Instead, we are witnessing a grassroots movement of individuals around the world creating content, at the very least, amplifying realities on the ground and bombing out lies.

By Rashid Yusof

TOK Haji Din, Tok Chin, and my father, who had by then vacated his post as an official of the Muslim League, Kedah, were often immersed in spirited chats on Palestine, Israel, Yahudi, and, yes, Arafat.

This week, 45 years on, Outlook (an Indian magazine) featured the painting on Palestine by a grandson of this Kedah Muslim League personality.

Brick-by-Brick

Of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations, journalism in India is the most vibrant. And South Africa has always been sympathetic to the Palestine cause, given the apartheid past.

South Africa observed a Truth and Reconciliation phase with the end of Apartheid.

By comparison, such approach is not practical for the Palestinian – Israeli crisis. It will probably require the setting up of numerous commissions.

Instead, we are witnessing a grassroots movement of individuals around the world creating content, at the very least, amplifying realities on the ground and bombing out lies.

Precisely why journalism and quality material shall gain greater importance.

Reporters Without Borders has, this week, called on the Israeli government to reopen the Egyptian-Palestinian border gates at Jaffa to facilitate the mobility of Palestinian journalists now in Gaza and to allow international journalists in.

It seems that those journalists who had gained entry into Israel were brought in by Israel. Their journalistic space is severely restricted.

The ApaKhabar Story Board

In addition to a spike in quality content, Jews and Muslims should work together to scrutinise historical facts, beginning with the 1917 Balfour Declaration. This has been the one model of truth endlessly invoked as an enabler for an apartheid regime.

A Declaration that has spawned a conflict that is threatening to be perpetual.

The thought process of the planners, or plotters, was indeed horrifying.

There was this moment when someone argued that well, “there is this vast Arab land that the inhabitants of Palestine could relocate to.”

Pause. What is the angle you are going with? This was often asked whenever this reporter told friends I wished to write on this issue, thus virtually sailing into the digital ocean, content-wise.

Consider this prospect. Israel is a political party contesting elections with the world population as its voters.

At this precise moment, Israel is going to be trounced.

Even a fair number of international Jews are acutely aware of this.

ApaKhabar decided to feature a poster of three Jews known to be critical of Israel.

They are Noam Chomsky, Ilan Pappe, and Norman Finkelstein, to name just three of the brigade of dissident thinkers.

On his part, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, has been giving almost all of his media interviews to American platforms.

Benjamin Netanyahu has also quoted the Bible.

There are reportedly something like 16 million Jews around.

Some of them find the rhetoric of Benjamin Netanyahu outlandish.

Pre- and Post-Oct 7

The Jewish population of Palestine had grown from 48, 000 in 1890 to 630, 000 by 1947.

It is true that the cause of Zionism had benefited from having a set of strategists.

Dr Chaim Weizmann, who eventually served as president of Israel, will be featured in two segments here.

He deserved a mention here because of the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement of 1919, signed on January 3 of that year in Paris.

Prince Faisal Al-Husseini was the son of Emir Hussein of Hedjaz, with “influence and control” over Mecca and Medina. Prince Faisal was said to have written a note soon after signing the Faisal-Weizmann manifesto, as the Arab personality described the agreement.

“If changes are made, I cannot be blamed for failing to carry out the agreement.”

Propagandists did not just materialise yesterday.

References to spin doctors did not reverberate in London until Tony Blair became Prime Minister in 1997. It is true that facts have been tweaked and twisted with convenient slants for ages.

Precisely why the Faisal-Weizmann Agreement had been largely cited as presenting this perspective—encouraging large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine.

Didn’t Prince Faisal Al-Husseini and Weizmann also agree on this other vision?

That the Zionist movement “must undertake efforts to assist the Arab residents of Palestine and the future Arab State to develop their natural resources and establish a growing economy”.

Prince Faisal was later crowned King of Iraq, reigning for 12 years until 1933.

One of his last missions was to highlight his concern in London about the situation in Palestine.

The planners must have worked on the key messages long before Faisal- Weizmann such as bringing in the bit on “we Arabs, especially the educated view with favour the Zionist”.

Zionism was described as “moderate and proper”.

Naturally, the Jewish Diaspora saw no reason to resist an opportunity to return to their homeland.

The parents of Ilan Pappe fled Germany to Palestine in the 1930s.

Pappe, born in Haifa in 1954, authored the book “Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” (2006).

Pappe highlighted that more than half of the Palestinian native population—over 750, 000—was uprooted, 531 buildings were destroyed, and 11 urban neighbourhoods were emptied after the British decided in February 1947 to end the mandate.

Back in 1923, Palestine, had been placed under the administration of Great Britain.

Curiously so, it must be said this was under under the Mandate system.

It is not entirely out of the question that the likes of Chaim Weizmann had lobbied for this arrangement.

This week in December 2023, Gazans who have fled the North to the South have been told by the Israeli Army to move again, in the direction of Jaffa, on the Egyptian border.

Leaflets citing a Quranic verse were distributed (see video.)

Palestinian Diaspora

Chile hosts the biggest number of Palestinians outside the Middle East, at about half a million in a country with a population of less than 20 million. There are some 5.9 million Palestinian refugees in the Middle East.

In the past, scrutiny and interest in he Israeli-Palestinian conflict tended to taper off after every gruesome episode.

Not so this time around.

Documentaries on a range of episodes, including the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 will be in demand.

One documentary featured the killings of 29 members of a clan, with one of the men being decidedly apolitical. He spoke Hebrew and had been working in Jerusalem.

He wanted his children “to speak well.”

The man and his siblings were killed by the Israeli troops. The documentary showed his son a year after the father’s death. The boy has been lovingly drawing the portrait of his deceased father, determined to seek revenge. His father was no terrorist. He wanted to do well.

ApaKhabar will now quickly cite two success stories of Palestinians who were afforded an opportunity.

Abdullah Ektileh was born in Haifa, Palestine, in 1945. Three years later, his family sought refugee status in Syria. On July 20, the retired surgeon wrote an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Palestinians Deserve a Passport.

Abdullah Ektileh died in Indianapolis some 120 days after his article was published. His Wall Street Journal article should be made widely available.

Laura Elborno is another Palestinian with a passport.

Israel first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion delivered, it seems, this quote: “The old will die and the young will forget”.

Laura Elborno is a living example of how some of these displaced Palestinians are going to be much sought-after speakers worldwide even.

“We, as Palestinians, are categorically denied the right to narrate our experience; instead, statements by the military apartheid regime of Israel are taken as facts and never challenged.” 

She was addressing the Stop the War rally in London on December 2.

Scripting a Conflict

Since 1999, Birthright Israel has brought to Israel some 800,000 Jews in the 18–26 age group from 68 countries. This 10-day trip is fully paid for.

There appears to be some kind of indoctrination transmitted to Jews. Do listen to Israelites giving street interviews.

Piers Morgan

Apa Khabar has added Piers Morgan to the poster featuring Ilan Pappe, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein.

Piers Morgan virtually terrorised former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, accused of being anti-Semitic, in an interview. Labour personalities associated with Leftist convictions tend to be critical of the conduct of, say, financial institutions where Jews were known to be prominent. George Orwell wrote something precious on this issue.

Back to Piers Morgan and Jeremy Corbyn. This reporter personally wondered why should Piers Morgan invite Jeremy Corbyn if he was going to be bullied.

Piers Morgan wanted Jeremy Corbyn to condemn Hamas for the Oct. 7 attacks that left 1,200 dead. That was brutal, the Oct. 7 episode. Never mind that Israel was unable to detect the Hamas incursions. That was a horrific crime.

My issue with Piers Morgan’s style is the unwillingness to view the issue as something that was sparked more than 100 years ago. Strangely enough, in my reckoning, Piers Morgan has not been as ruthless when interviewing the likes of Douglas Murray of the Spectator.

Still, to be absolutely fair to Piers Morgan, he has lately been pretty virulent in his scrutiny of facts presented by his Israeli guests. He announced to his viewers that he had been trying to secure an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli Prime Minister has been focusing almost entirely on American media platforms.

Norman Finkelstein is also featured in our poster. He is a Jew whose parents survived the Holocaust. He has also been interviewed by Piers Morgan.

Norman Finkelstein has maintained a number of arguments, such as Gaza is a concentration camp.

The War of Propaganda

Propaganda was a term invoked by Henry Gurney, who was the last British Chief Secretary in the Mandate Administration of Palestine, serving from October 1946 to May 1948. Henry Gurney kept a diary in the last 60 days of his tenure in Jerusalem.

“But because the birth of the Zionist State of Israel has now taken place under a cloud of propaganda conducted on the one hand by the Zionists in every country whose help they need and on the other by the six Arab States who find difficulty in acting up to their threats and high-sounding promises of and to the Arabs of Palestine, It may be useful to put on record some of the facts that are already becoming obscure or disturbed.”

Henry Gurney was assassinated when he was the British High Commissioner to Malaya on October 6, 1951. He was on his way to Fraser’s Hill for a meeting.

Chaim Weizmann

Malaysians are proving to be resilient in fighting for justice and highlighting the truth about the Palestinian issue.

As Malaysians travel across the globe, some may want to produce winning documentaries and books. They would want to look into personalities such as Chaim Weizmann.

This reporter’s writing lacks depth. References for this article are widely available, so quoting them extensively is not going to be sensible.

ApaKhabar decided to highlight Chaim Weizmann since he appeared to have been hugely successful in advocating the Zionism cause from the moment this Russian Jew arrived in Britain in 1904.

This lecturer of chemistry at Manchester University quickly gained considerable influence. James Balfour was Prime Minister when he met Chaim Weizmann in 1906.

Soon, Zionist sympathisers in the British establishment grew in strength. On Nov. 5, 1914, Britain declared war on Turkey. And, the Ottomans ruled Palestine in this period.

By early 1915, Herbert Samuel, a Jew, had presented “The Future of Palestine” to the British Cabinet. This was about Britain seizing control of Palestine to facilitate self-government for Jewish immigrants. The following year, Sir Mark Sykes of the Sykes-Picot Treaty reportedly “embraced” Zionism.

Sykes was the political secretary to the Cabinet. Chaim Weizmann’s clout expanded. Herbert Samuel was later made the first British High Commissioner in Palestine. This was 1920.

The idea of the coexistence of Arabs and Jews in Palestine is not at all deceitful. It was the “colonisation” intent that has proven to be calamitous.

ApaKhabar decided therefore to highlight this intent in the 1937 David Ben-Gurion’s letter to his son. Where was the future Prime Minister of Israel based then? “You can write to me in London. Here they (the Jewish Agency Office) always know where I am, and they are efficient in forwarding my mail.”

The Zionists progressively shifted focus from Istanbul when the Ottomans ruled Palestine, then on to London ahead of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate of Palestine. With the decline of British influence internationally, the Zionists’ central focus is the United States.

In this context, bringing in the Christian Zionists does seem convenient to expand and strengthen leverage.

Assimilation versus integration in Malaysia

Malaysians, collectively, should view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or more accurately, war, as a pathway to strengthen, unite, and grow.

People of the three religions had co-existed in Palestine.

It is not about religion. Malaysians project the right sort of DNA to offer our views on the conflict on the international stage.

Truth Commission

Collectively, mankind should aspire to establish truth in any episode so that perpetrators are not garlanded and victims, maligned.

Henry Gurney’s predecessor as Chief Secretary in the Mandate Administration was John Shaw. He survived the bombing of the southern wing of the King David Hotel on July 22, 1946.

A total of 91 people—41 Palestinians, 28 British nationals, and 17 Jews—were killed. The King David Hotel built in 1929 housed at the time of the bombing, Mandate Secretariat, and Army headquarters.

A plaque was unveiled at the hotel’s southwest wing in July 2006. It was announced that the deaths of 91 individuals were regrettable, as warning phone calls had been made to get inhabitants to leave at once.

And who was the leader of the Irgun at the time of the horrific bombing? The future prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, was leader of the Irgun.

House Keys

In a 2007 article, Basel Al Magusi shared this fact: “Thousands and thousands of Palestinians still keep the key to their home to return.”

Malaysians, collectively, should view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or more accurately, war, as a pathway to strengthen, unite, and grow. It is not about religion. Malaysians project the right sort of DNA to offer our views on the conflict on the international stage.