Israel Matzav: The people without a land really did get a land without a people?

Thursday, June 07, 2012

The people without a land really did get a land without a people?

I am sure that many of you are familiar with the quote by Israel Zangwill that Palestine (pre-state) was a land without a people for a people without a land. Okay, admit it. Like me, you had heard the quote but didn't know who said it.

As you also might know, the 'Palestinians' and their supporters really hate that quote, because it ignores their supposed presence here before us (which is a lie), and demonstrates (to them) our callousness in taking 'their' land.

Diana Muir Appelbaum has done some digging and discovered that the apocryphal story told by the 'Palestinians' and their supporters to refute the quote is - surprise - a lie.

I read an article this morning, “The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man“. It is about three academics, one at UCLA, one at Oxford, and one at Exeter, who lie as shamelessly as Mike Daisey. Anthony Pagden, Ghada Karmi and Avi Shlaim have all recounted versions of the following story in print as if it actually happened:

“Following the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 at which the idea of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was first mooted, the rabbis of Vienna dispatched two representatives to investigate the suitability of the country for such
an enterprise. The men reported the result of their exploration in this cable to
Vienna:
“The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.

“To their disappointment they had found that Palestine, though highly eligible to become the Jewish state the Zionists longed for, was not, as the writer, Israel Zangwill, later claimed, “A land without a people for a people without a land.” It was already inhabited, spoken for by a native Palestinian Arab population whose homeland it already was.”
In his new article, Shai Afsai demonstrates that the widely repeated story has no source. It never happened.

And it gets worse.

When Afsai questioned Anthony Pagden about his source in 2010, he responded, “I fear that I cannot now recall . . . My source was probably, I must confess, the introduction to my copy of Herzl, but it should be available in any history of the Zionist movement.”

Ghada Karmi, who has published the story multiple times, responded, “The story’s origins has caused me problems. I got the citation from Avi Shlaim at Oxford, who gave me a reference for it, which turned out not to be correct. I then searched hard for the source and have come up with a blank. I fear it might be apocryphal, much as I had not wanted that. Sorry!” She later added that Shlaim told her “the story had appeared in a book by Muhammad Hassanein Heikal. But it was not there.”

Anthony Pagden, Ghada Karmi, Avi Shlaim, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, check your sources. The ends do not justify the means.