...the tragedy befalling the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 was exclusively of their own making, and that there is therefore "a grave moral defect in the Nakba discourse."
I am surprised, however, by his assertion that "despite decades of research, to this day no document or broadcast has been found confirming ... [any order] by the Arab leadership for the population to leave." This claim couldn't be further from the truth.
...tens of thousands of Arabs were ordered or bullied into leaving the city of Haifa (on April 21-22 ) on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, the effective "government" of the Palestinian Arabs. Only days earlier, Tiberias' 6,000-strong Arab community had been similarly forced out by its own leaders, against local Jewish wishes...In Jaffa, Palestine's largest Arab city, the municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea; in Jerusalem, the AHC ordered the transfer of women and children, and local gang leaders pushed out residents of several neighborhoods, while in Beisan the women and children were ordered out as Transjordan's Arab Legion dug in.
...Some Arab residents [of Haifa] received written threats that, unless they left town, they would be branded as traitors deserving of death. Others were told they could expect no mercy from the Jews.
In the words of a British intelligence report: "After the Jews had gained control of the town, and in spite of a subsequent food shortage, many would not have responded to the call for a complete evacuation but for the rumors and propaganda spread by the National Committee members remaining in the town..."
...The deliberate depopulation of Arab villages too, and their transformation into military strongholds was a hallmark of the Arab campaign from the onset of hostilities. As early as December 1947, villagers in the Tul Karm sub-district were ordered out by their local leaders, and in mid-January Haganah intelligence briefs reported the evacuation of villages in the Hula Valley to accommodate local gangs and newly arrived ALA forces....In early May, as fighting intensified in the eastern Galilee, local Arabs were ordered to transfer all women and children from the Rosh Pina area, while in the Jerusalem sub-district, Transjordan's Arab Legion ordered the emptying of scores of villages.
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3 comments:
So Yisrael
what was your family name in 1948?
and where did your family live?
and who in your family spoke Hebrew ?
don't you get tired of repeating inanities?
but isn't it amazing that a people, dispersed from their country they had lost to the Roman Empire and who had not enough military strength to retrieve, held on to that vision for 1800 years, one that all the world and the Arabs included knew about and in doing so preserved their language, Hebrew, wrote in it, read in it and had it on their gravestones for all that time from Russia to Yemen and despite anti-Semitism and Islamic hostility even to the extent of the Mufti Haj Amin collaborating with Hitler, we were able to build up our country and declare independence in 1948.
And the Arabs there can't do squat.
How to get rid of allergies
Very enlightening and beneficial to someone whose been out of the circuit for a long time.
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