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The Forgotten 60,000 Jewish Refugees from Palestine

(Jerusalem Post) David Shayne - In Jewish Refugees in Israel's War of Independence (Hebrew), Dr. Nurit Cohen-Levinovsky, a historian with the Rabin Center, estimates that the war resulted in 60,000 Jewish refugees within Mandatory Palestine. Prof. Benny Morris' book, 1948, puts the number at 70,000. Cohen-Levinovsky describes how Jewish refugees, especially from villages attacked by Arab armies (primarily from Syria, Jordan and Egypt), clogged Haifa and Tel Aviv, even as those cites themselves came under attack. Kibbutz Manara, on the Lebanese border, evacuated its children under enemy fire by having soldiers carry the drugged children inside vegetable crates - a scene recreated in the 1961 movie Exodus. In all, 97 Jewish villages were attacked and damaged: 11 were destroyed entirely, 6 were conquered and lost - until after the 1967 Six-Day War when they were re-established. Moreover, many refugees came from Jerusalem. The city hosted some of the most intense fighting of the war and fully one-quarter of its Jews fled, mostly to the relative safety of the coast.
2018-09-14 00:00:00
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