History lesson: Someone asked me to retweet a meme on twitter quoting one of the early proponents of a Jewish-only Israeli state, David Ben-Gurion. The first line of the quote from Ben-Gurion is We will expel the Arabs and take their place.. I looked into the phrase to be certain it is true. It comes from a piece written by Ilan Pappé archived by the non-profit Palestine Studies though his quote attributed to Ben-Gurion is more tame: “The Arabs must go”. I stumbled into a realm of linguistic games as I learned the quote had been disputed. In the end I found the response by Palestine Studies. Not only is the quote an accurate version of translated text, the actually views of Ben-Gurions where the text originated are far more horrific than Pappés disputed citation. Here is a small piece of linguistic history and the firm response asserting the quote is accurate the Journal of Palestine Studies: palestine-studies.org/files/correct_JPSresponds.pdf Palestine Studies: Ben-Gurion’s 5 October 1937 letter thoroughly vindicates Ilan Pappé’s reading; indeed, the Pappé quotes to which CAMERA objects seem almost mild when compared to the actual words Ben-Gurion penned to his son. The more literal translation of the Ben-Gurion direct quote (“We must expel Arabs and take their place”) is actually stronger than Pappé’s freer rendering (“The Arabs must go”), although the meaning is basically the same. As for Pappé’s paraphrase, it is as accurate and comprehensive as any so succinct a sentence could possibly be. In more than forty years of publication, JPS has always prided itself on its high editorial standards. We very much regret the occasions when we inadvertently fall short, but we would be more distressed had the essential accuracy of an important article on so important a topic been found wanting. Finally, we are grateful to CAMERA for giving us the opportunity to make available for the first time the full English translation of a crucial document. We hope that in so doing we can contribute, to a bet- ter understanding in the English-speaking world of David Ben-Gurion’s thinking on transfer and the Arabs.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 22:39:38 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015