Transfer - The Legacy of Rehavam Ze’evi – Executed by the PFLP

General Ze'evi - A Rapist & Ethnic Cleanser is remembered as a Hero in Israel Today

Rehavam Ze'evi in Hebron 8th June 1967 with Moshe Dayan (left)

As Ha'aretz Ofer Aderet wrote last year in Ha'aretz on the occasion of the death of former General Rehavam Ze’evi’s widow:

‘In April of this year, a report by the Channel 2 investigative program “Uvda" ("Fact") revealed claims of sexual assaults and brutal intimidation tactics by Rehavam Ze’evi. Two women were quoted there as saying that Ze’evi had raped them. 

At least three additional women, including the veteran actress and broadcaster Rivka Michaeli, described being groped and almost raped by Ze’evi.

A number of individuals, including prominent journalists and army officers, came forward and recalled numerous incidents involving intimidation and "underworld" behavior by the murdered minister. These included putting a pistol to a reporter’s head, arranging for a bomb to be planted outside a journalist’s home and the shooting of two innocent Bedouin men, one of whom died.’

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine carried out the execution of Rehavam Ze'evi in retaliation for the murder of their own leader

Despite this Ze’evi, whose nickname was Ghandi, is honoured in Israel, his death is commemorated each year, roads and buildings are named after him.  Despite rape claims, state memorial for slain minister goes ahead.

It is welcome that with the furore in Israel over the claims that they are celebrating a rapist that Tel Aviv schools this year took a decision not to commemorate this foul man.  But it speaks volumes that the Education Ministry has even instructed schools to commemorate him.

Transfer of Palestinians, in Word and Deed

The legacy of Rehavam Ze'evi ('voluntary transfer') is commemorated all the time in the Jordan Valley, as a cabinet minister and a general demonstrated on Thursday

Amira Hass

  Nov 14, 2017 12:42 AM

Reserve General Rehavam Ze'evi

The legacy of Rehavam Ze’evi (“voluntary transfer”) is commemorated all the time in the Jordan Valley. Highway 90 there is named after him, using his irritating nickname, Gandhi. On every large sign with the words “Gandhi Highway,” the hardly secret Israeli desire to get rid of the Palestinians is linked to the appropriation of one of the international symbols of liberation from colonialism.

And now comes housing and construction minister Yoav Galant, and with the help of Kan, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, transfers the Palestinians with a thrust of his tongue. “In the Jordan Valley after 50 years there’s a total of 5,000 people,” he said on the morning news program Thursday. 

He didn’t say Jews, he didn’t say Israelis. He said “people.” And the experienced presenter didn’t interrupt and say: “Just a minute, there are at least 70,000 Palestinian living in the Jordan Valley, and they’ve been there since before 1967. In Ouja alone there are about 5,000 people. And a similar number in Jiftlik, and let’s not forget the city of Jericho, which has a population of about 35,000, and thousands of families of shepherds for whom the valley is home.”

On the previous evening, Kan’s television news publicized Galant’s plan to persuade more Jews to commit a crime and migrate to the Jordan Valley. “Today only about 6,000 people live in the Jordan Valley,” explained the reporter, and nobody corrected her. This is repeated on the Kan website, with a slight change: “Today only about 6,000 human beings live in the region,” according to the item that sums up the televised report.

Police seal off hotel where  Rehavam Ze'evi was killed

Galant and the TV reporters showed an extreme lack of awareness of the significance of the word that they chose or allowed to be used, in the above-mentioned context. Even if the reporters themselves are probably opposed to expulsion, they implemented a mental transfer of tens of thousands of Palestinians while internalizing the ultimate Zionist vision.

And here is a coincidence that did not happen by chance: About an hour after Galant’s radio interview, soldiers sent by their commander, Maj. Gen. Roni Numa, came to carry out more than a verbal removal: They placed an expulsion order for about 300 Palestinian shepherds and their families on the highway, in the area of the Al Maleh rural council. The injunction is not addressed to anyone and wasn’t delivered in person to anyone. The soldiers were following orders, and also demonstrated their profound disdain for the humanity and rights of the Palestinians, perhaps as they learned and absorbed from their commanders in the army and the Civil Administration, as well as from the school system.

Israel has not succeeded in persuading a larger number of Israelis to settle in the Jordan Valley despite the large amount of land and water it steals from the Palestinians and transfers to the settlers. But it has been able to make life extremely hard for the Palestinians there. At least 200,000, who fled and were expelled in 1967, are not allowed to return. 

Rehavam Ze'evi (right) with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1999.Government Press Office

And since then Israel has been preventing Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley from developing naturally, using a large number of mean methods that we have detailed dozens of times, and that cause young people to flee from their villages to Area A enclaves: These ploys include closed areas for the purpose of military training exercises, nature reserves, violent outposts, land confiscations, a prohibition against linking up to infrastructure, prohibitions against construction, blockades and checkpoints, preventing access to springs, drying up springs and on and on. 

One of the veteran shepherds told Haaretz: “In the 1970s the army fired at the flocks to get rid of us. We didn’t leave, and then they arrested us and released us in exchange for a ransom. We sent our children to graze the sheep in our place, so the soldiers confiscated sheep and made us buy them back them for the full price. We did. And in 1993 and 1994 they began the policy of demolishing our buildings.” In other words – at the beginning of the “Oslo era.”

Ze’evi’s legacy of voluntary transfer is in no need of commemoration. It is being implemented all the time.