Libertarians On Kissinger?

[E_R_Olovetto]

@Smiling Dave

@E. R. Olovetto

care to educate us?

You could start by educating yourself. The very snippets you quote show plainly he is lying.

First of all, you made the claim that Rothbard concocted this fantasy then gave a “dog ate my homework” story. Download Lazarus add-on to firefox so you can recover text, and you can delete your own double post by choosing “more”^>. I didn’t read the Rothbard essay except to find 1948 which you first referenced and do some quick fact checking. I don’t know much about this part of history or how it relates to Kissinger so much even, so mods, please feel free to split this off into another thread. I also haven’t made up my mind and you certainly haven’t proven your case that Rothbard intentionally “lied”.

@Smiling Dave

Rothbard on Dir Yassin:

@E. R. Olovetto

massacred a hundred women and children

Wiki on Dir Yassin:

@E. R. Olovetto

Around 107 villagers, including women and children, were killed. Some were shot, while others died when hand grenades were thrown into their homes

Note the difference in the Rothbard and the wiki version.

He lies about the numbers. According to Rothbard a hundred women and children were killed. But wiki has it that the hundred “included” women and children. How many women and children? Who knows? One?

That citation (#3) is from 1987. When is Rothbard’s essay from [RAL? 3/3]? Is it possible that he didn’t have the same information we do now?

@Smiling Dave

You can further educate yourself if you read the rest of the wiki. Frinstance:

Even the number 100 is wrong. From the same wiki:

The Jewish Agency sent two doctors, Dr. Z. Avigdori, the chairman of the Jerusalem branch of the Palestine Physicians Association, and his deputy, Dr. A. Druyan, to examine the corpses, and to report any mutilations or other atrocities. Lapidot writes that the doctors asked to be allowed to move around the village freely. They walked from house to house, counting and examining corpses. Their report said they found 46 corpses. The cause of death had been injuries from bullets or bombs, and that, “all the bodies were dressed in their own clothes, limbs were whole and we saw no signs of mutilation.”

So it’s not a hundred, it’s 46.

Two factual errors so far.

OK, this is from the criticism section… [underlines mine]

Criticism of Meir Pa’il account

Israeli military historian Uri Milstein writes that Pa’il’s report is not an eyewitness account, because Pa’il was not in Deir Yassin on April 9. Milstein argues that there was no organized massacre, though he acknowledges that whole families were gunned down during the fighting. He regards the Haganah intelligence reports to have been doctored, either by the authors or later by their superiors, to exaggerate the atrocities and blacken the names of the Irgun and Lehi within the context of in-fighting within the Jewish community.^[58] He argues that the killings were typical of war and that the Haganah did similar things on many occasions, even if not on such a scale. He writes that the idea of a massacre was a myth created by the Israeli Left to prevent unification of the Haganah and the Irgun, and in particular to prevent the Irgun’s commander, Menahem Begin, from taking office in Israel’s first national unity government under David Ben Gurion.^[59]

Morris writes that part of Pa’il’s account, where he reports that he saw five Arab men paraded, then later saw their bodies in the quarry, is supported by a report from Drs. Avigdori and Druyan, sent by the Jewish Agency to examine the scene (see below), who found five male bodies in a house by the village quarry.^[60]

Pa’il told Yoni Mendel in 2007 that he was sent to Deir Yassin by the Haganah to assess the fighting capabilities of the Irgun and Lehi. “What I discovered there,” he said, “is that they didn’t know a thing about field war. Worse, I saw that they knew how to massacre and kill … They are angry with me that I said these things. Let them first be angry at themselves.”^[61]

All citations from 1999/2007 after Rothbard is dead. The part you quoted of Jewish doctor’s accounts is at odds with #3 in the headline of 107 killed and it isn’t clear what year it is from. Maybe the doctors lied or got there after the other 73 who were women/children raped, mutilated, etc. Maybe the Israeli army never, ever did such things. They must hold themselves to higher standards of humane war.

@Smiling Dave

Rothbard also gleefully accepts fairy tales from sources known to be liars, ignoring the reliable sources. From the same wiki:

The Jordanian newspaper Al Urdun published a survivor’s account in 1955, in which he said that the Palestinians had deliberately exaggerated horror stories about atrocities in Deir Yassin to encourage others to fight

A Jordanian newspaper. A survivor’s account. In 1955. Just the people and place to give the most slanted anti Israel opinion, and yet the Rothbard doesn’t bother with that unimpeachable primary source.

Here you are again very selectively quoting from the section on propaganda. This newspaper account is based on a 2007 cite.

The Jordanian newspaper Al Urdun published a survivor’s account in 1955, in which he said that the Palestinians had deliberately exaggerated horror stories about atrocities in Deir Yassin to encourage others to fight, but unwittingly had caused them to flee instead. Everyone had reason to spread the atrocity narrative. The Irgun and Lehi wanted to frighten Arabs into fleeing; the Arabs wanted to provoke an international response;^[70] the Haganah wanted to tarnish the Irgun and Lehi; and the Arabs and the British wanted to malign the Jews.^[71] In addition, Milstein writes that the left-wing Mapai party and David Ben-Gurion, who became Israel’s first prime minister on May 14, deliberately exploited Deir Yassin to stop a power-sharing agreement with the right-wing Revisionists—who were associated with Irgun and Lehi—a proposal that was being debated at that time in Tel Aviv.^[72]

Mordechai Ra’anan, the Irgun commander in Jerusalem, told reporters on April 10 that, “so far, 254 Arab bodies have been counted.”^[73] He later said: “I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published, and so that Arabs would panic.”^[74] That figure was published by The New York Times on April 13, and it stuck until 1987, when Sharif Kan’ana of Bir Zeit University interviewed survivors and concluded that 107 had died, with 12 wounded. Only 11 of the 100 armed villagers were among the dead.^[46]

Hazam Nusseibeh, the news editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service at the time, gave an interview to the BBC in 1998. He spoke about a discussion he had with Hussayn Khalidi, the deputy chairman of the Higher Arab Executive in Jerusalem, shortly after the killings: “I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story. He said, ‘We must make the most of this.’ So he wrote a press release, stating that at Deir Yassin, children were murdered, pregnant women were raped, all sorts of atrocities.”^[75] Gelber writes that Khalidi told journalists on April 11 that the village’s dead included 25 pregnant women, 52 mothers of babies, and 60 girls.^[70][2006]

The stories of rape angered the villagers, who complained to the Arab emergency committee that their wives and daughters were being exploited in the service of propaganda.^[76] Abu Mahmud, who lived in Deir Yassin in 1948, was one of those who complained. He told the BBC: “We said, ‘There was no rape.’ He [Hussayn Khalidi] said, ‘We have to say this so the Arab armies will come to liberate Palestine from the Jews’.”^[75][1998]

“This was our biggest mistake,” said Nusseibeh. “We did not realize how our people would react. As soon as they heard that women had been raped at Deir Yassin, Palestinians fled in terror. They ran away from all our villages.”^[75][77] He told Larry Collins in 1968: “We committed a fatal error, and set the stage for the refugee problem.”^[78] Mohammed Radwan, one of the villagers who fought the attackers, said: “There were no rapes. It’s all lies. There were no pregnant women who were slit open. It was propaganda that … Arabs put out so Arab armies would invade,” he said. “They ended up expelling people from all of Palestine on the rumor of Deir Yassin.”^[69]

At best, all you have proven is that Rothbard was factually wrong based on information available now about this one set of atrocities (or fuzzy, friendly, war killings, depending what side you are on). Maybe he didn’t do enough research on this one specific little incident that I happened to pick out quite randomly and just take the headline as “close” (100~107).

Can you clarify, are you Jewish and pro-state-Israel? What is the exact proof that Rothbard had certain information readily available, like not from this one incident that both sides used as propaganda? What are you saying Rothbard’s intention of lying is? His states clearly that:

@Rothbard

The libertarian, in particular, knows that States, without exception, aggress against their citizens, and knows also that in all wars each State aggresses against innocent civilians “belonging” to the other State.

I will take issue with part of his conclusion:

Israel, therefore, faces a long-run dilemma which she must someday meet. Either to continue on her present course, and, after years of mutual hostility and conflict beoverthrown by Arab people’s guerrilla war. Or–to change direction dras-tically, to cut herself loose completely from Western impe-rial ties, and become simply Jewish citizens of the Middle East. If she did that, then peace and harmony and justice would at last reign in that tortured region. There is ample
precedent for this peaceful coexistence. For in the cen-turies before 19th and 20th century Western imperialism, Jew and Arab had always lived well and peacefully together in the Middle East. There is no inherent enmity or conflict between Arab and Jew. In the great centuries of Arab civilization in North Africa and Spain, Jews took a happy and prominent part–in contrast to their ongoing persecu-tion by the fanatics of the Christian West. Shorn of Western influence and Western imperialism, that harmony can reign once more.

I have seen a mosque in a Jewish quarter in Spain where the Star of David was hidden within the geometric Arab designs. There has always been animosity and persecution between differing religious ideologies. The fact is that modern states exacerbate this problem, rather than helping alleviate it as is their claimed intent.