Comment by CapricornNoble

> The problem is: it doesn't matter.

Clearly it does matter to significant portions of the people who either directly experienced it or are the children of those who did. I would argue it was a major driving factor for violent opposition to the Israeli state, now since replaced by Israel's current actions (current as in last 30 years) as the impetus.

> No matter what Israel did in Palestine, Arab Jewish people had no culpability.

I'm glad this discussion has forced me to do some research. I actually wonder how many of the early immigrant waves were even "expelled" in the first place, rather than moving of their own volition. Here's the example from Yemen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Magic_Carpet_(Yemen)...

And in Iraq's case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ezra_and_Nehemiah "Like most Arab League states, Iraq initially forbade the emigration of its Jews after the 1948 war on the grounds that allowing them to go to Israel would strengthen that state; however, by 1949 the Iraqi Zionist underground was smuggling Jews out of the country to Iran at about a rate of 1,000 a month, from where they were flown to Israel.[23] At the time, the British believed that the Zionist underground was agitating in Iraq in order to assist US fund-raising and to "offset the bad impression caused by the Jewish attitudes to Arab refugees".