Advertisement about Middle East inaccurately displays region’s complexities

The issues at stake in the Middle East are complex and confusing. Not everything is, though — some things are just plain wrong.

The “advertisement” by the group, Facts and Logic about the Middle East, contained at least one assertion that was neither factual nor logical. The writer of the essay claims that the primary cause of the Palestinian refugee problem is that in 1948, “broadcasts by the advancing Arab armies appealed to the resident Arabs to leave their homes so as not to be in the way of the invaders.”

As anyone who has seriously examined this claim knows, it’s nonsense. And do invading armies typically prefer to move into territory cleared of all of their friends and inhabited exclusively by a hostile population?

More well documented — by Israeli historians, it should be noted — are forced expulsions of the populations of Arab villages. Needless to say, the Arab armies also made Jewish villages disappear. It’s a complicated and tragic story, and propaganda pieces like this are depressing to anyone who yearns for a peaceful, just and humane resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Leonard S. Newman, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychology

Area Director, Social Psychology Program

Editor, Basic and Applied Social Psychology