History: April 2015 Archives

What Happened at Lydda » Mosaic

A popularized account by Ari Shavit in The New Yorker of the fighting in Lydda, during Israel's 1948 war for survival, omits or elides crucial facts -- grenades coming from inside a small mosque that was not under Israeli control; Jordanian troops controlling the city's fort-like police station to the south -- to paint a misleading picture that conveniently serves the interests of anti-Israel crusaders, according to scholar Martin Kramer, who rebuts Shavit with testimony from soldiers and locals. There are responses, pro and con, from other historians, and from Kramer himself.