Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Special Projects Elizabeth Berney, Esq. released the following statement:

In Part 1 of this Article (available here), ZOA set the record straight about aspects of a defamatory, antisemitic propaganda resolution entitled, “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian Refugees’ Rights” (H. Res. 1123), introduced by Jew-haters Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and six other Democratic “Squad” members. Part 1 of this Article described that: (i) the “Nakba” that Tlaib seeks to commemorate is the sick, hateful genocidal belief that it’s a “catastrophe” when Jews survive Arab attacks; (ii) Tlaib’s resolution grossly inflates Palestinian Arab “refugee” numbers and ignores the “refugees” origins outside Israel; and (iii) under the U.S. and international definitions of refugees, Palestinian Arabs never qualified as “refugees.”

This Part 2 of this article documents that Arab governments and leaders (not Israel) created the Palestinian Arab refugees; and that millions of alleged descendants of fraudulent “Palestinian refugees” have no “right” to overrun and annihilate the Jewish state.

Tlaib’s Resolution Falsely Blames Israel for Arab Refugees, Who Were Actually Created By Arab Leaders and Governments: First, Tlaib’s resolution falsely blames Israel for Arabs who left the area in 1948. In fact, Jewish authorities urged local Arabs to remain and live together in peace; while invading Arab armies, Arab governments and local Arab authorities, including Nazi-collaborator Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, demanded that local Arabs leave, to clear a path for the Arab armies to annihilate the Jewish population. Arab authorities also invented stories of Jewish atrocities to encourage Arabs to leave; while the Arabs committed actual atrocities against Jews – including murdering over 70 Jewish doctors and nurses on the way to Hadassah hospital. This Arab responsibility for Arab “refugees” is extremely well documented in British police reports, Arab authorities’ reports, Christian authorities’ reports, and Arab, local and international press. For instance:

• Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Said, a Jew-hater also responsible for expelling Iraq’s ancient Jewish community from Iraq, declared: “We will smash the country [Israel] with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.”

• The Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station confirmed on April 3, 1949: “It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem.”

• Egyptian daily Akhbar el Yom recounted on October 12, 1963: “The 15th of May, 1948, arrived…. On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead.”

• The Melkite Greek Catholic bishop of Galilee, George Hakim acknowledged in August 1948: “The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the ‘Zionist gangs’ very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.” Bishop Hakim also reported that the Arabs of Haifa “fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel.”

• Lebanese journalist Habib Issa reported in 1951, that the secretary-general of the Arab League, Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam, a.k.a Azzam Pasha, “assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade…. Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.”

• Beirut weekly Kul-Shay asked on August 19, 1951: “Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now from the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honor nor conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their honor? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it.”

• The Economist reported on October 2, 1948: “There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors [causing Arabs to leave Haifa] were the announcements over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit. . . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.”

• Jordan daily Al Difaa, quoted a refugee on September 6, 1954: “The Arab governments told us: Get out so we can get in. So we got out. . . .”

• British Palestine Police Haifa headquarters reported on April 26, 1948 that convoys of Arabs were leaving despite the fact that: “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on their normal lives, . . . and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.”

For details on these and much more, see especially, “The Palestinian Delusion,” by Robert Spencer, Post Hill Press, 2019; and “Battleground: Facts and Fantasy in Palestine,” by historian Samuel Katz, Taylor Productions, 2002 ed.

UNGA Res. 194 Does Not Create a “Right of Return” for Palestinian Arab “Refugees” or their Descendants: The UN Charter, Articles 10-11, provides that the UN General Assembly resolutions are merely discussions or recommendations, and are not binding. The UN General Assembly thus had no power to create a “right of return,” and did not even try to do so. UN General Assembly Resolution 194 used non-binding language and was a conditional recommendation to a conciliation commission. Further UNGA Res. 194 was mostly applicable to Jewish refugees. Notably, the Arab bloc voted against UNGA Res. 194.

Tlaib’s proposed Congressional resolution misleadingly added the word “Palestinian” onto UNGA Res. 194, to try to change UNGA Res. 194’s meaning. In fact, UNGA Res. provides no exclusive “right of return” to Palestinian Arabs. The resolution primarily applied to the peaceful Jewish refugees who were violently expelled from their centuries-old homes in the Jewish quarter, in the eastern portion of Jerusalem by Jordan, when Jordan illegally seized eastern Jerusalem and Judea/Samaria in 1948. The resolution also applied to approximately 800,000 Jews violently expelled from the Arab countries.

In addition, UNGA Res. 194 was conditional: it only applied to “refugees” who were willing to live in peace with their neighbors. The resolution thus never applied to Arabs seeking to murder Jews and destroy Israel. Further, UNGA Res. 194 only recommended return when return was “practicable.” In the absence of peace, that time never came. And the resolution never mentioned, and never recommended any rights to descendants of refugees.

In addition, Res. 194 alternatively called for compensation by the “Governments or authorities responsible.” Thus, the six Arab governments and local Arab inciters such as the Mufti who created the refugee situation were responsible to pay compensation to both the Jewish and Arab refugees. (But they never did so.)

In sum, there are no valid Palestinian Arab refugees today and no Palestinian Arab right of return.