Israel ethnically cleansed Arabs in 1948? Critical thinking about the Nakba

Image credit: United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA)

 

Israel ethnically cleansed Arabs in 1948? Critical thinking about the Nakba

 

On May 15, 2026, many people commemorated the Nakba. On that date, Al Jazeera reported the following:

Millions of Palestinians are marking the 78th anniversary of the Nakba—Arabic for “catastrophe”—a term that refers to the mass expulsion and flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel….

Historians estimate that about 750,000 Palestinians—roughly one-third of the population at the time—were forced from their homes….

In other words, Israel at its inception was engaged in ethnic cleansing.

But is it true?

No, it’s not true. It is anti-Israel propaganda.

For my argument for believing it’s not true, see below for chapter 2 of my recent book A Defence of Israel: Critical Thinking about the Israel-Hamas War.

To avoid being bamboozled by anti-Israel propaganda, it’s important to be clear about the truth of the Nakba.

Note to critics: Before offering criticism, please read the whole of my chapter, plus endnotes, plus relevant linked-to articles. And perhaps read chapter 1 (on settler colonialism) of my book A Defence of Israel or part 1 of my blog article “Settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing: Two false assumptions about Israel’s inception.” Thanks.

 

Chapter 2 of A Defence of Israel

 

Israel at its inception was engaged in ethnic cleansing (a.k.a. the Nakba)?

 

Objection: When Israel began as a state, it engaged in ethnic cleansing—also known as the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe)—so Israel is not a legitimate state.

Short reply: No, and no.

Long reply: As pointed out in the previous chapter, when Israel began as an independent state in 1948 its Nazi-sympathizing Arab neighbours immediately went to war against Israel. Instead of accepting the UN’s two-state solution for a Jewish state and an Arab state in the region of Palestine, Arabs chose to make an attempt to wipe Israel off the map. The Arabs would rather go to war than allow there to be a Jewish state (for more on this topic, see previous chapter). Of course, terrible things happen in war. Nevertheless, in its inception in the midst of a war started by Arabs, Israel did not attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Arabs (though there may have been some Israelis who wished to do so).

To understand this, it helps to get some clarity on the so-called Nakba.

About the Nakba

The Nakba (“catastrophe”) of the 1948–49 Arab-Israeli war refers to the fact that 750,000 Arabs were displaced from Israel. It should be noticed that the term nakba was originally used by Arabs to refer to the embarrassing-to-them defeat of Arabs by Jews when in 1948 the Arabs attacked the new State of Israel. The goal of the Arabs, led by Nazi-collaborator Haj Amin al-Husseini and company, was to exterminate the Jews and dominate the whole of the Palestine region. But the Arabs failed miserably.

And this failure was for Islamic Arabs a humiliation of epic proportion—a catastrophe. Why? Because of a culmination of at least three reasons.

Humiliation 1: Nakba was self-inflicted

First, the catastrophe was a self-inflicted wound. Arabs started the war—and lost. As researchers Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf point out: “For the Arabs, the results of the war were a complete humiliation—a small community of some 650,000 Jews succeeded in overpowering Arab Palestinian militia and the combined Arab armies of the surrounding states.”¹ And one of the results of the war (begun and lost by the Arabs) was the flight of 750,000 Arabs out of Israel. So Arabs were the main cause of the refugee problem. If the Arabs had not started the war, which they lost, there would be no refugee problem.²

Humiliation 2: Arab defeat embarrasses Allah

Second, the Arab defeat was an (alleged) injustice against God. According to Islamic doctrine, all once-Muslim lands always belong to Islam. This includes the Palestine region—once part of the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic caliphate—which was to be divided by the UN between Arabs and Jews. But in 1948–49 the Muslim Arabs lost the once-Muslim land to the Jews in a war started and lost by the Muslim Arabs. Such a loss is a violation of Islam’s Allah-ordained domination of the world. Daniel Pipes, an American historian and president of the Middle East Forum, elaborates:

Islamic doctrine holds that once a land has been conquered by Muslims, it becomes part of the lands of Islam (Dar al-Islam) and an inalienable Islamic patrimony (a waqf). Accordingly, its loss constitutes a robbery, and Muslims must exert to bring it back under their rule…

Palestine became a part of Dar al-Islam after its conquest by Muslims in 638 CE, six years after the Islamic account records the death of Muhammad. Muslims then ruled it until 1917, with the exception of two centuries, from 1097 to 1291, when Crusaders controlled parts of it. The British ruled all of it from 1917 to 1948 and Israel, most or all of thereafter. This history has created a deep sense of entitlement: Palestine belongs under Muslim control.³

Humiliation 3: Jewish victory embarrasses Islam

Third, according to Islam, Islam is the “true religion” whereas Judaism, the religion of the Jews, is not (nor is Christianity or any other religion⁴). For Islamists, that is, for Muslims who take Muhammad seriously as their prophet and revealer of God’s will, Muhammad’s later hateful and violent teachings against Jews (teachings that abrogate the prophet’s earlier peaceful views of Jews) are to be taken seriously.⁵ Indeed, very seriously. For Islamist Muslims like the popular al-Husseini and his many followers in the Arab world, Jews are less than human, like disease-laden “microbes” or “mangy dogs.”⁶ And they should be treated as such.⁷ According to al-Husseini: “The world will never be at peace until the Jewish race is exterminated... The Jews are the germs which have caused all the trouble in the world.”⁸ Thus, as Joseph Spoerl reports: “In March 1948, [al-Husseini] told an interviewer in a Jaffa newspaper that the Arabs did not intend merely to prevent partition but ‘would continue fighting until the Zionists were annihilated and the whole of Palestine became a purely Arab state.’”⁹ The reality, then, of a Jewish state simply cannot be the case for Islamists. A Jewish state is anathema to Islam (especially fundamentalist Islam, what I am calling “Islamist Islam,” as followed by al-Husseini and many Arabs, which takes Muhammad’s teachings against Jews seriously). Hence, the defeat of Arabs by Jews was a deeply embarrassing catastrophe—a Nakba.

Inverting the Nakba for Palestinian propaganda!

But now Nakba has a meaning used by Palestinian propagandists to divert attention away from the Arab anti-Semitic (i.e., anti-Jewish) violent aggression of 1948 and instead promote Palestinian victimhood. Nakba now means an alleged 1948 ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Israel by Israel. But this narrative is false. Yes, many Arabs, especially those deemed hostile to Israel, were forced out by Israel in 1948. This is truly tragic. But it was war—a war started by the Arabs. And these facts remain: Many Arabs left Israel willingly to get out of harm’s way because a war (to exterminate Jews) was at hand (and these fleeing Arabs planned to return to Israel after Israel was destroyed); many Arabs left Israel because the surrounding Arab nations (wishing to wage genocidal war on the Jews) ordered them to leave to facilitate the war effort (and return later to a Jew-ridden land); many Arabs who were not hostile to Israel stayed in Israel (as citizens of Israel). In other words, the criterion for Arabs being forced out of Israel was not whether they were Arab, but whether they were hostile to Israel. Middle East expert Denis MacEoin observes: “It is true that the Israelis expelled some Arabs, but they were mainly those in frontline areas and who were known to be cooperating with the enemy. But they were only a small percentage of those Arabs who became displaced.”¹⁰ Thus, embedded in the criterion of expulsion is a distinction that shows the Nakba was not genocide, not ethnic cleansing. Hostility, not ethnicity or religion, was the concern. This is a significant distinction that should not be missed (but often is) and it refutes the genocide/ethnic cleansing charge.

This distinction is additionally significant because it also refutes the oft-heard theft charge, i.e., the charge that Israel stole Arab land. That is to say, the distinction shows that in 1948 many Palestinian Arabs forfeited the ownership of their houses and land by siding with those who waged war on the Jews with the intent of murdering all the Jews. Is “forfeited” too strong a word? No. As MacEoin points out, “The Arabs in Palestine were being told: ‘You can leave now, you can get out of the way, let the armies—let the Egyptian army, the Jordanian army—let them do their work, and then when you come back you can have all the properties that belong to the Jews when we have wiped them out.’”¹¹ Surely, abandoning one’s property (even with intent of doing so only temporarily) so thereby one aids and abets a genocidal war against one’s neighbours constitutes no legitimate grounds whatsoever for one’s complaint of theft concerning the abandoned property’s subsequent appropriation by those neighbours (as a nation state) when the genocide attempt is stopped by those neighbours.

Thus, contrary to popular thought, Israel in its inception did not ethnically cleanse Arabs.¹²

(For additional perspective, keep in mind that whereas 750,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were pushed out of Israel during the 1948 war, in subsequent years about 850,000 Jews were expelled from surrounding Arab countries.¹³)

Conclusion

Thus, insofar as the popular Israel’s-inception-involved-ethnic-cleansing assumption undergirds criticism of Israel’s legitimacy as a state, such criticism fails. And thus, too, insofar as this assumption undergirds calls for Israel’s destruction, such calls are unfounded. In other words, the popular objection that Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing, a.k.a. the Nakba, and thus is not a legitimate state and so should not exist, is an abject failure.^14,15

 

NOTES

1. Adi Schwartz & Einat Wilf, War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace (New York: St. Martin’s Publishing/ All Points Books, 2020), 28. Adi Schwartz is a political scientist who is completing his PhD (Bar-Ilan University) and whose research focuses on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Einat Wilf has a PhD (Cambridge) in political science and is an Israeli politician.

2. See, again, Schwartz & Wilf, War of Return, 2–3, 5–6, 17, 32.

3. Daniel Pipes, Israel Victory: How Zionists Win Acceptance and Palestinians Get Liberated (New York & Nashville: Wicked Son/ Post Hill Press, 2024), 32–33. See, too, Robert Spencer et al., Islam: What the West Needs to Know, DVD (98 minutes), produced and directed by Gregory M. Davis and Bryan Daly (Lorain, Ohio: Quixotic Media Productions 2006). (See comments at 51:25–52:36 by Serge Trifkovic.) For further thought, see Mordecai Kedar, “Arabs and Muslims Will Not Accept Israel as the Jewish State,” The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, January 18, 2018.

4. For a look at how to arbitrate between the truth claims of competing religions vis-à-vis pluralism, see Hendrik van der Breggen, “Religious Pluralism x 3,” APOLOGIA (blog), November 21, 2013. And for a look at how to arbitrate between the truth claims of Islam and Christianity, see Hendrik van der Breggen, “Islam and Christianity,” APOLOGIA (blog), March 16, 2017.

5. It would be reasonable to describe Islamists as what Ayaan Hirsi Ali calls “Medina Muslims,” i.e., they follow the violent teachings of the Prophet Mohammed when in Medina the prophet effectively became a warlord after his peaceful approach to spreading Islam in Mecca was rejected (“Mecca Muslims” follow the Prophet Mohammad’s peaceful teachings when he first began his religion in Mecca). For more on the distinction between Medina Muslims and Mecca Muslims, see Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “Islam Is a Religion of Violence,” Foreign Policy Magazine, November 9, 2015. And see Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now (Toronto:  Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2016), 13–23.

6. Joseph S. Spoerl, “Palestinians, Arabs and the Holocaust,” Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 26, No. 1/2 (Spring 2014), 17.

7. For further thought about Islam’s view of Jews, see Mark A. Gabriel, Islam and the Jews: The Unfinished Battle (Lake Mary, Florida: Charisma House, 2003). Also see R. C. Sproul and Abdul Saleeb, The Dark Side of Islam (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2003).

8. Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2009), 184.

9. Spoerl, “Palestinians, Arabs and the Holocaust,” Joseph Spoerl is Professor of Philosophy (emeritus) at Saint Anselm College (Manchester, New Hampshire).

10. Denis MacEoin, in “The Status of Jerusalem, the 1949 Armistice Lines, and Refugees,” Whose Land? Episode 12 (London: UK Lawyers for Israel: 2024). MacEoin has a PhD in Persian and Islamic Studies from Cambridge University, was a lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University, and was a senior editor at Middle East Quarterly.

11. MacEoin, “The Status of Jerusalem, the 1949 Armistice Lines, and Refugees.”

12. Of course, and sadly, atrocities happen in war, and Israel, like most other countries, is guilty of engaging in such behaviour. But sometimes atrocities get blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes. One atrocity that has been blown out of proportion for propaganda purposes is the killing of 107 Arab civilians and soldiers by the Israeli military in the village of Deir Yassin in 1948. For clarity on this, see Mitchell Bard, “Israel War of Independence: The Capture of Deir Yassin (April 9, 1948),” Jewish Virtual Library, no date. And see Jacob Schwartz, “What is Deir Yassin and the Nakba?” Unpacked, September 5, 2019 (11 minute video). And see Noam Weissman, “Deir Yassin: The Battle for Truth,” Unpacked, October 5, 2023 (26 minute audio); transcript.

13. Noa Tishby, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth (New York: Free Press, 2021), 297. See, too, The Forgotten Refugees (49 minute documentary), produced & directed by Michael Grynszpan, IsraTV/ The David Project, 2005. My pointing to the expulsion of Jews from Arab states along with pointing to the expulsion of Arabs from Israel is not to suggest that two wrongs make a right. Two wrongs do not make a right. Rather, I am merely providing context to show that Palestinian Arabs were not the only ones who suffered.

14. For additional thought about the Nakba, see Salo Aizenberg, “Nakba Day: Why Israel did not allow refugees to ‘return’ after the 1948 war,” The Times of Israel, May 19, 2022. Salo Aizenberg is an independent scholar who studies and writes about antisemitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict and serves on the board of Honest Reporting.

15. To support the claim that at its inception Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing, some scholars refer readers to Ilan Pappé’s book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (London: Oneworld Publications, 2006). But it very much appears that the scholarly merit of Pappé’s work is dubious. In a review of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (and of two other books by Pappé) the highly-respected Israeli historian Benny Morris says the following: “At best, Ilan Pappé must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest. In truth, he probably merits a place somewhere between the two.” (Benny Morris, “The Liar as Hero,” The New Republic, March 16, 2011.) Apparently, Pappé has postmodern interpretive leanings and thus is much more open (prone) to allowing his subjectivity and ideology to influence his historical work than is Morris. Some helpful discussion (and links) concerning the differences in Pappé and Morris’s approaches to the study of history can be found on Reddit: “Nobody should be quoting Ilan Pappé or his works.”

Speaking of Pappé’s work, permit me at this juncture to point out that Pappé’s work on the topic of colonialism is sloppy, too. I add this extended comment on colonialism here instead of in my [earlier] chapter on settler colonialism because, from a pedagogical point of view, I felt readers first needed to understand or have a brief refresher on the historical background I set out in the above chapter on the ethnic cleansing charge against Israel during Israel’s inception and how the Nakba has been used for anti-Israel propaganda purposes. I submit that Pappé allows his postmodern interpretive leanings to influence his conceptual analysis of “colonialism” as well: that is, he very much seems to make meanings of words fit his preconceptions. It turns out that via several confusions he twists the notion of colonialism and forces his twisted version onto Israel. (Warning: Postmodern-leaning writers tend to create an entanglement of confusion and intellectual knots. Breaking free by untangling the knots takes intellectual effort. If what follows is confusing, it is Pappé’s fault.)

In chapter 4 of Ten Myths about Israel, Pappé attempts to change the meaning of colonialism (what Pappé calls “classic colonialism”) so it applies to Israel (as “settler colonialism”). To make his case, Pappé argues that Israel is an instance of “settler colonialism” but is different from “classic colonialism” (i.e., colonialism) in three respects. Pappé wants us to believe that because of those differences, it follows that Israel is in fact a case of settler colonialism. Pappé, however, is mistaken, so we should not be persuaded by his arguments. Contra Pappé, the first two of those three respects show that Israel’s case is not colonialism at all and the third respect is simply a flagrant falsehood foisted onto Israel. So, contrary to what Pappé would have us believe, Israel is not an instance of settler colonialism. Bear with me as I sort through Pappé’s intellectual entanglements.

The first respect or difference, according to Pappé, is that Israel’s survival at its beginning depends on the empire “only initially and temporarily” and that its people (i.e., the Jewish settlers who became, along with the Jews already there, the State of Israel) “do not belong to the same nation as the imperial power that initially supports them” (Pappé, 41). In reply (besides saying “Huh?”), we should notice that if the Jewish settlers do not belong to the British or any other empire, they are not colonialists from that or any other empire. In fact, the Jews at the time of Israel’s inception consisted of Jews already living in the region of Palestine and Jews from a variety of countries which were often persecuting them. Many of the Jews who immigrated to Israel came as refugees from Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Yemen, Poland, Lithuania, Ethiopia, Iraq, Iran, (Nazi) Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Greece. And probably, because most were fleeing, none or almost none of these immigrants were being supported by their countries of origin. True, the British did provide support initially by way of the Balfour Declaration (1917), but the British also withdrew that support via the White Paper (1939). Be that as it may, the temporary support was not that of a “mother country” promoting its colony; it was to help establish a national home for a people other than the British, that is, a national home for Jews who besides living in the land already were also people from other countries with ancestral connections to that land. And, as indicated by the UN Partition Plan (1947), it was also to help establish a national home for Arabs in the region. Contrary to what Pappé would have us think, then, this difference means that Israel is not an instance of colonialism at all—so cannot qualify as “settler colonial.”

The second difference, according to Pappé, is that the Jews were “motivated by a desire to take over land in a foreign country” instead of “[coveting] the natural resources in its new geographical possessions” (Pappé, 42). In reply, we should notice that the Jews were motivated to take over some land in the geographic region known as Palestine (while respecting the human and civil rights of those already there) but, contra Pappé, that land was not a country. As I pointed out in the previous chapter, the land was part of a region lost by the Ottoman Empire to the British as a result of World War I (recall that the Ottomans sided with Germany). Moreover, because the age of empire was coming to a close, the region became a part of the British mandate to allow for peoples in the region to develop into self-governing nation states. And the taking over of the land by the Jews was not for the sake of a colonial expansion or coveting natural resources; it was to be a place of refuge from persecution, and a place of national self-determination of a people. And the land was not foreign; the land was the land of the Jews’ ancestors who were forcefully dispersed from the land, a land to which the Jews were returning, a land on which many Jews already lived. Contrary to what Pappé would have us think, then, this difference means (again) that Israel is not an instance of colonialism at all—so cannot qualify as “settler colonial.”

The third difference, according to Pappé, “concerns the way they [the Jews] treat the new destination of settlement” (Pappé, 42). According to Pappé, the Jews engaged in “annihilation and dehumanization” of the native Palestinian Arabs and thereby “remove[d] the natives from their homeland” (Pappé, 49). In other words, Pappé charges Israel with ethnic cleansing. In reply, we should notice that aside from being a questionable characteristic difference concerning colonialism per se, when it comes to being attributed to Israel, Pappé’s claim is false—and grossly so. These historical facts remain and are ignored by Pappé: (1) Israel was fighting to resist annihilation by Jew-hating Nazi-collaborating Islamists (as I argued in my earlier chapter on settler colonialism); (2) the flight and displacement of many Arabs from Israel was primarily due to the Arabs beginning and losing the genocidal war they waged against Israel (as I also argued in the aforementioned chapter); and (3) Israel was not engaging in so-called ethnic cleansing (which I have argued above in the main body of chapter 2). It seems that Pappé is attempting to divert attention away from the Arab anti-Semitic (i.e., anti-Jewish) violent aggression of 1948 and instead promote Palestinian victimhood by alleging (falsely) that there was in 1948 an ethnic cleansing (“annihilation,” “dehumanization,” removal) of Arabs from Israel by Israel, a.k.a. the Nakba. But, again, this narrative is false.   

To ensure the reader understands my point, permit me to repeat my above reply (in the main text of this chapter) to the allegation that Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing. Yes, many Arabs, especially those deemed hostile to Israel, were forced out by Israel in 1948. This is truly tragic. But it was war—a war started by the Arabs. Nevertheless, many Arabs left Israel willingly to get out of harm’s way because a war (to exterminate Jews) was at hand (and these fleeing Arabs planned to return to Israel after Israel was destroyed); many Arabs left Israel because the surrounding Arab nations (wishing to wage genocidal war on the Jews) ordered them to leave to facilitate the war effort (and return later to a Jew-ridden land); many Arabs who were not hostile to Israel stayed in Israel (as citizens of Israel). In other words, the criterion for Arabs being forced out of Israel was not whether they were Arab, but whether they were hostile to Israel. Middle East expert Denis MacEoin observes: “It is true that the Israelis expelled some Arabs, but they were mainly those in frontline areas and who were known to be cooperating with the enemy. But they were only a small percentage of those Arabs who became displaced.” (MacEoin, “The Status of Jerusalem, the 1949 Armistice Lines, and Refugees.”) Thus, embedded in the criterion of expulsion is a distinction that shows that the ethnic cleansing charge fails. Hostility, not ethnicity or religion, was the concern. This is a hugely significant distinction that should not be missed (but often is).

Clearly, then, Pappé’s postmodern interpretive leanings (i.e., his subjectivity and anti-Israel ideology) influence his philosophical-historical work in the direction of, to use Morris’s term, sloppiness. And thereby Pappé casts onto Israel, to use Lowry’s term, a smear. Ilan Pappé’s work does not show that Israel is a settler-colonial state. Pappé’s argument fails—miserably.

For further assessment of Ilan Pappé’s view that Israel is (allegedly) a settler-colonial state, see the section “Colonialism and imperialist support” in Alexander Yakobson & Amnon Rubinstein, Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish nation-state and human rights (London & New York: Routledge, 2010), 65–75. On pages 76–82 of their book, Yakobson and Rubinstein also refute the claim that there is no historical continuity of the Jewish people. (Yakobson is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the late Rubenstein was dean of the Radzyner School of Law in Herzlia, Israel.)

On the topic of land in the Palestine region legally purchased by Jews before 1947, see Benji Rosenzweig, “Did Jews ‘steal the land’ in Israel? What the 1945 JNF map reveals about the partition plan,” Unpacked, November 28, 2025. Also see Oren Cahanovitc, “Did the Arabs Steal Palestine? Let’s Check the Receipts,” Travelling Israel, November 30, 2025 (19 minute video).

 

End of chapter 2.

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Postscript

About the trucks in the above photos: According to an April 1948 British report, it turns out that at least some of the trucks used to evacuate Arabs from Israel were borrowed from the British Army by Arabs who insisted on leaving even though Jews asked them to stay. For more on this, see M. A. Rothman, X, May 18, 2026.

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Note to critics (again): Before offering criticism, please read the whole of my above chapter, plus endnotes, plus relevant linked-to articles. And perhaps read chapter 1 (on settler colonialism) of my book A Defence of Israel or part 1 of my blog article “Settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing: Two false assumptions about Israel’s inception.” Thanks.