102 till-: y I t:s i i n v o k p a i .IvS M n e unarmed civilian Palestinians away, once they had moved (in most cases) to avoid the brutalities of war. Before as well as after they left there were specific Zionist instrumentalities for, in effect, obliterating their presence. 1 have already d ied Weitz in [940. Here he is on May 18, 1948, narrating a conversation with Moshe Shertok (later Sharett) of the Foreign Ministry: Transfer—post factum; should we do something so as to transform the exodus of the Arabs from the country into a fact, so that they return no more? . . . His [Shertok's] answer: he blesses any initiative in this matter. His opinion is also that we must act in such a way as to transform the exodus of the Arabs into an established fact.41 Later that year, Weitz visited an evacuated A ra b village. He reflected as follows: 1 went to visit the village of Mu'ar. Three tractors are completing its destruction, I was surprised; nothing in me moved at the sight of the destruction. No regret and no hate, as though this was the way the world goes. So we want to feel good in this world, and not in some world to come. We simply want to live, and the inhabitants of those mud-houses did not want us to exist here. They not only aspire to dominate us, they also wanted to exterminate us. And what is interesting— this is the opinion of all our boys, from one end to the other,” He describes something that took place everywhere in Pales­ tine but he seems totally unable to take in the fact that the human lives— very modest and humble ones, it is true— actually lived in that wretched village meant something to the people whose lives they were. Weitz does not attempt to deny the villagers' reality; he simply admits that their destruction means only that " w e ” can now live there. He is completely untroubled by the thought that to the native Palestinians he, Weitz, is only a foreigner come to displace them, or that it is no more than natural to oppose such a prospect. Instead. Weitz and “ the boys” take the position that the Palestinians wanted to “ exterminate” them— and this therefore licenses the de­