Summary
The young historian from the Hebrew University whose suggestion, in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, set the Village Files project in motion: a detailed registry of all Arab villages, conducted by the Jewish National Fund, which would greatly help the redemption of the land.
Details
- “The suggestion came from a young bespectacled historian from the Hebrew University by the name of Ben-Zion Luria, at the time an employee of the educational department of the Jewish Agency. Luria pointed out how useful it would be to have a detailed registry of all Arab villages, and proposed that the Jewish National Fund (JNF) conduct such an inventory. ‘This would greatly help the redemption of the land,’ he wrote to the JNF.” Pappe: Luria “could not have chosen a better audience: his initiative to involve the JNF in the prospective ethnic cleansing was to generate added impetus and zeal to the expulsion plans that followed.” (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.41)
Related pages
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Village Files, Jewish National Fund, Jewish Agency