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Anti-Israel Lie Online: Jewish Refugees Were Welcomed by Palestinians After the Holocaust
The sign “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work makes you free”) is pictured at the main gate of the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland. Photo: Reuters/Pawel Ulatowski
Another day, another lie when it comes to Israel on social media. This includes fabricating the history of the Jewish State.
While most anti-Israel inventions don’t gain traction and get lost in the cacophony of fringe voices that thrive in the dark corners of the Internet, others rise above the fray and take on a life of their own.
One of the latest historical falsehoods to take off online is the claim that, following the Holocaust, the Palestinians welcomed Jewish survivors of the Nazi genocide (with some even claiming that they were welcomed into their private homes), and it was these same survivors who later turned around and expelled them from their homes.
Even the most novice student of Israeli history could tell you that this claim is a laughable distortion of the past, so absurd as to not even warrant a response.
However, despite its blatant untruthfulness, this narrative has gained steam online, with one X (formerly Twitter) account’s telling of it reaching over two million views.
A history professor (!!) at Austin Community College, also shared this fiction on his Instagram page, reaching over 57,000 likes (the second most-liked post on his Instagram).
Jews arriving in Palestine from Europe as refugees in 1947.
Shortly after getting off the boat, they began killing and robbing the homes of the Palestinians who welcomed them with open arms.
Now they believe they are indigenous to the land. pic.twitter.com/N1NExKKszs
— Censored Humans (@CensoredHumans) October 23, 2025
So, before this anti-Israel lie becomes accepted history in certain circles, let’s break down why it’s baseless and ridiculous:
First things first: Between 1945 and 1948, there was no independent Palestinian government that could welcome Jewish refugees, even if they wanted to. The immigration policy was set by the administration of the British Mandate of Palestine, and this policy was hardly welcoming to the thousands of refugees who wished to reach the shores of the Land of Israel.
A few months before the start of the Second World War, the British government issued the 1939 White Paper, which set a severe limit on Jewish immigration to the British Mandate: 75,000 Jews over the next 5 years. After that, any Jewish immigration would be subject to the will of the land’s Arab population. For the masses of Jews who would soon be seeking refuge from the claws of the Nazi regime, this policy effectively served as a death sentence.
The White Paper was a response to three years of violence during the Great Arab Revolt (1936-1939). The Revolt, which saw Arab attacks on both Jews and the British in Mandatory Palestine, was partially due to a rise in Jewish immigration to the land over the past few years. Instead of welcoming those who were fleeing Nazi Germany and Eastern Europe, the leadership of the Arab population of the British Mandate resorted to violence to halt the flow of Jewish immigrants.
Despite the 1939 white paper, illegal Jewish immigration persisted and continued to increase during WW2.
After 1945, Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine was still illegal – but persisted anyway via smuggling networks. pic.twitter.com/72XAeqWntF— Tal Hagin (@talhagin) December 6, 2023
If some will respond, “Sure, that was before the Holocaust. After the destruction of European Jewry, the Palestinians opened their arms to Jewish refugees,” this is simply not true.
Even after the Nazi regime was defeated and the mass slaughter of Jews was put to an end, the British continued their policy of barring most Jewish immigration. With so many Jewish displaced persons wanting to immigrate to the Land of Israel, there was a rise in coordinated attempts to break the British maritime blockade with ships full of refugees (the most famous of which was Exodus 1947). Roughly 50,000 Jewish refugees from the ruins of Europe were intercepted by the British and largely interned in detention camps on Cyprus.
It was not only the British seeking to stop Jewish immigration to the British Mandate after the Holocaust. In 1946, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry noted that the Arab leadership was opposed to any Jewish immigration to Mandatory Palestine and that their main issue with the 1939 White Paper was that it didn’t go far enough in blocking Jewish immigration.
As paragraph 9 of Chapter VI states:
The White Paper of 1939, and the drastic limitation of Jewish immigration and of land sales to Jews which followed, met the Arab view only in part. The Arabs would have gone much further.
The demands voiced by their leaders are for immediate independence, for the final cessation of Jewish immigration and for the prohibition of all land sales by Arabs to Jews.
This attitude is not surprising as the Committee’s report noted that many of Palestine’s Arabs still aligned themselves with the exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who had served as a guest and ally of Hitler during the Second World War.
Thus, it is clear that, contrary to the false narrative being promoted online, the Palestinians did not welcome Jewish refugees with open arms after the Holocaust. Rather, they fought against any Jewish immigration to the British Mandate.
Although we have now debunked the key premise of this false narrative of welcoming Palestinians and duplicitous Jews, we should also briefly take a look at its second part: That Palestinians who welcomed Jewish refugees (into the country or even into their own homes) were later expelled by them from their homes.
First, it should be clear that there is no historical evidence for any large-scale phenomenon of Jewish refugees living in Palestinian homes.
Second, there was no mass expulsion of Palestinians by Jews or Israelis.
During the months prior to the establishment of the State of Israel and during the Israeli War of Independence, an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. However, the vast majority of these Palestinians fled ahead of the advancing Arab armies or to escape the warzone. It was only in a minority of situations that Israeli forces expelled Palestinians from their homes, usually due to their being in militarily sensitive areas.
Thus, it is clear that from start to finish, this narrative is nonsense and has no basis in reality. Unfortunately, this has not stopped it from gaining popularity among people who are ignorant of Israeli history or simply hostile to the Jewish State online.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
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With a Kennedy Center honor under Trump, David Mamet enters his final, tragic act
There was a time when David Mamet being honored at the Kennedy Center wouldn’t have raised eyebrows.
His contributions to American theater and film transcend an affinity for four letter words (let’s call them “the F— Variations”). His tough-talking, desperate men gave splenetic voice to the indignities of a capitalist system in Glengarry Glen Ross, evolving sexual mores in Sexual Perversity in Chicago and, in a movie like The Verdict, the justice system.
Cut to 2026 and Mamet’s scripts are but an afterthought to his grievance. When he makes headlines now, it’s for his reactionary conservative streak and his role as a partisan in the culture war. Together with a run of flops, numbering a Harvey Weinstein #MeToo comedy and a Broadway show not even Al Pacino could save, his esteem has cratered among the liberal circles that once embraced him, and to which he once belonged but now prefers to eviscerate.
He has made the transition from dramatist to pundit, first at HuffPost, lately at The Free Press. Reading too much into Oleanna, perhaps, he has called teachers pedophiles on Fox News, written screeds on cancel culture and, a prerequisite for the Kennedys at this moment, praised President Donald Trump.
In the honor, there is a strain of tragedy. Mamet has strayed so far from where he started — what he called his “brain-dead liberal” era — that he makes perfect sense for this appointment, under a regime that tried to slap its leader’s name onto a tribute to a slain president meant as a bipartisan shrine to art. (Due to the Center’s closure amid turmoil and legal battles, the ceremonies will take place at the Capital One Arena, which is only too perfectly bleak.)
A younger Mamet would have looked askance at such a figure as our current Commander-in-Chief, a character who is on the make with all sorts of half-baked schemes. The Iran War may be his latest play on a Buffalo nickel.
It’s enough to make one wonder if we’ve been misreading Mamet all along. Are the men breaking-and entering to steal the Glengarry leads meant to be admired? Are the Hollywood sleazes in Speed-the-Plow aspirational? Is Al Capone the real hero of The Untouchables?
Perhaps the evening, which tends to include career retrospectives, will elucidate. But if the Kennedy Honors could once be said to be for closers, it may now be only for a particular kind of sellout.
The post With a Kennedy Center honor under Trump, David Mamet enters his final, tragic act appeared first on The Forward.
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Why is Britney Spears studying Hebrew?
It’s Britney, Yitz!
Continuing a curious social media trend that has previously seen appreciation for the beards of chess-playing Chabadniks and the Zohar hidden among baby clothes, Britney Spears took to Instagram Sunday to post a Hebrew Book of Psalms and the Lekutei Amaraim, or Tanya, a Hasidic book of sayings.
The caption reads: “I’m extremely bored !!! Learning Hebrew reading right to left !!! Beautiful language !!!” (A previous caption, posted Sunday, was more cryptic, concluding “God speed little man !!! I love u !!!,” perhaps indicating the presence of a havruta or someone in her life who keeps his mitzvot.)
What exactly is happening here? Is Spears, like Marilyn before her and Sydney Sweeney now, about to dip her toe into the mikveh?
The best clue we have isn’t from Spears’ page, but from Israeli model Natalie Dadon, who tagged the “Hit Me Baby One More Time” singer in a selfie with the Tanya. “Finally, it’s possible to tell,” Dadon posted, in a gallery with Hebrew language news coverage of the posts. Dadon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dadon’s social media presence involves Tanya study, which itself is a cornerstone to Lubavitch philosophy (so perhaps is connected to the Chabad chess players whose beards Spears so admired) and adjacent to Kabbalah.
Spears is no stranger to Jewish subjects. Around the time she locked lips with Madonna at the 2003 VMAs, she started, like so many others, to look into Kabbalah, as this handy timeline from Hey Alma notes. She has a Hebrew tattoo of letters that signify healing in kabbalistic texts and was apparently once attached to star in a Holocaust-time-travel-romance film called The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton, which now that I’ve heard of it I will never shut up about.
She has credited Kabbalah with helping her through a difficult time in her life and has been spotted wearing a star of David.
But we should approach Spears’ dalliance with Judaism, now sandwiched on her Insta page between a call-out of her sister Jamie Lynn and a NSFW video of her dancing with a rose Emoji as a fig leaf, with some healthy skepticism.
Her Instagram bio currently reads “Pray Every Day” with a prayer hands emoji next to a Bible emoji with a cross. She’d still appear to be Christian — or, at the very least, waiting for the new iOS update with the Tanya emoji.
The post Why is Britney Spears studying Hebrew? appeared first on The Forward.
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Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate
(JTA) — Democratic Michigan U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens was given an extended ovation at a fundraising gala for a Detroit-area Jewish day school Sunday, hours after her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers for Senate.
Stevens, a longtime pro-Israel stalwart, was celebrated at the Yeshiva Beth Yehudah annual dinner as many members of her party across the country spoke out against her decision to break with Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
Video of Stevens’ minute-long standing ovation was shared on social media by representatives of Agudath Israel of America, a major Orthodox advocacy group. Strongly pro-Israel Jews have largely lauded her move to Rogers, which she said came about in part because of her objections to El-Sayed’s past relationship with anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker.
Also on Sunday evening, Stevens struggled to explain the timing of her decision in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. One consistency in her response was her belief that she was helping Democrats beat back antisemitism within their own party.
“I’m trying to help the Democratic Party. I felt the same way about Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo,” Stevens said, referencing the Maine Senate candidate who ultimately stepped down from the nomination. Asked if she believed El-Sayed is antisemitic, she responded, “I think some of the actions have certainly been antisemitic, Anderson, but I’m just sick of who he stands with.”
She named Piker and “the uncle,” referring to Piker’s uncle Cenk Uygur, whose PAC produced an ad supporting El-Sayed that blamed Israel for the price of groceries. After Stevens publicly pressured El-Sayed to condemn the ad’s contents, the candidate appeared to do so on Saturday night, which Stevens celebrated in a statement — hours before endorsing Rogers.
To Cooper, Stevens suggested that many other Democrats felt the way she did.
“I’ve been hearing from a ton of Dems, Anderson, who have said, ‘Thank you. This is how we felt.’ They haven’t liked this campaign. It’s painful,” she said. A growing number of Michigan Jewish Democrats have pledged to vote for Rogers, though more than 1,000 have also signed a letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah is spread across multiple suburban Detroit campuses and is the largest Jewish day school in the state. Its annual fundraising dinner, “An Evening of Unity,” is known for drawing big national names in politics and the media, usually from both major parties.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was the evening’s keynote speaker, and the gala program also featured personal letters from President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
But it was Stevens, a regular supporter of the school, who turned the most heads. She was also presented with what the emcee called “a specially designed, illuminated book of the five scrolls of our prophets, which remind you all of our heartfelt esteem and appreciation for who you are.”
The yeshiva’s leadership also extended warm wishes to Stevens’ Jewish fiancé, Democratic megadonor Jason Turkish, whom the yeshiva’s emcee described as “our dear friend.” Turkish’s own endorsement of Rogers came days before the congresswoman’s.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate appeared first on The Forward.
