European History and the Arab World Pt.3 of 3

[Michael]

From AAARGH <aaa...@abbc.com>

My profound gratitude is conveyed to Bradley Smith and the People at
the Committee for Open Debate On the Holocaust(tm) (CODOH) for their
unswerving dedication and exemplary integrity in bringing the Light of
Truth to bear on History. Mr. Smith has proven himself a gentleman of
principle in spite of vicious attacks on his good name and reputation.
(And worse)

An excellent and extensive site for a broad spectrum of revisionist
material please visit:

Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust: (http://www.codoh.com/)
Mosaic and similar browsers please use: (http://www.kaiwan.com/codoh/)

Part Three of Three appears courtesy of CODOH and AAARGH
==========================================================

European History and the Arab World

by Serge Thion

The text below [1] was intended to be the forward to the Arabic
edition of the book, "Historical Truth or Political Truth?",
scheduled to appear at the end of 1982. That publication project, and
the translation into Arabic, was undertaken by a group of Lebanese
militants, without the knowledge of the authors, except at the last
moment, as the translation was underway. This forward was proposed by
Serge Thion, and was accepted. The book was to appear in Beirut, when
the Israeli invasion of Lebanon took place. The printing equipment was
destroyed and the translation was lost under conditions that we have
not been able to reconstruct precisely, since the small group that
undertook the publication initiative was scattered by the turmoil.

A thousand times, it was repeated in the press, the courts and the
radio that the Faurisson Affair was a machination against Israel and a
roundabout way to promote the Palestinian cause. The president of
LICRA, Mr. Pierre-Bloch, who sued Faurisson, said on the radio
(Europe No. 1, Expliquez-vous Program of Ivan Levai, 17 December 1980)
that he had on his desk, copies of Faurisson's work in many languages,
including Chinese, and that all of this was paid for with Kadhafi's
gold. In the logic of Israel's unconditional defenders, any
difficulties encountered by Israel or the Zionists emanate from a
single source, devoted surely since the destruction of the Temple
to the destruction of the Jewish "people."

The devilish aspect of this source changes with time. But it is always
possible to name it. It was Hitler, during his time. But since
Hitler's death, it has been necessary to depict as Hitler, those who
succeeded him in the devil's image: Abdel Nasser, Kadhafi [2]

Faurisson's attorney, Mr. Eric Delcroix, had mischievously requested
through the courts that M. Pierre-Bloch produce the documents
he pretended to possess. Silence was the liar's only refuge [3]. We
have to say things exactly as they are. The Faurisson Affair, which
started being talked about after 1978, had almost no reverberations in
the Arab World until the writing of this article, in January 1982
[4]. The aim of this book is, hopefully, to make it known and thus
provoke some reflection in Arab circles that are interested in the
critique of contemporary ideologies, for reactions to this Affair
illustrate several, rather important, ideological mechanisms.

I kept certain Arab friends informed of the developments in this
Affair, just as I kept American, German, English, Japanese and other
friends informed. I learned that my book was reviewed by some people
at the Institute of Palestinian Studies, but nothing ever happened. A
publisher in Beirut was interested and decided to publish the book. I
am sorry to tell Mr. Pierre-Bloch that the transaction took place in a
businesslike manner and that we never saw the devil's claws. It could
have been an interesting encounter.

There was, however, a grain of truth in the paranoia behind the
attacks launched against Faurisson and all those, like myself, who
have contributed to make public the discussion of his theses. This
grain of truth is that there is a link between the tragic lot of many
European Jews during the Second World War and the Middle East conflict
between Israel and the Arab countries. Since this book bears my
signature, I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to
describe how I understand the relations between these two issues, and
also to talk about the uses to which I would like this book to be put,
in the Arab countries.

I may be better understood if I tell how I have tackled the
Palestinian question. I was nineteen years old. I was not forced to
reflect on these nagging problems by events at that time, but I was
rather led by a certain disposition to learn from life's encounters
and circumstances. I wrote this little personal story in 1973 for a
book about the Palestinians, which, as it turned out, never saw the
light of day. I have used notes and souvenirs from that time. Here is
my story.
-------------------------------
II
Under Israel, Palestine
ON THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS

I believe that it is possible here to dwell at length on the origins
of Israel's sudden appearance and the Palestinian question created by
the establishment of Israel. There exists a vast literature of varying
quality about the subject, often marked by strong apologetic
tendencies [13]. I would only like to underline some points to focus
the discussion.

The first is obviously that Zionism and its territorial claim ("a land
without a people to a people without a land") had, at the outset,
nothing to do with the Middle East, at the time of the Ottoman Empire.
The latter was in crisis due to increasing pressure to carve it up
and split it: the famous "Question d'Orient." From the moment the
industrial revolution started, there was no reason for this vast
multiethnic edifice, standing in the way between Europe and the East,
not to be remodeled and put at the service of European interests.
Mechanization provided the material means to dominate the Ottoman
Empire. Since the Crusades, Europe had lacked those means, and
it took close to a century of using them to attain its aims after the
First World War.

The situation of Jews in the Muslim world was certainly not as rosy as
some publications would like us to believe, when they try to
highlight a sharp contrast between a tolerant East, and a West that
was relentless in the persecution of Jews. There is exaggeration on
both sides. A religious minority in a profoundly religious world, the
Jews had a "protected" status with its high and low points according
to the circumstances and moods of local authorities. Compared with
other religious minorities, Christians, Pagans, Manicheans,
schismatic (Ismaelis, Druzes, Babists) or Sectarian (Dervishes, etc.),
Jews were relatively privileged in the land of Islam.
Communications with Palestinian sources (where the Talmud and Targum
were elaborated) remained open. Those expelled from Spain
chose to settle everywhere in the Ottoman Empire, with no noticeable
or particular attraction to Palestine. In 1800, there were 6000
Jews in Palestine, living mainly in the four "sacred cities" of
Jerusalem, Hebron, Safad, and Tiberiad. It is mainly from Russia that
waves of immigrants, animated by Messianic movements, arrived in the
nineteenth century. Around 1822, as modern Zionism was
being developed, the Jewish community in Palestine, called the
Yishouv, had about 30,000 people.

The Ottoman Empire could not be shielded from the repercussions of
European pressures. The "Nationalities Question" that shook
Europe around the mid-19th century infiltrated into clearly
non-national structures of the Empire: pulling away the Greeks (a part
of them), agitating the Balkans populations, igniting a national
Armenian movement, with a lot of outside encouragement, throwing the
Maronite mountains into some kind of alliance with Second Empire
France, but leaving Jews alone. The arrivals in Palestine had
nothing to do with the movements of other Jewish communities in the
Empire, those from Syria, Iraq, Istanbul or Salonika, converted
to French culture under the impulse of the Universal Israelite
Alliance. Each minority was more or less clearly looking for a foreign
protector. This encouraged rivalries among Powers. Practically until
1948, Oriental Jews did not stir, were almost completely ignorant
about Zionism, and were seeking contact with modernity through
assimilation in European cultures. For example, in Algeria, Jews chose
to become French when the Crémieux decree offered them the opportunity
(1870); or they acquired the most diverse nationalities in
Egypt, when it fell under British rule in 1882.

Zionism is, therefore, a movement that agitated essentially Yiddish
speaking Jews in central and eastern Europe, where those who
dominated, possessed the German culture, the matrix of Jewish
expansion toward the east. The term "Ashkenaz", refers in the Bible to
the northwest of Babylon, which is the state of Ourartou on the
Armenian plateau. In medieval Judaism, it became Germany par
excellence (as "Sepharad" means Spain in the golden age of Andalusia).
The end of the old regimes that recognized particular statuses to
some categories of subject, whether or not in the ghettos, profoundly
disturbed the functioning of traditional communities as they
progressively entered the industrial world. As protection by the
monarch was no longer assured either by statute or custom, the Jews
had sometimes the feeling of losing on the deal. According to the
French Revolution, they were to have full rights as individuals,
nothing as a nation. This situation weakened community links and
slowly liberated an increasing number of individuals who could free
themselves harmlessly from the heavy constraints of communal life,
with its rites and authority frozen into archaic pietism. Ancient
statutes often relegated them to money manipulations, and naturally,
with the development of banks, financial speculation would attract
elements freed by the weakening of community constraints. An imitation
of the Enlightenment shattered the eastern European communities in the
19th century, fragmenting them and triggering their dispersion through
emigration. A nationalist movement borrowing its conceptual equipment
from Germanic nationalism was established under the name of Zionism
[14]. It revealed the refusal of assimilation under the influence of
the Enlightenment. And since religion was no longer capable of
maintaining closed communities, it proposed the reconstitution of a
universal ghetto in Palestine in order to save the "race" from the
threat of dissolution by modernism and its trail of destructive germs.
It quickly developed into a totalitarian ideology, whose ambition was
to transform the Jews and to empty Palestine of any non-Jewish
elements. Initially, there was a tremendous resistance to Zionism by
Jewish intellectuals, both in eastern Europe and in the West. But the
sarcasms of Karl Kraus and many others are forgotten today. However,
the warnings were prophetic.

TOTALITARIAN AIMS OF ZIONISM

"The goal of Arab attacks against Zionism is not
theft or terror or a halt to Zionism's growth, but the total
destruction of the Yishouv. These are not political adversaries, but
students and even masters of Hitler, for whom there is only one way to
solve the Jewish question: total annihilation."

David Ben Gurion, Zurich, 1947

The above citation by the "founding father" of the Hebrew state, from
a speech to the Zionist Action Committee, traces the logic of
events: any act (or word) hostile to Israel will be regarded as the
ultimate menace, the death of the Jews. Any other ideology based on
such a paranoid vision of the world, on such a desire to crush the
adversary under a moral weight before crushing him under the weight
of arms, would have been ranked high among the totalitarian
monstrosities of the 20th century, if it weren't for the self-censored
media.

A more accurate biography [15] of Ben Gurion, the charismatic leader
of a vague socialism, referred to him as Benito Gurion. A straight
line connects his statement to that of Begin who, at the height of the
offensive on Beirut in 1982, described the Arabs he was burning
with phosphorous bombs as "two-legged animals thirsty for Jewish
blood." This straight line transcends Israeli political cleavages and
has basically one goal: the elimination of the Palestinians. Methods
change only according to circumstances and the international
environment. They are successively and concurrently: expulsion, land
confiscation, murder, torture, massacre, deportation, exile -- in a
word, the "final solution" of the Palestinian problem. As
illustrations, I could cite hundreds of confirmed facts mentioned in
the Israeli press (much freer in this respect than the Western media).

I have been observing this situation for the past quarter of a
century, since 1961, as I mentioned above. Books that would fill
entire libraries have described it with tiresome monotony. I have
often traveled to the Middle East and I have talked with the most
diverse people, and yet, I have written very little. The main reason
is precisely that there is on this subject abundant literature in
French, and even more in English. The facts are solidly established.
Anybody with the desire to find out can do so. Existing analyses may
be subject to discussion, but it is not difficult to find excellent
ones. There is certainly a vast hidden dimension of Israeli politics
(armaments, nuclear, omnipresence of the Mossad and other intelligence
services) but even in this domain, one can get a reasonably clear idea
of the situation. For example, I wrote the following brief review of a
book written by a former Israeli secret agent [16]:

A SULLEN MOSSAD AGENT

This book by a cynical Mossad agent, was dictated to an ignorant
journalist, translated by incompetents, and arrived with a whiff of
New York scandal [17]. Books on secret services belong to a very
profitable, hence very prolific literary genre. Countless memoirs have
been written by former agents of the CIA, MI 5, KGB, etc. or dictated
by secret services to disinformation mercenaries such as Louise
Sterling (Bulgarian Trail) or R. Seagrave (Yellow Rain) in the United
States, Dominique Wolton (KGB), Kaufer and Faligot, and many
others in France. All these publications, more or less inspired by
these services' desire to have a good image, and especially to justify
their existence, contain the good and the bad, a little that is true
and a lot that is false, and it is not always possible to sort out
truth from falsehood. "Veil," Bob Woodward's book on the CIA, is
interesting. But the only completely authentic book with systematic
in-depth description of a large secret service's operating procedures
is Philip Agee's "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," Penguin, 1975.

Mossad has a somewhat particular status. It fosters, as a protective
shell, the myth that it is "the best service in the world." Yet, side
by side with its spectacular "successes," mainly political
assassinations, it has committed considerable blunders. Its analysis
capability of its Arab adversaries is not very impressive, and going
by the judgment of a qualified user like Jacques Chirac, in his famous
interview in the Washington Times of November, 1986, its services are
"without any value," "all are infiltrated" and have no use except in
"wartime." The originality of Mossad and other Israeli secret services
is that they are of a small size (1500 to 2000 people) but that in
each country, it can count on an extensive network of local
collaborators provided blindly by chosen elements in Jewish
communities, those the Mossad calls sayanim, "Jewish volunteers of the
diaspora" (p. 321).

It is rather curious to realize that neither the press nor, it seems,
the administration were ever interested in these networks of French
citizens who volunteered in the service of a foreign power, determined
to acquire, at any price, military and industrial secrets and to carry
out attacks against people and property in the name of its war in the
Middle East. The communists, who did not do as much, were stigmatized
as "foreign agents." Only Vincent Monteil, in Dossier secret sur
Israel, (Israel's Secret File) attempted to lift a corner of the veil
from these secret networks that operate with complete impunity. As to
the recruitment methods of Israeli agents in Arab countries, they are
simple: money, a lot of money, enough money. That goes very well.

Ostrovsky talks about these "sayanim," but always vaguely. This
officer in Israel's navy was trained for two or three years before he
was commissioned as a "case officer" of the Mossad in 1985. He
resigned from his post after five months because of internal conflict,
of which he gives a hard to believe version. He gives an incoherent
account of various stages in his training and then relates well known
stories that are probably textbook cases, gone over during his
training sessions. It is more than probable that these stories were
arranged prior to being submitted to the sagacity of spy apprentices.

In September, 1990, the state of Israel asked a New York judge to ban
Ostrovsky's book because it threatened the life of certain agents.
A reading of the book belies this affirmation, since the author
conforms strictly to the Israeli rule of not naming active agents.
Others were widely covered in the Israeli and foreign press. There is
no better way of authenticating a fabrication.

This book, launched with great noise, tells us nothing, absolutely
nothing. Everything, and even more, has already been said, repeated,
written and annotated in the press, especially the Israeli and
American press. Several versions of these stories are known. They
eitherdiffer in some detail or complement each other. For example,
Ostrovsky tells us that the French technician killed in the bombing of
the French reactor, Osirak, in Baghdad was paid by the Mossad to
install a guidance signal for airplanes. But Ostrovsky does not give
his name, Damien Chaussepied, given by Derogy, who tells us that the
young man was "working overtime" [18]. So, no revelation, even
though the book is full of details, for the most part insignificant.

The picture the book gives of the Mossad is partial and banal. The
author is surprised that secret agents like money and sex! Deep
down, the real scope of the book is a sort of criticism. A close up
image of the Mossad does not resemble that drawn up by gullible
fools. The knights of heroic times have been replaced by cynical,
corrupt manipulators, using dirty tricks to impose their own views on
Israel's destiny and, through the best means, to insure its security.
Poor Ostrovsky does not see, or pretends not to understand, that
politics and secret services in Israel are in total symbiosis, and
that a good part of the political establishment started their career
in intelligence, and that the whole history of Israel's establishment,
since the maneuvers to get the Balfour Declaration, is based on a very
particular mixture of tricks, lies, dissimulation of real goals,
absolute cynicism and deadly violence towards the Arabs. No power in
the world is so racked by suspicion and deceit as a compulsory
component of clandestine procedures, because those who exercise them
were formed by them and govern through them. "Israeli democracy" is
mostly a closed confrontation field of small clans, hell-bent on
destroying each other but forced to compromise and coexist. But he
does not push his analysis far enough to describe the unbelievable
intertwining of the military-industrial complex, where former
intelligence agents become representatives of weapons manufacturers,
whose mission, in South America, Africa and elsewhere, is to
manipulate local conflicts, sell "security" and weapons to all the
protagonists, at the risk of losing in increasingly doubtful
combinations, as in the case of the Singhalese government and Tamil
guerillas. Between arms shipments to Iran in the war against Iraq, and
providing services (security, arms, training, mercenaries) to the
Medellin Cartel -- well documented in the press outside France -- the
line is less tortuous and the blunders well controlled. What is needed
is another book on the Mossad, and this one should be added to the
long list of the series, "Praise for the Mossad," or more precisely,
praise for what should be the Mossad.

If you want to know more about the Mossad, read the more authentic
novel, The Little Drummer Girl, by John Le Carré. If you want
to understand the genesis of an ordinary Nazi chief, of a brutal and
intelligent manipulator, read the Memoirs of General Sharon.

xxxxxxxxxx

Through the years, I did not feel that I had so many new and original
things to say, that would have justified speaking out. However,
some writings testify to a deep feeling of horror, not so much of the
expansionist politics by terror, as of its blissful and passive
acceptance by a West that cannot resolve to offer more than
half-hearted criticism.

It can be said in this respect that if it is ridiculous to speak of a
"Jewish conspiracy" in world affairs, as the prewar antisemites did,
one can and must see that it is almost impossible, both in the press
and in political circles, to measure Israel by the same yardstick as
other countries [19]. Everybody, with more or less hypocrisy, calls
for sanctions against South Africa, but is careful not to do the same
against Israel, which is closely tied to this same South Africa and
pursues the same politics. This impunity is not due to an organized
conspiracy. It is made of a generalized connivance with the Jewish
establishment, which on this point, deploys all its political,
financial and electoral resources in what Americans call a lobby, and
the French a "pressure group" [20].

I shall come back to this, but in the meantime, I would like to share
with readers the report on a visit to a Palestinian camp of Fatah in
Jordan in 1968, prior to the large massacres of "Black September." I
sent this article to Eric Rouleau, who dealt with these questions in
Le Monde. He answered, saying that he had just commissioned an article
on the same subject, which, I might add, was published a little
later.

CONVERSATION WITH AL FATAH

Amman, September, 1968. The city is poor, of striking poverty. This
meager oasis, surrounded by dry hills, invokes immediately the
British artifice that promoted it to the rank of an independent
capital. The bedouin emirate, that the 1948 war had transformed into a
superficially modern kingdom, lost the West Bank that, thanks to the
war in Palestine, it had annexed. Today, the country has
practically no economic resources of its own. To subsidize the
bedouins, who form the rampart of the throne, the state allows a
little trade, of which Amman is the miserable showcase. To travel its
dirty streets, constantly crowded with idle men, bedouins wearing
jackets or young men dressed with questionable elegance, to see the
pathetic stalls, one understands that the highest level of the
Jordanian economy is the production of junk.

One also notices in the crowd women in loose traditional dresses,
embroidered in vivid colors, and men in various military uniforms.
Some in camouflage fatigues without insignia differed from the others
by their busy pace: they are the Fatah commando members who
patrol the city, doubling the rather relaxed Jordanian police.

This is a matter of great concern: the emergence of an organized force
independent of royal authority. Since twenty years, the Palestinians
are lumped together into a very active group which more than once
forced the king to take measures he disliked.So far, pressure has been
exerted through political means or, at worst, by street
demonstrations, harshly repressed by the police. Now there is
Fatah, a large, organized army, which enjoys the unconditional support
of the vast majority of Palestinians, and which is ready to project
its fighting spirit.

Alert at 100%

At times, the king tried to react. At the beginning of the year, he
had surrounded the Karameh refugee camp, where part of Fatah
commandos were located, by his bedouin troops -- the old Glubb Pacha
Arab Legion. The commandos were ordered to surrender and
to give up their arms. They agreed to leave the camp, with their
weapons, and asked the camp residents to show their solidarity by
joining the combatants. The residents complied immediately. However,
other alerted Al Fatah units took positions behind the bedouins.
The latter retreated, probably more convinced by this maneuver than by
the political demonstration. The camp would be destroyed a
few weeks later by an Israeli raid, which led to fierce fighting.

Having momentarily given up on a frontal attack, the palace did not
seem to have dismissed the military option. There was no evening
in Amman when gun shots were not heard. These were the troops of
Sheriff Nasr, the King's maternal uncle, who would sometimes
attack an isolated commando or a passer-by and put the responsibility
on Al-Fatah. It is worth mentioning here that these men are paid
30 dinars a month by the central intelligence agency of a great
Western power that has many connections. Some Fedayin were detained.
Jordanian security has the sinister reputation of beating prisoners
and giving them intravenous pepper injections. It is true that part of
the population of Jordanian origin recriminates silently and takes the
King's side. The conflict may remain unresolved for an indeterminate
period [22].

The country lives at this moment under the threat of an Israeli
aggression (Jordan is not in a position to attack its very powerful
neighbor). Incidents multiply on the cease-fire line and military
concentrations have been spotted west of the Jordan River. Arab armies
are on alert, and Palestinian commandos, who know that they are
targeted, are on 100% alert.

"Youth" Camps

Having been unable to get to the training center near the border, they
wanted to show me a "youth" training camp. It was near a refugee
camp, a pile of overpopulated tents, surrounded by dubious greenery.
Two silhouettes came out from behind the rocks and motioned
for the car to stop. A kid with short hair and shiny eyes, dressed in
washed out rags, clutched an old English, loaded submachine gun.
No entry. He sent his friend, a little black boy bearing an enormous
sword, to get information. The adults accompanying me approved
by smiling and joking with him, but he watched us and remained tense
[23].

When we arrived, two groups of children were sitting in camouflage
fatigues in a circle around a monitor. They were eight to fourteen
years old, and were attentively following explanations. One would have
the impression of attending a boy scout meeting, were it not for
the presence of an imposing Soviet machine gun in the center of the
circle. Then, it was physical exercise punctuated by lineups and
fictitious alerts triggered by a whistle. "We fear shelling. It can
happen any moment. Yesterday, Israeli planes flew low over the camp
several times. They can do whatever they want. They use napalm and
phosphorus bombs to attack women and children, as they did in
Salt and Irbid [24]. Nobody in the world criticizes them. They feel
they have a free hand," said our interlocutor, with sadness.

Then the instructor gave a brief speech on the causes of the June,
1967 defeat (the Palestinians were not in the vanguard), on the
autonomous and popular Palestinian Revolution, on the struggle, which
will be long and will require a lot of courage, on love of the
homeland, on the necessary sacrifices, and on the rejection of hate of
Jews, as individuals. "It is very important," commented one of my
escorts, "because the young often have ignorant parents, who tell
them: the Jews took our homes and our lands. We must rid them of
these ideas and explain things from a political viewpoint. Zionism is
the enemy." It's all very good, but I don't believe in this kind of
idealism. And several times when the interpreter translated "Israeli,"
I heard "Yahudi," Jew. I don't see why not.

A Long Political Gestation

After the visit to the "Youth" camp, the conversation continued. I
posed questions on the history of the organization.

"Like all revolutions, ours stems from the suffering, humiliation and
hope of a people. Ours has been through many trials since 1948,
both in Palestine and elsewhere. We slowly formed the idea that what
was done by force can be undone by force. After the 1956
tripartite aggression, a vanguard got together and decided to put this
notion into practice. The point was to form a purely Palestinian
organization. Our action was to be a part of three "circles": the
Palestinian circle, the Arab circle and the international circle [25].
The organization must not have a class character because our
Palestinian society has been crushed; classes no longer exist. There
are bourgeois Palestinians in Beirut, Kuwait and elsewhere; there are
Palestinian workers in Lebanon and in Syria; there are no longer any
Palestinian peasants because the lands were taken. In the camps, there
are no longer any classes [26]. As for knowing whether this is a
leftist or a rightist organization, it is sufficient to ask whether
taking up arms to struggle against imperialism is a leftist or a
rightist action. Our goal is not to fulfill UN recommendations on the
1947-48 partition, but to destroy the Israeli state. We have no
animosity against people. On the contrary, we have stated, we state
and we will always state that Jews who will accept to remain in a
Palestinian Arab state will have exactly the same rights as all other
Palestinian citizens, irrespective of their religion. We will be happy
to accept them. Therefore, our struggle will accept no compromise
short of the total liberation of our land [27].

"Conceived in 1956, this political work took place under very
difficult conditions. Some Arab countries did not accept the existence
of a purely Palestinian organization that was not pledged to any of
the big Arab parties. Then we succeeded in launching our first
military operation in occupied territory. The First of January, 1965,
a commando of our military organization, Al Assifa (the storm), blew
up a diversion channel of the Jordan River at Aylabun. The choice of
the location had a symbolic meaning. This Christian village had been
the victim of a real butchery in 1948. Women and children who took
refuge in the village church were massacred by the Israeli army.
Since then, we have not ceased launching such operations, sometimes
under very difficult conditions. Combatants are killed sometimes
in enemy territory, sometimes on the border by Arab armies hostile to
our actions."

Then we got to the Six Day War. I reminded him that one of the reasons
given by Israel was the intensification of operations by commandos.
Israelis call them terrorists:

"In fact, these operations had been going on for two years. The real
cause was Israeli aggression. It is a state founded on aggression.
There has not been a single year since 1948 that the Arab world did
not suffer from its continual aggressions. If Israel struck in Gaza
when the Arab countries refused to join the Baghdad Pact [28]; if
Israel struck in Khan Younis (Gaza) when Abdel Nasser took power
in Cairo; if Israel struck in 1956 shortly after the nationalization
of the Suez Canal; then Israel had to strike at the moment when the
United Arab Republic (Egyptian-Syrian Union) launched its seven year
plan to build heavy industry. It is for this type of reason that
imperialism created Israel and maintains it in the middle of the Arab
world.

"After the 1967 aggression, our people understood that it must take up
arms. Other organizations were created at that time. It was for us
a kind of tacit popular legitimization. Arab attitudes improved. Some
countries started helping us.

"We stuck to our hit and run tactics, avoiding confrontation, until
the attack on the Karameh camp on March 21 (1968). Commandos of
Al Assifa were in this camp. The Israelis believed that our military
command was there. They entered Jordan with their air force, two
armored battalions and infantry -- in all, 12,000 men. We had
anticipated the attack and decided to resist. Fighting was very fierce
and Israeli losses were substantial. They had to use helicopters to
quickly recover the paratroopers dropped behind our lines that did not
make their linkup. For us, the battle of Karameh was a political
victory. We proved that national liberation fighters can resist a
crushing superiority in numbers and equipment. The masses understood
it; they came to join us in great numbers. We were virtually
overwhelmed by this popular enthusiasm.

"We continued to concentrate our actions against the Israeli military
system. The Israelis respond by terrorizing the civilian population
and multiplying their bombing raids on Jordan. We warn that we, too,
can attack Israeli cities. Then bombs exploded in Jerusalem and
Tel-Aviv. We can escalate. It is up to the Israelis to choose."

I wanted to know more about operations carried out in the "interior."
A man of about thirty was introduced to me. Like veterans of
these operations, he spoke in a steady and confident manner. I don't
know his exact military functions, but he knows what he is talking
about.

"Operations are determined by the leadership according to a general
plan. The political commissar prepares the unit for its mission. It
must be remembered that they all have freely consented to the suicidal
character of the mission. The attack takes place always in a very
precise location, but the real problem is in the retreat because of
the enemy's high mobility. We have no fixed fighting theory, so that
the unit on the ground has complete freedom of assessment. We have
introduced the principle of free discussion of the project before the
operation, which led to some turmoil in the organization.

"Like all struggles of this kind, we avoid fighting during the day
because of our reduced mobility, but the night is our domain. Along
the Jordan, they have a system of fairly flexible dams, with fixed
posts, projectors and ambushes that do not prevent us from passing
through. But in the occupied territories, they do not patrol at night.
When we attacked the Eilath oil installations on the Red Sea, we
travelled back and forth 450 km in enemy territory. The border there
is very near and very protected; we arrived from the back.... This
also means that we have effective support from the interior. We have
permanent military forces in residence in the interior. We send
equipment and they participate in operations, or they conduct them
alone. This was the case in operations against Shur in Galilee, the
Chrysler plant in Nazareth, the cannery in Hodeira, the attacks in
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv."

He said "Tel Abib," the Arabic pronunciation. It seems that some
commandos are given Hebrew courses. We asked if they fight in
uniforms. "More and more. We noticed that peasants are wary of armed
civilians. But they spontaneously help us when we are in
uniform. Furthermore, our perspective is to build a popular liberation
army. At the moment, the response from the interior is massive.
Our military development is extremely rapid -- too rapid, maybe. It is
possible for us to give the enemy a pounding, but we still lack
support from a part of international opinion. We would like a parallel
development of our actions in the three circles around our
revolution."

Under these conditions, how does the political problem of the Israeli
population get tackled?

"We want to make them understand the meaning of our actions. Many
Israelis have no clear idea about the political significance of their
presence in the Middle East. We use all available means, a ten minute
radio broadcast in Hebrew every hour, newspapers, indirect
contacts through international third parties. The Sofia Festival was
positive in this regard. The problem is to win Israeli opinion to our
cause. Many Jews are hostile to war against the Arabs. After June 5
(1967), we sent small groups to villages occupied in 1948. They
went to see the Israelis who are living in their former homes in
Jaffa, Acre, Tel Aviv and elsewhere. They were well received. We have
studied the reports. The conclusion is that it is absolutely possible
to gain the sympathy of a certain number of people. All our
supporters know that the solution is not to slaughter the Jews, as
some irresponsible people have said. When a comrade goes on a
"civilian mission," that is, for an attack, we explain to him the
gravity of his act; he knows that this is going to alienate the
sympathy we were beginning to benefit from, and that the road will be
long in restoring bridges between Arabs and Jews. But it is very
important that Israelis understand the true nature of the politics
conducted by their government junta. The results are really still
meager, even though voices are rising to denounce war, as a road that
will lead to catastrophe. But we cannot wait until all have
understood."

Are there Israelis who support your struggle and participate in it?

The question is annoying. After some quiet consultations:

"We cannot answer. But Moshe Dayan said that if he were Arab, he would
do the same thing we are doing. There are wiser people than Moshe
Dayan."

(September, 1968)

xxxxxxxxxxx

Twenty years later, I summarized Israel's existential situation as
follows [29].

TOWARDS A DISSOLUTION OF ISRAEL

When Claude Sarraute wrote (Le Monde, February 6, 1988) "Symbol
people" referring to the "Jewish people," she did not think, in
view of the current use of the term, that the former usage referred to
a group of the faithful of a religion. Similarly, the "Christian
people" did not come under any political identity. Still, these far
away times were bathed in a sort of mystical union between faith and
power. We are far from that. In our time, the word "people" applies to
populations who live, voluntarily or not, within the framework of
a state, or who claim the dubious privilege of having their own, for
themselves. Under these conditions, one wonders what semantic
contortions one has to go through in order to formulate a definition
of the "Jewish people" that would not be immediately challenged by
a large part of those it claims.

If, as can be seen, the phrase, "Jewish people," is not devoid of
problems, that of "symbol people" is even more extravagant. To limit
Jewish history to one dimension, that of suffering, dispossession and
massacre is absurd reductionism. As history, it has its dark, tragic
hours, as it has its moments of happiness and jubilation. Thousands of
other peoples, a great part of whom have already disappeared,
body and soul, throughout the centuries, have also lived this
alternation of darkness and light. I am well aware that such comment
may sometimes be considered sacrilegious: no one has the right to
compare the fate of the Jews to that of any other human community. And
if we don't accept that this right be refused to us in the name of
some divine election that concerns only those who believe in it, they
will refuse it to us in the name of Auschwitz, the symbol of barbarism
in our time. Thus, a symbol is guaranteed by another, which is a
peculiar logic but which is also a desperate effort not to face
reality .

Confronting the symbol with reality is generally a painful operation.
Images coming out of Israel are even twice as painful because they
reverse the symbol -- as an idol is brutally brought down -- and
because they show the savagery of bludgeoning, the desire to kill, the
racist hatred of an occupation army that is intensely living the
feverish fear of the colonized, who are awakening (as in New
Caledonia) and who are throwing stones at their oppressors. Far from
symbols, this atmosphere is reminiscent of Algiers under the OAS,
Rhodesia under Ian Smith or South Africa from Verwoerd to Botha. The
same apartheid, the same brutal and bloody repression by a privileged
minority of a native mass that rejects submission and shakes off its
servitude.

Israel is founded on force and only on force. The
theological-historical justifications (based on a crude travesty of
history), the resolutions of the UN, which in 1948 assumed the right
it did not have to dispose of the fate of Palestine, the "symbol" of
suffering during the war in Europe -- this composite mixture of
"justifications" for the creation of Israel, good for consumption by
European consciences, was never translated on the ground by anything
else than the brutal force of guns, torture and generalized terror.
Arabs did not consent to any of these justifications. Israel, the only
modern state with neither a constitution nor legal boundaries, cannot,
for a single moment, let go of its three instruments of founding
terror: namely, guns and beatings for Arabs under its control, aerial
bombardment of those around it and nuclear weapons to put pressure on
great powers. The well known secret of Israel's nuclear
arsenal testifies to the "perversity" of the symbolic, which is forced
to always present Israel as weak and threatened.

In reality, the only weakness of Israel is precisely this force, or
rather its exclusive confidence in force. Soviet or Arab missiles do
not shake Israel. What shakes Israel are the naked chests of
Palestinians, the small stones that recall the biblical story of David
and Goliath. Founded on force, incapable after forty years of making
itself welcome in a Middle East that it severely drenched in blood and
fire, Israel is condemned to disappear. Westerners should be well
inspired to vote a new Law of Return, giving Israeli citizens the
possibility of emigrating to lands where their existence would no
longer be based on the denial of that of others. Many are already
doing that. Let us welcome with solicitude those who refuse to be
accomplices to this new barbarism.

There has been a joke going around for some years now about a phantom
project of an international conference which would miraculously settle
the problem. This is but an elegant manner to gain time in order to
reinforce Israel's arsenals and bail out its coffers. Militarily and
financially, Israel is but the armed extension of American power. The
difference between the Likud and the opposition is only a divergence
in tactics over means and timing of annexation and domination.
Unfortunately, the pacifists' voices remain inaudible. Besides,
negotiate what? Even if the Arab dictatorships are made to ratify the
status quo, even if a rump state is granted to a Palestinian
bourgeoisie whose dreams are built on political chatter, what would be
resolved? It is the whole system of Western domination over the
Middle East, of which Israel is the advanced impregnable bastion, that
is the source of all these convulsions. [30] To those who do not
want to draw the appropriate lessons, the Iranian example shows that
domination generates resistance which will fight to the end.

It is not only since December 1987 that this helmeted oppression rules
and that the resistance manifests itself. Blood has been flowing
for forty years. It is in this bloody quagmire that Israel is
inexorably sinking. One day, there will be nothing left and future
generations will no longer understand the why of this long ferocity.
They will wonder how a symbol could have concealed its opposite for
such a long time.

Notes

1) The first part of this chapter was published in the Annales
d'histoire révisionniste, No. 1, Spring 1987, pp. 109-135. Notes for
this edition are between brackets.

2) [This thesis is still borne by the demonization of the Iraqi
dictator, Saddam Hussein as Hitleroid. There are others.]

3) [This slander was picked up again by propagandists without scruples
like Pierre Vidal-Naquet: "It is well known that Arab money,
notably from Saudi Arabia, serves for the dissemination of revisionist
theses," (Le Nouvel Observateur, 18-24 September, 1987.]

4) During the summer of 1981, some articles in the Lebanese press and
in the magazine, Doha, published in the Gulf, reported on the
suit filed against Faurisson in Paris. It was also mentioned briefly
in the influential weekly, Al Hawades (January 1, 1982), published in
London, with the comment: "After this, one is not surprised by Claude
Cheysson's declarations in Israel."

5) [Discovering the world, I looked for guides and teachers. So I
spent time with Dr. Adel Amer, now deceased, the communist
journalist Lutfi Al Khouly, and a young professor, Boutros
Boutros-Ghali, who was in charge of the economic supplement of the
newspaper, Al Ahram, now [1996] Secretary General of the United
Nations. I am very grateful to them.]

6) This fairly short text, discussed with a group of friends and
redrafted, was published under the title, "Introduction au probleme
Palestinien, Etudes anticolonialistes, No. 1, November 1962. It was
reprinted in June, 1967.

7) [Since writing these lines, this function of "promise for a better
future" was picked up again by what the press calls "integrists," also
called "islamists." They do not possess, anymore than their
predecessors, disciples of a popular Marxist sclerosis, the keys to a
true global reform of Muslim societies. In my opinion, their power is
only transitory.]

8) [On certain French aspects of this question, see my review of a
book by James Bacque, Other Losses, Toronto, 1989, reproduced in
the present book as an annex, under the title: "Vae victis." It can be
seen at:

<http://www.webcom.com/ezundel/english/04.faurisson/>

9) There were direct reactions in Israel to the Faurisson Affair. But
the answer came in June, 1981 in the form of a gigantic gathering of
Nazi camp survivors whose mission was to testify in a definite manner
for use by younger generations. For many weeks, the American
network television channels dedicated an hour a day to reports on this
demonstration. The French committee that participated in this
gathering was presided over by Simone Veil and led by a little known
personality by the name of Georges Wellers, propelled by
newspapers, radio and television for the distinguished part he played
against Faurisson.

10) Evron mentions in his title,"the Jewish people," even though in
his article, he seems to rather mean the "Jewish Israeli people." I
put "people" in quotes in the first lines of the present text. The
word leads to analysis problems with serious consequences in political
understanding. It obviously has its origins in the political-religious
concepts of antiquity. The contemporary ethnographer would rather
speak of "tribe" to describe the Jewish people of antiquity, despite
the fact that this term also covers very diverse sociopolitical
formulas. The notion of a people in the diaspora context, refers
rather to a religious notion. This ancient sense still holds, for
example, for the Church, which can speak of a Christian "people." The
modern notion of people, which originated from the revolutionary
period, is completely inadequate and many Jews certainly do not feel
that they belong to a Jewish "people" in the modern and Zionist sense
of the term. On the contrary, one can speak of an Israeli people. To
get into the details of this and many other important aspects of these
questions, the reader is referred to the very rich and remarkable
collection of articles by Maxime Rodinson, Peuple juif ou probleme
juif?, Maspero, 1981. Some of these articles have already appeared in
Arabic. It is quite interesting that Rodinson put a question mark
in his title and does not define what he means by "Jewish people."
Such a term is too full of subjective considerations to be of any use
in serious analyses.

11) Boaz Avron's full article was published in English in a small
journal, now defunct, called "Israleft" and then in French in No. 2 of
Revue d'études palestiniennes, Paris, Winter 1982, pp. 36-52. [Evron
is a former member of the Stern gang. See clarifying
commentary by Israel Shahak, in the same number, pp. 53-63, that gives
of the evolution of the Goy (gentile) concept an historical
analysis that I believe fundamental.]

12) [See, for example, the very bad book, Le Croissant et la croix
gammée, by Faligot & Kauffer, a sample of this sub-literature
written in the style of spy novels by "journalists" who are either
hacks in the pay of the police or policemen making extra money in the
literary world. Dominique Wolton is another beacon in this calculated
distillation of police archives, a vast terrain open to all sorts of
occult political maneuvers. Too bad the salt mines were closed.]

13) The Birth of Israel. Myths and Realities, by Simha Flapan (NY,
Pantheon, 1987), is a useful book in this respect. Based on Israeli
archival documents, he dismantles the main political myths, which are
still current today, about the creation of the Jewish state.

14) It would be correct to consider that some Zionists, like Herzl and
others, who were immersed in the racist ideas of the period,
contributed to the formulation of this völkisch -- i.e.,
"protofascist" -- set of concepts where Nazism and the dominant
currents of Zionism took root. See, for example, the reference to the
manifesto of "Der jüdische Volkssozialismus," the Jewish National
Socialist Party of Victor Arlosoroff, published in 1919, in the short
but penetrating essay, "Chambre à gaz, enfer sacré de Faust," (Gas
Chamber, Faust's Sacred Hell) by Mondher Sfar, Revue d'histoire
revisionniste, May-June-July, 1990, pp. 38-50. Visible at:

<http://www.webcom.com/ezundel/english/04.faurisson/>

15) For example, that of Michael Bar-Zohar, Ben Gurion, NY, Adama
Books, 1977.

16) Appeared in Maintenant le communisme, Paris, No. 1, Spring 1991,
pp. 34-36.

17) Victor Ostrovsky and Claire Hoy, Mossad, un agent des services
secrets israeliens parle, 1990, 324 pp. (English original: By Way
of Deception. The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer, St.
Martin's Press, 1990.)

18) Jacques Derogy and Hesi Carmel, Israel ultra-secret, Paris, Robert
Laffont, 1989, p. 86.

19) Today, the best account remains that of Noam Chomsky in The
Fateful Triangle, The United States, Israel and the Palestinians,
Boston, South End Press, 1983.

20) See The Zionist Connection, a classic work by Alfred Lilienthal.
There exists a second larger edition. The literature is considerable.
See "American Jewish Organizations and Israel," an inventory by Lee
O'Brien. On the penetration of the American political system, see
They Dare to Speak Out, by Paul Findley, former congressman from
Illinois, and the book already cited by Seymour Hersh. See also
commentaries in the American press about the Pollard affair (spy for
Israel).

21) I went back 15 years later. The West has spent a lot of money to
modernize this bazar. But modern junk and the longevity of the
crowned butcher in power did not convey more reality to this byproduct
of colonial carvings.

22) In September, 1970, King Hussein ordered an attack with heavy
weapons on the camps, resulting in eight to ten thousand dead.

23) This Palestinian universe was much better described by Jean Genet
in his last book, Un Captif amoureux, Paris, Gallimard, 1986.

24) At the moment, I had not given full credit to this assertion, In
fact, phosphorus use is forbidden by all international conventions in
force. It had not been used since the massive Allied bombardments of
big German cities. However, during the siege of Beirut in 1982,
Israel's airforce made massive use of this prohibited weapon in full
view of the international press. I don't remember any western
government -- so worried about a hypothetical Iraqi chemical attack --
blink an eye about Israel's indisputable war crime.

25) This "theory" of three circles was outlined by Abdel Nasser in
Falsafat ath-thawra (The Philosophy of the Revolution), a booklet
widely circulated in the Arab world.

26) This assertion is a mental construct, as I found out during an
investigation in the camps in Lebanon in 1973. Not only were social
classes very tangible, but clan and large family networks were also
present. Traditional rivalries among large families were translated
into allegiances to rival political organizations, whose clashes,
sometimes bloody, expressed these power struggles, as much as
rivalries between various Arab countries that financed them. Under
nationalism and propelling it, there are always groups who intend to
appropriate exclusively the eventual power of the state. But it is in
their interest to keep as discrete an existence as possible. That is
why I was not able to conduct this inquiry any further. I am one of
those who totally support the Palestinian cause, without having the
need to idealize those involved in it. On the contrary, the severe
criticism that can be directed at them has been expressed for a long
time in private in the camps and elsewhere. Development of the
Intifada and of the so called fundamentalist movement, Hamas, are
consequences of this critique. There are others.

27) There is a large proportion of Christians among the Palestinians.
It is decreasing under Israeli pressure on Christians to emigrate.
Note that the position expressed here by Fatah representatives has
been abandoned by the PLO, which ended up accepting the principle
of partition. Personally, I think that these enormous concessions will
lead to nothing, that they are immoral and incorrect to convince the
occupier. Those who applaud when the Palestinians give up defending
themselves and accept the partition, should have applied such
noble principles in 1940-44 and proposed to the Germans a partition of
French territory.

28) Organization, similar to NATO, that the Americans set up in the
Middle East during the cold war, in order to encircle the Soviet
Union.

29) Appeared under this title in Annales d'histoire revisionniste, No.
4, Spring 1988, pp. 60-62.

30) My deep scepticism on what could come out of such an international
conference since February 1991, as Basra was still smoking in
ruin, was expressed in "L'idée d'une conférence internationale ou la
grande mystification des peuples," Gazette du Golfe et de
banlieues, No. 2, March 1991, pp. 16-22.

++++++++++++++

This a translation, by S.Z., of the chapter 5 of "Une Allumette sur la
banquise" by Serge Thion (One match on the ice-pack ), a book
privately printed and distributed in France in 1993.

end of article
end of Part 3 of 3 (Conclusion)

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