[skinkestek]

> Has anyone of them mentioned the massive irony in Israel returning lands stolen from Jews while at the same time keeping all the land it itself stole from Palestinians?

To the degree that land has been stolen recently except by Jordan it was by UN and the British I think.

Israeli land was either bought, traded, given by UN, won in defensive wars (and most of that have been given back in return for peace).

You could say that the land that was gained in defensive wars is stolen even if it was a defensive war, but I think that becomes unreasonable - especially since Israel has proven that they are willing to give back such land for a real, lasting peace agreement, and also since some of the land represents a massive advantage for a hostile neighbor.

[bjourne]

During the 1948 Palestine war, Jewish troops ethnically cleansed the territory that became the State of Israel of Arab Palestinians. The land and property owned by those Arab Palestinians was confiscated by the state and handed out to Jewish immigrants. Israel does not believe that any of the land or property it confiscated should be returned to its former Arab Palestinian owners.

At the same time, property owned by Jews in the West Bank was confiscated by Jordanian authorities and given to Arab Palestinian refugees. In 1970, three years after Israel had taken the West Bank from Jordan, it enacted a law which stated that all property confiscated by Jordan should be returned to their original Jewish owners.

This is what I meant by "massive irony" but maybe it is just hypocrisy or racism.

[skinkestek]

> During the 1948 Palestine war, Jewish troops ethnically cleansed the territory that became the State of Israel of Arab Palestinians. The land and property owned by those Arab Palestinians was confiscated by the state and handed out to Jewish immigrants.

And this is why there is so many Arabs living happily in Israel today. /s

Quite on the contrary I've read that Israel asked Arabs to stay in Israel during the 1948 war - for selfish reasons - but still.

Surrounding Arab countries asked Arabs in Israel to leave temporarily to make "shoveling the Jews into the ocean" easier. Those who left "temporarily" are the ancestors of those who live in refugee camps today. Those who stayed are the ancestors of Arabs living good lives in Israel today. More or less.

edit: Confiscating the homes of those who left to make it simpler to wipe you into the sea is a bit different than bulk killing people (genocide) and taking their homes. endedit.

Also remember that far more Jews were forced out of surrounding countries and into Israel than Arabs out of Israel.

If Arabs from what is today Israel should get their homes back I suppose Jews should get their homes and shops back in Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq etc?

edit: Or can we finally accept that it was botched by UN and actively sabotaged by neigbouring countries? That the sad fate of the Arabs from Israel is less the fault of Israelis and that the ones to blame are neighbor Arab states and the UN? end edit

If any of this is news to anyone just think how much more biased news organizations hide from you.

Everyone should start reading.

PS: I'm not saying Israelis are innocent. I'm saying that media has massively misrepresented the situation for a few decades, selectively presented only the things that makes Israel look bad.

Many of them are true, but as shown above the full story is a bit more nuanced...

[bjourne]

After the war the international community pressured Israel into letting the Palestinian refugees return home. The famous UN Resolution 194 was an attempt to settle the Palestine question and to demand of Israel that it let the refugees repatriate. But the racist Israeli leaders didn't want non-Jews in their state. "Only Jews have a right of return to Israel", Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared.

To shield itself from criticism, Israel promulgated the idea that the Arabs left voluntarily. That they had been "called out" by their own leaders. Joseph Schechtman, working for the Israeli state, was the first to claim this in his book The Arab refugee problem from 1952. He referenced radio broadcasts and evacuation orders from Arab community leaders ostensibly calling for them leave.

Erskine Childers in his classic article The Other Exodus from 1963 went through transcripts of radio broadcasts in Palestine during 1948 and couldn't find a single instance of an order by Arab leaders calling for them to leave. Arab leaders that he interviewed vehemently denied calling for the Arabs to leave. On the contrary, he found transcripts of radio broadcasts calling for the Arabs to stay. Since then, many historians have investigated the issue and have concluded that the "called out"-theory is completely bunk.

Despite the overwhelming evidence showing that the Palestinians left for fear of getting caught in the hostilities, were "adviced" to leave by Jewish troops, or forced out at gunpoint, some Zionists still cling to the debunked "called out"-theory. That's the power of propaganda, I guess.

I find it callous and cynical to attempt to justify Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine with Jewish emigration from Arab countries in the 1950s and 1960s. That the Arab countries persecuted their Jewish minorities cannot justify an ethnic cleansing committed decades prior. Furthermore, some Arab states have apologized for their persecution of Jews and allowed them to return and to claim property. No such apology is forthcoming from the Israeli state.

[joelbluminator]

> But the racist Israeli leaders didn't want non-Jews in their state

Is it solely about racism, really? You're talking as if there weren't around 50 years of mutual blood shedding before that moment, or that all surrounding Arab states didn't invade Israel to destroy it. The Jews had a good reason not to trust Palestinian intentions towards them (See the Grand Mufhti's meetings with Hitler to help find a "solution" to the Jewish problem for example). In fact the Palestinians refused to split the land twice, on 1937 and again on 1947 and then they started a war, what good would it have done to let them back - to have another civil war all over again?

[bjourne]

Yes, the Jewish Zionist leaders were racist in the sense that they wanted as many of one race - white Jews - in their state, while they wanted as few of any other race. The British had promised them a "national home" in Palestine in 1917 and subsequently they drew up plans for dealing with the Arab population. The number of Jews wishing to immigrate to Palestine ("return" in Zionist parlance) was far fewer than what they had expected so to build a Jewish majority they decided that the territory of the Jewish state had to be cleansed of Arabs. The Zionists in Palestine's leader, David Ben-Gurion, on countless occasions expressed his support for ethnic cleansing. For example, in 1937 he wrote to his son: "We must expel the Arabs and take their places."

Even after the war Israeli leaders attempted to cleanse the land of its remaining Arab population. JNF chairman Yosef Weitz in 1951 proposed that the Christian Arabs from the upper Galilee should be transferred to Argentina. Both Ben-Gurion and Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett gave the plan its blessing.

None of the Zionist leaders ever suggested that the need to ethnically cleanse the land of non-Jews was due to Arab belligerency. On the contrary, they were quite clear on that Arab belligerency was not an issue. While there were many more Arabs than Jews in Palestine, they were poorly organized, poorly trained, and lacked access to military equipment.

Yes, it is correct that the Palestinians wanted to keep Palestine as one territorial unit. Dividing it would have meant that hundreds of thousands of Arab from the Jewish part would have been transferred out of their homeland and their property would have been confiscated. Instead, they wanted to create an all-encompassing Palestinian state with a parliament in which all ethnic groups were represented. This idea was a complete non-starter for the Zionists who wanted a Jewish-majority state.

[skinkestek]

It is good when talking about the problems on one side not to completely leave out the problems at the other side.

Here are some:

> Until the Arab armies invaded Israel on the very day of its birth, May 15, 1948, no quarter whatsoever had ever been given to a Jew who fell into Arab hands. Wounded and dead alike were mutilated. Every member of the Jewish community was regarded as an enemy to be mercilessly destroyed....

> [T]he Arab population of Palestine anticipated nothing less than massacres in retaliation if the Jews were victorious. Measuring the Jewish reaction by their own standards, they simply could not imagine that the Jews would not reply in kind what they had suffered at Arab hands. And this fear played a significant role in the Arab flight.[112]

I got it from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Palestini...

It is also worth mentioning that despite what David Ben-Gurion meant, Israels Proclamation of Independence, issued on May 14, 1948, invited the Palestinians to remain in their homes and become equal citizens in the new state.

It might also be worth mentioning that Israel even offered Arabs to return or to buy them out since.

It might also be worth mentioning that while Israeli citizens massacred (some nasty examples exist) this was not encouraged, and perpetrators could be threatened with harsh punishments instead of celebrations like on the other side.

The story goes on.

Israel is not blameless, but the way you present it it is evil powerful Israel relentlessly attacking poor Arabs.

I enjoy (for the lack of a better word, I find it disgusting to read about) learning more including were Israel was wrong, but at the same time, wherever I look it is obvious that while the things you say are correct, you systematically leave out the other side.

(And now that I think of it I might be guilty of the same, even if it is to a lesser degree.)

[skinkestek]

> Erskine Childers in his classic article The Other Exodus from 1963 went through transcripts of radio broadcasts in Palestine during 1948 and couldn't find a single instance of an order by Arab leaders calling for them to leave.

This is interesting. I'll stop writing that. (Or until I can get proof of it.)

[skinkestek]

Ok, I had to look this up.

It would be astounding to me if this was true but I also cannot square the idea of a genocide of Arabs within Israeli borders with the fact that there are many more Arabs inside Israel today than before 1948.

I still haven't made up my mknd on this, but here is what I found:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=did+arab+leaders+ask+arabs+to+leav...

There is a lot of information there but the most interesting (too me at least since it partially contractict my llng beld beliefs) was what I found by following the Wikipedia result one step further to this page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Palestini...

This page mostly supports bjourne but interestingly is also full of quotes that support what I learned:

> Furthermore, in his comprehensive book on the Arab–Israeli conflict, Righteous Victims, Morris wrote:

>> In some areas Arab commanders ordered the villagers to evacuate to clear the ground for military purposes or to prevent surrender. More than half a dozen villages ... were abandoned during these months as a result of such orders. Elsewhere, in East Jerusalem and in many villages around the country, the [Arab] commanders ordered women, old people, and children to be sent away to be out of harm's way.... [T]he AHC and the Arab League had periodically endorsed such a move when contemplating the future war in Palestine.[174]

> In a 2003 interview with Haaretz, Morris summed up the conclusions of his revised edition of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: "In the months of April–May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages."[175]

> The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the 8 March 1948 instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes and move to areas "far away from the dangers. Any opposition to this order ... is an obstacle to the holy war ... and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts."[176]