🤥 There was no Nakba, it was the Arab armies that attacked Israel in 1948.

More than 250,000 Palestinians had already been ethnically cleansed out of Palestine before any Arab army had set foot in Palestine. Israel’s ethnic cleansing plan was laid out from the 1930s and carried out starting in 1947. Arab armies at no point aimed to destroy Israel, they tried to maintain as much of the territory as possible and prevent an even larger genocide.

This is a myth. Arab armies did not enter Palestine until after the ethnic cleansing of Paestine was well underway. By the time Arab armies entered Palestine in May 1948, many tens of thousands of Palestinians had over the preceding months been driven from their homes.

Zionist militias had begun carrying out ethnic cleansing operations as part of the premeditated “Plan Dalet” months before Arab armies entered Palestine. Massacres and the emptying of cities such as Haifa and Jaffa all took place in the months leading up to the May 1948 war.

This talking point negates the enormous efforts behind the scenes aimed at avoiding war, not to mention ending it early when it did break out. The U.S. urged Jewish leaders in Palestine to defer any declaration of statehood and engage in negotiations. While most Arab states agreed to this proposal, David Ben Gurion rejected it, recognizing that peaceful adoption of the partition plan would entail the return of displaced refugees. He preferred war, as it offered the opportunity to seize territories beyond the 1947 partition borders that he desired.

When Arab states finally, and reluctantly, intervened, they for the most part arrived in the areas designated for a Palestinian state per the 1947 UN partition plan. They were not interested in war, and despite their propaganda and rhetoric, pursued many behind-the-scenes opportunities to end the war with Israel. Israel rejected all such overtures with the goal of maximizing its land-grabs.