Ben-Dror Yemini was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel in 1954. He studied Humanities and History in Tel Aviv University, and later on he studies Law. After his university studies, he was appointed advisor to the Israeli Minister of Immigration Absorption and then became the spokesman of the Ministry. In 1984, he began his career as a journalist and essayist. He worked as a lawyer and was a partner in a law firm. He has worked for the daily newspaper Maariv, and in Spring 2014 began writing for the daily Yedioth Ahronoth. The author of "The Industry of Lies."
In a guest op-ed in the New York Times Mahmoud Abbas stated that shortly after the UN announced its partition plan "Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs... and Arab armies intervened" and that he and his family "took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees" in Syria as a result. Let's check the facts.
First, the UN partition plan was passed on 29th November 1947, yet the Arabs of Safed fled, under the encouragement of the Arab leadership, only in May 1948.
Second, Abbas' family was affluent and had the means to live in better conditions than a canvas tent.
Third, Abbas's family fled to Jordan, not Syria, and moved to Damscus later.
Fourth, the Arab population fled of its own free will, mailny out of fear of reprisal for the massacre it carried out on the Jewish population in 1929.
Fifth, the Arabs in general were forced out, but it was the Arab armies that forced them to leave their homeland.
Sixth, it was not the Jews who refused the partition plan but the Arabs did, and immediately declared war on the Jews.
Is it only "Zionist propaganda" that contradicts Abbas' claims? Not at all. Abbas himself has refuted each and every one of his own claims. Only two years ago in a 2009 interview for the Palestinian broadcasting service, Abbas spoke about his affluent family who left Safed of their own free will due to fear of reprisal, and he stated that they moved to Jordan.
Some have argued that these words were never spoken, and in the pertinent Wikipedia article, they were removed with the excuse that there is no record of them. I asked MEMRI, which researches and translates Arabic channels, to try to find the original interview. Eventually it was located, and the video segment in which Abbas tells his family story is available, and can be viewed.
As for the so called "Zionist expulsion" claimed by Abbas, we must ask if the Zionist forces were the ones who really expelled the Arab populace, as Abbas argues or did the Arab armies force them out? Dr. Yitschak Ben Gad in his book "Politics, Lies and Videotape" quoted Abbas who wrote in "Falastin el-Thawra": "The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians... but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and to leave their homeland..."
We can continue ad-infinitum and it is doubtful whether there is one paragraph in Abbas's New York Times article that passes the simple test of truth. Of course, lies can be exposed and truth can be revealed, yet this time Abbas does it himself. Historians will dub Abbas's invented version with the Orwellian term "Palestinian Narrative". Indeed. It seems that even the Palestinian leader does not have one Narrative but many. The many "narratives", that are synonymous with "lies", can be classified as a new disease which can be called "Narratitis".
While on the subject of lies, or narratives, Haaretz published an interview with one Ismail FahEr el-Din from the village Magdel Shams, who spoke of his recollection from the "Nakba": "I recall that the village was full of refugees who fled from their homes" he said, which is astonishing since he reports himself as being 57 years old. This man is a real phenomenon, because he can recall events which happened 6 years before he was born.
The question is not how could such figures as Abbas make up such a "narrative", but rather, how could such lies escape the fact checkers employed by respectable medias.
Ben-Dror Yemini is a researcher, lecturer and journalist
bdyemini@gmail.com
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