In a classic scene from the British comedy series Fawlty Towers, Hotel proprietor Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) is preparing to receive a group of German guests. “Remember, don’t mention the war” he admonishes his staff. The reason he does so is that he is referring to WWII, which the Germans started – and lost, and that it therefore would be poor manners to make it a topic of conversation. In May 2009 the Norwegian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique succeeds in showing the very same restraint at which Fawlty fails miserably.
The article “Hostages to the right-wing extremists” by Joseph Algazy and Dominique Vidal, deals with how “the turn to the right in Israeli politics is threatening to make the lives of Israel’s many arabs even more difficult. The right-wing dream of a Jewish state exposes an increasing number of Israel’s one and a half million Palestinians for what they call a sneaking apartheid”. At the bottom of the article, which runs over an entire page, there is a “fact box”. This “fact box” is supposed to contain the basics of the Arab-Israeli struggle from 1947 up to today. This is what the “fact box” says about the first years of the state of Israel:
The Arab Israelis’ story
1947-1949. During the war which breaks out after the proclamation of the state of Israel, between 700 000 and 800 000 Palestinians are forced to leave their homes. Only 160 000 are allowed to remain in Israel.
October 21st 1948. The authorities subject them to a military regime, based on the British state of emergency laws (which are valid to this day).
1948-2008. Comprehensive expropriation of Palestinian land and forced proletarization of most of the Palestinian Israelis.
It’s one thing how the “fact box” completely omits any mention of how, following the proclamation of a Jewish state in 1948, an even larger number of jews was displaced. Incredibly, the newspaper goes one step further and manages to omit the war of 1948, which in part was a war of aggression started by Israel’s neighbors and in part a civil war which started already before the proclamation of 48. Israel lost a full 1% of its population in this war. Moreover this war caused the naqba, the Palestinian refugee crisis which to this day fuels the war against the Jewish state. Israel’s neighbors and the Palestinians went to war against the state of Israel, as well as any jews they could lay their hands on, and subsequently lost. And the Le Monde Diplomatique elects to reward them for their aggression, by politely refraining from mentioning the war.
If even the most basic of facts concerning the war of 1948 are spirited away in this fashion, how on earth is the Norwegian population to be able to understand the present situation in anything even resembling a proper context?
The Norwegian edition of Le Monde Diplomatique is published monthly and claims to be “globally committed and philosphically radical”. More to the point, it does not find the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 to be worthwhile a mention. Impossible? Alas, no. Not in the Norwegian Middle East debate, where decency goes to die.
