Erased from Space and Consciousness:
Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948

Hundreds of Palestinian villages were left empty across Israel when their residents became refugees after the 1948 war, their lands and property confiscated. Most of the villages were razed by the new State of Israel, but in dozens of others, communities of Jews were settled—many refugees in their own right. The state embarked on a systematic effort of renaming and remaking the landscape, and the Arab presence was all but erased from official maps and histories. 

Using official archives, kibbutz publications, and visits to the former village sites, Noga Kadman has reconstructed this history of erasure for all 418 depopulated villages.

Noga Kadman is an Israeli activist and researcher in the field of human rights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as a tour guide who deals mostly with the hidden Palestinian layers of the landscape in Israel.  Her work for B'Tselem, Gisha, and Zochrot has informed her belief that “Israel should acknowledge the uprooting, dispossession, oppression and human rights violations it caused to Palestinians, take responsibility on it, and act for reparation and compensation.”

"The publication of Kadman's book is a cultural event of the first rank." — Haaretz review of the Hebrew edition.