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Every May, Israelis celebrate the anniversary of their independence. For Palestinians, their memories are of dispossession and displacement.

Beginning in late 1947, months before the official creation of the Jewish state, Jewish forces expelled Palestinian Arabs and destroyed their homes and villages. By the time the Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, was over, some 750,000 Palestinians had been expelled in one of the first ethnic cleansing operations of the post-WWII era.

Yet it took generations for this story to receive the attention it deserves — an alarming erasure because today's conflict cannot be understood without this "other half" of Israel's origin story. Historian Mark LeVine of the University of California-Irvine is our guest.

Further reading:

Art Beyond the Edge: Creativity and Conflict in the World on Fire by Mark LeVine

Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948 by Mark LeVine