Moshe Dayan: ‘We Are the Generation of Colonizers’

‘Before their eyes, we turn into our homestead, the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived’

MOSHE DAYAN and Jordanian Lt.-Col. Abdullah El Tell reach a ceasefire agreement in Jerusalem, Nov. 30, 1948 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)

If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel.”
—David Ben-Gurion (né David Grün), called the “founder of Israel”

Israel, from its beginning, understood that its creation and continued existence would be fiercely resisted. Israel also knew why — because it was founded on land stolen from others. The following piece, published in an earlier form 2023, is more than relevant today.

It contains a confession that Israelis today won’t admit: You fight, you Arabs, because we have stolen from you.

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‘What cause have we to complain about their hatred of us?’

Consider these forgotten words of the former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. He has a strongly pro-Zionist past, a fighting past:

At the age of 14, Dayan joined the Jewish defence force Haganah. In 1938, he joined the British-organised irregular Supernumerary Police and led a small motorized patrol.

Haganah was “the main Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv’s presence in the region, and was formally disbanded in 1948, when it became the core force integrated into the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence.”

Dayan had strong views about what defending Israel would take. One thing it would take is this — an unblinking acknowledgement of the crime Israel committed to acquire the land.

In Dayan’s own words:

What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.

And:

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.
—Moshe Dayan address at Technion University, Haifa (March 19, 1969)

And:

Before [the Palestinian’s] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived...We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home.
—Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, “Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel”

Also consider this, from David Ben-Gurion (né Grün), the first Israeli prime minister and so-called “founder of Israel”:

Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. … They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?
—David Ben-Gurion, quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nathan Goldman

These men were clear-eyed. They knew what the project was about: stolen land; aborted future lives; eternal battle to defend the crime.

An Intransigent Thief

This is like Henry VIII’s 16th century theft of the wealth of the Church. Once taken and given away to cronies and friends, the money could not be returned, nor the theft undone, in the same way a murdered man can’t come back to life.

Even fifty years later, England was as Catholic as France; only the government and those dependent on power were Protestant. Thus Catholics were brutally treated, and both sides fought till one or the other was beaten to powerlessness.

There is now peace in England, but the process took six generations.

The Bloody One-State Solution

So here. A so-called two-state solution can’t work — Israelis insist on one state, their own, with no middle ground. Thus, by intransigence this will proceed till one side is gone; a bloody one-state solution, fought to the end.

“We came here and stole their country.” And they’re determined to stay. How does that not end in death or mass emigration? Here’s what occurred when Europeans invaded America. First, pre-conquest North America:

American Indian population and language groups prior to the European invasion. Image credit: The University of Texas at Austin. From the National Atlas of the United States of America (1970). Source.

Then this:

Source

Until finally, this:

Source

Click for the full animation.