Did Arab radio broadcasts urge the Palestinians to flee?

Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question, edited by Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens (1988).

The following passage is from an essay by Christopher Hitchens entitled Broadcasts in Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question:

It is probably safe to say that nobody interested enough in the Middle East to have even overheard an argument about it can be a stranger to the story of ‘the broadcasts’. Confronted with the charge that the Palestinian Arabs were forcibly dispossessed in 1948, Israeli propaganda resorts routinely to the claim that the Palestinians did indeed run away, but that they were induced or incited to do so by their own leadership. For example, the official Israeli government pamphlet on the refugee question, first published in 1953, states plainly that the Palestinian exodus followed ‘express instructions broadcast by the president of the Arab Higher Executive (the Mufti)’. The same claim has been repeated before the United Nations, by countless Israeli diplomats in numerous countries, by overseas Zionist organizations, by pro-Israeli academics and journalists and by hundreds of thousands of honest partisans of the Israeli cause who in all probability believe it.

Considered from almost any level of moral elevation, the question of whether the Palestinians ran away ‘under orders’ or ‘under pressure’ is a secondary one. Whatever may have prompted their flight, they had a right to expect to return home after the end of hostilities. Nobody has so far been so bold as to deny that that right was stripped from them. But alas the argument about the Palestinian refugees has not been carried on in any elevated manner. Thus the simple question, did they flee or were they driven out, assumes an importance of its own. To put it no higher, an awful lot of moral capital has been sunk into the argument. The claim that ‘broadcasts’ were transmitted urging flight has become virtually totemic. It is clung to with an almost neurotic zeal. What is the evidence for it?

In January 1986, the Israeli historian Dr Benny Morris published an article of extraordinary importance in Middle Eastern Studies. Dr Morris had obtained a copy of a report by the intelligence branch of the Israeli Defense Forces, entitled The Emigration of the Arabs of Palestine in the Period 1/12/1947 – 1/6/1948. These months saw almost half of the refugees leave their homes, and thus may be taken as ‘typical’. The IDF intelligence made a meticulous study of the departure of these 391,000 people, and listed three major causes in their assigned order of importance:

1) Direct, hostile Jewish operations against Arab settlements.
2) The effect of our hostile operations on nearby settlements…especially the fall of large neighboring centers.
3) Operations of the dissidents.

Report came from Economist writer in Cyprus

Later in his 11-page article, Hitchens cites an article by Erskine Childers in the London Spectator of May 12, 1961. In the article, Dr Childers expresses his bafflement over the Israeli propaganda claim that Arab Palestinians were urged to flee by their own leaders:

Examining every official Israeli statement about the Arab exodus, I was struck by the fact that no primary evidence of evacuation orders was ever produced. The charge, Israel claimed, was ‘documented’, but where were the documents? There had allegedly been Arab radio broadcasts ordering the evacuation; but no dates, names of stations, or texts of messages were ever cited. In Israel in 1958, as a guest of the Foreign Office and therefore doubly hopeful of serious assistance, I asked to be shown the proofs. I was assured they existed, and was promised them. None had been offered when I left, but I was again assured. I asked to have the material sent to me. I am still waiting.
   While in Israel, however, I met Dr Leo Kohn, professor of political science at Hebrew University and an ambassador-rank advisor to the Israeli Foreign Office. He had written one of the first official pamphlets on the Arab refugees. I asked him for concrete evidence of the Arab evacuation orders. Agitatedly, Dr Kohn replied: ‘Evidence? Evidence? What more could you want than this?’ and he took up his own pamphlet. ‘Look at this Economist report,’ and he pointed to a quotation. ‘You will surely not suggest that the Economist is a Zionist journal?’
   The quotation is one of about five that appear in every Israeli speech or pamphlet, and are in turn used by every sympathetic analysis. It seemed very impressive: it referred to the exodus from Haifa, and to an Arab broadcast order as one major reason for this exodus.

Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians, by David Gilmour, 1982.

Hitchens continues: “Dr Childers was sufficiently intrigued to turn up the original Economist article, which had appeared on October 2, 1948. His first suspicion was aroused by the use of the bland euphemism ‘incident’ to describe the notorious massacre of the Arab villagers of Deir Yassin. Further checking showed that the report in the Economist, which made a vague reference to ‘announcements made over the air’ by the Arab Higher Committee, had been written from Cyprus by a correspondent who used an uncorroborated Israeli source. It hardly counted as evidence, let alone first-hand testimony.”

Citing the same Spectator article, David Gilmour, author of Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians, quotes Childers as saying: “There was not a single order , or appeal, or suggestion about evacuation from Palestine from any Arab radio station, inside or outside Palestine, in 1948. There is repeated monitored record of Arab appeals, even flat orders, to stay put” (P 67).

Gilmour continues: “Additional evidence of the attitude of the Arab leadership is contained in a letter from the Arab Higher Committee, dated March 8, 1948, which specifically asks Arab governments to cooperate in preventing Palestinians from leaving their country. The letter says: ‘The Arab Higher Committee has resolved that it is in the interests of Palestine that no Palestinians should be permitted to leave the country except under special circumstances…’”

Describing the allegation the Palestinians fled in response to broadcast instructions from their leaders as “extraordinary”, Gilmour says: “…it has been shown to be false time after time, and it is difficult to see what the Zionists hope to achieve by endlessly repeating it”. But presumably, they continue to repeat it because they hope that if the lie is told often enough, for long enough, it will eventually metamorphose into truth.

Click here for Part 2 of this article.

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