Can we inform everyone, but offend no one, when we talk about Israel and Palestine?
by Helen Said, Melbourne Australia
This is a page from my family biography, Five Egyptian Pounds - the story of George Said OAM (published 2015, Equilibrium Books). This page describes the creation of the modern state of Israel, which occured when my parents were teenagers living in Egypt. The Arab-Israeli Wars that followed caused my parents to leave Egypt as refugees. This page is narrated by my father but written by me, and I filled in details using historical research.
Looking back at what I wrote 20 years ago, I ask myself if it told the whole story. At the time of writing about the creation of Israel, I felt compelled to appear impartial. I had interfaith, international family members, of many different viewpoints, who contributed family memories to my book and were eager to read my "family bible". I wanted to write an accurate historical account that would inform everyone but offend no-one, an almost impossible task. To do this, I downplayed some of the more harrowing details about the Nakba, the catastrophe, that preceded the creation of the modern state of Israel by the Zionists. In the current political climate, I think it's time to fill in these details:
There were about 1.2 million Arabs living in Palestine before 1948. According to Amnesty International, 700,000 people, more than half the population, were displaced during the Nakba.
It is generally acknowledged that between 13,000 and 16,000 Palestinians were killed and over 530 towns and villages were destroyed to make way for the creation of Israel. Killings and displacements continue to this day, with an estimated 70,000 Palestinaians killed in the current conflict. Israel grants all Jews the right of return to their ancestral land but does not extend this right to displaced Palestinians.
Although I did not spell out these details about the Nakba in my book, I have never heard anyone complain about bias, one way or the other, in the details I provided. Yet it's not a completely sanitised account of the role of British imperialism and Zionism in the Middle East. As a British cousin commented, after reading about about the role of the British in the Egypt, "No wonder they kicked us out."
I hope this means that my account is accurate and coherent but not offensive. If you are looking for an incisive but respectful take on how Israel was created, and the role of Britain in the Middle East, feel free to use the below quotes from the pages of Five Egyptian Pounds - the story of George Said OAM:
"1948 was the year in which homelands were lost and found for two
traumatised nations. Still shaken by the genocide their people had suffered at
the hands of the Nazis, the Jews who descended upon Palestine pinned their
hopes for a safe and peaceful future on the creation of the modern state of
Israel. The panic-stricken and terrorised Palestinians, who had fled to hellish
refugee camps in their wake, watched in anguish as their country was wiped off
the world map by the United Nations plan for the new Jewish homeland.
"This was the era in which the Arab-Israeli conflict was born. David
Ben-Gurion’s proclamation from Tel Aviv, that Israel had come into being in a
region that had been inhabited by Muslims for some sixteen hundred years, could
only illicit one response from the Arab world: war! ....
"In the year that followed, Israel fought off the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The warring Arab countries were unaccustomed to battle and unco-ordinated in their actions...
"Israel triumphed and counter-attacked, conquering even more of its
ancient territories by the end of the war. The Palestinians remained an
impoverished, homeless, forgotten people for decades until terrorism exploded
onto the world stage. Rather than ending centuries of anti-Semitism, the
creation of the Jewish homeland had sparked a frightening new era of violence,
hatred and war, from which the world has never recovered.
"The Arab-Israeli War was a humiliating defeat for Egypt. The only morsel of pride Egypt gained from their involvement in this war came from the resilient and audacious army unit commanded by Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Negev Desert. We didn’t know then what we know now about the part this man would play in reshaping his country’s destiny and our own.....
"By the age of nineteen, I had pieced
together the reason for the British presence in Egypt which had brought my
parents to this land. I could see it right before my eyes as I stood facing the
huge, bustling Suez Canal. In modern times, the man-made Suez Canal had
overtaken the Nile as Egypt’s main transportation route. It was a shipping
short-cut through Africa, slicing weeks from the sea voyage from East to West.
The enormous passenger and cargo ships which steamed past us, on their way to
and from Europe, were the backbone of Western economies. Britain’s tenacious
hold on Egypt, politically and militarily, ensured that this roadway remained
open. The Suez Canal was also extremely lucrative. The shipping lines that
queued to use the canal paid heavy tolls. The British “protection” of the Suez
Canal allowed these profits to be creamed off by its wealthy British and French
stockholders.
"The bare foot Egyptian peasants in
these parts worked the land from sun up to sun down as the world’s wealth
glided past them, destined for consumption by the West. They lived and worked
right by the fabulously profitable Suez Canal, yet never saw a cent from their
nation’s largest enterprise. The NAAFI built and operated the luxurious
“Olympic Stadium” sporting and entertainment complex in this impoverished town,
but no local Egyptian was allowed to use these facilities. My father was
employed as the local manager of this complex. He found a job there for me and
my brother did clerical work at the British Army Headquarters. Yet we were not
allowed to use these facilities either. They were exclusively for the use of
British Army personnel and their families.
"We lived and worked at the scene of
Egypt’s greatest human endeavour since the building of the ancient Pyramids.
Beginning in 1859, The French Universal Company of the Suez Maritime Canal
forcibly recruited Egyptian peasants to shovel out countless tonnes of desert
sand to form the one hundred and sixty-three kilometre link, joining the
Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Working under slave labour conditions in the
desert, it took one and a half million Egyptians ten years to dig the Suez
Canal by hand. Many canal workers died of cholera. Others collapsed at the spot
where they toiled, dead from exhaustion, only to be dragged to their sandy
graves and replaced by other unwilling labourers. All in all, one hundred and
twenty-five thousand Egyptians perished building this canal. Egypt was forced
to sell its shares in the Suez Canal to Britain to cover its Third World debts,
depriving the Egyptian economy of future growth and spurring on the West’s
domination of Egypt.
"Those Egyptians living and working
near the Suez Canal were too ground down by manual work, uneducated and
unorganised to fight or even question this status quo. But many of their better
educated urbanised counterparts strove to liberate their country from poverty
and foreign control, by ridding the land of British troops and foreign
profiteering. Their nationalism had unleashed the anti-European sentiments
which were threatening our minority communities. Whether I agreed or disagreed
with their cause would have no affect on my fate. Increasing numbers of
Egyptians were determined to see the last of people like me and there was
nothing I could do. My only place in the Suez Canal drama was on one of those
passenger ships that steamed past us, taking people to a new life in Australia.
I wondered how long it would be before I too could leave...
"It hadn’t occurred to me that 26th
July 1956 was the fourth anniversary of the abdication of King Farouk. I knew
that Egypt was edging towards a final showdown with its tenacious colonial
rulers. But on that night, I could never have guessed that, just a few
kilometres away, untold thousands of militant Egyptians were gathering to
listen to President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s address from the balcony of the
Bourse, the Alexandria stock exchange. Nasser, who we had all dismissed as the
latest in a long succession of directionless, political hot-heads…. Nasser who
led only the Egyptians and not us, was about to utter the words that would
change our family’s history forever – “De Lesseps.”
"At 10 o’clock that night, two hours
into his speech, Nasser spoke these words, the name of the French diplomat who
had developed the Suez Canal. Nasser repeated the name “De Lesseps” fourteen
times over the next ten minutes. In far away Port Said, Army Colonel Mahmoud
Yunis was also listening to the presidential radio broadcast. To him, the
president’s uttering of the name “De Lesseps” had a special meaning – it was
the pre-arranged code word signalling the order for the Egyptian Army to seize
control of the Suez Canal.
"Throughout the world, the Suez Canal
had become the most potent symbol of Western imperial domination, keeping open
the sea trade between Britain and the East, feeding British industry with its
indispensable oil supply and reaping untold profits to its shareholders. Now it
was to become the audacious young President Nasser’s means to fund the Aswan
High Dam project, the lynch pin in an ambitious plan to lift Egypt out of its
centuries of poverty and servility.
"At ten past ten, Nasser made the
shock announcement that the Suez Canal was being nationalised as he spoke. I
could hear his voice and the thunderous cheers of the masses of Egyptians on
air as the BBC reported on the night’s momentous events. This was it – this was
the apocalypse for the Europeans of Egypt. From middle class affluence, we were
about to descend into a nightmare of dislocation and loss in the face of
senseless war and political upheaval. Our fragile security in Egypt had finally
been exposed for the sham it always was. As President Nasser heeded the cries
of his hungry people, and Maroula tended to our crying baby, I was consumed by
a wave of panic and nausea.
"We returned home to a tense and
worried Heliopolis, with more and more ears tuned to the BBC foreign
broadcasting service, which ran continuous coverage of the developing political
crisis. Britain unashamedly declared its need for oil as a motive for preparing
for war with Egypt. In response to the nationalisation of the Suez Canal, Prime
Minister Anthony Eden made the statement, 'We have come to rely more and more
upon oil for power. Our industry and our exports depend upon it. Here,
therefore is something that affects every home in this land and not in this
land alone'
"Our slow moving corner of the world
was rapidly becoming the focus of international scrutiny. America raved about
Nasser’s links with the socialist camp. Britain and France froze Egypt’s assets
and massed military vessels in the Mediterranean, poised for war. Egypt’s
promise, to continue to allow foreign ships passage through the nationalised
canal, and to compensate its stock holders, did not satisfy Britain and France.
Their aim was to revert to colonial control.....
“ 'We will commence bombing in twenty minutes and we advise civilians to leave the vicinity of Almaza Air Base.' We braced ourselves, after this BBC announcement on October 31st, for the coming British and French attack on the air base six kilometres from where we were sheltering at home. Our training during the Second World War had taught us to close the shutters, to protect ourselves from flying glass fragments during a bomb blast, and hope for the best….
"...The entire Egyptian air force had been destroyed before the planes had even taken off from their base...
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