Shame!...

According to Gershon Shafir, an Israeli American professor of Sociology, Palestine began to export agricultural produce, from wheat to oranges, to Europe in the late 19 Century and remained a wheat exporting country until 1923. This agricultural boom was caused not by Palestinian Jews but by Arab Palestinians using a mix of traditional practices and modern inventions (Land, labour and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestine Conflict, 1882-1914).

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The Ottoman Empire was on the losing side in the First World War. Postwar, Palestine fell under British occupation. British administrators, true to their wont, carried out detailed surveys of Palestine for this period. According to A Survey of Palestine, even in 1946, the Fellaheen (Arab-Palestinian peasants) produced over 90% of grains, olives, melons, and tobacco and over 75% of grapes and vegetables even in 1946. The Fellaheen, who farmed both arable and non-arable land, were also responsible for over 78% of the agricultural output. This would change only with the Nakba of 1948, and the formation of the state of Israel.

Hasbara explains away the Nakba by claiming that Palestinians were not driven off their land but left voluntarily, in obedience to calls by their leaders and Arab armies. The truth, again, is far otherwise. The Israeli army and Jewish terrorist gangs drove Palestinians out of their homes and villages, forcing 750,000 men, women, and children into makeshift refugee camps. In his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Israeli historian Benny Morris quotes a note made during a briefing by an Israeli military leader about an operation by the Seventh Brigade in the Palestinian village of Safsaf in Upper Galilee. “Safsaf 52 men tied with a rope, dropped into a pit and shot. 10 were killed. Women pleaded for mercy. Three cases of rape.

Caught and released. A girl of 14 was raped. Another four were killed. Rings of knives.”