Unhappy anniversary

Tony Karon's "How the 1967 war doomed Israel" is simply terrific, tracing parallel tracks--personal and political--of post-"Six-day war" history (six days? It was over in one, but six sounds so much more biblical). Karon traces his own path from euphoria to disillusionment with Israel, alongside the growth of the "special bond" between Apartheid South Africa and the Jewish state:

South Africa and Israel became intimate allies in the years that followed the ‘67 war, with unrepentant former Nazis such as Prime Minister B.J. Vorster welcomed to Israel to seal military deals that resulted in collaboration in the development of weapons ranging from aircraft and assault rifles to, allegedly, nuclear weapons.

Karon also examines some "facts on the ground" in 1947/8, which don't come before the eyeballs of most Americans:

The Partition Plan awarded 55% of the land to the Jewish state, including more than 80% of land under cultivation. At the time, Jews made up a little over one third of the total population, and owned some 7% of the land. Moreover, given the demographic demands of the Zionist movement for a Jewish majority, the plan was an invitation to tragedy: The population within the boundaries of the Jewish state envisaged in the 1947 partition consisted of around 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs.

Hardly surprising, then, that the Arabs of Palestine and beyond rejected the partition plan.

For the Arab regimes, the creation of a separate Jewish sovereign state in the Holy Land over which the Crusades had been fought was a challenge to their authority; it was perceived by their citizenry as a test of their ability to protect their land and interests from foreign invasion. And so they went to war believing they could reverse what the U.N. had ordered on the battlefield. For the Jews of Palestine in 1948, a number of them having narrowly survived extermination in Europe, the war was a matter of physical survival. Although in the mythology, the war pitted a half million Jews against 20 million Arabs, in truth Israel was by far the stronger and better-organized and better-armed military power. And so what Israel called the War of Independence saw the Jewish state acquire 50% more territory than had been envisaged in the partition plan. The maps below describe the difference between the Israel envisaged by the UN in 1947 and the one that came into being in the war of 1948.

But maps don’t convey the disaster that befell the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. The war also allowed the Zionist movement to resolve its “demographic concerns,” as some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs found themselves driven from their homes and land — many driven out at gunpoint, the majority fleeing in fear of further massacres such as the one carried out by the Irgun at Dir Yassein, and all of them subject to the same ethnic-cleansing founding legislation by passed the new Israeli Knesset that seized the property of any Arab absent from his property on May 8, 1948, and forbade the refugees from returning.

Run that last part past virtually any American, even a highly educated one, and you're sure to get either puzzlement or downright denial. This kind of thing is more in the mainstream discourse than basic facts...

Chris Hedges also has a good analysis of the appalling anniversary, and Tom Segev has an interesting meditation on "What if Israel had turned back?" in the Times today.

I will add that the "comments" section on the Karon blog is also well worth reading and spectacularly well-behaved, lacking in the nasty flame-throwing crap you see elsewhere whenever this subject is raised. Hope I don't jinx it by saying that....