Dimitry Toukhcher

OK.

So the idea that these guys show up after World War II and take Palestinian land is not a real idea.

Jerusalem in the 1860s was already significantly

had significantly more Jewish inhabitants than anything else.

So Tel Aviv is the same thing.

We just looked at the numbers, right?

We were just looking at numbers and trying to understand what was happening.

There were two groups of refugees, and two countries were supposedly formed.

One was Israel, one was Transjordan.

Both formed in 1948, by the way.

No, Transjordan declared independence in 1946.

How did Transjordan declare independence in 1946?

And who are those people?

Well, they were the Arabs living in the region.

And their leadership is not from that region at all.

The Al Saud family in Saudi Arabia won a revolution in 1923.

Basically, the government took over the country.

It was the Kingdom of Hejaz at the time.

And the Hashemite family, which was the ruling family,

of the Saudis, that land for many generations, ended up kind of stateless.