Drawing from more than two-dozen state, army, and kibbutzim archives, in addition to journals of key figures, Raz illustrates in painstaking and often hard-to-read detail the extent to which Zionist Jewish settlers were able to confiscate the homes and properties of terrorized Palestinians who had fled the war—temporarily, they thought, having no reason to believe that their departure would be permanent. Whatever these Zionists saw, they coveted and plundered. They descended like jackals on well-maintained homes and stripped them of their furnishings; they stole from people they knew, like their neighbors, and from residents in other towns; they went on foot individually and in groups and took what they could carry, hauling larger items on trucks. They were civilians, as well as soldiers and police officers.
Adam Raz’s meticulously researched Loot: How Israel Stole Palestinian Property demonstrates in distressing detail that, far from taking over a barren, uninhabited landscape, Zionist forces and Jewish settlers violently and brazenly looted the well-furnished homes, stocked businesses, and lovingly tended farms and orchards of displaced Palestinians.
In the words of Thomas Suarez, “Israel took over an intact, ready-made country—houses, assets, money, orchards, quarries, 10,000 acres of vineyards, 25,000 acres of citrus groves, 10,000 business establishments, olive groves, and machinery.”
1 For these conquerors, it was all theirs for the taking.