The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  Aratta continued. “With millions of Arabs throughout the Middle East demanding the blood of the Jews, thousands of holy warriors sprung up and worked their way to Palestine, joining the locals: a ragtag army of Arab bands fighting independently of one another. Six months followed in which the Arabs attacked, and the Jews were on the defense. In April 1948 that was to change; the Jews went on the offensive and routed the Arab forces.

  “Consequently, in the area that came under Jewish control, most of the Arabs left, about 700,000. Most fled out of fear of persecution by the advancing Jewish forces, while some were expelled by the later. The majority moved to areas of Palestine that came under Arab control, while a minority worked their way to other regions within the Arab world. Mostly Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. About 17,000 Jews of Palestine were expelled or fled during this war; no Jew was left in the territory that came under Arab control, and their villages were razed to the ground.”

  Aratta went on, “This civil war in Palestine was to be act I. As the last of the British soldiers vacated the territory, the Jews declared the formation of the state of Israel. Concurrently, the armies of neighboring countries marched into the territory, and a three-way complex, violent land grab ensued.

  “When the dust settled, the newly formed state of Israel held most of the territory, Jordan assumed control of the hill region, which they christened ‘the West Bank,’ and Egypt gained control over a strip of land that was to be known as the Gaza Strip.

  “Subsequently, the United Nations recognized the state of Israel. Now, without the reality on the ground, it would not have been a country, but a figment of the international community imagination. Yet, with the reality on the ground without UN recognition, it would not have been a bona fide country, case in point being Somaliland.

  “While the exodus of the local Arabs from the Jewish-controlled territory was mostly a matter of choice, the return was not. The state of Israel came into being, and everything changed.

  “The Israelis barred the return of the Arabs. Hundreds of Arab villages were razed, or their houses and properties were given to the newly arrived Jewish refugees. The Israelis had just escaped what they believed to be the destruction of the Jewish enterprise in the hands of the very Arab people who fled and were not going to allow them to return and form what they feared would be a fifth column in their midst. It also dawned on them that if the Arabs returned, Jews might become a minority in their newly-established state.

  “Having said that, the hundred and fifty thousand Arabs that chose to remain, although treated with distrust and hostility, were largely left unmolested. Apart from this, in a context of a comprehensive peace agreement with its neighbors, Israel agreed to absorb a total of one hundred thousand Arabs that left the territory that came under its control. The Arab states insisted they will take back all those who left, and nothing came of it.

  “In the years that would follow, tens of thousands of Arabs would try to return to their former villages. They were forcefully turned away. There was no going back—in any sense of the word. Their aspirations and attempts to return have been at the heart of the budding Palestinian national identity. The Return narrative was forged in the cold winter nights buttressed by the contempt of fellow Arabs and bolstered, notably in recent decades, by western NGOs.”

  “Was their exile a singular event during that time?”

  Aratta shook his head. “It was anything but.”

  He puffed a few times on his pipe.

  “The era of nationalism brought with it waves of ethnic cleansing. Tat­ars were ejected from Crimea, Muslims from Bulgaria and Armenians from Turkey. It went on for many decades and reached a crescendo in the 1940s.

  “The hundreds of thousands of displaced Arabs of Palestine joined in those years the stream of tens of millions of people, from those Muslims streaming out of India to Turks fleeing Bulgaria. Why, about that time, a rock-throw away, civil war also raged in Greece. And as Arabs were making their way out of the Jewish controlled territories, the winning side in Greece issued a decree, banning refugees—notably those of Macedonian ethnicity, who were on the losing side—from returning, their property summarily confiscated.

  “But there was one mass exodus that took place a year or two earlier whose outcomes and the norms surrounding it are even more instructive.

  “When the German forces were pushed back, and the war was coming to an end, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and a few other countries in the region turned around and contemplated their citizens whose ethnic roots were German. Earlier, many of the ethnic Germans had welcomed with open arms the invading German army. They were deemed a potential fifth column, and their respective governments have decided that they must all go.

  “Their properties were forfeited to the state, and they were forced into cattle trains. Over ten million, predominantly women and children, were brutally driven against their will to the charred rubble of post-war Germany. Literally, hundreds of thousands died en route. The world fully sanctioned the expulsion and watched.

  “Like the Arabs of Palestine, the German-Czech and German-Pole refugees could not accept that their departure from former homelands had been final. They nursed an irrational conviction that some sudden radical change will allow them to return. As the Arabs of Palestine, most of the expellees were peasants deeply attached to their native soil, which they cultivated for many generations. And like the Arabs of Palestine, they did not consider that their own behavior was in part responsible for their ejection. Instead, they were self-righteously indignant. Caught in the grip of self-pity and inertia, they clung to their miserable makeshift abodes rather than looking into the future. The German public and government were also opposed to their integration and refused to grant them full citizenship.

  “However, within a few years, the two accounts diverged. Germany came to realize the futility of its actions and change the narrative. They initiated a series of resettlement programs. By the late Fifties, most of the German ethnic refugees were resettled. The Arabs from Palestine were not.

  “Any attempts to provide livelihood or improve the well-being of the Palestinian refugees were rejected.

  “War-ravaged Germany, inundated by millions of German ethnic refugees, picked up the pieces and moved on. So did everyone else. From the tens of millions of refugees of that time, the Palestinians have been the only ones who have perpetuated that status. And perhaps the only group who was the aggressor in a given conflict, lost, and demand repatriation. From Arab governments to various European Leftist activists, a great effort has been invested over the decades to assure that the embers of resentment will not die out, that the situation was not to be resolved except at Israel’s expense. Ultimately, the real battle in the region has been waged to eradicate the Jewish state—not to create a Palestinian one.”

  Lee turned to David. “Aratta told me something about Jewish refugees arriving to Israel. “

  David nodded. “In the two years following the inception of Israel, Jewish refugees flooded Israel. Many of the newcomers were housed in makeshift camps. All of us had to live on ration coupons under an austerity regime.

  “What is relevant to note is that the decision of the international community to partition Palestine precipitated a wave of persecutions and intimidations throughout the Middle East. Consequently, in the coming years and decades, hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries flooded the new Jewish State. We are talking about people who lived in those Arab countries for generations beyond reckoning.

  “Jews and Arabs, in a sense it was a population transfer—not unlike the far more massive population transfer that happened about that time in the partition of British India into Hindu-dominated India and into Muslim-dominated Pakistan.”

  “You suggested that just a minority of the seven hundred thousand Arabs who were displaced left Palestine itself, becoming refugees proper,” said Lee. “Out of this smaller group, there can’t be th
at many that are still alive and stateless. Where the demand for a right of return of five or six million refugees comes from? Did they clone themselves?”

  Aratta was mildly surprised. So Lee was familiar with some of the details of the conflict. “The vast majority of those who at present identify themselves Palestinian refugees are of course not those originally displaced but their descendants, down to fifth generation and counting. This aside, about four-fifths of those currently defined as Palestinian refugees aren’t refugees by conventional standards: they are either citizens of various countries or descendants of those that never left the territory of Palestine, but rather were internally displaced, moving to the areas that subsequently came to be known as the Gaza strip and the West Bank.

  “Be it as it may, the Palestinian administration insists those millions of people have the right to settle in Israel proper. The Right of Return is a core, unyielding demand, which its exercise can potentially spell the end of the state of Israel as such. In a sense, they have been counting on just that.”

  Brandon turned to David. “What do you say to a Palestinian American whose grandparents fled the war and wish to return home?”

  “I say ‘home’ is no more; it was gone generations ago in every meaningful sense. Look, my son was born in Israel, my three grandkids were born in Israel, and my great-grandkid, Itai, was born in Israel. Yet, most of those so-called refugees have never set their eyes on this land let alone lived in it. They are native to Chile, Jordan, Syria, or the United States. And as for those few originally displaced and still alive, well, they were displaced from Mandatory Palestine, and you are talking about Israel. It came into existence after they were gone and by a set of values different from theirs.”

  Brandon looked at Aratta. “What of a secular democratic state en­compassing Israel proper, Gaza, and the West Bank, one that both the Jews and Arabs can migrate to freely? One person one vote?”

  “It’s a nonstarter,” responded Aratta. “Both the Jewish and Palestinians nations are deeply invested in having a state with a strong national character. Neither peoples are the least bit interested in a one-state arran­gement, unless, in the case of some Palestinians, as a gambit to gain dominance over the entire territory.

  “The Palestinian have co-opted popular narratives of injustice and made them their own. With their talk of the historical homeland, concentration camps, genocide, and persecution, they co-opted the Jewish narrative.” Aratta looked around. “The Arabs are using any which way to see the Jewish state eradicated. From the insistence of the Right of Return, to the raining of rockets, to the negotiating table, to songs, to textbooks, to terror acts, to diplomatic demands for territorial concessions—the campaign has been waged on every possible front. It has been waged over countless pages of social media, in campuses, and in boycott and sanction campaigns.

  “Bolstered by EU money, thousands of European activists, some of whom are diplomats, roam the length and breadth of the territory, contriving, formulating, donating, and pushing many staged confrontations with the Israeli army and also helping to fabricate news. Petro-dollars and EU funding grease the works of human right groups, and their reports spin, unquestioned, to the media, to UN bodies, and the academia.

  “In the halls of the General Assembly, International Court of Justice, UNESCO, and elsewhere, the Jewish state is being systematically and repeatedly condemned and denounced. The powerful anti-Israel lobby is well on its way to make it appear self-evident that the Jewish state is an illegitimate entity that has no place among the states of the world.”

  “How terror and killing fit in?” asked Susan.

  “Attrition,” said Aratta immediately. “They have sought to impose over the long term a casualty rate beyond the Israelis’ willingness to pay.”

  “And where would that lead them?”

  “Along with the strangulation of Israel’s economy with international boycotts, it is part of a broad, decades-long campaign to make it miserable enough for most of the Jews to depart. They strive to wear down the secular society of Israel, eventually causing it to waste away. And in the generations to come, as Jews migrate to greener pastures, Israel will be hollowed out, divested of its Jewish character.”

  “They actually think they can bring this about?”

  “The Arabs fancy Israel to be an artificial, weak, disunited society: a collection of opportunistic migrants from various countries who belong to an innately subservient, subject race.”

  “What chance do they really have?”

  “I don’t rightly know. The Palestinians do have the active support of myriad European governments, international Left-leaning organizations, and hundreds of millions of people: Arabs and non-Arab Muslims, European activists, some Christians groups, and dyed-in-the-wool Western anti-Semites. In a few more generations, it may all work out for them.”

  “That’s why I think they should be made to leave,” declared David.

  The other guests turned to him.

  The old man unclenched his fists. “We, in Israel, cannot justify sacrificing the life of Israeli soldiers because of the Palestinians’ inability to live in a state with a Muslim character alongside a state with a Jewish character. But it goes far beyond that. The current colonial and militant arrangement in the West Bank are horribly corrosive for both people. The Palestinians irresponsible dreams are everybody’s else nightmares. They result in their children steeped in bigotry and hatred, while Israeli youth is growing up callous to the Palestinians’ humanity and needs. We must bring this nightmare to an end. When the Palestinians define it as a zero-sum game, when they do not settle for anything less than everything, the Arabs of the West Bank must be made to leave.”

  No one had anything to say to this.

  “The alternative, the cost of the status quo through the decades, is higher—not to mention the long-term existential threat to our Jewish state. When we have next to us millions plotting our demise, it tends to make me nervous. They eventually might get lucky.

  “They must leave, and they will get over it. They already did once not that long ago.”

  Lee frowned, puzzled. “They did?”

  “In 1991, through a campaign of harassment, terror, and rape Kuwait drove out all its Palestinian populations, about half a million of them. No one rioted in the streets in protest, no one begged Kuwait to let them stay. Few in the world took notice, and fewer still cared.”

  “You are talking about turning millions of people into refugees,” told him Brandon somberly.

  The old man gave them half a smile. “We don’t have to do it like Kuwait did. Those publicly pledging fealty and willing to shoulder their civic duty to the state of Israel can stay. As for the majority, they can sell their land for tidy sums and the legendary sums Israel spent over time on related security measures could very well be given to each departing family. “

  Brandon threw his hands in the air. “Where could they go?”

  “Jordan is over fourteen times larger than the West Bank and Gaza Strip, combined, and has about eight times less their population density. Let them live alongside their Palestinian brethren, which already make up the majority of the population in Jordan anyway. So there you have your two-state solution: East of the Jordan river is the Palestinian-majority state and west of it is a Jewish majority state.

  “But all of this is just old man’s foolish rants. This idea is outside the political discourse. It has snowball’s chance in hell. In fact, nothing substantial is likely to alter, one way or another. Both nations are two snaked intertwined in an impossible embrace, while the world is rooting on, screaming bloody murder if either would dare to change the status quo in any meaningful way.”

  Excerpt II

  “On occasion,” Galecki finally said, “hoodlum blacks roam in packs, looking for fun.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Last Christmas, hundreds of blacks brawled and rampaged in Monroeville. About th
e same time, blacks brawled and rampaged in malls in Sacramento, Independence, Davenport, Buffalo, York, Nashville, Groton, Jacksonville, Dayton, and who knows where else.”

  He went on, “A white family pulled into a gas station in Baton Rouge at night. The father who came out to pay for the gas was mocked at by a black man. Things escalated, and he was told he was in the wrong neighborhood and was not going to make it out. Subsequently, he was punched and knocked to the ground. The wife got out to help and was summarily knocked unconscious. The horrified daughter got out and was struck in the face. Such black-on-white gratuitous attacks have been occurring in America for decades.

  “In Fort Myers, a bunch of black teenagers spotted an elderly white man tending his garden. One of the girls ran at full speed and then kicked him, knocking him down while her friends streamed it on social media and shrieked in laughter and encouragement.”

  He took a drag on the cigarette. “You spot a soft target, hit him on the head, trying to knock him out. In New Orleans, a pack of blacks ambushed a cyclist and struck his face with an aluminum bat. So there is that, too—along with slamming heads of white people onto the pavement.

  “The black lead actor in the film Django Unchained joked around, saying that as Django, he gets to ‘kill all the white people in the movie. How great is that? And how black is that?’ Well, you tell me.

  “One afternoon, not long ago, a white person was heading to his home in a suburb of Boston when two blacks attacked him, jumped him from behind, and slammed his head onto the pavement. Had no interest in his money or wallet, though. The unfortunate man had to undergo three brain surgeries, and he still eats from a feeding tube and does not speak—one year after the attack.”

  David exhaled noisily in frustration. “Is this why so many blacks are in prison?”

  “I don’t know about ‘many.’” Galecki glanced at him. “Most of their violence goes underreported due to a strict stitches-to-snitches social code.”