The Real Story

For many years, Israeli citizens learned a sanitized version of what happened during their War of Independence in 1948. They learned that 700,000 Arabs fled the country on their own accord. But in the late 1980s, a group of Israeli historians gained access to most of the government documents from the war and started writing a truer, less flattering version of the story: That in some cases, the Palestinians were forced out, or scared away, and then not allowed to return. Ira discusses the real history and its impact on the Israeli public with some of the men who uncovered it: Benny Morris, author of The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem 1947-1949, and Tom Segev, who wrote 1949: The First Israelis. He also talks to BZ Goldberg, one of the filmmakers behind the Emmy-winning documentary about Israeli and Palestinian kids, called Promises. (20 minutes)