From Staff Reports

Peace activist Mike Peled, author of “The General’s Son: Journal of an Israeli in Palestine,” spoke on Nov. 8 in A-B Tech’s Simpson Auditorium.

His talk, titled “Moving Beyond Zionism: A New Paradigm for the Future of Israel/Palestine,” drew about 70 people.

The talk was sponsored by Western Carolians for Peace and Justice in the Mid-East and the Coalition for Peace With Justice.

Peled was born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well-known Zionist family. His grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson, was a Zionist leade and a signer of Israel’s Declaration of Independence.

Much of his talk focused on the difference between the image of Israel that it portrays to the world — and the reality that results in the mistreatment of Palestinians.

For instance, he said of the 1948 war between Israel and surrounding Arabs, “in 12 months, this Zionist military managed to conquer 80 percent of the country and 500 cities were completely destroyed.” The war resulted in the exile of nearly 1 million Palestinians, he said.

Peled said the Israeli “narrative” is that “The Arabs attacked, we won and they left. Therefore, there is no moral issue.”

He added, “If we look at the details today, we know the story of the war is untrue and quite ridiculous.”

Peled asserted, “The drums of war began beating when Egypt’s (Gamal Abdel) Nasser kicked out the U.N. Peacekeeping forces and invaded the neutral zone in 1967.

“The Israli generals saw this as a cause for war and demanded a presumptive strike,” he said. After some debate, “the generals prevailed and defeated the Egyptians and, at that time, the generals decided — on their own -— to take the Gaza, Golan Heights, Sinai and the West Bank ....

“The Egyptian army was not prepared for war and, therefore, we once again had an opportunity to attack and destroy them ... Militarily, there was no threat” to Israel.

Fifteen thousand Egyptian soldiers were killed, along with 700 Israelis — “all in six days,” he noted. “They (the Israelis) had a very well-trained army with an excellent plan of attack.

“After the war, my father said we have an opportunity to solve the Palestinian problem — offer them the West Bank and Gaza.”

Instead, Israel did not solve the Palestinian problem “Basically, the conquest was complete and there was ethnic cleansing ... The whole point of the Zionist idea was complete.”

Peled said among Israel’s goals were to “erase Palistine from the map” via “ethnic cleansing to ‘de-Arabize’ the country.”

However, he noted that “Palestine was an Arab country for 1,500 years” before the U.N. forced the creation of modern Israel in its midst.

He said the “notion that today’s Israel is connected with King David” and others before him in the Jewish tradition is bogus. “There’s no historical proof that Kind David ever existed,” Peled said.

What’s more, he said the Israelis recently decided that the ancient city of David was covered by a city of 50,000 people, so the Palistinian city was destroyed and the residents moved away, so that the city could be excavated — and to no avail.

“If anybody talks today about the notion that Israel should ever let Palestine exist — it’s called absurd by the Zionists.”

Despite peace talks through the years, “when the Palistinians agreed to the two-state solution, they gave up 80 percent of their land,” Peled said. “Also, by doing this, they gave up to the right for the Palestinians ever to return. Israel made no concessions at all. Yet what Arafat did” was the result of pressure, as “his home was surrounded by Israeli tanks.”

What’s more, Arafat was later vilified by “the Zionists as a terrorist.”

Following in the steps of his father, Gen. Matti Peled, the young Peled, served as a parachutist. He went from a militaristic hawk to a fighter for peace following the loss of his 13-year-old niece, who was killed in 1997 by Palistinian suicide bombers.’

He said he was driven by the tragedy to explore Palestine, its people and their stories.

The main problem now, he said, is “where do we go from here?” There are 6.5 million Israelis and 5.5 million Palistinians “governed by Israel and the problem is it’s not a democracy ... How do two nations share a country?”

He said a popular saying among Israelis is “look at the Arabs of Israel — they don’t even want to leave, they’re doing so well...

“The only way to move forward is to take away the Jewish state in the Middle East.” Instead, he recommended establishing a democracy with equal rights” for all. “There can be a peaceful transfer of power. We’ve seen that elsewhere,” he said, citing South Africa.