Humanist: Historical Memories by a New York Jew.

The Nakba, catastrophe in Arabic, that accompanied Israel’s birth in 1948.

* In 1947 there were 1,293,000 Arabs and 608,000 Jews in Palestine. Though Jews made up 32% of the population, the UN partition plan (agreed in November 1947) assigned them 55% of the country, including the economically developed citrus-growing plains.
* Israel’s Declaration of Independence on 15 May 1948 was preceded by several months of civil war between Jewish and Palestinian forces, and followed by more months of war between the new state and its Arab neighbours.

* In April and May, before the expiry of the British mandate, the cities of Haifa and Jaffa fell to Jewish forces, and more than 100,000 Pa...

The Nakba, catastrophe in Arabic, that accompanied Israel’s birth in 1948.

* In 1947 there were 1,293,000 Arabs and 608,000 Jews in Palestine. Though Jews made up 32% of the population, the UN partition plan (agreed in November 1947) assigned them 55% of the country, including the economically developed citrus-growing plains.
* Israel’s Declaration of Independence on 15 May 1948 was preceded by several months of civil war between Jewish and Palestinian forces, and followed by more months of war between the new state and its Arab neighbours.

* In April and May, before the expiry of the British mandate, the cities of Haifa and Jaffa fell to Jewish forces, and more than 100,000 Palestinians fled. To the north, in Galilee, the Haganah – the mainstream Zionist defence force – systematically conquered clusters of villages, emptying them of inhabitants and often levelling them.
* In June, the Israelis advanced further into territory designated for the Arab state, capturing the towns of Lydda and Ramle where they killed 250 Palestinians and expelled almost all the rest – 40,000 – at gunpoint.

* In the course of 1948, 531 Palestinian towns and villages were abandoned, evacuated or destroyed.
* In the Jaffa area, 96% of the villages were totally erased.
* As Jewish forces proceeded with the ethnic cleansing of territories both within and outside the UN-allotted borders of the Jewish state, a British army of 70,000 refused to intervene, despite being charged under the mandate with the protection of the civilian population.

...Memories of a promised land

* When the fighting finished in early 1949, the Jewish state had acquired 78% of Palestine.
* 180,000 Palestinians found themselves a minority within the expanded borders of the Jewish state.
* 750,000 had been made refugees.

* The homes and lands they left behind were quickly occupied by Jewish settlers and the new Israeli parliament passed laws confiscating their property.
* Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property.
* In 1954 more than one third of Israel’s Jewish population lived on absentee property.
* Conquest and expulsion provided the material base for the building of the Jewish state.


# For many y[b]...

* When the fighting finished in early 1949, the Jewish state had acquired 78% of Palestine.
* 180,000 Palestinians found themselves a minority within the expanded borders of the Jewish state.
* 750,000 had been made refugees.

* The homes and lands they left behind were quickly occupied by Jewish settlers and the new Israeli parliament passed laws confiscating their property.
* Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property.
* In 1954 more than one third of Israel’s Jewish population lived on absentee property.
* Conquest and expulsion provided the material base for the building of the Jewish state.


# For many years Zionists claimed that the Palestinians had left voluntarily, at the behest of Arab leaders.
# That myth has been repeatedly disproved: there’s no evidence of so much as a single broadcast or leaflet telling people to abandon their homes.
# There is, on the other hand, a great deal of evidence that the Zionists used the war to alter the demographic facts on the ground.
On April 6, for example, David Ben-Gurion told a Zionist meeting:

“We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area, even if only in an artificial way, in a military way … I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population.”

The facts of the Nakba are now well documented and beyond serious dispute. Yet Nakba denial remains widespread, and shamefully acceptable in polite circles. That is partly because its victims have been so demonised and dehumanised. Acknowledgement of the Nakba is also resisted because it undermines Israeli and Jewish self-definitions; for many, it is a truth that simply cannot be assimilated.