Laila El-Haddad's anti Israel screed is filled with so many antisemitic calumnies about recent Mideast history, it is hard to know which one to respond to first. (" The Fight For Justice in Palestine is Far from Over").
However just one of her calumnies -- that the Nakba was caused when " a majority of Palestinians ( note: Arabs did not call themselves " Palestinian" until after 1964) were EXPELLED ( emphasis supplied) from their homes to make way for a Jewish ethno- religious state" -- demonstrates the antisemitic vacuousness of her entire op ed.
Notwithstanding the endless calumnies by recent antisemitic revisionists like Ms. El- Haddad concerning the "Nakba", even a cursory glance at CONTEMPORANEOUS Arab and Muslim newspapers and other CONTEMPORANEOUS Muslim and Arab media makes clear that it was Arab leaders in command of five invading Arab armies in 1947/1948 who commanded the local Arab population in Mandatory Palestine to “flee” their homes in anticipation of the genocide of the Jews — and an Arab populace who willingly obeyed that command.
On April 3, 1949 the Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station reported: “It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem”. ("The Palestinian Delusion, The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process", Robert Spencer, 2019, page 83)
On October 12, 1963 the Egyptian daily “Akbar el Yom” reported that : “The 15th May, 1948 arrived…On that day the Mufti of Jerusalem ( the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini) appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead”. ("The Palestinian Delusion", page 83)
On April 9, 1953 the Jordanian daily “Al Urdan” reported: “For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumours exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs..By spreading rumours of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy”. See: "The Palestinian Delusion", , page 83.
See also: "The Massacre That Never Was: The Myth of Der Yassin and the Creation of the Palestine Refugee Problem", Professor Eliezer Tauber, 2021.
Even the contemporaneous reporting of “The Economist” makes clear that the “Nakba’ was self inflicted. On October 3, 1948 “The Economist” reported: “Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit…It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades”. ("The Palestinian Delusion", page 82).
On August 19, 1951 the Beirut weekly “Kul-Shay” opined: “Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honor not conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their homes? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it”. ("The Palestinian Delusion, , page 84).
In 1955, the secretary of the Office of the Arab League in London, Edward Atiyah, admitted:
"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs enable to re enter and retake possession of their country". ("The Palestinian Delusion", , page 84).
Furthermore, the Jordanian newspaper Filastin on February 19, 1949 stated: “The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees” ("The Palestinian Delusion", , page 82-83).
Ahistorical antisemitic revisionism today in the tradition of Edward Said cannot change the true history of the self inflicted "Nakba" as accurately reported by CONTEMPORANEOUS Arab and Muslim journalists.
See: " 'My Beautiful Old House' and Other Fabrications of Edward Said", Justus Reid Weiner, Commentary Magazine, September 1999.
Also, Syrian intellectual Constantine Zureiq in August 1948 FIRST used term nakba as “a self- inflicted and humiliating wound caused by the Arabs themselves”.(“Israel: A Simple Guide To The Most Misunderstood Country On Earth”, page 114, Noa Tishby, 2021)
As Professor Richard Landes insightfully points out, the original meaning of "nakba" was "when we Arabs did it to ourselves".
See : "Can 'The Whole World' Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad", Richard Landes, page 195, 2022).
Further Zureiq imputed agency to the Arabs and made them responsible for their own humiliation. Zureiq’s own words make clear that “the Nakba” has nothing to do with Israel or the Jews:
“When the battle broke out, our public diplomacy to speak of our imaginary victories, to put the Arab public to sleep and talk of the ability to overcome and win easily — until the Nakba happened….We must admit our mistakes…and recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot”.("Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, page 114).
Only after 1964 did the anti-semites of the PLO encouraged by the KGB and their jew hating allies on the Left and later Hamas pervert Zureiq’s clear meaning, create the fiction of Palestinian Arab victimhood, and make the Jews the villain. Recent "Palestinian" revisionist historians and textbook writers are sycophants of this KGB balderdash and show total disrespect -- racism? -- for CONTEMPORANEOUS Muslim and Arab journalists.
Richard Sherman, Florida