I'm writing this on May 15th, and that means it's time for the yearly round of hand-wringing over the so-called "Nakba."

Left-wingers and terrorist supporters across the globe will spend the day decrying the alleged "ethnic cleansing" of Arabs from "Palestine." As the Nakba narrative goes, evil "Zionist" Jews randomly marauded across the land in 1948, completely unprovoked. In their wake, they left a trail of death and destruction, violently expelling "Palestinians" from "their lands." //

what is the truth of the supposed Nakba, which means "disaster" in Arabic? Putting aside the absurd contention that the Jews, who were woefully outnumbered in 1948, somehow physically carried out an "ethnic cleansing," we need to start with how the Israeli War of Independence began. //

Why were they attacking Jewish cities and settlements on the Israeli side of the partition, which at the time was a small fraction of the former British mandate, with the Arabs being given almost all of the land, including all of modern-day Jordan? The simple answer is that having previously allied with Adolf Hitler during World War II, they were trying to prevent the creation of a Jewish state for very obvious reasons.

On that note, did the Jews just randomly show up after World War II to claim land given to them by the UN? Certainly, some Holocaust survivors did make their way to what would become Israel, but much of the original Israeli state was composed of land that was legally bought in the early 1900s. For example, Tel Aviv was developed on land that was deemed largely useless at the time. In other words, the Jewish state was set to be formed on a small sliver of land deemed to be of no real value to the Arabs.

That plan was never allowed to come to fruition, though, because the Palestinians and their Arab allies (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia) attacked on May 15th, 1948, the day after Israel declared its independence. Their express intent? To drive the Jewish state into the sea, murdering as many Jews along the way as possible. That's where the genocidal chant "from the river to the sea" originates.

So why did so many Palestinians leave in what is now called the "Nakba?" The answer is that the Grand Mufti, the Palestinian leader in exile who had allied with Hitler, ordered them to. At the time, it was thought that an Arab victory was imminent given how outnumbered and outgunned the Israelis were. Palestinians voluntarily left in droves with the expectation that they'd be able to return after a glorious victory.

Further, the Israelis told the Palestinians that they could remain in their homes if they laid down their arms. The Grand Mufti rejected that offer and ordered the war to move forward. //

The expectation at the time was that the Palestinians displaced due to the war they lost would be absorbed into the neighboring Arab states, including the Palestinian-majority state of Jordan. At the same time, Israel was left taking in nearly a million Jews who had been expelled from Muslim nations. That never gets talked about, though, because it doesn't fit the Nakba narrative. //

The fact that "Nakba Day" is on May 15th, the day the Arab alliance declared war on Israel gives the game away. They aren't upset about a supposed "ethnic cleansing" that occurred the day after Israeli independence. They are upset that they got their clocks cleaned and lost territory in the process. Perpetual victimhood omitting their self-destructive actions is the Palestinian way. That's the truth of the Nakba narrative.