In an article titled “BEN-GURION’S NOTORIOUS QUOTES: THEIR POLEMICAL USES & ABUSES” (here), Ralph Seliger, a writer on Israel and Jewish cultural and political issues, attempts to grapple with David Ben-Gurion’s candidness regarding the practices and goals of Zionism, as well as his supremacist, messianic attitude towards the Palestinians whose homeland he had stolen – his own word – to establish a Jewish state.
Seliger’s attempt at defence and justification of Ben-Gurion’s remarks appears in an email exchange between himself and a number of anti-Zionist Jews. The quotes Seliger addresses in his justificatory analysis are not only considered highly controversial, distasteful, and disturbing for their racist and anti-humanist content (explaining why Seliger feels the need to defend them); they have in actual fact proven catastrophic and deadly to the Palestinian people, who have lost their homeland and continue to be slaughtered and ethnically cleansed by Israel, Ben-Gurion’s apartheid creation.
Whilst I have reproduced the selected sof Ben-Gurion here below (What did David Ben-Gurion say?), I shall only reproduce the 6 points Seliger makes as part of his attempt to justify, what he himself admits, is Ben-Gurion “clearly advocating ethnic cleansing against the Arabs” (entire text evailable here):
To sum up my reaction [writes Seliger]:
1. The Jews were engaged in a life or death struggle with the Arabs of Palestine, mostly because of the choice of the latter.
2. Selected quotes of one leader are not representative of an entire spectrum of parties and factions that equally saw themselves as “Zionist.” (They might not even be so representative of his movement or even of him; they were uttered in times of extreme pressure.)
3. When is the bigotry, intolerance, ignorance and violence of the Arab world going to become PC for the left to examine honestly and completely?
4. How many countries in the world were not born of historical “sin” of some sort or other?
5. When are we going to stop talking ancient history?
6. When are we going to stop talking about “Zionism” and start relating to this conflict in human terms? Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians have to see each other as fellow human beings entitled to equal respect, rights and protections.
Taking Seliger’s attempts at justification of the Ben-Gurion quotes on ethnic cleansing one by one, let us critically examine them from the perspective of universally recognised human rights and ethical norms:
1. The Jews were engaged in a life or death struggle with the Arabs of Palestine, mostly because of the choice of the latter.
- First, from a human rights perspective, the context of conflict does not justify policies promoting ethnic cleansing or the disregard for the rights and well-being of the Palestinian Arab population. Human rights principles emphasize the protection of all individuals, regardless of the historical or political context. Resorting to extreme measures, such as forced displacement, cannot be morally justified by the intensity of the conflict.
Second, Seliger, without irony it seems, attempts to portray the resistance of Palestinians to their proposed ethnic cleansing as actual justification for carrying it out. That is, Seliger says, Jews were forced into ethnic cleansing mostly because of the choice of Palestinians to resist the taking of their homeland by Zionists. By this, Seliger denies Palestinians the right to resist what would rob them of their homeland, accusing them of pushing Jews into a life and death struggle simply by virtue of their resistance to their own dispossession. The arrogance of this view is second only to the quotes Seliger is attempting to justify, and were we to adopt it as an ethical guide could adequately justify occupying our neighbour’s garden simply because he resisted our attempt to do so. It was because he resisted, and threatened us,” says Seliger to the judge, “that we evicted him, your honour.”
2. Selected quotes of one leader are not representative of an entire spectrum of parties and factions that equally saw themselves as “Zionist.”
- While it’s true that not all Zionists may have shared Ben-Gurion’s views advocating human rights violations and discriminatory attitudes towards Palestinians, we should remember that only Ben-Gurion is under examination here. Proper evaluation of the moral implications of actions and statements specificaly by Ben-Gurion must be conducted irrespective of the diversity of opinions within Zionism. Dismissing these quotes as unrepresentative does not address the ethical questions they pose. This can be seen as an attempt by Seliger to deflect attention from Ben-Gurion’s advocacy of ethnic cleansing, made all the more poignent by the fact that Ben-Gurion was not just a Zionist, but a leading Zionist who later became the first Prime Minister of Israel.
3. When is the bigotry, intolerance, ignorance and violence of the Arab world going to become PC for the left to examine honestly and completely?
- Pointing out the shortcomings of others does not negate the need for accountability. Examining human rights violations in one context should not preclude addressing issues in another. Ethical norms demand a consistent approach to evaluating violations, regardless of the parties involved. Focusing on the actions of others should not divert attention from addressing one’s own responsibilities and moral obligations.
4. How many countries in the world were not born of historical “sin” of some sort or other?
- Interesting that Seliger uses the word sin, even in quotation marks. He should note, however, that acknowledging historical wrongs does not diminish the importance of ongoing human rights violations, particularly when accused of them oneself. While many nations have sinful histories, it does not absolve any country or leader from accountability for human rights abuses.
5. When are we going to stop talking ancient history?
- Human rights violations, regardless of when they occurred, demand acknowledgment and redress. Seliger’s attempt to cast Ben-Gurion’s quotes as “ancient history” is perhaps the most disingenuous of his justifications. The problem with Seliger’s apologetics is that Ben-Gurion is not ancient history. His version of Zionism is very much alive in Israel today, both in theory and practice, particularly in light of the recent comments made by the far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Amichai Eliyahu, among others. Speaking in the Knesset, Smotrich threatened Israel’s Palestinian citizens with ethnic cleansing, cautioning them they “Are here by mistake, because Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job.” In an interview, Eliyahu suggested wiping out Palestinians in Gaza with a nuclear bomb.
Historical injustices and the intention to commit them often have lasting consequences, and Ben-Gurion’s are a text book case. Dismissing as ancient history the comments and actions of the Zionists of yester-year unfortunately doesn’t work, because the Zionists of today are still calling for them. Ben-Gurion’s words and spirit live on in Zionists such as Smotrich, Eliyahu and Ben Gver, all of whom cannot be seen as anything other than Israel’s version of the Nazis.
6. When are we going to stop talking about “Zionism” and start relating to this conflict in human terms?
- One doesn’t really know what to respond to this. How can we stop talking about Zionism when it is still on the rampage and becoming increasingly more vicious? (See response 5, above).
In summary, Seliger applies a series of bad-faith arguments in an attempt to negate the intention and execution of human rights violations advocated by Ben-Gurion, as stated in the selected quotes. He attempts to draw out a supposed irrelevance and redundancy of the quotes over time, uses false equivalences and ad hominem attacks, and finally, for good measure, displays wilful blindness to the continuing realities of Zionism precisely as advocated by such extreme, and one might say, entirely heartless figures as Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion may have been the father of Israel, but, by his own words, he had to advocate the rape of Palestine to give it birth.
The sacrifice of Palestinians to obtain Israel was not the only sacrifice Ben-Gurion was prepared to make. By his own words, he was also prepared to sacrifice Jews to this end, in particular Jewish children (quote 6 below). Through Ben-Gurion alone, a significant voice, Zionism is exposed for the heartless and morally bankrupt ideology that it is. It is not the saviour of all Jews (and this, through sacrifice of Palestinians), but as Ben-Gurion himself tells us, only of some Jews, should that ever fit Zionism’s goals. (On this topic see What the BBC fails to tell you about October 7 by Jonathan Cook, a Nazareth-based journalist.)
To Palestinians, Zionism is Nazism, an ideology intent on their elimination one way or another. No amount of apologetic analysis can deny it, nor rehabilitate figures such as Ben-Gurion. Although, there may be some hope for Benjamin Netanyahu, Smotrich and all the rest of those yearning to “finish what Ben-Gurion started”. That is, if only they would listen to Seliger, and “stop talking about Zionism and start relating to this conflict in human terms”.
What did David Ben-Gurion say?
- “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
— David Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp121. - “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”
— David Ben Gurion. Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech. - “We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return.”
— David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar’s Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157. - Ben Gurion also warned in 1948: Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes: “The old will die and the young will forget.”
- “We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai.”
— David Ben-Gurion May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, a Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978. - “If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.”
— Ben-Gurion (Quoted on pp 855-56 in Shabtai Teveth’s Ben-Gurion in a slightly different translation). - “It’s not a matter of maintaining the status quo. We have to create a dynamic state, oriented towards expansion.” –Ben Gurion
- “Every school child knows that there is no such thing in history as a final arrangement — not with regard to the regime, not with regard to borders, and not with regard to international agreements.”
— Ben Gurion, War Diaries, 12/03/1947 following Israel’s “acceptance” of the U.N. Partition of 11/29/1947 (Simha Flapan, “Birth of Israel,” p.13) - “We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population? ‘Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ‘ Drive them out! ‘ “
— Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979. - Partition: “after the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we will abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine “
— Ben Gurion, p.22 “The Birth of Israel, 1987” Simha Flapan. - “The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan. One does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today — but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concerns of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.”
— P. 53, “The Birth of Israel, 1987” Simha Flapan - October, 1936, during the Jewish Agency Executive meeting Ben-Gurion arguing in favor of transfer as a policy, he said “We are not a state and Britain will not do it for us…” although “there is nothing wrong in the idea.”
- “If it was permissible to move an Arab from the Galilee to Judea, why it is impossible to move an Arab from Hebron to Transjordan, which is much closer? There are vast expanses of land there and we are over crowded….Even the High Commission agrees to a transfer to Transjordan if we equip the peasants with land and money. If the Peel Commission and the London Government accept, we’ll remove the land problem from the agenda.”
- The Arabs, Ben-Gurion claimed, would not become landless as a result of Zionist land acquisition; they would be transferred to Transjordan.
- October 29, 1936 the 21 member of the Jewish Agency Executive endorsed the proposal of a transfer of displaced Arab farmers to Transjordan. Only two of the four non-Zionist members opted to dissent.
— Flapan, Zionism and the Palestinians, citing protocols of the Executive meeting, p. 261 - 12 July 1937, Ben-Gurion entered in his diary: “The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own feet during the days of the First and Second Temple”
– a Galilee free from Arab population. - Ben-Gurion went so far to write: “We must prepare ourselves to carry out” the transfer [emphasis in original]
- 27 July 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos: “We have never wanted to dispossess the Arabs [but] because Britain is giving them part of the country which had been promised to us, it is fair that the Arabs in our state be transferred to the Arab portion”
- 5 October 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16 year old son Amos: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. And, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places- then we have force at our disposal.”
- “It is very possible that the Arabs of the neighboring countries will come to their aid against us. But our strength will exceed theirs. Not only because we will be better organized and equipped, but because behind us there stands a still larger force, superior in quantity and quality …the whole younger generation of Jews from Europe and America.”
Ben-Gurion, Zichronot [Memoirs], Vol. 4, p.297-299, p. 330-331.
See also Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs, p. 182-189 - Ben-Gurion in an address to the central committee of the Histadrut on 30 December 1947:
“In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about a million, including almost 40 percent non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority…. There can be no stable and strong Jewish State so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 percent.” - On the 6th of February 1948, during a Mapai Party Council, Ben-Gurion responded to a remark from a member of the audience that “we have no land there” [in the hills and mountains west of Jerusalem] by saying: “The war will give us the land. The concepts of “ours” and “not ours” are peace concepts, only, and in war they lose their whole meaning”
(Ben-Gurion, War Diary, Vol. 1, entry dated 6 February 1948. p.211) - Addressing the Mapai Council the following day, Ben-Gurion declared: “From your entry into Jerusalem, through Lifta, Romema… there are no Arabs. One hundred percent Jews. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, it has not been so Jewish. In many Arab neighborhoods in the west one sees not a single Arab. I do not assume that this will change… What had happened in Jerusalem… is likely to happen in many parts of the country …in the six, eight or ten months of the campaign there will certainly be great changes in the composition of the population in the country.”
(Ben-Gurion, War Diary, Vol. 1, entry dated 7 February 1948. p. 210-211) - And two months later, Ben-Gurion speaking to the Zionist Actions Committee on 6 April, Ben-Gurion declared: “We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area….I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of the Arab population.”
[Ben-Gurion, Behilahem Yisrael, Tel Aviv, Mapai Press, 1952, pp. 86-87] - Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary on 12 July 1937: “the compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the projected Jewish State…. We have to stick to this conclusion the same way we grabbed the Balfour Declaration, more than that, the same way we grabbed at Zionism itself.”
(Ben-Gurion, Zichronot [Memoirs], Vol. 4, p. 299)
In summary, Ben-Gurion’s statements are as abhorrent and indefensible as the subsequent crimes against humanity resulting from them, and which have been committed by Ben-Gurion, his fellow Zionists of the time, and all Zionists since to the present-day and ongoing massacre by Israel of Palestinians in Gaza.