No don't worry about it mate, it's probably how I read the post - kinda start to expect kickback on this thread! no offence taken and definitely no need to apologise.
You're 100% right - I've simplified right down to the bones, but that's BECAUSE of reading into it. The further back you read - the more contradictions to each story you find.
The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem by revisionist historian Benny Morris, states:
Israel-haters are fond of citing—and more often, mis-citing—my work in support of their arguments. Let me offer some corrections. . . . In defiance of the will of the international community, as embodied in the UN General Assembly Resolution of November 29th, 1947, [the Palestinians] launched hostilities against the Jewish community in Palestine in the hope of aborting the emergence of the Jewish state and perhaps destroying that community. But they lost; and one of the results was the displacement of 700,000 of them from their homes. . . . On the local level, in dozens of localities around Palestine, Arab leaders advised or ordered the evacuation of women and children or whole communities. . . .
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.
The displacement of the 700,000 Arabs who became “refugees”—and I put the term in inverted commas, as two-thirds of them were displaced from one part of Palestine to another and not from their country (which is the usual definition of a refugee)—was not a “racist crime” . . . but the result of a national conflict and a war, with religious overtones, from the Muslim perspective, launched by the Arabs themselves.
This is from documentation from Israeli state archives, whilst Isidor Feinstein Stone (a Left-wing journalist) wrote about the exodus of Palestinian Arabs (written in 1948 as it was happening):
“Ill-armed, outnumbered, however desperate their circumstances, the Jews stood fast.” The Palestinians, by contrast, began to run away almost as soon as the fighting began. “First the wealthiest families went,” “While the Arab guerrillas were moving in, the Arab civilian population was moving out.”
- a hugely different recount to the current description where mass violent displacement happened - more fleeing.
This is my point. I wasn't there, I don't know. I've read polar opposites on both sides... And yes i'm fully aware it's a cop-out answer. I'm in no way denying it happened, merely which side to believe. You believe what you want, i'll remain unresolved.
Jesus Christ what a long-winded boring post that is.
