The argument that Palestinians’ own leaders caused their expulsionPrinted in full in 1948, with its sources named · 1948 to 2016
Blame within
The argument that Palestinians’ own leaders caused their expulsion
One of the oldest arguments about 1948 is that Palestinians were failed above all by their own leaders — that the Arab states told them to leave, and so their displacement is not Israel’s doing. It is usually treated as a later rationalization. It is not. It was in American newspapers in 1948, in full, with its sources named, while the people it describes were still moving.
What changes over the following sixty years is not the claim but its standing. In 1948 it arrives attributed — to a magazine, to a letter, to a named Arab official who said it himself. By 2016 it is a headline with no argument attached.
“Thus, the Arab League forced the Arabs to evacuate Palestine. " Having created the Arab ‘refugee’ problem, they now present it as an international " issue.”
Rabbi Aaron Decter, reporting from Israel for the Boston Evening Globe. The same piece sits down with the National Liberation League and the Arab Workers’ Trade Congress, names the men he spoke to, and records that in Nazareth the inhabitants “did not fight, nor did they run away.”
CP-1948-044“Arab Refugees’ Plight Caused by Own Leaders.”
Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, carrying a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report of a letter by Herbert Bayard Swope in the New York Herald Tribune. It cites the London Economist on “the announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive, urging all Arabs in Haifa to quit,” and quotes Emil el Ghory of the Arab Higher Committee saying the refugee problem is “the direct result of the policy of resistance to partition… and it is they who have to bear responsibility.” This is the argument at its source, seven months after the Haifa evacuation.
CP-1948-059“Martial Law Ordered by Arab Leader.”
Great Falls Tribune, Montana, running the Associated Press from northern Palestine on Fawzi al-Qawuqji. The one clipping here from the period the leaders-told-them-to-leave claim is usually made about. It reports a commander declaring martial law. It does not report anyone being told to go.
CP-1948-006“Murders linked to land sales reopen an ugly chapter.”
The Oregonian, Barbara Demick for Knight-Ridder. It opens on one man: “Ali Jumhour kissed his wife goodbye at 9 a.m. Saturday and headed off to driving school.” Three Palestinians suspected of selling land to Jews killed in a month. The Palestinian Authority blames Israelis; Israelis say Palestinian officials encouraged it. Both accusations printed, neither resolved.
CP-1997-002“Hamas takeover of Gaza.”
Chicago Tribune. A headline with no verb attached to anybody outside Gaza.
CP-2007-003“EU cuts electricity funding to Gaza, says Hamas ‘diverting’ revenues.”
Gettysburg Times, running Ibrahim Barzak of the Associated Press from Gaza City. The word is in the paper’s own quotation marks, and a Hamas adviser is given the reply in the same story: the money, he says, was stolen by the company’s former director, and the investigation will be announced. The aid-diversion frame, on the day it arrives, with its rebuttal attached.
CP-2007-004“Israel accuses Hamas of diverting aid.”
The Rock Island Argus, on Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. Nine years on the quotation marks are gone from the headline and the accusation is the story rather than the occasion for one.
CP-2016-002