Carl
Everyone tells stories about history, including the Nakba. The Palestinians are very prone to this, of course. But people who supposedly demythologize the myths often just spread new myths. Here are two in the quoted tweeted: ONE - "As a general rule, such Jewish and Arab populations had been occupying the land they were on for 100 years or more." Not true. There were Jews in Palestine for far more than 100 years, of course, but "occupying the land they were on"? No. Until Zionism, Jews were a tiny minority (3-5% of the population) living mostly in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safad, and Tiberias. This changed with the six "aliyah" (waves of immigration) that brought Zionist immigrants to Palestine, starting in 1882 (1st 1882-1903; 2nd 1904-1914; 3rd 1919-1923; 4th 1924-1929; 5th 1929-1939; and Aliyah Bet 1933-1948). So no, most Jews in 1948 had not been on the land they were on for 100 years or more. TWO - "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" The idea that the Arabs just up and left with plans to come back when all the Jews were dead is mostly a myth. It ignores a lot of history, including repeated attacks on Arab villages by Jewish military forces, including massacres, most famously the one at Deir Yassin. (Jewish villages were also attacked by Arabs, of course.) The truth of why the Arabs left is messy because there was no single simple cause ("Evil Jews," "Conniving Arabs"), but rather a mixture of causes that functioned differently in each person's mind. Here is Benny Morris in "Righteous Victims" (p282) (Benny Morris is the Israeli historian who took the pro-Israel side with Destiny against Norm Finkelstein and that other guy) "But while military attacks or expulsions were the major precipitant to flight, the exodus was, overall, the result of a cumulative process and a set of causes. A Haifa merchant did not leave only because of months of sniping and bombing, or only because business was getting bad, or because he saw his neighbors flee, or because of extortion by Arab irregulars, or because of the collapse of law and order and the gradual withdrawal of the British, or because of a Haganah attack, or because he feared to live under Jewish rule. He left because of an accumulation of these factors. In the countryside, too, many factors often combined: isolation among a cluster of Jewish settlements, a feeling of being cut off from Arab centers, a lack of direction by national leaders and a feeling of abandonment by the Arab world, fear of Jewish assault, reports and rumors about massacres by the Jews, and actual attacks and massacres." — — — If you want to live in a world of purely good guys and purely evil guys, I can't stop you, but that's not sound history. In reality, every side has its bad guys. (If they're lucky, they have some good guys too.)
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.