Related comment someone posted on there: https://twitter.com/HadesShawn/status/1713390022890590689 https://archive.vn/szoPt >*This day in history:* October 15th, 1948, the Israeli military launched Operation Yoav, a seven-day campaign which was aimed at inflicting a defeat upon Palestinian and Egyptian army forces by securing control of the Negev Desert. The assault occurred in the context of the first Arab-Israeli war, precipitated by the imperialist-backed declaration earlier in 1948 of a Jewish state established through the violent dispossession of the Palestinians.* > >*In the months leading up to Operation Yoav, there had been unstable ceasefires brokered by the United Nations, temporarily halting some of the hostilities between the Israeli army and a coalition of Arab states opposed to the formation of Israel.* > >*Israeli command, however, was determined to secure substantial territorial gains to consolidate the new state. The immediate aim of Yoav was to drive a wedge between the Egyptian forces near the coast and the Beersheba–Hebron–Jerusalem road. The more fundamental goal, however, was to secure control of the entire Negev Desert, including through the forcible removal of its Palestinian inhabitants.* > >*On October 15, Israel launched its attack with an aerial bombardment of Gaza, al-Majdal, Beersheba, and Beit Hanoun that would last for two more days. Beginning October 21, Israeli land forces launched a coordinated assault on Beersheba, eventually overrunning an Egyptian garrison stationed there. Over the following weeks, Israeli troops would continue a bombing campaign, even as the Egyptian military retreated, and the Israelis took a series of villages, including Iraq Suwaydan.* > >*On October 28, Israeli troops carried out a massacre in the Hebron town of Al-Dawayima, indiscriminately murdering up to 200 women and children. That was only the most infamous of a series of onslaughts against Palestinian villagers associated with Operation Yoav. The United Nations Refugee Relief Project would report that the campaign had resulted in an increase in the Gaza Strip’s refugee population from roughly 100,000 to around 230,000.* > >*The onslaught was a continuation of the activities by Zionist organizations to establish Israel. They had carried out terrorist attacks on Palestinian forces, as well as against the British, to secure the most favorable terms when British imperialism relinquished its colonial mandate in 1947. The Zionist groups had then carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing, killing thousands of Palestinians and forcing thousands more from their homes, in order to lay the basis of a state explicitly founded on Jewish racial supremacy.*