The great catastrophe

In the last week of April 1948, combined Irgun-Haganah forces launched an offensive to drive the Palestinian people out of the beautiful port city of Jaffa, forcing the remaining inhabitants to flee by sea; many drowned in the process. My aunt Rose, a teenager at that time, survived the trip to begin her life in exile on the Lebanese coast. Each Palestinian refugee family grows up hearing again and again the stories of those final moments in Palestine, the decisions, the panic, as we live in the midst of their terrible consequences. Throughout 1948, Jewish forces expelled many thousands of Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities into Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of others fled in fear. The purpose was to create a pure Jewish state, ethnically cleansed of the original inhabitants who had lived there for centuries. The creation of the state of Israel was the heart of this cataclysmic historical event for the Palestinians - the mass forced expulsion of a people; the more than 50 massacres carried out over the summer of 1948 by various armed Jewish forces; the demolition of villages to ensure the refugees could not return - all this is summed up in a single word for Palestinians: nakba, the catastophe.

"We must do everything to ensure they never do return ... The old will die and the young will forget," said David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel, in 1949. But the young have not forgotten. The event is remembered every year on May 15, and the youth are at the heart of it: at a rally on the site of the destroyed village of Umm al-Zinnat near Haifa, Salim Fahmawi, now 65, a primary school student when the soldiers entered the village 56 years ago to expel them, told an Israeli reporter: "The presence of so many young people, many of whom are third- and fourth-generation post-1948, gives me a sense of relief - because I know the torch has not been extinguished and is passing from generation to generation."

Nakba day has now become a profoundly political event - unlike other cultural and social manifestations of our national identity - because it is all about resistance to the current Palestinian situation rather than enshrining past memories of victimhood. The project against the Palestinians begun at the start of the past century had two purposes: first, to deny the very concept of Palestine and destroy its political and social institutions, and second, to annihilate the spirit of the Palestinians as a people, so that they would forget their collective identity once scattered far from home. But the relentless and dynamic nature of the catastrophe - it is an ongoing daily Palestinian experience - binds this generation directly to the older one, and binds the exiled to Palestine. Indeed, the past few years have witnessed a violent acceleration in this process of attempted destruction - hence the title of this year's event: The Nakba Continues.

The nakba is being lived again today in the brutal thrust of the current policies of the Israeli state. More than 10,000 Palestinian refugees have been created by the construction of the concrete separation wall that has cordoned off huge new tracts of occupied land. This wall, condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice, has turned West Bank cities such as Qalqilya into ghost towns, and thousands of refugees have been created for the third and fourth time in the refugee camps in Gaza. Yet it is not simply in the building of the walls and checkpoints by Israel's occupying forces, or the different roads created for Jews and Arabs on Palestinian land, or the use of specially constructed bulldozers that rip up Palestinian orchards and olive groves and demolish hundreds of homes, or the imprisonment of thousands of political prisoners, or the daily murder of Palestinian civilians, that demonstrates the continuing nature of the nakba. It is also in the dedication of Israel's military and political machinery to the destruction of Palestinian resistance to their project.

Guardian

...of Palestine. Israel should be ashamed.

http://www.palestineremembered.com/index.html

snip
In early April, an estimated 25,000 Arabs left the Haifa area following an offensive by the irregular forces led by Fawzi al­Qawukji, and rumors that Arab air forces would soon bomb the Jewish areas around Mt. Carmel. On April 23, the Haganah captured Haifa. A British police report from Haifa, dated April 26, explained that "every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe." In fact, David Ben-Gurion had sent Golda Meir to Haifa to try to persuade the Arabs to stay, but she was unable to convince them because of their fear of being judged traitors to the Arab cause. By the end of the battle, more than 50,000 Palestinians had left.

Tens of thousands of Arab men, women and children fled toward the eastern outskirts of the city in cars, trucks, carts, and afoot in a desperate attempt to reach Arab territory until the Jews captured Rushmiya Bridge toward Samaria and Northern Palestine and cut them off. Thousands rushed every available craft, even rowboats, along the waterfront, to escape by sea toward Acre (New York Times, April 23, 1948).

In Tiberias and Haifa, the Haganah issued orders that none of the Arabs' possessions should be touched, and warned that anyone who violated the orders would be severely punished. Despite these efforts, all but about 5,000 or 6,000 Arabs evacuated Haifa, many leaving with the assistance of British military transports.

Syria's UN delegate, Faris el-Khouri, interrupted the UN debate on Palestine to describe the seizure of Haifa as a "massacre" and said this action was "further evidence that the 'Zionist program' is to annihilate Arabs within the Jewish state if partition is effected."

The following day, however, the British representative at the UN, Sir Alexander Cadogan, told the delegates that the fighting in Haifa had been provoked by the continuous attacks by Arabs against Jews a few days before and that reports of massacres and deportations were erroneous. The same day (April 23, 1948), Jamal Husseini, the chairman of the Palestine Higher Committee, told the UN Security Council that instead of accepting the Haganah's truce offer, the Arabs "preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings, and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town."

snip
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html

First, the comment by Sir Alexander Cadogan is correct, but there is a significant sin of omission concerning Haifa. The best guide to this is Uri Milstein's series which spends a fair amount of time talking about Haifa. Haifa itself was the seen of quite a few incidences between Jews and Arabs prior to that time consisting of brutal terrorist attacks by irregulars from both sides. Please don't insinuate that I'm talking about ethnic cleansing, these attacks were just an increasing quid-pro-quo of violence that preceeded the occupation by the Haganah of Haifa.

As for the bigger picture of the Nakba or refugee crisis, I would be careful to NOT use Haifa as a singular example which is what your sole source seems to be implying.

The war produced Arab refugees whose cause for leaving differed considerably. Again Uri Milstein's works talk about this to great length. If you are looking for a pattern, then I would say that it depends on two lines of orthogonal thinking - the chronological time, especially prior to the major watershed of Deir Yassein, and the specific geographical area. Prior to Deir Yassin, the number of refugees was significant, but generally consisted of the middle and upper classes - those who could afford to leave and stay with family. About 20-25% of the total number of refugees left during this time period. After Deir Yassin was an atrocity of such magnitude that it engendered much fear by the Palestinian peasants of the Haganah. Coupled with the increasing tendency of the Haganah to actively encourage this behavior and the rumor that the relief armies were asking Palestinians to leave the front line, the steady stream of people leaving areas of active fighting turned into a rout even when for only a rumor of the Haganah's presence. It was this period when the majority of Palestinian refugees were created.

That the really nasty stuff is usually done by individuals and small or modest size groups, and often dissembled as the act and responsibility of vast assemblages, most of whom were just trying to stay out of the way.

I thought Barb's piece was interesting in that it shows how easy it is (by comparison with the OP) to whip up competing and supportable narratives that are incompatible in what they purport about historical events.

"...to flee by sea; many drowned in the process"
What I actually starting searching was that particular line about Haifa, the "many" drowning, how many actually died fleeing. It wasn't "whipped up" but then again I didn't go through the 40,000 hits either trying to find a definitive answer to the question.

One must be selective to write history, otherwise ones readers might as well just read the sources themselves. And one finds what one looks for, as you have just been so kind as to demonstrate. If you find "whipped up" too fanciful a description for that process, then choose another, it's fine with me, but that process of selection - of what to use to support the narrative one wishes to tell - is what I was referring to.

Particularly in academia is the basic thesis/anti-thesis, build-up and attempt to destroy method of analysis. Problems arise where people do not adequately or aggressively pursue the definition and defense of the anti-thesis. What's worse is when these incomplete theses are cited and those works also are cited which creates a false sense of "fact".

In science, this happens too - the speed of sound under certain condition carried a certain value that only recently was determined incorrect and revised. No great fallout, but golden apples that are rotten at the core do abound.

Now, I've a question, are you talking about the meta (higher level) viewpoint which looks at why people develop a weak anti-thesis as being what you find interesting?

L-

I consider that the various reasons why one gives only lip service to the antithesis are fairly transparent. What I find interesting is how easy it is to do a credible job of giving that "false sense of fact", and that almost everyone does it, and how rare it is when anyone does more, and how little noticed it will likely be when someone does do more. Most people most of the time are grinding some axe or another. It gives meaning and purpose to their lives to be advocates. And they are therefore not themselves really interested in a balanced presentation, in a critical examination of what actually occurred. They prefer great sweeping falsehoods. A narrative with good guys and bad guys and a clear plot line is more satisfying, and easier to execute too.

Complete with black and white hats for easy identification. All sides tend to do it. And yes, the lengths that authors have gone to are fairly incredible.

One of the things I like about Uri Milstein is that while he is biased, he at least did give a fair go at the anti-thesis for the subject he was covering (nominally the War of Independence). There are a few others as well but they also tend to be in pure academia.

The problem is rampant even in the academic world, as you say, but at least some pretense of dispassion is usually maintained there. Not that academic fights cannot be embarassing to watch.

In the I/P issue or course, the preponderance of propaganda and slanted drivel is such that it has (almost?) completely drowned out any attempts to discuss the situation in a balanced way, in the light of all the historical evidence; everyone is emotionally involved.

One of the reasons I took M&W's paper to not be an academic effort was that lack of anti-thesis, as you put it, they were clearly out to get a certain point of view out there, not to produce a balanced examination of the issues. Not that I would criticize them for doing that, professors can argue politics too, as long as they keep the distinctions clear.

I chose Haifa because it was mentioned in the OP's article, towards the top of the article and it's a well-known city. Also because it's difficult (perhaps impossible) to offer another view(s) without trying to isolate certain geographic areas or incidents, with each area or incident having its own very specific story along with multiple points of view of why people left. Otherwise (without that attempt of specificity or narrowing) responses becomes generalities. Haifa is its own very specific story and by no means was it intended to represent any other area. That's also the reason I showed immediately below the wikipedia article which reads somewhat differently as to what happened at Haifa from the JVL article.

snip
After the UN resolution to partition Palestine, the Jewish neighborhoods of Haifa were under constant attacks by Arab snipers. The neighborhoods of Hadar suffered major shelling from the Arab neighborhood of Halisa. Further attacks were carried on from the Arab villages on the shore of the Mediterranean, blocking transportation between the Jewish neighborhoods of Haifa and Tel Aviv.

Through Christian intermediaries, Haganah proposed a cease-fire to the Arab leadership in Haifa. The Arabs declined, having been advised by the Arab military command in Akko that there was a large Arab force south of Haifa, near Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek, planning to attack. The military command also advised Arabs in Haifa to evacuate to Akko by sea. The harbour soon filled with Arabs fleeing the city.

At 10:30 in the morning of April 21, 5,000 fighters from the Lehi and the Carmeli Brigade participated in the offensive that started from the Jewish neighbourhood Hadar HaCarmel and began shelling the Arab Muslim neighborhhod of Halisa. The 3,500-5,000 Arab irregulars and elements of the Arab Liberation Army could not mount a real defense. Furthermore, the 3,000 defenders of Al-Tira who tried to reinforce the city were intercepted by the British. The next day the Arab National Committee of Haifa were prepared to ask for a truce via Stockwell. Stockwell agreed to meet with the Israelis, and returned 15 minutes later; however, the terms proposed by the Haganah -- complete disarmament, surrender of weapons, and a curfew -- were not accepted by the Arab leadership.

That afternoon, a meeting was held in the town hall to discuss terms of the truce. Due to pressure by the Arab military command, the Arab delegation declared their inability to endorse the proposed truce and requested protection for the evacuation of Haifa's Arab citizens. The request came as a surprise, as the Haganah leaders urged most Arabs to stay, but was granted.
snip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_Haifa_in_1948

Lovely.

Try Shlaim's work, or Flapan's. At least their's are academic, however controversial.

:hi: