Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 18, 2019

03/18 Links Pt2: Pitzer College Disgraces Itself for BDS; Petition requests UNESCO to remove antisemitic Belgian "Carnival at Aalst" from Heritage list; Joe Lieberman says some Democrats are anti-Jewish, but party is not

From Ian:

Last week, the council of Pitzer College—a liberal-arts school in Claremont, California—voted to end its study-abroad program with Haifa University. The college’s president has declared he will not abide by the resolution of the council, a body made up of representatives of the faculty, staff, and students. But the results, writes Jonathan Marks, are nonetheless disturbing:

Pitzer maintains programs in China and Rwanda, both uncommonly repressive regimes with no regard for academic freedom. And look! They’re embarking on a program with the University of Zimbabwe, “conditions permitting.” . . .

So, to square its rejection of Israel with its rejection of absolutely no other country, the council’s motion focuses wholly on the specifics of Israel’s visa policy. Among other things, that policy bars from the country certain supporters of boycotting it. There is, of course, no reason to make that the line a nation must not cross. . . .

[T]he reason for the Pitzer boycott is the same as it has ever been [for boycotts of Israel]: to strike a blow against the intolerable presence and strength of Jews in the Middle East. Yes, the motion suggests that there may be ways to permit students to travel to Israel without dirtying themselves through contact with Israel’s universities. And yes, the motion allows for the possibility that other countries may one day also be deemed too filthy to touch. The American Studies Association said much the same thing when it voted for a boycott [of Israel] in 2013. Somehow, it hasn’t gotten around to boycotting anyone else yet. . . .

This is the first time that the stakeholders of a college—not a student government association, but the faculty, staff, and students of a college—has voted to ignore the protests of those in their community who consider [the boycott-Israel movement] anti-Semitic and to ignore their own responsibility to protect scholarship and teaching from partisanship. And all to spit on a country most of them don’t know a blessed thing about.

Germany Deports Convicted Palestinian Terrorist Rasmea Odeh, Cancels BDS Event After Outcry

After a strongly worded statement from United States Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, the German government has disallowed a planned anti-Semitic "Boycott, Divestment, Sanction" event in Berlin, and expelled its headline speaker, convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the German government and the Berlin Department for the Interior responded quickly to international outcy following the announcement that Odeh was set to speak at a "Palestinian Women in the Liberation Struggle" in the country's capital city, even after initially pledging to allow the event to go forward.

Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was the mastermind and lead bomber in an attack on a Jewish grocery store in Israel in 1969 which left two Hebrew University students dead and scores injured. She was convicted and jailed for a decade before being released in a prisoner exchange. Eventually, she ended up in the United States. She was finally deported back to her home country of Jordan in 2017, after U.S. authorities discovered she had lied about her terrorism convictions on her immigration application.

The elderly Odeh remains a hero to anti-Israel activists across the globe, and has fans in both Congresswoman Rashida Tliab (D-MI) and Women's March leader Linda Sarsour, according to William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection. No surprise, both women have been known to express anti-Semitic views.

Petition requests UNESCO to remove antisemitic Belgian "Carnival at Aalst" from Heritage list

After the Carnival in Aalst, Belgium, featured caricatured Jewish figures with money and rats, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC) requested that UNESCO remove Aalst from its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The Carnival at Aalst has been recognized on the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2010.

A petition urging the removal of the Carnival from the list has received over 14,000 signatures.

“UNESCO should not continue to endorse this repeated violation of its values by retaining the Carnival on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”, Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UKLFI commented.

“The date of the Bureau’s meeting, 21 March, is the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This will be a good opportunity for the members of the Bureau to show that they really mean it,” Dr. Shimon Samuels, SWC’s Director for International Relations, said.

The Ambassador of Poland to UNESCO has endorsed the request.

UKLFI is an association that fights anti-Israel and antisemitic activity. The SWC is a global human rights organization that researches the Holocaust and hate in a historic and contemporary context. The SWC is accredited by UNESCO and an Associate Partner NGO.

The Dutch Chief Rabbi, Binyamin Jacobs, said that the portrayal at the Aalst Carnival was “shocking” and contained “typical, antisemitic caricatures from 1939.”

Cartoon of the Day - Let's be intersectional!

Continuing my re-captioning of single-panel cartoons....

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Minat al-Qal'a - an Umayyad/Crusader fort on the beach in Ashdod

One of the most interesting things about Israel is that everywhere you look, you can find sites from over a thousand years ago that no one even thinks is a big deal.

A couple of weeks ago I visited Minat al-Qal'a, the remains of an Umayyad fort that was repurposed by the Crusaders, on a beach in Ashdod.

Although the site is fenced in, the fence is broken and unfortunately it looks like kids go in there to drink or otherwise party. It doesn't appear that the Israel Antiquities Authority has placed a high priority on this fort, which is very impressive.

Here's my 360 degree panorama from the center of the fort. It renders a little weirdly so I am including the full panorama.

It is large, and includes three mostly identical rooms still enclosed.

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03/18 Links Pt1: Father of 12 succumbs to injuries from Sunday terror attack; PA official implicitly endorses terror attack in which 2 Israelis were murdered; Grenell: U.N. Human Rights Council is antisemitic

From Ian:

Father of 12 succumbs to injuries from Sunday terror attack

Rabbi Achiad Ettinger died of his injuries Monday, a day after being shot by a Palestinian terrorist during an attack in the northern West Bank, a family spokesperson said.

Ettinger, 47, was a father of 12 from the settlement of Eli. Doctors had been working to save his life since the attack near Ariel Sunday morning in which a soldier, Gal Keidan, was also killed.

Ettinger was shot in the head and neck as he drove by the Ariel Junction by terror suspect Omar Abu Laila, 19, who had stolen Geidan’s gun and opened fire on passing cars, according to the IDF.

He was rushed to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva in critical condition and doctors worked for a day to save his life before he succumbed to his injuries, the hospital said.

Relatives of Ettinger told reporters Sunday that despite having been shot and bleeding profusely, he turned his car around and fired four bullets in the direction of the attacker, who managed to escape in a vehicle abandoned by a fleeing driver.

“This self-sacrifice characterized him over the years,” his family said in a statement, noting his decision to live for several years in south Tel Aviv “to strengthen Jewish identity” in the working class neighborhood.

His family asked that his organs be donated, Ettinger’s sister told reporters.

Hundreds mourn terror victim Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger in Eli

Hundreds of mourners came to the funeral of Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger in the settlement of Eli on Monday, as his family and friends tearfully eulogized and praised him for his life’s work and for having attacked the terrorist who took killed IDF soldier Gal Kaidan and the rabbi himself.

Ettinger, the father of 12, was killed in Sunday’s terror attack as he stopped to shoot at the terrorist as he was carrying out his attack, who returned fire and mortally wounded the rabbi.

Speaking at the funeral, Education Minister Naftali Bennett vowed to “cut off the evil” of terrorism and said that the State of Israel needed to take action in order “to win” the battle against its enemies.

“The evil that cuts off the best people must itself be cut off,” said Bennett in front of Ettinger’s family.

“On your grave, I say that the blood of Jews will not be the cheapest thing in the Middle East. We will cut off terror only when we free ourselves from our legal and mental bonds which prevent us from winning,” continued the minister.

Bennett described the rabbi as “a hero in life and hero in death,” and praised both his work in establishing a yeshiva in south Tel Aviv and his heroism in stopping his vehicle to attack the terrorist who was perpetrating a terror attack at that very moment.

“When the murderer stood not far from where we are now Rabbi Ahiad could have done the easiest thing and ignore the attack, say it’s not my problem, but he fired at the murderer and paid for it with his life,” said Bennett.

Netanyahu vows to build new West Bank housing following terror attack

Israel will begin building 840 housing units in the West Bank town of Ariel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday following Sunday's terror attack.

Speaking Monday at a visit to the town near which two people were killed in a terrorist attack the day before, the prime minister said, “These terrorists will not uproot us from here, the total opposite will happen.

“Tomorrow, we will begin building 840 housing units in Ariel in a new neighborhood as was approved two years ago.”

Netanyahu offered his condolences to the families of Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger and Gal Keidan.

Keidan, 19, a soldier guarding Ariel junction was killed at the scene of Sunday’s terror attack. He was buried in his hometown of Beersheba on Monday morning.

Ettinger, 47, succumbed to his wounds Monday morning after doctors at Beilinson hospital fought to save his life for almost 24 hours. Ettinger was the father of 12 and was head of the Oz and Emunah Yeshiva in south Tel Aviv.

“The two people who were killed were wonderful people, I am told,’ said the prime minister. “The hearts of the entire people are with their families.”

On Sunday morning, Israeli police found a small glider made from polystyrene that had an explosive device attached to it that came from Gaza.

The explosive was neutralized.

A similar booby-trapped plane was found last week, that one attached to balloons. My guess is that if the balloons are shot down (with bullets or lasers) or naturally explode when they gain enough height, the plane can glide a long distance before landing, increasing the range of the improvised explosives.

There were some 50 balloons with incendiary devices launched from Gaza on Sunday, perhaps to make up from Hamas canceling the "return march" on Friday.

There is no weapon more indiscriminate that incendiary balloons. Even the most rudimentary rockets can be aimed a little bit, but these balloons can land anywhere.

Which makes the silence of human rights organizations about this clear violation of international law even more egregious.

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The new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Muhammed Shtayyeh, a key member of Fatah's Central Committee, has emphasized that Fatah does not recognize Israel:

The new cabinet and government is made up of only Fatah members, as opposed to the previous one which was nominally independent.

Abbas has dissolved the Palestinian Legislative Council which was led by Hamas members. To do it, he used the Palestinian Constitutional Court, which has mostly Fatah members that Abbas handpicked in 2016.

In other words, every single Palestinian executive, legislative and judicial branch is now headed by Fatah, and Mahmoud Abbas is the head of Fatah besides being president of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO.

Fatah does not recognize Israel, even though the PLO pretends to.

There has been very little discussion in Western media about Abbas' illegal moves to consolidate power, even as there have been hundreds of articles about Israeli internal politics. Similarly, the positions of these new leaders of Palestinian bodies - support for terrorism, being against a two state solution - have been ignored as well.

The lack of interest in how the Palestinian side is acting, combined with the intense interest in finding fault with the most minor of actions or words by Israeli officials, is simply another manifestation of how the media and world governments are biased against Israel - and don't really care about Palestinians.

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One fairly consistent feature that can be found among most people is psychological projection, the accusation that your ideological enemies are guilty of your own crimes or less than pristine thoughts.

Arab leaders accuse Jews of ridiculous crimes that invariably are things that they have done themselves, like attacking the enemy's crops or stealing their water.

The progressive Left is at least as guilty of projection. The entire idea that "white people" are invariably racist and that people of color are more righteous because of their skin color is as racist as it gets. No one stereotypes the sins of their ideological enemies more than today's "progressive" Left. And often they accuse white people, even those on the farthest Left, of subconscious racism that is so deeply embedded that it simply cannot ever be truly erased, and therefore all white people must be burdened with the original sin of racism forever.

Often, this projection serves as another psychological tool used by magicians - a means to misdirect people's attention so they don't see what is going on in front of their faces. When you keep the discussion oriented towards the supposed sins of your opponents, you keep the discussion away from people looking at you.

Ilhan Omar pretends to address her critics by misdirecting them in her new Washington Post op-ed:

There’s been so much noise about my views on foreign policy, I decided it needed more than a tweet. https://t.co/ogFqf3X4Dk
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) March 18, 2019

No, the noise isn't about her views of foreign policy, which are pretty much identical to all progressives. The noise is about her latent antisemitic attitudes. But Omar wants to misdirect away from that.

Since I began my first term in Congress, I have sought to speak openly and honestly about the scale of the issues our country faces — whether it is ending the crippling burden of student debt, tackling the existential threat of climate change or making sure no one in one of the richest countries in the world dies from lack of health care.

When she accused Jews of dual loyalty and the Jewish lobby of controlling Congress with its "Benjamins," she was speaking openly and honestly - about her own antisemitic feelings, feelings that are so deep that she does not even recognize them. Her view of US foreign policy is one that is secretly controlled by nefarious Jewish money and influence, that Jews speak with essentially one voice on Israel.

The article pretends to insist on using a single standard based on human rights for all nations, but the logic falls apart when you look past the platitudes:

Our criticisms of oppression and regional instability caused by Iran are not legitimate if we do not hold Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to the same standards.

I was unaware that Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain are controlling and funding terror groups worldwide like Iran is. But let's treat them all the same, based on internal human rights only, and ignore fomenting terror that violates the human rights of people she really doesn't think deserve the same human rights as everyone else!

Even though this op-ed was carefully written to make it appear that Omar is not obsessed with "Palestine," she has to address it and gives it five paragraphs - and her bias shines through even the layers of consultants and ghostwriters that she hired to spin this op-ed to be as liberal and fair as possible:

This vision also applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. U.S. support for Israel has a long history. The founding of Israel 70 years ago was built on the Jewish people’s connection to their historical homeland, as well as the urgency of establishing a nation in the wake of the horror of the Holocaust and the centuries of anti-Semitic oppression leading up to it. Many of the founders of Israel were themselves refugees who survived indescribable horrors.

We must acknowledge that this is also the historical homeland of Palestinians. And without a state, the Palestinian people live in a state of permanent refugeehood and displacement. This, too, is a refugee crisis, and they, too, deserve freedom and dignity.

A balanced, inclusive approach to the conflict recognizes the shared desire for security and freedom of both peoples. I support a two-state solution, with internationally recognized borders, which allows for both Israelis and Palestinians to have their own sanctuaries and self-determination. This has been official bipartisan U.S. policy across two decades and has been supported by each of the most recent Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as well as the consensus of the Israeli security establishment. As Jim Mattis, who later was President Trump’s defense secretary, said in 2011 , “The current situation between those two peoples is unsustainable.”

Working toward peace in the region also means holding everyone involved accountable for actions that undermine the path to peace — because without justice, there can never be a lasting peace. When I criticize certain Israeli government actions in Gaza or settlements in the West Bank, it is because I believe these actions not only threaten the possibility of peace in the region — they also threaten the United States’ own national security interests.

My goal in speaking out at all times has been to encourage both sides to move toward a peaceful two-state solution. We need to reinsert this call back into the public debate with urgency. Both parties must come to the table for a final peace deal; violence will not bring us any closer to that day.

Notice that Omar doesn't say a word about Palestinian obligations in human rights, or in bringing peace. Notice that she doesn't say explicitly that the two state solution must include a Jewish state, only an Israeli one. Notice that she only brings specific examples of bad behavior by only one side that must be protested. Notice the absence of the words "terror" or "Hamas."

Notice also that she uses another dog-whistle - "justice" - a word that means, to the far Left, the dismantling of the Jewish political presence in the region, as something that is inherently racist, while another Arab and Muslim state (that the Palestinian constitution says "Palestine" is) is not a violation of "justice." To the far-Left, "justice" means that Palestinians have the right to move to Israel even four generations after they fled. Omar probably agrees with that definition, always intended to destroy the Jewish state. She dances around her real feelings on that critical component of "justice."

Also notice that Omar doesn't address how her supposed care about universal values doesn't square with her support of BDS - of boycotting only one nation in the world. If everyone is to be treated the same, then why such particularity in punishing only one state in the world with boycotts and sanctions? And the founders of the BDS movement are very clear that they are against a two state solution - how can she support Israel's existence, and what form would Israel take?

Finally, notice that Omar's position that Israeli actions "threaten the United States’ own national security interests" means that Omar believes that Palestinians are always going to threaten the world with violence unless they achieve what they consider "justice." They are, according to her logic, an inherently violent people. What other people on the planet are considered a threat to world security if we do not give in to their own definitions of "justice"?

This op-ed is not meant to clear up her position on the conflict. It is meant to obscure it using nice words like "peace" and "justice" and "human rights" and "equality" that do not mean what they normally literally mean when used by the progressive Left and their Arab partners.

The entire article is misdirection away from Ilhan Omar's very problematic biases and positions. If she wants to clear the air, she should speak honestly, and not behind the layers of consultants that wrote and massaged this op-ed to say nothing about her real positions about Jews and Israel.

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03/17 Links: Victim of J&S attack id'ed as IDF soldier Gal Keidan, 19; UNHRC to call for Israeli arrests, settlement boycott; PMW: UNHRC should condemn the PA and Hamas for abuse of Palestinian children

From Ian:

Victim of West Bank attack identified as IDF soldier Gal Keidan, 19

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday identified the victim of a West Bank stabbing and shooting attack earlier in the day as Sgt. Gal Keidan, 19, from the southern city of Beersheba.

Keidan, who served in the IDF’s 334th Artillery Battalion, will be buried in the Beersheba Military Cemetery at 11 a.m. on Monday, the army said.

He will be posthumously promoted to the rank of staff sergeant.

Two other Israelis were critically injured in the attack, which began at around 9:45 a.m. near Ariel Junction.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement, conveyed his condolences to Keidan’s family.

US envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt responded to the attack on Twitter, saying his country “condemn[s] today’s brutal attack by a Palestinian terrorist who murdered at least 1 Israeli & injured others near Ariel.”

In a follow up post, Greenblatt said: “Disgustingly, but not surprisingly, Hamas & Palestinian Islamic Jihad welcomed the attack & no doubt the Palestinian Authority will reward the terrorist under its pay for slay policy.”

1 Israeli killed, 2 critically injured in West Bank terror shootings

One Israeli was killed and two were critically injured in a pair of shooting attacks in the northern West Bank on Sunday, the military said.

The attack began at around 9:45 a.m. near the Ariel Junction, where the terrorist assaulted a soldier with a knife and managed to gain control of his weapon, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said.

The attacker then fired at passing vehicles, hitting a civilian in the first vehicle. A second vehicle was hit, but managed to flee the scene. A third car stopped, and the attacker, whom Conricus said “appears to be a Palestinian,” took it and fled the scene.

“I saw the terrorist. He fired at my vehicle and I ran away while it was still running. The terrorist then stole the car, and I saw him continue driving in the direction of Tel Aviv,” the driver of the third vehicle told the Ynet news site.

Conricus said that the suspect then continued to the nearby Gitai Junction, where he shot at a soldier standing at a hitchhiking post, injuring him.

Netanyahu, Rivlin condemn West Bank terror shootings, vow to apprehend attacker

Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin, condemned the terror attack that took place Sunday morning at a pair of junctions in the northern West Bank in which one Israeli was killed and two were injured.

“We are in the midst of pursuing the terrorists in two locations in the Ariel area,” Netanyahu said at the opening of the weekly cabinet meeting. “I affirm my support for the IDF soldiers, the Shin Bet and the security forces chasing the terrorists. I’m sure they will catch them… as we did in every previous case.”

The IDF said it was not immediately clear whether the shooter had acted alone.

“My thoughts are with the families who are right now coming to terms with the terrible news from the horrific terrorist attack, and with the security forces who are right now in pursuit of the terrorists. The State of Israel will seek out, find and defeat all those who attack us,” Rivlin tweeted.

Several lawmakers used the attack as a platform for political statements over how to best handle Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.

Culture Minister Miri Regev said the attacks “were a direct result of the rampant incitement on the part of Ahmad Tibi, who on Friday demonstrated that he was not prepared to condemn the murder of an innocent child in her bed and encouraged martyrs simultaneously.”

Hamas and Islamic Jihad praise deadly West Bank terror shootings

The Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups praised a pair of shooting attacks in the northern West Bank on Sunday, in which one Israeli was killed and two others were critically wounded, calling them “heroic.”

Early Sunday, close to the Ariel Junction, a terrorist assaulted a soldier with a knife, managed to gain control of his weapon and shot him dead, an IDF spokesman said.

The attacker then fired at multiple passing vehicles, hitting two cars and injuring a civilian, and then took another person’s automobile and fled in it, the spokesman said.

The suspect drove to the nearby Gitai Junction, where he shot at a soldier standing at a hitchhiking post, wounding him, and then continued on to Bruqin, an Palestinian village where Israeli security forces were pursuing him, the spokesman added.

“Hamas praises the heroic Salfit operation that happened this morning, which came in response to the occupation’s crimes,” Hamas said in a statement posted on its official Telegram account, referring to a Palestinian town near Gitai Junction. “This courageous and bold operation affirms that resistance, in all of its forms, is the most powerful and successful option to deter the occupation, foil its plans and protect and defend our people’s rights and holy sites.”

Cartoon of the Day: So much in common

Continuing my re-captioning (and in this case, editing) of single-panel cartoons....

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Palestinian paper reveals secrets of Bilderberg group.(Sounds a lot like the Elders of Zion.)

Amad, a Palestinian news site, has an exclusive report of the criteria to join the (real) Bilderberg group and what its agenda is.

The Bilderberg Group is not a secret. It is a bunch of Europeans and American leaders and heads of corporations who meet regularly to discuss Atlanticism.

According to Amad, however, they are all either Jews or Freemasons. Any new member must be either Jewish, Zionist or a globalist.

It runs the world, according to the Arab media. In the West, a ruler does not ascend to power or take office without the approval of this group. Which means they chose Clinton and Obama to be Presdents. (They are strangely silent on Trump.)

The invasion of Iraq was part of the agenda to liquidate the power bases in the Arab region to nationalize the region and to bring it under Israeli control.

Its goals are supposedly a new world government , one army, one currency and one industry. It wants to topple all national identities.It controls human minds through its control of the media, the schools. It manufactures crises and wars.

Of course, the European arm is controlled by the Rothschilds.

Good thing I already run it, or else I'd have to expand a bit.

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Islamic Jihad praises "heroic operations" of triple terror attack

Here's what the autotranslated Islamic Jihad news site Palestine Today described this morning's terror attacks:

Nothing thrills these animals more than dead Jews.

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The @NYTimes bullied into publishing lie "most Arabs forcibly removed from their homes in Jaffa"

Three days ago, the New York Times published an article entitled "Jaffa Is Tel Aviv’s Unexpected Luxury Hotspot."

Palestinians were outraged because an article about Jaffa in 2019 didn't include their lies about Jaffa in 1948.

They wrote to the New York Times, and unbelievably it issued a correction - assuming their lies about most of Jaffa's Arabs being expelled in 1948 is the truth.

Editors’ Note: March 14, 2019
The original version of this article, in focusing exclusively on the new high-end hotels and other additions, failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa's makeup and its history — in particular, the history and continuing presence of its Arab population and the expulsion of many residents in 1948. Because of this lapse, the article also did not acknowledge the continuing controversy about new development and its effect on Jaffa. After readers pointed out the problems, editors added some of that background information to this version.

This paragraph was added to the article:

The gentrification hasn’t pleased everyone. Jaffa for centuries has been a stronghold of Arab and Muslim life. In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded, most of Jaffa’s Arab residents were forcibly removed from their homes. Today the district is one of the few areas of the country with a mixed Arab and Jewish population, and as luxury projects have moved in, so have accusations that the city’s Muslim history is being erased.

Most Arabs did not get expelled from Jaffa in 1948. The New York Times was bullied by Arabs into publishing revisionist history.

I have written about Jaffa a number of times. The first residents who were forced from their homes were Jews, in August 1947, from Arab fire - including from the minaret of the Hassan Bek Mosque.

The rich Arabs of Jaffa left quite voluntarily starting when the fighting started in December 1947. They mostly went to Lebanon, where a lot of them had families and where they had similarly fled in 1936 to avoid fighting.

Historian Efraim Karsh writes:

In Jaffa, Palestine’s largest Arab city, the municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea; in Jerusalem, the AHC ordered the transfer of women and children, and local gang leaders pushed out residents of several neighborhoods.

As for the Palestinian Arab leaders themselves, they hastened to get themselves out of Palestine and to stay out at the most critical moment. Taking a cue from these higher-ups, local leaders similarly rushed en masse through the door. High Commissioner Cunningham summarized what was happening with quintessential British understatement:

You should know that the collapsing Arab morale in Palestine is in some measure due to the increasing tendency of those who should be leading them to leave the country. . . . For instance, in Jaffa the mayor went on four-day leave 12 days ago and has not returned, and half the national committee has left. In Haifa the Arab members of the municipality left some time ago; the two leaders of the Arab Liberation Army left actually during the recent battle. Now the chief Arab magistrate has left. In all parts of the country the effendi class has been evacuating in large numbers over a considerable period and the tempo is increasing.

An article in The Nation from 1948 echoed this theme, that Jaffa was evacuated by the Arabs and not the Jews after their leaders fled:

Most of Jaffa was in good shape. The Arab masses, when they fled, took what little they could carry; the wealthy Arabs, who had left during the months before the real fighting began, often salvaged the greater part of their portable possessions.

Not one source from 1948 claimed that Arabs were expelled by Jews.

Petra Marquardt-Bigman uncovered a first hand Arab account as well:

I found an Al-Ahram Special from 1998“commemorating 50 years of Arab dispossession since the creation of the State of Israel.” On pp.91-93 there is an eyewitness account covering the situation in Jaffa between late 1947 to May 1948 under the title “After the matriculation.” The author, Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, is a former resident of Jaffa with impeccable anti-Zionist credentials – which is to say he would have described in detail all the horrors if there was any truth to the NYT claim that “most of Jaffa’s Arab residents were forcibly removed from their homes.”

However, recalling his last months in his hometown, Abu-Lughod wrote:

“No sooner had the UN General Assembly passed its partition resolution in November 1947, than Palestine was torn apart by a war waged between its two historically antagonistic communities — Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews. […] The first shots were exchanged between Jaffa and Tel Aviv on the eve of 30 November 1947 during a three-day general protest strike declared by the Arab Higher Committee. […] On the eve of the UN Partition Resolution, Jaffa’s Arab population numbered over 70,000. By and large they supported the traditional Palestinian leadership headed by Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti.”

Understandably, Abu-Lughod, who was by then a professor of political science, didn’t mention the fact that the man who headed the popular “traditional Palestinian leadership” in the second half of the 1940s had spent the first half of the decade in Berlin, where he lived in considerable comfort as a well-paid guest and committed ally of Nazi Germany. Indeed, a 1948 magazine article described Al-Husseini as “Hitler of the Holy Land.”

Abu-Lughod then goes on to note that most Arabs in Jaffa and elsewhere seemed confident that “as the country belonged to the Arabs, they were the ones who would defend their homeland with zeal and patriotism, which the Jews – being of many scattered countries and tongues, and moreover being divided into Ashkenazi and Sephardic – would inevitably lack. In short, there was a belief that the Jews were generally cowards.”

When this belief proved mistaken, people started to leave Jaffa. According to Abu-Lughod, at first mainly the rich left, but as more and more people began to flee the fighting, the “National Committee…decided to levy a tax on every family who insisted on leaving.” Abu-Lughod volunteered to help with collecting this “tax:”

“I worked in a branch of the committee based in the headquarters of the Muslim Youth Association near the port of Jaffa. Our job consisted mainly of harassing people to dissuade them from leaving, and when they insisted, we would begin bargaining over what they should pay, according to how much luggage they were carrying with them and how many members of the family there were. At first we set the taxes high. Then as the situation deteriorated, we reduced the rates, especially when our friends and relatives began to be among those leaving.

We continued collecting this tax until 23 April, when the combined force of the Haganah and the Irgun succeeded in defeating the Arab forces stationed in the Manshiya quarter adjacent to Southern Tel-Aviv. On that day, as we realised that an attack on the centre of Jaffa was imminent, I and my family decided that they had to be evacuated temporarily. We rented a van, into which we crammed all the women and young children and sent them to Nablus.”

Abu-Lughod himself stayed in Jaffa until May 3, when he left by ship together with two friends to make the short trip to Beirut. By July 1948, he was already back with his family in Nablus, from where he soon made his way to the US to study and to build a successful career at Northwestern University. He left there in 1992 to become vice-president of Bir Zeit University in Ramallah.

As Abu-Lughod’s account illustrates, the majority of Jaffa’s Arab residents fled the fighting over a period of several weeks or even months – by land or by sea – while Jaffa’s self-proclaimed defenders tried to exploit those who wanted to leave by demanding a “tax.”

Petra also shows that most of the Jaffa Arabs in 1948 were recent immigrants from other Arab lands, which explains why they were so eager to flee rather than defend homes that they felt few ancestral ties to.

The New York Times' own reporting from 1948 doesn't have a hint of Jews expelling Arabs. The Arabs fled out of fear of war. (And many stayed, including in Jaffa, without any problem.)

The New York Times assumed that the outraged comments were based on the truth. After all, the repeated claims of Jews expelling Arabs from Israel must have some truth to them, right?

But the truth matters. And the New York Times has just proven once again that it prefers a version of history that caters to its biases rather than to facts.

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