THE OTHER EXODUS Sirs--Sir John Glubb thinks that recrimination about
the past is not getting us anywhere, and that people should stop these exchanges and think of the future. He misses the point.
Israel's position in the future will be vitally affected by world public opinion about the issue being de- bated in your columns. So far, Western public opinion has predominantly accepted the Zionist con- tention that the Arabs fled of their own accord on the advice of their own leaders. The tacit corollary is that, as it was' their own fault, they have forfeited their rights. It is obviously of cardinal importance to the politi- cal Zionists for the future that this belief should continue to prevail. For, if Western public opinion were to become convinced that the Arabs did not abdicate from their lands on their own volition, the next thing would be that people would begin to, ask what is the real basis for Israel's right to occupy the lands from which the Arabs were driven out by force of arms?
Zionists quote the UN resolution of 1947. But this was in the General Assembly, and Zionists carefully omit to mention the fact that General Assembly resolutions are no more than recommendations, with- out legal force. So there is no binding basis in that.
Ahd no acceptable moral basis, either, because that resolution was railroaded through by an unpre- cedented campaign of pressure and propaganda in which extreme Zionist leaders were (in President Truman's own words) 'actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats.'
So what is left except the right of conquest? But if that is the real basis of Israel's claim to keep the Arab refugees out of their own lands and houses, how can it be reconciled with the charter of the United Nations of which Israel is a member?
The issue being debated in your columns is not just recrimination over the past, and no one knows this better than the militant Zionists. They know per- fectly well that what happens in the future between Israel and the Arabs will be decisively conditioned by the state of Western public opinion. If they lose the line of defence they have built up with such skill and tenacity on this question of why the Arabs fled, they may lose so much ground that they will have to abandon all hopes of further territorial conquest from Arabs, and give way to those Jews and Gentiles who thought all along that it was right for the Jews to have a cultural home of their own in Palestine, but wrong to launch a militant colonising conquest of Arab lands.—Yours faithfully,
MICHAEL IONIDES
21 Suffolk Street, SW! 21 Suffolk Street, SW!
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