NLRB Confirms Legality of Union Support for Israel Boycott; Union Condemns Political Attacks on BDS

[Little Tich]

30. I suppose that if one starts drinking the hasbara kool-Aid, there's no going back to reality.

I suppose that if one starts drinking the hasbara kool-Aid, there's no going back to reality.

Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe may disagree on a few things, but that the Palestinians were mostly driven out is not one of those things:

Causes of the 1948 Palestinian exodus
Source: Wikipedia
(snip)

Morris's Four Waves analysis
In The Irish Times of February 2008, Benny Morris summarized his analysis as follows: "Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops." In The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, Morris divided the Palestinian exodus in four waves and an aftermath: Morris analyses the direct causes, as opposed to his proposed indirect cause of the "transfer idea", for each wave separately.

Causes of the first wave, December 1947 – March 1948
Morris gives no numbers regarding the first wave, but says "the spiral of violence precipitated flight by the middle and upper classes of the big towns, especially Haifa, Jaffa and Jerusalem, and their satellite rural communities. It also prompted the piecemeal, but almost complete, evacuation of the Arab rural population from what was to be the heartland of the Jewish State—the Coastal Plain between Tel Aviv and Hadera—and a small-scale partial evacuation of other rural areas hit by hostilities and containing large Jewish concentrations, namely the Jezreel and Jordan valleys." More specific to the causes Morris states: "The Arab evacuees from the towns and villages left largely because of Jewish ... attacks or fear of impending attack, and from a sense of vulnerability." According to Morris expulsions were "almost insignificant" and "many more left as a result of orders or advice from Arab military commanders and officials" to safer areas within the country. The Palestinian leadership struggled against the exodus.

Decisive causes of abandonment of Palestinian villages and towns according to Benny Morris
Decisive causes of abandonment Occurrences
military assault on settlement 215
influence of nearby town's fall 59
expulsion by Jewish forces 53
fear (of being caught up in fighting) 48
whispering campaigns 15
abandonment on Arab orders 6
unknown 44

Causes of the second wave, April–June 1948
According to Morris the "Haganah and IZL offensives in Haifa, Jaffa and eastern and western Galilee precipitated a mass exodus." "Undoubtedly ... the most important single factor in the exodus of April–June was Jewish attack. This is demonstrated clearly by the fact that each exodus occurred during or in the immediate wake of military assault. No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population before the main Haganah/IZL assault." Also many villages were abandoned during attacks, but others were evacuated because the inhabitants feared they would be next. A major factor in the exodus was the undermining of Palestinian morale due to the earlier fall and exodus from other towns and villages.[139] Morris says that the "Palestinian leaders and commanders struggled against [the exodus]" but in many cases encouraged evacuation of women children and old people out of harms way and in some cases ordered villages to evacuate.

Regarding expulsions (Morris defines expulsions as "when a Haganah/IDF/IZL/LHI unit entered or conquered a town or village and then ordered its inhabitants to leave&quot Morris says that the Yishuv leaders "were reluctant to openly order or endorse expulsions" in towns but "Haganah commanders exercised greater independence and forcefulness in the countryside": "In general Haganah operational orders for attacks on towns did not call for the expulsion or eviction of the civilian population. But from early April, operational orders for attacks on villages and clusters of villages more often than not called for the destruction of villages and, implicitly or explicitly, expulsion." Issuing expulsion orders was hardly necessary though, because "most villages were completely or almost completely empty by the time they were conquered", "the inhabitants usually fled with the approach of the advancing Jewish column or when the first mortar bombs began to hit their homes." The Givati Brigade engaged in expulsions near Rehovot.

Causes of the third and fourth waves, July–October 1948 and October–November 1948
In July "altogether, the Israeli offensives of the Ten Days and the subsequent clearing operations probably send something over 100,000 Arabs into exile." About half of these were expelled from Lydda and Ramle on 12 through 14 July. Morris says that expulsion orders were given for both towns, the one for Ramle calling for "sorting out of the inhabitants, and send the army-age males to a prisoner-of-war camp". "The commanders involved understood that what was happening was an expulsion rather than a spontaneous exodus."

In October and November Operations Yoav in the Negev and Hiram in central Galilee were aimed at destroying enemy formations of respectively the Egyptian army and the Arab Liberation Army, and precipitated the flight of 200,000–230,000 Arabs. The UN mediator on Palestine Folke Bernadotte reported in September 1948 that Palestinian flight, "resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion". United Nations observers, who had been dispatched to monitor how the partition plan, reported in October that Israeli policy was that of "uprooting Arabs from their native villages in Palestine by force or threat". In the Negev the clearing was more complete because "the OC, Allon, was known to want "Arab-clean" areas along his line of advance" and "his subordinates usually acted in accordance"[149] and the inhabitants were almost uniformly Muslim. In the Galilee pocket, for various reasons, about 30–50 per cent of the inhabitants stayed. More specifically regarding the causes of the exodus Morris says: "Both commanders were clearly bent on driving out the population in the area they were conquering," and "Many, perhaps most, [Arabs] expected to be driven out, or worse. Hence, when the offensives were unleashed, there was a 'coalescence' of Jewish and Arab expectations, which led, especially in the south, to spontaneous flight by most of the inhabitants. And, on both fronts, IDF units 'nudged' Arabs into flight and expelled communities."

Main causes of the Palestinian exodus according to Israeli historian Benny Morris
Wave Period Refugees Main causes
First wave December 1947 – March 1948 about 100,000 sense of vulnerability, attacks and fear of impending attack
Second wave April–June 1948 250,000–300,000 attacks and fear of impending attack
Third wave July–October 1948 about 100,000 attacks and expulsions
Fourth wave October–November 1948 200,000–230,000 attacks and expulsions
Border clearings November 1948 – 1950 30,000-40,000

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_1948_Palestinian_exodus#Morris.27s_Four_Waves_analysis