There appears to be two positions and I don't know which is correct. I've read that there were broadcasts to the arab population to leave the region in 48-49. Then I've read the BBC has no records of such broadcast (they monitored mideast radio signals) and only a record of broadcasts telling the arab population not to evacuate.
"They should be the Jews headache" Well, you make it sound now that Arabs are not people, that the populationn that was indigenous to Israel, no longer had rights because of treaties signed by nonrepresentatives. If I leave a war torn region, it doesn't follow that I lose my property rights as a result. I guess the Serbs were trying to do the same to Kosovars, recently, boot them out of the country and keep them out, take away their papers, bulldoze their homes and now they have nothing.
I've read a eulogy by Moshe Dayan in 1956 at the funeral of a friend who was murdered by an arab. Mr. Dayan told his listeners not to hate Arabs because "we" forced them off their land.
Also, I've read conflicting claims about the size of the forced removal. And because Israel was designed to be a nation for "jewish people" I think it is reasonable, on my part to suppose, it would want as few nonjews in the country as possible and work toward that end.
Finkelstien writes, someplace I can't remember where, that for the indigenous Palestinians at the time, they accepted the Jewish influx as something they could do nothing about and so for the most part accepted it.
Not my folks, but I know of others in Estonia whose land has been given back to them. As many Jewish folks got their swiss bank money that had be misappropriated and in fact, their is a movement for certain German firms to pay for the labour Jews were forced to provide. Perhaps reparations are in order.
I don't know the details but I hear, Begin and Shamir, former PMs, heroes, were former terorists associated with the Stern Gang and Irgun. |
