Israel's founders didn't simply plant flags in an empty country. Instead, they coveted a state where close to a million Palestinians outnumbered Jews two to one and where Jews owned only 6% of the land. A Jewish state could not be established in this milieu. Exploiting Palestinian opposition to the United Nations partition plan, Zionist militias, and later Israeli troops, forcibly exiled about 750,000 Palestinians from their homes and homeland, or terrorized them into flight. Israeli historian Benny Morris documented twenty four massacres of unarmed Palestinian civilians in this period. —— Nakba at 60 George Bisharat