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Portrayed as outgunned and outnumbered by Arab armies, the truth is mirror opposite. Zionist forces neutralized the Jordanians, the strongest regional army, bribing them not to fight with 20% of historic Palestine, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In 1948, on the eve of battle, Jewish forces numbered around 50,000 against a hopelessly outmanned, outgunned irregular Palestinian force of about 7,000. Until May 15, 1948, when Israel was established, other Arab nations deferred, acting belatedly with token forces proving no match for the superior Israelis.
It was a walkover, 78% of Palestine seized; the Jewish state created; 800,000 Palestinians massacred or displaced; 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods destroyed; no quarter given in committing mass murder; ethnic cleaning; vast destruction of villages, communities and crops; rapes and other atrocities.
Yet Israeli historiography portrays the war as liberating, including the myth that Palestinians left voluntarily, fearing harm from invading Arab armies - the same token ones never showing up until it was too late to matter, ill-equiped, fighting with no commitment. Proving no match for superior Israelis, they exited and went home. The war's outcome was never in doubt, the fate of Palestinians sealed, atrocities against them to this day sanitized, including memoricide of the Nakba, fortress Israel and revisionist history enforcing it.
Another myth as well about the region's only democracy, affording rights solely to Jews, and increasingly less of them, Israel solidifying the same elitist society as in America, assuring most rights to the privileged, eroding ones to ordinary Israelis, becoming more like Arabs on their own and out of luck under hardline governance no longer caring.
Israeli thought control enforces it, including crackdowns on dissent - an open, just, free society eroding to conceal growing harshness against anyone challenging injustice, including journalists and academics unwilling to support wrong over right and saying so. As in America, it's now a crime.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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