2/17/98

Letters to the Editor
The Philadelphia Inquirer

Dear Sir:

   In the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine article "Rewriting history In Israel, a less heroic view of the birth of a nation" (Sunday Feb 1,98) a passage from Benny Morris's book "After Israel and the Palestinians" was quoted:

    ``At no point during the war did the Arab leaders issue a blanket call to Palestine's Arabs to leave their homes and villages and wander into exile. Indeed, I have found no trace of such a campaign, and had it taken place, had there been such broadcasts, they would have been quoted or at least left traces in the documentation.''

    The Inquirer article neglected to point out that there are more than traces in the documentation. The London Economist wrote at the time that the main reason the Arabs left was because of "the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit...It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."

   Edward Atiyah (then the secretary of the Arab League Office in London) described the situation by saying "This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country.(The Arabs, London 1955p.183).

    Not only did the Jews not encourage the Arabs to leave, when they had the opportunity they tried to prevent the Arabs from leaving. Bishop Hakim of Galilee said that the Arabs of Haifa "fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish Authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel."

    After the war of 1948 the Arabs started to blame the Jews for the refugee problem. During the war Emil Ghoury Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee said "I do not want to impugn anybody, but only to help the refugees. The fact that there are refugees is a direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish State. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unaminously and they must share in the solution of the problem." After the war Emil Ghoury said "It has been those (Zionist) acts of terror, accompanied by the wholesale depredations, which caused the exodus of the Palestinian Arabs.

    The Arabs rewrote history after creating a mass of Arab refugees who they were unwilling to take care of. The Arab leaders didn't want the blame so they blamed the Jews. Now Israeli, left wing historians such as Benny Morris have joined the Arab chorus and are rewriting history as well.

                                        Sincerely,   

					Mark Feinstein 

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