Libby Davies and the NDP: Jack Layton's leadership test

Today, Tuesday June 15, is a day the NDP‘s Jack Layton will face a leadership test. He is poised to make a decision to punish one of his MPs and it could stain his leadership for a long time to come.

As reported yesterday in the Vancouver Sun [2] and other Canwest papers the party is in a state of near hysteria over what should have been a minor flap. But when the question of Israel and the Palestinians is involved, nothing is simple. The pro-Israel lobby and its friends are masters of taking advantage of any situation to promote their cause and vilify Israel's critics. And it doesn't matter if the victim is an icon of progressive politics.

In this case Vancouver East MP Libby Davies got bushwacked by a pro-Israel activist posing as a neutral -- if not pro-Palestinian -- blogger. After a rally for the Palestinians criticizing Israel's deadly assault on the aid flotilla, a man approached Libby asking for an interview. As she always does, because she never hides her views, she complied. He immediately set her up with what he called a "background question." He asked when the occupation began, 1948 or 1967.

Libby hesitated then said 1948. She made the point that the date was not important -- that whatever the date the occupation was the longest in the world -- and far too long.

The next day the interview appeared on YouTube. But in 24 hours it had gone nowhere -- just 28 views. Then the most vociferous supporter of Israel in the NDP caucus, Thomas Mulcair, got wind of it and it escalated out of control. He went on a relentless campaign to punish Libby. The spin he helped create was that if Libby believed the occupation began in 1948 then she, ipso facto, believes that Israel has no right to exist. Libby has always gone to great lengths to make it clear that she supports Israel's right to exist and the two-state solution endorsed by the NDP. But suddenly Jack Layton was in full-panic mode. He apologized to the Israeli ambassador. He hung Libby out to dry. He forced her to issue a public apology.

Some have criticized Libby's statement as evidence that she does not know the history of the occupation which most mainstream commentators date from 1967 -- when Israel militarily occupied the West bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights. But Libby's problem was not that she didn't know enough. She knew too much.

It is part of the unquestioned history of Israel that during the time leading up to its formal establishment by UN resolution 181 there was a massive, forced expulsion of 750,000 Palestinian Arabs from the land designated for the Jewish state. The resolution explicitly banned any such expulsion. The Arab population of that land had equal rights to it.

So when did the occupation begin? Certainly the Arab families who were forced from their homes, farms and villages by Israeli terrorist groups like the Irgun believe their land was occupied. They still do. That is the basis for their demand of the Right of Return.

In any case Libby's point in the interview was the correct one: whenever you date the occupation one thing is clear. It is a grotesque violation of international law, human rights and numerous UN resolutions which Israel, with the carte blanche support of the US and Canada, contemptuously ignores.

Here's where the question of leadership comes in. Jack Layton has said virtually nothing about the hideous blockade of Gaza -- what commentators call an outdoor prison. Why? Because he is does not, apparently, have the political courage to take an independent stand on Canadian foreign policy. He said virtually nothing when eleven aid activists were murdered (some of them executed at close range or shot in the back) by Israeli commandos.

But suddenly he is fully engaged in the issue because one of his most trusted and ethical MPs got suckered into making a controversial statement.

Mr Layton needs to rethink which is more important -- the vicious blockade of Gaza, and the collective punishment of 1.5 million people. Or a careless remark by an MP admired across the country for her courage and openness.

The irony is that Libby is being punished for doing exactly what Jack Layton should be doing: defending the human rights of a people suffering under the oppression of an Apartheid regime.

No one said leadership is easy. Jack Layton should back off, tell Thomas Mulcair to quit exposing the party to public ridicule, and maybe consider taking a stand, with Libby, on behalf of the Palestinians of Gaza. He might be pleasantly surprised at the response of Canadians.

Comments

Submitted by M. Spector on June 15, 2010 - 9:59pm.

It's unfortunate that Layton and the NDP didn't rush to Davies's defence in the face of outrageous distortions of her position by the Zionist right - the way they did for KAIROS, for example.

Submitted by Margo on June 16, 2010 - 1:09am.

Mr. Dobbin's statement that "it is part of the unquestioned history of Israel that during the time leading up to its establishment" there was a forced expulsion of 750,000 Arabs is not at all "unquestioned"; in fact, it is simply incorrect. UN Resolution 181 was passed on November 29, 1947. The exile of Arabs occurred in the course of the war of 1948. By far the vast majority of those who became refugees simply fled. The first to flee was the Arab middle class, who did not stay to provide leadership. Many, many Arabs fled as a consequence of fear stirred up by their own leaders, who told them to clear the way since the Arabs were sure they would drive the Jews into the sea. It was not the policy of the Israeli forces to perform ethnic cleansing; had it been, the population of Israel today would not be 20% Arab. The Jewish mayor of Haifa actually urged its Arab population to stay, but they fled through fear. The Israeli fighters weren't saints, crimes were committed on both sides, and there were villages from which Arabs were expelled (as were Jews from the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem), but none of this happened, as Murray Dobbin claims, "leading up to" Resolution 181; the Arab refugee problem happened in the course of the 1948 war, which was started by the Arab countries after the partition resolution. (The Jewish leadership accepted partition.) The other fact to remember is that the Arab refugee problem is balanced by the vast number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Jews in Iraq, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in North Africa were persecuted and victimized by pogroms after the formation of the state of Israel, and approximately the same number of Jews (as Arab refugees from Israel) had to leave their homes and property, without compensation. (And unlike the Arab states surrounding Israel, who kept the Palestinian refugees as refugees, in camps, and refused to house them or care for them, Israel settled the Jewish refugees from Arab lands.)These Jewish communities in Arab lands were ancient communities; the Jewish community of Syria, for example, was one of the most learned and pious, and went back thousands of years. But they had to flea; the few Jews who remained in Syria were effectively held hostage by a brutal regime, until they were clandestinely ransomed by Judy Feld Carr of Toronto. If you want to compare the intentions of Israel and its Arab neighbours toward their minorities, note that Israel proper is 20% Arab, whereas there are no Jews left in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. You can read up on all these facts in "Myths and Facts on the Middle East" at Mitchell Bard's Jewish Virtual Library website. There is an extensive discussion of the treatment of Jews in Arab lands.

Submitted by M. Spector on June 16, 2010 - 2:41am.

Zionist nakba-denial is just as sickening as fascist holocaust-denial.

They blame the "Arab refugee problem" on the Palestinians themselves, as if the creation of the state of Israel on Palestinian land were not the sole cause of the dispossession of the people who lived there.

Quote:

The final master plan was called Plan D (Dalet in Hebrew) following plans A, B, and C preceding it. It was to be a war without mercy complying with what Ben-Gurion said in June, 1938 to the Jewish Agency Executive and never wavering from later: "I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." Plan D became the way to do it. It included forcible expulsion of hundreds of thousands of unwanted Palestinian Arabs in urban and rural areas accompanied by an unknown number of others mass slaughtered to get it done. The goal was simple and straightforward - to create an exclusive Jewish state without an Arab presence by any means including mass-murder.

Once begun, the whole ugly business took six months to complete. It expelled about 800,000 people, killed many others, and destroyed 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. The action was a clear case of ethnic cleansing that international law today calls a crime against humanity for which convicted Nazis at Nuremberg were hanged. So far Israelis have always remained immune from international law even though names of guilty leaders and those charged with implementing their orders are known as well as the crimes they committed.

They included cold-blooded mass-murder; destruction of homes, villages and crops; rapes; other atrocities; and massacres of defenseless people given no quarter including women and children. The crimes were suppressed and expunged from official accounts as Israeli historiography cooked up the myth that Palestinians left voluntarily fearing harm from invading Arab armies. It was a lie covering up Israeli crimes Palestinians call the Nakba - the catastrophe or disaster that's still a cold, harsh festering unresolved injustice.

- Stephen Lendman's review of Ilan Pappe's 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Palestinian communities destroyed in the Nakba [6]

Submitted by dgr_insurrection on June 16, 2010 - 9:39am.

The previous poster is indeed correct, and Israel's leading historian, Benny Morris, has reached a similar conclusion. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of his book to quote from, but he too agrees that this idea that the Palestinians fled voluntarily (or at the behest of Arab leaders) is patently false.

I am curious though, Dobbin states that 11 aid activists died. My understanding from all the news reports I've looked at (BBC, AJE, etc) is that 9 aid activists died. Who's right and who's mistaken?

Submitted by M. Spector on June 16, 2010 - 11:44am.

At least one recent report says "as many as eleven" activists were killed.

Part of the Israeli outrage is that they have never given a full accounting of the attack, and no official list of the names of the dead has been issued.

Submitted by DavidJH on June 18, 2010 - 7:40pm.

Margo drags up another tired canard: the Mizrahi Jews were NOT all refugees from Arab countries "welcomed" in Israel. You really need to listen to what some of them have say about their reasons for migrating: Ran Cohen: "I have this to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody is going to define me as a refugee."

The claim that they came as refugees infuriated many Mizrahi Israelis who defined themselves as Zionists. As early as 1975, Knesset speaker Yisrael Yeshayahu declared: "We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this country before the state was born. We had messianic aspirations."

Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist in Iraq, adamantly opposed the analogy: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because they wanted to, as Zionists."

So this migration "balances" exactly nothing about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as well documented by historians like Ilan Pappé and even benny Morris. Even Ben Gurion recognized that "we came and stole the country from them [the Palestinians]."

The treatment of Libby Davies by all parties has been nothing short of scandalous. As Vancouver rabbi David Mivasair writes:

Libby said that she thinks the Israeli occupation began in 1948. Well, it did. I can introduce you to Palestinians living here in Vancouver who were forced out of their homes at gunpoint by Jews in 1948 and their villages destroyed. That's occupation. It happened. Denying it doesn't change a thing.

And concludes:

To imply that Libby doesn't support the existence of the State of Israel is nothing but disingenuous manipulation. You know that's not true; Libby does support the existence of the State of Israel. It is Israel's behaviour that Libby condemns - and rightfully so.