Yes, They Were Ordered To Flee Their Own Homes

From "Reclaiming a historical truth" by Efraim Karsh published in Haaretz, June 10, 2011

...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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The Extermination Plan

Yes, senior officials really did expect the upcoming 1948 war to be one wherein the Jews would be exterminated and Tom Segev alerts us, in his typical anti-Israel fashion:

The blind misleading the blind

The oft-used (mis)quote from prior to Israel's Declaration of Independence that has been used as proof that the Arabs were scheming to annihilate Israel.

Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam was an Egyptian diplomat and statesman...and in 1945 was elected the first secretary general of the Arab League...Prior to Israel's declaration of independence, Azzam supplied the Zionists with a sound bite that serves Israeli propaganda to this very day:

"The establishment of a Jewish state would lead to a war of extermination and momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusaders."

...Brendan McKay is a professor of computer science at the Australian National University in Canberra. He is interested in the Middle East, and compiles Wikipedia entries. McKay recently decided to delve into what Azzam really said, to whom, and when...A friend of McKay's who was in Cairo went to the offices of the newspaper, where he was shown the original newspaper, somewhat yellowed and creased, from October 11, 1947. An interview with Azzam appears on the ninth page, as does the quote, although with the addition of several words that have subsequently been omitted from the citation.

"Personally, I hope the Jews do not force us into this war, because it would be a war of extermination and momentous massacre ..."

[The original Arabic:

notice the boot-crushing caricature.]

...McKay uploaded his findings to Wikipedia, and they found their way into an article published by David Barnett and Efraim Karsh in the current issue of the Middle East Quarterly. The two researchers described Azzam's statement as a genocidal threat. Within days, their article was being quoted on a website that features a section entitled "Ask Danny." "Danny" is currently Israel's deputy foreign minister Daniel Ayalon.

...A few weeks before the interview with Akhbar el-Yom, Azzam met with two representatives of the Zionist lobby in London, Abba Eban, who would become foreign minister, and David Horowitz, who would become the governor of the Bank of Israel.  The meeting took place at the Savoy Hotel...

...Horowitz quoted Azzam's gloomy assessment of the situation: "We shall try to defeat you. I am not sure we'll succeed, but we'll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But it's too late to talk of peaceful solutions."

[Here's from a Jewish Agency Memorandum dated February 2, 1948:

]

Ben-Gurion, who was informed of the meeting, summed up Azzam's words thus, in a meeting with members of his party: "As we fought against the Crusaders, we will fight against you, and we will erase you from the earth." Since he considered Azzam to be an honest person, Ben-Gurion believed him. He, too, assessed that war was inevitable.

...There is something pathetic about this hunt for historical quotes drawn from newspapers. Azzam used to talk a lot. On May 21, 1948, the Palestine Post offered this statement by him: "Whatever the outcome, the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like."

A la Segev, he really didn't mean it.

Or he didn't know what he was saying.

Or he said one thing one day and another on another day.

Or he was disguising his real intentions very cleverly.

I guess he was just being an...Arab?

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AP Is Not Only Biased But Wrong

So, this is AP history:

Palestinians were marking the "nakba," or "catastrophe" — the term they use to describe their defeat and displacement in the war that followed Israel's founding on May 15, 1948.

So, no war started on December 1, 1947?

Well, since Wikipedia is quite available to journalists, what does it say there?

This:-

Soon thereafter [the Partition recommendation of November 29, 1947 - YM], violence broke out and became more prevalent. Murders, reprisals, and counter-reprisals killed dozens on both sides.

In December 1947 and January 1948 an estimated nearly 1000 people were killed and 2000 injured. By the end of March, the figure had risen to 2,000 dead and 4,000 wounded. These figures correspond to an average of more than 100 deaths and 200 casualties per week in a population of 2,000,000.

Jewish soldiers take up positions at Mishmar Ha'emek, a settlement whose defenders repulsed repeated Arab attacks and inflicted a significant defeat on the Arab Liberation Army. From January onwards, operations became more militaristic, with the intervention into Palestine of a number of Arab Liberation Army regiments which divided up around the different coastal towns and reinforced Galilee and Samaria. Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni came from Egypt with several hundred men of the Army of the Holy War. At the time, military assessments were that the Palestinian Arabs were incapable of beating the Zionists.

Having recruited a few thousand volunteers, al-Husayni organized the blockade of the 100,000 Jewish residents of Jerusalem...

And how does an Arab source report the history of the 1947-1949 war? How about PASSIA?

In Nov. 1947, the UNGA voted...for the majority scheme (UN Res. 181), recommending the partition of Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state with an international enclave comprising Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The Palestinians (two-thirds of the population and owning most of the land) rejected the resolution. The ensuing disturbances culminated in the first Arab-Israeli war, after the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 in the part of Palestine allocated to the Jews in UN Res. 181. The balance of power was very unequal with a wellequipped and trained Zionist army fighting against poorly armed Palestinian resistance groups, and many Palestinian civilians fled in panic after Jewish forces committed a series of massacres in their villages. Before the entry of the Arab armies, the Zionist forces launched two offensives - one from Tel Aviv and one from Jerusalem itself (Dec. 1947-May 1948) - which resulted in the conquest of West Jerusalem and the corridor leading to the coast - in violation of the UN Partition Resolution.

That's quite a revisionist version. But we do have there Arabs fighting Jews pre-May 1948.

Here are some random items:

JERUSALEM, Saturday, Dec. 27 -- An immigration official of the Jewish Agency for Palestine was shot dead yesterday by Arabs in an attack on a convoy in which Mrs. Golda Meyerson, acting head of the Agency's Political Department, was traveling. Mrs. Meyerson was unhurt.

and

PALESTINE KILLINGS JUMP TO 16 IN DAY; FIGHTING STIFFENS; Haifa Is Worst Trouble Spot With 4 Arabs, 5 Jews Slain -- Wounded Total 51

That was December 1947 from the New York Times.

Yes, AP. A war actually preceded Israel's founding.



(k/t = BT)

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