For Palestinians, Every Day is Al-Naqba--the Catastrophe: A Palestinian woman weeps over the rubble of her home in the Gaza Strip's Rafah Refugee Camp. The Israeli military demolished the home, one of dozens, during an operation in 2003. (Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images).

May 14, 1948 marks Israel's declaration of independence. To Israelis, it's a day of celebration. For Palestinians and Arabs, May 14, 1948 marks a day of rage they call al-Naqba, Arabic for "the Catastrophe."

The stereotypical view of the Palestinian Arabs voluntarily abandoning the land and society they'd thrived on was a Western implant, developed early in the narrative of the Jewish-Arab conflict--and countered, from time to time, just as early by factual observers.

Dana Adams Schmidt, writing in The New York Times on May 15, 1948, the day after Israel's Declaration of Independence, illustrates the point:

Zionists commonly indulge in certain fallacies about their Arab neighbors.

Firstly, they imagine that opposition to Jewish immigration comes only from the effendis (the term originally applied to landowners) and other representatives of a vestigial feudalism. On the contrary, Arab opposition is wide and deep. Even though the upper classes are articulate, the Arab fellaheen resents the foreign "intruders" and their innovations and has drunk his share of the new wine of Arab nationalism.

Secondly, many Zionists maintain that the Arabs of Palestine do not mind the influx of Jews and would live in peace with them but that "foreign Arabs" from other Arab states have stirred up trouble and led attacks.

In fact, although the Palestine Arab may be even less gifted militarily than others and Syrians and Iraqis constantly crop up in the news, most of the shooting in Palestine has been done by Palestinians.

See my full account of the meaning and controversies of al-Naqba.