An Indicative Archive: Salvaging Nakba Documents

Abstract

This Special Document File examines the closure of documents on the Nakba in the Israeli archives and argues that this closure must be juxtaposed with recent intensified U.S. and Israeli attempts to depoliticize the Palestine question and to delegitimize the Palestinian narrative in general, and that of 1948 in particular. The documents are important because they expose the systematic nature of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, both in planning and execution. Many of these documents have been copied and scanned by scholars over the years, but they are now no longer accessible to the public or to researchers. Collating, digitizing, and archiving these documents is the best response to the attempt to cover up the crimes against the Palestinian people in 1948.

Notes

* See Seth Anziska, “The Erasure of the Nakba in Israel's Archives,” JPS 49, no. 1: pp. 64–76. –Ed.

1 See Mustafa Abbasi, “The Battle for Safad in the War of 1948: A Revised Study,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36, no. 1 (February 2004): pp. 21–47; Saleh Abd Jawad, “Colonial Anthropology: The Haganah Village Intelligence Archives,” Jerusalem Quarterly no. 68 (Winter 2016): pp. 21–35; Nur Masalha, The Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992).

2 See Hagar Shezaf, “Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs,” Haaretz, 5 July 2019, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-israel-systematically-hides-evidence-of-1948-expulsion-of-arabs-1.7435103.

3 Akevot claims that the removal of documents on the Nakba is illegal and without authority, although I doubt this is the case given the levels of indoctrination in Israel and the censorship structure that operates in the country. Still, these issues are very hard to “prove.”

4 Malmab barred Cohen from using research material he had gathered on Israel's nuclear arsenal and policy after designating him a subversive. See Avner Cohen, The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel's Bargain with the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); see also John Cassidy, “What about Israel's Nukes?” New Yorker, 5 March 2012, https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/what-about-israels-nukes.

5 Shezaf, “Burying the Nakba.”

6 Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (December 2006): pp. 387–409.

7 Omar J. Salamanca, et al., “Past Is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine,” Settler Colonial Studies 2, no. 1 (2012): pp. 1–8.

8 Seyed H. Borhani, “Palestine Studies in Western Academia: Shifting a Paradigm?” Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs 5, no. 4 (Winter 2015): pp. 119–50.

9 On this situation, see Ilan Pappé, “Finding the Truth amid Israel's Lies,” Electronic Intifada, 30 May 2018, https://electronicintifada.net/content/finding-truth-amid-israels-lies/24531.

10 Alex de Waal, “Defining Genocide,” Index on Censorship 34, no. 1 (February 2005): pp. 6–13, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220512331339391. I reached a similar conclusion in my book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine when discussing the events of the Nakba from legal and moral standpoints. See Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (New York: Oneworld, 2007), pp. 1–7.

11 De Waal, “Defining Genocide,” p. 9 (italics added for emphasis).

12 De Waal, “Defining Genocide,” p. 9.

13 Alexander Zahar, “Focus on Rwanda,” Journal of Genocide Research 3, no. 2 (February 2001): pp. 293–300.

14 Walid Khalidi, “Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine,” JPS 18, no. 1 (Autumn 1988): pp. 4–33.

15 Benny Morris, “Israel Conducted No Ethnic Cleansing in 1948,” Haaretz, 10 October 2016, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-conducted-no-ethnic-cleansing-in-1948-1.5447785.

16 Baruch Kimmerling, Politicide: The Real Legacy of Ariel Sharon (New York: Verso, 2003).

17 See Nahla Abdo and Nur Masalha, eds., An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba (London: Zed Books, 2019); Rana Barakat, “Lifta, the Nakba, and the Museumification of Palestine's History,” Native American and Indigenous Studies 5, no. 2 (Fall 2018): pp. 1–15; Samera Esmeir, “Memories of Conquest: Witnessing Death in Tantura,” in Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, ed. Ahmad H. Sa'di and Lila Abu-Lughod (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 229–52; and Sherna B. Gluck, “Review Essay: The Voices of Palestinian Women; Oral History, Testimony, and Biographical Narrative,” Oral History Review 18, no. 2 (Fall 1990): pp. 115–24.

18 As quoted in Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), pp. 92–93. In both the Hebrew and English editions, the quote is cited incorrectly.

19 Gershon Rivlin and Zvi Sinai, eds., Hativat Alexandroni Bemilhemet Haqomemiut [The Alexandroni Brigade in the War of Independence], rev. ed. (Tel Aviv: Maarachot, 1992), pp. 26–28.

20 Rivlin and Sinai, eds., Hativat Alexandroni, pp. 26–28.

21 Rivlin and Sinai, eds., Hativat Alexandroni, pp. 26–28.

22 Rivlin and Sinai, eds., Hativat Alexandroni, pp. 58–59.

23 Ben Ami/Ehud operation documents to Carmeli Brigade, April 1948 and 19 May 1948, 100/35, Haganah Historical Archive, Tel Aviv. While the document is no longer accessible, original references appear in figures 1 and 2.

24 All figures, unless otherwise indicated, were scanned by Oshri Laad circa 2001 from the IDF archive and provided by the author.

25 All translations, unless otherwise indicated, were provided by the author.

26 Villagers in fact had no proper weapons, only hunting rifles and the rifles of Palestinian men who served in the police force; without Arab troops, who were absent, they stood no chance.

27 In April 1948, the intelligence arm of the Haganah defined a man as any boy above the age of ten.

28 Conversation with Binyamin Rosky and Yerichmiel Khanovitz, 23 July 2012, Kibbutz Degania. Videos of these testimonies were later part of the exhibition held at Zochrot from 2 October 2012 to 15 January 2013, titled Towards a Common Archive: Video Testimonies of Zionists Fighters in 1948. See https://zochrot.org/en/gallery/54187.

29 Military headquarters of Brigade 7 to general headquarters in Tel Aviv, 17 July 1948, 75/922/1025, IDF archive, Tel Aviv. See figure 3.

30 The letter and the circumstances in which it appeared can be found in Yair Auron, “Breaking the Silence: The Poem That Exposed Israeli War Crimes in 1948,” Haaretz, 18 March 2016, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-poem-that-exposed-atrocities-perpetrated-by-israel-in-48-1.5418995.

31 For both Tom Segev and Benny Morris, I am using here the Hebrew editions of their books as the text of the letter and subsequent document are originally in Hebrew. See Tom Segev, 1949: The First Israelis (Jerusalem: Keter, 2001), pp. 87–88; Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1987), pp. 295–97.

32 Styled per Haaretz.

33 Ha-shmada in Hebrew, often used to refer to the Holocaust as hashmadat ha-yehudim—the elimination of the Jews.

34 Italics for emphasis.

35 Auron, “Breaking the Silence.”

36 Auron, “Breaking the Silence.”

37 Auron writes that from Zisling's “private archive,” as it is designated, not only were minutes of cabinet meetings from decades ago removed, but also personal letters.

38 See the story of how a student came across this document in Shezaf's article, “Burying the Nakba.” See figure 5.

39 On the Advisory Council, see Pappé, Ethnic Cleansing.

40 Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, p. 307.

41 Nahmani, who was a director at the Jewish National Fund and purchased Palestinian land on behalf of the agency, wrote in his 6 November 1948 diary entry, “In Safsaf, after … the inhabitants had raised a white flag, the [soldiers] collected and separated the men and women, tied the hands of 56 fellahin [peasants] and shot and killed them and buried them in a pit. Also, they raped several women.” See Benny Morris, “Falsifying the Record: A Fresh Look at Zionist Documentation of 1948,” JPS 24, no. 3 (Spring 1995): p. 55.

42 From the personal papers of Yossef Vashitz, Givat Haviva, Israel.

43 This is a verbatim translation. The reference is probably to a famous attack by the Arab Liberation Army on Kibbutz Mishmar Ha-emek, in which Qawuqji participated, and the implication is that the attack on Mashhad was a kind of retaliation in Vashitz's mind. Photocopy provided to the author by Tamar Novik.

44 Message from the Coastal Plain District to Battalion 151, 25 November 1948, 6308/49/141, IDF archives.

45 Zochrot, “Testimony of Amnon Neuman,” posted 27 December 2011, YouTube video, 13:52, quote at 9:45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS4OXOom_vk.

46 Zvika Zamir was a battalion commander in 1948 and the head of Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, from 1968–74.

47 Yerichmiel Khanovitz and Yehuda Kedar, in conversation with the author, Tel Aviv, 2 October 2012. See Zochrot, Video Testimonies of Zionists Fighters in 1948.

48 Zochrot, “Testimony of Amnon Neuman,” YouTube video.