Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 1992, Page 24, 88

Memory of 1967 “Ethnic Cleansing” Fuels Ideology of Golan Settlers

By Dr. Israel Shahak

In important respects, the Golan Heights differ from other territories seized in June 1967. Israel conquered the Golan Heights in two days and within a few weeks had carried out there what is now called "ethnic cleansing."

In absolute numbers, the 180,000 Syrian expellees were fewer than the 400,000 to 500,000 Palestinians expelled our otherwise forced into exile between June 1967 and August 1968. But there also was an important qualitative difference between the two cases of expulsion. All Golan Heights Syrians, with the exception of some 6,000 Druze residents, were expelled, compared to only some Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Since the still-occupied Druze villages are compactly situated in a single corner of the Golan Heights, the expulsions produced a virtual demographic vacuum throughout the rest of the Golan Heights, which remain sparsely populated. The 180,000 Syrians expelled have been replaced by only 12,000 to 15,000 Jewish settlers. In either case, this marks a huge decline in population since 1967.

The expulsions were carried out ruthlessly by Israeli army units made up mostly of kibbutz members. The Israelis allowed the villagers no more than an hour to pack their belongings.

One story, which was recounted just one time in an Israeli left-wing journal, describes the experience of two Israeli soldiers, one of them a Holocaust survivor and both apparently more squemish than most of the kibbutzniks serving in a unit assigned in June 1967 to expel the inhabitants of a particular village. At that time, resisting Israeli army orders was unthinkable. The two nevertheless resolved to expel the family of the house to which they were assigned in as humane a manner as the horrible circumstances permitted.

They entered the house and notified the family of the expulsion order, then said they would wait outside to protect the family from other soldiers for one hour, while the Syrians packed their belongings.

While waiting, the Holocaust survivor predicted to his comrade that the first person to emerge would be a little boy, carrying a heavy bag containing the family's gold jewelry and other most precious possessions. The second soldier dismissed the prediction. When the family emerged, however, it was preceded by a little boy carrying a heavy bag which, when inspected, turned out to contain the family's gold and jewelry.

During the inspection the family was convinced that the bag would be seized, but the soldiers returned it. Afterward, the second soldier asked, "How did you know in advance what the boy would be carrying?"

"Because," said the Holocaust survivor, "in 1940 when the Nazis expelled us from our little town to a big city ghetto, I was a little boy and I carried my family's gold."

The expulsions produced a demographic vacuum.

Suppression of the story illustrates the compulsion of Golan Heights settlers to conceal their crime from the world, despite the fact that the memory, however repressed, continues to shape their attitudes.

The "ethnic cleansing" of 1967 is never mentioned within Israel, and very seldom in the Western press. But the Hebrew press occasionally alludes to what followed: obliteration of the Syrian villages and the establishment, in the wake of the expulsions, of very peculiar Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights.

In an article entitled "We are the State" in the Sept. 11 Yediot Ahronot, Nahum Barnea describes a recent reunion of village demolishers as follows: "In the club of Merom Hagolan kibbutz members, a group of rather elderly people assembled last Tuesday to reminisce about the glorious beginnings of the Golan Heights settlement. A videotape recorded their every word and gesture. . .

"Shlomo Rotschild, who in the meantime has left to live in Karmiel, said: 'It was an act of supreme justice on our part, for the simple reason that whatever we, the Jews, do is just.' Gyora Levkovitz added: 'We have settled here in the conviction that we had the right to, because, being a pivot of the universe we had the right to do whatever we wanted.' Levkovitz, too, now lives in Karmiel.

"With total openness and humor-laced nostalgia, each recounted his own part in the systematic 'leveling' or 'ironing' of the Syrian villages in the Golan Heights. They also recounted how, of all the government ministers of that time, only Menachem Begin, then a minister without portfolio in the Levi Eshkol government, professed to have been 'shocked' after learning by chance that the village of Banyas was slated for destruction. All other ministers were sympathetic."

The last point, Barnea clarifies, was meant sarcastically, illustrating Likud hypocrisy.

As recounted by Yerakh Tal in the Sept. 10 Ha'aretz, "The first [Jewish] settlement in the Golan Heights was established barely five weeks after the 1967 fighting ended." It was a kibbutz named Merom Hagolan. A number of other kibbutzim and moshavim soon followed. Tal adds that the Golan Heights already were dotted with settlements before anyone began settling any more of the West Bank than East Jerusalem and a small enclave to its south, "Gush Etzion," which had been inhabited by Jews before 1948.

AN INTERESTING CHOICE OF SITES

A point of interest was the choice of sites for the first Golan Heights settlements. The chosen locations were not close to the old international borders, where before 1967 the Syrians had indeed shelled Israeli settlements from above, nor in the middle of the Golan Heights. Instead they were close to the new cease-fire lines.

The explanation of a Merom Hagolan kibbutz member, engaged in a hunger strike in front of the Knesset to protest any Israeli territorial concessions, was quoted by Nerri Livneh in the Sept. 10 Hadashot:

"In the socialist camp within Zionism there has always been a sacrosanct rule that the borders of the Jewish state extend as far as the Jewish settlements reach, and remain there forever." Livneh's interviewee then went on to accuse Rabin of betraying this sacred dogma, naming Rafael Eitan as his choice of Israeli leaders who have kept their faith with it.

This "rule" is indeed being taught in all Israeli secular state schools to children aged 5 to 18, and then again in the army. Such indoctrination has its power. Graduates of this educational system accept this dogma automatically, unless as adults they are able to emancipate their thinking.

The religious state schools, attended by roughly a quarter of Israeli children, provide a different version: They teach that the borders of the Jewish state have been preordained by God. They also teach that Jewish settlements, even if secular, are visible signs of the fulfillment of God's will. Obviously, there is a high degree of coincidence between the socialist and the religious dogmas in Israel.

Yitzhak Ben Aharon, a former secretary-general of Histadrut, now retired, and a dove relative to many of his colleagues, has shed further light on the story of early Golan settlement in the Sept. 15 Yediot Ahronot. In his version, the initiative for settling the Heights was provided by an overwhelming majority within the Labor-affiliated United Kibbutz Movement. Ben Aharon indicates that privately, but never in public, he was a member of a minority which opposed the initiative. He writes:

"The decision was to locate the first settlements on the very edge of the Heights. The Chief of Staff [i.e. Yitzhak Rabin] and the Northern Command [of the Israeli army] recommended (and I still keep wondering why it was no more than a mere recommendation) that a strip of 15 to 20 kilometers [from the cease-fire lines] be reserved for army positions, with no settlements. The idea was to establish the closest kibbutz behind the fortified lines of the army.

"But the recommendation was rejected as pigheadedly as only a messianic movement can. . . The kibbutz movement insisted with all the stubbornness it could muster that all of its new kibbutzim be located as close to the new border as possible, in front of the army fortification lines."

Ben Aharon goes on to analyze the political identity of the Golan Heights settlers, whom he can be assumed to know intimately. He describes their majority as always belonging to Labor, and always overwhelmingly voting for Labor, until the June 1992 elections, when many switched their votes to the extremist Tsomet party.

He nevertheless sees these settlers politically closer to Likud, especially since 1981. At that time they supported Begin in passing the so-called Golan Law, which, without annexing the Golan Heights outright, made them for all intents and purposes a part of Israel. Their alliance with Likud has continued, according to Ben Aharon, despite "the inability of the naive and fervently idealistic Golan Heights pioneers to extract from their Likud allies any funding for the development of their area. . .

"This is why the Golan Heights have remained sparsely inhabited," he continues. "Those who do reside there, however, have remained steadfast in their conviction that since Israel finds itself in a state of perpetual war with the Syrians, which perforce means with all of the Arabs, the security of all of Israel depends only on them and their demagogic right-wing allies. This is why the nationalistic and security-obsessed philosophy of the Golan Heights settlers assumes that any attempts, by nations large or small, to terminate bloodshed by contractual peace or some other agreements amount to nothing less than an abysmal folly. Their security and Israel's, which for them are one and the same, supposedly requires aggravating the enmities, escalating the arms race and, above all else, shattering the widespread [Israeli] preference for peace over war."

Ben Aharon's portrayal of the settlers' essentially feudal mentality and aims is undoubtedly correct. A number of other Hebrew press commentators have clearly echoed Ben Aharon while characterizing the Golan Heights settlers, or at least the kibbutz and moshav members among them, as "the nobles," "knights," "self-appointed guardians of the nation" and similar terms, not necessarily meant sarcastically. It goes without saying that the militaristic and paranoid features of the ideology of the Golan Heights settlers have been shaped, consciously or unconsciously, by the memory of the cruel expulsions that emptied the land they now inhabit.

Dr. Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor and retired professor of chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is chairman of the Israeli League of Human and Civil Rights. His monthly translations From the Hebrew Press are available to Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, readers for $25 a year.