I learned about the tragedy that befell the Palestinian families by listening to the oral history from my mother-in-law, Marguerite Farah. She told me how in April 1948 during the ethnic cleansing of West Jerusalem she was forced to leave their house together with her four children to find refuge in safer environment. She explains how the family was not allowed to return, she was considered by the Jewish State an absentee and their house is till today occupied by a Jewish family. This was the fate of all the Palestinian families who lived in West Jerusalem.

I learned more about the Jewish plans to vacate Palestine by reading two books that dealt with the events of 1948. The first by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe “the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, a crime against humanity”. This book is based on Israeli archives and reveals how on March 10, 1948 Jewish migrants finalized plan D for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the systematic expulsion of the civilian Palestinian population, christian and moslem, from urban and rural areas. This plan was implemented by orders of Jewish migrant from Poland, David Ben Gruen (Gurion).

The second book by Israeli historian Adam Raz published a book under the title “the theft of Arab properties in the war of independence in 1948”. He describes in detail how the Jews raided Arab homes, shops, stores, farms and factories left behind by the terrorized Palestinian owners. He adds all segments of the Jewish public and military participated in this looting of Palestinian property and in all cities of Palestine.

Finally I got my inspiration to write the book from my own experiences working as a change agent with development organizations in the West Bank in the 80s and 90s of the previous century. I learned from many of the farmers I worked with their ordeal of seizure their land and property by the Israeli authorities for the establishment of exclusive Jewish settlements. I wrote a number of articles on the subject of Jewish Settlements, Palestinian rights and peace.

The sum total of the above materials and experiences convinced me to write the book on the destruction of Palestine by European migrants mainly from Ukraine and Poland to create a Jewish State at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people.

Ibrahim Matar was born, raised and still living in Jerusalem. He is an economist by profession. He completed high school at the Christian Brothers school, undergraduate in business and economics at the American University of Beirut, and graduate studies in development economics at the University of Indiana, Bloomington Indiana USA. In his working career, he established and chaired the department of business and economics at Bethlehem University in Bethlehem West Bank. In his career he focused on development in the West Bank working with voluntary organizations such as the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) and finally as senior program officer with the Italian Cooperation, Italian Consulate in Jerusalem. He is the author of a number of publications on Jewish settlements, Palestinian rights and peace as well as the present book on theft of Palestinian properties in West Jerusalem in 1948 and East Jerusalem in 1967.