I met my husband, Sami, in the mid fifties where he was attending the college I attended. He was a foreign student with a Jordanian passport because he was born and grew up in the West Bank. After 1948 the West Bank was governed by Jordan. From the beginning of our relationship he explained to me how the truth of the creation of Israel was very different from how it appeared in the American media. Over the years I met many Palestians who were adults in 1948. They all told their stories of the Nakba, their expusion from their homes in Palestine. I began to realize early that they were all telling basically the same story. It differed dramatically from the story Americans were fed by the US media. How could so many people who didn't know each other, tell the same story if they were lying?

Please take the time to read this accounting of the Nakba by a scholar from the University of Toronto.
An Email From: My Son
Subject: Conflict between Israel and Palestine has a hidden history

Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2007 13:10:46 +0000

by Henry Makow, Ph.D. [Excerpted]



According to Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, 1948 was a pretext and cover for the pre-planned expulsion of a million mostly defenceless Palestinians from their ancestral homes, orchards, fields and businesses. (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," 2006)

The elites who prevailed over the Zionistic military expansionist agenda of Israeli knew the neighbouring Arab states did not constitute a threat. The Palestinians did not flee willingly as Jews are mischievously taught in a societal milieu of disinformation. Palestinians were mercilessly driven out.

The British and UN were accomplices. With 75,000 soldiers present, the British permitted the massacres and pillage in spite of their promise in the Balfour Declaration to uphold Palestinian rights.

The UN ceded to 600,000 Jews a territory containing one million Palestinians, leaving them at the mercy of David Ben Gurion who said, "Only a state with at least 80% Jews is a viable and stable state." (Pappe, p.48)

Eighty-nine percent of the cultivated land in the UN designated Jewish state belonged to Palestinians.

General Sir John Bagot Glubb, the British chief the (Jordanian) Arab Legion called 1948 "a phony war." Like most wars the outcome was determined in advance. The leader of Arab forces, King Abdullah of Jordan, had a secret deal with the Zionists to offer only token resistance in return for the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In addition, the English controlled the Arab armies and curtailed supplies.

Far from being "a rag tag group of defenders", Israel had 50,000 soldiers, half of whom had served in the British army. It had a small air force, navy, tanks, armoured cars and heavy artillery. Facing them were the real "rag tag defenders," perhaps 10,000 poorly trained and equipped Palestinian paramilitary outfits and volunteers from the Arab world.

Despite rhetoric from Arab capitals, there was never any chance of "driving the Jews into the sea". The Palestinians were passive and underestimated their danger from elites who used Judaism to perpetrate a fascistic Zionist agenda. Palestinians had lived under Ottoman and British rule, and somehow would manage under the Jewish regime. Many villages made "non-aggression pacts" with the Jews.

In March 1948 Ben Gurion told the Jewish Agency Executive: "I believe the majority of the Palestinian masses accept the partition as a fait accompli... [they] do not want to fight us."

The (British-controlled) Arab Legion was the only potential real opposition. It was used to repulse the Zionists when they reneged on their bargain and attacked the Old City of Jerusalem.

The other Arab nations were so feeble that the Zionists occupied Southern Lebanon and expelled Arabs from there. On May 24, 1948, David Ben Gurion did not sound like the leader of a beleaguered people when he confided in his diary: "We will establish a Christian state in Lebanon, the southern border of which will be the Litani river. We will break Transjordan, bomb Amman and destroy its army, and then Syria falls, and if Egypt will still continue to fight, we will bombard Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo."

Yes, the Palestinians did attack some convoys and isolated Jewish settlements at considerable loss of Jewish life. These attacks played into the hands of the Zionists who always portray acts of resistance as aggression and anti-Semitism.

The Nabka

Arabic speaking, Ilan Pappe interviewed survivors in Palestinian refugee camps. He compared their accounts to those in the IDF Archives.

Over 200 Arab villages were destroyed before a regular Arab soldier set foot in Palestine. Their ethnic cleansing program was called "Plan D". A detailed inventory of all Palestinian settlements and property had been made for it. (Often the unwary Palestinians extended hospitality to the takers of this macabre "census").

The fascistic Zionists (as opposed to those people who seek to peacefully practice Judaism) attacked Palestinian villages at night and dynamited houses while residents slept inside. Then they rounded up males between age 10 and 50 and shot them or sent them to prison camps. The women, children and elders were made to leave. Eventually about 750,000 ended up in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank or neighbouring countries. There were many instances of rape and plunder.

In the big cities like Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa, the Palestinian districts were shelled and people terrorized and killed. Altogether, 530 of about 1000 Palestinian villages were physically demolished. About a dozen cities and towns were also emptied. Some villages had forged economic or personal ties with the Jews and escaped this fate. Many of these "deals" were not honoured by the Zionists.

Dier Yassin was bad but the events that unfolded October 28 1948 in the village of Dawaymeh between Beersheba and Hebron were even worse. I cite Pappe:

"Venturing into the village the next day the Muktar (Hassan Mahmoud Ihdeib) beheld with horror the piles of dead bodies in the mosque — with many more strewn about in the street—men, women and children, among them his own father... 455 people were missing among them around 170 children and women. The Jewish soldiers who took part also reported horrific scenes, babies whose skulls were cracked open, women raped or burned alive in houses, and men stabbed to death. These were... eye-witness accounts sent to [Israeli] High Command within a few days of the event."

The Holocaust

The day before a Palestinian village was attacked, Israeli political officers (like Soviet commissars) would incite the troops with a talk about the Holocaust. The Zionists also used it to give themselves moral impunity. The whole world watched and said nothing.

But were fascistic Zionists themselves also partly responsible for the Holocaust? Did Zionists first do to Jews what they later did to Palestinians?

In 1943 Rabbi Dov Weissmandl of the Jewish Rescue Committee in Slovakia arranged for Nazi officials to stop transports to concentration camps in exchange for $50,000. They in fact stopped them while waiting for the money which had to come from abroad.

Weissmandl appealed to the Zionist Jewish Agency HQ in Switzerland and was told Zionists "must turn a deaf ear to the pleas and cries emanating from Eastern Europe" in order to establish the state of Israel.

"Remember this: all the allies have suffered many losses, and if we also do not offer human sacrifices, how can we gain the right to sit at the conference table when the territorial boundaries are reshaped? [Israel] Eretz Yisroel will be ours only by paying with blood, but as far as our immediate circle is concerned, ATEM TAJLU. The messenger bearing this letter will supply you with funds for this purpose".

Weismandl interpreted the letter as follows: "The price of Eretz Yisroel is the blood of the men and women, hoary sages, and babes in arms - but not YOUR [Zionist] blood! Let us not spoil this plan by giving the Axis [i.e. Nazis] powers to save Jewish lives. But for you, [Zionist] comrades, I have enclosed carfare for your escape. What a nightmare! The Zionist agent "diplomat" comes to Czechoslovakia and says "Shed your blood cheerfully, for your blood is cheap. But for your blood, the Land (of Israel) will be ours! (Min Hametzar, p. 92) by Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, ZT L Dean of Nitra Yeshiva).

If you don’t think this philosophy actuated the rise of Nazism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, you are kidding yourself. Nazism was a fraud on the German people, just as Zionism is a fraud on Jews. Both turned good people into cold blooded killers, pawns of the "Prince of Lies".

The current fascistic instigation of violence and war against Palestinians and Arabs

Today the Nakba continues in Gaza Strip, the West Bank and along the partition wall. (One could argue it continues in Lebanon Afghanistan and Iraq). New settlements are being built to strengthen Israeli claims, as "fait accompli".

The majority of Israelis and their supporters are faced with an elite contrived "moral" "fait accompli." Having been deceived about the Holocaust and "War of Independence", they have been tainted by a moral abomination. Many have built their lives accordingly. What can they do now?

When you have travelled down the wrong road, there is no use pretending it is the right one. You have to make a U-turn and retrace your steps, the sooner the better.

I believe Zionists should acknowledge the truth and pursue a two-state solution providing apologies and generous restitution to the Palestinians. That would support a climate of reconciliation in the Middle East among Jews, Palestinians, and Arabs, being able to live together in a peaceful and creative context of working together toward the mutual affirmation of their quality-of-living. There should be a limited right of return. Indeed, this is what Jews demand of the Germans. In contrast with the fascistic Zionists, Jews who embrace peace in today's Israel, fully appreciate that Palestinians should not continue to be treated in any way resembling how Jews were treated by Nazi Germany. Palestinians should be treated spiritually like the brothers and sisters they are to Jews.

Ilan Pappe says Palestinians would accept this. Pappe is a rare historian: honest, courageous and moral in the true Jewish spirit. He says his research "fully vindicates" the Palestianian version of events denied for so many years (Yet "Nakba denial" is not a crime anywhere).

Israelis need to make a 180-degree turn before a cabal of international fascists linked to the Zionist expansionist agenda taken humanity into a course of nuclear self-destruction.

Pappe is not optimistic. The premeditated attack on Lebanon last July was the last straw. A professor at Haifa University, he watched his dovish colleagues accept the government rationale. They are prisoners of a satanic "fait accompli." If anything Israelis now are more fanatical. Pappe is leaving Israel to become Chair of History at Exeter University in England.

There is only one way the human race will flourish in peace: by acknowledging the truth no matter how incriminating or painful it is.

About the author:

Henry Makow is the author of A Long Way to go for a Date. He received his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Toronto. He welcomes your feedback and ideas, e-mail: henry@savethemales.ca.