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Dear editor:
Bruce Ticker is correct. Raja Abdulrahim’s account of Abu Samara’s family leaving Israel’s territory for Gaza in 1948 was sorely lacking in context. (“Column: A ‘Nakba’ in Times Reporting” boulderjewishnews.org September 18, 2025.) Yes, as reported, Arab families were told to leave for a short while because of a war, but the Times article ignores significant context.
Arab leaders ordered Arab residents to leave Israeli territory in 1948 so that Arab armies, about to invade the renascent Jewish state, would not have to be cautious to avoid killing Arabs as the armies attempted to destroy Israel. The Arabs under the evacuation order were told that the armies would surely defeat the Jews in a few days or weeks after which the Arabs could return to share in the spoils.
Of course, we know what happened. Israel survived the attacks and also took in 800,000 MIzrachi Jews subsequently driven from their homes in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa by Arab leaders who were shamed by the failure of Arab armies to destroy “the Zionist entity.”
https://www.jimena.org/resources/forgotten-refugees/
In contrast, the Arab League told its member nations to deny citizenship to Arabs who left Palestine or were displaced during the Arab-initiated violence and to deny citizenship to their descendants as well. While the majority of Israel’s current Jewish citizens have roots in the Mizrachi communities rescued by Israel, fewer than 700,000 Arabs who fled or were displaced in the 1940’s have grown into 6,000,000 Palestine refugees on UNRWA’s rolls. Fully 99.5% of these Palestine “refugees” were born in UNRWA camps which have become breeding grounds for terrorism. The UN has been complicit in teaching the “refugees” to hate Jews and hold the formation of the modern State of Israel to be the source of all their miseries, But UNRWA nonetheless accepts the diktat of Arab leaders — the Palestine Refugees will remain in limbo until Israel agrees to give the “refugees” the homes these UNRWA-born people claim their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, … lost in the 1940’s. So determined to see Israel turned into a Muslim majority state, Palestinian leaders have rejected multiple Israeli and American proposals for the formation of the first-ever Arab State of Palestine because all of the plans would have required the new state to co-exist peacefully with the nation-state of the Jews.
Toby F. Block
Atlanta, GA
