The Latest Lie: Palestinians Welcomed Jewish Survivors of Holocaust into Palestine

A tall tale is now being spread on social media: survivors of the Holocaust, we are told, were “welcomed” by Palestinians in Palestine, and those ungrateful Jews then turned on those good Samaritans, driving them out of Palestine. More on this fantastical tale can be found here: “Anti-Israel Lie Online: Jewish Refugees Were Welcomed by Palestinians After the Holocaust,” by Chaim Lax, Algemeiner, November 14, 2025:

Another day, another lie when it comes to Israel on social media. This includes fabricating the history of the Jewish State.

While most anti-Israel inventions don’t gain traction and get lost in the cacophony of fringe voices that thrive in the dark corners of the Internet, others rise above the fray and take on a life of their own.

One of the latest historical falsehoods to take off online is the claim that, following the Holocaust, the Palestinians welcomed Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide (with some even claiming that they were welcomed into their private homes), and it was these same survivors who later turned around and expelled them from their homes.

Even the most novice student of Israeli history could tell you that this claim is a laughable distortion of the past, so absurd as to not even warrant a response.

However, despite its blatant untruthfulness, this narrative has gained steam online, with one X (formerly Twitter) account’s telling of it reaching over two million views.

A history professor (!!) at Austin Community College, also shared this fiction on his Instagram page, reaching over 57,000 likes (the second most-liked post on his Instagram)….

Yes, this professor claims that the Holocaust survivors were “welcomed with open arms,” and yet they turned on those very people, those kind Palestinians, “killing and robbing” them.

A few months before the start of the Second World War, the British government issued the 1939 White Paper, which set a severe limit on Jewish immigration to the British Mandate: 75,000 Jews over the next 5 years. After that, any Jewish immigration would be subject to the will of the land’s Arab population. For the masses of Jews who would soon be seeking refuge from the claws of the Nazi regime, this policy effectively served as a death sentence.

The White Paper was a response to three years of violence during the Great Arab Revolt (1936-1939). The Revolt, which saw Arab attacks on both Jews and the British in Mandatory Palestine, was partially due to a rise in Jewish immigration to the land over the past few years. Instead of welcoming those who were fleeing Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe, the leadership of the Arab population of the British Mandate resorted to violence to halt the flow of Jewish immigrants.

The White Paper itself, which allowed only 15,000 Jews a year, and for only five years, to enter Mandatory Palestine, thereby preventing perhaps a million Jews from fleeing Europe to find refuge in Palestine, was a response by the British government to the demands of the Arabs that Jews not be allowed to enter Palestine.

The Arabs were not satisfied with the White Paper’s limit of 15,000 Jews being allowed into Mandatory Palestine; they wanted there to be a total ban on Jewish immigration.

The Arabs had been fighting against Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine from the Mandate’s very inception in 1922. Attacks on Jews included such things as the massacre in 1929 of all the Jews in Hebron — the second holiest city in Judaism — who had not managed to flee in time, and the many hundreds of attacks on Jewish settlements that culminated in the Arab Revolt, that began in 1936 and lasted until 1939, when it was finally suppressed by the British army. At no time did the Arabs “welcome” Jews into Palestine; they instead engaged in the massacre of Zionist pioneers, and constantly pressured — successfully – the British to limit Jewish immigration to a pathetic handful. The leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Haj Amin el-Husseini, who spent the war years in Berlin, where he met Hitler, was an enthusiast for the Final Solution, visited Auschwitz in the company of Nazi notables, and even raised a Waffen SS brigade of Bosnian Muslims to help with murdering Jews. After the war, the British, responding to the desires of the Palestinian Arabs, prevented ships carrying Jewish survivors of the Holocaust from landing in Mandatory Palestine. The most famous example of this was the Exodus, a ship intercepted by the British before it reached Palestine. Its passengers were forcibly returned to Germany on deportation ships by British authorities and sent back to two DP camps in Germany.

 

“Although we have now debunked the key premise of this false narrative of welcoming Palestinians and duplicitous Jews, we should also briefly take a look at its second part: That Palestinians who welcomed Jewish refugees (into the country or even into their own homes) were later expelled by them from their homes.

 

“First, it should be clear that there is no historical evidence for any large-scale phenomenon of Jewish refugees living in Palestinian homes.

 

“Second, there was no mass expulsion of Palestinians by Jews or Israelis.

 

“During the months prior to the establishment of the State of Israel and during the Israeli War of Independence, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. However, the vast majority of these Palestinians fled ahead of the advancing Arab armies or to escape the warzone. It was only in a minority of situations that Israeli forces expelled Palestinians from their homes, usually due to their being in militarily sensitive areas.

 

Comment:

The Arabs who left Mandatory Palestine, and after May 14, 1948, what had become the state of Israel, did so because Arab broadcasts from abroad urged them to “get out, so that we can get in.” They were told to leave that area, for what was assumed would be a short stay, and then they could return after the Arab armies destroyed the Jews, as they surely would. Typical of the Arab confidence was the view Azzam Pasha, the Egyptian Secretary-General of the Arab League, expressed. He predicted that there would ensue “a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades.”

 

Not only was it the Palestinian Arabs themselves who left both for their own safety, and to make it easier for the Arab armies to operate, but some Jews, including the Mayor of Haifa and members of the Histadrut, urged the Arabs not to leave. This, of course, is not mentioned by those now spreading tales of 750,000 Arabs being cruelly forced to leave by Jews.

 

“Thus, it is clear that from start to finish, this narrative is nonsense and has no basis in reality. Unfortunately, this has not stopped it from gaining popularity among people who are ignorant of Israeli history or simply hostile to the Jewish State online.

 

Comment:

No Jews, survivors of the Holocaust, were “welcomed” by the Palestinian Arabs, who did everything they could to prevent them from arriving in Palestine, before, during and after World War II, both by pressuring the British to severely limit the number of Jews who were allowed entry, and by murderously attacking Jews already in Mandatory Palestine, in the hope that some would leave, and other Jews outside Mandatory Palestine/Israel would be discouraged from emigrating to such a dangerous place.

 

There is no record of a single Holocaust survivor being “welcomed” by Palestinian Arabs, much less being put up by kind Arab hosts. It’s one more of the preposterous lies being fed into the maw of the anti-Israel propaganda machine. But at least those spreading these lies are acknowledging that there was such a thing as the Holocaust. That’s progress.