Simon Schama's Nakba denial

British historian Simon Schama has written a comment piece for the Financial Times on “the left’s problem with Jews”, the main purpose of which is to argue that “anti-Israel demonstrations are in danger of morphing into anti-Semitism.”

The section I wish to focus on comes near the end, when Schama addresses the emergence of Zionism in nineteenth century Europe – and its ultimate impact on the Palestinians.

That the Palestinians did become tragic casualties of a Judeo-Arab civil war over the country is indisputable, just as the 700,000 Jews who were violently uprooted from their homes in the Islamic world is equally undeniable.

This is Nakba denial.

In 1948, the State of Israel was established through the violent dispossession and expulsion of the indigenous Palestinian population. Hundreds of villages were levelled, and whole city neighbourhoods were emptied. Around 87 percent of Palestinians who had lived inside the new state’s de-facto borders were ethnically cleansed.

Let us take Benny Morris, an Israeli historian who Schama will perhaps consider a reliable source. His major work, ‘The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem’, makes it clear that the actions of Zionist militias were responsible for almost all cases of Palestinian villages emptied of their inhabitants.

Out of some 392 ethnically cleansed Palestinian communities identified by Morris (other historians give a higher number), “abandonment on Arab orders” was the decisive factor on just six occasions. For Morris, Israel’s “policy was to prevent a refugee return at all costs…In this sense, it may fairly be said that all 700,000 or so who ended up as refugees were compulsorily displaced or ‘expelled’.”

Morris reiterated his position elsewhere: “Above all…the refugee problem was caused by attacks by Jewish forces on Arab villages and towns and by the inhabitants’ fear of such attacks, compounded by expulsions, atrocities, and rumours of atrocities – and by the crucial Israeli Cabinet decision in June 1948 to bar a refugee return.”

On another occasion, Morris put it even more pithily: “without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here.” Yet for Schama, the victims of this ethnic cleansing were merely “tragic casualties of a Judeo-Arab civil war.”

But Schama does not stop there; he also compares the Palestinians expelled in the Nakba to “Jews who were violently uprooted from their homes in the Islamic world.” But as Israeli academic Yehouda Shenhav has written, “any reasonable person, Zionist or non-Zionist, must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Arab Jews is unfounded.”

Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled, or fled, from the borders of historic Palestine. Those who left did not do so of their own volition. In contrast, Jews from Arab lands came to this country under the initiative of the State of Israel and Jewish organizations. Some came of their own free will; others arrived against their will.

As Australian professor – and public Israel supporter – Philip Mendes has also pointed out, “the Jewish exodus from Iraq and other Arab countries took place over many decades, before and after the Palestinian exodus.” So while Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs certainly sees the propaganda value in such an analogy, others are less convinced.

Iraqi-born, former Israeli minister Shlomo Hillel put it like this: “I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists.” Former Knesset speaker, Yisrael Yeshayahu stated: “We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations.”

The fact that Schama includes this paragraph is telling, and his Nakba denial says a lot about his argument as a whole. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine – its massacres, the detonated villages, the killings of refugees harvesting crops – is historical fact. This was how a ‘Jewish majority’ was created.

Israel’s strength of arms and discriminatory legislation, not a left-wing ‘narrative’, prevents a Palestinian refugee in Jordan from returning home. It is not Western ‘post-colonial guilt’ that bombs Palestinian families to death in the Gaza Strip: it is the horror of the colonial present.

But it is only through the erasure and denial of the Palestinians’ past and present experiences that Schama can whitewash Israel’s crimes, and smear those who support the struggle of the colonised.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.