In yesterday’s post, I mentioned a mistake I had made, and in the same conversation, the person I was speaking with shared their own misinformation. This is why, other than obsessives like me, I think we need to move beyond the history of who was most wronged.

I still do think this particular information is worth sharing as the general discourse has made me feel like the UN Partition plan unfairly benefited Jews. After transferring the UN’s Dec. 1946 Census of Mandatory Palestine to a spreadsheet, I mapped the areas on the census to the UN allocation plan. Based on numbers I’ve heard in the general discourse, I expected the results to be a lot less equal than the census revealed.

I think contemporary beliefs that antisemitism has largely died out shapes this erroneous framing. If you think about it, antisemitism had not suddenly disappeared by 1948. Other than wanting to get Jews out of Europe (many who couldn’t return any way), there was no real impetus to overly support the Jewish State. The UN voted to give the Jews land, but they didn’t even help the newly founded Israel defend itself when it was invaded. That should tell you something.

The tragic displacement really did begin in late April 1948 and onward as the war progressed.

Here is the total population figures and how they map in terms of Jews and Palestinians displaced by the proposed UN Partition.

As you can see above, the population totals match the UN census (see below for link), and you can use the UN Partition Plan to look up the areas assigned to each potential state (Jewish or Palestinian) and then tally the populations in each location to see the populations proposed to be displaced.

None of these numbers ended up reflecting the proposal because in April, the Battle of Haifa began between Jews and Arabs as a prelude to the invasion of the five surrounding countries, and the Palestinians were displaced from many of the areas they had been promised or those areas were occupied by one of the invading countries which was almost as bad as displacement because the Palestinians became stateless.

These numbers tell such a heartbreaking story. This is the heritage of war. I don’t know what power we have individually. I don’t personally know anyone who celebrates war. Centuries of war — not just in this region, and it is all the same story. This madness has to end.

A reminder: Deligitimizing Jewish or Palestinian connections to the homeland is a bad look. Peace is the right look. Let’s focus on that.

UN Census Dec. 1946 Spreadsheet. Use the UN link in the doc for more info on partition plan specifics https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/103LjxjrSEyPZ83_YahW8lj865Bx6U12pzi5Qr3JjjuU/edit