#davidf

You certainly have changed your tune.

Having asserted that 700000 Arabs were uprooted by the Jews - as you believe Benny Morris claimed - and that you had been lied to about that having occurred - you now state::

"Yuyutsu's last post coincides with what I can make of the situation."

Yuyutsu stated:
"According to first-hand information that I got from family-members who were in Israel in 1948, there was chaos, there was no central policy on either side: on the Arab side, different villages and towns received different instructions from their local leaders and surrounding militias and on the Israeli side, the decisions about what to do with the local Arab population was left to each individual local military commander, usually at the level of captains who were in their early 20's - some placed the Arabs on trucks and expelled them, some ignored them and others asked them to stay, all at their personal whim. Also, at least in some cases, Arab villagers fled because they had ground to believe that the Arab militias that were fighting around their villages were going to rape them "

This certainly does not amount to the mass uprooting of 700000 Arabs at the hands of the Jews.

Yuyutsu accords with what Benny Morris recounts in his letter to the Irish Times dated 21st February 2008.

"Most of Palestine's 700,000 "refugees" fled their homes because of the flail of war (and in the expectation that they would shortly return to their homes on the backs of victorious Arab invaders). But it is also true that there were several dozen sites, including Lydda and Ramla, from which Arab communities were expelled by Jewish troops."

So will you now answer this question.

Are you prepared to now admit that the Arabs fleeing Palestine did so mainly of their own volition?

Dear David,

I am not prepared to say most Arabs fleeing did that on their own volition because I do not have evidence to say it is true. I think some Arabs fled on their own volition. I do not know the proportion.

I am prepared to say some Arabs fled on their own volition. I do not have the evidence to say that most Arabs fled on their own volition.

Dear David,

Are you prepared to agree that the new State of Israel should have allowed people who fled a war zone to return to their homes when the war was over?

So 700000 Arabs fled an invasion of heavily-armed army of racist butchers. Of course it was of their own volition. So?

#davidf

You now state:
" I am prepared to say some Arabs fled on their own volition. I do not have the evidence to say that most Arabs fled on their own volition."

Here are some contemporary Arab sources as evidence:

1. Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, in his book, "The Arabs:"
"This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country."

2. Khalid al-Azm, Syrian Prime Minister (1948-49) in his 1973 memoirs:
"Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave."

3. "The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two, Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile."
Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee - Beirut newspaper, Sada al-Janub (August 16, 1948).

4. "The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade, He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean....Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down."
Habib Issa in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951)

Please now answer my question #davidf