No need to wonder, never smoked or drank once in my life.
What you're stating about 1948 is completely false (ie. Arab armies attacks caused the Palestinians to flee and/or Arab leaders broadcasted orders for the Palestinians to leave so that the armies can drive the Jews out).
Although that's the official Israeli narrative used to describe the founding of the State of Israel (blaming the Nakba on the Arabs), it's nothing but a myth that's been debunked by Israeli historians themselves citing official Israeli archives after the 1948 documents were declassified in the late 1980's (historians like Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappe, Simha Flapan). I'm not even going to reference Palestinian historians because I'm sure they'll be discredited.
Zionists in Palestine initiated a process of ethnic cleansing in early 1948, even before the end of the British Mandate on May 15. By April, over 150,000 had been expelled, with the massacre at Deir Yassin on April 9 exemplifying the brutality of these expulsions. By the time Arab armies intervened on May 15, already 250,000 Palestinians were already refugees. It was a systematic expulsion.
Benny Morris himself, a staunch Zionist, stated that the "
Haganah and IZL offensives in Haifa, Jaffa and eastern and western Galilee precipitated a mass exodus" and "
Undoubtedly ... the most important single factor in the exodus of April–June was Jewish attack. This is demonstrated clearly by the fact that each exodus occurred during or in the immediate wake of military assault. No town was abandoned by the bulk of its population before the main Haganah/IZL assault."
Even from my own family history, I can tell you that they didn't just flee when they heard the Arab armies are entering. To the contrary, my family stayed in their town (Al-Faluja) till 1949 along with the Egyptian army that was besieged in town for 4 months, from Oct 1948 until the armistice agreement was reached in Feb 1949. Following the armistice agreement, the Israelis promptly violated it and began to intimidate the local population into flight (it doesn't exist anymore, now it's an Israeli town called Kiryat Gat that was built adjacent to it).
At the end of the day, it really goes back to the settler colonial ideology embedded in Zionism. Early Zionists knew well that Palestine is populated (not the myth of “a land without a people for a people without a land”) and in order create a Jewish majority state in Palestine, there has to be a "transfer" of the indigenous population (a nicer way to say ethnic cleansing).
They didn't even shy away from publicly stating that intent. I'm sure the following quotes will be shocking for some:
- Ukrainian/Russian born Moshe Sharett (first Israeli foreign minister) wrote in 1914:
"We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it, that governs it by the virtue of its language and savage culture ..... for if we cease to look upon our land, the Land of Israel, as ours alone and we allow a partner into our estate- all content and meaning will be lost to our enterprise."
- Belarusian/Russian born Menachem Begin (leader of the Irgun and former PM) stated in 1930:
"If there are other inhabitants there, they must be transferred to some other place. We must take over the land. We have a great and NOBLER ideal than preserving several hundred thousands of [Palestinian] Arabs fellahin [peasants]."
- Ukrainian/Russian born Joseph Weitz (Head of the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department and known to be the "Architect of the Transfer"), in 1940:
"We shall not achieve our goal if the Arabs are in this small country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries — all of them. Not one village, not one tribe should be left.”
- Hungarian born Theodor Herzl (father of modern Zionism) wrote in 1895:
"We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly."
- Polish born David Ben-Gurion (first PM of Israel) in 1937:
"The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples"
And "With compulsory transfer we [would] have a vast area [for settlement] .... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."
There were many more so I had to pick!
nationalpost.com
I know you're not actually pro-terrorism. I stand by that characterization of most pro-"Palestine" advocates, however, because most will gleefully chant for the destruction of Israel.
