Over time, I have gotten to know many Palestinians. Like Jewish people I’ve known, they tend to be bright, inquisitive, and informed. Palestinians often prove generous beyond their capacity to be so. The incredibly sad, hard fact is, were it not for the emerging dominance of aggressive Zionists among Jewish leaders before World War II, their $35 million pre-war transfer agreement with the Nazis to scuttle global boycott of German goods, and their horrific aggression when they invaded Palestine after the war, they precluded any peaceful outcome — for the foreseeable future.

Referencing the newly coined term antisemitism, Zionism’s visionary founder, Theodor Herzl, said that hatred of Jews was so deeply rooted in Europe that only creation of a Jewish state could provide escape. He created the World Zionist Organization and promoted a congress in 1897. From that gathering came the statement, “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by law, (and) promotion by appropriate means of the settlement in Palestine of Jewish farmers, artisans, and manufacturers.”

Arabs may not have accommodated such a view, but these early Zionists envisioned shared governance with a Palestinian Arab population. They were not aggressive.

It was Revisionist Zionists, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky who altered Zionism, advocating for a Greater Israel. And it was Prime Minister Menachem Begin, 1977-1984, who first promoted Israeli ambition to claim this biblically promised land. “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham saying ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates’.” (Genesis 18, Holy Bible.)

Began had been commander of Irgun. He directed the April 9, 1948 attack on the village of Deir Hassan where 107 Palestinian men, women, and children were killed. There was reported looting, mutilation, and rape. Began could be termed “creator of the Nakba,” the historic Zionist assault on Arab Palestinians. Israel’s Deir Hassan massacre files remain secret.

Began created the right wing Likud Party which has, ever since, advanced Greater Israel. To do so he promoted Israeli West Bank settlement. Netanyahu continues that project now.

Had Jews continued to come peacefully, adding numbers to the 630,000 in Palestine during the 1930s, quietly settling among the Palestinians as kibbutzim farmers, there could have been a peaceful resolution. Instead Zionists came armed, intending to sweep aside the Arab Palestinian occupants of the land. carrying out assaults that killed hundreds and drove 730,000 from their farms and homes.

Under humane leadership, Jewish survivors of historic division and torment, then the Holocaust, now possessing global sympathy and seeking security, might have been pleased to settle amongst peace-loving Palestinian neighbors. To be sure, there would have been tension and resistance. Arabs launched a rebellion in 1936, against both British rule and Jewish immigration.

July 22, 1946, Began’s Irgun carried out the most devastating terror attack of that era, the bombing of British headquarters at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel.

Ninety-one people were killed. November 29, 1947, the newly created United Nations adopted a plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

In return for Arab military support against the Ottomans in the First World War, the British had promised them statehood. Britain reneged on that promise. Truman’s support for UN mapping ignored Roosevelt’s promise, based on the Atlantic Charter, that he would secure Arab territorial interests. Roosevelt addressed Arabs, “Help us as we have come to help you, and rich will be the reward unto us all who love justice, righteousness, and freedom.”

The British might have brokered harmony, but they departed their mandate when both Zionists and Arabs resisted their presence. A mere glance at the map warns UN partition will be unworkable. So there is blame to go around for the disaster that soon followed.

The Israeli grant of territory was contiguous and included the fertile lands along the Mediterranean coast. Haifa in the north became a place of contention. I later visited a mosque and neighborhood destroyed by the Irgun.

At the time of 1947 partition, the Palestinian Arab population was double that of Jews. Land provided to them was less, not contiguous, and of poor quality for farming. They refused to accept the partition and, supported by the Arab League, prepared to fight again the plan.

The Palestinian National Council declared an independent Palestinian state on October 1, 1948 in all of the Palestine region with Jerusalem as its capital. This government was recognized by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, but not by any non-Arab country.

Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an investigative journalist and historian, currently editing his newest work, “Breaking the Silence: Revisioning the American Narrative.”