1948
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Nauseous and delirious –
2023-11-04
Hey Barbaro…the 1948 episode was an improvement over your others on the topic. Maybe someday you will become a real journalist. That said there were unfortunately a couple of meaningful omissions:
1. The expulsions began in January 1948 and more than half of the 750,000 refugees cited were forced from their homes BEFORE Israel declared itself a state. This bolsters the surrounding countries’ contention that they were coming to the aid of their neighbors; not because of antisemitism as Israeli leaders and spokespeople as well as papers likes yours are prone to assert either explicitly or thru inference.
2. UN General assembly resolutions including 191 are proposals. They are not binding on local populations who understandably have the right to reject them.
3. A religious text (ie the Bible) is not only childish it’s irrelevant. After all, we are all 21st century beings and we’re not in Sunday school. What’s relevant is the fact that 90 percent of the 1947 Jewish population of Palestine had immigrated there “from Europe” in the preceding 30 years. Naturally the local population feared expulsion.
P.S. given how your guest referenced Benny Morris or how in the subsequent decade Jews migrated out of other middle eastern countries, perhaps you need to bring someone on who is familiar with the research and writings of Ilan Pape or Avi Shlaim respectively. Also, you may want to explore some day the question; what right did Great Britain (and Arthur Balfour) have to give somebody else’s homeland to yet a third entity?