I’ve been reading in a few places about the Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, who wrote, in his book "The Arabs", "This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country." (Pg. 183)
This link also brings these references from what seems to be reliable sources of the time:
"Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."
The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948.
"It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem."
Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949.
"The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948.
And this is an interesting one:
"The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones. The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable".
by Abu Mazen, from the article titled: "What We Have Learned and What We Should Do", published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976.
I could go on and on. If you want to read more, and there’s plenty of it, you can check it all out here.
Strange how Benny Morris couldn’t find any of this. Maybe he wasn’t looking very hard.
So what’s interesting Israelis right now?
Mainly the fuel strike. We’re all filled up. I hope it ends before we go up North on Tuesday, though.
Wow.
Seen on Civax
We’re afraid of chemicals dropping from above
This German town could be getting chemicals from the floodwaters.
Die Zeit on EU complicity in Palestinian terrorism (II)
This is Stefan Sharkansky’s translation of the Die Zeit sequel to ”Arafat Bombs, Europe Pays” by Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff from June 2002.