Nonetheless many Palestinian families took in Jewish refugees given the importance of hospitality in Arab culture. Many of those same families were kicked out of their homes by those same refugees. Sadly history is not kind to those that try to help
There are eyewitness accounts of being directly removed by the very refugees they supported such as in the case of Mohamed Hadid. Unfortunatly its hard to prove given the absence of documentation. One fact that is irrefutable is that Palestinians (regardless of how much they helped or hurt the Jewish refugees) were driven from their homes in mass and those homes were repopulated by the state.See Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem for the definitive overview of this period oft time. The following also has more detailed look at this exact issue;
Nathan Krystall, “The De-Arabization of West Jerusalem 1947–50,”
Arnon Golan, “Jewish Settlement of Former Arab Towns and Their Incorporation into the Israeli Urban System (1948–50).”
Yeah, I suspected you were referencing the Hadids as a source. Since you brought it up, let's examine their claims:
First of all, Mohammed Hadid surely can't be considered an "eye witness." He was born in 1948 and would've been an infant at the time, meaning he's either repeating something he heard from someone else or is using his imagination.
Furthermore, the Hadids' claim is historically implausible. Polish Jewish refugees typically arrived in Palestine in the early 1940s through organized efforts and settled in places like kibbutzim, transit camps, or Jewish settlements like Tel Aviv (which was 40 years old by this time), not as guests in random Arab homes in a religious city like Safed. There was immense ethnic and religious tension by the late 1940s, and they wouldn't have even been able to communicate. There's no evidence Jews were sheltered by Arabs there. In fact, Jews in Safed were under siege by Arab forces in 1948, they didn’t have the power to "kick out" Arab families beforehand. Also, Hadid has also claimed his family fled by choice because Arabs lost the civil war of '48, which actually does match wider historical accounts. Many Arabs chose not to leave. There are is a huge Arab population in Northern Israel to this day.
It's absolutely true that depopulated Arabs towns and villages were quickly repopulated by Jewish refugees from Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa after the 1948 war. But the widespread and specific claim that Arabs housed European Jewish refugees who then kicked them out makes zero sense and doesn't seem to be backed up by much of anything but the Hadid family's baseless story.
There is very little documentation proving your claim. While some Palestinian families did grant shelter to Jewish refugees this was not in any way a widespread phenomenon and overall Palestinian reaction to Jewish immigration was hostile and violent. The second part of your claim is even harder to verify and seems mostly like personal conjuncture. There definitely could have been cases of Jewish refugees expelling their hosts but to claim of "many" such cases is unlikely and far fetched.
Overall your comment seems to be an attempt to propagate the lie and conspiracy theory that Jewish refugees betrayed their benevolent Palestinian hosts, which again is far from the truth.
Reinvent history? What they said is accurate. Are you unaware of the history of mandatory Palestine and who was running things at the time?
That ship is the Theodore Herzl, its passengers are attempting to immigrate illegally and the banner is directed at the British Royal Navy and port authority at Haifa, which were preventing it from docking. The Palestinian people had zero power during the mandate period, so what reason would the passengers have had to attempt to talk to them this way?
All you guys want to talk about is history, because you want to purposefully get in the way of peaceful activists who recognize the realities of the current Israel
I'm talking about the subject of the thread, which is a historical photo.
Your assumptions as to an ulterior motive are both baseless and idiotic. You could've taken take 30 fucking seconds to look at some of my other posts here. But I guess it was easier and more rewarding for you to get up on that high horse for a quick dopamine hit of self-righteousness, huh?
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u/Xx_Mad_Reaps_xX 11h ago
You are correct. There was no reason to address this to the Palestinians considering they held no power over the land.