(LONG - must read) Israel Vindicated? 1948 as told in 1948 and by those who lived it.
Robert F. Kennedy, martyred liberal icon, was a reporter for the Boston Globe in 1948. He was sent in the spring of that year to Mandatory Palestine to cover the lead up to the British withdrawal. His dispatches are a fascinating glimpse back in time and invaluable historical records. And yet, they are also a testament to the ideological stagnation of the Arab world vis a vis Israel. Then, as now, Israelis saw themselves as fighting for survival against irrational enmity. Then as now, the Arab world abounded in hostility to the very idea of a Jewish presence in its midst which it justified by casting itself as the victim of Western conspiracies. R.F.K.’s accounts and other primary sources would appear to vindicate Israel’s version of events.
At the heart of Arab grievances against Zionism lay the claim that an indigenous people (the Palestinian Arabs) were ethnically cleansed by Zionist colonialists aided by the West. Zionists have long held that, though the Holy Land was not empty at the dawn of political Zionism, the Turkish backwater was in no way inhabited by a distinct people, nor did the Zionists ever adopt a policy of ethnic cleansing.
Kennedy in his first dispatch, puts the Arab claim (which was perhaps more controversial then) to rest almost as an afterthought:
“The Jews point with pride to the fact that over 500,000 Arabs in the 12 years between 1932 and 1944, came into Palestine to take advantage of living conditions existing in no other Arab state. This is the only country in the Near and Middle East where an Arab middle class is in existence.”
much more...
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israel-vindicated-1948-as-told-in-1948-and-by-those-who-lived-it/
