Cynical Publius
There are lots of discussions these days on X about the "Nakba." Allow me to join the discussion with a brief comparison of myth and actual history. MYTH: In 1948, after the United Nations recognized Israel, the Jews in Palestine rounded up all of the Palestinians living there and forcibly removed them from their ancestral homeland, with genocidal intent, thus creating the worst case of racist, colonialist ethnic cleansing in modern history. The persecuted Palestinians have forever since called this historic tragedy the "Nakba." HISTORICAL REALITY: In 1948, a United Nations mandate created separate Jewish and Arab states in the region previously controlled by the United Kingdom and known as the "Palestine Mandate." As a general rule, such Jewish and Arab populations had been occupying the land they were on for 100 years or more. The two states were to be intertwined geographically, with Jerusalem under international control. The Jewish state was what we now call Israel. All of the Arab countries surrounding Israel determined that a Jewish nation in their midst was wholly unacceptable, and proceeded to mount a war effort against Israel in its infancy, to kill or drive out all of the Jews that were there. The Arabs occupying the new Arab state the UN intended to create were warned by their Arab state neighbors (Jordan, Syria, Egypt, etc.) about the upcoming war, and chose to temporarily relocate in order to get out of the way of the violence of that coming war, with the specific intent of returning after the Jews were exterminated, taking over the infrastructure created by those same Jews. Israel then surprisingly won the 1948 war aimed to destroy it, and those willingly-displaced Arabs who were so eager to kill all of Israel's Jews and take their stuff had no where to return to. Thus were born the so-called "Palestinians" and their perpetual grievances based on their inability to exterminate Jews, and they created the "Nakba" myth as a means of justifying their rabid, suicidal Jew hatred. Myth and history. Know the difference. This is a public service announcement from Realityland.