Israeli right wing admits to dispossessing Palestinians, says Nakba was worse

By Jesse Bacon

Reading the press coverage of Jewish Voice for Peace’s fabulous campaign in support of the Israeli theater artists boycotting settlements, I was struck by an item in Arutz Sheva, the settler’s news service, which ends with this paragraph..

The liberation of Israeli territory in the War of Independence in 1948 was accompanied by a massive exodus of Arabs, and dozens of Jewish communities were then built atop the ruins of Arab villages whose inhabitants had fled, as opposed to the Six-Day War in 1967, when the return of Judea and Samaria [Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza] to Israel was less violent and was not accompanied by an Arab exodus. Paradoxically, leftists in Israel consider communities built on the ruins of Arab villages taken in 1948 legitimate, but view communities built beside Arab villages taken in 1967 as illegitimate.

First of all, over 200,000 Palestinians were displaced by the Six Day War. and no doubt more would have been if the memory of the Nakba had not been so recent. Many people died as well, so I am not sure about where Arutz Sheva gets “less violent” from. But nonetheless I am fascinated that the settlers’ news service is arguing the dispossession they are responsible is not so bad as the Nakba, Israel’s founding. Is this is further sign of potential right wing support for a one state solution?