A hard-hitting two-hour debate between israel Ambassador Yaacov Herzog and historian Arnold J. Toynbee on the historian’s pro-Arab charges against Israel wound up yesterday with an invitation from the envoy to Dr, Toynbee to visit Israel and see things for himself.
The debate, held in response to a challenge to the historian from the envoy, took place in the same Hillel House at McGill University where Prof, Toynbee made his first statements last week on the issue. The Hillel House was packed with 350 students and 35 newspapermen. Television coverage was barred and the general public was excluded from admission.
The debate dealt with two principal assertions made by Dr. Toynbee, both at the first lecture at the Hillel House and at prior lectures and in his six-volume study of history. These were a comparison of Israeli treatment of the Arabs in 1947 with the Nazi onslaught against European Jewry and a contention that there was a “statute of limitations” on Jewish claims to Israel.
Ambassador Herzog pointed out that the Germans “committed a crime which the human imagination finds difficulty in embracing. It was cold-blooded planning and cold-blooded execution. ” The Arabs, on the other hand, the envoy said, declared in 1947 they would resist the implementation of the United Nations decision on Palestine. He quoted former UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie as declaring that the Arabs asserted their intention to resist by force and to make “a physical assault on the Jews.”
The Israel envoy also quoted the Arab leaders as declaring “a war of extermination and massacre” against the Jews. “Through the war, a large number of people, Jewish and Arab, in the Middle East, were uprooted, ” he said.”The problem was the result of the war proclaimed by the Arabs. “He quoted an Arab refugee who said “they told us to get out so that we could get in.”
“Two hundred thousand Arabs are today enjoying equality in Israel and I, as the Ambassador of Israel, represent those Arabs just as I represent the Jews, ” Mr. Herzog said. “Israel absorbed the Jewish refugees who were displaced from the Arab countries by this war but the Arab refugees are permitted to lead a parasitic existence in the camps.”
TOYNBEE CHARGES U.S.JEWS WITH APPROVING ATROCITIES
Professor Toynbee then replied that in the debate, he was dealing with the murder of civilians behind the lines. “Whether it is murder by the British in Port Said, or by the Germans in Poland, it is murder and there is no such thing as more than 100 percent murder. AH of these points apply to the acts of the Stern gang and the Irgun, ” a reference to two pre-state terrorist groups.
“I do not know how far the Haganah, ” (the pre-state Jewish underground army) was implicated but I have heard it said and I have never heard it denied that after Deir Yassin, Jewish trucks went around with loudspeakers in Arab settlements and called out ‘if you don’t want this, get out, ” Prof.Toynbee stated.
The historian charged that “the Arab refugees left Palestine no more of their own free will than the German Jews left Germany before 1939, or the French refugees who fled south in 1940.The refugees do not thereby forfeit their rights or their properties. ” He added that more than half of the private property and land in Israel “belonged to the Arabs who fled and who are now living outside of their homes but often in sight of their homes.”
The Ambassador replied to this that the Deir Yassin incident “came after tremendous provocation. It was condemned by the Jewish Agency and a message of regret was sent to King Abdullah of Jordan. The Arabs committed many atrocities but there was never a word of regret. ” The envoy added that the historian had declared in his books that all wars were accompanied by atrocities against civilians and he asked: “Why pick on the Jews?”
Speaking again, Prof, Toynbee said that all Jews in the world “have associated themselves with the atrocities which took place in Israel and with the holding of the Arab property, particularly the Jews of Canada and the United States. This is robbery. ” Dr. Toynbee added that such behavior was a part of human nature and that the “Jewish people took part in this kind of action, “
In another phase of the debate, the Ambassador replied to the historian’s argument that he questioned the claim of the Jews to Palestine on grounds of a “statute of limitations.” The envoy said that “in point of fact, the Jewish people lived in and created in Palestine continuously. Palestine was never a separate Arab entity.”
He added that the Jews were the only nation in history to have kept their identity despite their dispersal. He noted that such British statesmen as Lord Balfour, David Lloyd George and Sir Winston Churchill had supported Jewish claims to statehood.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
