person:levi eshkol

    • http://lavoixdu14e.blogspirit.com/archive/2018/11/20/inauguration-de-la-statue-mon-fils-marin-de-chana-orloff-sam

      Inauguration de la statue « Mon fils marin » de Chana Orloff, samedi 24 novembre, place des Droits de l’Enfant

      Chana Orloff conseil de quartier Montsouris- DareauRendez vous place des Droits de l’Enfant, le 24 novembre à 11h, pour l’inauguration de la statue « Mon fils marin » de Chana Orloff, à l’occasion du 50ème anniversaire de la disparition de cette grande artiste, dont l’atelier se trouvait 7bis Villa Seurat dans le 14ème.

      (La Place des Droits de l’Enfant se situe à l’intersection des rues Alésia-Tombe Issoire et Sarrette.)

      L’inauguration de la statue Mon fils marin de Chana Orloff dont la maison-atelier (réalisée sur les plans de Perret) se situe au 7bis de la Villa Seurat arrive enfin, à l’issue du travail acharné de la commission culture du conseil de quartier Montsouris- Dareau depuis...8 ans ! Ce projet avait été en effet approuvé à l’unanimité lors de la séance du Conseil d’arrondissement de décembre 2008.

      Cette inauguration interviendra quatre jours après la célébration de la Journée internationale des Droits de l’Enfant du 20 novembre. Elle commémore aussi le 50ème anniversaire du décès de Chana Orloff.


      chana orloff,conseil de quartier montsouris- dareauChana Orloff née le 12 juillet 1888 à Starokonstantinov dans Kostiantynivka, Gouvernement de Iekaterinoslav, maintenant la région de Kharkiv, Ukraine, décédée à Tel Aviv, le 16 décembre 1968, est une sculptrice figurative juive de nationalité française. Elle a fréquenté Marc Chagall, Chaim Jacob Lipchitz, Amedeo Modigliani, Pascin, Chaïm Soutine et Ossip Zadkine...

      Elle a réalisé, entre autres, une sculpture de David Ben Gourion, le Monument des héros dédié aux défenseurs d’Ein Gev et le Monument de la maternité en mémoire de Chana Tuckman morte pendant la guerre d’indépendance d’Israël. Outre ces monuments, elle a sculpté les portraits du futur Premier ministre Levi Eshkol, des architectes Pierre Chareau et Auguste Perret, des peintres Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso et Per Krohg, ainsi que des poètes Hayyim Nahman Bialik et Pierre Mac Orlan... (Wikipédia)

      #femmes #art

  • ’We look at them like donkeys’: What Israel’s first ruling party thought about Palestinian citizens -

    Quand Ben Gourion et le parti travailliste israélien (la “gauche”) qualifiaient des Palestiniens d’Israël d’ “ânes” et réfléchissait sur la manière de les expulser

    Israel’s first ruling party, Mapai, was torn about the status of Arabs who remained in the country after the War of Independence; almost 70 years later, the ’Arab question’ has yet to be answered
    By Adam Raz Jan 13, 2018
    read more: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.834355

    “The Arab question in Israel” was the term used in the top ranks of Mapai, the ruling party in the young State of Israel – and forerunner of Labor – to encapsulate the complex issue that arose after the War of Independence of 1948-49. In the wake of the fighting, and the armistice agreements that concluded the war, about 156,000 Arabs remained within Israel (out of an estimated 700,000 before the war), accounting for 14 percent of the nascent state’s population. So it was with some justification that Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett stated in a meeting of Mapai Knesset members and the party’s senior leadership, on June 18, 1950, that “this is one of the fundamental questions of our policy and of the future of our country.” He added that the issue was one “that will determine the direction of the country’s morality,” for “our entire moral stature depends on this test – on whether we pass it or not.”
    Almost 70 years later, the “Arab question in Israel” continues to pose a conundrum for politicians when they address the issue of the status of Palestinian citizens of Israel (or, as they are often imprecisely called, “Israeli Arabs”).
    The minutes of the meetings held by Mapai, which are stored in the Labor Party Archive in Beit Berl, outside Kfar Sava, attest to the deep dispute in the party over two conflicting approaches concerning the Arabs in Israel. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his associates – Moshe Dayan (Israel Defense Forces chief of staff 1953-1958) and Shimon Peres, at the time a senior official in the Defense Ministry – urged a policy of segregation and a hard hand against what he argued was a communal threat to national security; while Sharett and other Mapai leaders – Pinhas Lavon, Zalman Aran, David Hacohen and others – promoted a policy of integration.

    The disagreement between Ben-Gurion and Sharett mirrored the respective approaches held by the two regarding the Arab world in general. Sharett was critical of Ben-Gurion’s policy, which he said, held that “the only language the Arabs understand is force,” and called for an approach that preferred the “matter of peace.” Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, then a Knesset member, and later Israel’s second president (1952-1963), summed up succinctly the alternatives in a meeting of the Mapai MKs several weeks later, on July 9, 1950: “The question is the attitude the state takes toward the minorities. Do we want them to remain in the country, to be integrated in the country, or to get out of the country We declared civic equality irrespective of race difference. Does this refer to a time when there will be no Arabs in the country? If so, it’s fraud.”
    ’Transfer’ option
    The discussions within the party were quite freewheeling, even if speakers frequently expressed concern of leaks to the press, which could have lead to international pressure on Israel to improve the treatment of its Arab citizens. Indeed, the future of the relations between the peoples who inhabited the country demanded weighty political decisions. Among the issues in question: the right to vote, the Absentees’ Property Law, the status of the Arab education system, membership of Arab workers in the Mapai-affiliated Histadrut federation of labor, and more.

    One proposition that arose frequently in the discussions was that of a “transfer” – the expulsion of the Arabs who continued to reside in Israel – a term that some found grating already then. In the June 1950 meeting, Sharett took issue with the allegation, voiced by Ben-Gurion and his supporters, that the Arabs in Israel were a “fifth column.” That was a simplistic assumption, Sharett said, “which needs to be examined.” As he saw it, the fate of the relations between the two peoples depended overwhelmingly on the Jews. “Will we continue to fan the flames?” Sharett asked, or try to douse them? Even though a high-school education was not yet mandatory under law (and the state was not obligated to offer one), a large number of the Jewish youth in the country attended high school, and Sharett thought that the state should establish high schools for the Arabs as well. Israel needs “to guarantee them their cultural minimum,” he added.
    For political reasons, the segregationists tended to ignore the difference between the Arabs living in Israel and those who were left on the other side of the border following the war, many of whom made attempts to “infiltrate” and return to their homes. Sharett took the opposite view: “A distinction must be made between vigorous action against Arab infiltration” and “discrimination against Arabs within the country.”

    David Ben-Gurion. Fritz Cohen / GPO
    Ranking figures such as Sharett and Lavon, who was defense minister in 1954-55, viewed positively a further exodus of Arabs from the country, but only “by peaceful means.” Sharett vehemently objected to the position taken by Dayan, who not only wanted to bring about a situation in which there would be fewer Arabs in Israel, but sought to achieve this through active expulsion. In Sharett’s view, “We must not strive to do this by a wholesale policy of persecution and discrimination.” Sharett spoke of “distinctly unnecessary forms of cruelty, which are tantamount to an indescribable desecration of God’s name.”
    Dayan, notwithstanding the fact that he was serving in the army at the time – as head of Southern Command – participated in Mapai’s political meetings and helped set public policy. He was one of the leaders of the aggressive stance against the country’s Arabs and was against a proposal that they should serve in the army (an idea that came up but was shelved). He opposed granting the Arabs “permanent-citizenship certificates,” opposed compensating those who had been dispossessed of their land, and in fact opposed every constructive action that could contribute to bridge-building between the peoples. “Let’s say that we help them live in the situation they are in today” and no more, he proposed.
    Dayan’s approach remained consistent over the years, and conflicted with the view taken by Sharett and the stream in Mapai that he represented. Speaking in the same June 1950 meeting, Dayan asserted, “I want to say that in my opinion, the policy of this party should be geared to see this public, of 170,000 Arabs, as though their fate has not yet been sealed. I hope that in the years to come there will perhaps be another possibility to implement a transfer of these Arabs from the Land of Israel, and as long as a possibility of this sort is feasible, we should not do anything that conflicts with this.”
    Dayan also objected to Sharett’s proposals to improve the level of education among the country’s Arabs. “It is not in our interest to do that,” he said. “This is not the only question on which the time for a final solution has not yet arrived.”
    Zalman Aran, a future education minister, objected to the military government that had been imposed on Israel’s Arabs at the time of statehood and remained in effect until 1966. Under its terms, Arabs had to be equipped with permits both to work and to travel outside their hometowns, which were also under curfew at night. “As long as we keep them in ghettos,” Aran said, no constructive activity will help. Lavon, too, urged the dismantlement of the military government. In 1955, a few months after resigning as defense minister, he savaged the concept at a meeting in Beit Berl. “The State of Israel cannot solve the question of the Arabs who are in the country by Nazi means,” he stated, adding, “Nazism is Nazism, even if carried out by Jews.”
    Even earlier, Lavon was a sharp critic of the line taken by Dayan and other advocates of transfer. At a meeting of another Mapai leadership forum, on May 21, 1949, he said acidly, “It’s well known that we socialists are the best in the world even when we rob Arabs.” A few months later, on January 1, 1950, in another meeting, he warned, “It is impossible to take action among the Arabs when the policy is one of transfer. It is impossible to work among them if the policy is to oppress Arabs – that prevents concrete action. What is being carried out is a dramatic and brutal suppression of the Arabs in Israel... Transfer is not on the cards. If there is not a war, they will not go. Two-hundred thousand Arabs will be citizens in terms of voting... As the state party, we must set for ourselves a constructive policy in the Arab realm.”
    Back in December 1948, during the discussions on granting the right to vote for the Constituent Assembly – Israel’s first parliamentary institution, which was elected in January 1949, and a month later became the “Israel Knesset” – Ben-Gurion agreed to grant the right to vote to the Arabs who had been in the country when a census was taken, a month earlier. About 37,000 Arabs were registered in the census. The decision to enfranchise them apparently stemmed from party-political considerations. The thinking was that most of them would vote for Mapai.
    This assessment was voiced in the discussions on the Citizenship Law in early 1951, when Ben-Gurion expressed the most assertive opinion. He refused to grant the right to vote to the Arabs who were living in the country lawfully (as Sharett demanded) but who had been elsewhere during the census (because they had fled or had been expelled in the wake of the war); or to those Arabs who resided in the “Triangle” (an area of Arab towns and villages on the Sharon plain), which was annexed to Israel only in April 1949, under the armistice agreement with Jordan. “Is there no country in the world that has two types of citizens in elections [meaning voting and non-voting],” Ben-Gurion asked rhetorically in a meeting of Mapai MKs on February 20, 1951.

    Moshe Dayan. Fritz Cohen / GPO
    In the view of Sharett, who submitted a conflicting draft resolution, it would not be possible to defend “this situation in regard to ourselves and in regard to these Arabs, and in regard to the Arabs in Israel as a whole and in terms of world public opinion. Accordingly, I suggest granting them the right to vote... Discriminate only against the Arabs who entered Israel without permission.”
    Sharett maintained that Ben-Gurion had not given consideration to the root of the problem. “Terrible things” were being done against Arabs in the country, he warned. “Until a Jew is hanged for murdering an Arab for no reason, in cold blood, the Jews will not understand that Arabs are not dogs but human beings.” Sharett’s view carried the day in the vote, and the Arabs in the Triangle voted in the elections.
    In the July 9, 1950, meeting, MK David Hacohen disputed the argument that discrimination against the Arabs and the institution of the military government were essential for the country’s security. Assailing the Absentees’ Property Law – a series of measures that allowed the state to expropriate land and homes abandoned by Palestinians who were displaced during the war, even if they subsequently returned to the country – he said, “I don’t know whether it was clear to us all, when we voted, how grave it is.” He noted that, “According to the law, when an Arab dies, his property does not go to his wife but to the Custodian of Absentees’ Property It is inconceivable for us to declare equality of all citizens and at the same time have a law like this on the books.”
    Apparently, no one took issue with the next comparison Hacohen drew: “These laws that we are coming up with in regard to Israel’s Arab residents cannot even be likened to the laws that were promulgated against the Jews in the Middle Ages, when they were deprived of all rights. After all, this is a total contrast between our declarations and our deeds.”
    A similar approach was voiced during the same meeting by Zalman Aran, who viewed Mapai’s handling of the Arabs as a “process of despair” that must be rejected instead of finding excuses for it.
    “Morally, if we are a movement that does not lie, and we do not want to lie, we are here living a total lie,” he said. “All the books and articles that have been written, and the speeches made internally and for external consumption, are groundless when it comes to implementation. I am not talking about the attitude of individuals in the country toward the Arabs. I am talking about a [policy] line. I reject this line, which has emerged within society and has a thousand-and-one manifestations. I do not accept all the excuses that have been put forward.”
    Taking issue with Dayan’s approach, Aran compared the situation of the Arabs in Israel with the situation of Jews in other countries. “On the basis of what we are doing here to the Arabs, there is no justification for demanding a different attitude toward Jewish minorities in other countries I would be contemptuous of Arabs who would want to form ties with us on the basis of this policy. We would be lying in the [Socialist] Internationale, we are lying to ourselves and we are lying to the nations of the world.”
    Dayan – still an officer in uniform, it must be remembered – objected to the opinions voiced by Hacohen and Aran, and saw no reason to draw a distinction between the Arab public in Israel and Arabs in enemy countries. “I am far more pessimistic about the prospect of viewing these Arabs as loyal,” he countered.

    Moshe Sharett. Frank Scherschel
    Flawed democracy
    During the same period of a decade-plus when Ben-Gurion was premier, a political battle raged in Mapai over the continued existence of the military government. Ben-Gurion persistently defended the military government, which he saw as a “deterrent force” against the Arabs in Israel. In a meeting of the Mapai Secretariat on January 1, 1962, he railed against the “dominant naivete” of those, such as Sharett and Aran, who do not understand the Arabs, and warned of the possible consequences: “There are people living under the illusion that we are like all the nations, that the Arabs are loyal to Israel and that what happened in Algeria cannot happen here.”
    He added, “We view them like donkeys. They don’t care. They accept it with love...” To loosen the reins on the Arabs would be a great danger, he added: “You and your ilk” – those who support the abolition of the military government or making it less stringent – “will be responsible for the perdition of Israel.” A decade earlier, on January 15, 1951, Shmuel Dayan, Moshe Dayan’s father, a Mapai leader and longtime Knesset member, had voiced similar sentiments in a meeting of Mapai MKs. The Arabs, he said, “could be good citizens, but it’s clear that at the moment they become an obstacle, they will constitute a terrible danger.”
    A decade later, Aran offered an opposite assessment of the situation. Speaking at a meeting of the Mapai Secretariat in January 1962, he maintained that it was the military government that “is exacerbating the situation.” He also rejected the Algeria analogy. On the contrary, he thought, the existence of the military government would not delay an Arab uprising but would only spur it. He reiterated his critique of the early 1950s a decade later. He was against a situation in which the Arabs are “second-class” citizens who lack rights like the Jews, and he was critical of both himself and his colleagues: “We accepted this thing, we became accustomed to it... We took it in stride... It’s hard to swallow... No Arab in the State of Israel is able, needs to, is capable of – whatever you give him economically, educationally – accepting that he is a second-class citizen in this country. I think that the world does not know the true situation. If it did, it would not let us keep going on this way.”
    Already then, Finance Minister Levi Eshkol, under whose term as prime minister the military government would be abolished, foresaw the dire consequences: “It would not surprise me if something new suddenly emerges, that people will not want to rent a stable – or a room – to an Arab in some locale, which is the [logical] continuation of this situation. Will we be able to bear that?”
    One person who was not impressed by such arguments was the deputy defense minister, Shimon Peres. In a Mapai Secretariat meeting on January 5, 1962, he maintained that in practice, the military government “is not a strain on the Arabs.” The military government, he added, was [effectively] created by the Arabs, “who endanger Israel and as long as that danger exists, we must meet it with understanding.” In contrast, Isser Harel, head of the Shin Bet security service (1948-1952) and the Mossad (1952-1963), stated in 1966, days after resigning as Eshkol’s adviser for intelligence and security, that “the military government is not a security necessity, and therefore there is no need for its existence. The army should not be dealing with the Arab citizens. That is a flaw in terms of our democracy” (quoted in the daily Maariv, July 10, 1966). That had been the view of the security hawks, including Yigal Allon, since the early 1950s.
    Over the years, it was claimed that the military government had served as a tool in Mapai’s hands for reinforcing its rule, both by giving out jobs and by distributing benefits, and also by intervening in election campaigns through the creation of Arab factions within existing parties that were convenient for the ruling party (and suppressing opponents on the other side). This is not the venue to discuss that allegation – for which evidence exists – but it’s worth noting one of the motifs of the hard-hand policy, which preserved the segregation between Arabs and Jews, as expressed candidly by Ben-Gurion in the meeting of the Mapai Secretariat on January 5, 1962: “The moment that the difference between Jews and Arabs is eliminated, and they are at the same level If on that day there does not exist a regime in a world where there are no more wars, I do not have the shadow of a doubt that Israel will be eradicated and no trace will remain of the Jewish people.”

    Adam Raz
    Haaretz Contributor

  • La destruction calme de la Palestine par le sionisme | Agence Media Palestine
    Par Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 16 novembre 2017 – Traduction : JPP pour l’Agence Média Palestine
    http://www.agencemediapalestine.fr/blog/2017/11/21/la-destruction-calme-de-la-palestine-par-le-sionisme

    Deux reportages publiés par Haaretz mercredi soulignent l’objectif immuable du sionisme : la destruction des Palestiniens en tant que peuple et communautés viables, et le vol de leur terre au profit exclusif des colonies de peuplement juives.

    Le premier reportage fait état de procès-verbaux déclassifiés de réunions au cabinet du Premier ministre dans les mois qui ont suivi la guerre de 1967, quand Israël a occupé la Cisjordanie et la bande de Gaza, ainsi que le plateau du Golan syrien et la péninsule égyptienne du Sinaï.

    Les dirigeants israéliens se sont demandé comment traiter la question de ces centaines de milliers de Palestiniens qui se retrouvaient sous leur occupation militaire. Il est clair que, déjà, les Israéliens voulaient la terre, mais pas les gens qui vivaient dessus.

    L’une des « solutions » préconisée par Levi Eshkol, Premier ministre d’Israël à l’époque, a été, en réalité, de les expulser.

    Priver d’eau les Palestiniens

    Selon ces procès-verbaux, Eshkol a déclaré aux ministres qu’il « travaillait à la création d’une unité ou d’un bureau qui se livrera à l’encouragement de l’émigration arabe ». Et il a ajouté, « Nous devons traiter cette question sans bruit, calmement et secrètement, et nous devons travailler à trouver un moyen (pour eux) d’émigrer vers d’autres pays et pas seulement au-delà du Jourdain ».

    Et dans une prémonition du siège israélien brutal d’aujourd’hui, Eshkol a indiqué que « précisément en raison de la suffocation et de l’emprisonnement qui existent là-bas, peut-être que les Arabes quitteront la bande de Gaza ».

    Mais il n’allait pas nécessairement laisser faire le hasard. Et le Premier ministre de proposer : « Peut-être que si nous ne leur donnons pas suffisamment d’eau ils n’auront pas d’autre choix, parce que les vergers vont jaunir et flétrir ».

    Il a suggéré également que « peut-être, pouvons-nous nous attendre à une autre guerre et qu’alors ce problème sera réglé ». Il devait penser à la Nakba de 1948, quand les milices sionistes ont nettoyé ethniquement 750 000 Palestiniens de leurs foyers pendant la prétendue « guerre d’indépendance » d’Israël.

    Eshkol était catégorique : « Ce qui nous intéresse, c’est de vider Gaza, d’abord ».

    Il n’y a eu apparemment aucun désaccord.

    https://seenthis.net/messages/645282

  • Israeli prime minister after Six-Day War: ’We’ll deprive Gaza of water, and the Arabs will leave’
    Declassified minutes of inner cabinet sessions in the months after the Six-Day War show government ministers who were at a loss to deal with its implications
    Ofer Aderet Nov 16, 2017 8:24 AM
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.823075

    “Empty” the Gaza Strip, “thin out” the Galilee, rewrite textbooks and censor political cartoons in Haaretz: These are among the proposals discussed by cabinet ministers after the Six-Day War that will be available to the public in a major release of declassified government documents by the Israel State Archives on Thursday.

    The material being posted on the state archives’ website includes hundreds of pages of minutes from meetings of the inner cabinet between August and December 1967. From reading them, it is clear that in the several months that followed the June 1967 war, members of the security cabinet were perplexed, confused and sometimes helpless in the face of the new challenges to the state. Israel conquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula in under a week. It was not even remotely prepared for this scenario, and had to hit the ground running.

    In December 1967, six months after the war, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol speculated over how to deal with the hundreds of thousands of Arabs newly under the state’s control. “At some point we will have to decide. There are 600,000 Arabs in these territories now. What will be the status of these 600,000 Arabs?” he asked.

    Eshkol evidently felt no urgency in regard to the matter. “I suggest that we don’t come to a vote or a decision today; there’s time to deal with this joy, or better put, there’s time to deal with this trouble,” he said. “But for the record I’m prepared to say this: There’s no reason for the government to determine its position on the future of the West Bank right now. We’ve been through three wars in 20 years; we can go another 20 years without a decision.”

    He got backing from Transportation Minister Moshe Carmel, who said, “If we sit 20 years, the world will get used to our being in those territories, in any case no less than they got used to [Jordan’s King] Hussein being there. We have more rights; we are more identified with these territories than he is.”

    But an examination of other documents shows that Eshkol was well aware that Israel couldn’t ignore the problems posed by the occupation for long, particularly its rule over hundreds of thousands of Arabs. In one discussion he compared the Israel to “a giraffe’s neck,” because it was so narrow. “The strip of this country is like a miserable, threatening neck for us, literally stretched out for slaughter,” he said. “I cannot imagine it — how we will organize life in this country when we have 1.4 million Arabs and we are 2.4 million, with 400,000 Arabs already in the country?”

    One of the “solutions” to the new situation, according to Eshkol, was to encourage Arabs to emigrate. In this context Eshkol told the ministers that he was “working on the establishment of a unit or office that will engage in encouraging Arab emigration.” He added, “We should deal with this issue quietly, calmly and covertly, and we should work on finding a way from them to emigrate to other countries and not just over the Jordan [River].”

    Eshkol expressed the hope that, “precisely because of the suffocation and imprisonment there, maybe the Arabs will move from the Gaza Strip,” adding that there were ways to remove those who remained. “Perhaps if we don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither,” he said in this context. Another “solution,” he said, could be another war. “Perhaps we can expect another war and then this problem will be solved. But that’s a type of ‘luxury,’ an unexpected solution.”

    “We are interested in emptying out Gaza first,” Eshkol summed up. To which Labor Minister Yigal Allon suggested “thinning the Galilee of Arabs,” while Religious Affairs Minister Zerah Warhaftig said, “We must increase [the number of] Jews and take all possible measures to reduce the number of Arabs.”

    One idea raised by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan was to give the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza permits to work abroad, in the hope that some would prefer to stay there. “By allowing these Arabs to seek and find work in foreign countries, there’s a greater chance that they’ll want to migrate to those countries later,” Dayan said.

    As for Gaza, Dayan was pretty optimistic. According to his calculations, of the 400,000 people who then lived in Gaza, only 100,000 would remain. The rest, whom he termed refugees, “must be removed from there under any arrangement that’s made.” Among his ideas was to resettle the Gazans in eastern Jordan.

    Nor was Dayan particularly worried about Israeli military rule in the West Bank. “No soldier will have any interest in interfering in the lives of the inhabitants. I have no interest in the army sitting precisely in Nablus. It can sit on a hill outside Nablus.”

    Justice Minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapira took the opposite position, calling for Israel to withdraw from the territories and warning that Israel couldn’t exist as a Jewish state if it retained them. “We won’t be able to maintain the army, when there will such a large percentage of residents who [won’t serve] in the army. There won’t be a[n army] command without Arabs and certainly there won’t be a government or a Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee without Arabs when they’re 40 percent,” he said.

    Finance Minister Pinhas Sapir said that remaining in the territories would be “a disaster for the State of Israel,” which would become an Arab state. He warned that there was nothing to stop the West Bank from suddenly declaring independence, and that it was only a matter of time.

    Education Minister Zalman Aranne felt similarly. “I do not for one minute accept the idea that the world outside will look at the fact that we’re taking everything for ourselves and will say, ‘Bon Appetit,’” he said. “After all in another year or half a year the world will wake up; there’s a world out there and it will ask questions.”

    Aranne objected to the argument, put forth by Dayan and others, that Israel must retain the territories for security reasons. “Suddenly, after all these victories, there’s no survival without these territories? Without all those things we never dreamed of before the six days of this war, like Jerusalem?” he asked.

    Arab rights didn’t seem to be much of a concern for Aranne; he was more worried about the future of the Jewish state.

    “The way I know the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora, after all the heroism, miracles and wonders, a Jewish state in which there are 40 percent Arabs, is not a Jewish state. It is a fifth column that will destroy the Jewish state. It will be the kiss of death after a generation or a generation and a half,” he warned. “I see the two million Jews before me differently when there will be 1.3 million Arabs — 1.3 million Arabs, with their high birth rate and their permanent pent-up hatred. ... We can overcome 60,000 Arabs, but not 600,000 and not a million,” Aranne concluded.

    Within the inconclusive discussions of the future of the territories are the seeds of talk of establishing settlements, outposts and army bases. The minutes show that even half a year after the war, the government had not formulated an orderly policy on this issue, but discussed various ideas even as it chose to delay making these tough decisions as well.

    Thus it was, for example, in the case of Hebron, when there were requests to renew the Jewish presence in the city. Eshkol showed the ministers a letter he received in November 1967 from associates of the dean of Hebron Yeshiva — which relocated to Jerusalem after the 1929 Hebron Massacre — asking the government to “make appropriate arrangements to let dozens of the yeshiva’s students, teachers and supervisors return and set up a branch in Hebron.”

    Allon was all for it. “There is a benefit in finding the first nucleus of people willing to settle there. The desire of these yeshiva students is a great thing. There aren’t always candidates willing to go to such a difficult place.” No decision on the matter was made at that time, however.

    There were also cabinet members who spoke of preparing for the next war. The minutes included pessimistic reports about the number of warplanes left to Israel after the war. It was argued that the Arab states had already acquired new planes and had more than Israel.

    Ezer Weizman, deputy chief of staff at the time, detailed the difficulty of trying to extract promises of military aid from Washington. “Is there no hope of getting planes from any other country?” asked Interior Minister Haim-Moshe Shapira. Weizman replied, “We checked in Sweden. Sweden isn’t prepared to talk about this. England has nothing to buy. I don’t think Australia will give us anything.”

    Belgium was mentioned as a possibility: It was claimed that Brussels had offered to help Jerusalem circumvent the French embargo by procuring French planes and even German tanks for Israel.

    Dayan warned, “The impression, as of now, is that not only are the Arabs not rushing to make peace, they are slowly starting to think again about war.” It was six years before the Yom Kippur War.

  • Comment les généraux israéliens ont préparé la conquête bien avant 1967
    Sylvain Cypel > 13 juin 2017
    http://orientxxi.info/magazine/comment-les-generaux-israeliens-ont-prepare-la-conquete,1892
    http://orientxxi.info/local/cache-vignettes/L800xH399/5348d415a43104f40751f9ce1ffea8-76d09.jpg?1496654686

    Non seulement, de l’aveu même de ses généraux, Israël n’était pas menacé de destruction en juin 1967, mais l’état-major de l’armée avait depuis longtemps préparé son plan de conquête de la Cisjordanie, de Jérusalem, de Gaza, du Sinaï et du Golan. Et il a imposé ce plan par un quasi-coup d’État contre le premier ministre Levi Eshkol et les membres de son gouvernement encore hésitants à déclencher les hostilités.(...)

  • #film LE VILLAGE SOUS LA FORÊT
    De Heidi GRUNEBAUM et Mark J KAPLAN


    En #1948, #Lubya a été violemment détruit et vidé de ses habitants par les forces militaires israéliennes. 343 villages palestiniens ont subi le même sort. Aujourd’hui, de #Lubya, il ne reste plus que des vestiges, à peine visibles, recouverts d’une #forêt majestueuse nommée « Afrique du Sud ». Les vestiges ne restent pas silencieux pour autant.

    La chercheuse juive sud-africaine, #Heidi_Grunebaum se souvient qu’étant enfant elle versait de l’argent destiné officiellement à planter des arbres pour « reverdir le désert ».

    Elle interroge les acteurs et les victimes de cette tragédie, et révèle une politique d’effacement délibérée du #Fonds_national_Juif.


    « Le Fonds National Juif a planté 86 parcs et forêts de pins par-dessus les décombres des villages détruits. Beaucoup de ces forêts portent le nom des pays, ou des personnalités célèbres qui les ont financés. Ainsi il y a par exemple la Forêt Suisse, le Parc Canada, le Parc britannique, la Forêt d’Afrique du Sud et la Forêt Correta King ».

    http://www.villageunderforest.com

    Trailer :
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISmj31rJkGQ

    #israel #palestine #carte @cdb_77 @reka
    #Israël #afrique_du_sud #forêt #documentaire

    –-

    Petit commentaire de Cristina pour pour @reka :
    Il y a un passage du film que tu vas adorer... quand un vieil monsieur superpose une carte qu’il a dessiné à la main du vieux village Lubya (son village) sur la nouvelle carte du village...
    Si j’ai bien compris la narratrice est chercheuse... peut-etre qu’on peut lui demander la carte de ce vieil homme et la publier sur visionscarto... qu’en penses-tu ? Je peux essayer de trouver l’adresse email de la chercheuse...

    • Effacer la Palestine pour construire Israël. Transformation du paysage et enracinement des identités nationales

      La construction d’un État requiert la nationalisation du territoire. Dans le cas d’Israël, cette appropriation territoriale s’est caractérisée, depuis 1948, par un remodelage du paysage afin que ce dernier dénote l’identité et la mémoire sionistes tout en excluant l’identité et la mémoire palestiniennes. À travers un parcours historique, cet article examine la façon dont ce processus a éliminé tout ce qui, dans l’espace, exprimait la relation palestinienne à la terre. Parmi les stratégies utilisées, l’arbre revêt une importance particulière pour signifier l’identité enracinée dans le territoire : arracher l’une pour mieux (ré)implanter l’autre, tel semble être l’enjeu de nombreuses politiques, passées et présentes.

      http://journals.openedition.org/etudesrurales/8132

    • v. aussi la destruction par gentrification de la Bay Area (San Francisco), terres qui appartiennent à un peuple autochtone :

      “Nobody knew about us,” said Corrina Gould, a Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone leader and activist. “There was this process of colonization that erased the memory of us from the Bay Area.”

      https://seenthis.net/messages/682706

    • La lutte des Palestiniens face à une mémoire menacée

      Le 15 mai, les Palestiniens commémorent la Nakba, c’est-à-dire l’exode de centaines de milliers d’entre eux au moment de la création de l’Etat d’Israël : la veille, lundi 14 mai, tandis que plusieurs officiels israéliens et américains célébraient en grande pompe l’inauguration de l’ambassade américaine à Jérusalem, 60 Palestiniens étaient tués par des tirs israéliens, et 2 400 autres étaient blessés lors d’affrontements à la frontière de la bande de Gaza.
      Historiquement, la Nakba, tout comme la colonisation de Jérusalem-Est et des Territoires palestiniens à partir de 1967, a non seulement eu des conséquences sur le quotidien des Palestiniens, mais aussi sur leur héritage culturel. Comment une population préserve-t-elle sa mémoire lorsque les traces matérielles de son passé sont peu à peu effacées ? ARTE Info vous fait découvrir trois initiatives innovantes pour tenter de préserver la mémoire des Palestiniens.

      https://info.arte.tv/fr/la-lutte-des-palestiniens-face-une-memoire-menacee

    • Effacer la Palestine pour construire Israël. Transformation du #paysage et #enracinement des identités nationales

      La construction d’un État requiert la nationalisation du territoire. Dans le cas d’Israël, cette appropriation territoriale s’est caractérisée, depuis 1948, par un remodelage du paysage afin que ce dernier dénote l’identité et la mémoire sionistes tout en excluant l’identité et la mémoire palestiniennes. À travers un parcours historique, cet article examine la façon dont ce processus a éliminé tout ce qui, dans l’espace, exprimait la relation palestinienne à la terre. Parmi les stratégies utilisées, l’arbre revêt une importance particulière pour signifier l’identité enracinée dans le territoire : arracher l’une pour mieux (ré)implanter l’autre, tel semble être l’enjeu de nombreuses politiques, passées et présentes.

      https://journals.openedition.org/etudesrurales/8132

    • Il y aurait tout un dossier à faire sur Canada Park, construit sur le site chrétien historique d’Emmaus (devenu Imwas), dans les territoires occupés depuis 1967, et dénoncé par l’organisation #Zochrot :

      75% of visitors to Canada Park believe it’s located inside the Green Line
      Eitan Bronstein Aparicio, Zochrot, mai 2014
      https://www.zochrot.org/en/article/56204

      Dont le #FNJ (#JNF #KKL) efface la mémoire palestinienne :

      The Palestinian Past of Canada Park is Forgotten in JNF Signs
      Yuval Yoaz, Zochrot, le 31 mai 2005
      https://zochrot.org/en/press/51031

      Canada Park and Israeli “memoricide”
      Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, le 10 mars 2009
      https://electronicintifada.net/content/canada-park-and-israeli-memoricide/8126

    • Israel lifted its military rule over the state’s Arab community in 1966 only after ascertaining that its members could not return to the villages they had fled or been expelled from, according to newly declassified archival documents.

      The documents both reveal the considerations behind the creation of the military government 18 years earlier, and the reasons for dismantling it and revoking the severe restrictions it imposed on Arab citizens in the north, the Negev and the so-called Triangle of Locales in central Israel.

      These records were made public as a result of a campaign launched against the state archives by the Akevot Institute, which researches the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

      After the War of Independence in 1948, the state imposed military rule over Arabs living around the country, which applied to an estimated 85 percent of that community at the time, say researchers at the NGO. The Arabs in question were subject to the authority of a military commander who could limit their freedom of movement, declare areas to be closed zones, or demand that the inhabitants leave and enter certain locales only with his written permission.

      The newly revealed documents describe the ways Israel prevented Arabs from returning to villages they had left in 1948, even after the restrictions on them had been lifted. The main method: dense planting of trees within and surrounding these towns.

      At a meeting held in November 1965 at the office of Shmuel Toledano, the prime minister’s adviser on Arab affairs, there was a discussion about villages that had been left behind and that Israel did not want to be repopulated, according to one document. To ensure that, the state had the Jewish National Fund plant trees around and in them.

      Among other things, the document states that “the lands belonging to the above-mentioned villages were given to the custodian for absentee properties” and that “most were leased for work (cultivation of field crops and olive groves) by Jewish households.” Some of the properties, it adds, were subleased.

      In the meeting in Toledano’s office, it was explained that these lands had been declared closed military zones, and that once the structures on them had been razed, and the land had been parceled out, forested and subject to proper supervision – their definition as closed military zones could be lifted.

      On April 3, 1966, another discussion was held on the same subject, this time at the office of the defense minister, Levi Eshkol, who was also the serving prime minister; the minutes of this meeting were classified as top secret. Its participants included: Toledano; Isser Harel, in his capacity as special adviser to the prime minister; the military advocate general – Meir Shamgar, who would later become president of the Supreme Court; and representatives of the Shin Bet security service and Israel Police.

      The newly publicized record of that meeting shows that the Shin Bet was already prepared at that point to lift the military rule over the Arabs and that the police and army could do so within a short time.

      Regarding northern Israel, it was agreed that “all the areas declared at the time to be closed [military] zones... other than Sha’ab [east of Acre] would be opened after the usual conditions were fulfilled – razing of the buildings in the abandoned villages, forestation, establishment of nature reserves, fencing and guarding.” The dates of the reopening these areas would be determined by Israel Defense Forces Maj. Gen. Shamir, the minutes said. Regarding Sha’ab, Harel and Toledano were to discuss that subject with Shamir.

      However, as to Arab locales in central Israel and the Negev, it was agreed that the closed military zones would remain in effect for the time being, with a few exceptions.

      Even after military rule was lifted, some top IDF officers, including Chief of Staff Tzvi Tzur and Shamgar, opposed the move. In March 1963, Shamgar, then military advocate general, wrote a pamphlet about the legal basis of the military administration; only 30 copies were printed. (He signed it using his previous, un-Hebraized name, Sternberg.) Its purpose was to explain why Israel was imposing its military might over hundreds of thousands of citizens.

      Among other things, Shamgar wrote in the pamphlet that Regulation 125, allowing certain areas to be closed off, is intended “to prevent the entry and settlement of minorities in border areas,” and that “border areas populated by minorities serve as a natural, convenient point of departure for hostile elements beyond the border.” The fact that citizens must have permits in order to travel about helps to thwart infiltration into the rest of Israel, he wrote.

      Regulation 124, he noted, states that “it is essential to enable nighttime ambushes in populated areas when necessary, against infiltrators.” Blockage of roads to traffic is explained as being crucial for the purposes of “training, tests or maneuvers.” Moreover, censorship is a “crucial means for counter-intelligence.”

      Despite Shamgar’s opinion, later that year, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol canceled the requirement for personal travel permits as a general obligation. Two weeks after that decision, in November 1963, Chief of Staff Tzur wrote a top-secret letter about implementation of the new policy to the officers heading the various IDF commands and other top brass, including the head of Military Intelligence. Tzur ordered them to carry it out in nearly all Arab villages, with a few exceptions – among them Barta’a and Muqeible, in northern Israel.

      In December 1965, Haim Israeli, an adviser to Defense Minister Eshkol, reported to Eshkol’s other aides, Isser Harel and Aviad Yaffeh, and to the head of the Shin Bet, that then-Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin opposed legislation that would cancel military rule over the Arab villages. Rabin explained his position in a discussion with Eshkol, at which an effort to “soften” the bill was discussed. Rabin was advised that Harel would be making his own recommendations on this matter.

      At a meeting held on February 27, 1966, Harel issued orders to the IDF, the Shin Bet and the police concerning the prime minister’s decision to cancel military rule. The minutes of the discussion were top secret, and began with: “The mechanism of the military regime will be canceled. The IDF will ensure the necessary conditions for establishment of military rule during times of national emergency and war.” However, it was decided that the regulations governing Israel’s defense in general would remain in force, and at the behest of the prime minister and with his input, the justice minister would look into amending the relevant statutes in Israeli law, or replacing them.

      The historical documents cited here have only made public after a two-year campaign by the Akevot institute against the national archives, which preferred that they remain confidential, Akevot director Lior Yavne told Haaretz. The documents contain no information of a sensitive nature vis-a-vis Israel’s security, Yavne added, and even though they are now in the public domain, the archives has yet to upload them to its website to enable widespread access.

      “Hundreds of thousands of files which are crucial to understanding the recent history of the state and society in Israel remain closed in the government archive,” he said. “Akevot continues to fight to expand public access to archival documents – documents that are property of the public.”

  • Voici comment #Maxime_Rodinson concluait son fameux article "Israel, fait colonial ?" (1968)

    « Prendre conscience du caractère colonial de l’État d’Israël, c’est commencer à s’expliquer pourquoi la pression des faits contribue tant à pousser Israël dans le camp des puissances occidentales et pourquoi une autre orientation demanderait des éléments progressistes d’Israël des efforts héroïques. C’est surtout comprendre les réactions arabes et celles des peuples du tiers monde qui sont dans la même situation. Ceux qui cataloguent tous les mouvements et tous les régimes arabes automatiquement comme fascistes du seul fait qu’ils s’opposent à Israël répandent une conception erronée et profondément néfaste du problème. De même, tous ceux qui s’en tiennent à la légende de la haine gratuite des Arabes envers les Juifs ou à la thèse du mythe machiavélique élaboré consciemment s’égarent et égarent les autres. S’il y a, en effet, haine qui souvent dépasse la mesure, si les gouvernants et les idéologues construisent des mythes mobilisateurs autour du fait palestinien, c’est sur la base d’une donnée objective donc les dirigeants sionistes sont responsables, la colonisation d’une terre étrangère. Juger moralement condamnable la révolte des Arabes contre une situation coloniale est permis à un partisan de la non-violence. La moindre cohérence de pensée interdit une telle condamnation morale à un anticolonialiste qui admet ailleurs la lutte armée. Il peut au maximum trouver cette révolte inopportune pour le moment.

    Il en résulte que faire fond sur un régime social nouveau en pays arabe pour accepter Israël est une illusion dangereuse. Disons-le sans ambages, quitte à peiner ou à indigner les conformistes de gauche qui croient que la révolution sociale résout tous les problèmes. Il n’y a pas de « solution révolutionnaire » au problème israélo-arabe. C’est aux Arabes en tant que peuple que la création d’Israël a été un affront. Aucun régime ne peut l’accepter de son plein gré. Les circonstances politiques internationales ou internes peuvent peut-être un jour forcer à reconnaître Israël. Mais ce ne peut être en vertu d’une idéologie qui admettrait le bien-fondé de la colonisation israélienne. Au contraire, ce sont les régimes les plus socialisants qui se sont montrés les plus revendicatifs. Croire le contraire, c’est manifester une profonde ignorance des conditions locales ou être profondément égaré par la passion idéologique. Les émeutes de Jordanie à la suite du raid de représailles israélien dans la région d’Hébron, événements qui se déroulent au moment où j’achève cet article, montrent bien les dangers de l’interprétation habituelle de l’hostilité arabe à Israël. Comment ceux qui l’expliquent comme une création artificielle de gouvernements et de mouvements « fascistes » peuvent-ils expliquer la profondeur de l’indignation palestinienne révélée par ces mouvements ? Comment ne s’aperçoivent-ils pas que leur interprétation rejoint celle par laquelle tous les États colonialistes ont justifié leur répression des mouvements de libération indigènes ? Et le gouvernement Levi Eshkol lui-même a visiblement exclu de ses calculs l’éventualité d’un tel mouvement. Victime des propres mythes sionistes, il a été amené par eux à fausser les données du problème qui se posaient à lui. Phénomène classique, mais dangereux.

    Il est possible que la guerre soit la seule issue a la situation créée par le sionisme. Je laisse à d’autres le soin de s’en réjouir. Mais s’il y a quelque chance de voir un jour une solution pacifique, on n’y arrivera pas en disant aux Arabes qu’ils ont le devoir d’applaudir leurs conquérants parce que ceux-ci sont européens ou en voie d’européanisation, parce qu’ils sont « développés », parce qu’ils sont révolutionnaires ou socialistes (virtuellement !), encore moins parce qu’ils sont tout simplement juifs ! Le maximum qu’on peut demander d’eux est qu’ils se résignent à une situation désagréable et qu’en se résignant ils tirent parti de leur résignation. Obtenir d’un vaincu qu’il se résigne à sa défaite n’est pas facile et on ne facilite pas cette démarche en claironnant combien on a eu raison de le rosser. Il est plus judicieux en général de lui offrir des compensations. Et ceux qui n’ont pas souffert de la bagarre peuvent (et même doivent, je crois) prêcher le pardon des injures. Ils ont peu de titres à l’exiger. »