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Details and Lies - The Systematic Mendacity of a Palestinian Atlas

(New Republic) Benny Morris - The political goal of the Atlas of Palestine 1948: Reconstructing Palestine by Salman Abu Sitta is to delegitimate Zionism and Israel and to promote the re-Palestinization of Palestine/the Land of Israel through a process that includes the return of the refugees and the dismantling of the Jewish state. While this vast treasure-house of maps is a major boon to researchers, Abu Sitta's narrative is unabashedly propagandistic and often factually wrong. There are dozens of cases in which there is no correspondence between Abu Sitta's assertions in the text and the references that he purportedly bases them on. From reading this atlas, the reader will not know that it was the Palestinian Arab onslaught on the Jewish community in Palestine in November to December 1947 that provoked Jewish counter-violence, and that it was the follow-up invasion of the country by the armies of the surrounding Arab states in May to June 1948 that turned what might have been an ephemeral phenomenon into a still larger tragedy. The reader will come away believing that the Zionists unleashed a pre-planned campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against hapless Palestinian Arab villagers who were simply sitting at home embroidering folksy shirts. A more accurate description would go something like this: the UN General Assembly voted by more than a two-thirds majority in favor of partition and the establishment of Jewish and Arab states. The Palestinians and the Arab states rejected the resolution and vowed to prevent its implementation. Throughout the Arab world the cry went up for "jihad." On November 30, 1947, the day after the partition vote, Arab gunmen ambushed two Jewish buses near Petah Tikva, killing seven passengers, and Arab snipers began firing from Jaffa into Tel Aviv's streets. These attacks marked the start of the war.
2005-10-21 00:00:00
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