Before 1948, Tantura was a Palestinian coastal fishing village of 1,500 residents located just north of the Israeli town of Zichron Yaakov. As war threatened and conditions worsened for Palestinian residents, the wealthier fled to Haifa. About 1,200 remained to tend to their farmland. Because Tantura was located along the coastal highway connecting Tel Aviv […]
Arab Jews: the ‘Nakba’ That Wasn’t Zionist claims of a historic mass expulsion of Jews from Arab Lands are largely hype, hasbara, and myth
Over the years, a recurring hasbara trope has accused Arab states of ethnically cleansing their entire Jewish populations in the years between 1948-1956. They marshal vivid maps displaying the numbers of Jews originally in these countries and how many are left currently. Phrases like “expulsion,” “refugee,” “Jewish Nakba,” and “pogroms” are bandied about as if […]
Israeli Ethnic Cleansing, Bedouin Murder and the Inevitable Cover-Up
In 2017, Israeli Border Police arrived in a Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran, which was slated for demolition to make way for a Jewish settlement to be built on its land. This ethnic cleansing is standard operating procedure for Israel’s indigenous Bedouin, who have never been allotted the grazing and agricultural lands they worked for […]
Israeli Holocaust Commemoration Marred by Political Infighting
Last week, Israel hosted the World Holocaust Forum. This is a considerably expanded version of the article Middle East Eye published a few days ago, which profiled it. I guess it should come as no surprise. Everything about contemporary Israel is embroiled in exploitation of traditions and history for political gain. So why should the […]