SIR,—Under challenge, Jon Kimche has now shifted ground so breathtakingly
that I have quite lost his 'mountain of evidence that the initiative for the Arab exodus came from the Arab side.' He now writes that he 'never said there were' Arab broadcasts ordering evacuation. Why, then, the 130 words of his earlier letter questioning the completeness of the BBC monitor records—which he carefully depicted as only not showing such orders, not as also showing repeated Arab broadcasts against evacuation? Mr. Kimche is still going on about the supposed incom- pleteness of the BBC (and I suppose the separate yet wholly corroborative CIA?) monitoring. But I will save precious space because, praise be, Mr. Kimche has now conceded the whole broadcasts issue.
And under direct challenge, Mr. Kimche is silent about his previous fantasy of the telephones and messengers verbally ordering 650,000 Arabs to leave! In fact in his latest letter Mr. Kimche drops all suggestion that the Arabs left under Arab orders. This, from a leading Zionist publicist in the West, at a time when Mr. Ben-Gurion is repeating (May 16) the myth, is really quite something.
Mr. Kimche has also exploded Mr. Ben-Gurion's latest denial that 'a single Arab resident was expelled' since Israel's establishment. For Mr. Kimche now admits that later'—clearly, after Israel's creation on May 15, 1948—the Israelis ' "encouraged" and In some cases forced the Arabs to leave.'
I do not quite grasp the distinction, and nor, apparently, does Mr. Kimche, since he himself put 'encouraged' in quotes. But I will state what he felt hesitant to say. Those civilians not already fleeing out of the panic long incited by the Zionists were 'encouraged' to leave by the advancing Israeli troops indiscriminately shooting up their homes and families (cf. Mr. Kimche himself on Dayan entering Lydda and Ramie); and by loudspeaker vans. If any Arabs were still left when the Israelis fully took a town or district, these were then 'forced' to leave at bayonet-point, first being 'stripped of all their belongings' (cf. Economist, etc.). That is what hap- pened. Mr. Kimche attributes partial 'responsibility' for this phase of the exodus to the 'invading Arab armies.' They did not succeed in preventing this mass expulsion; so that makes them 'responsible' for it, according 'to Mr. Kimche Where, then, has Mr. Kimche's 'mountain' gone? Having admitted Israeli expulsion after May 15, he for some strange reason seeks to absolve the Zionists from any responsibility for the exodus phase before May 15. Here, we are back with the familiar Zionist story of the Arabs being demoralised by bad leaders and the initial exit of the well-to-do. Of course there was demoralisation. But did that make these first 300,000 Arabs flee? Mr. Kimche's method of sug- gesting it did makes me gasp. He writes that these pre-May 15 Arabs 'left in the main from towns and districts where the Jews exercised no control.'
No control? It was against precisely these Arab centres that Zionist troops, beginning in April. launched their all-out military attacks designed (Ben-Gurion) to 'make the State larger and Jewish.' On April 10 Deir Yassin's Arabs were butchered; April 20, Tiberias was attacked; Haifa on April 22; Jaffa on April 26; Acre, Safed and the rest before May 15. It was in precisely these Arab centres that official and unofficial Zionist troops began their 'orgy of looting and wanton destruction' (Mr. Kimche himself); and that the whole Zionist campaign of deliberate terrorisation by radio, loudspeaker vans, and atrocity reached its peak. And Mr. Kimche would have us believe that these Arabs were not under Zionist 'control'; that without Zionist 'encour- agement,' leave alone 'force,' they left, all 300,000 of them, simply through demoralisation, Arab- and British-caused demoralisation. Is there no limit to Zionist rewriting of history?
The rest of Mr. Kimche's latest letter is the usual minefield. 'Many of these Arabs were Palestine Government civil servants . . . advised to leave the country, he writes. How many, Mr. Kimche? We are dealing with the fate of 650,000 people. And why, since the well-to-do minority's departure began in January, was it that the great mass only left in April—the month of Deir Yassin and the major Zionist offensive? And on and on and on . . .
And at the end having, in the midst of all this, made his enormous admission of. Zionist mass expul- sion of Arabs, Mr. Kimche dares to suggest that these same Arabs have had 'enough of words about the past.'—Yours faithfully,
ERSKINE B. MIT DI RS
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