My speech

Kia ora koutou, assalamu alaykum,

Yesterday was Nakba Day. The 15^th of May 1948 was the day after the proclaimed birth of the state of Israel, but this was not when the Nakba started. To say something about the Nakba I am going to talk about the massacre at Deir Yassin which took place more than a month earlier. Many of you have heard of the Deir Yassin massacre, though it was not the greatest massacre of the Nakba nor more brutal than some others. It may be famous for the wrong reasons. It was, however, a key moment in the long genocide against Palestinians and in the blood-drenched establishment of the IDF.

The Nakba made refugees of over 600,000 Palestinians. Almost all fled on foot guarded by armed Zionists who would sometimes kill the refugees for sport. One Palmach soldier said it was because watching people walk was boring.

Most Israelis even to this day will try to tell you Palestinians only fled their homes because they were told to do so by the Arab states who went to war against Israel.

Do we believe them?

I couldn’t hear that. Do we believe them?

No, we don’t believe them, because as the great comedian Alexei Sayle tells us “They lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie!”

In reality, by this time 78 years ago 200,000 Palestinians had already been ethnically cleansed. They did not leave their lives behind and flee for trivial reasons, they fled because of violence. This was not merely the fear of being caught in the crossfire of war, they fled because the Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah forces were using violence against the civilian population to drive them out. They slaughtered civilian men women and children so as to ensure that others would know to expect no mercy. The first such massacre of this period began on December 31^st in 1947. Haganah forces went in the dead of night into the residences of the town of Balad al Sheikh with orders to quote “kill maximum adult males”.

In another overnight operation Haganah forces went into the village of Sa’sa’. Their order read: “You have to blow up twenty houses and kill as many warriors as possible”, but according to Ilan Pappé, “warriors” should be read as “villagers” to properly understand the order.

The Haganah claimed that the village was a haven for Palestinian fighters?

Do we believe them?

I still can’t hear you. Do we believe them?

No, we do not believe them because they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie!

The Haganah forces met with absolutely no return fire as they killed people. Their were no fighters there, only murderers.

Then there was the Deir Yassin massacre carried out primarily by Irgun and Lehi, though Haganah were crucial as I will detail shortly. Deir Yassin was uninvolved in fighting and had a non-aggression pact with the Haganah who were based in nearby Jerusalem.

A report to the UN on the violence stated that “the killing of some 250… men, women and children, took place in circumstances of great savagery.

“Women and children were stripped, lined up, photographed, and then slaughtered by automatic firing and survivors have told of even more incredible bestialities. Those who were taken prisoners were treated with degrading brutality.”

25 men and boys were paraded through a Jewish neighbourhood of Jerusalem before being taking to a quarry and mowed down with sub-machine guns.

Recently the number killed has been disputed, but the nature of the acts is not. In either case this was not the most prolific massacre of the Nakba. Historian Thomas Suarez suggests that it is more famous because it was carried out by right-wing militias which makes it easier for liberal Zionists to digest. In addition it is probably famous because the Haganah themselves spread the story of the horrors. It was their showcase massacre and they made sure that people knew the details. Young fanatics some of them still adolescents threw grenades into dwellings then shoot everyone with automatic weapons before finishing any survivors with knives and sabres.

But Deir Yassin may be famous for the wrong reason. This horrific bloodletting was also the true birthplace of the IDF. This was a systematic, documented and undeniable act of genocide – a co-ordinated calculated mass killing that showed a clear intent to visit destruction upon the Palestinian people as such. This is the real origin of the IDF.

Now, some of you may not know of the organisations I have mentioned, Irgun, Lehi and Haganah (which had an army of 5000 regular commandos called Palmach). These are the 3 forces that were combined on May 26 1948 to create the IDF. According to most Israeli and most Western historians Haganah were the moderates when compared with the openly terroristic Irgun and fascistic Lehi.

That is what they say of the Haganah, but do we believe them?

Well, do we believe them?

No, we do not believe them because they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie!

The Haganah was effectively the military arm of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and both were led by David ben Gurion. We know from their actions and from private documents that they always sought to establish a single ethnically-cleansed Jewish state, taking all of Palestine by means of violence, but they postured by condemning the fascism of revisionists like Ze’ev Jabotinski who openly talked about these things.

The Haganah, as we have seen, were responsible for many massacres. And even though it was Irgun who carried out the most notorious bombing of the mandate period when they killed 91 people in the King David Hotel in 1946, it was the Haganah that had carried out the more deadly bombing of the ship Patria in 1940, where 267 Jewish refugees from Europe were killed because Haganah’s leaders preferred to see them dead than see them sent away from Palestine. And even though it was Lehi that openly fought to ally with the Nazis, it was the Haganah that actually reached out to the Third Reich and even smuggled Adolph Eichmann into Palestine disguised as a journalist in order to negotiate an agreement with the Nazi regime. And furthermore it was the Haganah who were the ultimate force behind the Deir Yassin massacre.

By the time of Deir Yassin the strategy of ethnic cleansing had been formalised. After different approaches had been entertained it was decided to implement Plan D (or Plan Dalet after the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet) on March 10 1948. They claimed that Plan D was meant to protect Jewish civilians by temporarily removing nearby Palestinian populations that might Palestinian resistance fighters.

Do we believe them?

No, we do not believe them because (all together now) they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie!

Plan Dalet was a plan of ethnic cleansing – a plan of genocide. They cleansed whole cities like Haifa whose non-Jewish population was reduced from 65,000 to 4000. 400 to 600 Palestinian villages were razed. It is very clear that from the beginning the intent was to permanently erase the people from the land and after hostilities ended the Israelis took every measure to make sure that Palestinians could not reclaim their land and property. Those who left but despite the dangers returned were still legally designated “absentees” by Israel, denied citizenship, denied their homes, their land, their businesses. The state of Israel was built on this stolen property. Jewish settlers owned little of the land and far less of the commercial infrastructure. They needed terror and murder to grab these things.

The Haganah wanted to keep their own hands clean so they brought Irgun and Lehi in to massacre the peaceful residents of Deir Yassin, not despite the non-aggression agreement they had with the village but because of it. Then as now, the peace and coexistence they claim to want would not give them the ethnostate they desired. It is not the actions of Palestinians that threatens them it is and always was their existence – the existence that they now refer to as a demographic threat.

So the Haganah brought these others in to do the dirty work. It was the first joint operation of the three militias. It was the first action of what was to become the IDF.

The IDF would murder and rape and torture throughout the rest of the Nakba in places like Tantura, al-Dawayima, and Abu Shusha. They used biological warfare on civilians in what was called Operation Cast Thy Bread. They deliberately spread typhoid and dysentry with notable success in the city of Acre.

The IDF was born out of this genocidal slaughter and they still claim to be the “most moral army in the world”.

You aren’t going to tell me you believe them are you?

No, you do not believe them because they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie, and they lie!

Thanks to the IDF the desert bloomed with death, grief, loss and dispossession. They made a stateless population greater in number then their entire citizenry. Both inside and outside of Mandate Palestine their victims would face lives of oppression, discrimination, poverty, vulnerability and frequent violence. As we all know, they still do 78 years later. The Nakba will not be over until all of those who suffer this exile are able to return. The Nakba is still with us and it will be with us until Palestine is a free state with rights for all of its people. It is time for all Palestinians to be able to go home.

That is no lie.