarily fled (from a war they started) return. The fact that there are today 1 million Arabs inside Israel gives the lie to the ‘ethnic cleansing’ charge. It is the Arabs who want a land that is ‘judenrein’. (Incidentally, the official UN figure for the number who fled outside the borders of Israel is 711,000.)
This does not make Israel an unusually wicked country. You and I were both
born in countries (I in Newfoundland, you presumably in NZ) where sustained
and violent acts of ethnic cleansing led to a wholesale change of the
dominant population group. The proportion of Maoris in New Zealand's
current population is about the same as the proportion of Arabs left
within Israel's pre-1967 frontiers, and there are NO Beothucks left in
Newfoundland. The last one died in 1836: I am the heir of a fully
successful and completely unpunished genocide.
I can't speak to Newfoundland, but you sure have New Zealand all wrong. I doubt there is one Kiwi — Maori or Pakeha - who would apply the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ to NZ.
The difference is not moral, but practical. The Maoris pose little threat
to the dominance of the settler population in NZ, and the Beothucks by
definition are no longer a threat to anyone, whereas those whom the
Israelis replaced are still around in very large numbers and quite close
by. Together with their Arab brethren, the Palestinians pose a continuing
existential threat to Israel, so Israelis are compelled to deal with the
issue in ways that you and I are not.
Agreed.
Israelis are uncomfortable when one calls a spade a spade, but it is not
anti-Israel to locate the roots of this problem in the act of ethnic
cleansing that was a necessary preliminary to the foundation of a
Jewish-majority state in former Palestine.
In my experience, Israelis are the FIRST to call a spade a spade. But that aside, do you REALLY think that if the Arabs had not fled in 1948, there would be no Mideast problem? Surely the real root of the problem is the unremitting refusal by the Arabs to let Israel exist. As has been often said, if the Arabs laid down their arms, there would be a Palestinian state; if Israel laid down its arms, there would be no Israel..
Whenever I do so, I am careful to point out that this is perfectly normal behaviour historically, and was almost universal among European groups setting up new states overseas in the past few centuries.
But there is a HUGE difference between European colonization and today's Israel. Newfoundland and New Zealand were colonised by people with no historical ties to the land; Israel was reinstated on land that had a continual Jewish presence from the time of Joshua. Further, Israel was GIVEN the land by its previous owner (or caretaker), who had captured it from the owners before that, neither of whom were Palestinian, and this was done fully in accord with international law as represented by the United Nations. There is simply no comparison with European colonisation.
If the Israelis play their cards right, they may still get away with it, just like
the rest of us did, but they do need to pay more attention to the long-term
implications of their actions (and their failures to act) than they have
been doing in the past decade.
Gwynne, I would really appreciate it if you would tell me what you think Israel should do — the morally right thing. Do you want it to accept back all refugees? Do you think that would end the conflict? Did you not say that these Arabs would then ‘constitute a huge fifth column in its midst’?
Rodney
=======**For example, the killing of 80-100 Arabs at al-Dawayima on Oct. 29 was in response to the massacre of 129 Jews at Kfar Etzion on May 13. The massacre of 35-58 Arabs on Nov. 1 at Hula — which in any case was in Lebanon, not Israel - was said by the accused officer to be an act of revenge for the murder of his best friends in Haifa. Fourteen Arab males were killed at al-Mawas on Nov. 2 when Israeli soldiers discovered the headless bodies of two Israeli soldiers on a nearby hill.