Juan Cole's little Nakba narrative

This is just one paragraph from a longish post, but it stands on its own, a little bauble of bias:

Thousands of Palestinians rallied in Gaza on Saturday to commemorate the Nakbah or national catastrophe of 1948, when European Jewish settlers brought into the Mandate of Palestine by imperial British policy expelled 700,000 Palestinians from what is now Israel and then sealed the border, confiscating all their property without compensation. These actions turned the bulk of the Palestinians into poverty-stricken camp dwellers and/or stateless persons living under the rule of others, and prevented the rise of an independent Palestinian state such as was envisaged by the League of Nations and the British government just a decade before.

Are Cole's academic employers capable of embarrassment? And speaking of those whose academic employers should be embarrassed . . .

Crossposted on Soccer Dad