(Commentary) Sol Stern - Every year on May 15, the Palestinians commemorate Nakba (Catastrophe) Day to protest Israel's creation. Palestinian leaders have been insistent that their people were innocent victims of a historically unprecedented crime in 1948, one that is frequently mentioned in the same breath as the Holocaust. Their account is an example of the "big lie." In the event of an Arab victory in 1948, Palestinian Arab leaders planned to carry out a real Nakba for the Jews of Israel - not just a wave of refugees but mass murder. As Israeli novelist Amos Oz, a leader of the peace movement, describes in his classic memoir on the War of Independence as he experienced it in Jerusalem: "All the Jewish settlements that were captured by the Arabs in the War of Independence, without exception, were razed to the ground, and their Jewish inhabitants were murdered or taken captive or escaped, but the Arab armies did not allow any of the survivors to return after the war." Oz also cites Azzam Pasha, the secretary general of the Arab League, who vowed in 1948 that "this war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades." And, according to Oz, "the Iraqi Prime Minister, Muzahim al-Bajaji, called on the Jews 'to pack their bags and leave while there was still time,' because the Arabs had vowed that after their victory, they would only spare the lives of those few Jews who had lived in Palestine before 1917." Israelis should never apologize for winning the War of Independence and avoiding another Holocaust.
2023-03-09 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive