
Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs - rbecker
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-israel-systematically-hides-evidence-of-1948-expulsion-of-arabs-1.7435103
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dagav
My ancestors lived in Israel since 1880, and the Arabs raided their villages,
burned their fields, and massacred them in riots. Before Israel they lived in
Yemen, where they faced pogroms and blood libel. What the West cannot
understand about the Arab-Israeli conflict is that it's not just a political
war, it's also a race war and a holy war. What's happening in Israel is
biblical, and reducing it to politics cannot possibly capture its complexity.

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Udik
> My ancestors lived in Israel since 1880

No, they lived in Palestine.

In hindsight, having been the Palestinians pushed away from their lands, first
through mass immigration, then by the generous gift made by Europe of those
lands to the immigrants, and finally through ethnic cleansing and land
grabbing, in hindsight their violence towards the newcomers was perfectly
justified. How can you blame them if they saw in advance what was happening?

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skinkestek
There never was a Palestinian people or a Palestinian contry.

After last time the Jews (Israeli) lived there those areas went from being
Roman to Turkish to British to being split into mostly Jordan and Israel.
Jordan was the big part - for the Palestinian Arabs - and Israel was about the
about 30 % that was left for Palestinian Jews.

At no point in time however before the Oslo process has there been a
Palestinian country, only Arabs and Jews living in Palestine, better known as
Israel until that massive propaganda effort last century.

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Kednicma
You're being disingenuous; if we call them not just Palestinians, but
Philistines or the Peleset, then they are mentioned in multiple histories of
the region. While the region passed through Roman, Turkish, and British
control, the only time when there was a large influx of foreign folks was
during the Islamic expansion, when many Arabs moved into Palestine. Other than
that, they've been there since around the Bronze Age Collapse; their history
traces through the Iron Age just like Israelite/Jewish history.

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onyva
Ben gurion. Arthur Ruppin. Golda Meir. Kleizmer, eugenics and pathos. Israel
did a fantastic job of milking the world’s empathy while committing horrible
crimes. Also, nothing to do with Zionism. Hertzl, a proud ethnic Jew
(Sephardi), despised the Eastern European mob that would eventually take
Zionism over and Judaism and turn it into a farce.

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phenkdo
Tens of thousands killed, millions forced to flee their ancestral lands
overnight, guess who I am talking about: Germans Post WW2. They too loved
their lands which they too had lived in for millennia. How many Germans do you
see blowing up cafes in Warsaw or Prague asking for their land back?

How about the 12 Million South Asians displaced in the partition of India &
Pakistan? How many Hindus/Sikhs do you see asking for their lands back? the
Indus Valley (modern day Pakistan) is the cradle of Indian civilization.

Mind you, both these events happened at the same time (1945-50) as the
founding of Israel. Somehow they all seem to have moved on with their lives,
and yet the Palestinians seem to be the only one fixated on "our lands" and
indulging in self-flagellation.

IMHO the The Palestinians just need to get over it and move on with building a
new life in some Arab countries. This idea of condemning generations to
oppression and racism, and living in that hell hole of Gaza/West Bank, in the
vain hope of winning it all back, is utter insanity.

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simonh
Really appalling. But I’ll just point out this is being reported by an Israeli
newspaper. I look forward to the day a report this critical of its government
can be freely published in Arab nations.

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mkhattab
I don't believe Arabs are under the illusion that their government is non-
tyrannical. I live in Egypt and there's not a single person I've met that
doesn't think their government is corrupt, oppressive and inept. So there's
really nothing revealing or surprising that a newspaper could report.

"BREAKING: Egyptian government is corrupt. In other news, water is wet."

On the other hand, there are perhaps many Israelis who believe the false
narrative that the Palestinians sold their lands and left, but changed their
minds and started the aggression.

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throwaway073120
An Israeli friend told me that after the Shoah her countrymen faced a choice.
They could say "never again" or "never again to us."

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arminiusreturns
[https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYork...](https://archive.org/details/AlbertEinsteinLetterToTheNewYorkTimes.December41948)

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Pils
Malmab personnel interviewed at the end of the article:

> But isn’t concealing documents based on footnotes in books an attempt to
> lock the barn door after the horses have bolted?

> “I gave you an example that this needn’t be the case. If someone writes that
> the horse is black, if the horse isn’t outside the barn, you can’t prove
> that it’s really black.”

For additional context, this is with regards to the scholarship of Benny
Morris[0]. Plenty of liberal democracies use and abuse the concept of state
secrets, but to abuse it in such a petty and transparent way
feels...counterproductive?

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Morris)

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skinkestek
Could be useful to mention at the same time how many jews were thrown out from
neighboring countries.

This somehow slips everyones minds as those were successfully integrated and
not set aside in refugee camps to be played as a pawn in the western media
guilt and shame game.

