January 1989, Page 16

Should the US Warn Israel Against Transfer of Palestinians?—Two Views

Yes, Because It's Genocide

By George Thompson

" The White man speaks with forked tongue."

The American Indian said it first about us. Now the Israelis are using sweet-sounding words to describe foul-smelling deeds to avoid the inevitable. Ironically, we are all involved in this bastardization of language.

An example is use of the English word, "transfer," to mean "expulsion" which we Americans accept as an Israeli euphemism for kicking Palestinians out of the Occupied Territories. An exact definition would have to include yet another English word, "genocide."

Whatever it is called in whatever language, the despicable act solves nothing and exacerbates everything.

The concept of transfer began with the expulsion into Lebanon of the first moderate Palestinian who dared to speak out.

Incensed by curfews, shuttered stores, flattened homes, broken bones, too many funerals, and diminished hopes for the future, he said—like the Indian—" Enough! Let us meet and talk peace."

But the brooding Menachem Begin would not then hear talk of peace. Nor will the current terrorist-turned-tyrant, Yitzhak Shamir, listen now.

So the outspoken Palestinian was found. His house was destroyed. His family was thrown into the streets to find what succor it could among others only slightly better off. They had yet to be "transferred."

With $20 in his pocket, and whatever he could pack into a single suitcase, he was taken to the Lebanese border. There, flanked by American armed Israeli soldiers, he was pushed, prodded and otherwise propelled into what Israel's leaders hoped most would be oblivion—but at the very least, silence—far from the place of his birth.

Hundreds of other such voices for peace have been heard since that first plaintive cry. They, too, have been identified, and their houses also have been reduced to rubble. They, too, were "transferred" to the war-torn wasteland that is today's Lebanon.

Not unlike the American Indian on his reservation, they exist today in silence, devoid of voice but filled with thoughts of violence—waiting.

Without these proponents of peace, Israel faces the threat of war. Without the threat of war, Israel loses its raison d'etre, its public image as a Biblical David amidst the lions, and its increasingly restless diaspora—reluctant to go but willing to send money, so long as the ominous clouds of impending conflict loom on the horizon.

Most important of all, it is the threat of war that glues the irascible Sabras together. Without conflict, Israel would be but the latest in a growing number of theocracies, newest neophyte in an increasingly impoverished Third World, bankrupt and bereft of morals and the money with which to pursue them.

Israel's dreams have been made more restless by memories of the Holocaust. Understandable. There is reason enough to be wary. Wasn't it then, while the ovens smoked, that the world looked away?

The Jews lost much more than their lives then. They, like the Indians, lost trust in those who questioned their very right to exist.

But if that is also true of the Palestinians, whom do we enlist now in our combined quest to halt history's latest genocide: Those who once raised their voices in peace or those who now lift their arms in violence?

George Thompson, a retired Foreign Service officer, is a nationally syndicated columnist and television talk show host.

Expulsions Are No Surprise

By Allan C. Brownfeld

Voices of moderation exist in Israel, but they have been overshadowed in recent days by those who reject compromise and seek, instead, to perpetuate Israeli control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Beyond this, there are many in Israel who, more and more, are speaking openly about the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in these occupied areas. Rehavan Zeevi, a former military commander of the West Bank, whose Moledet (Homeland) party won two Knesset seats in the recent election, campaigned on a platform whose slogan asked Israeli Jews: "Who will go—us or them? The choice is still in your hands."

For those who are familiar with Israeli history, the idea of expulsions will come as no surprise. Zeevi himself proclaims that Israel was built upon the principle of expelling Arabs and states that, "We came to conquer the land and settle. If transfer is not ethical, then everything we have done here for 100 years is wrong."

Before such proclamations go any further, the United States should make it clear that any policy of removing Palestinians from the occupied territories is unacceptable and would cause the US to reassess its relationship with Israel and the foreign aid the US so generously provides. Such a policy of expulsion would be both illegal and immoral. It would violate Jewish ethics and democratic values.

The notion of expelling the Palestinians is hardly confined to a narrow, unrepresentative ultraright wing in Israel. In August, the Israeli Institute of Applied Social Research reported that 49 percent of Jewish Israeli adults believed that "transfer" would allow the democratic Jewish nature of the state to be preserved. Only 20 percent believed that giving Arabs equal rights would help preserve Israel's democratic and Jewish nature.

In the recent campaign, Zeevi said there are two elements to Israel's security problem: too many Arabs on too much valuable real estate. He was a young soldier during Israel's war of independence in 1948 and recalls the conquest of Lydda, a large Arab town now known as Lod. When officers of Zeevi's unit asked their assistant commander, Yitzhak Rabin, what to do with the Arab population of the town they had just conquered, Zeevi reports that Rabin's answer was: "Expel them."

It was done "smoothly and simply," said Zeevi. He said Rabin told him that "it was an order from Ben-Gurion himself." Rabin, now a leader of the Labor Coalition and defense minister in Israel's coalition government, also described the expulsion of Arab residents of Lydda and nearby Ramleh when he wrote his memoirs in 1979, but the sections were deleted by an official censorship committee.

In December 1984, when West Germany's Green Party sent a delegation to watch proceedings in the Knesset, two rightist legislators, Geula Cohen and Raphael Eitan, raised anti-German placards from their seats in the chamber. Tewfik Toubi, an Israeli-Arab member of the Knesset, grabbed Cohen's poster, shouting "Shame on you! They are guests." In a revealing outburst, Cohen replied, "How dare you! You are yourself a guest."

Israel's Arab citizens and the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza are not guests in their own home. Any policy which seeks to remove them from their homes must be resisted by the United States.

Allan C. Brownfeld is a nationally-syndicated columnist and associate editor of the Lincoln Review and of America's Future.