What is so remarkable about journalistic and online debates about the formation of Israel is that the contemporary reporting is publicly available, often from the very same news organs whose op-ed pages are currently spreading disinformation about it. https://t.co/RrNwTLynpB

— Ryan Ruby (@_ryanruby_) June 6, 2024

On March 20, 1947, Clifton Daniel reported for the New York Times:

Talking to Jews in ordinary walks of life — not Zionist leaders — one gets the definite impression that relations with Arabs are not among their major concerns. Some were even surprised that in the present circumstances the subject should be discussed.

Their unconcern seems to be the product of several factors. First of all, they feel, although not boastfully, that as a people they are superior to the Arabs in skill and education. “Look at the Arab village and a Jewish settlement side by side,” one of them remarked recently. “There is a difference of 200 or 300 years.”

Another man stated the difference more bluntly when he described the Western Jew as bearing the same relation to the Oriental Arab as the white man to the native in a colonial system. Some of the chauvinistic youth carry the feeling of superiority so far as to despise the Arab as an inferior.

Whatever the degree of their superiority complex, however, the Jews are certainly confident of their ability to bring the Arabs to terms — by persuasion if possible, by might if necessary. The program of the largest terrorist group, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, is to evacuate the British forces from Palestine and declare a Zionist state west of the Jordan, and “we will take care of the Arabs.”