by Jack Cooper
The so-called “refugee” problem of the Arabs could have been solved in 1948.
Following the War of Independence, it seemed to the United Nations that the Arabs and the State of Israel would soon sign a peace treaty and conditions would become normal.
In order to bring this about, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recommending that all the refugees who wanted to do so could return to their homes. All the Arab states voted against the resolution. To this day, the Arabs are demanding the “return” of four million “refugees” as a condition for any peace treaty.
Why was the original resolution turned down by the Arabs? Because it would have provided tacit recognition of Israel as a sovereign nation, something that they did not wish to accept then and still do not accept today.
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1. Quoted in Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2003), 82.
2. Benny Morris, quoted in Dershowitz, The Case for Israel, 83.
3. Dershowitz, The Case for Israel, 83.
4. Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Knopf, 1996), 323.
1. Quoted in Dershowitz, The Case for Israel, 84.
2. Ibid.
...Israel limited immigration of Jews
In the early 1950s, the Israeli economy was not doing well. Faced with the financial burdens of settling droves of new immigrants, providing for defense against hostile neighbors, and developing a viable economy for the new nation, the country was close to economic collapse. In a desperate effort to stave off the disaster, the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency were forced to impose restrictions on the arrival of new immigrants.
Immigration was limited to Jews who would be at mortal risk if they stayed in their current locations abroad, and exceptions were made only for those who were well placed to contribute to the fledgling nation.1
Happily, the crisis did not last long. As the economy stabilized, unlimited Jewish immigration was soon resumed.
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1. Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Knopf, 1996), 415.
...Soviets gave Jewish jobs to Muslims
In the mid-1950s, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet dictator, was confronted with some troubling demographic data. The Muslim population of Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus was burgeoning. Fearing an ethnic challenge to Slavic domination, the Soviets decided to placate the Muslims by compensating them with a virtual monopoly on second-level technocratic positions in their bureaucracies, professions, and universities.
Jews, as the best educated nationality in the Soviet Union, normally occupied these positions. To accomplish the change from Jews to Muslims, Khrushchev went on the all-too-familiar tirade against Jews as potentially disloyal and as an outpost for the “imperialistic West.” Some trials were held for “financial corruption.”
This occurred at a time when pressures for Jewish emigration were building in many other parts of the Soviet Union. The new tide of would-be emigrants was one the Soviet Union would be unable to stem.1
In the not-too-distant future, the Soviet Union would be faced with bloody Muslim insurrections. The group they tried to placate was seeking total independence, while the peaceful and productive population of Jews found life so intolerable that they were forced to emigrate in large numbers.
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1. Howard M. Sachar, Israel and Europe: An Appraisal in History (New York: Random House, 1998), 257.
...Israelis look like Norwegians
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, France was a major supplier of military hardware for the Jewish state. With the ascension to power of Charles de Gaulle, a reappraisal of French-Israeli and French-Arab relations took place. France decided to incline toward the Arabs and away from the Israelis.
An arms embargo began slowly on selected items, but Israel wasn’t affected too badly. At the same time, the Israelis had contracted with West Germany for the construction of a dozen speedy coastal vessels to be named Sa’ar. Once delivered, the boats could be fitted with the Israeli-developed Gabriel missile, “an exceptionally accurate sea-skimmer capable of avoiding enemy radar.”1 However, news of the contract was leaked to the press, and political considerations caused the Germans to rescind it. It was at this point that the Israelis made a deal with the French to manufacture the boats.
Three of the Sa’ars left for Israel in 1967 but too late to participate in the Six-Day War. Although de Gaulle’s embargo on arms sales to Israel was supposed to be complete, French naval and marine officials ignored the ban, and work on the Sa’ars proceeded. By December, three more boats were completed and left for Israel.
After new French elections, the incoming premier, Georges Pompidou, decided to strictly enforce the embargo.2 But even as he did so, two more Sa’ars slipped out of the harbor and cruised to Israel. Work proceeded on the other boats, but a new way had to be found to get them to Israel. Aware of the extreme necessity of having all these boats, Moshe Dayan, Israeli defense minister, devised a plan. The shipyard was to entertain offers from buyers wishing to purchase the remaining five boats. A Norwegian firm purchased the boats, allegedly for oil exploration in Alaska. A group of blond, blue-eyed “Norwegian” (really Israeli) sailors boarded the craft and readied them for departure.3
When Pompidou learned of the deception, he called a meeting of high officials to discuss the matter. It was determined at the meeting to avoid further international derision by putting out the story that the boats had been sold to a private firm and were no longer a matter for government concern.
The boats would ultimately prove their worth to the Israelis. During the Yom Kippur War they were used to great effect off the Egyptian and Syrian coasts.1
Another blow from the French to the Israeli war machine was the cancellation of all contracts to supply the Israeli air force with the French Mirage jet plane. Since the Mirage was manufactured in Switzerland, the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, went to work to obtain the construction blueprints for the French fighter. By the time they had accomplished their mission, they had illegally acquired an astounding 200,000 blueprints for the Mirage plane and the specifications for the machine tools needed to build the plane. This enabled the Israelis to build their own versions of the Mirage, which they called the Nesher and the Kfir.2
Sometime later a Swiss national was convicted of stealing the blueprints and served four and a half years in prison.3 It is interesting to note that, by contrast, Jonathan Pollard, the American Jew who gave some American secrets to Israel, was sentenced to life in prison.4
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1. Howard M. Sachar, Israel and Europe: An Appraisal in History (New York: Random House, 1998), 188.
2. Ibid., 189.
3. Ibid., 190.
1. Ibid., 192.
2. Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services(New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), 234–35.
3. Ibid., 235.
4. Meron Medzini, “The Pollard Affair,” Encyclopedia Judaica, CD-ROM Edition (Jerusalem: Keter, 1997).
...Romania sold Jews to Israel for three thousand dollars each
When Nicolae Ceausescu came to power in Romania in 1965, his fondest wish was to gain most-favored-nation status from the United States. This would give Romania trading privileges on liberal terms. To accomplish this task, Ceausescu, believing that Jews were masters of “back-stairs diplomacy,” called on the services of Romanian chief rabbi Rosen.
Rosen had experience as a goodwill ambassador from Romania to Jews in America. Indeed, the economy of Romania had profited greatly by allowing the Joint Distribution Committee, a worldwide Jewish welfare agency, to give money to Jewish institutions across their land. As a consideration for Rosen’s efforts on behalf of the Romanian government, Ceausescu promised to lift the ban on Jewish emigration from Romania to Israel. Some 220,000 Jews resided in
Romania, the densest concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe outside of the Soviet Union.
Rabbi Rosen’s diplomatic foray into the United States was favorably received, and negotiations proceeded to bring about the trading status the Romanians wished for. Of course, it helped that Romania, although Communist, had been charting a diplomatic course independent of Moscow and had already developed extensive ties with Israel.
Unrelated to the Romanian quest for most-favored-nation status was that the government would be able to reduce the Jewish population of Romania. This would make available to “integral” Romanians badly needed housing and jobs then held by Jews. Indeed, Ceausescu’s predecessor had begun the process by allowing thirty-three thousand Jews to leave for Israel before halting the emigration.
As the United States granted most-favored-nation trading status to Romania, Ceausescu was brokering a secret deal with Rabbi Rosen, whereby the Jewish Agency would pay up to three thousand dollars per person to leave for Israel. The total amount paid was an astounding one hundred million dollars!
The Israelis felt that the price was well worth it in the 160,000 Jews who came to Israel and the goodwill generated in Romania’s diplomatic friendship.1
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1. Howard M. Sachar, Israel and Europe: An Appraisal in History (New York: Random House, 1998), 255–56.
...Israeli intelligence helped win the Six-Day War
June 6, 1967, marked the beginning of Israel’s stunning victory over an Arab coalition of armies vastly superior in numbers and firepower. The Israeli army’s success was due in large part to superior intelligence about Arab planning and deployment of resources.
Israeli intelligence determined that the Egyptian radar and antiaircraft installations were faced east. Acting on this knowledge, the initial Israeli attack planes came from the north and the west.1
The Egyptian Air Force expected the Israelis to attack between four and seven in the morning. The Egyptian reconnaissance flights took place during those hours; then they would be back on the ground. Knowing all this, the Israelis attacked shortly after seven o’clock, precisely hitting all their previously pinpointed targets.2
During the battle, the Israelis intercepted President Nasser’s order to the Egyptian army to fall back to the Suez Canal. This knowledge enabled the Israeli army to shift some forces to counterattack the Syrians on the Golan Heights.
The Israelis had also broken the Egyptian army code and used it to confuse the Egyptian military by issuing false orders. On one occasion, they ordered a MIG pilot to jettison his bombs into the Mediterranean Sea. The pilot was suspicious and asked for further proof that the order was genuine. The Israelis then supplied the pilot with details about his wife and children. Convinced, he dropped his bombs into the sea and parachuted to safety while ditching the plane.3
In another feat, the Israelis deployed a dummy force to mislead the Egyptians into thinking that their attack into the Sinai Desert would take a more southerly route than actually planned. The Egyptians diverted forces of elite units to counter the Israeli token force, while the main Israeli thrust went elsewhere, meeting only light resistance.4
One would have to search far and wide to find a war in which intelligence played a greater role than that played by the Israeli secret services in 1967.
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1. Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services(New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991), 224.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., 232.
4. Ibid., 232–33.
...Yasser Arafat was a KGB creation
According to Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking Soviet bloc intelligence officer ever to defect to the West, Yasser Arafat was almost entirely an invention of KGB resourcefulness.1
Yasser Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1929. Gravitating toward communism, he received training in the Soviet Union at the Balashikha special operations school near Moscow. It was then that the KGB decided to promote Arafat as the leading spokesman of the Palestinian cause.
Their first task was to destroy his birth records and replace them with documents stating he had been born in Jerusalem.2 The KGB’s next step was to beef up Arafat’s four-page tract called “Falastinuna” (Our Palestine) into a forty-eight-page monthly magazine. After that, they created an anti-Zionist persona for him and engineered his election to the post of chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. They also set Arafat up with the line that Israel was a tool of Zionist imperialism. Labeling others as imperialists is a favorite Soviet euphemism for anybody who disagrees with them.
As Arafat evolved into a full-time terrorist, the Romanian intelligence services began to serve as a cover for Arafat’s terrorism, while at the same time building him up as a statesman. The trick, as stated by Pacepa, was to keep on promising to break with terrorism while never getting around to actually doing so.
All this time, the Romanian intelligence services were serving as a conduit for some two hundred thousand dollars a month to the PLO. Presumably, other monies were coming from a variety of other sources to fund their terrorist operations.
How well all this chicanery worked was summed up in 1998 when President Clinton, speaking to Arafat, concluded his remarks by thanking Arafat for “decades and decades of tireless representation of the longing of the Palestinian people to be free, self-sufficient, and at home.”3
Toward the end of Clinton’s presidency he was able to convince the Israelis to agree to the Palestinian demands and give up a large portion of Jerusalem in exchange for “a lasting peace.” This however was not enough for Arafat and he walked away from the negotiations, never to return.
President Clinton would later change his tune into a denunciation of Arafat’s duplicity.
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1. Ion Mihai Pacepa, “The KGB’s Man,” Wall Street Journal (September 22, 2003), http://online.wsj.com/article/ SB106419296113226300-search.html.
2. French biographers Christophe Boltanski and Jihan El Tairi wrote in their 1977 biography that Arafat was born in Cairo, Egypt. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Information lists Arafat as having been born in the Gaza Strip, which has been a part of Egypt.
3. Pacepa, “The KGB’s Man.”
...Jewish immigration to Palestine was good for Arabs
When journalist Joan Peters went to the Middle East in 1973 to cover the latest Arab-Israeli conflict, she became interested in the much-talkedabout “refugee” problem. In her perusal of United Nations documents, she became familiar with the usually accepted definition of refugees as “those people who were forced to leave their ‘permanent’ or ‘habitual homes.’”1 She also noticed what she termed “a seemingly casual alteration of the definition of what constitutes an Arab refugee from Israel.”2 The UN broadened the definition of an Arab refugee to include persons who had lived in Palestine for only two years before Israeli statehood.3
Ms. Peters questioned why it was deemed necessary to amend the definition of a refugee. The answer she found is that the Arabs’ claim to having lived in Palestine “from time immemorial” is untrue, and the amended definition served the purpose of padding population numbers in order to strengthen the Arabs’ position in laying claim to the land. Ms. Peters’s exhaustive investigation into the “refugee” problem led to the title of her book From Time Immemorial.
Another Arab claim was that the Jews were displacing Arabs. Ms. Peters’s data show that the Arab population in the mainly Arab section in the time period recorded increased about 121 percent, while the Arab population in the mainly Jewish area increased an astounding 401 percent.
The conclusion to be drawn from the data is that the immigration of Jews actually attracted Arabs rather than displacing them as has been claimed by the Arabs.4
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1. Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict over Palestine (Chicago: JKAP Publishi
ng, 1984), 4.
2. Ibid., 4.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., 255.
...Alexander Haig saved Israel in 1973
When the Arabs launched their surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur in 1973, the Israeli armed forces found themselves on the defensive and expending ammunition at a rate faster than they had anticipated. An immediate call went out to the United States for help in replenishing their rapidly diminishing supplies.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was of the opinion that if the Israelis were denied a decisive and quick victory, they would be more amenable to make concessions in the peace talks to follow. His theory, as told to Secretary of Defense Schlesinger, was “to let Israel come out ahead, but bleed”1 before shipping the necessary matériel to the Israel Defense Forces.
What Kissinger failed to recognize was that at that point, the Israelis were in danger of losing the war, and that they would have no bargaining power at all at the peace table. So desperate was the Israeli military situation that Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered the arming of nuclear weapons to be used in case of an enemy breakthrough.2
Without waiting for authorization, General Alexander Haig, at that time President Nixon’s chief of staff in the White House, began rounding up TOW missiles from Germany and the eastern seaboard of the United States and started sending them to Israel. He then invited senior Israeli military officers to Fort Benning, Georgia, for an orientation session in how to use the deadly anti-tank missiles.3 The Israeli officers were amazed to learn that the missiles had a 97-percent kill rate “and could be fired from a foxhole and destroy a moving tank three kilometers away.”4