Liberal Zionism & the Spirit of Things

In the beginning (of the Zioinist movement) was the word. And the word (in Theodor Herzl's diary for 12 June, 1895) was Genocide: "When we occupy the land... We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border..."

Hence Israel's spiriting of  penniless Palestinians across the borders in 1948... and again (into Jordan) in 1967.

But Gaza, into which Palestinians from across southern Palestine had already been spirited in 1948? What to do with them? Well, the only border to spirit them across was the Egyptian border... into the Sinai Desert.

And how to spirit them there? A re-run of 1948 perhaps? No, that'd be a PR disaster in 1967. Hmmm:

"'Perhaps if we don't give them enough water they won't have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.' That is what Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol said in 1967 about Gaza, as revealed in newly declassified documents from the time. Ofer Aderet of Haaretz reported... about this today... Eshkol, the leftist 'liberal Zionist,' was very willing to send Palestinians to the moon: 'I want them all to go, even if they go to the moon,' he said.

"As is widely known, the standard UN definition of genocide includes 'Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.'

"These newly declassified documents reveal that the genocidal policy was indeed there already in 1967... Indeed, Eshkol was aware in the months after the 1967 war of the 'suffocation and imprisonment' in Gaza in 1967... And he was quite clear about this being an instrument to effect Israeli strategy: '... precisely because of the suffocation and imprisonment there, maybe the Arabs will move from the Gaza Strip,' he said.

"Eshkol was also paraphrasing Herzl, when Eshkol told the cabinet he was 'working on the establishment of a unit or office that will engage in encouraging Arab emigration.' He noted that 'We should deal with this issue quietly, calmly and covertly, and we should work on finding a way for them to emigrate to other countries and not just over the Jordan [River].' [...] (From Liberal Israeli leaders were contemplating genocide in Gaza already in 1967, Jonathan Ofir, mondoweiss.net, 17/11/17)