In his latest Haarertz commentary, the Israeli political analyst Yoel Marcus wonders “How Israel became a night unto the nations?” Marcus is obviously nostalgic about the days where the great powers “were not only sympathetic to Israel's establishment, but admired its valor in repulsing the Arab states' onslaught.”

Proudly he mentions the ‘renowned foreign journalists’ who came to Israel in 1948 and wrote “glowing reports about this war of David against Goliath”. Noticeably, Marcus fails to mention or to grasp that the expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians from their villages and cities wasn’t exactly a repetition of a ‘David against Goliath’ narrative. Quite the opposite, it was a story of a young organised Jewish army that ethnically cleansed a defenseless civilian  population consisting mainly of peasants.