Dark Side of Israel

April 20th, 2006 at 07:16 Björn Hallberg

Following the report on Jewish racism here are some more pertinent facts to add to the matter.

Ilan Pappe has this to say specifically on the historical origins of the handling of the “demographic problem” for instance:

None of this is new. The population problem was identified as the major obstacle in the way of Zionist fulfilment in the late 19th century, and David Ben-Gurion said in December 1947 that ‘there can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 per cent.’ Israel, he warned on the same occasion, would have to deal with this ‘severe’ problem with ‘a new approach’. The following year, ethnic cleansing meant that the number of Palestinians dropped below 20 per cent of the Jewish state’s overall population (in the area allocated to Israel by the UN plus the area it occupied in 1948, the Palestinians would originally have made up around 60 per cent of the population).

• Guardian: Brothers in arms – Israel’s secret pact with Pretoria
• Guardian: Worlds apart (on the disturbing resemblance to apartheid)
• Ilan Pappe: Ingathering. The Israeli election and the ‘demographic problem’
• Economist: The last conquest of Jerusalem

Entry 513 filed under: Middle East. This entry was posted 3 years, 10 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.