Mahmoud Khalil lies that his grandparents were "forcibly removed" from Tiberias in 1948. @CNN and the @NYTimes accept it as fact. ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Mahmoud Khalil lies that his grandparents were "forcibly removed" from Tiberias in 1948. @CNN and the @NYTimes accept it as fact.

CNN writes a backgrounder about Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University leader of the antisemitic CUAD group.

In an interview with CNN last spring, Khalil said he was born a Palestinian refugee in Syria, but his family is from Tiberias, an Israeli city that was once known for its mixed Jewish and Arab population.

During the Arab-Israeli War in 1948, Palestinians were forcibly removed from cities like Tiberias in what became known as “The Nakba,” or catastrophe.

The New York Times uses almost identical language:

Mr. Khalil was born and raised in Syria because his grandparents were forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Tiberias, now part of Israel, according to his lawyers’ legal filing.

Indeed, the legal brief does make that claim, employing a footnote that does not support it at all.

Mahmoud Khalil is Palestinian, but he was born and raised in Syria because his grandparents were forcibly removed from their ancestral home in Tiberias, Palestine.

It is simply not true.

Efraim Karsh summarized what happened in Tiberias in 1948:

Five months after waging his war of annihilation on the Yishuv, the Mufti's strategy had backfired in grand style. His forces, together with the ALA, had been routed, and Palestinian Arab society had been profoundly shattered, with tens of thousands of terrified and disorientated Arabs taking to the road. On April 18, another milestone in the war was passed when, after a few days of fighting, the Hagana made its first urban gain, capturing the mixed-population city of Tiberias, overlooking the Sea of Galilee, where some 6,000 Jews and about as many Arabs were living.

Ignoring pleas by the local Jewish leadership to stay put, the Arabs acting on the orders of the Nazareth National Committee and on the advice of local British commanders chose to leave Tiberias en masse and were evacuated by the British army.

Contemporaneous accounts support this.

The Jews and Arabs of Tiberias signed a treaty of non-aggression. Yet Iraqi troops, and possibly Syrians with a former Nazi officer (1948, Benny Morris, p. 199), moved in and started attacking the Jews.

The Palestine Post, April 9, 1948, describes how the Jews were forced to evacuate their homes under fire.

Eight Jews were killed and the Haganah responded. (April 11, 1948)

The Arab residents chose to flee under the advice of their leaders and the British, who helped evacuate them with their lorries. (April 21)

Benny Morris largely agrees:

The Haganah occupied key Arab areas and demanded surrender. The Jewish commanders vetoed the idea of a "truce," and the Arab notables, perhaps on their own initiative, perhaps heeding British advice, decided on an evacuation of the population. The British imposed a curfew and assembled a fleet of trucks. Then, on 18 April, escorted by British armored cars, the Arab population was trucked out in separate convoys east-ward to Jordan and westward to ALA-held Nazareth.

But two remained. (April 22)