A Brief Historical Snapshot: What Actually Happened in 1948?
Understanding how Israel was formed isn’t “being political”—it’s being honest.
In 1948, the state of Israel was declared, and almost immediately, war broke out. What many don’t realize is that over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced in what’s known as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” Entire villages were emptied, families fled under fire, and many were never allowed to return. This wasn’t just a tragedy—it was the foundation of modern Israel.
Today, some of those same families are still in refugee camps. They kept their old house keys. They tell stories of the orchards their grandparents once tended. And they wait. Not for revenge—but for justice.
If your theology skips over the Nakba, it's not grounded in truth. It’s propaganda with a Bible verse stapled on.
A Short History of the Palestinian People
Palestinians aren’t a modern invention. They are an ancient, rooted people—descendants of Canaanites, Arameans, Arabs, and others who’ve lived in the land for thousands of years. When Jesus walked through Nazareth, Samaria, and Jerusalem, He walked among their ancestors.
For centuries, the people of Palestine lived under different empires—Byzantine, Islamic Caliphates, Crusaders, Ottomans—yet their communities remained. Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived side by side. Cities like Jerusalem, Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron, and Gaza weren’t just names on a map—they were homes, traditions, dialects, and dreams.
Under Ottoman rule (1517–1917), Palestine was a multicultural province with Arab-majority cities and vibrant trade. Around 1917, Arabs made up roughly 90% of the population. When the British took control after World War I (via the British Mandate), things began to shift. British colonial policies and growing European Zionist immigration—motivated by creating a Jewish homeland—started to displace the local population.
By 1947, Palestinians made up about two-thirds of the population, but were given only 45% of the land in a UN partition plan—despite owning the majority of it. In 1948, when Israel declared statehood, over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled in what they call the Nakba—“the catastrophe.” Entire towns were depopulated or destroyed. Families scattered into exile, refugee camps, or life under military occupation.
Since then, Palestinians have endured decades of occupation, blockade, displacement, and statelessness—in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the diaspora. Many still carry the keys to homes they were never allowed to return to.
But through it all, the Palestinian people have never vanished. They are poets, farmers, architects, resistance leaders, peacebuilders, parents, and children. They are Muslim and Christian. They are still here. Still grieving. Still creating. Still fighting for dignity, memory, and a future.
To know Palestine is to know a people who have suffered deeply and loved stubbornly.
A people whose story deserves to be told—not erased, not silenced, not forgotten.
Who Was Arthur Balfour—and What Did He Really Think About Jews?
Arthur Balfour was a British politician who, in 1917, signed the now-famous Balfour Declaration—a letter expressing the British government's support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
This declaration is often celebrated by Christian Zionists as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. But let’s take a closer look at who Balfour actually was—and why he supported Zionism.
Spoiler: It wasn’t because he loved Jewish people. In fact, the truth is painfully ironic—Arthur Balfour was a committed antisemite.
Years before he issued the Balfour Declaration, Balfour pushed for the Aliens Act of 1905, a law aimed at restricting Jewish immigration into Britain—especially from Eastern Europe. He believed Jews were "undesirable" and "unassimilable." He didn’t want them in England.
So why support a Jewish homeland in Palestine?
Because, like many European officials of his time, Balfour saw Zionism as a convenient way to get Jews out of Europe—not to empower them, but to remove them.
In other words, he supported a "Jewish homeland" not out of solidarity, but out of segregation.
The same man who didn’t want Jews in his own country was more than happy to send them to someone else’s.
This is a chilling reality: One of the foundational moments of modern Israel was shaped not by love for Jews—but by Christian and colonial antisemitism, wrapped in imperial strategy. Palestine, under British rule, was seen as disposable land for solving Europe’s “Jewish problem.”
And what about the people already living there? The native Arab population—mostly Muslim and Christian—were never consulted. Balfour himself made it clear in 1919:
“Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions… but it is of far greater import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”
Translation: Palestinian voices didn’t matter. Their lives, rights, and futures were secondary to a European plan with racist roots.