THE OTHER EXODUS Sta,—The article 'The Arab Refugees' by Leo
Kohn published in the Spectator on June 16 contains excel- lent examples of certain standard techniques of Zionist propaganda: (a) The isolation of events from their chron- ological sequence: Kohn refers to 'the innumerable atrocities committed against the Jews such as the wholesale massacre of Jewish employees by their fellow workers in the Haifa Refineries.' The chron- ological context of this incident is described by Major R. D. Wilson in Cordon and Search (p. 157):
'It started when IZI. gangsters threw two bombs from a passing car among a large group of Arab employees
waiting for transport outside the refinery. This act resulted in six Arabs being killed and forty wounded, many of them seriously. The casualties were im- mediately taken into the refinery First Aid Post on the way to which they were seen and questioned by their compatriots. The reaction of the latter was instantaneous. . . . All subsequent casualties were suffered by Jews of whom forty-one were killed and forty-eight injured. . . . In spite of time fact that this massacre was the direct outcome of the initial attack by the IZL . . . the Haganah felt itself obliged to carry out a reprisal. The following night the Arab village of Balad es Sheik . . . was attacked. . . . They succeeded in killing fourteen Arabs of whom ten were women and children.'
(b) The multi-purpose half-truth: Kohn writes: 'More than 220,000 Arabs live today in the State of Israel. Not a single Jew survived in any part of Palestine that fell under Arab sway.'
The fact is that the 220,000 Arabs in Israel today are the 'balance' of some 800,000 Arabs who in- habited the same areas before their expulsion by the Zionists in 1948. To argue (as Kohn seems to be doing by implication) that this balance in itself proves the humane treatment of the Arabs by the Zionists is logically analogous to arguing that the survival of a certain number of Jews in Europe is evidence of the humane treatment of Jews by the Nazis. At the same time to state that 'not a single Jew has survived etc.' is to suggest that many Jews (just how many is left to the reader's imagination), would today be alive in Jordan had they not been liquidated when they fell `under Arab sway' in 1948. The fact is that according to the UN partition decision the Jews who occupied less than 7 per cent. of a predominantly Arab country were to have 55 per cent. of Palestine with some 500.000 Arabs and about 10,000 Jews falling within the proposed Jewish and Arab States respectively. In the course of the Zionist offensives, both before and after May 15 the Jews expanded over 77 per cent. of the country including most of the areas in which the 10,000 Jews of the proposed Arab State lived. In all, less than 2,000 Jews fell under 'Arab sway' both with- in the borders of the Arab State and the Jerusalem enclave. These were (1) 1,300 civilians and 340 com- batants taken in the Old City of Jerusalem. The civilians were immediately handed over to Zionist authorities, and the combatants who were taken as prisoners of war were returned after the armistice. (2) Some 350 combatants taken as prisoners of war from Gush Etzion and also released after the armistice. Arab Legion behaviour at the Jewish sur- render in the Old City is described by Dov Joseph, the Jewish Military Governor in Jerusalem, as follows: 'The Arab Legion according to all our evidence behaved extremely well. Some of their officers were Arab, some British, but all of them treated the Jews correctly and even courteously.' To say as Kohn does that, at Gush Etzion, the Arab Legion is guilty of 'horrible treachery' in 'letting loose an Arab mob' on the settlers is a shocking travesty of the truth. Jewish eye-witnesses themselves attest to the protection given them by the Arab Legion at the time. If what Kohn said had really happened very few of the 350 POWs of Gush Etzion would indeed be alive today.
(c) The scholarly reference to non-existent evi- dence in Arabic sources: Kohn mentions the memoirs of Nimr al Khatib in support of his contention that the Arab leaders urged the Palestine Arabs to leave their country. In fact Khatib quotes the full text of the twelve communiques issued by the Haifa National Committee (translated by me in Middle East Forum, December, 1960) in which the Arab inhabitants are expressly and repeatedly urged to hold firm and attend to business as usual. Khatib also gives much detailed evidence of Zionist atroci- ties to compel Arabs to leave their villages including the pouring of paraffin and then the setting on fire of Arab captives in the village of Tireh and the methodical shooting and burial in a communal grave of some forty young men in Tantura village.—Yours New Jerry
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