Sunday, March 12, 2017

Did He Flee or Remove Himself?

"The best known milestone in the removal of the Arab population was the Deir Yassin massacre of April 9, 1948, conducted by Irgun and Lehi forces, designed to scare Palestinians and cause them to flee their homes, towns and villages."

That excerpt is from an op-ed published in Haaretz by the son of famous Betar, Brit HaBiryonim, Irgun and Lechi veterans Moshe and Tova Svorai.

Yair (what else?) Svorai describes himself as "a former Israeli, has lived in the United States for 45 years."  

His misguided and misrepresented and baseless attack is launched on what he perceives as a campaign of renewed "settlement expansion and the process of people replacement".

However, Svorai's claim that Deir Yassin (and there was no massacre) was meant as a "removal of the Arab population...designed to...cause them to flee their homes, towns and villages" is in error.

If there had not been attacks on Jewish neighborhoods the weeks before the attack, if the Arabs of Deir Yassin had not tried in 1914 to kill the Jews of Givat Shaul, and then again in 1920 and again in 1929 and again during 1936-39 - all instances documented - they probably would not have been attacked, unlike Abu Ghosh which was left alone.  

Shame, really.

He could have been in Israel these past 45 years instead of removing himself - or did he flee? - to the Diaspora.  Although he seems to have done well as a a real estate professional.



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