Loot: How Israel Stole Palestinian Property

Exiled in 1948, Palestinians were robbed of their private property when looting became weaponized

During the 1948 War, Israeli fighters and residents alike plundered Palestinian homes, shops, businesses, and farms. This bitter truth was then suppressed or forgotten over the coming years.

Tens of thousands took part in the pillage of Palestinian property, stealing the belongings of their former neighbours. The implications of this mass looting go far beyond the personality or moral fibre of those who took part. Plundering served a political agenda by helping to empty the country of its Palestinian residents. In this context, it was part of the prevailing policy during the war – one designed to crush the Palestinian economy, destroy villages, and to confiscate and sometimes destroy crops and harvests remaining in the depopulated zones.

The participating Jewish public became a stakeholder, motivated to prevent Palestinian residents from returning to the villages and cities they had left. These ordinary people were mobilized in the push for the segregation of Jews and Arabs in the early years of statehood.

With painstaking original research into primary sources, Adam Raz has brought to light a tragic moment in the history of a conflict that roils the region and the wider world. As the details of the Nakba are understood and documented, redress for Palestinian grievances comes closer to reality.

Adam Raz is a human rights researcher and historian whose field of research is the political history of the twentieth century and Marxist thought. In recent years Raz has written several books on the history of nuclear weapons in Israel and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Among his books in Hebrew are: The Struggle for the Bomb (2015), Herzl: The Conflicts of Zionism’s Founder with Supporters and Opponents (2017), Kafr Qassem Massacre: A Political Biography (2018), The Military Rule 1948-1966 (2021). His most recent book is The Demagogue – the Mechanics of Political Power (2023). Raz works at Akevot: Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research.