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The Nakba Narrative Is Nonsense

(CAMERA) Dr. Alex Safian - In the years since Israel's rebirth in 1948, a narrative has taken root that portrays well-armed and financed Jews overrunning peaceful Palestinian villages, brutally expelling Palestinians from their homes and their country, summed up in the Arabic word nakba, or catastrophe. Yet this narrative contradicts basic historical facts. Even as early as 1937, Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, wrote: "We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places. All our aspiration is built on the assumption - proven throughout all our activity...that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs." On Dec. 13, 1947, Ben-Gurion said, "In our state there will be non-Jews as well - and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without exception....The attitude of the Jewish state to its Arab citizens will be an important factor - though not the only one - in building good neighborly relations with the Arab states." In 1948 the Arab states launched a brutal war against the Jews, in which more than 1% of the Jewish population was killed. When the Arab armies began to fall back from their initial victories (to within 21 miles of Tel Aviv), the local Palestinians panicked and began to flee, thus creating the Palestinian refugee problem. Had the Palestinians accepted the UN-approved partition plan, a Palestinian state would have been created side-by-side with Israel in 1948, and there wouldn't have been a single Palestinian refugee. The Palestinian nakba narrative is a massive collection of blatant falsehoods that stand history on its head and turn the victim into the perpetrator. Western acceptance of these falsehoods encourages the Palestinians to keep rejecting compromise and peace, guaranteeing more suffering and death, especially for the Palestinians themselves. The writer is associate director and research director of CAMERA.
2023-05-22 00:00:00
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