The Palestinian Refugee Problem Explained (Nakba and the Arab narrative)
The Zionists stole the Palestinians’ land, massacred them, and kicked them out of their homes. That is what you hear from the Palestinians and their supporters. In this video, I will be discussing the Nakba, which is the Arab name for the Palestinian disaster of 1948, and I will be covering the partition plan, Plan Dalet, Deir Yassin, and much more. But this time my approach will be to take a video by Vox Media Group that talks about the same subject but from a Palestinian point of view, and then we can dismantle it together. Just so you know: Vox is an American, progressive media group
that was founded by Ezra Klein, an American Jew. I chose this video because it was carefully crafted to show the Palestinian narrative. Let’s start as there is a lot to unpack. I’ve added time stamps so that you can jump to Deir Yassin or Plan Dalet and I’ve also left a link to the full Vox video below. That History has been carefully concealed and,
in the West, largely forgotten. This is a good one. I like the effect of having the Hebrew document and all the lines crossed out in black. As if they’re on to a really big secret. Really? Concealed and forgotten in the West? Deir Yassin has probably had more articles and papers written about it than any other event in the war of 1948. The number of dead was around 100. There are not many events with such a low number of casualties that have gotten so much attention. I will be coming back to this toward the end of the video.
0:43 The massacre in this village was one of many. in a series of catastrophic events... Really? Then why is Deir Yassin always the example given? It’s like when you only have one example, so you just say et cetera. 0:50 When hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were violently displaced from their homeland… in order to create the state of Israel.
This is key to understanding the false Palestinian narrative. No, this is not what happened. The Palestinians were offered a state, they rejected it, they started to kill Jewish civilians and then lost the war that they had started. More about that shortly. The borders of Palestine have been changed forcefully over time. But historically this region has been home to Palestinians for centuries. I’ve said this many times before in different videos but I’m happy to repeat it again here. No,
not true. Until the beginning of the 20th century, there was no such thing as a Palestinian people. Thousands of pilgrims visited the Land of Israel in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Not a single one of them saw or met a Palestinian. At the time of the Ottoman Empire, which used to control the region, there were Muslims, Arabs, Bedouins, Christians, Jews, Druze, Circassians...
All peoples have the right to self-determination, but you don’t have the right to reinvent history. 4:36 The migration helped the Zionist movement gain steam. And a slogan took off. “A land without people for a people without land.” And it sends a message to Western leaders… that the people who had been living in Palestine for generations… could just be easily moved elsewhere.
Here we have just four sentences and yet Vox manages to squeeze so much misinformation into them. Vox wants to show you that the Jews planned the transfer of the Arabs. The thing is that in all Zionist documents, from the first Zionist congress to the Israeli Declaration of Independence, there is absolutely nothing to support this theory. They actually state the opposite: that all people will enjoy equal rights. The slogan “A land without people for a people without land” was said by Israel Zangvill at the end of the 19th century in Britain. At that time the Land of Israel was a neglected part of the Ottoman Empire. So to take a sentence that was said in Britain about 30 years before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and to claim that that was the policy in the 1930s is pure manipulation. It is claimed
in the video that ‘it sends a message to the West’ that the people could be easily removed. Who sends a message? The Zionist movement never said anything about removing non-Jews from the land. On the contrary, the Zionist movement said very clearly that all people from all religions would be granted their human rights. Now the next sentence is a true masterpiece of misinformation. I will say that when you talk about any subject there will probably be different
opinions and it is hard to know all the details and you might forget those facts that are not in your favor, but this next sentence shows that they do know the facts but just turn them around: Violence broke out, rooted in tensions over land. Violence broke out? Just out of the blue? This is like saying: In 1939, violence broke out in Europe and the British bombed Germany. Or: In 1941, violence broke out and the Americans bombed Japanese cities. And now for the truth: In 1920, 1921, 1929 and from 1936 to 1939, Arabs attacked the Jews. There were brutal attacks and pogroms against Jews in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Galilee and Hebron. And in Gaza. Even Israelis don’t know this but until 1929 there were Jews in Gaza. Many ancient Jewish communities, a lot of which had nothing
to do with Zionism, were wiped out. The bottom line is very clear: Arabs attacked the Jews, destroyed ancient communities, burnt Jewish villages to the ground, and killed Jews living in Jewish settlements. In one of my latest videos, I showed the names of some of the Jewish settlements that were destroyed by Arabs. I will show it again. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, before any Arab left his home for reasons I will be coming back to, Jews were being attacked, ancient communities were being destroyed, and Jewish settlements were having to be abandoned.
This is not the odd bout of violence. This is continuous violence being perpetrated against the Jews by the Arabs, so it’s not like violence just broke out in 1948, as Vox would have us believe. Let’s continue. The next one is also a big one. And the British began training and arming Zionist militias. to suppress the rebellion. So the British trained the Jews.
What can I say? It is true. But Vox has forgotten to mention two important points. First of all, they trained Arabs as well. Both Jews and Arabs worked for the British, also as armed forces. And second, they forgot to tell you that in World War 2, the British trained the Jews because the Arabs had already made a pact with the Nazis. Silly Vox,
they forgot about that. This topic deserves its own video, but here is a brief summary of what happened. The leader of the Palestinians, Amin al-Husseini, lived in Nazi Berlin for three years during the war. He met with Hitler and other high-ranking S.S. officials. The plan was that when Rommel conquered the Middle East, a death camp would be set up in the Dotan Valley and run by the Arabs. Rommel was stopped by Montgomery in El Alamein. But there was another Nazi-Arab
plan called Operation Atlas. The plan was that a few Arabs and Germans would arrive by air and poison the drinking water of Tel Aviv. The British managed to put a stop to it. You’ve never heard about this Nazi-Palestinian connection? I don’t blame you. The mainstream media doesn’t talk about it. Don’t believe me? Google Operation Atlas. It is all documented. So yes, the British did arm the Jews against the German Nazis and against the Arab Nazis.
Let’s continue. A UN special committee proposed the land be divided into two states… a Jewish state and an Arab state It was called the Partition Plan of 1947. We could not accept the partition plan because at that time the population was almost 2 to 1. But the plan proposed giving over half the land and often the most fertile areas to the Jewish state. From a purely pragmatic perspective… the partition plan didn't make much sense for Palestinian Arabs.
Vox should really get an award here – an award for choosing the most misleading words ever. The partition plan didn’t make much sense for Palestinian Arabs. Could it be that by this sentence, you meant: the Arabs didn’t accept the partition plan, and so they started shooting at Jewish civilians? Let’s unpack this. So the British had enough problems at home and their empire was collapsing. They told the UN to take care of this Jewish-Arab problem. The UN looked
into it and decided to split the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Neither Jews nor Arabs liked it. However the Jews were willing to compromise, and the Arabs weren’t. Instead they started killing Jewish civilians. Well, they didn’t start, as they had already started in 1920… they continued. This is extremely important to understand, so it bears repeating: In 1947, the Arabs had the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state, and they said no.
And as for the claim that the Jews were given more, even though they were fewer in number. Of the land of the British Mandate, the Arabs also got Jordan. Now I have nothing against the Jordanians, but the Jordanians and the Palestinians are the same people. Both are entities that were simply made up by the British. There was no difference between the Arabs who were living on the eastern side and the western side of the Jordan River. But the point I want to make
is that the Arabs had already gotten hold of a large part of the British Mandate land. And if you take Jordan’s territories into account as well, the Jews actually got the smaller part. And the claim that the Jews got the most fertile land is a lie. The biggest chunk of land that the Jews got was the desert. And now I want to show you an amazing map. On the left, you can see the map of the partition plan and on the right you can see a map of the areas infected with malaria. So the Jews were given the desert and the swamps and malaria.
On March 10th, a couple of months before the British mandate would end, the Haganah adopted what was called Plan Dalet Or Plan D. On paper, the main goal was to gain control of the Jewish state as laid out in the partition plan, while also defending Jewish settlements outside of the borders. Now let’s talk about ‘Tokhnit dalet’ or Plan D. The pro-Palestinian side doesn’t have many cards to play, so they play this Plan D card a lot. But as you will soon understand, this is actually a very weak card. So on the 29th of November, 1947, the Jews accepted the
partition plan whereas the Arabs said no and started killing Jews. Their first act was an attack on a bus. In response to that, the Jews started to move in convoys. They added metal plates to the tracks and had some armed guards. In response to that, the Arabs started blocking the roads and shooting at the convoys. The biggest problem was in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the biggest Jewish city, home to 100,000 Jews, and the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was in a valley that had Arab villages on the mountains on both sides. Deir Yassin was one of them. In March of 1948, so four months after the Arabs had started shooting at Jewish cars,
there were three disasters for the Jews. Three convoys were wiped out by the Arabs, two of them on their way to the besieged city of Jerusalem. More than a hundred Jews carrying supplies were killed. If Jerusalem fell, that would be the end of Israel before it had even
been established. Let me remind you that as of March 1948, 1,200 Jews had been murdered by Arabs, and no Jew who fell into Arab hands had been left alive. So if Jerusalem had fallen, you can guess what would have happened. Very scary. So this is the context in which Plan
D needs to be viewed. However, if you want to distort reality, you just leave out the context, as Vox does here. The Jews decided to change their strategy, and instead of thinking defensively, they started to think offensively. The idea was to gain control of all the areas along the road
to Jerusalem. Plan D proposed that this would be done by first surrounding the Arab villages. If the inhabitants cooperated, there would be a check to see if there were any weapons in the village, and if there weren’t any, then everybody could get on with their lives. If the inhabitants resisted, there would be a fight for control of the village and the people would be deported a few kilometers from there to the area that was supposed to be the Arab state. Pro-Palestinian organizations hold up this Plan D as proof that the Israelis deported Arabs. They completely ignore the fact that it was a local military plan, and that the Arabs murdered hundreds of Jewish civilians, and that those Arabs who didn’t fight the Jews were allowed to keep on living in their villages. Actually tens of thousands of Arabs who didn’t fight the Jews remained in their villages and cities, whereas not a single Jew was left alive in areas conquered by Arabs. So what happened in Deir Yassin?
One of the most widely publicized village massacres happened here in Deir Yassin. So at the beginning of the video, they said that history had been carefully concealed in the West and largely forgotten. And now they’re saying that this is the most widely publicized village massacre. So Vox, you’ve decided you want to lie? Great, you’re very good at it! But at least be a little consistent in your lying and don’t say two opposing things in the same video. So what did happen in Deir Yassin? As they said, there was a local peace pact, but the people of Deir Yassin broke that pact when they shot at Jewish vehicles and let Arab fighters into the village. By the start of 1948, it was clear to both sides that the local peace pact was no longer relevant.
At the beginning of the battle, the Jewish forces used loudspeakers to give the women, children and elderly time to evacuate. Think about it: basically the Jews voluntarily gave up the element of surprise, which is crucial in a battle, so that the civilians would have sufficient time to run away. Do you think that the Arabs ever gave Jewish civilians time to run away before they attacked? Never. Not from 1920 to the 7th of October 2023. Never. The Jewish forces that attacked the village were from the Etzel and the Lehi, which were right-wing paramilitary groups. They didn’t have much military experience and as the battle went
on they started blowing up the houses. Some of the houses held civilians that hadn’t evacuated. In the aftermath of the battle, there were five Jewish dead and about 100 Arabs dead. Of those Arabs who died, many were fighters, but some were civilians who had hidden in their houses, and there were about ten to twenty civilians who had been shot by Lechi and Etzel members after they had surrendered. The Deir Yassin battle was small, poorly planned and poorly executed. A few dozen civilians died during the fighting and at most, if you take the highest estimation, 40 civilians were shot after they had surrendered. It is a fact that a tragedy occurred in Deir Yassin and it is fair that the Jews take their share of the responsibility, but it is also fair to mention the context, to have a sense of proportion, and to understand that it went both ways. And in fact the Jews took their share of the responsibility:
after the event, the Jewish Agency sent a letter to Abdullah, king of Jordan, condemning the attack, saying it had been carried out by Jewish extremists and that it contradicted Jewish values. And this, my friends, is the true story of Deir Yassin. A few days after the battle of Deir Yassin, a convoy to the hospital in Jerusalem was attacked by the Arabs. 80 doctors and nurses were murdered. Vox hasn’t dedicated a video to them. Or to the 130 Jewish civilians who were massacred in Kfar Etzion, a month after the battle in Deir Yassin. The Zionist militias used it as a propaganda tool to tell people about it everywhere. The idea was that if you don't leave… we will do to you what happened in Deir Yassin.
No, not true. No Jewish military or political leader ever used the Deir Yassin battle to urge the Palestinians to leave their homes. As I just said, it was the Arabs who used the story of Deir Yassin to motivate other Arabs to fight. It was Hussein Khalide, the former mayor of Jerusalem and a representative of the Arab Higher Committee, who persuaded the Arabs of Deir Yassin to say that there had been more death and rape and that the Jews had used tanks and other things that never happened. The aim was to motivate the Arabs to fight the Jews, but instead of doing that, it motivated them to flee.
After taking Deir Yassin, Zionist paramilitary groups cleared major cities including Haifa and Jaffa. Now Vox made a big mistake here when they used Haifa as an example. Unlike other misleading information in this video, where they intentionally twisted the facts, here they dug a deep hole for themselves and I am going to let them fall right into it. The battle of Haifa is the best example of what really happened to the Arabs in the war and how they came to be refugees. So Haifa was a mixed city,
half Jews and half Arabs. The Arabs started to shoot at Jewish cars entering Haifa, which led to fighting between the Jewish neighborhood and the Arabs. Now Haifa was one of the biggest centers of Arab leadership, and what did the Arab leadership do? It ran away. Arab gangs started to fight among themselves and rob the local Arabs. The Jewish mayor of Haifa, Moshe Carmel, told the Arabs they could stay and that they would not be hurt. The Arabs asked the Mufti of Amin al-Husseini, the head of the Arab high committee, what to do, and he said: Don’t surrender to the Jews and don’t cooperate with them. Run away and in a few weeks the Arab armies will conquer Haifa and
you will be able to go back. This is something Vox will not tell you, that the Arab leaders were the first to run away, and that the others were told to run away just for a few weeks. And by the way, not a single Jew was able to live in areas conquered by Arabs, but 160,000 Arabs who didn’t run away were able to become Israeli citizens.
Plan D became the blueprint for carrying out the ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine to make room for a new state. No. Deir Yassin is an extreme event that by no means represents the war. And the fact that Deir Yassin is the only example that pro-Palestinians use just goes to show that it wasn’t the norm and it wasn’t the blueprint. Only a few were forced to flee. The majority chose to flee in the hope that they would be able to come back once the Arab armies had defeated Israel. Haifa was the blueprint: the Arabs shot at Jewish civilians, the Arab leadership cowardly ran away, Arab gangs fought each other, and many Arabs ran away thinking that after the Arab armies had eliminated Israel, they would be able to go back. Neighboring Arab countries that were overwhelmed by Palestinian refugees immediately went to war with Israel.
So the Arab countries attacked Israel in order to help the Palestinian refugees? No. Sorry to disappoint you, but their motive was not to fight for the Palestinian refugees. Rather, their motive was to wipe out Israel.The second the British left, on the 14th of May 1948,
five Arab armies invaded Israel to do one thing only. To destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. Luckily for us, we won. Turning 6 million Palestinians into refugees without a homeland. This is an interesting one. If
about 700,000 left their homes, why are there 6 million refugees? What I am going to say now will blow your mind. And the fact that you weren’t aware of it until now will make you realize how deeply entrenched the Palestinian narrative, or propaganda, really is. So what is a refugee? There are two legal definitions. One that refers to all the refugees in the world, which is someone who has had to leave their home due to war or crisis, and there have been hundreds of millions of refugees since 1945. And there is another, separate definition for the most privileged refugees in the world – the Palestinans. And the difference is that the Palestinians are the only group in the world who pass this title of being refugees on to their children and grandchildren and so on. I don’t want you to just take my word for it on this one. Check it out for yourselves.
For them, the Nakba isn't just a moment in history. It's a catastrophe that never really ended. Their catastrophe never ended for two reasons. First, they never took responsibility for their wrongdoing. Second, they keep on trying to wipe out Israel. They said no to a Palestinian state in 1937, they said no again in 1947. From 1948 till 1967, they could have established a Palestinian state - those areas were under Jordanian and Egyptian control – but they didn’t. Yasser Arafat and Abu Mazen also had plenty of chances, but they kept saying no.
Golda Meir once said: Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us. Sadly, the Palestinians still bring their children up to hate us. Before I conclude this video, I want to zoom out for a second. I want to show you a map that I really like. Here you can see the world. Which is a really big place. It is bigger than Israel.
After every world war, the first, the second and, to some degree, also the Cold War, there has been a new world order. After World War Two, a wave of new countries was established. Here is a quick list: Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Israel, Jordan, Syria, East and West Germany. From 1945 to 1949, the creation of most of these states, and of the new borders in eastern Europe, with Poland being moved to the west, was accompanied by the movements of tens of millions of people. And as you can imagine, the forced movement of tens of millions of people – Germans from the east, Hindus to India, Muslims to Pakistan, Poles, Ukrainians, Jews from Arab countries – was anything but peaceful. Millions died in these mass migrations. The fact the world is obsessed with the Nakba,
with Plan D and the small village of Deir Yassin, is testament to how deeply the Palestinian narrative is rooted in the West. And to just how much media coverage the Palestinians get. Vox media, with its 11 million subscribers, is part of this media circus. I have 200,000 subscribers and I don’t have enough time to debunk all their anti-Israel videos. So if you want to help me spread the word, then like, subscribe, and hit the share button below the video. It will let you share my content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… With a few clicks, you can help me reach many more viewers. Next week I will be uploading a video about the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Muslim countries. So see you next week. Yalla bye.
2023-11-09 20:26
