The Nakba Explained
Every November 30th, Israel observes Yom Haplitim, ‘Day of Refugees’ aka the actual Nakba, honoring the nearly 1,000,000 Jews who were forcibly expelled from Arab and Arab colonized lands after brave Jews liberated what was left, thanks to the British occupiers, (22%) of Israel.
Jews had lived across North Africa and across Arabia (since the 6th century BC), Iraq (since the 8th century BC), were there before Arabs colonized North Africa, and helped shape the culture of those regions. Prior to Islam, Jews and the Pagan populations lived in great harmony without issue. All that changed when Islam was created.
Instead of thanking Jews for the vast contributions, Judean assets were stolen to the tune of billions of dollars after 1948. There was no UNRWA equivalent for actual Judean refugees (no Arab occupiers were refugees after the 1948 war as Jews did not kick them out (though should have) but left on their own accord to help Arab armies kill Jews faster and those who were forced, were pushed out by the Arab armies.
Displaced Mizrahi Jews from Arab countries in a temporary Israeli refugee camp known as Ma’barot.”
Photo source: Click here
Israel absorbed all the Mizrahi refugees, coming back home, at great cost to the Israeli economy (the austerity years). Jews were even housed in tents across Ma’abarot camps across the nation.
So, when antisemites cry about the Arab occupier made up ‘Nakba’ remind them of what happened to nearly 1,000,000 Judeans in the years following Israel’s liberation. Pogroms, forceful evictions, land and assets stolen; Jews hung in Baghdad. The same governments who had used Judeans to strengthen their countries then turned on their Judean citizens because the Judeans’ homeland was no longer under occupation, not due to the UN, but because Jews decided that 1,812 years of occupations was enough and after over 20 years of fighting the British, kicked them out through force and humiliation.
Were Arab Occupiers Kicked out in 1948?
The short answer is no. The overarching cause of Arab occupiers (barely 500,000 left) leaving Israel was the Arab armies gleefully promising that it would only take weeks for Jews to be driven to the sea (an annihilation attempt) and then Arabs would be able to return. The British who by 1948, after being kicked out by Jews, were training the Arab armies, did not overturn the Arab armies’ messaging:
About 30,000 wealthy Arabs left for fear of war; other Arabs left because they were encouraged to do so by both the Arab leaders (local and invading forces) and the British.
- When the war was finished, the Arabs who left were no longer citizens
- Fewer than 500,000 Arabs became refugees
*Jews in Palestine (Israel) however, were appealing to the Arab occupier population to remain, and even extended a hand in peace despite being threatened by the Arab world, from where the Arab occupiers in Israel came from, mostly between the World Wars. *
Yemenite Jews en route from Aden to Israel, during the Operation Magic Carpet (1949–1950)”
Photo credit: Israel Forever Foundation
‘Farhud’ pogrom in Baghdad, Iraq, 1941 (public domain)
Photo credit: Times of Israel
The Assembly of Palestine Jewry issued this appeal on October 2, 1947:
“We will do everything in our power to maintain peace, and establish a cooperation gainful to both [Jews and Arabs]. It is now, here and now, from Jerusalem itself, that a call must go out to the Arab nations to join forces with Jewry and Israel and work shoulder to shoulder for our common good, for the peace and progress of sovereign equals.”
On November 30, the day after the UN partition vote, the Jewish Agency announced:
“The main theme behind the spontaneous celebrations we are witnessing today is our community’s desire to seek peace and its determination to achieve fruitful cooperation with the Arabs….”
- Israel’s Proclamation of Independence, issued May 14, 1948, also invited the Arabs to remain in their homes and become equal citizens in the liberated Judean homeland:
“In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions….We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.”
In numerous instances, Jewish leaders urged the Arabs to remain in Palestine and become citizens of Israel.
Had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN anti-Israel resolution, not a single Arab occupier would have become a refugee. A third terrorist state would now exist inside Israel (that is what the Partition Plan was about – stealing more land from Jews of what was left of the paltry 22% that was left, post Churchill’s theft of 78% of the Judean homeland and renamed to ‘Jordan’ in 1922. The responsibility for the refugee problem rests with the Arabs.
“The beginning of the Arab exodus can be traced to the weeks immediately following the announcement of the UN partition resolution. The first to leave were roughly 30,000 wealthy Arabs who anticipated the upcoming war and fled to neighboring Arab countries to await its end. Less affluent Arabs from the mixed cities of Palestine moved to all-Arab towns to stay with relatives or friends. By the end of January 1948, the exodus was so alarming the Palestine Arab Higher Committee asked neighboring Arab countries to refuse visas to these refugees and to seal their borders against them.”
- On January 30, 1948, the Jaffa newspaper, Ash Sha’ab, reported: “The first of our fifth-column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere….At the first signs of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.”
- Another Jaffa paper, As Sarih (March 30, 1948) excoriated Arab villagers near Tel Aviv for “bringing down disgrace on us all by ‘abandoning the villages.'”
- Meanwhile, a leader of the Arab National Committee in Haifa, Hajj Nimer el-Khatib, said Arab soldiers in Jaffa were mistreating the (Arabs) residents. “They robbed individuals and homes. Life was of little value, and the honor of women was defiled. This state of affairs led many [Arab] residents to leave the city under the protection of British tanks.”
- John Bagot Glubb, the commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, said: “Villages were frequently abandoned even before they were threatened by the progress of war.”
A leading Arab nationalist of the time, Musa Alami, revealed the attitude of the fleeing Arabs:
“The Arabs of Palestine left their homes, were scattered, and lost everything. But there remained one solid hope: The Arab armies were on the eve of their entry into Palestine to save the country and return things to their normal course, punish the aggressor, and throw oppressive Zionism with its dreams and dangers into the sea.”
“On May 14, 1948, crowds of Arabs stood by the roads leading to the frontiers of Palestine, welcoming the invading armies. Days and weeks passed, but the Arab armies did not ‘save the country.’ They did nothing but let slip from their hands Acre, Sarafand, Lydda, Ramleh, Nazareth, most of the south and the rest of the north. Then hope fled (Middle East Journal, October 1949).”
“As the fighting spread into areas that had previously remained quiet, the Arabs began to see the possibility of defeat, the flight of the Arabs increased — more than 300,000 departed after May 15 — leaving approximately 160,000 Arabs in Israel.”