UNFORGETTABLE WORDS FROM AN ISRAELI GENERAL’S SON

by
The General’s Son

The General’s Son

Miko Peled is a peace activist who dares to say in public what others still choose to deny. Born in Jerusalem in 1961 into a well known Zionist family, his grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson was a Zionist leader and signer of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. His Father, Matti Peled, was a young officer in the war of 1948 and a general in the war of 1967 when Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, Golan Heights and Sinai.

Miko’s unlikely opinions reflect his father’s legacy. General Peled was a war hero turned peacemaker.
Miko grew up in Jerusalem, a multi-ethnic city, but had to leave Israel before he made his first Palestinian friend, the result of his participation in a dialogue group in California. He was 39.

On September 4, 1997 the beloved Smadar, 13, the daughter of Miko’s sister Nurit and her husband Rami Elhanan was killed in a suicide attack.

Peled insists that Israel/Palestine is one state—the separation wall notwithstanding, massive investment in infrastructure, towns and highways that bisect and connect settlements on the West Bank, have destroyed the possibility for a viable Palestinian state. The result, Peled says is that Israelis and Palestinians are governed by the same government but live under different sets of laws.

At the heart of Peled’s conclusion lies the realization that Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace as equals in their shared homeland.

  • Anonymous

    “Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves
    … politically we are the aggressors and they 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.” -David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s ‘Fateful
    Triangle’, which appears in Simha Flapan’s Zionism and the Palestinians pp
    141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

     

    “We must expel Arabs
    and take their places.” -David Ben Gurion, 1937, ‘Ben Gurion and the Palestine Arabs’, Oxford University
    Press, 1985.

     

    “We must use terror, assassination,
    intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid
    the Galilee of its Arab population.” -David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From
    ‘Ben-Gurion, A Biography’, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York
    1978.

     

    “Jewish villages were built in the place of
    Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do
    not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books
    not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of
    Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of
    Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a
    single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” -David Ben Gurion, quoted in ‘The Jewish Paradox’, by
    Nahum Goldmann, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1978, p. 99.

     

    “There is no such thing as a Palestinian
    people … It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country.
    They didn’t exist.” -Golda Meir, statement
    to The Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969.

     

    “(The Palestinians) should be crushed like
    grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” -Yitzhak Shamir, in a speech as Israeli Prime Minister to
    Jewish settlers, New York Times April 1, 1988