A Climate of Violence

       The information on this page needs to be accompanied by an important clarification: the majority of Palestinian Arabs leading up to the 1948 War, while certainly no fans of Zionism, were not violently hostile to it. Most expressed their distaste for Zionism, and the Jews immigrating to realize it, with uneventful contempt. There were, however, enough Arab inhabitants who chose the path of violence and massacre to warrant a very real and widespread insecurity among the Jewish population. This vulnerability influenced Jewish outlooks and responses to events in Palestine. Without taking this perennial aggression into consideration, any political or historical analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict in its early years will be lacking.

"... nor can we forget that the hatred of the Arab politician for the [Jewish] National Home has never been concealed and that it has now permeated the Arab population as a whole." - Peel Commission, 1937



"The revolt enjoyed popular support throughout the Arab Middle East. Even before its outbreak, the Arab world had been smoldering with the idea of a jihad (holy war) against the Yishuv. The speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Sa’id al-Haj Thabit, on a visit to Palestine in March 1936, repeatedly called for such a jihad."11


"'Every Arab in Palestine will do everything in his power to crush down Zionism, because Zionism and Arabism can never be united together' - Awni Bey Abdulhadi to the Peel Commission 13 January 1937"12


       Spending to provide for public security "rose from £265,000 in 1923 to over ... £2,230,000 in 1936-37"13, an 840% increase because of Arab aggression directed against Arab political opponents, Jews, and British officials. It was not just a case of a particularly troublesome group of Arabs giving the rest a bad name: "The hostility shown toward the Jews during the riots was shared by Arabs of all classes; Moslem and Christian Arabs, whose relations had hitherto been uneasy, were for once united.”14


"... nothing has done us more damage and ruined relations between Jews and Arabs than the Arab press. From the day it was born in the Land of Israel ... to the present it has not ceased to denounce us and malign our name. This virulent activity has instilled deep hatred of us in the hearts of the Arabs and has poisoned the atmosphere not only in this land but also in the Arab countries (Transjordan, Syria, Egypt, and others)."15


       In reaction to the April 1946 report from the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in Palestine, "One Foreign Office cable ... spoke of Arab hatred of the Jews as being greater than that of the Nazis. The AHC ... issued an 'ultimatum' and threatened 'jihad.' ... The publication of the report triggered violent demonstrations in Baghdad and Palestine. ... At least one Baghdad newspaper called for jihad ... Another called on the Arabs to 'annihilate all European Jews in Palestine.'"16 The Arab League "secretly decided to help the Palestinian Arabs with funds, arms, and volunteers should it come to an armed struggle."17


"The chain of unfortunate events which began in Palestine almost immediately after the adoption of the resolution of 29 November demonstrated conclusively not only that the necessary Arab willingness to co-operate was lacking, but that a dangerous antagonism existed which was provoking virtual civil war even before the termination of the Mandate on 15 May 1948."18


       During the civil war stage of the 1948 War (before the main Arab invasions of May 1948), Arab violence and aggression antagonized almost every battle the Jews found themselves having to fight. The attacks began the very next day after the November 1947 UN resolution to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states was passed, in what Benny Morris describes as a "clear, organized Palestinian Arab response to the UN resolution."19 He also points out that "most of the fighting between November 1947 and mid-May 1948 occurred in the areas earmarked for Jewish statehood ... and where the Jews enjoyed demographic superiority. Almost no fighting occurred in the almost exclusively Arab-populated central and upper Galilee and Samaria ..."25

       A survey of Morris’ prominent study The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited20 reveals in more detail the climate of violence Jews faced:


       "Sixty-two Jews were murdered by Arabs in the first week after the UN partition plan was passed, and by May 15, 1948, a total of 1,256 Jews had been killed, most of them civilians. These deaths were caused by Arab militias, gangs, terrorists and army units which attacked every place of Jewish inhabitation in Palestine.
       The attacks succeeded in placing Jerusalem under siege and eventually cutting off its water supply. All Jewish villages in the Negev were attacked, and Jews had to go about the country in convoys. In every major city where Jews and Arabs lived in mixed neighborhoods the Jewish areas came under attack. This was true in Haifa's Hadar Hacarmel as well as Jerusalem's Old City.
       Massacres were not uncommon. THIRTY-NINE Jews were killed by Arab rioters at Haifa's oil refinery on December 30, 1947. On January 16, 1948, 35 Jews were killed trying to reach Gush Etzion. On February 22, 44 Jews were murdered in a bombing on Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda. And on February 29, 23 Jews were killed all across Palestine, eight of them at the Hayotzek iron foundry. Thirty-five Jews were murdered during the Mount Scopus convoy massacre on April 13. And 127 Jews were massacred at Kfar Etzion on May 15, 1948, after 30 others had died defending the Etzion Bloc."
23


       In addition to identifying more than 100 Jewish settlements that were attacked by Arabs in the timeframes 1920-21, 1936-38, and 1947-48, Sir Martin Gilbert also points out extensive Jewish property damage such as timber yards burnt, crops burnt, haystacks burnt, orchards uprooted or burnt, threshing floors burnt, homes burnt, olive groves uprooted, thousands of citrus trees uprooted or burnt, vegetable crops uprooted, hundreds of acres of wheat destroyed, shops damaged with rocks, cattle killed, etc.22.

       As the civil war gave way to a multi-front invasion from Arab nations, the sentiment of Palestine’s Arab population toward the Jews was still further established when “crowds of Arabs stood by the roads leading to the frontiers of Palestine, enthusiastically welcoming the advancing armies”21. But it was not just local Palestinian Arabs excited about the coming military assault on Palestine's Jewish population. The invasion enjoyed widespread, frantic support among the Arab states that would soon be engaged in it:

       Illustrating a special kind of hatred that is not satisfied with mere killing, Jewish corpse mutilation was a problem as well:




Footnotes:
2  Teveth, Shabtai. Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press, 1985. 47.
3  Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Jewish Problems in Palestine and Europe. Report to the United States Government and His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 1946. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1946.
4  Gilbert, Martin, and Martin Gilbert. The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. London: Routledge, 2002. 10.
5  A Survey of Palestine Prepared in December 1948 and January 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Vol. 2. 1946. 18-19.
6  Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Jewish Problems in Palestine and Europe. Report to the United States Government and His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 1946. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1946.
7  A Survey of Palestine Prepared in December 1948 and January 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Vol. 2. 1946. 24.
8  Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Jewish Problems in Palestine and Europe. Report to the United States Government and His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 1946. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1946.
9  Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Jewish Problems in Palestine and Europe. Report to the United States Government and His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, Lausanne, Switzerland, April 20, 1946. Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off, 1946.
10  A Survey of Palestine Prepared in December 1948 and January 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Vol. 2. 1946. 45.
11  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 16
12  Gilbert, Martin, and Martin Gilbert. The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. London: Routledge, 2002. 23
13  Great Britain, and William Robert Wellesley Peel Peel. Palestine Royal Commission Report. London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1937.
14  A Survey of Palestine Prepared in December 1948 and January 1946 for the Information of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Vol. 2. 1946. 19.
15  Cohen, Hillel. Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. 28
16  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 34-35
17  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 66
18  United Nations, and Folke Bernadotte. Progress Report of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine. Rhodes, 16th September 1948. London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1948.
19  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 76
20  Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. Cambridge Middle East studies, 18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
21  Palestine Facts. Why did Arabs Leave the New State of Israel? (Site accessed Feb. 12 2008)
22  Gilbert, Martin, and Martin Gilbert. The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. London: Routledge, 2002. 17-21
23  Frantzman, Seth. Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine?. Jerusalem Post. Aug 16, 2007.
24  Gutmann, David. The Arab Lie Whose Time Has Come - Veteran of the 1948 War Dissects the Myth of Palestinian Innocence. April 21, 2004.
25  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 78
26  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 110-111
27  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 111
28  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 124
29  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 125
30  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 293
31  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 361-362
32  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 182-183
33  Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven [Conn.]: Yale University Press, 2008. 186-187