“Charities” should apologise to Scottish school children for suppressing history. Charities caved in to Zionists’ terror demands to suppress Palestinian history

Scottish Israel flag wavers
Fernando Guevara* writes:

I was disturbed and saddened when I read Stuart Littlewood’s recent article “Israel’s tentacles choke schoolchildren’s right to free speech at Scotland’s Bannockburn (of all places!)“. In his article, Littlewood referred to a report published in Scotland’s Daily Record:, entitled “National Trust for Scotland apologies after featuring ‘anti-Semitic’ children’s display at Bannockburn”. The exhibition, or display, was co-hosted with the charity Children in Scotland.It featured the theme of protest! A part of the exhibition, which covered the Palestinian struggle, was taken down following a complaint by the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council (GJRC). Not only did the two charities take down the challenged item that was branded “highly offensive” and “historically inaccurate” by the GJRC, both charities apologised for having featured the children’s now suppressed narrative in the first place! But the GJRC wanted more. Its president, Paul Edlin, said “we still want to know how this happened”. The arrogance of the GJRC shows just how accustomed Zionist terror groups are to having educational entities cave in to their demands to silence history.

By succumbing to Zionist bullying and taking down the school children’s exhibition, which had exposed the truth about Zionist/Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the two Scottish “charities” have made themselves complicit in the continuing war crimes by covering up for their perpetrators – signalling that Israel can count on them to look the other way while Israel keeps up the genocide

Littlewood’s article quotes the text of the children’s display that was taken down:

Protests gathered around the world in support of Palestinians during a flareup in violence between Israel and Gaza. Israeli warplanes bombarded Gaza city, killing many Palestinian civilians.

Israel and Palestine have been embroiled in conflict on-and-off since the early twentieth century. The land which Israel inhabits was formally Palestine, ruled over by the British following the First World War. It was mostly inhabited by an Arabic population of Palestinians. However, during the twentieth century and culminating after the Second World War, increasing volumes of Jewish immigrants settled in Palestine and built communities – this was due to the Zionist desire for the Jewish people to have their own homeland near the Holy Land of Jerusalem.

By 1947 the UN agreed to partition Palestine into two countries – one for the Jewish people and one for the Palestinian Arabs. However, almost immediately after Israel became a nation (1948) they took more land than had been agreed by the UN and pushed out Arabic communities from their homes by force. In the decades since, Palestine has lost more and more land, causing a massive refugee crisis across the region and many Palestinians losing their lives. Israel has continued to impose institutionalised discrimination against Palestinians living under its rule in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and has maintained its illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip, subjecting its residents to collective punishment and deepening the humanitarian crisis there.

Traditionally, Israel has been supported by western governments but recently the tide for public sympathy internationally is swelling for Palestinian communities, shown through these protests.

I wrote to the two charities on 20September. The following is a copy of my letter to them (except the letter contained full citations, to facilitate the charities’ stated objectives of being informed and questioning the past):

Dear Executives and Managers of National Trust for Scotland and Children in Scotland,

I am writing to you because I have been informed that the “National Trust for Scotland has apologised after featuring an “anti-Semitic” children’s display at a famous battleground. The article reports that the NTS has stated: “The Trust prides itself on its political neutrality and clearly more judgment should have been exercised in this case. We’re sorry for any concern caused” (the emphasis is mine, as is the emphasis added in the text below). I note that the National Trust for Scotland advertises itself as INDEPENDENT AND POLITICALLY NEUTRAL on its website and, further, claims to be “Brave: …not having to fall in line with political viewpoints… to both question the past while also looking forward. 

Further, the aforementioned article states that the Children in Scotland charity, through Amy Woodhouse, has said: “We understand the content of the exhibit on Palestine, and the way the topic was framed, has caused hurt and anger among some audiences. We apologise for this.” However, the web page of Children in Scotland states that the charity offers a broad, balanced and independent voice; is committed to honesty and openness in all its work; challenges inequalities and that all children in Scotland shall have an equal chance to flourish. Children in Scotland also claims to be informed, focused and accountable.

I have read the text of the children’s display that was allegedly taken down, after having been branded “highly offensive” and “historically inaccurate” on the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict”, by Glasgow Jewish Representative Council (GJRC).

While I consider the Israeli conduct that is described in the children’s narratives as “highly offensive” indeed, the closest I can get to finding anything “historically inaccurate” is that I consider the suppressed children’s account of events rather timid. For instance, the use of terms such as “conflict” and “flareup in violence” fails to address the planned nature of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the statement “the UN agreed to partition Palestine into two countries” implies that the UN had some right to do so.

Please note that while certain truths about Israeli history will cause hurt and anger among some, Zionism/Israel has caused ethnic cleansing to others – the Palestinians.

The fact that the truth is objectionable to some is no excuse to cave in to demands to silence evidence-based narratives of history. It is par for the course that well documented historical narratives are frequently suppressed by Zionist organisations that use threats of slander, libel and social or professional harassment to suppress information about Zionist or Israeli deeds.

I am, therefore, compelled to inquire if the leaders of your organisations have informed themselves of any of the following acts or statements by Israeli officials. The quotes that follow are not statements of fringe elements in the Zionist movement – they are statements by Israeli government officials or top Israeli military commanders.

Israel’s first prime minister, Ben Gurion, is the one who perhaps best described what has been Israel’s consistent policy, when he admitted that “the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them” (Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle… He confirmed that“[t]he truth was that “politically we are the aggressors and they [the Palestinians] defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside”… The revolt was crushed by the British, with considerable brutality” (Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle…”.

There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?” (Goldman, The Jewish Paradox).

Already in 1938, in internal discussion, Ben-Gurion had “stated that ‘after we become a strong force, as a result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine’”In 1948, Menachem Begin [Israeli Prime Minister 1977–83]declared that: “The partition of the Homeland is illegal… It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel [the land of Israel] will be restored to the people of Israel, All of it. And forever’” (Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle…). Begin stated: “You came to another people’s homeland, as they claim, you expelled them and you have taken their land” (Chomsky’s “Peace in the Middle East?”). “Begin, then Leader of the Irgun, tells how ‘in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defenive to the offensive… Arabs began to flee in terror… Hagana [Zionist terror organisation] was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter’…The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states’ intervention” (Sami Hadawi, Bitter Harvest)

Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund… On 19 December 1940, he wrote: “It must be clear that there is no room for both peoples in this country… The Zionist enterprise so far… has been fine and good in its own time, and could do with  ‘land buying’ — but this will not bring about the state of Israel; that must come all at once, in the manner of a salvation (this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and there is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer them all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not leave a single village, not a single tribe”… There were literally hundreds of such statements made by Zionists (Edward Said, The Question of Palestine).

In the Deir Yassin Massacre of Palestinians by Jewish terrorists, “[f]or the entire day of 9 April 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers [Zionist terrorists] carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion…The attackers ‘lined men, women and children up against the walls and shot them’…The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country” (Simha Flapan,The Birth of Israel). 

During the British presence in Palestine, Britain had allowed Jews, but not Palestinians, to bear arms. On 14 May 1948, then Jewish Agency Chairman Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel, and became its first Prime Minister. On 15 May 1948, the day the British Mandate over Palestine ended, the armies of five neighbouring Arab states joined the Palestinians in collective self-defence of Palestine. The Palestinians had a right to collective self-defence, under customary international law and, since they were largely unarmed, they needed help from other nations. “Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organisation, had occupiedmost of the Arab cities in Palestine before 15 May 1948 [before the Zionist movement proclaimed the state of Israel]… In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the partition resolution” (Henry Cattan, Palestine, The Arabs and Israel).

The “Jewish military advantage was translated into an act of mass expulsion of more than half of the Palestinian population. The Israeli forces, apart from rare exceptions, expelled the Palestinians from every village and town they occupied. In some cases, this expulsion was accompanied by massacres” (Ilan Pappe, The Link). Israeli military [commander] Moshe Dayan admitted: “We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here… Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages… There is not a single community in the country that did not have a former Arab population” (Benyamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins). Dayan stated: “Before [the Palestinians’] very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived… We are the generation of coloniSers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home.” 

The deliberate destruction of Arab villages to prevent return of Palestinians:“During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile began to crystallise, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim…[Even earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha… The village was destroyed that night… Khulda was levelled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April… Abu Zureiq was completely demolished… Al-Mansi and An-Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also levelled… By mid-1949, the majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable” (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem). “Whereas the moral and political right of a person to return to his place of uninterrupted residence is acknowledged everywhere, Israel has negated the possibility of return… [and] systematically and juridically made it impossible, on any grounds whatever, for the Arab Palestinian to return, be compensated for his property, or live in Israel as a citizen equal before the law with a Jewish Israeli” (Edward Said, The Question of Palestine). 

Why had the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) recommended a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state in the first place?In the infamous“Balfour Declaration” of 1917, Britain had promised British Jew Lord Rothschild to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, and wrote that “[w]e do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country”. By the end of 1947, the USA had emerged as the most aggressive proponent of the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab part; in other words, the USA had by then accepted Zionist ideology. Zionism had infiltrated US institutions deeply, including the US Supreme Court. Note that the UNGA resolutions are not legally binding and are, therefore, generally referred to as “recommendations”. Tragically, this did not prevent the UNGA from violating the UN’s own charter in recommending the partition, and it did not prevent Britain from giving away Palestine that was not Britain’s to give. 

What did Mahatma Gandhi say? In 1938, he said: “Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French… What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct… If they [the Jews] must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs… As it is, they are co-sharers with the British in despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them. I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regard as an unacceptable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds” (Paul Mendes-Flohr, A Land of Two Peoples).

Currently, Israel’s Basic Law states that “the right of national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people”.

Since the 1980s many ”Israeli scholars [have] concurred with their Palestinian counterparts that Zionism was… carried out as a pure colonialist act against the local population…” “The new Israeli historians… wish to rectify what their research reveals as past evils… There was a high price exacted in creating a Jewish state in Palestine. And there were victims, the plight of whom still fuels the fire of conflict in Palestine” (Ilan Pappe, The Link). 

Organisations that refuse to allow well founded narratives of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine to be covered have no right to call themselves politically neutral, informed, accountable, balanced, independent or committed to honesty and openness

I think that National Trust for Scotland and Children in Scotland were right to apologise – but that the apologies should have been directed to the children whose history has been suppressed in what can only be described as mind-boggling servility to raw Zionist terror. I agree that more judgment should have been exercised,by both charities in this case. Or could it be that the representatives of the charities are not informed of what has happened and is still happening in Palestine? If that is the case, I shall gladly apologise to the representatives of both organisations for the harshness of my first impression of their motives for apologising. Will the National Trust for Scotland and Children in Scotland have the moral compass to allow history to be told? With the hope that this will be the case, I remain

Very truly yours,

Fernando Guevara

I emailed the letter to the following addresses, and I encourage others to email them with questions as well: 

So far, I have received an inane response from Amy Woodhouse that included the statement:

It was not our intention to offend or upset anyone, nor to make any judgements about the causes the young people chose to support. However, the content of the exhibit about Palestinecaused hurt and anger amongst some audiences, and we have apologised for this.

I wrote back: 

Dear Ms Woodhouse,

I can see from your cookie-cutter response to my previous email that you either have not read it beyond the subject line, or that you have made the judgement that it is most prudent to side with those who wish to silence Palestinians and the narratives of their struggle. 

Apparently, the hurt and anger amongst Zionists hold so much more value for you than the hurt and anger of the children whose narrative on the Palestinian struggle was suppressed. Or have you apologised to them as well?

Sincerely,

Fernando Guevara

At the time of this writing, I have not received other communications from either fund. 


*Fernando Guevara can be reached at Fernandoguevara2019@yahoo.com

Print Friendly, PDF & Email