Israel has a secret department which makes critical documents disappear, especially documents related to what the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba of 1948, the year that marks the foundation of the state of Israel and the displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their villages, towns and cities in lands that make up the border of Israel.
An investigative report by Haaretz revealed that an Israeli Defense Ministry department called the “Director of security of the Defense establishment” or MALMAB (its acronym in Hebrew) is tasked with wiping out archives on Nakba, or catastrophe in Arabic, which opposes the Israeli version of the event.
The Israeli rendition of the event says that Palestinians left their lands after Arab politicians asked them to do so. However, documents deleted by Malmab suggest otherwise, prompting the Israeli secret agency to seek to hide them as historical records show the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military.
The department was said to secure sensitive information about Israel’s secret military program but in reality, it is more about concealing the actual history of Nakba in favor of an Israeli narrative.
Malmab was founded in 2007 by Yehiel Horev who told Hareetz that the program is still ongoing. Horev also said that it is better to conceal the events of 1948 otherwise the exposure of the archives would cause unrest among the Palestinian population.
Malmab, whose budget and activities are classified, has removed a number of documents about the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) killing Palestinian civilians, destroying villages, as well as expelling Bedouins during the first decade of Israeli statehood.
According to a report by the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, Malmab has illegally sealed public documents which had been previously cleared for release by the military. Many directors of public and private archives said the staff of Malmab considers the documents as their property and often seal them without any authority.
Many documents vaulted by the department had been previously published. When Haaretz inquired about the reason for concealing those, Horev said it is done to undermine the credibility of scholars and historians who referred to those documents while writing about the events.
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