You’ve doubtless wondered at some point, as I have, what kind of Arab state the Palestinians envisioned in 1948 if they had won the war. What were their plans? Where did they intend to build their version of the Ayalon Highway? Did they also want to dry up the Hula swamp to make more agricultural land available? Oh, and what were their thoughts about the 628,000 Jews living in what is now Israel on the eve of the war? What did they intend to do with them?
Every week, columnist Ben-Dror Yemini tells his readers in Yedioth Ahronoth about Arab leaders in 1948 who called for the Jews to be thrown into the sea. In other words, they intended a systematic slaughter.
So, without burdening Haaretz readers with dry academic research, I think it’s worth informing them that in 15 years of searching, during which I read hundreds of propaganda documents from 1947 to 1949, I encountered only one case in which an Arab leader mentioned “sea” and “Jews” in the same sentence. That was the Egyptian Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, in a call to expel the Jews from Egypt.
The more familiar quotes (like the one attributed to the Arab League’s secretary general at the time, Azzam Pasha) aren’t backed up by reliable Arabic sources, and it’s not clear
— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | Shay Hazkani | 4 Dec 2022
