JOURNALfor the STUDYof ANTISEMITISM

Israel’s Intent
Yehuda Bauer*
What happened in Palestine in 1948 was a war between two ethnic/
national groups about a piece of land. A typical ethnic/national fight, one
that humanity has unfortunately witnessed innumerable times. To refer to
the Convention 1 (or any other attempt at defining genocide) in cases like
this creates difficulties. Was there an intent to annihilate the other group?
On the Arab side, certainly yes, and anyone who reads Arabic or has access
to the propaganda of the time will have to agree. Incitement to genocide is,
according to the Convention, part of the crime of genocide, as we all know.
But the intent was not translated into action, because the Arabs lost the war.
On the Jewish side, there were voices that advocated what we would now
call ethnic cleansing, not with the intent to annihilate the Palestinian Arab
population (the term Palestinians was not then in use) but with the intent to
settle Jews instead of them, and thus cause grave physical and mental harm.
Benny Morris and others have shown that the official Jewish leadership was
of two minds, and issued contradictory orders. Part of the Arab population
in what was to become Israel were evicted; an example is Ramlah/Ramle.
Part fled as civilian populations do in times of war—in this case, some in
the expectation of returning after victory; some simply in panic and fear of
the Jews who were presented, in Arab propaganda, as devils in human
form; and some because they were forced by Arab commanders to do so, as
in the area around Mishmar Haemek, Beersheva. Others were asked by the
Jews to stay, and refused: Tiberias, Haifa, Jaffa. Part were simply left alone,
or were permitted to stay if they chose, and did: Galilee, part of the Jaffa
Arab population, part of the Haifa Arab population, and the same in Lod/
Lydda. In part, the intent depended on the local Jewish commanders. For
example, a Jewish commander who hailed from South Africa gave an order
to the inhabitants of E-Rameh in the Lower Galilee to get out; a command
car with an officer sent by the commander of the “Front” (Brigadier Moshe
Carmel), by then ensconced in Nazareth, threatened to shoot the other
officer if he did not rescind the order. But yet another officer managed to
evict, brutally, the inhabitants of another large village, Hunin, in the Upper
Galilee. Does all this amount to ethnic cleansing à la Kosovo? Was there an
intent to annihilate a group as such by eviction/deportation/expulsion? Ben
Gurion wanted to have as few Arabs as possible in Israel, but he never
initiated a policy that would lead to that result; a majority of the military
1. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,
New York, December 9, 1948.
199