In its story about a renewed investigation into the murder of Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali, this is how the New York Times describes the British occupation and then the Nakba:
“He fled his home in the British Mandate of Palestine at the age of 10 during the war that accompanied the creation of Israel.”
One little sentence that continues so many lies.
This is how the same history is shared on Handala.org, a website dedicated to al-Ali’s work and named after his most famous creation, Handala, a refugee child who represents the Palestinian search for justice:
Naji Al-Ali was born in 1936 in the Palestinian village of Ash Shajara. In 1948, Ash Shajara was one of the 480 villages destroyed in what is known as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe. The Nakba is the devastation of Palestine in the creation of the Israeli state: The Palestinians lost more than half of their land, massacres took place and 750,000 refugees were created. Naji Al-Ali was 10 years old when he and his family were expelled from Palestine to Ein Al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon.
Hi Bruce, thanks for the correction. May the New York Times one day represent journalistic and intellectual honesty when covering Palestine and Israel.
“He fled his home in the British Mandate of Palestine at the age of 10 during the war that accompanied the creation of Israel.”
When Polish born David Ben-Gurion (nee, David Gruen) et al. declared the “Jewish State” of Israel effective 15 May 1948, Jewish forces had already dispossessed and expelled at least 300,000* Palestinians – e.g., 30,000 from West Jerusalem in March (and a further 30,000 in May), 60,000 from Haifa in April and 75,000 from Jaffa in late April and early May. Hence, although outnumbered, outgunned and reluctant to do so, Arab state armies were forced to intervene in order to stem the accelerating expulsion of Palestinians.
*(Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1988, p. 145.)
“Arab state armies were forced to intervene in order to stem the accelerating expulsion of Palestinians.”
Why didn’t they just build a wall? and force Israel to pay for it?
In a similar vein, Jews fled their homes in Europe during the war that accompanied the destruction of Germany.
The Jews in Europe were pariahs ever since their Diaspora-dictated-departure from the Middle East in the distant past.
Omitting volumes of historical facts & records and proceeding directly to today’s problems: I contend that if, as undeniably IS the case, The Holocaust was Hitler & the Nazis’ solution to Germany’s perennial “Jewish Problem”, then the creation of Israel and the partition of Palestine were the-rest-of-Europes solutions to their centuries-old “Jewish Problem”. Best stated, it went like this … from behind closed doors, of course: “Let’s all become Zionists; ship the Jews out of our country; and dump them on the Arabs,” Then let’s forget about them.”
Unfortunately for all concerned, it didn’t work out that way. The Palestinian themselves have always been somewhat of a Middle Eastern pariah, and if my history is correct, other Arabs want(ed) the Palestinians “out of sight and out of mind” as fervently a Europeans wanted the Jews out of Europe.
After WW II, both Jews and Palestinian Arabs rightfully needed a “safe place”, and both saw their haven as “The Holy Land” over which Zionist Jews and less-organized Palestinians were already fighting and killing each other. Fairly stated, that land — now Israel & occupied territories — been the Palestinian’s homeland for millennia.
It is a tragedy for which there can be no successful military solution; however, world leaders’ intransigent egos will lead us nowhere else.