During the 1948 War Israeli fighters and residents alike plundered Palestinian homes shops
businesses and farms. This bitter truth was then suppressed or forgotten over the coming
years. Tens of thousands took part in the pillage of Palestinian property stealing the
belongings of their former neighbours. The implications of this mass looting go far beyond the
personality or moral fibre of those who took part. Plundering served a political agenda by
helping to empty the country of its Palestinian residents. In this context it was part of the
prevailing policy during the war – one designed to crush the Palestinian economy destroy
villages and to confiscate and sometimes destroy crops and harvests remaining in the
depopulated zones. The participating Jewish public became a stakeholder motivated to prevent
Palestinian residents from returning to the villages and cities they had left. These ordinary
people were mobilized in the push for the segregation of Jews and Arabs in the early years of
statehood. With painstaking original research into primary sources Adam Raz has brought to
light a tragic moment in the history of a conflict that roils the region and the wider world.
As the details of the Nakba are understood and documented redress for Palestinian grievances
comes closer to reality.
