The Jerusalem refugees of 1948

With thanks: Frank

The media has an enormous impact on public policy. But when the media consistently tells lies, the effect is both destructive and unfair.

That's why the media watchdog HonestReporting has made this video exploding the myth of 'Arab East Jerusalem'. East Jerusalem was only under Arab control for 19 years. All the Jewish inhabitants were expelled. Before 1948 and since the city's re-unification under Israeli rule in 1967, Jews lived in the old city and the eastern sector.

Sima Nightingale 's family lived in Jerusalem's old city for eight generations. She tells how in 1948 Arab snipers on the roof of the nearby synagogue shot dead her grandfather, who had gone to fetch the last of the family's water supply.

Puah Shteiner 's family had been in Jerusalem for six generations, ever since her ancestor Rav Eliezer Bergman had arrived in the city in 1835. "The world has heard of Arab refugees, but there were also Jewish refugees," she says on the video. She remembers fleeing her home with only the clothes she was wearing.

As our regular reader Eliyahu patiently points out, the first refugees of the 1948 fighting were Jews expelled from the Shimon Hatsaddik area (now referred to by the media by its Arab name Sheikh Jarrah).

Perhaps HonestReporting will make a sequel about those Jewish refugees.

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Jewish voices from Jerusalem (CiF watch)

Jerusalem in 1900 by Elliott A Green

Time Life photographs from 1948 (with thanks: Daphne Anson)