Dear Honorable Rachina Singh,
You have received an email from nine groups that call themselves "Nakba Education BC" who ignore or willfully deny the endless reporting by CONTEMPORANEOUS Muslim and Arab journalists that makes abundantly clear that the "Nakba" was self inflicted.
"Nakba 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 Palestinians between 1947-1949 to make way for the creation of the State of Israel".
"Nakba Education BC" ignores the reality that even a cursory glance at contemporaneous Muslim newspapers and other contemporaneous Muslim media makes clear that it was Arab leaders in 1947/1948 who commanded the local Arab population in Mandatory Palestine to “flee” their homes in anticipation of the genocide of the Jews — and an Arab populace who willingly obeyed that command.
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)
Even the contemporaneous reporting of “The Economist” makes clear that the “Nakba’ was self inflicted. 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).
On August 19, 1951 the Beirut weekly “Kul-Shay” opined: “Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honor not conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their homes? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it”. ("The Palestinian Delusion, , page 84).
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" in the tradition of Edward Said cannot change the true history of the self inflicted "Nakba" as accurately reported by contemporaneous Arab and Muslim journalists.
Also, Syrian intellectual Constantine Zureiq in August 1948 FIRST used term nakba as “a self- inflicted and humiliating wound caused by the Arabs themselves”.(“Israel: A Simple Guide To The Most Misunderstood Country On Earth”, page 114, Noa Tishby, 2021;
As Professor Richard Landes insightfully points out, the original meaning of "nakba" was "when we Arabs did it to ourselves". See : "Can 'The Whole World' Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad", Richard Landes, page 195, 2022).
Further Zureiq imputed agency to the Arabs and made them responsible for their own humiliation. Zureiq’s own words make clear that “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 anti-semites 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 was a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a military commander of the PLO, and he declared "the Palestinian people" to be a propaganda invention.
In a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper "Trouw", Mr. Mohsen acknowledged that "the Palestinian people" were a propaganda invention:
"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).
In fact, Palestine 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.
The Arabs have rejected an independent state in 1937, 1947, 1948, 1967, 1994, 2000, 2008, 2019 and 2020.
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 is specifically mentioned even once in the Koran.
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.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration of this important matter.
Richard Sherman
Margate, Florida