History for Arabs but not for Jews

Soccer Dad
16 May '10

In his famous speech in Cairo last year President Obama said:

For decades then, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. It's easy to point fingers -- for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.

The degree to which Palestinian displacement was due to Israel's founding is usually overstated. President Obama's speech, more than showing empathy, emphasized a false narrative.

Efriam Karsh wrote:

Yet still the Palestinians fled their homes, and at an ever growing pace. By early April some 100,000 had gone, though the Jews were still on the defensive and in no position to evict them. (On March 23, fully four months after the outbreak of hostilities, ALA commander-in-chief Safwat noted with some astonishment that the Jews "have so far not attacked a single Arab village unless provoked by it.") By the time of Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, the numbers of Arab refugees had more than trebled. Even then, none of the 170,000-180,000 Arabs fleeing urban centers, and only a handful of the 130,000-160,000 villagers who left their homes, had been forced out by the Jews.

The exceptions occurred in the heat of battle and were uniformly dictated by ad-hoc military considerations--reducing civilian casualties, denying sites to Arab fighters when there were no available Jewish forces to repel them--rather than political design.[35] They were, moreover, matched by efforts to prevent flight and/or to encourage the return of those who fled. To cite only one example, in early April a Jewish delegation comprising top Arab-affairs advisers, local notables, and municipal heads with close contacts with neighboring Arab localities traversed Arab villages in the coastal plain, then emptying at a staggering pace, in an attempt to convince their inhabitants to stay put.[36]

For the most part, then, Arabs (not yet Palestinians) left the nascent Jewish state by heeding the exhortations of their leaders, and were not driven out by the Jews.

There was a different group of refugees at this time. These were Jews who lived in Arab states. For example here's what happened to the Jews of Iraq:

(Read full post)

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