> Erskine Childers in his classic article The Other Exodus from 1963 went through transcripts of radio broadcasts in Palestine during 1948 and couldn't find a single instance of an order by Arab leaders calling for them to leave.
This is interesting. I'll stop writing that. (Or until I can get proof of it.)
It would be astounding to me if this was true but I also cannot square the idea of a genocide of Arabs within Israeli borders with the fact that there are many more Arabs inside Israel today than before 1948.
I still haven't made up my mknd on this, but here is what I found:
There is a lot of information there but the most interesting (too me at least since it partially contractict my llng beld beliefs) was what I found by following the Wikipedia result one step further to this page:
This page mostly supports bjourne but interestingly is also full of quotes that support what I learned:
> Furthermore, in his comprehensive book on the Arab–Israeli conflict, Righteous Victims, Morris wrote:
>> In some areas Arab commanders ordered the villagers to evacuate to clear the ground for military purposes or to prevent surrender. More than half a dozen villages ... were abandoned during these months as a result of such orders. Elsewhere, in East Jerusalem and in many villages around the country, the [Arab] commanders ordered women, old people, and children to be sent away to be out of harm's way.... [T]he AHC and the Arab League had periodically endorsed such a move when contemplating the future war in Palestine.[174]
> In a 2003 interview with Haaretz, Morris summed up the conclusions of his revised edition of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem: "In the months of April–May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves. At the same time, it turns out that there was a series of orders issued by the Arab Higher Committee and by the Palestinian intermediate levels to remove children, women and the elderly from the villages."[175]
> The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the 8 March 1948 instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes and move to areas "far away from the dangers. Any opposition to this order ... is an obstacle to the holy war ... and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts."[176]
This is interesting. I'll stop writing that. (Or until I can get proof of it.)