Цитаты из книги Dear Palestine: A Social History of the 1948 War

Zionism was initially very influential in the DP camps established in the American zone in Germany. Many members of youth movements were eager to immigrate to Palestine from 1945 onward.

The day after the UN approved partition, fighting reignited between Jews and Arabs, with the understanding that British departure would inaugurate the ultimate battle for Palestine.

Although the protest in Baghdad was initially against the treaty, it quickly came to encompass a much wider range of demands: from calls to send Nuri al-Saiʿd (the pro-British politician who dominated Iraqi politics for decades) and Prime Minister Salih Jabr to the gallows, to calls to distribute bread to the people…

Al-Salihi’s letter demonstrates the extent to which all of these convictions and sectarian identities intersected: not only did he display an anti-Fascist sentiment but also an ideological mix of Iraqi nationalism, pan-Arabism, anticolonialism, and Islamic solidarity. Of course, this degree of ideological mixing should…

At the same time, more violent steps were taken to convince those who refused to enlist. Already in March 1948 the third congress of Holocaust survivors in DP camps decided that those who evaded the draft “would be excluded from social and political life.” By mid-April those who refused to present themselves for…

Alluding to those difficult times in Palestine, a notable from Haifa, Hanna Badr Salim, wrote the editor of al-Difaʿ(Defense) in February 1948 that “we waged war on Zionism, but we were unprepared” because “we were busy fighting one another, which distracted us from the danger.” Even Amin al-Husayni himself may have…

In the Arab world, European expansion into the Ottoman Empire was a malady of similar magnitude. France sponsored autonomous Christian rule in Mount Lebanon in 1861; Algeria and Tunisia were occupied by the French in 1831 and 1881, respectively, and Libya by Italy in 1911. Most egregious in the eyes of many was Britain’s…

Exaggerations in letters home were also not unique to the ALA. Soldiers writing to their families from war zones around the world have often chosen to boast about victories—real or invented—in order to placate or impress their loved ones.

One of the most effective “social cement” themes was the Bible, which had been used already in Palmach education materials before 1948 to promote the view that “activism”—a euphemism for militarism—was the only course of action for the Jewish people. Numerous education pamphlets in 1948–49 stressed the bravery of the Jews…

The Haganah was engaged in sociopolitical training—commonly called hasbara—from its inception in 1920, but a specialized hasbara department was established only during the Second World War. The department focused on both political indoctrination and military education, and a special emphasis was placed on the question of…