Zionist denials

Zionist Denials are cases in which Israel itself has deliberately and falsely denied actions which Israel or others have later admitted.

In some of these cases the state of Israel has denied culpability but then later admitted liability. In other cases Israel has paid compensation despite denying intent eg the USS Liberty Incident, widely and predominantly reported by "reliable sources" as being a case of the Israelis deliberately attacking a US ship, see this chart.

Also included in the category of "denials" are cases in which Israel has obstructed access or failed to assist investigators. Wikispooks is treating such obstrucion in a fashion broadly similar to incidents such as Tiananmen Square where the state party has acted in a non-transparent fashion and has allowed a presumption of guilt to be widely (though not necessarily generally) held.

There are also denials of Zionist policy. Some were once denied but are now pretty generally accepted (eg the policy of "Transfer", what we came to know as "Ethnic Cleansing" after incidents in the Balkans in the 1990s) while others such as the Judaization of Jerusalem and the total annexation of the West Bank are still officially denied. In other cases eg "from the Nile to the Euphrates" intent is denied even though it is established settler policy. The real meaning of the two blue lines of the Zionist flag seems to be either currently unknown or impossible to prove.

Cases of fraudulent denial or mis-reporting of Israeli massacres include cases where death-tolls have been reduced in suspicious circumstances. All denials are commonly linked to fraudulent accusations of "Blood-Libel" and antisemitism.

Incidents post-2000

The following incidents are described in greater detail at Zionist denials - post 2000

2010 Flotilla

Sub-headings: First use of violence, Violence on other boats.

2008/9 Gaza Massacre, Operation Cast Lead

Sub-headings: White Phosphorus use in Gaza, UN Board of Inquiry.

2006 Lebanon

Sub-headings: Use of White Phosphorus.

2002/2003 Deaths of internationals

British observers/UN employees James Miller, Tom Hurndall and Iain Hook were shot dead by Israeli forces in 2002/2003. Despite initial denials, compensation has been paid and one Israeli (a Bedouin) jailed. Parents of American activist Rachel Corrie have not had support from their own government and were still attempting to get answers through the Israeli courts in 2010.

Incidents before 2000

1985 Jonathan Pollard

U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States in 1985 for passing military secrets to Israel.

Israel promised this would not happen again, eg "As with Pollard, this (Lavon Affair) was a rogue operation," David Kimche, a former Mossad deputy chief, said in 2005 "We knew never to go down that road again."

But in March 2008, another Israeli spy, 84 year old Ben-Ami Kadish was arrested on charges that he had spied for Israel for 20 years (ie recruited not long after Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment). Former head of Mossad, Labor MK Danny Yatom told Army Radio: "I think what primarily bothers the Americans is the feeling that Israel didn't tell them the whole truth two decades ago, in 1985, when the Pollard affair exploded". and added: "The Americans asked if there are additional people that Israel ran or are running in the United States. The answer, to the best of my knowledge, was always no".

1982 Lebanon

Some denials (eg responsibility for Sabra and Shatilla, killing of UN soldiers) and a lot of deceit.

Deceitful reasoning for invasion

The claimed excuse for this fresh attack on Lebanon was a near fatal attack on the Israeli Ambassador in London on the 3rd June by Abu Nidal, a Palestinian and free-lance terrorist. Israel launched air-strikes against Beirut the next day, the 4th. On the same day, less than 24 hours after the shooting, the attackers had been caught. On 6th Jun 1982, Margaret Thatcher told the House of Commons that a hit-list in the possession of the terrorists included the name of the PLO's London representative, making Arafat's involvement even less likely.

Nevertheless, Israel had long wished to seize Lebanon and on 5th June Menachem Begin proposed a military operation. An earlier "Big Plan" had been aired and rejected by the Cabinet. Ariel Sharon and Eitan presented the Cabinet with the "Small Plan," which was an operation in south Lebanon only. This included no advance to Beirut and no move against the Syrians. The attack started on 6th June 1982 and turned into the "Big Plan". The "big plan" invasion turned into an occupation but not the ethnic cleansing of the whole of southern Lebanon, as repeatedly proposed by leading Zionists (eg Moshe Dayan and David Ben Gurion in 1954.

In the event the occupation lasted until 2000 but was increasingly fought by Hezbollah. Israel announced a planned withdrawal which they carried out prematurely. The militias (eg "The South Lebanon Army" or SLA) which had done Israel's dirtiest work for 18 years collapsed immediately.

Harassment of US Marines

See the Wikispooks article section on "Israeli forces clash with Marines" in the article on the 1982 Lebanon War. The original of the article is by Donald Neff, published in 1995 by the "Washington Report" and re-published by "If Americans Knew".

1967 War

Israel initially claimed that it had come under attack, though all sources later agree it carried out a pre-emptive strike.

USS Liberty Incident

While many Israel-firsters continue to insist that this was an accident, the argument has largely turned against them. A turning point in the debate may have been the article in the Chicago Tribune of 2nd Oct 2007 which, as the Wikipedia says contains "numerous previously unreported quotes from former military personnel with first-hand knowledge of the incident. Many of these quotes directly contradict the US National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots, claiming that not only did transcripts of those communications exist, but also that it showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel."

Typical of the quotes in the Tribune is one from the late Dwight Porter, American ambassador to Lebanon during the Six-Day War, who told friends and family members that he had been shown English-language transcripts of Israeli pilots talking to their controllers. Close friend, William Chandler, former head of the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Co., said Porter recalled one of the pilots protesting, "But sir, it's an American ship - I can see the flag!" To which the ground control responded, "Never mind; hit it!".

A fuller description of this incident is carried by Wikispooks here, including a unique section on the "Reliable Sources" at which it is claimed that these sources "all say that Israel knew what it was doing".

Execution of POWs

In 1995 the mass graves of up to 1,000 unarmed Egyptian civilians and prisoners of war were discovered outside El-Arish and the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Jewish Telegraph Agency, and many other respected press organs both in the U.S. and Israel reported that IDF veterans had admitted that there had been mass-murders during the 1967 War. Deputy Foreign Minister, Eli Dayan even offered compensation to the victims families in 1995, but explained that Israel was unable to pursue those responsible due to the statute of limitations.

In 2001, James Bamford published a book on the National Security Agency called "Body of Secrets" and in one chapter mentioned the USS Liberty Incident, surmising that the motive was to conceal the 1967 massacre reported in 1995.

Bamford's book resulted in a new spate of denial, Michael Oren wrote that one of the witnesses (Israeli reporter Gabriel Bron, a former IDF soldier) told him "The one hundred and fifty POWs were not shot, and there were no mass murders" but that the they were helped by the Israeli soldiers who "gave them water, and in most cases just sent them in the direction of the Suez Canal." Oren had more to say about Bamford, and presented a second piece of Zionist Denial "there are a lot of reasons to question Bamford's credibility, starting with his rather curious reading of Middle Eastern history. For example, Bamford says Israel initiated hostilities against Syria and Jordan, when it happened the other way around."

Steve Aftergood also denied the massacre in the July 17, 2001 issue of Secrecy News.

A further mass grave of 30 Egyptian soldiers was found in the Sinai peninsula in 2008.

1960s Israel's development of nuclear arsenal

Israel continues to operate a policy of secrecy, refusing to confirm or deny that it is a nuclear armed power. However, all media sources accept the evidence presented eg testimony of the technician Vanunu who had worked at Dimona and whistle-blew to the Sunday Times. Estimates of the capability range from around 70 to 400 war-heads, with delivery by plane, missile and submarine.

Israel is widely thought to be planning a form of deterrence known as the "Samson Option", whereby it attacks other nations, including the US, all over the world if it is threatened by destruction. The Wikipedia version of the article is just a shadow, a much fuller version of an article written correctly to Wikipedia standards is here.

1953 Qibya

The Wikipedia article on this event accurately describes some of the deceit and denial of Israel but is wrapped up in excusatory tones eg "The international outcry caused by the operation required a formal reply by Israel". The references given are short of URLs and other material adequate to access or expose the dishonesty of the official Israeli response.

Prime Ministers Moshe Sharett advised that a denial of the involvement of their forces would make Israel appear patently "ridiculous" but on October 19th 1954 his predecessor as PM, David Ben-Gurion, asserted that the raid had been carried out by Israeli civilians.

None deplores it more than the Government of Israel, if ... innocent blood was spilled ... The Government of Israel rejects with all vigor the absurd and fantastic allegation that 600 men of the IDF took part in the action ... We have carried out a searching investigation and it is clear beyond doubt that not a single army unit was absent from its base on the night of the attack on Qibya. (Statement by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, ISA FM 2435/5)

On Israeli Radio that same day, Ben-Gurion addressed the nation and said:

The [Jewish] border settlers in Israel, mostly refugees, people from Arab countries and survivors from the Nazi concentration camps, have, for years, been the target of (...) murderous attacks and had shown a great restraint. Rightfully, they have demanded that their government protect their lives and the Israeli government gave them weapons and trained them to protect themselves.
But the armed forces from Transjordan did not stop their criminal acts, until [the people in] some of the border settlements lost their patience and after the murder of a mother and her two children in Yahud, they attacked, last week, the village of Kibya across the border, that was one of the main centers of the murderers' gangs. Every one of us regrets and suffers when blood is shed anywhere and nobody regrets more than the Israeli government the fact that innocent people were killed in the retaliation act in Kibya. But all the responsibility rests with the government of Transjordan that for many years tolerated and thus encouraged attacks of murder and robbery by armed powers in its country against the citizens of Israel.

Uri Avnery, founder and editor of the magazine HaOlam HaZeh, relates that he had both his hands broken when he was ambushed for criticizing the massacre at Qibya in his newspaper. The chief of the secret service in the 50s, Issar Har'el, later testified that the Ben-Gurion establishment considered Avnery and Haolam Hazeh as "Public Enemy Number 1".

1954 Lavon Affair

For years, Israel "denied involvement" in attacks on US and UK facilities in Cairo and Alexandria, which they had intended to be "blamed on local insurgents [and] discredit Nasser's rule"

The denials finally came to an end 51 years after the attacks (2005) when medals for the surviving perpetrators of the fire-bomb were handed out by Israeli President Moshe Katsav. More details at False Flag Attacks.

1950 Baghdad bombings

The April 1950 bombings that helped panic most of the 150,000 Jews of Iraq to leave for Israel are still denied by the Zionists. But even the WP article on "Jews in Iraq" lists many credible sources who say the bombings were indeed Zionist. See False Flag Attacks.

1948 Tantura

While Israel rejects the claims made in the doctoral thesis, no investigation has been carried out on the mass-grave known to be under a carpark and the number of victims (either 70-80 or around 250) buried there being in doubt.

Pre-Israel actions

Some pre-Israel actions were condemned by the Yishuv but were later admitted to have been carried out under their control/instigation. There are only a small number which were admitted before May 1948.

1948 Deir Yassin massacre

5 weeks before the Independence of Israel. Condemned by the Yishuv at the time. Shortly thereafter it was discovered that it was the Palmach that had actually overcome the small number of defenders and allowed the massacre of the village. Official denial/re-writing continued in some quarters until at least the 1970s. A ravine where some of the bodies are thought to lie has been filled with refuse.

1946 Bombing of the King David Hotel

Denied and condemned at the time. Binyamin Netanyahu attended a two-day 60th anniversary celebration in July 2006, with a tour of the hotel given by one of the surviving perpetrators.

1944 assassination of Lord Moynes

Denied and condemned at the time, the bodies of the perpetrators were brought back to Israel and buried in honour on Mount Herzel in 1975, provoking outrage in the British Parliament. James Callaghan, then Foreign Secretary and later Prime Minister, ordered a formal protest "to make it clear to the Israeli government that the British government very much regretted that an act of terrorism should be honoured in this way."

1940 sinking of the Patria

Death of over 200 Jews. Denied and condemned (?) at the time, in 195? one of the perpetrators went public and explained the previously unknown actions of the Haganah.

Denial of Zionist Policies

Denial of Transfer

Supporters of Israel (including many of the most prominent such as Alan Dershowitz, Melanie Phillips, Daniel Piper) in the West deny that "transfer" (ie "ethnic cleansing") was always intended by the founders of Israel. They claim that "peace" between the parties, living in the same places as they are now, is a realistic option and the aim of Israel.

Rabbi Chaim Simons lived in Kiryat Arba, the notorious Hebron settlement which may have displaced 30,000 Palestinians. He believed in ethnic cleansing and full annexation of the West Bank to Israel. In 1990 he listed many of the pre-1948 claims that transfer was necesary and continues: "As we shall see, this phenomenon of restricting transfer plans to diaries, private correspondence and closed meetings, was not the prerogative of Herzl, "but has been emulated by many other Zionist leaders."

Denial of the Zionist flag

There is no proof that the two lines on the Zionist flag are intended to symbolise "from the Nile to the Euphrates", even though the policy itself is widely documented.

Blood-libel allegations

In many cases, when allegations have been made against Zionists, the critics have been accused of making blood-libels or of general anti-semitism. In some cases, the allegations against the Zionists have either been proved true or found to be very well evidenced.

2009 - Organ harvesting affair

When a Swedish newspaper broke the organ-harvesting story, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister demanded that Sweden condemn the piece, compared it to the Dreyfus Affair and compared Sweden's response to its "silence" during the Holocaust. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "echoed colleagues in comparing the article to medieval "blood libels," which alleged Jews used the blood of Christian babies in religious rites" and curbs were placed on Swedish journalists.

In fact, it was an old story - Dr Yehuda Hiss, Israeli chief pathologist at Abu Kabir, had been exposed for selling body parts in 2000 (by Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot), was on tape talking about freely taking organs at the time, was in possession of numerous organs when searched in 2002 and had been reprimanded in 2005.

In October 2011, a Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics press release claimed that Israel holds tens of bodies of male and female Palestinians killed during the second Intifada as well as hundreds of corpses of others killed in previous years.

2000 - Muhammed al-Durrah

Mohammed al-Durrah

Great effort and expenditure have been expended on this case by defenders of Israel trying to prove that Mohammed al-Durrah was shot by Palestinians (or is not dead) and that the famous picture is a blood-libel. Over ten years later, the cameraman and the head of the television channel, France24, are still being pursued through the courts in an attempt to destroy their careers.

Project Censored claim (using figures from the well-regarded Israeli NGO, Btselem) that "In the first three-and-a-half months ... Israeli forces killed 84 Palestinian children ... During this period, not one Israeli child was killed. Not one suicide bombing against Israelis occurred". It is known that some Israelis and some French Jews are unhappy with the denial. Other Israeli newspaper comment has suggested that the whole discussion is "tasteless questions designed to divert attention from the truly important issues ... Israel is responsible for killing more than 850 Palestinian children and teenagers since al-Dura was killed" and that some investigators have an "eccentric obsession" with their denial.

Wikipedia treatment

The Wikipedia article is largely taken up with a discussion (often positive) of the two denialist Zionist narratives. After years of debate an apparent change of heart at the Wikipedia decided that there should be mention of the widely commented linkage between the photo and the October 2000 lynching of two Israeli army reservists in Ramallah and the beheading of Daniel Pearl in Feb 2002.

1948 - Deir Yassin

There have been numerous attempts to deny there was a massacre at Deir Yassin, including some by Israel itself, and to smear the critics with accusations of blood-libel. The Wikipedia even suggests a book entitled "Blood Libel at Deir Yassin" by Uri Milstein.

Interference with the historical record

In some cases, Israel has claimed to be quoting Palestinian sources for the death-tolls of massacres, and these totals are both much smaller than believed at the time and impossible to confirm.