Why Is Israel Losing the PR War?

PART 1 – THE NAKBA

Why is Israel so clearly losing the war of public perception in the West? The facts are on Israel’s side. Israel was brutally attacked by known terrorists who made no secret of their plans beforehand and gleefully recorded their atrocities for the world to see. Israel fought to defeat these terrorists. Israel fought to recover the hundreds of its civilians, including women and children, who were taken hostage by these terrorists. Since then, the terrorists have never stopped proclaiming their commitment to attack Israel again and again. Yes, there’s destruction but that’s what happens in war and, in fact, Israel has maintained a lower civilian to combatant casualty ratio than has ever been achieved in urban warfare.

Yet somehow much of the Western world is not on Israel’s side. Why is this? Why can’t they see this conflict for what it actually is? It’s not because Israel needs to prove more conclusively that this war is necessary and just, or that its conduct of the war is legal. Those facts are plainly obvious to anyone who looks. So, what’s going on?

Those facts don’t matter because much of the Western world have made up their minds that Israel is the villain. They believe Israel committed the original sin that started and still defines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A lie has become the foundation for the West’s judgement that Israel is to blame. So now, no other facts or details matter. Israel’s guilt is the signal and any facts that are inconsistent with that are just noise.

As long as we allow this lie to stand, the West will continue to see Israel as the villain. So, this is a call to action. For those who support Israel, your daily efforts are beautiful and deeply appreciated. But we need to fight together a lie that poisons everything.

What is that lie? It’s that Israel cruelly, greedily, and wantonly expelled hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians from their homes and villages in 1948.  This lie is known across the world as the Nakba.

It simply isn’t true. First of all, the word Nakba, which means catastrophe, is itself propaganda. The term was first coined in 1948 by Syrian historian Constantin Zureiq in his book, “The Meaning of the Disaster.”  Zureiq wrote, “We must admit our mistakes … and recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot.”

As Zureiq’s term entered common usage, it was applied only in the context of a self-inflicted Arab disaster. That was because Arabs at the time knew very well that it was Arabs who started a war they lost, and they knew very well that they played a significant role in the exodus of Palestinian Arabs during that war.

It was not until the late 1980s that the meaning of Nakba changed. That’s when PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat recognized the value of turning aggressors into victims.  Through extensive propaganda, Arafat managed to alter the meaning of Nakba to an Israeli-inflicted injustice.

But let’s take a step back. What really happened in 1948? What drove this now so mythologized Palestinian exodus? The armies of seven Arab nations along with fighters from across the Arab world attacked the newly formed Jewish state. It was in the midst of this terrifying chaos that the Palestinian exodus occurred. There were four principal reasons why.

Some Palestinian Arabs feared Jewish paramilitary forces, organized first to fight the British occupation forces and then to fight the attacking Arabs. Within this group, some were, in fact, forcibly expelled. But far more left voluntarily, fearing what might happen if they didn’t, fears that were based on rumors, many of which weren’t true.

Some Palestinian Arabs feared roving bands of foreign Arab fighters who came to attack the Jews but also attacked and stole from local Palestinian Arabs. Among this group, too, some were forcibly relocated, and some left voluntarily, again based on their fear of what might happen if they didn’t.

A significant number of Palestinian Arabs were influenced by the repeated calls of local and foreign Arab leaders to evacuate until victory over the Jews was achieved.

In its May 3, 1948, edition, Time Magazine reported, “The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city … by withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.”

On October 2, 1948, The Economist reported, “Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa, not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by 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.”

A Palestinian refugee, Fuad Khader, said in an interview broadcast on official Palestinian Authority television on May 15, 2013, that “The one who made us leave was the Jordanian army because there were going to be battles and we would be under their feet. They told us, ‘Leave. In two hours, we will liberate it and then you’ll return.’”

And lastly, as it became clear that Arab armies would not win the war, some Palestinian Arabs simply chose to leave rather than be ruled by Jews.

Medium Magazine reported a story about the departure of the Arab residents of Haifa in 1948. A truce agreement had been offered to the Arabs, but their response was to ask for assistance in evacuating instead. Medium describes their interaction with Shabtai Levy, the Jewish mayor of Haifa at the time, and British Commander, Major-General Hugh Stockwell.

“With tears in his eyes, the elderly Levy pleaded with the Arabs, most of whom were his personal acquaintances, to reconsider, saying that they were committing ‘a cruel crime against their own people.’

Yaacov Salomon, a prominent Haifa lawyer and the Haganah’s chief liaison officer in the city, followed suit, assuring the Arab delegates that he ‘had the instructions of the commander of the zone . . . that if they stayed on they would enjoy equality and peace, and that we, the Jews, were interested in their staying on and the maintenance of harmonious relations.’

Even the stoic Stockwell was shaken. ‘You have made a foolish decision,’ he thundered at the Arabs. ‘Think it over, as you’ll regret it afterward. You must accept the conditions of the Jews. They are fair enough. Don’t permit life to be destroyed senselessly. After all, it was you who began the fighting, and the Jews have won.’”

They left anyway.

No one can say for sure how many Palestinian Arabs left due to which of these four causes. Some have tried. For example, in his 2004 book, “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited,” Benny Morris wrote, “A detailed analysis of the causes of the abandonment of 392 Palestinian towns and villages during the 1947-1948 war found that ‘expulsion by Jewish forces’ accounted for the abandonment of just 53 towns and villages, or only 13.5% of Palestinian refugees.”

For sure, many who left were influenced by more than one of the four factors mentioned above. But the simplistic claim that the fault rests squarely on the shoulders of Jewish colonizers is simply nonsense. And the claim that the Israelis sought to erase the Palestinian Arabs is ridiculous when you consider the fact that the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs who remained in Israel were granted full Israeli citizenship with all the rights of Jewish citizens. Today, they number over two million and represent some 21% of Israel’s population.

Another key fact is what started all this. As Abba Eban, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, said in 1958, “The Arab refugee problem was caused by a war of aggression, launched by the Arab States against Israel in 1947 and 1948. Let there be no mistake. If there had been no war against Israel, with its consequent harvest of bloodshed, misery, panic and flight, there would be no problem of Arab refugees today.”

The key point is that the truth about the exodus of Palestinian Arabs from Israel in 1948 is profoundly different than the false Nakba myth that has been used to mislead so many in the West. The myth that Israel is singularly the villain of this story is a lie.

We need to fight this lie. We need to fight it and win. And we’re not doing that today. Instead, we’re caught like Sisyphus, reacting to whatever the latest accusation is against Israel, pushing the same boulder up the same hill every day.