Who Was Responsible for the "Refugee" Phenomenon in 1948?

Palestine Media Watch brings us a refugee from Mandate Palestine, Muhammad Khana, who complains that those that left were ill-served by lying Arab propaganda and media that made the Arabs leave in 1948 during Israel's War of Independence.

He was interviewed on the official Palestinian Authority TV's program "Source of the Story" on May 13, 2025 and declared:

"[In 1948, the Arab] propaganda and media had a central role in us leaving. The media and propaganda, the propaganda [claimed] that there is a horrifying [Jewish] force coming."

In a previous interview in 2022 with Khana, he was more explicit: The Arab media "lied and deceived" people, claiming that the Jews "killed and slaughtered," which made Arabs flee.

Having him on a second time obviously points to the PA considering him reliable.

Moreover,  a "Palestinian settlement affairs" expert Khalil Al-Tafakji recently confirmed Arab responsibility for the refugees leaving, saying they left because the Arab leaders told people to leave in 1948, promising them they would return shortly.

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That 1942 Lord Moyne Speech

Lord Moyne was serving as Britain's Minister for State for the Middle East from January 1944 in Cairo, Egypt and was assassinated by two member of the Lechi undergound on November 5 that year.

In a 2012 interview, Yitzchak Shamir, the main commander over the operation was adamant why he was killed:

because we fought against the British in this area, we took him for a target. This was the main reason for his assassination. Certainly, we had known about his hostile attitude towards Zionism, towards the idea of ingathering of the Jewish people here. He was against any Jewish aliyah, any Jewish immigration. He didn’t believe that there exists such a thing like a Jewish nation, or a Jewish people … and therefore, we decided to make this operation.

At the Lechi Veterans' web site, one can read this:

In the House of Lords in June 1942, he expressed his support for the White Paper and limitations on Jewish immigration. He found the Zionist vision narrow, advocating a solution of a federation of Arab lands.

When he came to serve as minister of state in Cairo, Lord Moyne launched extreme plans to strangle the Yishuv. He openly spoke of Palestine as an Arab land; Jews were a mixed race, and the Jews of Palestine could be relocated to another land in Africa.

Bernard Wasserstein, in a 1980 article, reprinted in Midstream ("New Light on the Moyne Murder," Midstream 26, March 1980: 30-38), sought to debunk the "racial" elements of that speech and wrote:

When Moyne states that Jews are racially mixed he is putting them into the same category as every other European people, including the British. To interpret his speech as signifying that he considered the Jews as inlerior alter the Nazi fashion is therefore nonsense. Indeed, by arguing that the most "primitive" of known races is racially "pure" whereas the most "advanced" are racially intermixed, he is precisely contradicting one of the basic premises of Nazi racialist ideology. From allthis it will be evident that there is no substance in the charge of racialist antiSemitism made against Moyne on the basis of his House of Lords speech.

What did Moyne declare on June 9, 1942 in the House of Lords? Here:

Since the Mahomedan invasion of 632 the Arabs have occupied Palestine for practically the same period. To these Arabs the Jews are not only alien in culture but also in blood. It is very often loosely said that Jews are Semites, but anthropologists tell us that, pure as they have kept their culture, the Jewish race has been much mixed with Gentiles since the beginning of the Diaspora. During the Babylonian captivity they acquired a strong Hittite admixture, and it is obvious that the Armenoid features which are still found among the Sephardim have been bred out of the Ashkenazim by an admixture of Slav blood.

The Zionist movement has its main spring among those Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe.

Be that as it is understood, or misunderstood, the speech is important in other ways.

The speech was delivered on the background of another speech, one delivered by Lord Wedgwood who was a strong supporter of Zionism and actually a supporter of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, who had adopted Wedgwood's Seventh Dominion idea in 1927. The Irgun at the time of its reprisal raids during the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 made effective use of a letter Wedgwood wrote on May 30, 1938 which advocated an armed Jewish civil revolt in Palestine. 

That May 1942 speech can be found in this file. And see here, on page 161.

It caused quite a ruckus. Wedgwood defended himself and Moyne participated in the debate.

It deserves to be quoted in its entirety.  The text is taken from Hansard.

Lord Wedgwood did not mean what he said. Anybody who heard the broadcast which Lord Wedgwood read out must attach the ordinary meaning to the language, and interpret it as a direct incitement to the Jews of Palestine to seize political domination and the land from the present inhabitants. I am always amazed at the attitude of Lord Wedgwood. He boasts of his patriotism and he parades his love of England, and I cannot see how he can reconcile himself to the role of abusing and libelling his own country and his own countrymen.

Lord Wedgwood's incitement to Zionists to seize the land of Palestine. In considering this treasonable appeal to the Jews to levy war on their own legal Government it is, of course, reasonable to consider whether the Jews have, as the noble Lord suggested, any well-founded complaint against the administration of the Palestine Mandate. The Zionist claim has raised two burning issues: firstly, the demand for large-scale immigration into an already overcrowded country, and, secondly, racial domination by these newcomers over the original inhabitants.

In 1922, when the present Prime Minister was Colonial Secretary, he issued a statement on British policy in Palestine which is very much to the point in regard to the Jewish claim to political domination and the swamping of the Arab population by immigration to-day. Mr. Churchill stated that His Majesty's Government had not at any time contemplated the subordination of the Arabic population, language or culture in Palestine. Attention was further drawn to the fact that the terms of the Balfour Declaration do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded in Palestine. It was also laid down that immigration cannot be so great in volume as to exceed whatever may be the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals. "It is essential," the statement went on, "to ensure that the immigration should not be a burden on the people of Palestine as a whole." It was stated that up to that time immigration had fulfilled these conditions, the number of immigrants since the British occupation having been about 25,000.

Your Lordships should bear in mind that figure of 25,000 immigrants, which Mr. Churchill considered reasonable for the four years after the end of the last war, and compare that with the demand, backed by the noble Lord, for bringing in 3,000,000 Jews immediately after this war to swamp the population of Palestine. The inhabitants of that small country—about the size of Wales, but much less fertile—are already threatened with conditions of grave congestion. At the present rate of increase, the Arab population will double within twenty-seven years. All the fertile soil is not only occupied but very closely cultivated. At the end of the last war, the Jewish community numbered 80,000. It now numbers about 450,000; and yet the Zionist Organization have indignantly refused the terms of the White Paper, under which further immigration should be allowed up to another 75,000 in five years. They have also rejected the proposal 1o co-operate in a Joint Government by taking over responsibility for certain departments in proportion to the respective populations, as they claim not merely equal citizenship but political ascendency.

There is certainly no basis for these demands under the Mandate. There is no question of this country having broken faith. The Mandate obliges the Mandatory to ensure that the rights and position of other sections of the population are not prejudiced. Over and over again Commissions and White Papers have expressed the opinion that neither the Mandate nor the Balfour Declaration intended Palestine to be converted into a Jewish State against the will of the Arab population. The tragedy of the Palestinian question is, as was said by the Royal Commission, that it is a conflict between two rights. When Jerusalem was destroyed and its site ploughed up in the year 135 A.D., the Jews had occupied the country for about 1,300 years. Since the Mahomedan invasion of 632 the Arabs have occupied Palestine for practically the same period. To these Arabs the Jews are not only alien in culture but also in blood. It is very often loosely said that Jews are Semites, but anthropologists tell us that, pure as they have kept their culture, the Jewish race has been much mixed with Gentiles since the beginning of the Diaspora. During the Babylonian captivity they acquired a strong Hittite admixture, and it is obvious that the Armenoid features which are still found among the Sephardim have been bred out of the Ashkenazim by an admixture of Slav blood.

The Zionist movement has its main spring among those Jews of Poland and Eastern Europe. Their leaders demand that an already overcrowded Palestine should be trebled in its population by the admixture of another three million Jews immediately after the war. Now it is not a matter of putting a quart into a pint pot, it is a matter of putting exactly three pints into a pint pot. Successive inquiries have shown that immigration on this scale would be a disastrous mistake, and is indeed an impracticable dream. A far smaller measure of immigration led to the Palestine disturbances which lasted from 1936 to 1939, and showed that the Arabs, who have lived and buried their dead for fifty generations in Palestine, will not willingly surrender their land and self-government to the Jews. We may deplore it, but there is the stark naked fact, and you cannot get away from it by sentimental appeals to the hardship on the Jews. This country is responsible for law and order in Palestine, and we cannot possibly wash our hands of the country and let Jews and Arabs wage a civil war, as suggested by Lord Wedgwood.

But Lord Wedgwood's effort has a far greater power of mischief in being addressed to America. It must surely have a deplorable effect upon our Allies to be told by an ex-Cabinet Minister that the Palestine Administration do not like Jews, and that there are enough Anti-Semites in Great Britain to back up the Hitler policy and spirit. This suggestion is a complete reversal of the truth. If a comparison is to be made with the Nazis it is surely those who wish to force an imported régime upon the Arab population who are guilty of the spirit of aggression and domination. Lord Wedgwood's proposal that Arabs should be subjugated by force to a Jewish régime is inconsistent with the Atlantic Charter, and that ought to be told to America. The second principle of that Charter lays down that the United States and ourselves desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned; and the third principle lays down that they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of Government under which they will live.

Surely it is time for the Zionists to abandon this appeal to force, and to seek a settlement with the Arabs by consent. The Zionist leaders expect about 7,000,000 Jews to be surviving in Eastern Europe at the end of the war, and they reject the policy of re-establishing Jewish communities under civilized conditions in Europe. They apparently expect the loss of half this number if the other half can get control of Palestine. The war will end with the heavy problem of trying to resettle these most pitiable victims of Nazi abominations. Millions of people cannot be left indefinitely the objects of charity in refugee camps. A merciful settlement must be a quick settlement. We ought, therefore, to look at once in all directions to find means to re-establish these martyrs to Nazi oppression in a new life. The Zionists look only to Palestine. On May 25, at the annual dinner of the Anglo-American Palestine Committee, Dr. Weizmann again declared that Palestine alone could absorb and provide for the homeless and Stateless Jews uprooted by the war. It is to canalize all the sympathy of the world for the martyrdom of the Jews that the Zionists reject all schemes to re-settle these victims elsewhere—in Germany, or Poland, or in sparsely populated regions such as Madagascar.

But even in their wish to occupy the pre-Christian home of the Jewish race, the Zionists are far too narrow in their outlook. Palestine itself is but a small fraction of the ancient land of Syria. I do not believe that the problem of overcrowding applies to Syria and the Lebanon and Transjordan as it does to Palestine. It would be physically possible for those States, if they were willing, to absorb large numbers of Jews to mutual advantage, and without any threat to their own political independence. If the fear of Jewish domination could be removed they might indeed be glad to welcome the Jewish immigrants, with their well-known industry and intelligence and with their capital. So far as I know, no effort has been made to explore these possibilities, and we ought surely, without waiting for the peace, to see how far the regions to the north of Palestine can offer asylum for the Jewish immigration, within the old limits of historic Syria. I hope the Government will give serious consideration to the possibility of negotiations with the neighbouring States of the Levant to take part in re-settling the Jews. It is obvious that the fear of political domination by immigrant Jews will be decreased if they can be spread over a wider area and shared among different Administrations. A Federation of the Northern Arab States might well assist such a solution, but federation may be long in coming, and we ought at once to discuss with the Governments concerned to what extent and under what conditions they could admit Jewish immigration without swamping their own nationalities and independence.

I trust that the revelations in Lord Wedgwood's broadcast will have finished once and for all with the idea of arming the Jews in such a way as would encourage the attempt to seize the land of Palestine. This is quite a different matter from legitimate arming in their own defence, and I think it is hardly necessary for the Government to assure the Arabs that they would not be a party to such an assault upon their rights as has been suggested. But I hope there will be no mistake in America that Lord Wedgwood is speaking only for himself in the suggestion that we ought to give up the Palestine Mandate to the United States, in the hope and expectation that she would repudiate our binding obligations. It seems to me the broadcast of Lord Wedgwood is most of all deplorable because the salvation of civilization depends primarily upon a good understanding between us and the United States. All through his broadcast runs the suggestion that we are not only unjust but feeble and incompetent. I can imagine no greater disservice than to have planted such suspicions in the minds of millions of American listeners. How are we to plan the peace if British spokesmen are to sow distrust and contempt in the minds of our Allies?

Judge for yourselves how pro-Zionism was Moyne.

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See also my previous post regarding this here.

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Emigration to Mandate Palestine from the Hauran

A report on the present conditions in the Hauran was published in the Journal of The Royal Central Asian Society in 1936.

One of the topics was the emigration of the population in the region, the Southern Golan, into Mandate Palestine.

An excerpt:

...during the spring and summer of 1934 some twenty-five to thirty thousand people left Hauran, and that 96 per cent, of them emigrated to Palestine. Mass emigration started in April from these drought-stricken regions when it became clear that all hope of a harvest had to be abandoned, and soon spread to other districts. In August-September, when the available food supply had been almost exhausted, emigration reached its height. The largest number of emigrants came from the Der'a and Bosra-Eskisham districts, where some villages were almost completely deserted.

Approximately 10 per cent of the emigrants turned to the Syrian cities, Damascus and Beirut. The present grave economic crisis in Syria and the labour glut, due to the constant influx of fellaheen from the rural districts to the towns, have deterred the Haurani from wandering to the interior of the country. On the other hand, reports of conditions in Palestine, the plentiful employment, the higher wages, and the general prosperity, proved irresistibly attractive, and the first immigrants were soon followed by those who had previously tried their luck in the various cities of Syria. Even in normal times there was a continual stream of emigration from Hauran, and in periods of drought, such as has occurred during the last two years, the exodus assumed mass proportions. 

Native Hauranis were familiar figures in the large towns of Syria and of Palestine in normal times as well, although their numbers never reached the present total. The existing situation must not, therefore, be regarded only as a result of the drought. The underlying causes go much deeper, and the problem of emigration from Hauran is neither new nor merely temporary.

At the beginning of October a number of Hauranis began to return from Palestine to their homes. Most went voluntarily, but there were also deportees. At the end of October it was estimated that about 30 per cent, had returned to Hauran.  Under pressure of Jewish public opinion and the growing opposition of the Arabs themselves to Hauran immigration, which had begun to affect the local wage level adversely, the Government of Palestine began to make sporadic arrests of Hauranis, and some were deported. 

But the Hauranis themselves told the writer that only a small number of the immigrants were sent out of the country, and that the majority of the deportees returned either immediately or a little later.  

There were 14 more years left too the existence of the Mandate regime. What were the demographics of Arabs from outside Mandate Palestine who came to the country and stayed?  And how many fled during 1947-1948 and became "refugees"?

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Peter Beinart Goes 'Supreme'

Peter Beinart uploaded a short clip on Instagram. Its message:

Of course, that is a sleight-of-words exercise.

He has substituted "supremacy" for "political sovereignty". He then suggests that a Jewish state is inherently wrong in that it asserts its sovereignty over non-Jews.

But what is truly invidious is that he knows well that he is employing a term that resonates as racist, such as "white supremacist".

Aside from being wrong, what he is encouraging is violence directed at Israelis and, as we have seen since October 2023, the pro-Palestine forces do not make any distinction between Israeli and Jews and go about physically assaulting Jews, damaging Jewish property and institutions and seeking to commit psychological injury to Jews for being Jews. In their logic, all Jews must be 'Zionists'.

Of course, that destroys Beinart's thesis which is that Jews should not be permitted to run a political state. But to explain to him that, at least in the modern era, a main impetetus for Zionism was antisemitism - in addition to the 2000-year old vision of a return to Zion - and that today's antisemitism simply justifies the right of Jews to maintain a state, would be beyond his intellectual grasp.

And why?

Because Beinart's prejudices and political orientation override any rational thinking in which he may engage.

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Jewish "settlers" in 1932, in Russia

Mr. Medad, are Jews in their historic national homeland termed "settlers"?

That's the language everyone now uses. In the London Times of August 20, 1932, however, Jews from Mandate Palestine going to Birobijan, Russia were also "settlers" and "colonists". Perhaps the word did not possess today's perjorative level.

Go figure it out.

On the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of Birobijan, see here. And here. On Menachem Elkind,

Sketch of Elkind by Mendel Gorshman 1933

see this.

P.S. A hint as to Elkind's problem with the Gudud Ha'Avodah:

"After having familiarised itself with the situation in Gdud Avoda, the Eastern Secretariat states a disillusionment with the national chauvinistic frenzy that has arisen in the milieu of Jewish workers in Palestine and also in Gdud, which has overcome its 'theory' of constructive socialism and is taking the path of consistent class struggle."

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Fawzi al-Qawuqji and Southern Syria

Fawzi al-Qawuqji (or spelled Fauzi el-Kaukji) played a role in two Arab anti-Zionist military campaigns.

He was Lebanese-born, Tripoli, and fought for Faisal in Syria, against the French, then in the French-Syrian Army, for Saudi Arabia and even was a colonel in the Nazi Wehrmacht during World War II, and served as the Arab Liberation Army (ALA) field commander during the 1948 Palestine War.

In 1912, he graduated from the military academy in Istanbul. During World War I, he served as a captain in the 12th Ottoman corps garrison in Mosul and fought in several battles alongside General Otto von Kreiss's Prussian unit. He was at Beersheva and Nebi Samuel.

In 1936, he crossed over into the Palestine Mandate territory to fight the British and the Jews.

His title?

Supreme Commander of...South-Syrian Palestine.

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An Observation on Israelis and Archaeology

Ariel David of Haaretz reported on a new find, one that appears here and deals with An Israelite Residency at Mahanaim in Transjordan?

It deals with  "the site of Tall adh-Dhahab al-Gharbi in the valley of the az-Zarqa River, the biblical Jabbok, in Jordan. We discuss a group of incised ashlar blocks found there, probably dating to the first half of the 8th century BCE. We suggest that the blocks originated from an official building, a residency or a gate complex, not yet excavated, and propose thematic similarities with visual imagery from Kuntillet ʿAjrud. We then show that this site can be securely identified with biblical Mahanaim and point to several biblical verses that may hint at the existence of a North Israelite residency there."

Credit: Pola et. al./Ruhama Bonfil / The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

And he needed to add two, let's call them 'hesitations'.

The first:

To be clear, no one is proclaiming that evidence has been found confirming the historicity of this or other biblical narratives linked to this region. Rather, the evidence of a strong administrative Israelite presence in Transjordan helps us understand why key foundational biblical stories were set in this area, say the study's authors, Prof. Israel Finkelstein of Haifa University and Prof. Tallay Ornan of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

And the second:

A word of caution must be sounded again: identifying the names of biblical places like Mahanaim or Penuel doesn't necessarily say anything about the historicity of biblical stories that take place there. It simply means that – based on the geography, the modern names of the sites, the biblical descriptions and the archaeological or historical evidence – scholars think that these are the real locations that the authors and readers of the Bible would have had in mind as a setting for their stories.

I am almost tempted to write "God forbid that anything that could seemingly confirm the Biblical narrative would be accepted as as close to the scientific truth as possible.

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