Introduction
“There is no denying that the Zionist colonization of Palestine which began in the early 1880s and continues to this day, represents one of the most remarkable colonizing ventures of all time”.
Dr Walid Khalidi - All That Remains
“I want to explore both the mechanism of the 1948 ethnic cleansing [of Palestine] and the cognitive system that allowed the world to forget...I want to make the case for the paradigm of ethnic cleansing and use it to replace the paradigm of war as the basis for the scholarly research of, and the public debate about, 1948”.
Professor Ilan Pappe - The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
“The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's. On 16 August [2007], the Bush administration announced an unprecedented $30bn military "aid package" for Israel, the world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel does. No other country has such a record of lawlessness; not any of the world's tyrannies comes close. International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is nothing like it in UN history”.
John Pilger, August 2007
“In 1948 eighty-five percent of Palestinians in the part of Palestine that became Israel were displaced, 675 towns and villages were depopulated while their lands and properties were confiscated. Palestinians refer to this experience as their Nakba”.
Dr Salman Abu-Sitta - The Return Journey
“If I were to sum up the [1897] Basle Conference in one word - it would be this: at Basle I founded the Jewish State...If I were to say this to-day [3 September, 1897], I would be be met with universal laughter. In five years, perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will see it."
Theodor Herzel, Founder of Zionism [from his own diaries]
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The principal aim of 1948 Lest We Forget, through its website, established in May 2006, is to expose the lies which have, for far too long, been presented as the true scenario of how Israel came to be in 1948.
There is nothing mysterious about what is often referred to as ‘the Palestine Problem’ or 'The Palestine Question'. What Palestinians refer to as their Nakba was not enacted in some obscure era of history but rather in the 20th Century, within our life time and under the noses of western democarcies - who condoned it.
Until recently, detailed information about ‘the Palestine Problem’ had been hidden from academic researches mainly in the zionist archives of the Israeli state.
Apart from the declaration in 1897 by the Zionists at Basel to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the real decisions which helped bring about the realisation of that declaration and, consequently, the Palestinian tragedy were in fact taken in two Western capitals: London and Washington. These decisions were backed by a sophisticated machine of propaganda and manipulation the aim of which was to realise the Zionist vision of 'a Jewish home in Palestine’. All the crises that have beset the Middle East, from the early days of the 20th century until the present bloody wars raging throughout this region, flow directly and indirectly from that Basel decision of 1897. About this, there is no doubt.
As the process of turning that ‘vision’ into reality continued, Western acquiescence to, and accommodation of that ‘vision’ also continued. Its manifestation lies at the heart of what might be termed as the Bible Syndrome. Its epicentre is the great dialogue between Christianity and Judaism. This epicentre is vast, powerful and is proving to be the final doomsday chapter of what is left of Palestine.
No conflict in the world has ever been so well documented and recorded as the Palestine tragedy.
There is a mass of detailed maps, photographs, populations counts, up-to-date reports, facts on the ground and official documents which show that the basis for the most trumpeted peace process today calling for an independent and viable Palestinian state sitting side by side Israel has long disappeared.
The so-called two-state solution is now nothing but an empty phrase. It is a 'delusion'.
There is a huge gap between what is being said and what is being heard; between what is being done on the ground and what is officially reported or admitted. The continued military occupation of historic Palestine, and the manner in which it is manifested through the construction of tunnels, bridges, settlements, exclusion zones and bypass roads for Jews only, all supported by the 4th largest militay machine on the planet, continues unabated in defiance of International Law. The construction of the illegal prison wall around Gaza and the West Bank continues to rob Palestinians of their land and of their farms. The establishment of new illegal Jewish colonies and the enlargement of existing illegal ones are a daily activity funded in large part by he American taxpayer. No one makes a formal complaint and when they do, no one listens.
For these reasons, we aim to show that the problems did not start with the establishment of the Israeli state in May 1948 (for that is the event that caused the Palestinian Nakba), but with the decisions taken by the Zionist leadership in Basel in 1897: to create an exclusive home and a nation for the Jews in Palestine within 50 years.
That dream had been realised in 51 years! The Zionists plotted to take over the nation of one people and offer it to the people of many nations.
Yanun - Palestine Palestinian family 1943
1 year after the Nakba: 1949 60 years later: 2009
It is worth noting that at the time of the Basel Conference of 1897, 95% of the population of Palestine were Palestinian Arabs and 99% of its land was Arab owned. This fact was excluded from the thinking of the Zionist leadership and was memorably reflected in Golda Meir’s famous statement: “There was no such thing as a Palestinian people…it was not as though there was a Palestinian people considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist”.
Israel did not even exist before May 1948. That so-called State has neither recognised boundaries nor a national constitution. For its people, that dream of a democratic state has been slowly turning into a nightmare.