Israel
Cannot Handle Its Past - Zionist Historian Reveals
08 August 2010
By Gilad Atzmon
Israel cannot handle its past. Israeli PM Benjamin
Netanyahu decided this week to extend from 50 to 70
years the time state archives remain classified.
Israel realizes that it has too much to hide.
Haaretz reported this week (in its Hebrew edition
only), that the first documents will be released to
the public only in 2018 (1948+70). Many of the
documents that are stored in the archive are relevant
to the history of the first 20 years of the Jewish
state: the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people,
the massacres in Deir Yassin, Tantura and many others,
the 1956 Suez conflict, the Israeli nuclear project
and so on. Disclosing such documents may bring to
light some facts that could “shatter myths and cause
embarrassment to many entities and individuals” said
the Israeli paper. I guess that president Shimon Peres
is one of those ‘many individuals’.
In my latest work I elaborated on the concerning fact
that history is foreign to the Jewish religion,
ideology and politics. Israeli and Jewish history are
set as phantasmic tales. Facts and historical
documents are either pushed aside, shoved under the
carpet, eliminated or simply destroyed. As we all
know, truth seeking is interpreted by Israelis and
Zionist as anti Semitism or even holocaust denial.
As it seems, 50 years were not enough for Israel to
tackle its original sin. The reason is simple, the
crimes that are entangled with the foundation of the
Jewish state have never been resolved. Millions of
Palestinian refugees are still awaiting to return to
their land. Israel is still driven by racist and
supremacist laws. The Jewish state has never matured
from its lethal philosophy of constant physical
intimidation. Consequently, the IDF, the Mossad and
the security services mounted pressure on the
government to extend the classification status of
these 50 year old documents. And no surprise,
Netanyahu has provided the required extension.
Haaretz pointed out that it is slightly peculiar that
PM Netanyahu, the son of Benzion Netanyahu, a Zionist
historian, gave his hand to a crude attempt to conceal
historical research and truth seeking. I read Benzion
Netanyahu, I actually learned a lot from him. Benzion
wasn’t exactly an ordinary historian, he was a Zionist
historian (as opposed to a historian of Zionism). He
was there to give the Jewish national aspiration a
contextual pseudo academic meaning. PM Netanyahu's
decision to hide facts for another 20 years is
actually in line with his father’s philosophy.
A disclosure of the truth regarding Israel's early
days would reveal that the Jewish state was a
murderous lethal attempt from its very beginning. As
much as Zionist and Israeli leaders vowed publicly to
make Jews ‘people like all other people’, behind
closed doors they commanded their army and secret
services to kill like their imaginary Biblical
forefathers.
I would argue that from a historical perspective,
Israel can keep sitting on its secret files as long as
it wants. We do not really need the Israeli archive in
order to examine the true murderous meaning of the
Jewish state and the Jewish national project. However,
the fact that Israel insists on hiding its past, means
that there is a little bit of shame and consciousness
left in this tribal collective. This is actually a
positive sign.
Add Comments