[thoughtomator]

Their fear was due to a situation entirely of their own making. Had they not had decades of anti-Jewish rioting behind them, eager cooperation with Hitler's "Final Solution", and a then-current threat of invasion from several nations led by their brethren, they would have had no cause for fear. Indeed, the Arabs that did not flee became citizens of Israel.

The Jewish fear of extinction, in 1948, just a few years after the Holocaust, with the Arab world irreconcilably arrayed against them, was a valid fear, and cannot be considered to be of their own making. The Arab fear of retribution for their own murderous actions extending back decades and unmoderated in 1948 (unmoderated today, as well) cannot be blamed on the Jews. The blame lies squarely on their own shoulders.

So I stand firm with my conclusion that their catastrophe was entirely of their own making.

[Phil V.]

Those who fled were in no way encumbered with "final solution" guilt. Their "reality" was entirely parochial. When you say that "they started the war" you rather cutely absolve the new State of Israel of the expected consequences (social dislocations) attendant with Zionism. Jabotinsky understood. I suspect that the Arabs understood Jabotinsky more clearly than did the Jews.