I wonder if even David Warren would claim that events such as those at Deir Yassin (4/10/48, well before the Arab attack) had nothing to do with the flight of the refugees
I doubt it. The real issue is not the claim that the Israelis are pure as the driven snow; it is the moral double standard that insists the Israelis be pure, restrained and civilized, even as it makes excuses for any degree of Palestinian duplicity and barabarity. No national movement, I don't care what their grievances are, should be able to wage a vicious terrorist campaign against civilian targets, whining all the time about how they are oppressed, massacred, innocent victms of genocide, etc, etc, and be able to get away with it in the world press.
One suspects that if the Arabs did not have the Israelis as their enemies, someone might have asked them what refugees are still doing in refugee 'camps' over fifty years after the war. There were 10s of millions of refugees in the 40's; no other group is still in camps. Most got resettled instead.
BTW, Deir Yassin may have been before the Arab armies attacked, but there was a definite war going on at the time between the Hagannah & Irgun and the Mufti's troops; Abdul Khader Husseini's men were besieging Jerusalem, and Deir Yassin was one of the towns that got attacked in the effort to open the road. The Arabs themselves publicized Deir Yassin (suitably exaggerated) in the mistaken belief that it would stiffen resistance. Instead it fomented a panic. Collins and Lapierres O Jerusalem! (a work that has no love lost for the Irgun at all) gives a very good description of that war. |
