Please read `Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949` (Cambridge University Press, 1978), by Benny Morris.
Some highlights: 369 Palestinian villages were cleansed of Arabs (only 6 vacated on Arab orders, the remainder were coerced by Zionist military force and threats); 186 Israeli settlements were constructed on the ruins of the villages. A dozen full-on massacres took place to terrify the Arabs into fleeing, along with six documented cases of gang rapes. One particularly poignant quote is from the radiogram of an IDF officer to the Zionist HQ saying he needed another truckload of dynamite to destroy the villages assigned to his unit. Over 90% of the sources cited in the 61 pages of footnotes are in Israeli archives.
Keep in mind, the author, Benny Morris, is an Israeli historian and an extreme right-winger. (E.g. advocating that Israel nuke Iran`s centrifuge program if diplomacy fails, and expulsion of Israel`s Arab citizens if Israel faces and `existential threat. |
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