Ignoring evidence of eminent historian

Dermot Meleady (Letters, Jul 12) tells us that the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 was not marked by ‘ethnic cleansing’, and that the flight of the Palestinians was instigated by Arab radio stations, not by war crimes.

In saying this he ignores the work of the most highly-regarded Israel historian of this period, Benny Morris.

Interviewed in Ha’aretz in Jan 2004, Morris noted that Jewish forces committed 24 acts of ‘massacre’ in 1948. Notable among these were Deir Yassin (110 people killed), Lod (250 people killed) and Saliha (80 people killed). “In the months of Apr–May 1948,” Morris says, “units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves”. His primary sources for this information, he tells his interviewer, were the Israeli Defence Forces Archives.