The Evacuation of the Noncombatant Population in the 1948 War: Three Kibbutzim as a Case Study

Abstract

During the 1948 Israeli War of Independence thousands of Jewish civilians, mainly women and children, became refugees when the fighting came dangerously near to their homes in the towns and agricultural settlements (moshavot, moshavim and kibbutzim). While the Jewish victory in the war turned the refugee phenomenon among the Palestinians into an ongoing tragedy, the Jewish refugee phenomenon proved temporary, lasting on average only several months, and has almost been forgotten by the Israeli collective memory. This article examines this episode in the history of the 1948 war from the viewpoint of the evacuees in three kibbutzim, and proposes a number of possible directions for research: the organizational, personal-psychological and ideological aspects of the evacuation, along with the role of national myths and symbols.