March 27, 2024
Honourable Rachna Singh
Minister of Education
Government of British Columbia
Dear Minister Singh;
You have received an email from nine groups that call themselves "Nabka Education BC" who provide specious arguments for the introduction of curriculum content based on fabrications that are totally without merit.
"Nabka Education BC," ignores or willfully denies CONTEMPORANEOUS Muslim and Arab journalism in order to promote the antisemitic calumny of "the ethnic cleansing and violent dispossession of Palestinian Arabs between 1947-1949 to make way for the creation of the State of Israel". This claim and their call for a false historical narrative to be added to the curriculum must be challenged immediately. The contemporaneous media make it clear that it was Arab leaders of 1947-48 who commanded the local Arab population of Mandatory Palestine to “flee their homes in anticipation of the genocide of the Jews, and the Arab population largely obeyed this command. The armies of 5Arab countries invaded Israel in 1948 and attempted to murder every Jew. Evidence is provided here of the truth about what is called the Nakba:
On April 3, 1949 the Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station reported: “It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem”. ("The Palestinian Delusion, The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process", Robert Spencer, 2019, page 83)
On October 12, 1963 the Egyptian daily “Akbar el Yom” reported that : “The 15th May, 1948 arrived…On that day the Mufti of Jerusalem ( the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini) appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead”. ("The Palestinian Delusion", ibid, page 83)
On April 9, 1953 the Jordanian daily “Al Urdan” reported: “For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumours exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs.by spreading rumours of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy”. See: "The Palestinian Delusion", , page 83; . See also: "The Massacre That Never Was: The Myth of Der Yassin and the Creation of the Palestine Refugee Problem", Professor Eliezer Tauber, 2021)
On October 3, 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”. ("The Palestinian Delusion", page 82).
In 1955, the secretary of the Office of the Arab League in London, Edward Atiyah, admitted:
"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 enable to re enter and retake possession of their country". ("The Palestinian Delusion", , page 84).
Furthermore, the Jordanian newspaper Filastin on February 19, 1949 stated: “The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees” ("The Palestinian Delusion", , page 82-83).
Ahistorical revisionism today by "Nakba Education BC" cannot change the true history of the self- inflicted "Nakba" as accurately reported by contemporaneous Arab and Muslim journalists.
Syrian intellectual Constantine Zureiq in August 1948 imputed agency to the Arabs and made them responsible for their own humiliation. In his own words Zureig stated, “the Nakba” has nothing to do with Israel or the Jews:
“When the battle broke out, our public diplomacy to speak of our imaginary victories, to put the Arab public to sleep and talk of the ability to overcome and win easily — until the Nakba happened….We must admit our mistakes…and recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot”.("Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, Ibid, page 114).
Only after 1968 did the antisemites of the PLO encouraged by the KGB and their Jew hating allies on the Left, and later Hamas, pervert Zureiq’s clear meaning, create the fiction of Palestinian Arab victimhood, and make the Jews the villain. Clearly "Nakba Education BC" like so many academics today is a sycophant of this KGB balderdash.
Finally concerning "Nakba Education BC's" use of the phrase "Palestine", it is unlikely that they know as much about the Palestinian people as a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Zaheir Mohsen, a commander of the PLO who declared “the Palestinian people” to be a propaganda invention. In a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Mr. Mohsen wrote:
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.
"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we claim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan". ("The Palestinian Delusion", Robert Spencer, 2019, pp 95-96.)
As Mr. Spencer also makes clear: "It is no accident that neither Mark Twain nor any of the series of English travelers who visited the area, nor anyone else who traveled through desolate Palestine over the centuries ever mentioned the "Palestinian" people. They spoke of encountering Muslim Arabs, as well as Jews, Christian Arabs, and others, but no one, among multitudes of people who wrote about Palestine, ever refers to any “Palestinians”. Nor do the many British white papers and other documents the British government produced during the Mandate period every mention the Palestinians. The opposing factions in those documents are the Jews and the Arabs. "There is a very simple reason for this: there were no Palestinians." (The Palestinian Delusion" pp 87-88).
Claims of a violent expulsion of Arabs, of a Palestinian genocide, of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestine, of colonization by Zionist militias and other lies expressed by “Nakba Education BC”, must not be taken seriously as this appears to be just the latest antisemitic smear campaign against the indigenous Jewish population of Israel, and the latest disgusting expression of Jew hatred in our own country Canada.
In fact, “Palestine” or actually “Syria Palestina,” was a Roman designation of an area, not a country, designed to obliterate 1500 years of indigenous Jewish culture. For nearly one thousand years up until World War One, the word “Palestine” did not appear on any map. There was the British Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948), a trust not a country, bestowed on Britain following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire by the victorious supreme council of the allies post WWI. There is plenty of evidence that the Jews of Mandatory Palestine were called “Palestinians” as evidenced by the passports, such as that held by the former Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir. In this vein, it is also noteworthy that postage stamps of flags of Mandatory Palestine bore the Jewish emblem, the Star of David. During the Mandate period (1920-1948) Arabs called themselves Egyptians, Lebanese, Jordanian or Southern Syrians. Only the Jews called themselves Palestinians.
Neither Palestine nor Jerusalem are specifically mentioned even once in the Quran.
Ahistorical narratives by "Nakba Education BC" or anyone else about "the Nakba" or "Palestine" cannot change history including the documented words of contemporaneous Muslim and Arab journalists.
We trust that as Minister of Education you will not allow the introduction of misinformation, untruths and total fictions to be introduced into the educational curriculum of BC students, thus exacerbating an already serious rise in antisemitism.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Andria Spindel
Executive Director
Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation