Haifa 1948: the pamphlet that punctures the Nakba story

The so often repeated "Nakba" story of "Free Palestine" chanters and sloppy left-wing journalists collapses at the sight of this pamphlet, which was distributed all over Haifa at the time. Dated 28 April 1948! Before the Arab League wanted to drive the Jews out of their barely established homeland. The real Arab genocidal replacement theory, which fortunately never became practice.

From my hometown of Jaffa I drove yesterday along the coast to Haifa (97 km), a one-hour ride. A beautiful city of 300,000 inhabitants, the third largest city of Israel. Many Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants live there, as well as a fast-growing community of ultra-Orthodox Jews, the Haredim.

What did the city look like when the British took over the area from the Ottoman colonial-Islamic empire and began their mandate assignment from the League of Nations?

About 25,000 people lived in Haifa then: a small community of 9,000 Arab Muslims, 9,000 Christians and 7,000 Jews. Through the construction of a modern deep-sea port, oil refineries (by British and Jews alike) and a railway network, the population grew over the following twenty years to more than 130,000 inhabitants. Partly under the influence of the Third Aliyah: the immigration wave of European Jews fleeing the pogroms and the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. The Jews brought much Zionist capital and idealism. The Technion university opened as early as 1924.

There was no question of conflict, because the Arab inhabitants too, twenty percent of whom were Christian, shared in the economic prosperity. This led to Arab population growth to 36,000. Around 1940-1945 the Jewish population rose through the Fifth Aliyah to some 66,000 inhabitants.

This growth stalled because of the British immigration restrictions; the British listened to Arabs who never wanted more than a third of the (British) Palestinian mandate area allotted to the Jews. In most of the country, buying land was even forbidden.

The area was above all to become Islamic. If a real state were to be founded, the Arab population would gain power, partly thanks to the immigration halt. The Jews were effectively in an open prison. The Arab revolt against the British (1936-1939) moreover brought many attacks on the Jews.

They felt betrayed by the British. The Balfour Declaration was effectively torn up before their eyes. The British acquitted themselves very "conscientiously" of their mandate task. The Jews were not protected against the well-armed Arabs.

Militant Jewish movements were founded that began attacking the British and the Arabs. This had a gigantic, disruptive influence on daily life, politics and the demography of Haifa. Jewish immigration was severely restricted and further immigration depended on the permission of… the Arabs.

Precisely when the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany escalated, the port closed to Jews. The British even stopped refugee ships, after which the refugees were interned in the nearby Atlit camp or deported to Mauritius. The controversial word "replacement" truly applies here.

The Haifa paradox

The Jews were effectively locked up in their small "refugee camp". But Nazi Germany advanced through North Africa and the port became of crucial strategic importance to the British. Jews and Arabs were forced by necessity to work together in the port and the oil refineries with the British, hated by both parties.

Jewish paramilitary groups even decided to fight temporarily alongside the British against the Nazis who were murdering their Jewish brothers and sisters in Europe. The real genocide.

After the British victory, however, the British refused to withdraw the Jewish immigration halt and the ban on buying land. The Jews were left empty-handed, having to defend themselves again at the founding of Israel. The Arabs lost.

The Arabs call this loss the Nakba. The catastrophe. The chutzpah!

What is forgotten is that the Jews WANTED to cooperate with the Arabs and even offered them citizenship with full rights. The proud Arabs, however, thought that after a few days the Arab League would have driven the Jews into the sea, and that after a short departure they could return to a then Judenfrei Haifa.

The real catastrophe

The Jews knew that leaders from the neighbouring Arab countries (they were simply surrounded) told the local population all kinds of fables about the fate of Arabs under Jewish rule and ordered them to flee.

The Jewish Workers Council of Haifa and the Histadrut (the largest socialist Israeli trade union) had the leaflet above printed and called on the Arab inhabitants precisely NOT to leave.

The text read, among other things: "Do not destroy your houses with your own hands. The gates are open to work, to life and to peace, for you and your families."

That same week the British police in Haifa reported the same. Jews tried to keep shops open and to guarantee the safety of Arab lives and property. Ben-Gurion even sent Golda Meir to convey this personally to the Arab inhabitants of Haifa. Still, tens of thousands left.

Originally, "Nakba" referred to the failure of the Arabs to destroy the Jewish state. Later the term was redefined as an order of expulsion by Jews.

Look at Haifa and test that theory!

There was no order to leave. The Arab Higher Committee branded everyone who remained under Jewish protection as an "apostate". Its chairman, Jamal Husseini, told the Security Council that Arabs "chose to leave their homes, their possessions and everything they had in the world and to leave the city."

Most of the 62,000 Arab inhabitants of Haifa left on foot. A few thousand stayed. They became citizens of the new state, and today their grandchildren vote in Israel.

The expulsion story can only exist if this document does not.

Am Yisrael Chai!