Golan Height refugees, 1967 (Photo: Micha Bar-am)
What happened to the 130,000 Syrian citizens living in the Golan Heights in June 1967? According to the Israeli narrative, they all fled to Syria, but official documents and testimonies tell a different story.
Israeli eyewitness: “[W]e saw a big group of Syrian civilians, a few hundred people, gathered in front of tables with soldiers sitting behind them. We stopped and asked a soldier what they were doing. He answered they were doing pre-expulsion registration. I’m not a softhearted person, but I immediately had the feeling that something here wasn’t right. I still remember what a bad impression this sight left on me. But it was, de facto, like it was [with the Arab populations] in Lod, Ramle and other places in the War of Independence.”
*UPDATED* IOA Editor: As in 1948, the “Israeli narrative” tries to sweep Israel’s ethnic cleansing crimes under the rug. As in 1948, official Israel lied about the fate of the local population during and after the war and so did Israeli historians, as this story reveals.
Note: As is often the case, the original Haaretz story, in Hebrew, is longer and more detailed than the English version presented below.
Among the parts left out of the English version: Rehavam Ze’evi, then a general at the IDF General Command under then IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin, in a War Room meeting on 9 June 1967, stated
“The [Golan] Height does not have a large population and it needs to be received [delivered] clean of its residents.”
To which the Haaretz writer adds
“The IDF did not receive the Height empty, as Ze’evi wanted, but it took care that it will become that.”
Twenty years later, Ze’evi — by then an extreme right-wing politician — wrote in a Yediot Ahronot article defending his Transfer [of all Palestinians out of Palestine] idea:
“Palmach member David Elazar [IDF General in charge of the Northern Command which lead the conquest of the Golan] removed all the Arab villagers from the Golan Height after the Six-Day-War, and he did so with the approval of Rabin the chief of staff, Dayan the defense minister and Eshkol the prime minister,”
all regarded as moderate Zionists, therefore justifying Ze’evi’s Transfer idea, which was considered “extreme” in most Israeli political circles.
Indeed, Ze’evi had a point: Historically, while right-wing Zionism (“Lehi,” or the “Stern-Gang” and the “Irgun” were associated with the war crimes of Deir Yassin, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine which followed was largely the responsibility of the “Yishuv,” the broad, mainstream Jewish community of Palestine, which was dominated by labor movement elements, not the right-wing.
This is still very important today: Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni — representing the current generation that came out of the school of David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin, all considered “moderate” — offer a political vision that is no different than that of Benjamin Netanyahu, who follows the the school of Ze’ev Zabotinsky and Menachem Begin, both considered “extreme”.
Also, both header and sub-header of the two versions are different. The header of the Hebrew version story reads “What happened to the 130 thousand Syrian citizens who resided in the Golan Heights in June 1967?” The header of the English version story reads: “The disinherited.”
The sub-header of the Hebrew version story reads “What happened to the 130,000 Syrian citizens who lived in the Golan Heights in June 1967? According to the official Israeli version, the vast majority fled into the depth of Syria by the end of the war. According to military documents and eyewitness reports, tens of thousands were expelled in a transfer that reminds that of the residents of Lod [Lydda] and Ramle [al-Ramla] in 1948.”
The sub-header of the English version reads “What happened to the 130,000 Syrian citizens living in the Golan Heights in June 1967? According to the Israeli narrative, they all fled to Syria, but official documents and testimonies tell a different story.” Clearly, this “sanitized” version was designed to ’soften the blow’ of the facts presented in the English version, which are essentially the same as those of the Hebrew version. Not the first time Haaretz editors engage in such practices.
No comments:
Post a Comment