How Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

This is a story about what happened here in 1948. We are only 750 people. And everybody knows each other. It was a black spot in the history. That history has been carefully concealed... purposefully distorted, and in the West, largely forgotten. They put our village as an example of what they can do. The massacre in this village was one of many in a series of catastrophic events... that became known as the Nakba. When hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were violently displaced from their homeland... in order to create the state of Israel. “In May of 1948, a new Jewish state Israel was born in a bath of blood.” The borders of Palestine have been changed forcefully over time. But historically, this region has been home to Palestinians for centuries with hundreds of villages and thriving cities. One of them being the central city of Jerusalem... with holy sites important to Jewish Christian and Muslim people. By the late Ottoman Empire, Palestinians living here were overwhelmingly Muslim with minority Christian and Jewish native populations, too. But regardless of religion Palestinians were often referred to as Arabs. People of the Arabic speaking world despite their distinctive culture. Palestinians have long distinguished themselves as Ahl Filastīn... or the people of Palestine. They developed a distinctive Arabic accent. They developed regional food, regional dress, and family ties. But by the time World War I began... several key political forces were competing for control of these lands. First, there was a growing Arab political movement... looking for independence from the Ottoman Empire in hopes of a unified Arab state that would include Palestine. Then there were Zionists a political group that had one main goal: The creation of a Jewish state. Zionism was a response to an increasingly brutal climate for Jewish people, particularly in Europe and Russia... where there was a massive wave of antisemitism... including large scale attacks in the late 1800s and early 1900s. After briefly considering other areas for a new state including Uganda and Argentina... Zionist leaders decided on Palestine because of its connection to early religious history. But there was a third key group with political interests here. The British. Control of the region would allow them to expand their spheres of influence and protect trade routes to India. During World War I, since both the British and the Arab independence movement wanted Palestine... they decided to go after the Ottomans together with an important pledge. Through a series of letters in 1916 an Arab leader and a British official agreed that if Arabs would help the British fight the Ottomans and give the British economic and other foreign privileges in Arab lands... in return, the British would recognize and support an independent Arab state. Soon the Arabs started doing their part in revolting against the Ottomans making it easier for the British to move in. But the next year the British issued a new declaration and betrayed the Arabs. “In 1917, Lord Allenby conquered the Holy Land... and the Jews were promised a national home in Palestine.” Without consulting the native Palestinian population... the British issued what's known as the Balfour Declaration: Supporting the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. So instead of supporting the idea of Palestine as part of a unified and independent Arab state... the British pledged to help secure this land for Zionists. It was a strategic move. This declaration opened up a pathway for Britain to gain power in Palestine. Under the guise that it was supporting the self-determination of another people... of a people in Palestine... who don't reside there yet. As for Palestine's majority Arab population the declaration referred to them as non-Jewish communities... who would be given civil and religious rights... but not political rights. A few years later, after World War