http://www.cordovabooks.com/index.php?c=islamicbusiness&n=1000&i=1851685553&x=The_Ethnic_Cleansing_of_Palestine
Pappe, an Israeli academic, provides a detailed documentation of why the Mid-East became embroiled in decades of non-stop strife. His material is drawn from personal accounts, Israeli military records, and other written sources. His accounting also documents that Israel's "ethnic cleansing" of Palestine was not the result of voluntary departures nor an act of war. The end of the 1948 Palestine-Israel War led to around a million people being expelled from their homes at gunpoint, civilians being massacred in at least 42 instances, and 531 Palestinian villages being destroyed. Forcible eviction of the 75-90% Palestinian population from villages was accomplished through bombardment, homes being set on fire at night while occupied, homes and businesses being bulldozed, and mines planted among the rubble to prevent Palestinians from returning. The mission took six months to complete, and has been systematically denied and erased almost totally from global memory. Leaders of this military pogrom include former Prime Ministers Ben Gurion and Yitzak Rabin, and the effort was witnessed by Golda Meir (another Prime Minister). Atrocities also included poisoning the water supply for Acre with typhoid, numerous cases of rape, looting food stores and other Palestinian assets. Jews had purchased Only 6% of Palestine by 1947 when a U.N. special committee gave the Jews over half the territory. The newly founded Israeli army, with the help of the country's Communist party, received a large shipment of heavy arms from Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union in May, 1946, and the regular Arab armies bought some of their own. The Jewish forces were about double the Arab armies combined, even more at the start of the conflict. Preceding the war they also set up a network of spies and collaborators, and created detailed files for each village - indicating those Arabs who had opposed them. Mansyur www.cordovabooks.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
