For decades, Palestinians have recounted the story of 1948—the Nakba, or “catastrophe”—when hundreds of thousands were expelled from their homes and villages during the creation of Israel. Now, thousands of newly discovered Israeli documents, reported by Haaretz and examined by historian Adam Raz, appear to validate what Palestinians have said all along: the expulsion was intentional, systematic, and accompanied by acts of violence and massacre. But the narrative that these files “reveal the truth” risks obscuring the fact that Palestinians themselves have always been the first witnesses to this history.
Raz’s recent Haaretz article frames the discovery of archival material as a breakthrough, with a subheadline proclaiming, “Thousands of newly discovered documents now make it possible to tell the true story of Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians in 1948.” Yet Palestinians did not need these files to know what had happened. For decades, survivors, displaced families, and oral historians have provided detailed accounts of expulsions, killings, and the destruction of villages. These testimonies, passed down through generations, captured not only the sequence of events but also the lived realities of dispossession and loss.
Studies by Saleh Abd al-Jawad and Adel Manna, among others, relied on oral testimony to document the Nakba. Palestinian literature and personal memoirs preserved these experiences long before state archives were opened. Families recounted fleeing under fire, witnessing neighbors killed, and returning to find their homes demolished. Villagers described sneaking back to harvest the fruit of trees planted by their ancestors, often at great personal risk. Young Palestinians, having witnessed massacres, sometimes took up arms, while students and activists carried the memory of displacement into calls for return and liberation. These voices, though frequently marginalized in mainstream historical narratives, conveyed the truth of 1948 from the very beginning.
To suggest that these newly surfaced Israeli documents alone reveal the “truth” risks granting the perpetrator an exclusive claim over history. The files certainly provide granular detail: names of commanders, dates of operations, types of weapons used, and strategic intentions. They allow historians to corroborate, sequence, and contextualize events with precision. Yet presenting them as the only legitimate source of truth ignores the vast body of knowledge held by Palestinians themselves. In fact, Raz notes that of 17 million files in Israel’s State Archives, the IDF, and the Defense Establishment Archives, more than 16 million remain inaccessible. Their concealment is deliberate. One could reasonably infer that had the contents contradicted Palestinian accounts, they might never have been revealed.
The significance of these archives is undeniable, particularly when paired with rigorous historical analysis. They allow researchers to confirm that expulsions were not spontaneous but planned, and that massacres were more widespread than previously documented. They offer insight into operational decisions, military orders, and the political logic behind policies of dispossession. Yet the broader lesson is that documents produced by the state or military should not hold exclusive authority over memory and testimony. Histories of oppression, exploitation, and violence exist independently of official archives, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels noted when they described class struggle as central to the human story. In the Palestinian context, national, ethnic, and gendered struggles shape the narrative just as much as any written record.
This hierarchy of credibility—the tendency to privilege Israeli documents or official statements over Palestinian testimony—has long distorted reporting and understanding of the conflict. Oral accounts of dispossession, killings, or structural violence are often dismissed as anecdotal or unreliable. By contrast, a single leaked Israeli report or official confirmation is elevated as definitive proof, even when it merely corroborates what Palestinians have consistently described. The result is a journalistic framework in which Palestinian voices are subordinated, valued only when validated by the state apparatus that perpetuated their suffering.
The pattern is familiar across multiple decades of conflict. During the early weeks of the second intifada, for instance, reports of lethal force against demonstrators were initially discounted until Israeli sources confirmed them. In Gaza, IDF attacks on civilians fleeing with white flags in 2008–2009, the use of prohibited weapons like white phosphorus, and the targeting of entire families in 2014 were all documented by Palestinian witnesses before any mainstream validation. Yet only when an official Israeli document or statement corroborated these accounts did they receive broader attention.
This skewed hierarchy of “truth” also affects public memory. Individual testimonies documenting the killing of children, forced evictions, or village demolitions are often relegated to the margins. A denial from a military spokesperson can push months of detailed, consistent accounts into obscurity. Despite this, the lived reality of Palestinians—their experiences, memories, and inherited knowledge—remains a reliable and essential record of history. The truth of 1948 does not rely on the state’s permission to exist; it persists independently in the stories of the dispossessed.
Ultimately, the newly released Israeli documents serve as confirmation rather than revelation. They offer detail and specificity, providing a framework for historians to analyze the mechanics of expulsion and violence. But the Nakba was known, understood, and mourned by those who lived it long before these files surfaced. The persistent denial of Palestinian testimony, the marginalization of oral histories, and the delayed acceptance of written evidence reflect a broader struggle over who controls the narrative. The real story of 1948 is not found solely in state archives; it resides in the collective memory, literature, and voices of Palestinians who survived, resisted, and remembered.
As Haaretz and Adam Raz report on these discoveries, it is crucial to recognize that while archival material enriches historical understanding, it does not create the truth. The expulsion, the massacres, and the systematic dispossession were witnessed by those who endured them. They told their story long before the world had access to official files, and that story remains unbroken, validated not just by documents but by generations of lived experience.
