Speech #890008164

Pinner examined with particular care the census of the British Mandatory Government. His meticulous investigations resulted in the conclusion that no more than 539.000 Arabs left Israel territory and did not return. Not only has International Affairs concocted the figure of 1 million refugees. it has also invented the fact of their expulsion. The Arabs who left Israel were never expelled. On the contrary. they were. in effect. driven out by their socalled leaders. Let Arab sources testify: On April 3. 1948. the Near East Arabic Radio said: "It must notbe forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees to flee from their homes in Jaffa. Haifa. and Jerusalem and that certain leaders have tried to make political capital out of their miserable situation. The Arab States must not allow the future of the refugees to be sacrificed to make political capital out of their fate." Emile Ghori. the Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee and one of its representatives before the United Nations. admitted to the Beirut Telegraph on September 6. 1948: "The fact that there are these refugees Is the direct consequence of the Arab States in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share In the solution of the problem." On September 27. 1948. the Near East Arabic Radio attacked the Arab Higher Committees record in these words: "It is besmirched by the flight of its leaders and their encouragement of the Arabs to leave their homes even though no previous arrangement had been made for their housing and resettlement." The AmericanLebanese daily AliHoda summed up the strategy of the Arab leadership when it wrote on June 8. 1951: "Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine. urging them to leave their land. homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring. brotherly states. lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down. The Palestine Arabs had no choice but to obey the advice of the League and to believe when Azzam Pasha and other responsible men in the (Arab) League told themthat their withdrawal from their lands and their country was only temporary and would end in a few days with the successful termination of -the Arab punishment action against Israel." Another major "fact" mentioned by International Affairs in its "explanation." is that in December 1948 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution supporting the return of the Arab refugeesa resolution which. according to International Affairs. Israel refused to implement. Here again. the halftruth is preferred to the outright lie.