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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (3355)	9/10/2001 6:55:36 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

Hence, Ben-Gurion's remark in May of 1948 that he was "not surprised" by the "flight of the Arabs." Latter in the same year, he stated flatly that, "I am for compulsory transfer, I don't see anything immoral in it." >>> You think he made an error for not doing it?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (3355)	9/10/2001 7:03:22 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 23908

en.monde-diplomatique.fr To this we might add that the manipulation of history for political ends is not an exclusively Israeli domain: most often it goes hand in hand with nationalism. What lessons have the revisionist historians drawn from their diligent working-through of the archives? As regards the broad picture of the balance of power between Jews and Arabs in both 1947 and 1948, their results contradict the generally-held picture of a weak and poorly armed Jewish community in Palestine threatened with extermination by a highly armed and united Arab world - David versus Goliath. Quite the contrary. The revisionists concur in pointing to the many advantages enjoyed by the nascent Jewish state over its enemies: the decomposition of Palestinian society; the divisions in the Arab world and the inferiority of their armed forces (in terms of numbers, training and weaponry, and hence impact); the strategic advantage enjoyed by Israel as a result of its agreement with King Abdullah of Transjordan (in exchange for the West Bank, he undertook not to attack the territory allocated to Israel by the UN); British support for this compromise, together with the joint support of the United States and the Soviet Union; the sympathy of world public opinion and so forth. This all helps to explain the devastating effectiveness of the Jewish offensives of spring 1948. It also sheds new light on the context in which the mass departure of Palestinians took place. The exodus was divided into two broadly equal waves: one before and one after the decisive turning-point of the declaration of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 and the intervention of the armies of the neighbouring Arab states on the following day. One can agree that the flight of thousands of well-to-do Palestinians during the first few weeks following the adoption of the UN partition plan - particularly from Haifa and Jaffa - was essentially voluntary. The question is what was the truth of the departures that happened subsequently?