Talk:1948 Palestine war

Should we mention the exodus of Jews from Arab countries during and immediately after the war in the lede of this article? Alaexis_¿question? 23:05, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• No, as discussed above in "Recent changes". The beginning of the exodus is only indirectly a consequence of the war and we should be striving for brevity in the lead of this article as there is much information to cover. Note also that though the lead is a summary of the body, the aftermath section of this article currently gives disproportionate attention to this aspect of the war's consequences and results. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:16, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. This was a massive event, with hundreds of thousands people fleeing or emigrating. Multiple reliable sources (see the list here) agree that this was one of the major consequences of the war. Therefore a brief mention is warranted. Alaexis_¿question? 23:22, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
• No certainly it was an important event, but it was not an event that is a subtopic of this war. At most a small portion of the emigration was even indirectly related to this war, and the argument that we should include decades of immigration from a large number of countries not even involved in this war makes no sense. And the claim that reliable sources agree that it was a major consequence of the war is just not true. Morris says "The war indirectly created a second, major refugee problem", Schindler says In Arab countries, the defeat of the Arab armies and the exodus of the Palestinian Arabs exacerbated an already difficult situation. In December 1947, a pogrom and the destruction of synagogues in Aleppo persuaded half the city’s Jewish population to leave. In Egypt, arrests, killings and confiscations catalyzed the flight of nearly 40 per cent of the Jewis hcommunity by 1950. In Kuwait, the minuscule number of Jews were expelled. In Iraq, the Criminal Code was amended in July 1948 such that Zionists were lumped together with Anarchists and Communists. The death penalty could be meted out to adherents or they could be sentenced to many years’ imprisonment. Enforced emigration to Israel became the officially permitted route out of Iraq for an increasingly oppressed Jewish community. Israel ironically became the unlikely destination for many Jewish Communists despite their opposition to Zionism. In Libya, Algeria and Morocco, there were periodic outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence. Over 37 per cent of Jews in Islamic countries – the Arab world, Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan – left for Israel between May 1948 and the beginning of 1952. This amounted to 56 per cent of the total immigration. And he says that in a chapter on Jewish emigration, not in coverage of this war. It is an attempt at trying to balance what actually was a direct major consequence of this war, the expulsion and flight of 80-90% of the Palestinians from the territory Israel would come to control in this war, with an entirely different topic that was not a part of this war. And a ton of it was from countries not involved in this war at all. There are no sources that treat this as a major consequence of this war, and the claim that there is rests on the assumption that nobody will actually check, as it is so plainly not true, and been shown untrue on this talk page previously. Beyond that, there is no definition of immediately after that includes years and years later. nableezy - 00:09, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

No, it's a part of the IP conflict but not a significant-enough part of the 1948 war to merit being mentioned in the lead. While Morris says this is an "indirect" result of the war, I think the balance of sources do not treat this as a significant effect of the war, even indirectly. Further, in the RM for the article about the exodus, I quoted Tessler's book explaining the complicated factors he said was behind the exodus, and the war was only a small part of it; I won't reproduce the whole quote here but it applies to this RfC as well. It's something that happened over years during and after the war (1948-52), which is further evidence that while it's a part of the conflict, it's not a huge part of the (47-) '48 war. Levivich (talk) 01:25, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

• No, it wasn't a part of the 1948 war. Lots of things happened as a result of the foundation of Israel, but that's not the topic of this article. Zero^talk 02:48, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  Elaborating, the exodus of Jews was a result of the foundation of Israel and the consequent implementation of Israeli policy. It would have happened without the war that accompanied Israel's foundation, so it is factually incorrect to call it a consequence of that war. Zero^talk 11:09, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

'It would have happened without the (1948) war. That is as hypothetical at least as the argument that the exodus was consequential on that war. For one thing, in an alternative history, one could imagine that the old Zionist priority to privilege Ashkenazi immigration over aliyah from 'Arabized' Jews (i.e. deemed slack, uneducated etc.,) probably would have prevailed, esp. given that they were the victims of a Holocaust whose mass immigration to the US and Great Britain was systematically blocked by those powers, for the usual electoral-antisemitic motives. 'Consequence' does not mean strictly an assertion of some mechanical 'post hoc ergo propter hoc' reasoning. Nishidani (talk) 13:25, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

• Ummmm. There is way to much in the lede already. It should be cut significantly down with superfluous language removed. It DOES NOT read as neutral. Most of the factual information should be in the body of the article. With that said, if the lede stays "as-is" then, yes, information about an exodus should be added if nothing more than to provide a more balanced perspective and neutrality. Slacker13 (talk) 05:49, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

No: It wasn't a direct effect of the war; just an indirect side-effect in the aftermath of the conflict. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:18, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

agreed Slacker13 (talk) 21:57, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

You might want to amend your vote and clarify your position on this, @Slacker13. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:04, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

• No I do not see evidence that this event was sufficiently closely related to be DUE in the lead of the article. (t · c) buidhe 04:44, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes The Jewish exodus from Arab countries was one of the most important consequences of the war, along with the Palestinian refugee problem. I agree with Alaexis. Marokwitz (talk) 07:27, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

  The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians wasn't a consequence of the war: it began before the war, was partially a trigger for the war, and intensified during the war by design. It was a direct impact on the civilian population in the warzone. The subsequent exodus of Jews from other countries due to a range of push and pull factors, one of which was negative sentiment arising from the war (and the ethnic cleansing it entailed), was a consequence, but not a direct impact of the conflict. The two phenomena are in entirely different categories of immediacy to the conflict. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:26, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

• No per Nableezy, Levivich and Buidhe, The 'exodus' narrative emerged later to draw a false equivalence between the radical programmatic ethnic cleansing which Yishuv and then Israeli forces imposed on Palestinians during the war, and what occurred to Jews in Arab countries after the cessation of hostilities, often at the open invitation of the new state of Israel, which adopted a policy of encouraging Jews in those countries to make aliyah, not always successively, as their conditions deteriorated very much as a consequence of the impact of the image of mass expulsions on the 'Arab street'.Nishidani (talk) 09:04, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes The Jewish exodus from Arab countries was one of the most important consequences of the war. Vegan416 (talk) 23:29, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

  Can you give any sources that say that a. it was a consequence of the war, and b. it was one of the most important of those consequences? nableezy - 23:33, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

It seems like Salt is talking about Jerusalem rather than about the whole Mandatory Palestine. The word "its" in the first line of page 231 refers to the subject of the sentence, that is "Jerusalem." Alaexis_¿question? 20:55, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree. The figure for Jewish-owned land in all of Mandatory Palestine before the war is 7% per e.g. Morris 2008 p. 65. Levivich (talk) 21:42, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, and a large part of the rest was publicly owned land. Alaexis_¿question? 05:31, 2 April 2024 (UTC)

The source doesn't support the text that was added to the article (bold) During this time, paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi, supported by the Haganah and Palmach, perpetrated the Deir Yassin massacre, killing at least 107 Arab villagers, including women and children.. This is what they say

Alaexis_¿question? 08:18, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

The bolded text is pretty much what it says (sourced) at the wikilink? Selfstudier (talk) 10:41, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

"Supported" summarizes "provided covering fire and fired on the refugees fleeing ... helped evacuate the wounded and take some of the houses". Levivich (talk) 15:16, 28 April 2024 (UTC)