ISRAEL
PALESTINE
CONFLICT
The story of one of the most sensitive conflicts in the world
Before 1920 and 1948 (when Israel was established), there has been a continuous human presence on this land. We are going to focus on Jerusalem, because it is currently of one the biggest issue in this conflict.
3,000 to 2,500 B.C. — The city on the hills separating the fertile Mediterranean coastline of present-day Israel from the arid deserts of Arabia was first settled by pagan tribes in what was later known as the land of Canaan. The Bible says the last Canaanites to rule the city were the Jebusites.
1,000 B.C. — According to archaeological evidence, King David conquered the city. He was warned that "even the blind and the lame can ward you off," the Bible says. He named his conquest The City of David and made it the capital of his new realm.
960 B.C. — David's son Solomon built the first Jewish temple. The Bible says the Israelites also fought many wars against another Canaanite tribe called the Philistines who lived along the southern coastline.
721 B.C. — Assyrians conquered part of the land of Israel called Samaria, and Jewish refugees fled to Jerusalem, causing the city to expand.
701 B.C. — Assyrian ruler Sennacherib laid siege to Jerusalem.
586 B.C. — Babylonian troops occupied the city, destroying the temple and exiling many Jews.
539 B.C. — Persian King Cyrus the Great conquered the Babylonian empire, including Jerusalem.
516 B.C. — King Cyrus allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild. The Jews built the Second Temple.
445-425 B.C. — Nehemiah the Prophet rebuilt the walls of the city.
332 B.C. — Alexander the Great of Macedonia took control. After his death, his empire was divided into four, including the Seleucid Empire that contained the land of Israel and their ancient enemies the Philistines (Palestine).
160-167 B.C. — The Jews' Maccabean revolt, launched against the Seleucid Empire and Greek influence, eventually returned the city to Jewish control. The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah celebrates the purification of the Second Temple after the Maccabees reconquered the city.
141 B.C. — The Hasmonean dynasty of Jewish rulers began, and the city grew.
63 B.C. — Roman General Pompey captured Jerusalem.
37 B.C. — Roman client King Herod renovated the Second Temple and added retaining walls, one of which remains today and is called the Western Wall, or the Wailing Wall by Jews.
30 A.D. — Jesus was crucified by the Roman soldiers.
70 — During another Jewish revolt, the Romans destroy their Temple and exile many Jews.
135 — The Romans rebuild Jerusalem as a city of their own.
335 — Roman Emperor Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulcher over the spot where Jesus was said to have been buried and to have risen from the dead.
614 — The Persians capture Jerusalem.
629 — Byzantine Christians recapture Jerusalem.
632 — Muhammed, the prophet of Islam, died and was said to ascend to heaven from a rock in the center of where the Jewish Temple used to be.
637 — Caliph Omar entered the city to accept the surrender of its Byzantine ruler, the Patriarch Sophronius.
691 — The Muslim shrine known as Haram al Sharif, or the Dome of the Rock, was built around that spot where Mohamed was said to have risen to heaven, remains there today.
1099-1187 — Christian Crusaders occupied Jerusalem, claiming it as a major religious site.
1187 — Salladin captures Jerusalem from the Crusaders.
1229-1244 — Crusaders recapture Jerusalem twice.
1250 — Muslim rulers dismantle the walls of the city.
1517 — The Ottoman Empire captures Jerusalem and Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilds the walls from 1538 to 1541.
1917 — The British capture Jerusalem in World War I.
Despite the fact that Jews have been exiled and fired from this land a long time ago, the previous three millennia of history saw a continued Jewish presence on it, the Islamic conquest in the year 637 and, much later, massive arrivals of Muslim populations from all over the Empire Ottoman. It might look like a cliché, but Jewish people do belong to these lands. They were the first people there. Arabic, Muslim people arrived later.
Regarding the Philistines, that propagandists use a lot to justify the (false) fact that Palestinian people were here since ever ; as written aforesaid, they arrived much later and were not in Judea; they settled in the current Gaza Strip, which does belong to Palestinians nowadays.
The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Palestine and Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following the end of World War I in 1918. The mandate was assigned to Britain by the San Remo conference in April 1920, after France's concession in the 1918 Clemenceau–Lloyd George Agreement of the previously-agreed "international administration" of Palestine under the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Transjordan was added to the mandate after the Arab Kingdom in Damascus was toppled by the French in the Franco-Syrian War. Civil administration began in Palestine and Transjordan in July 1920 and April 1921, respectively, and the mandate was in force from 29 September 1923 to 15 May 1948. Following the arrival of the British, the inhabitants established Muslim-Christian Associations in all the major towns
(Source: Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies).
In 1919 they joined to hold the first Palestine Arab Congress in Jerusalem (Source: Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict). It was aimed primarily at representative government and opposition to the Balfour Declaration
(Source: First Arab Congress Document).
The Zionist Commission formed in March 1918 and became active in promoting Zionist objectives in Palestine. On 19 April 1920, elections took place for the Assembly of Representatives of the Palestinian Jewish community
(Source: Palestine through history: A Chronology).
In July 1920 a civilian administration headed by a High Commissioner replaced the military administration.
(Source: Official Records of the Second Session of the General Assembly, Supplement No. 11)
The first High Commissioner, Herbert Samuel, a Zionist and a recent British cabinet minister, arrived in Palestine on 20 June 1920 to take up his appointment from 1 July.
The formal transfer of Jerusalem to British rule, with a "native priest" reading the proclamation from the steps of the Tower of David
One of the first actions of the newly installed civil administration was to begin granting concessions from the Mandatory government over key economic assets. In 1921 the government granted Pinhas Rutenberg — a Jewish entrepreneur — concessions for the production and distribution of electrical power. Rutenberg soon established an electric company whose shareholders were Zionist organisations, investors, and philanthropists. Palestinian-Arabs saw it as proof that the British intended to favour Zionism. The British administration claimed that electrification would enhance the economic development of the country as a whole, while at the same time securing their commitment to facilitate a Jewish National Home through economic—rather than political—means.
(Source: Shamir, Ronen (2013) Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine; Stanford University Press)
In March 1920, there was an attack by Arabs on the Jewish village of Tel Hai. In April, there was another attack on Jews, this time in Jerusalem. In May 1921, almost 100 died in rioting in Jaffa after a disturbance between rival Jewish left wing protestors was followed by murderous attacks by Arabs on Jews.
Samuel tried to establish self-governing institutions in Palestine, as required by the mandate, but the Arab leadership refused to co-operate with any institution which included Jewish participation
(Source: Caplan, Neil. Palestine Jewry and the Arab Question)
When Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Kamil al-Husayni died in March 1921, High Commissioner Samuel appointed his half-brother Mohammad Amin al-Husseini to the position. Amin al-Husseini, a member of the al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist and Muslim leader
(Source: Mattar, Philip (2003) Encyclopedia of the Palestinians)
As Grand Mufti, as well as in the other influential positions that he held during this period, al-Husseini played a key role in violent opposition to Zionism. In 1922, al-Husseini was elected President of the Supreme Muslim Council which had been established by Samuel in December 1921. The Council controlled the Waqf funds, worth annually tens of thousands of pounds and the orphan funds, worth annually about £50,000, as compared to the £600,000 in the Jewish Agency's annual budget.
(Source: Yitzhak Reiter; Islamic Endowments in Jerusalem under British Mandate) In addition, he controlled the Islamic courts in Palestine. Among other functions, these courts had the power to appoint teachers and preachers.
The 1922 Palestine Order in Council established a Legislative Council, which was to consist of 23 members: 12 elected, 10 appointed, and the High Commissioner.
(Source: The Times, 30 May 1923, p. 14, Issue 43354)
Of the 12 elected members, eight were to be Muslim Arabs, two Christian Arabs, and two Jews. Arabs protested against the distribution of the seats, arguing that as they constituted 88% of the population, having only 43% of the seats was unfair. Elections took place in February and March 1923, but due to an Arab boycott, the results were annulled and a 12-member Advisory Council was established.
At the First World Congress of Jewish Women which was held in Vienna, Austria, 1923, it was decided that: "It appears, therefore, to be the duty of all Jews to co-operate in the social-economic reconstruction of Palestine and to assist in the settlement of Jews in that country."
(Source: Las, Nelly; International Council of Jewish Women)
In October 1923, Britain provided the League of Nations with a report on the administration of Palestine for the period 1920–1922, which covered the period before the mandate.
(Source: League of Nations, Official Journal, October 1923, p. 1217)
In August 1929, there were riots in which 250 people died.
In 1930, Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam arrived in Palestine from Syria and organized and established the Black Hand, an anti-Zionist and anti-British militant organization. He recruited and arranged military training for peasants, and by 1935 he had enlisted between 200 and 800 men. The cells were equipped with bombs and firearms, which they used to kill Zionist settlers in the area, as well as engaging in a campaign of vandalism of the settlers-planted trees and British constructed rail-lines.
In November 1935, two of his men engaged in a firefight with a Palestine police patrol hunting fruit thieves and a policeman was killed. Following the incident, British police launched a search and surrounded al-Qassam in a cave near Ya'bad. In the ensuing battle, al-Qassam was killed.
(Source: Segev, Tom (1999); One Palestine, Complete.)
The death of al-Qassam on 20 November 1935 generated widespread outrage in the Arab community. Huge crowds accompanied Qassam's body to his grave in Haifa. A few months later, in April 1936, the Arab national general strike broke out. The strike lasted until October 1936, instigated by the Arab Higher Committee, headed by Amin al-Husseini.
(Source: Charles D.Smith; Palestine and the Arab–Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents)
During the summer of that year, thousands of Jewish-farmed acres and orchards were destroyed. Jewish civilians were attacked and killed, and some Jewish communities, such as those in Beisan (Beit She'an) and Acre, fled to safer areas. (Gilbert 1998, p. 80) The violence abated for about a year while the British sent the Peel Commission to investigate. (Khalidi 2006, pp. 87–90)
During the first stages of the Arab Revolt, due to rivalry between the clans of al-Husseini and Nashashibi among the Palestinian Arabs, Raghib Nashashibi was forced to flee to Egypt after several assassination attempts ordered by Amin al-Husseini.
(Source: Charles D.Smith; Palestine and the Arab–Israeli Conflict: A History with Documents)
Following the Arab rejection of the Peel Commission recommendation, the revolt resumed in autumn of 1937. Over the next 18 months, the British lost control of Nablus and Hebron. British forces, supported by 6,000 armed Jewish auxiliary police, suppressed the widespread riots with overwhelming force.
(Source: Gilbert 1998, p. 85: "The Jewish Settlement Police were created and equipped with trucks and armoured cars by the British working with the Jewish Agency".)
The British officer Charles Orde Wingate (who supported a Zionist revival for religious reasons) organised Special Night Squads composed of British soldiers and Jewish volunteers such as Yigal Alon, which “scored significant successes against the Arab rebels in the lower Galilee and in the Jezreel valley” (Black 1991, p. 14) by conducting raids on Arab villages. (Shapira 1992, pp. 247, 249, 350) The Jewish militia Irgun used violence also against Arab civilians as "retaliatory acts," attacking marketplaces and buses.
(Source: Reuven Firestone; Holy War in Judaism: The Fall and Rise of a Controversial Idea)
By the time the revolt concluded in March 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 British had been killed and at least 15,000 Arabs were wounded. The Revolt resulted in the deaths of 5,000 Palestinian Arabs and the wounding of 10,000. In total, 10% of the adult Arab male population was killed, wounded, imprisoned, or exiled. (Khalidi 2001, p. 26) From 1936 to 1945, while establishing collaborative security arrangements with the Jewish Agency, the British confiscated 13,200 firearms from Arabs and 521 weapons from Jews.
(Source: Khalidi 1987, p. 845)
The attacks on the Jewish population by the Arabs had three lasting effects: first, they led to the formation and development of underground Jewish militias, mainly the Haganah, which were to prove decisive in 1948. Secondly, it became clear that the two communities could not be reconciled, and the idea of partition was born. Thirdly, the British responded to Arab opposition with the 1939 White Paper, which severely restricted Jewish land purchase and immigration. However, with the advent of the Second World War, even this reduced immigration quota was not met. The White Paper policy itself radicalised segments of the Jewish population, who after the war would no longer co-operate with the British.
The revolt had also a negative effect on Palestinian Arab leadership, social cohesion, and military capabilities and contributed to the outcome of the 1948 War because "when the Palestinians faced their most fateful challenge in 1947–49, they were still suffering from the British repression of 1936–39, and were in effect without a unified leadership. Indeed, it might be argued that they were virtually without any leadership at all.
(Source: Khalidi 2001)
On 3 July 1944, the British government consented to the establishment of a Jewish Brigade, with hand-picked Jewish and also non-Jewish senior officers. On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war on the British Commonwealth and sided with Germany. Within a month, the Italians attacked Palestine from the air, bombing Tel Aviv and Haifa, inflicting multiple casualties.
In 1942, there was a period of great concern for the Yishuv, when the forces of German General Erwin Rommel advanced east across North Africa towards the Suez Canal and there was fear that they would conquer Palestine. This period was referred to as the "200 days of dread." This event was the direct cause for the founding, with British support, of the Palmach – a highly trained regular unit belonging to Haganah (a paramilitary group which was mostly made up of reserve troops).
(Source: How the Palmach was formed, History Central)
As in most Arab countries, there was no unanimity among Palestinian Arabs as to their position regarding the belligerents during the Second World War. A number of leaders and public figures saw an Axis victory as the likely outcome and a means of securing Palestine against the Zionists and the British. Although Arabs were not highly valued by Nazi racial theory, the Nazis encouraged Arab support to counter British hegemony. On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in 1943, SS-Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler and Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sent telegrams of support to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammad Amin al-Husseini to read for a radio programme at a partisan rally in Berlin.
On July 3, 1944, the British government agreed to the creation of a Jewish brigade, with handpicked Jewish and non-Jewish senior officers. On 20 September 1944, an official War Office statement announced the formation of the British Army Jewish Brigade Group. The Jewish Brigade was then stationed in Tarvisio, near the border triangle of Italy, Yugoslavia and Austria, where it played a key role in the Berihah's efforts to help Jews flee Europe for Palestine, a role that many of its members would continue after the brigade was disbanded. Her projects included the education and care of Selvino children. Later, Jewish Brigade veterans became key participants in the new Israel Defence Forces of the State of Israel.
From the Palestine Regiment, two platoons, one Jewish, under the command of Brigadier Ernest Benjamin, and another Arab were sent to join the allied forces on the Italian front, after taking part in the final offensive there.
Besides Jews and Arabs from Palestine, in total by mid-1944 the British had assembled a multiethnic force consisting of volunteer European Jewish refugees (from German-occupied countries), Yemenite Jews and Abyssinian Jews.
(Source: Corrigan, Gordon. The Second World War)
In 1939, as a consequence of the White Paper of 1939, the British reduced the number of immigrants allowed into Palestine. World War II and the Holocaust started shortly thereafter and once the 15,000 annual quota was exceeded, Jews fleeing Nazi persecution were interned in detention camps or deported to places such as Mauritius.
(Source: Lenk, RS; The Mauritius Affair, The Boat People of 1940–41)
Starting in 1939, a clandestine immigration effort called Aliya Bet was spearheaded by an organisation called Mossad LeAliyah Bet. Tens of thousands of European Jews escaped the Nazis in boats and small ships headed for Palestine. The Royal Navy intercepted many of the vessels; others were unseaworthy and were wrecked; a Haganah bomb sunk the SS Patria, killing 267 people; two other ships were sunk by Soviet submarines: the motor schooner Struma was torpedoed and sunk in the Black Sea by a Soviet submarine in February 1942 with the loss of nearly 800 lives.
(Source: Aroni, Samuel; Who Perished On The Struma And How Many?)
The last refugee boats to try to reach Palestine during the war were the Bulbul, Mefküre and Morina in August 1944. A Soviet submarine sank the motor schooner Mefküre by torpedo and shellfire and machine-gunned survivors in the water, killing between 300 and 400 refugees.
(Source: "מפקורה SS Mefküre Mafkura Mefkura")
Illegal immigration resumed after World War II.
After the war, 250,000 Jewish refugees were trapped in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Europe. Despite pressure from world opinion, particularly the repeated demands of US President Harry S. Truman and the recommendations of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry that 100,000 Jews be immediately allowed to enter Palestine, the British maintained the immigration ban.
The Jewish Lehi (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) and Irgun (National Military Organisation) movements initiated violent uprisings against the British Mandate in the 1940s. On 6 November 1944, Eliyahu Hakim and Eliyahu Bet Zuri (members of Lehi) assassinated Lord Moyne in Cairo. Moyne was the British Minister of State for the Middle East and the assassination is said by some to have turned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill against the Zionist cause. After the assassination of Lord Moyne, the Haganah kidnapped, interrogated, and turned over to the British many members of the Irgun ("The Hunting Season"), and the Jewish Agency Executive decided on a series of measures against "terrorist organisations" in Palestine.
(Source: The Hunting Season by Yehuda Lapidot)
Irgun ordered its members not to resist or retaliate with violence, so as to prevent a civil war. The three main Jewish underground forces later united to form the Jewish Resistance Movement and carry out several attacks and bombings against the British administration.
In 1946, the Irgun blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, the headquarters of the British administration, killing 92 people. Following the attack, the British government began interning illegal Jewish immigrants in Cyprus. In 1948 Lehi assassinated the UN mediator, Count Bernadotte, in Jerusalem. Yitzak Shamir, future Prime Minister of Israel was one of the conspirators.
The negative publicity resulting from the situation in Palestine caused the Mandate to become widely unpopular in Britain, and caused the United States Congress to delay granting the British vital loans for reconstruction. The British Labour party had promised before its election in 1945 to allow mass Jewish migration into Palestine but reneged on this promise once in office. Anti-British Jewish militancy increased and the situation required the presence of over 100,000 British troops in the country. Following the Acre Prison Break and the retaliatory hanging of British Sergeants by the Irgun, the British announced their desire to terminate the mandate and to withdraw by no later than the beginning of August 1948.
(Source: UN Doc A/364 Add. 1 of 3 September 1947 Archived)
The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in 1946 was a joint attempt by Britain and the United States to agree on a policy regarding the admission of Jews to Palestine. In April, the Committee reported that its members had arrived at a unanimous decision. The Committee approved the American recommendation of the immediate acceptance of 100,000 Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. It also recommended that there be no Arab, and no Jewish State. The Committee stated that "in order to dispose, once and for all, of the exclusive claims of Jews and Arabs to Palestine, we regard it as essential that a clear statement of principle should be made that Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine." U.S. President Harry S Truman angered the British Government by issuing a statement supporting the 100,000 refugees but refusing to acknowledge the rest of the committee's findings. Britain had asked for U.S assistance in implementing the recommendations. The U.S. War Department had said earlier that to assist Britain in maintaining order against an Arab revolt, an open-ended U.S. commitment of 300,000 troops would be necessary. The immediate admission of 100,000 new Jewish immigrants would almost certainly have provoked an Arab uprising.
(Source: Kenneth Harris; Attlee)
These events were the decisive factors that forced Britain to announce their desire to terminate the Palestine Mandate and place the Question of Palestine before the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. The UN created UNSCOP (the UN Special Committee on Palestine) on 15 May 1947, with representatives from 11 countries. UNSCOP conducted hearings and made a general survey of the situation in Palestine, and issued its report on 31 August. Seven members (Canada, Czechoslovakia, Guatemala, Netherlands, Peru, Sweden, and Uruguay) recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration. Three members (India, Iran, and Yugoslavia) supported the creation of a single federal state containing both Jewish and Arab constituent states. Australia abstained.
(Source : Howard Adelman; "UNSCOP and the Partition Recommendation.")
On November 29, 1947, it validates the division of Palestine into two states:
56% of the territory (or 1/3 of the population) is given to the Jews: this includes the Negev desert44% of the territory (ie 2/3 of the population) is given to the Arabs: it is a large habitable territory.Jerusalem was supposed to be an enclave neither Jewish nor Arab.
There was a great asymmetry in the division of the UN. Indeed, the future Arab state was homogeneous: 100% of the population was Arab. We had taken entirely Arab regions and put them in a future Arab state. The Jewish state, on the other hand, was not homogeneous: it had 45% Arab population.
If the Arab side had accepted the partition of the UN, if they had not fired a single shot, if they had simply created their state on the territory provided for by the UN, awaited the departure of the British for concretely implement what the UN voted, they would have had a 100% Arab state on half of the territory. On the other hand, there would have been a difficult Jewish state to run because half of its population would have been Arab. It is possible that the Arabs would not only have had a state but might have benefited from a destabilized state of Israel.
Instead, they did the exact opposite. They rejected the UN partition plan, claiming the whole country. Results: They did not have a state and the Jews took back that half of the Arab state.
In 1949, the territory planned for the Arab state was shared for half between the neighboring Arab states and the state of Israel, which reclaimed 7,000 km2 to finally have 21,000 km2. Mandatory Palestine was 27,000 km2.
The UN vote takes place from September 27 to November 29, 1947.
It takes place at a general meeting. It took a 2/3 majority for an important vote like that. The Jewish Agency, that is, the official Zionists fought for the majority in the UN vote, and for the partition plan. It was at this point that the Irgun did a lot of lobbying which almost prevented the vote. A few votes against were enough for the project not to pass.
France was very hesitant. They had helped the Zionists a lot, but when it came to voting, France was very reluctant. The Quai d'Orsay was at the helm at the time and supported the Irgun's arguments not to accept the partition plan.
The French secret services, politicians, customs officers and police were in favor.
However, France's vote at the UN brought with it that of Belgium and the Benelux, if 4 votes that could tip the scales against if France voted against.
At the time, there were about 50 member states in the United Nations because there had not yet been decolonization.
During the vote at the UN, when the presiding officer calls "France" to vote, the French delegate answers "yes": there is then a thunder of applause from the New York Jews present in the room. Until the last moment, there was uncertainty over this vote. There were great behind-the-scenes maneuvers to put pressure on the Orsay Pier to vote “yes” instead of abstaining as he intended.
Europe was very dependent on the Marshall Plan after the war and therefore very dependent on the United States, which could put pressure on it.
THE VATICAN CASE
Demonstrations have been made by the Jewish Agency's emissaries to the Vatican to find out whether it will encourage or discourage the vote of very Christian Latin American countries. The Vatican responded that it was not hostile to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and that it would not seek to dissuade those countries from voting "for". The audience at the Vatican was secured thanks to a French priest, Father Glasberg. Ukrainian Jew, converted to Catholicism, he had been very active during the war in a Jewish rescue network. Although wearing the cassock, he continued to feel very Jewish and militant. He had enlisted as a secret agent with the Haganah.
PALESTINIAN DELEGATIONS
The Arabs present at the UN are the representatives of the Mufti. After escaping from a French prison where he was imprisoned, the Mufti was exiled to Egypt from where he pulled the strings.
Palestinian delegations representing neighboring Arab countries vote “against”.
THE JEWISH AGENCY
The Jewish agency played a very active role in the vote for 2/3. They vote "for".
It will take 5 ½ months between the vote at the UN and the departure of the British.
The English left on May 15, 1948: date set by the partition plan. Zionists want to use the UN vote to create their state in the final hours of the British Mandate. It's a race against time! Israel was created on May 14, 1948.
This UN vote was almost overturned: all kinds of forces (not just Arabs) wanted to reverse the UN vote. Apart from the Arabs, all kinds of
"Goodwill" believed that the minute the Jewish state was created it would be crushed by Arab forces. A stereotype was very widespread: Jews would be unable to build an army that could win in the event of war. Out of sympathy for the Jews, many wanted to delay the departure of the English. The coldest are the diplomats of the British Foreign Office and the Department of State in the United States because they have economic interests at stake: many are stationed in Palestine. They therefore become ardent defenders of Arab countries. They are much less numerous stationed in Israel!
In the USA, the president and elected representatives of Congress support the Zionists. But it is the State Department that is proposing a UN "trusty ship" or "trusteeship" of the UN in place of the British mandate. British soldiers are being replaced by UN peacekeepers. They justify this by saying that they want to avoid a massacre. Do they really mean it or is it junk?
AFTER THE UN VOTE
There is widespread violence across the country.
In March 1948, René Cassin and Léon Blum write :
"The level of violence is such that there is serious reason to believe that the Jews will be slaughtered." Important Zionist emissaries then came to France, to Paris to consult René Cassin and Léon Blum, Jewish politicians renowned for their wisdom, their great experience and Zionist sympathizers. René Cassin is already president of the Alliance. Both respond, “Don't delay the moment of creating the state. If you delay you may never get a chance again. " The emissaries, moderates, were surprised by these responses.
The state of Israel was created on May 14, 1948
At the end of April-beginning of May 1948, the Zionist leadership is divided: 50/50.
There are those who are moderate and who tend to want to accept this UN trusty ship: they say to themselves "Let's be patient. Maybe we are not ready to endure a war against the Arabs. We will try to create our state a little later when things get better ”.
With one voice (that of David Ben-Gurion who puts all his weight in the balance) the state of Israel was created on May 14, 1948; the Zionist leadership decides not to postpone the proclamation of the state, not to play the "trusty ship" game, and to create the state on May 14, 1948.
David Ben-Gurion has been preparing for years the creation of an army, the purchase of weapons, the training of cadres. So he was taking a calculated risk when he decided to go to war: he believed they were capable of winning it.
WIDESPREAD VIOLENCE IN THE COUNTRY
There is systematic widespread violence in the country, carried out by Arab armed groups against Jewish civilians. The scenario of the violence of 1921, 1922 and 1926 repeated itself but on a large scale and throughout the country. At the time the English tried not to interfere and failed to protect the Jews. In 1948, Jewish armed groups, the Haganah and the Stern group retaliated.
This violence will last for 1 ½ year when the Jewish population will cash in calmly, without panicking. There will be a thousand Jewish civilians killed in a year and a half out of a Jewish population which at the time numbered 675,000 inhabitants: it is enormous! Even though this war is the hardest Israel has seen, there will have been no panic. They never evacuated their house, their neighborhood or their village. And when in very rare cases, because the danger was enormous, they had to evacuate, they came back afterwards, when the army recaptured those areas. There were times during this war when they had no more to eat, when supplies were cut off: despite this, they clung to their village and their home.
On the Arab side, it is exactly the opposite. The Arab army is formed by the Jordanian army and the Egyptian army. The strongest is the Arab Legion, the Jordanian army formed and supervised by John Bagot Glubb nicknamed Glubb Pasha, an English officer whom the Zionists do not like because he had trained and trained the Arabs.
The Egyptian army is bad. Syria and Lebanon did not mix much. Iraq has sent a division to the Palestinian front.
The rivalry between the Jordanian army and the Egyptian army is one of the explanations for the Arab fiasco in 1948. On the one hand, King Abdullah covets the territories that the UN wants to give to the Palestinians, so he cannot help them. On the other hand, Egyptian King Farouk wants to prevent Abdullah from obtaining the Palestinian territories. Egypt and Jordan spent more time neutralizing each other than fighting the Zionists to prevent the creation of Israel. That’s why their armies have been misused. It puts the Israeli military merits into perspective! The Jews are trying to keep the land given to them by the UN.
SPONTANEOUS VOLUNTARY DEPARTURE OF PALESTINIANS
The day after the UN vote, in the winter of 1948, a very interesting phenomenon began. The large, wealthiest Arab families take shelter in neighboring countries (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon) where they have second homes. There is a specific Palestinian Arab identity which is not the Jordanian, Egyptian, Syrian or Lebanese Arab identity. It is a partial identity: a Palestinian Arab feels himself to be Palestinian but also an Arab "periodt". He feels first Arab, then Palestinian. So he doesn't feel like a stranger to Beirut or Damascus. It is for this reason that all large Palestinian families have second homes in neighboring Arab countries, which allows them, when the violence begins, to move there for personal comfort. During all these riots, Palestinian Arab society is deprived of its ruling elite, which greatly weakens the population left behind.
In February, March 1948 begins the second stage: it is the turn of the Arab middle classes. All Arabs who have the resources will seek refuge in neighboring countries. These are traders, intellectuals. They were the backbone of Palestinian society. It is they who, knowing how to speak, could bead on behalf of the Palestinians. They also had an important economic role in this society.
This spontaneous exodus surprised unsuspecting Arab leaders, as well as Jewish leaders.
Those who stay are those who cannot leave: they are the peasants: a poor, rural, vulnerable, confused and gullible population: this is a particular profile.
APRIL 9, 1948: DER YACIN
Deir Yacin is an Arab village at the exit of Jerusalem allowing to supply the city. It is on the road down from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. The Arab population of the village wants to block the road to the Zionists. The battle rages for control of the village; after the fighting, the village is under the control of the Irgun. At the time there was military coordination between the Irgun and the Haganah. Unfortunately there are 107 Arab civilian deaths. But the rumor swells and the circulating figure is wrong: we are talking about 245 dead!
Palestinian historians from the Palestinian University of Birzeit have investigated the event: they arrive at a figure of 107 dead. To get to that number, they went interviewing people and made a nominal list. The death toll that is spreading at the time is therefore 2.5 times greater than the reality.
In 1998, the BBC carried out a survey to mark the 50th anniversary of the event. They went to interview old Arabs from the village who told them that the mufti's emissaries had asked them to dramatize the situation when they would deliver their story!
Nobody knows exactly what really happened at Der Yacin to this day.
The Irgun story reports a very hard battle.
The Palestinian narrative, but also taken up by the Hadassa, says that the Irgun fighters behaved badly: what is the true part?
For their part, the Haganah was not unhappy to discredit the Irgun.
After Der Yacin, rumors swell across the country that the Jews are slaughtering the Arabs. The Arabs got scared: they thought what was going to happen to them what happened in Der Yacin. Palestinian peasants panicked and fled the roads. They left their home which will prove very serious for their future. Since they have no money they go and hide in the forest or in remote areas: these are small displacements of people.
On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was created by David Ben-Gurion. The Arab state is not created. It is at this point that the armies of neighboring Arab countries enter Palestinian territory. (Until then the British army was still there. Local Arab groups are engaged in guerrilla warfare). A very hard period then begins when the Israeli army retreats. In June 1948, the UN initiated two truces thanks to which Israel managed to resupply itself with arms, mainly from Czechoslovakia. The UN ban on the delivery of arms is not being respected.
The Israeli army (the emerging IDF) succeeds in repelling the Arab offensive and engages in a counter-offensive that ends brilliantly: they have succeeded in increasing their territory, half of the territory intended for the Arabs; Jordan and Egypt share the other half.
This is when Jordan takes its name: it was called Trans-Jordan. It recovers the West Bank and becomes Jordan.
There are a few places the Israeli army has lost such as on the shores of the Dead Sea: Kibbutz Beit Ahava was created under very harsh conditions in 1946 on a land steeped in salt water. They lost it and never got it back until 1967.
In June 1948, when we were in the midst of the UN's 1st truce, the Israeli government made a decision: abandoned houses and land, after a certain period, would become state property. However, it is the Arabs who have abandoned their homes and their lands. This decision of the Israeli government will seal the fact that these Arab peasants can no longer return to their lands since the state has reclaimed them and allocated them to the Jews.
It is important to understand the context:
Since 1940, Jews no longer had the right to buy land because the British had frozen land purchases.At the same time there is a massive influx of Jews from Europe and Cyprus. In the declaration of independence of the state of Israel "Jews are invited from all over the world to come and participate in the building of the new state." Immigrants who arrive at this time are deprived of everything. Besides, there are thousands of houses and abandoned land nearby…. So there is a certain logic in recovering Arab houses.
At the end of 1948 a congress of Palestinian notables is held in Jericho and endorses the annexation of the West Bank by Jordan;
Around the same time, another congress is being held with Palestinian notables in Gaza. Egypt incorporates Gaza into its territory.
So there is no Palestinian territory. There are two rival congresses being held corresponding to the very great rivalry between Egypt and Jordan.
5,000 Israeli soldiers were killed, which is enormous, reported to the Jewish population of the time. Israeli military historians today believe that the IDF won because the opposing Arab armies (Jordanian and Egyptian) waged war with each other.
In his 1988 edition, Benny Morris talks about 377 villages abandoned during the War of Independence. This is the kind of argument that comes up regularly in Palestinian propaganda. Often the latter speak of 500 villages: there is a political inflationary tendency.
There are 186 Jewish villages which have taken the place of Arab villages. These are multifactorial events where the factors overlap. When looking at the map of abandoned Arab villages, there are seven categories for B. Morris.
There are Palestinian villages abandoned by order of the Arab commandThere are Palestinian villages abandoned because the neighboring village had fallen: a phenomenon of contagion.There are Palestinian villages where Arabs were expelled by Jewish forcesThere are Palestinian villages where fear in general and more particularly that of being caught in the middle of the fighting has driven Arab residents to fleeThere are Palestinian villages where the Israeli army has stormedThere are Palestinian villages where the IDF and the Haganah have engaged in psychological poisoning.
Only two situations are of Jewish action. The other four are subject to a certain free will of the Arab inhabitants.
But the main factor remains panic: the Israelis did not create it, but in some cases they were able to play it.
The two classic Israeli arguments in the 1950s / 1960s are: There are places where Jews called on Arabs to stay. The example of Haifa is highlighted by Israeli propaganda. However, many Arabs will be leaving.
There was also a radio call from Arab armies in neighboring countries asking the Arabs to leave. “We will take the homes of the Jews and return them to you. Not only will you get your homes back, but the homes of your Jewish neighbors as well. So put yourself aside while we collect them. " According to B. Morris, There have been very few Arab appeals; it was magnified. This phenomenon cannot explain this exodus.
There are documents which try to prove the contrary: one concerns the memoirs of Khaled El Hazam, Syrian Prime Minister during the war of independence. He belonged to a large family of moderate Syrian notables. They are now leading the rebellion against Assad in Syria. In his memoirs written in 1965, he says:
“Arab governments have called on the people of Palestine to leave the country and cross into neighboring Arab countries after fear spread among them over the Der Yacin affair. This collective flight served the Jews and the situation evolved in their favor without difficulty. What would have happened if the inhabitants of Palestine, numbering one million, had remained in their country? What fifth column would he have constituted! How much their continued presence would have been a source of constant anxiety for the Jewish government! We have been calling since 1948 for the refugees to return to their homes, but we are the ones who urged them to evacuate them! Only a few months elapsed between our call to leave and our call to the UN for them to decide on their return: is this a wise and founded policy? Is there a consistent application of a plan? With our own hands, we have shaped the fate of the Arabs through our call to leave their lands, their homes, their places of work, their factories. We turned them into uprooted, unemployed people when each of them had a job and a trade they made a living from. And after that, we got them used to begging and being content with what little the UN Relief Agency gave them."
The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, said in 1951:
“It was promised that conquering Palestine would be a military picnic, our advice to the Palestinians was to temporarily leave their homes.”
The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun stated on April 9, 1953: “The Arab Exodus was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by the Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews. For the flight and fall of the other villages, it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities to inflame the Arabs. By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children, etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy.”
Edward Atiyah, Secretary of the Arab League, said in 1955:
“The wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab states, and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of the country.”
A refugee who fled the War of Independence told Al Difaa in 1954: “The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.”
Moreover, The Beirut Institute for Palestinian Studies found that “fully two-thirds of the Palestinians fled their homes without ever seeing a Jewish soldier or hearing a shot fired.”
Benny Morris was not familiar with this document. When he heard about it he said it was a settling of scores between Arab leaders to blame each other for the events: he concluded that this was not a valid explanation.
On the other hand, we are now rediscovering the work of Jewish historians of the 1980s. As it is an unpleasant aspect, things were obscured because the collective memory was not in a great hurry to rehash unpleasant things. These writings say that the Jews consciously acted to drive the Arabs away. At the very least, they used force against them without killing. But in the most serious cases they have gone so far as to kill unarmed civilians.
Itzrak Rabin wrote his memoir in 1979 when he was beaten by Begin. Israeli censorship censored a passage from his memoir that was made public in a NY Times article published by his translator (the one who translated his memoir into English). Rabin was the commander of a large unit in Lod and Ramleh in 1948. In Lod there were some warning shots but no fatalities. In Ramleh, there was no gunfire. The Arabs left and the Israelis even provided them with vehicles to leave. They moved only a few meters to cross the border line. This is what embarrasses the Arabs instead of embarrassing the IDF!
Today B. Morris estimates that 800 Arab civilians were deliberately killed throughout the territory. These are crimes! During the War of Independence there were 1,000 Jewish civilians killed either coldly (these are war crimes) or by collateral damage. So on the scale of the two populations, the Arabs suffered no more than the Jews either in terms of crimes or in terms of collateral damage. The Arabs were twice as numerous as the Jews. But today it is this story of crimes against civilians that obscures the minds of Palestinians.
But Ben-Gurion is playing a double game: on the one hand, he asks Rabin to make the Arabs leave, but on the other hand, he warns not to kill civilians! It is very difficult to keep a cool head in such circumstances. Is it possible to wage war making sure that no soldier abuses his weapon? Does this confirm Arab fear and panic? At the time, everyone knew these facts: as proof, this play written in 1949, by Izar Spilenski. She became very famous and today is one of the great classics of Israeli literature. It deals with the moods of Jewish soldiers during the conquest of Arab villages and their destruction during the War of Independence. Everyone knew these facts!
At the time of B. Morris writing this book he belongs to the classic Israeli left. Later he will move to the right. At the time he believed Israel had the right to exist even though there were blunders. It's kind of a moral and human price to pay, a tragic story, to create a state that is a right idea. The other two historians of the 1980s who did the same type of work after B. Morris are not Zionists. These are Avi Schlaim and Alan Pappe who belong to the far left: one is a communist (the USSR supported the creation of the state of Israel) and the other is a Trotskyist. They took up these events by putting in brackets the mistakes of the Arabs to demonstrate the Israeli faults: it is a political bias which induces a very subjective analysis.
(Jean-Yves Camus, French Journalist and Historian)
At the start of his research, B. Morris investigated whether the Zionist leaders had made any plans to organize the "transfer" at the time of the first plan to partition the country proposed by the English in 1937. ( called "transfer" is the fact of making the Arab population leave to make room for the Jews). There was no debate about the "transfer" to the Zionist Congress. On the other hand, one finds in the Zionist archives of Jerusalem, the notes taken by the shorthand typists during the closed sessions from which the official report was drawn up: one of the hypotheses discussed is that of “transfer”. If the discussion was not concluded, the hypothesis was considered. It is interesting that in Israel archives on such sensitive subjects are available. And it goes even further because these are not taboo subjects: this information is even in the textbooks of the national education. Israel has reached such a degree of maturity that it allows itself to bring these matters to the public.
700,000 Arabs were turned into refugees by the 1948 War of Independence. Arab propaganda speaks of one million refugees!
The number of Jews who had to leave the Arab countries at the time of the war for independence, in 1948 or after is 700,000. It was done in two waves: those who came from the Middle East between 1948 and 50 and those who came from the Maghreb from 1956. These Jews, like the Arabs, left, leaving everything behind. Although it is not comparable because for the Jews it was done twice, there is an interesting symmetry. If we talk about spoliation on one side, we have to talk about it on the other too.
In the spring of 1949, there was a series of armistice agreements: the Rhodes Agreements.
This is the moment when Israel negotiates its entry into the UN: it is done on May 11, 1949, three days before the state's 1st anniversary. At the same time, in May 1949, there were negotiations in Lausanne to reach real peace agreements. Israel is making a gesture of good will: the Zionists are ready to receive 100,000 Arab refugees who would return home. A gesture of goodwill allowing them to be admitted to the UN. But there is no Arab delegation opposite. This was later completely forgotten by the time of the 1949 negotiations, so Israel did not reiterate its offer.
Where did the Palestinian Arab refugees go? They remained in the territory of Mandatory Palestine but on the Arab side, that is to say in the West Bank and Gaza. This is not an exile! This word is excessive because geographic displacement is extremely limited.
When Israel arrived in the West Bank in 1967, Palestinian Arab populations moved across the Jordan River. It is not Mandatory Palestine but Ottoman Palestine. It is still not an exile as it is a displacement in the same historical area. A small minority went to Lebanon.
The majority of Palestinians have moved inside Palestine: this is an argument to "cool the debate". But we must also take into account the fact that these Palestinians are peasants attached to their land, very conservative.
The Jewish population was a population of people who had experienced such a disaster, a large majority were Holocaust survivors, whom they were unfortunately used to moving from one country to another. The perception of "displacement" is not the same.
In December 1948, the UN held its general assembly in Paris at the Palais de Chaillot over two days. On December 10, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted by René Cassin was adopted. On December 9 the word "genocide" is written into the UN international convention. On December 11, resolution 194 on Palestine was adopted in a general assembly at the UN. A paragraph in this text specifies that “displaced populations must be allowed to return to their homes”. This paragraph is used today by Palestinians demanding their "right of return".
Note that this is a text of the UN General Assembly which has no legally enforceable function. This body expresses wishes. Only the UN Security Council can impose it.
In addition, we are talking about people who have left their homes and who are nearby; not of people who have left their land for generations.
Today some Palestinians advocate peace: "it does not make sense to demand today the return to houses that no longer exist or to houses inhabited by other families who have lived there for several generations."
For example Professor Sarin Nocibé says: "Instead of attaching ourselves to a mythical past of the former Palestine which was wonderful, Palestine which never existed, we must project ourselves towards the future and dream of the future Palestine. , which will be beautiful because we will have achieved peace with Israel ”.
Elias Sanbar, Ambassador of Palestine to UNESCO, recounts that after 1948, there were Arab families on the Lebanese border who spoke with loudspeakers to their families on the other side. Arab families were separated by war. He described these scenes as a great misfortune: the nakba = the disaster: a victim people, abandoned by the whole world: this is the Palestinian theory.
In comparison, there was a whole people of Jewish survivors trying to find their families. In the 1950s in Israel, at the end of the news bulletins, there was a list of Jews separated from their families.
Palestinians and Israelis have had similar experiences: the idea of separating their families because of a cruel war.
During the time of the Oslo Accords, several Israeli filmmakers made documentaries, one of which involved "tough" Palestinians - Palestinian nationalist activists who had served time in prison.
Another documentary shows a Jew in his kibbutz, a Holocaust survivor, an old Israeli Arab who talks to a young Palestinian. We understand that this Israeli Arab lived in the village which was evacuated to make room for the construction of the kibbutz in which this Jew lives. The Jew and the Israeli Arab are friends. The Jew survived in Europe under apocalyptic conditions: during those "nightmare" years, he thought that if he survived, he would absolutely have to go and live in Israel. He emigrated in 1948. He always knew that the house he lives in on the kibbutz was that of Arab villagers who left in 1948. These Arabs are in the village next door. They remained in Israel and were able to establish normal relations with the neighboring kibbutz. This documentary shows that the wrongs are shared and that dialogue is not completely impossible.
Today the right of return for Palestinians being hereditary, it concerns 5 million Arabs. They have an economic interest in getting help from the UN. It is this UN resolution on the right of return that creates the UNRA. This organization is an organ of the United Nations, provides economic aid to the temporary refugee camps in Jordan, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza created to accommodate these Palestinians. They therefore have no interest in declaring themselves autonomous. Even when they manage to start a new life in better conditions, it is not in their interest to declare it in order to keep an assistantship. The UN bureaucracy, too, needs to justify its existence. They are clearly on the Palestinian side.
A few years ago an Arab Israeli diplomat was Ambassador to Finland for Israel. He wrote a text which circulated in all languages. He told that his family had to leave his house in 48. In his family circle, there were Arab civilians killed during the events of 1948.
He writes: “We have decided to turn the page, to rebuild our lives, as a constructive citizen of the State of Israel. Despite the events, we play the game, loyally to the State of Israel. As an Israeli citizen you have rights, freedoms that you wouldn't have in neighboring Arab countries."
The declaration of independence of the State of Israel gave rise to much discussion: in particular, the word "God" had to appear in it. Some were atheists, others were Orthodox, and in between every nuance possible. The compromise adopted was to speak of the “Rock of Israel” which is traditionally one of the names of God. There is a paragraph in the Declaration of Independence which clearly says that the Arab inhabitants of the country are invited to take their place in the full country. There is a second paragraph which reaches out to the neighboring Arab country to make peace. There is another paragraph that reaches out to Jews in the Diaspora to make their allies and help build the country. Another paragraph refers to the recent Shoah to give legitimacy to the emerging state. The argument “We created Israel to fix the Holocaust, and we Arabs are not responsible for it” is an Arab propaganda argument. In fact, when you look closely at the statement of the reasons for the creation of the state in the Declaration of Independence, there is a series of references where the Holocaust is only one of the elements. The others go back to the Bible, the continuity of the links between the people and the country is the enumeration of the reasons which led to the creation of the State. There is also and not only the fact that we have just suffered a disaster.
In the Declaration of Independence, there are principles of the search for peace, equality for all citizens, and democratic principles (freedom of expression, equality between men and women, etc.). This Declaration of Independence serves as the Constitution. At that time, there was the Consultative Assembly of the Jews of Palestine, elected in British times, which in 48 became the Provisional State Assembly. The Declaration of Independence states that as soon as possible, elections will be held to elect the Constituent Assembly. The first election was held in January 1949 when the War of Independence was not over. The First Knesset (Israeli Parliament) was to be a Constituent Assembly and was to prepare the state constitution. A commission was created, but it ended up getting bogged down because the relationship between the Jewish religion and the State of Israel was too delicate and too sensitive. The relationship between State Law and Jewish Law (Halacha) was too complicated a subject to be concluded. It was never concluded and the Constitution was never written. The idea was to find a synthesis text among all the different Jewish currents.
Much later, KNESSET adopted basic laws which acted as chapters of a constitution. The idea being: "We cannot come up with a constitution the first time, so we will do chapters and maybe one day we will have enough chapters to make a constitution".
When the state was created in 48/49 with 16 elections and 16 first KNESSET, they adopted a parliamentary regime without checks and balances; KNESSET has all the powers and the executive is entirely in the hands of KNESSET; which means that the Government does not have the right to dissolve KNESSET. Only KNESSET itself can self-dissolve. The President does not have a political role, he has a moral role. KNESSET has 120 deputies, which refers to the Haguedola Knesset which existed in antiquity; the Assembly of 120 Wise Men. It was decided to elect the delegates to full proportional representation, which is the voting system known to generate unmanageable political situations. This system perfectly matches all the nuances of public opinion. The first KNESSET already contained Arab deputies. They set a minimum floor of 1% for a political party to be represented in KNESSET. But since no one was excluded, they raised this floor to 4% in the last election. This is the voting system in Germany before 1933 (the year Hitler was elected)! This voting system can be explained by the fact that Jews were brought in from all over the world who were very different from each other: this diversity in religion, culture and others had to be taken into account. Ben Gurion is seen today as an authoritarian and dictatorial person whom it is fashionable to criticize in Israel today. He was haunted by the question of the viability of the Jewish state because he had a long-term vision of creating a viable Jewish state: he had read the great thinkers of political philosophy like Plato. For him, a state is supposed to exercise sovereignty. What were the obstacles?
There were different political parties which had created a true Jewish Society capable of living completely independent of the English. The Jews had become accustomed to doing what they wanted by bypassing the English: these are the habits of the diaspora where the Jewish communities administered themselves in the Jewish quarters where they created their schools, their administrations, their hospitals, their roads. When the State was born, there were all kinds of administrations under the control of the Ministries in particular the Labor Party which was in the majority at the time had created the greatest number of institutions such as for example the Histadrout (Central trade union) to build and develop the country. Ben Gurion struggled for many years to do away with his party's institutions (more so than those of other parties), they voluntarily wanted to break his party to strengthen the state because he believed that a state could not be viable if a party was too strong and the state too weak.
Zionists around the world had mobilized for many years for the creation of the state. However, the day the state is born, we tell them we don't need them anymore! This is the old diaspora discussion; does she have the right to meddle in Israeli affairs?
There was a very tough power struggle between Ben Gurion and the international Zionist movement where he wanted to pressure them to bring money without meddling in Israeli affairs.
The KKL for example during the British mandate had cultivated land and settled people on it. It had to come under the control of the Ministry of Agriculture. However, the World KKL brings money to Israel, but they are not the ones who manage Israeli agriculture.
The criterion of a state institution is the professionalism of a state institution is based on the professionalism of its officials, itself based on their personal competence and not their political affiliation (especially in foreign affairs): it is not won until today!
(Jean-Yves Camus, French Journalist and Historian)
Palestine is a region of the Middle East, separated in 2 counties; The Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Its largest city is Gaza, and its administrative center is Ramallah.
Palestine has never been an actual official country fully recognized by The UN, it is The State of Palestine, but because they don't have actual frontiers, many countries don't recognize them. As said previously, in 1947, they could have accepted the partition and could have created their state on the territory provided by The UN (which was much more interesting than the Israeli territory), but they did not. Thus, they did not have the opportunity to create their State either.
In 2007, 2 years after Israeli disengagement from Gaza, Hamas becomes the Leader of Palestine.
The West Bank is held by Fatah and led by Mahmud Abbas.
Hamas is a Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist military organization.
It is a:
-Palestinian Nationalist
-Sunni Islamic
-Islamic Nationalism
-Anti-Zionist
-One State solution (that would of course be held by them)
And antisemitic brotherhood.
It is a dictatorship. In Palestine, many human rights are violated. Recently, Hamas has "banned" LGBTQ+ rights.
In 2014 (and sadly still nowadays), Hamas hid in schools and hospitals so that when Israel have to bomb them, they have to bomb school.
During a UN Congress in September 2017, Mosab Hassan Yousef, a former Hamas soldier, spoke on the Palestinian situation. (Link hereinebelow). In this 3 minutes speech, he describes the heinous life of the Palestinian people, because of The Hamas' behavior.
"I address the words to the Palestinian Authority" (Hamas & Fatah). Hassan Yosef begins with this sentence, which already shock other delegates from other countries. He continues :
"...which claims to be the 'sole legitimate representative' of the Palestinian people. I ask: Where does your legitimacy come from? The Palestinian people did not elect you, and they did not appoint you to represent them". Lots of Pro Palestine activists have been denying this fact when Israeli/Jewish people said it. Mosab Hassan Yosef set the record straight by declaring this.
During his speech, Mosab Hassan Yosef talks about Hamas' outrageous behaviours, including the facts that their populations' life conditions are "the least of your- The Hamas- concerns" and also the fact that they kidnap Palestinian students from campus and torture them in jail. He also declares : "The suffering of the Palestinian people is the outcome of your selfish political interests". He claims that Hamas is the greatest enemy of the Palestinian people, and also declares: "If Israel did not exist, you would have no one to blame".
He asks Palestine to take responsibility for their own actions, and also says : "You fan the flames of conflict to maintain your abusive power". A very important part of his speech is the last one; indeed, he accuses Palestine "(...) You use this platform -The UN- to mislead the international community, to mislead Palestinian Society, to believe that Israel is responsible for the problems you create.". His speech ends, and we see the Palestinian Delegation stunned; indeed, apart from Israeli and Jewish people, seeing a Palestinian person exposing the truth of its own country is very rare because by saying the truth you risk your life (Hamas is a dictatorship), and yet very important.
Another example of Arabic people who set the record straight, is Sarah Idan, former Miss Iraq. In her 2 minutes speech (link herein below), also at the UN, Former Miss Iraq tells her story :
"Two years ago, I represented Iraq at Miss Universe. I posted a photo with Miss Israel on social media. I was told to remove it and forced to denounce Israeli policies. I received death threats." Sarah Idan begins, and already gets things perfectly clear. She continues : "Since then, I can no longer return to my homeland. Why did the Iraqi government fail to condemn the threats, or allow my freedom of speech?" . You might be wondering; what does it have to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict; there it comes : "The issue between Arabs and Israelis goes beyond policy disagreements. It's deeply rooted in the belief systems taught in Muslim countries, which are antisemitic. Sadly, hatred and intolerance are reinforced by biased media. When I watched the news last month, why did they never report that Hamas terrorist organization fired nearly 700 rockets at Israeli civilians in one weekend, or that Hamas used Palestinians in Gaza as human shields? Why do they never condemn Hamas for initiating the attacks? Instead, they only show those killed by the response, in self-defense, and blame Israel." After this, she is gonna denounce the Arab media never called to ask her views, and declare that instead, these medias publish false translations of her statements. She will end her speech by saying : "I would like to remind Arab countries that today you share more common interests with Israel than the terrorist militias. Negotiating peace for both states isn't betraying the Arab cause, but a vital step to end the conflict and suffering for all.". Again, this is an important resource that must be spread.
Throughout the world, 138 countries recognize Palestine as a state.
The 58 others do not. Among these 58 countries, there is Israel, The USA, France, The UK, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, South Korea and many others.
A very important thing to remember is that Palestine has never been an actual official country with actual frontiers. Therefore, before 1920, no "Palestinian" then qualified himself as "Palestinian". Even before 1948, Arabic people who qualified themselves as Palestinians were rare. Before the establishment of The State of Israel, the region was under British Mandate, and before the British Mandate it was the Ottoman Empire.
Despite the fact that the term "Palestine" first appeared in 5th Century BC, when Heorodotus wrote of a "District of Syria, called Palaistinê", rare were people who considered themselves Palestinians.
Apart from all the hate and rumors towards Israel, the country has developed itself... And not just a bit!
Waze, Soda Stream... Israel is considered as one of the most high tech country in the world!
To begin, Israel is often considered the best country to get a cancer treatment, ahead South Korea and Japan. Here is a list of the biggest discoveries (we cannot put the 6,000 discoveries):
Discovery of quasicrystals by Dan Shechtman of the Technion. The discovery led him to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Discovery of the role of protein Ubiquitin by Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover of the Technion Institute (together with the American biologist Irwin Rose). The discovery led them to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
World's smallest video camera – a camera with a 0.99 mm (0.039 in) diameter, designed to fit in a tiny endoscope designed by Medigus.
Development of the "Pillcam" by Given Imaging, the first Capsule endoscopy solution to record images of the digestive tract. The capsule is the size and shape of a pill and contains a tiny camera.
Eshkol-Wachman Movement Notation – a notation system for recording movement on paper that has been used in many fields, including dance, physical therapy, animal behavior and early diagnosis of autism
Development of Azilect, a drug for Parkinson's disease, by Moussa Youdim and John Finberg from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and commercialized by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.
Work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem explaining irrational human economic choices. The work led Daniel to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Nanowire – a conductive wire made of a string of tiny particles of silver, a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Developed by Uri Sivan, Erez Braun and Yoav Eichen from the Technion.
Amir Pnueli introduced temporal logic into computing science
USB flash drive – a flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB interface. The Israeli company M-Systems (in partnership with IBM) developed and manufactured the first USB flash drives available in North America. This claim is challenged by multiple companies in the following four countries who also independently developed USB technology: Singapore (Trek Technology), the People's Republic of China (PRC) (Netac Technology) and the Republic of China (Taiwan). See USB Flash drive § Patent controversy.
Laser Keyboard – virtual keyboard is projected onto a wall or table top and allows to type handheld computers and cell phones. Developed simultaneously by the Israeli company Lumio and Silicon Valley startup company Canesta. The company subsequently licensed the technology to Celluon of Korea
The first Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) based PC to Phone software solution – developed by VocalTec.
Babylon, a single-click computer translation, dictionary and information source utility program, developed by Amnon Ovadia
OrCam MyEye, is a portable, artificial vision device that allows the visually impaired to understand text and identify objects through audio feedback describing what such people are unable to see.
Umoove, a high-tech startup company that invented a software only solution for face and eye tracking is located in Israel.
Viber, a proprietary cross-platform instant messaging voice-over-Internet Protocol application for smartphones.[46] Developed by American-Israeli entrepreneur Talmon Marco, Viber reached 200 million users in May 2013.
Waze, a GPS-based geographical navigation application program for smartphones with GPS support and display screens, which provides turn-by-turn information and user-submitted travel times and route details, downloading location-dependent information over the mobile telephone network. Waze Ltd., which was founded in 2008 in Israel by Uri Levine, software engineer Ehud Shabtai and Amir Shinar, and is now available in over 100 countries, was acquired by Google for a reported $1.1 billion.
ReWalk a bionic walking assistance system that enables paraplegics to stand upright, walk and climb stairs.
Development of robotic guidance system for spine surgery by Mazor Robotics
Iron Dome – a mobile air defense system in development by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aircraft Industries designed to intercept short-range rockets and artillery shells. On April 7, 2011, the system successfully intercepted a Grad rocket launched from Gaza, marking the first time in history a short-range rocket was ever intercepted. The Iron Dome was later utilized more fully in the Israeli-Gaza conflict of 2012, where it displayed a very high rate of efficiency (95%–99%) in intercepting enemy projectiles. Further production of the Iron Dome system will be financed and supported by the United States government.
The Emergency Bandage is a first field dressing which can be applied and secured with one hand to prevent bleeding from battlefield injuries.
Golden hamster – first domesticated for pet use by a Hebrew University of Jerusalem zoologist in 1930
Drip irrigation systems – The huge worldwide industry of modern drip irrigation all began when Israeli engineer Simcha Blass noticed a tree growing bigger than its neighbors in the Israeli desert, and found that it was fed by a leaking water pipe. Netafim, the company founded in 1965 to commercialize his idea, is recognized as the worldwide pioneer in smart drip- and micro-irrigation. It has revolutionized the agricultural industry
Super iron battery – A new class of a rechargeable electric battery based on a special kind of iron. More environment friendly because the super-iron eventually rusts, it was developed by Stuart Licht. of the University of Massachusetts.
Guess Who? – a two-player guessing game invented by Theo & Ora Coster (a.k.a. Theora Design)
Mastermind – an Israeli board game invented by Mordecai Meirowitz.
If you want the whole list, link hereinebelow.
Since 1980s, Israel has been giving humanitarian, medical aid to other countries, a proof of great humanity.
Indeed, in the 80s, Israel has provided humanitarian aid to places affected by natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
In 1995, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and IDF established a permanent humanitarian and emergency aid unit, which has carried out humanitarian operations worldwide.
As well as providing humanitarian supplies, Israel has also sent rescue teams and medical personnel and set up field hospitals in disaster-stricken areas worldwide.
Between 1985 and 2015, Israel sent 24 delegations of IDF search and rescue unit, the Home Front Command, to 22 countries.
In Haiti, immediately following the 2010 earthquake, Israel was the first country to set up a field hospital capable of performing surgical operations. Israel sent over 200 medical doctors and personnel to start treating injured Haitians at the scene. At the conclusion of its humanitarian mission 11 days later, the Israeli delegation had treated more than 1,110 patients, conducted 319 successful surgeries, delivered 16 births and rescued or assisted in the rescue of 4 individuals.
Despite the radiation concerns, Israel was one of the first countries to send a medical delegation to Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster. Israel dispatched a medical team to the tsuami-stricken city of Kurihara in 2011. A medical clinic run by an IDF team of some 50 members featured paediatric, surgical, maternity and gynaecological, and otolaryngology wards, together with an optometry department, a laboratory, a pharmacy and an intensive care unit. After treating 200 patients in two weeks, the departing emergency team donated its equipment to the Japanese.
In only 54 years, Israel has provided humanitarian aid to over 140 countries.
The Indian tsunami of 2004 was one of the worst natural disasters in history. Israel has sent 60 tons of aid to Indonesia, which was well-received by a country with the largest Muslim population in the world, and no ties with Israel. The Israeli Government also sent 82 tons of relief supplies, including medicine, water, food, blankets, tents, nylon sheeting and electric generators to Sri Lanka.
Israeli organizations were also involved in providing aid to Pakistan after the November 2005 earthquake in Kashmir. An Israeli NGO, Israeli Flying Aid (IFA) sent a mission to the region and provided thousands of families basic dry food products, blankets, coats, socks, personal clay heating kits and iron sheets to shield temporary shelters from heavy snow.
IsraAid (The Israel Forum for International Humanitarian Aid) founded in Israel in 2001, is an umbrella organization of more than 35 Israeli and Jewish non-governmental organizations and other individuals active in development and relief work around the world and concerned about global issues. IsraAid and its members have provided relief assistance to more than 20 countries including Rwanda, India, Mexico, Congo, Chad, Sudan and Malawi.
There are other Israeli humanitarian aid organizations like The Fast Israeli Rescue and Search Team (FIRST), Israeli Flying Aid (IFA), Save A Child's Heart (SACH) and LATET (Hebrew for "give").
And a very important aid that Israel provides and that most don't know about; Palestine.
Indeed, despite attacks by Hamas, Israel maintains an ongoing humanitarian corridor for the transfer of perishable and staple food items to Gaza. This conduct is used by internationally recognized organizations including the UN and the Red Cross.
In 2009 :
-738,576 tons (30,576 trucks) of humanitarian commodities were transferred to the Gaza Strip.
-22,849 Palestinians exited the Strip, among them 10,544 patients and their companions, exiting for medical treatment in Israel.
-21,200 international organization staff members entered the Gaza Strip.
-4,833 tons of medical equipment and medicine entered the Strip, in 572 trucks, based on requests made by the PA and the international community.
At the Security Cabinet meeting of June 2010, the Government outlined its new policy towards the Gaza Strip. It was agreed to:
Liberalize the system by which civilian goods enter GazaExpand the inflow of materials for civilian projects that are under international supervision.Continue existing security procedures to prevent the inflow of weapons and war materiel.
Since the decision of June 2010, the number of trucks delivering goods to the Gaza Strip has steadily increased from a daily average of 120 in April 2010 to 247 in September 2011. (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
In June 2016, from the territory of the Golden Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967 and annexed in 1981, the Israeli military began Operation Good Neighbor, a multi-faceted humanitarian relief operation to prevent starvation of Syrians who live along the border and provide basic or advanced medical treatment.
The aid consisted of medical care, water, electricity, education or food ans was given to Syrians near the ceasefire line between Israel and Syria, often escorted across by Israeli soldiers. Over 200,000 Syrians received such aid, and more than 4,000 of them were treated in Israeli hospitals from 2013 to September 2018. Many of the treated victims were civilians, often children.
Israel has offered aid and support to Lebanon following August 4th's devastating port explosion in Beirut, a quick turn of sentiment after a recent exchange of attacks with Lebanese militants along a tense border in recent days. With at least 135 killed and thousands injured, Israeli officials said it was time to put aside hostilities and offer help to Israel's northern neighbor. "Humanity takes precedence over every conflict, and our heart is with the Lebanese people in the aftermath of the terrible disaster that they've suffered", Mayor Ron Huldai tweeted (he had the city hall lighted in the form of the Lebanese cedar flag on Wednesday 5th). (The Washington Post).
Recently, Israel has sent humanitarian aid to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia to help battle Covid-19
If we had to quote every 140 countries that Israel has helped, even countries they were in conflict with, it would take hours. Even after years of provocation, rocket attacks, and bombings, Israel defies terror organizations and works to uphold the highest standards of assistance and support to civilians everywhere, whether it's in Asia, Europe, Iraq, or the West Bank and Gaza.
The whole list herein below
Palestine is, as said earlier, leaded by Hamas, "a Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist military organization. It is a
-Palestinian Nationalist
-Sunni Islamic
-Islamic Nationalism
-Anti-Zionist
-One State solution (that would of course be held by them)
And antisemitic brotherhood.
It is a dictatorship, which took Mahmoud Abbas' place (Mr Abbas is the President of Palestine, he is part of the Fatah, the ennemy of Hamas). In Palestine, many human rights are violated. Recently, Hamas has "banned" LGBTQ+ rights.
In 2014, Hamas hid in schools and hospitals so that when Israel have to bomb them, they have to bomb school."
In a speech at The UN, Nikki Haley denounced Hamas' crimes.
One crime that we did not quote previously, is that for a long time, Israel has been giving bricks to Gaza, so that they can build houses. Hamas intercepted them, and used them to build "terror tunnels used to attack Israeli citizens" (N.Haley).
"(...) Hamas has been the de facto government in Gaza since 2007. This strip of land along the Mediterranean coast has enormous potential. And yet, after 11 years of Hamas rule, Gaza has electricity --provided by Israel-- for only a few hours a day. It has enormous unemployment and poverty. It is a heaven for terrorist activity". Her entire speech on the link herein below.
The GDP in Palestine is established at 5,020 dollars.
What is very important to remember about the amount of deaths on The Palestinian side, is that many have been killed by internal war, but also by Hamas itself, and by other Palestinian themselves. During the Fatah VS Hamas war (two Palestinian military groups), at least 98 Palestinians were killed. During the First Intifada (engaged by Palestine), 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians.
During the War of the camps, over 3,000 Palestinians have been killed by other Palestinians.
In 2012, the Human Rights Watch presented a 43 page long list of human rights violation committed by Hamas. Among actions attributed to Hamas, the HRW report mentions of beatings with metal clubs and rubber hoses, hanging of alleged collaborationists with Israel, and torture of 102 individuals. According to the report, Hamas also tortured civil society activists and peaceful protesters. Reflecting on the captivity of Gilad Shalit, the HRW report described it as "cruel and inhuman". The report also slams Hamas for harassment of people based on so called morality offenses and for media censorship.
On May 26, 2015, Amnesty International released a report saying that Hamas carried out extrajudicial killings, abductions and arrests of Palestinians and used Al-Shifa Hospital to detain, interrogate and torture suspects during the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014. It details the executions of dozens of at least 23 Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel and torture dozens of others, many victims of torture were members of the rival Palestinian movement, Fatah.
In 2019, Osama Qawassmeh, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, accused Hamas of "kidnapping and brutally torturing Fatah members in a way that no one can imagine." Qawassmeh accused Hamas of kidnapping and torturing 100 Fatah members in Gaza. The torture allegedly included the practice called "shabbah" - the painful blinding of the hands and feet to a chair. Also in 2019, Fatah activist from Gaza Raed Abu al-Hassin was beaten and had his two legs broken by Hamas security officers. Al-Hassin was taken into custody by Hamas after he participated in a pro-Abbas demonstration in the Gaza Strip.
(: Mahmmoud Abbas is the President of the State of Palestine. He is part of Fatah).
In a nutshell; 15 years ago, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, in a good faith to make peace with the Palestinians. The Israeli Government literally dismantled the Jewish community in Gaza, and left Gaza without any Israeli presence whatsoever. In response, Israel has received over 17,000 rockets to date from the newly elected ruling power, terrorist organization Hamas. Since then, Hamas has :
-Brutally oppressed their own people
-Used Palestinians as human shields
-Initiated 3 wars that devastated Gaza
-Tortured and murdered dissident Palestinians and alleged collaborators
-Stolen foreign aid money to use for terrorist puroposes
-Endangered the lives of children, journalists and international NGO workers.
-Cynically abused good faith humanitarian efforts for medical treatment to Palestinians
-Became another agent of Iranian terrorism in the Middle East
-Destroyed the Palestinian economy, leading to a 50% unemployment rate.
-Provided assistance to terrorist organizations like ISIS
-Allowed unsanitary water and inadequate electricity supply due to not paying bills to the Palestinian Authority
-There has been no state building
(StandWithUs)
THE WEST BANK
The status of the West Bank today remains one of the biggest question marks in the conflict.
While some movements and activists advocate Israel's complete and unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, there are problems with this potential withdrawal. Problems for both Israelis and Palestinians.
While this could have advantages for a potential two-state solution, if Israel unilaterally withdraws from the West Bank tomorrow, several phenomena would sadly and tragically occur.
Firstly, about 200,000 Palestinians would lose their jobs. The unemployment rate is already very high (18%), so this massive loss of work would seriously aggravate it. As a result, the Palestinian economy would collapse.
Not only the economy would collapse: the Palestinian authorities would also give their last breath; Hamas, which is already influential in the West Bank but is being held back by Israel, would probably crush the Palestinian authorities and seize power.
Moreover, Israel would no longer have security control over the Jordan Valley, which would become vulnerable to an ISIS invasion.
It would be a total chaos on the Palestinian side.
On the Israeli side, there is already a shortage of houses west of the Green Line; there is virtually nowhere to put the 700,000 Israelis living in the West Bank.
The two most densely populated areas would be threatened with constant bombing or attack (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, about 5 million people).
Hamas and Hezbollah would probably join the party and bombard the North and the South, putting another 1.5 million Israelis at risk.
And thus, the infernal spiral would resume: Israel would have to fire missiles in retaliation, the tension would become serious again, and the West Bank would end up like the Gaza Strip: a battlefield, a bloodshed.
In the end, Israel would probably win the war, since the Israeli army has a better defence and attack system, and would have to annex the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: back to square one.
First, if you don't know what the BDS Movement is :
Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.
The BDS wants the State of Israel to be removed, even if it includes creating a genocide.
BDS, at its heart, is a tool designed to win a propaganda war, not help bring a real peace. It is a blunt weapon of ideological hostility, not human empathy and engagement. It is neither a genuine response to the suffering endured by both peoples nor a program designed to address effectively the complex challenge of improving their lot.
Focusing on BDS in any form weakens other, constructive forms of engagement and action that seek to bring Israelis and Palestinians together. Choosing even partial BDS as policy promotes a vision which undermines the principles of engagement, tolerance, dialogue and coexistence and makes it more difficult to establish trust, mutual awareness and compromise.
Despite claims to the contrary, there are other ways to express concern and opposition to the ongoing Israeli presence in the territories, if that is a position that someone wishes to support. The presentation of boycotts as a last resort where all other measures have failed is a misrepresentation of the opportunities to impact positively on the story.
While someone supporting a limited boycott may think they are not engaging in an act of delegitimization, BDS proponents use and abuse any kind of BDS activity to claim support and momentum for their own, full-blown anti-Israel version of the strategy. No matter how good the intention may be, associating with BDS strengthens the delegitimizers who seek Israel’s demise.
BDS doesn’t address the real sources of the current political impasse, such as the Palestinian failure to reassure the Israeli public of the peacefulness of their intentions. Punishing Israelis for the “occupation” may even help entrench maximalist Palestinian claims, rather than encouraging the necessary moderation needed to reach a fair political accommodation. Opponents of the “occupation” would also have greater credibility within Israel if they dissociated themselves from the boycott campaign.
Boycott campaigns by their very nature are divisive and hurtful. BDS tactics have brought division and rancor to every institution (coops, campuses, church groups and others) they have targeted, precisely because the conflict in the Middle East is a complex one in which both sides have grievances that must be addressed in direct negotiations. One-sided attacks on Israel do not resolve Palestinian concerns and ignore Israel’s altogether.
The distinction between Israeli businesses and communities in the territories and the rest of their compatriots cannot be applied in practice. Any steps to isolate and exclude Israelis from over the green line would inevitably also isolate and exclude Israelis from within it. The collective-punishment nature of the BDS agenda which makes it wrong in general also undermines its validity in its supposedly more focused version.
The Arab League has applied a boycott against Israel since 1945 without significantly harming Israel’s economy or coercing it to change its policies. A BDS campaign is also doomed to failure as it will not change Israel’s perception of its fundamental national interests as regards the core issues of security, borders, Jerusalem, settlements, and refugees.
“Targeted BDS” is easily dismissed by Israelis who see it as hypocritical, anti-Semitic and/or anti-Israel given that the proponents express no concern about non-democratic countries.
"Targeted BDS" won’t help the Palestinians achieve their political or economic goals. In fact, were BDS in the territories to take hold it would make Palestinian lives worse, by removing the livelihood of tens of thousands of Palestinian bread-winners, with no viable prospect of alternative employment anywhere to be seen. On the political level, BDS creates a magnetic attraction for Palestinians away from the negotiation table and reinforces the view that the way ahead is to run to supporters in the international community, rather than make tough decisions inside the negotiating room.
Is B.D.S. anti-Semitic?
Leaders of B.D.S. insist that it is not anti-Semitic, and the movement’s umbrella group explicitly rejects anti-Semitism.
But many Israelis and American Jews say it is, using the so-called three-Ds test to distinguish fair criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism: Does the criticism delegitimize Israel, apply a double standard or demonize it?
B.D.S. does all three, its critics say, by questioning Israel’s right to exist, and by singling out Israel for its treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens when minorities in some countries suffer far more. The columnist Ben-Dror Yemini, a critic of the movement, said B.D.S. supporters also demonize Israel when they portray the country as “the great danger to humanity.”
Is B.D.S. anti-Zionist?
Yes, loudly and proudly. Its founding documents explicitly reject Zionism — the belief in self-determination for the Jewish people in the biblical land of Israel — calling it the “ideological pillar of Israel’s regime of occupation, settler colonialism and apartheid.”
“A Jewish state in Palestine in any shape or form cannot but contravene the basic rights of the indigenous Palestinian population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination that ought to be opposed categorically,” Mr. Barghouti said.
Is it nonviolent?
In its original 2005 call, B.D.S. urged strictly “nonviolent punitive measures,” and Mr. Barghouti said B.D.S. “considers violence targeting noncombatants as illegal and immoral.” Still, he said, B.D.S. treats resistance to what it sees as Israeli oppression, including by armed struggle, as a legitimate right. Asked if B.D.S. condemned violence that targeted Israeli soldiers, he declined to comment.
Opponents have attacked B.D.S. not just for failing to condemn violence but for allowing terrorists and their supporters under its umbrella. The B.D.S. National Committee’s members, for example, include the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine. The council includes several groups designated by the United States as terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
(The New York Times, full article herein below).
The BDS movement aims to emulate the campaigns of the 1980s against South African apartheid. Its supporters claim that Israeli policy towards Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is similar to the apartheid regime that existed in South Africa, and that the same tactics used to demand the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa should be used to pressure, ostracise and marginalise Israel.
Campaigns have been launched to demand the "disinvestment" of the investment portfolios of universities, municipalities, churches, trade unions and other companies that claim to "help the Israeli occupation", as well as the "boycott" of Israeli products, professionals, professional associations and academic institutions, and artistic performances (in Israel and abroad).
Some BDS supporters may sincerely believe that these efforts will encourage Israel to change policies with which they disagree. However, the predominant driving force behind the BDS campaign and its leadership is not criticism of policies, but demonization and delegitimization of Israel. BDS campaigns promote a biased and simplistic approach to the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presenting this conflict over territorial and nationalist claims as the fault of one side - Israel. The BDS campaign does not support Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and rejects a two-state solution to the conflict.
Despite the best efforts of BDS activists, the campaign has failed to have more than a public relations impact, particularly in the United States. For the most part, the campaigns have failed to get major institutions to divest from Israel or to prevent companies and institutions from engaging with Israel or Israelis. Religious groups and trade unions in the UK have made some progress. At universities where student governments have passed divestment resolutions, the President, Chancellor or Board of Trustees have refused to implement them. Graduate students' unions that voted in favour of divestment had the resolution overturned by their international union. Even university associations that voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions did not visibly implement these policies.
However, BDS campaigns do generate publicity and often have a negative impact on the public perception of Israel. Increasingly, BDS campaigns are being used by anti-Israeli activists to draw attention to their message, especially on university campuses where BDS initiatives draw students, faculty, campus organisations and administrations into a highly politicised and publicised debate.
Many of the founding goals of the BDS movement, including the denial of the universal right to self-determination of the Jewish people - as well as many of the strategies employed in BDS campaigns are antisemitic. Many people involved in BDS campaigns are motivated by opposition to the very existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Often BDS campaigns provoke tensions in communities - particularly on university campuses - that can lead to harassment or intimidation of Jews and supporters of Israel, including openly antisemitic expressions and acts. These dynamics can create an environment in which antisemitism can be more freely expressed.
And all too often BDS proponents use antisemitic rhetoric and narratives to isolate and demonise Israel.
(ADL)
Moreover, the stated aims of BDS by its founder and prominent supporters:
“Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.” (Omar Barghouti, BDS founder)
"There is no Israel, that is what it is really about." (Norman Finkelstein)
" Zionists complain BDS demands spell the end of the Jewish state. They are correct. " (David Litwin)
"The real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel…this should be stated as an unambiguous goal.” (As’ad AbuKhalil, California State University Professor of Political Science, BDS leader and activist)
“I think the BDS movement will gain strength from forthrightly explaining why Israel has no right to exist…” (John Spritzler, BDS leader and activist)
So, does BDS succeed in achieving its goal: the "liberation" of Palestine, the "return" of Palestinian rights?
No. According to a Forbes article and many other sources, the boycott campaign of Israel is a failure. Not only does it have almost no impact on Israel, but it goes against what BDS wants to do; instead of reaching the Israeli economy and liberating the Palestinians, the boycott campaign is hampering and slowing down the Palestinian economy!
The Internet is a heap of lies and distortions of facts that systematically threatens the stability of society. Through social networks, free hatred has developed easily and freely because of the fake news relayed on the Internet.
Since we are talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, let us quote some lies or distortions even coming from certain media.
Compassion for the Jews killed by the Nazis allows the naive to believe that one is not an anti-Semite; but this is not incompatible with the new form of anti-Semitism of demonizing the Jewish state by portraying it as the new Nazi in the face of the oppressed Palestinians, which AJ + can do as we will see. The “Palestinian cause” is indeed a privileged theme of the channel. Here are some of his posts.
We find there the inevitable Ahed Tamimi, this young Palestinian woman raised by her family to provoke the Israeli soldiers in front of the cameras in the hope of pushing them to the blunder and who awaits her judgment on twelve counts, including incitement to terrorism (in this explicit call to carry out attacks to “liberate Palestine”)…
In a recent video in French, the channel AJ+, the CEO of this channel, Al Jazeera, talks about the Palestinian cause. 6 minutes of propaganda: "Imagine we come to your house”. If the other topics are dealt with in the news, the "Palestinian cause" keeps coming back to the fore. And those posts are where the channel scores most of its best scores.
The clip “Israel-Palestine: less than 6 minutes to understand 70 years of conflict” is a good example. In a week, it achieved more than 650,000 views on Facebook and 45,000 on Twitter. And that's a bunch of lies. A model of propaganda. Keep reading for the demonstration.
The video begins with a little cartoon. The little Eiffel Tower and the image of this wise couple from home help progressive French people to identify with the narrative:
“Imagine showing up at your house, settling into your living room, and gradually nibbling away a little more of your space to leave you with a third of your room or worse kicked out? And beware of you if you ever protest. Well, this is what has happened to Palestinians for 70 years.”“Palestinians”.
Such a progressive speech! And since we are progressive, believe me: Israel and the Jews are usurpers, thieves. Since I tell you!
Then there is the history lesson. The presenter returns “to the very beginning, to the end of the First World War”.
It's just been 100 years.
However, she speaks of a territory located between the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the fertile crescent, which was the crucible of the oldest civilizations of mankind. We note there, 3000 years ago, the appearance of a certain Jewish people. But the story, in Qatari version, will therefore begin in 1918, under the Ottoman Empire. Palestine was placed under British mandate in 1920. AJ + plants the British flag on the borders of Palestine ... from 1922, when 77% of the area of the mandate originally given by Great Britain to the constitution of a Jewish national home was cut off to become the Emirate of Transjordan, future Jordan.
Then comes the far-left French journalist Alain Gresh (known for promoting people like Muslim Brother Tariq Ramadan). For him, the conflict dates back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which he presented as the open door to "the settlement of a foreign population in Palestine". Still nothing about the previous three millennia of history which saw a continued Jewish presence on this land, the Islamic conquest in the year 637 and, much later, massive arrivals of Muslim populations from all over the Ottoman Empire. He skips directly to the partition plan of 1947 and tells us that this “replacement by another population had an effect on the Palestinians who revolted”.
If Alain Gresh had consulted reliable sources, he would know that the Jews accepted the plan to partition the remaining 23% of Mandatory Palestine (remember, the rest had been allocated to Transjordan in 1922); the Arabs (none of whom then defined themselves as a "Palestinian") refused, and the coalition armies of neighboring Arab countries swooped down on the State of Israel to annihilate it the day after its independence. They lost this war but Transjordan occupied (yes, occupied) what became the “West Bank” from 1949 to 1967 and expelled all Jews from it. Next period : 1967. The Six-Day War “pits Israel against its Arab neighbors. Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Israel, which emerges victorious from this war, appropriates several territories ”. Who caused the war? AJ + passes on the subject like cat on embers. Nothing on the actions of the Arab countries which had massed their armies on the borders of the Jewish state by announcing loudly that they wanted to destroy it, nothing on the casus belli created by Nasser which had blocked access to the Red Sea. Omissions that will probably not shock the public because many other media do: but they serve precisely to make Israel guilty of the wars it has waged to defend itself.
Then intervenes an obscure "Israeli consultant in human rights" (nothing better to delegitimize a country than to find one of its citizens prey to self-hatred and ready to denigrate it).
Talya Sultana Swissa talks about the UN resolutions condemning one side of the conflict (guess which one, and ask yourself how many Muslim countries there are in the UN and how many Jewish countries). “In 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, which constitutes a violation of human rights,” she blurted out. When France returned to Alsace and Lorraine after winning the war started by Germany, what was it? And when Jordan annexed that same half of the city, cutting it in half for the first time, what was it?
It is apparently worse than that: Israel has "revoked the residency status of 15,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem". For the analyst, this is a "war crime" ... We traced the source of this information: a report by Human Rights Watch. Without going into technical considerations, the curious reader will be well advised to read the passage entitled “License revocations as punitive measures”: there he will find the exposure of cases of terrorists whose status Israel effectively revoked after they killed Israelis. Punishing murderers, heinous crime ... The Yazidis slaughtered by ISIS in Syria might testify to what a war crime really is, but they are less popular than the Palestinians with the editors of AJ +.
Then comes the plea for the “two state solution” (which would exist if the Arabs had not invaded Palestine after the partition of 1947 or refused several peace plans, but that, AJ + will not say).
“Big problem”, we are told, “Israel (…) does not recognize any borders, since its plan is to expand”. The greedy Jew, an old anti-Jewish cliché… By the way, where would it be written? In order to expand, Israel has already withdrawn from Sinai, southern Lebanon, Gaza … And this classic Palestinian propaganda map (link here in below) makes it appear that there was an Arab state of Palestine in 1946. That was of course the British Mandate. Nor does it say that the confetti of the right-wing image, areas B and C under civilian control of the Palestinian Authority since the Oslo accords with Israel, are the very first “Palestinian” territories in the country. History: a concession from Israel and not the other way around. In the United States, the MSNBC channel that once used it withdrew this map with apologies, admitting that it was "factually inaccurate.”
Unsurprisingly, the “Israeli consultant” continues with the immutable arguments of the Israeli occupation (with an obvious bias since the occupation from 1949 to 1967 by Jordan, which had no historical legitimacy on the territory today disputed, is not mentioned) and “colonization” (2000 years ago, the region was called Judea after the name of the Jewish people who lived there; but making history begin in the 20th century allows us to not to be bothered with these facts which would reveal the absurdity of the term “colonization”).
The TV host accuses Israel of "annexing territory when it is illegal and condemned by the entire international community." She will not say which territories she is talking about. Jerusalem, which had only been divided under Jordanian occupation, and the Golan Heights were indeed annexed after Jordan and Syria were defeated in the Six-Day War which cut short their plans for destruction of the State of Israel. The other territories conquered in 1967 were not, for a very simple reason, the existence of the Oslo accords totally ignored. It is, to this day, these agreements that determine the ties between Israelis and Palestinians. Even Area C of Judea Samaria (West Bank) under Israeli civilian administration under these agreements has not to date been annexed by Israel.
And we inevitably come to what English speakers call the “call to action”: the call for sanctions and economic pressure against Israel, in accordance (but without naming it) to the “BDS” campaign of “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions”.”, whose founders, taking up the old anti-Jewish boycotts of Nazi Germany, then of the Arab League, have as their real objective the end of Israel as a Jewish state (even if it means committing genocide against its population). It is the existence of this state that is unacceptable to them, not just its policies.
The activist-consultant still insists on the “war crimes” allegedly committed by Israel and reprehensible by the International Criminal Court, this time during the last Gaza war of 2014: she does not say who caused the war (Hamas, branch of the Muslim Brotherhood to which Al Jazeera is linked, which had sprayed Israeli civilians with rockets for months, then was behind the kidnapping and murder of all young Israeli hitchhikers); and since she is not talking about Hamas, she cannot explain that its fighters were hiding in schools and hospitals, and that Israel, on the contrary, had taken unprecedented measures to let the people of Gaza shelter before each bombardment, to minimize the civilian losses even among the enemy.
The prosecution video against Israel concludes: “Aren't some states above international law? And how far will the international community allow Israel to expand?”
Words that bring back bad memories, especially coming from a channel emanating from a country that wants to be the mouthpiece of an Arab-Muslim world which has spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean by conquest.
A rumor falsely claims that Google Maps would no longer mention the name of the Palestinian State on its mapping service.
"According to Google Maps, Palestine no longer exists!".
In recent days, many Internet users have relayed a rumor claiming that the mention "Palestine" was recently deleted from Google Maps, leaving only that of Israel. Twitter users were moved by this, accusing the American firm of manipulation. Except that the information that has been circulated on this subject is erroneous. Explanations.
WHAT THE RUMOR IS SAYING
It all started with a message on the website of the Palestinian Journalists' Forum, a journalism collective based in Gaza, on August 3. This press release claims that Google deleted the name of Palestine from Google maps on July 25, an act described as a "crime" and "falsification" of history and geography, for which the collective demanded an "apology" from the American company. Many websites followed suit, such as the Russian propaganda site Sputniknews.
WHY IS IT MORE COMPLICATED
A simple look at Google Maps confirms the absence of the word "Palestine" from the map. Instead, we only see a territory delimited by dotted lines, without name.
However, this situation is not new, as The Washington Post pointed out. In particular, there are traces of many messages published before July 25 on social networks already pointing to the absence of the word "Palestine". It is therefore wrong to say that this is a redaction in the middle of summer.
"There was never a mention of 'Palestine' on Google Maps, but we discovered a bug that made the mention "West Bank" and "Gaza Strip" disappear" said Elizabeth Davidoff, a Google spokesperson at Dailydot. And to affirm that the firm's teams will quickly reappear the two names on the map.
The controversy has given a second wind to a petition on change.org that asks Google to mention Palestine on its map.
Coronavirus is widely used by Palestinian propaganda, which in turn accuses Israel of wanting to contaminate the Palestinians, or prevent them from treating themselves.
We have already noted how France Inter (a French News Channel) had accused Israel of having destroyed a field hospital for Palestinian Covid patients by ignoring the existence of an official Israeli denial (the CSA, seized on this report, still has not decided).
The International Courier has just repeated the same manoeuvre by repeating an article from the Middle East Eye site, known to be extremely critical of Israel.
It says that Israel "demolished a Covid-19 screening center" in Hebron after refusing to grant a building permit. The land is located in Zone C of the West Bank, a territory that has been managed by the Israeli administration since the Oslo Accords. Israel is therefore perfectly entitled to refuse building permits.
Obviously, whatever the legal justifications, preventing the construction of a sanitary structure could be shocking... if it was proven.
We will see that it is not, but with such an article, the rumor spreads. There is a message of demonization of Israel that is crystal clear in a lawyer's statement quoted in the text : "In a general way, Israel is standing in the way of the Palestinians in their fight against the virus".
The technique is the same as in the report of France Inter; to peddle the Palestinian accusations without taking the trouble to consult the Israeli Authorities, in this case the COGAT, the agency under the Israeli Ministry of Defence responsible for coordinating civil affairs in the West Bank, including issuing building permits in Area C. Yet again, the COGAT strongly denied the charges. According to an article from the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs, activists from the Palestinian cause have been campaigning around this unjust demolition charge but, the demolished structure is nothing like a medical center. The site refers to a press release issued on July 17 (5 days before article appeared in the Courier International...) by Major General Kamil Abu Rukun, head of COGAT.
Here is what he says in his text written in Arabic (his mother tongue since, it should be noted, this high ranking of the Israeli army is not a Jew, but a Druze):
"In recent hours, false rumors have spread on social networks about the intention of the Civil Administration and the Hebron Coordination and Liaison Office to demolish a complex dedicated to conducting tests to diagnose coronavirus infection in Hebron.
Contrary to the allegations, there was no plan to establish a coronavirus screening facility there.
It is nothing more than a lie, because the discussions were about the foundations of a building that was illegally built there for personal use. This was reported by the initiator of the construction works himself to bodies belonging to the civil administration.
As for the sign that was suspended at this location, which indicates that there is a project to set up a coronavirus examination complex on the site, this is a false case, because it was only suspended after the order to stop work on the site was issued and after the confiscation of the work tools that were used in the construction.
The Civil Administration has not received any request for the establishment of a coronavirus screening complex on this site, either from the Palestinian Authority or international organizations."
In a trial, we give the floor to the prosecution and to the accused, who has the right to defend himself.
This fairness is lacking in the International Courier, where Israel is accused of a mischief mixing racism and human rights violations, without the formal denial of the Israeli authorities being brought to the attention of readers.
As a result, the article’s Facebook post, which was liked more than 2,500 times, is full of hateful comments about Israel, with some openly flirting with anti-Semitism by assimilating Jews with the Nazis.
And the moderators of International Mail let it happen.
1 – “Israel commits genocide, murders and conducts ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people” – FALSE!
This dangerous, cynical and repugnant claim has become one of the great lies of contemporary history. It is broadcast unscrupulously on university campuses and in international commissions and human rights NGOs.
Its supporters are individuals and organizations that claim to defend constitutional and human rights but, in fact, engage in dishonest legal acrobatics and misrepresentation of the facts.
With malice and hypocrisy, they interpret in their own way the legal principles, declarations, and conventions for the sole purpose of slandering Israel and calling into question its legitimacy and very foundation of its existence. They cynically manipulate historical facts by accusing Israel of committing genocidal acts against Arab society out of revenge.
The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin, whose entire family was exterminated by the Nazis in Poland solely because they were Jewish.
Contrary to these false and abject accusations:
Israel has never advocated or developed a plan, design or campaign that aims to undermine or destroy the Palestinian people, or to act out of revenge or despair.Israel, the Jewish people, and the Zionist movement have never implemented a military action, a political, religious, economic or cultural campaign, aimed at destroying the national, ethnic, racial and any religious structure of the Palestinian people.Israel has never sought to undermine the essential foundations of the life of the Palestinian people, or even to question their right to exist as a people.Israel has never committed mass murder.
Israel has never exercised ethnic cleansing because it is against the moral, religious and ethical codes of the Jewish people.In its Declaration of Independence of May 14, 1948, Israel pledged to guarantee the freedom, justice and peace provided for by the prophets of Israel. And full equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants regardless of religion, race or sex.”Israel is committed to ensuring freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture. It undertakes to be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.In spite of the offer of peace, good neighbourliness, cooperation and mutual aid, in a common effort to promote the well-being of the whole Middle East, the Arab States have launched a total war against the Jewish State, the stated objective was to kill in the bud the newly born state.It was not Israel that started this conflict. Israel was obliged to defend itself to ensure its own existence, its integrity and its people. The slippage and displacement of people during the armed conflict, as regrettable as they may have been, was not part of a conception or intention to destroy the Palestinian people, but part of the consequences of the war.Similarly, the 1967 Six Day War was the specific result of Arab attempts to strangle Israel militarily and economically. The conquest of the areas of the West Bank and Gaza was not motivated by a desire to destroy or transfer Palestinian residents or to undermine their rights as a people.Attempts to justify a claim to genocide by accusing Israel of “repeated military attacks” in the Gaza Strip are completely absurd. They are deliberately ignoring the thousands of rockets, attack tunnels and other forms of terror from Gaza directed against the Israeli civilian population by Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization.It was not the Israelis but Hamas that killed Palestinian children digging tunnels. It was Hamas that executed Palestinian residents for “crimes of morality” and “collaboration with Israel”.Clearly, every serious man of good faith and every organization that truly respects human rights is aware that Israel is acting in self-defence and not out of revenge or as an act of genocide to destroy a people.In the same context, it should be noted that:
It was not Israel that massacred 15,000 Palestinians living in the refugee camps in Jordan during the famous «Black September». This civil war started between Jordan and the PLO in 1970.Nor did Israel expel 400,000 Palestinians from Kuwait in 1991 in retaliation for the PLO’s support of Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.It is not Israel that has displaced 390,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria since the outbreak of the conflict in 2011.It was not Israel that besieged the Palestinian refugee camp in Yarmouk, near Damascus in 2013-2014. 18,000 men and women and children were besieged without food, water or medicine.
From a regional demographic point of view, it should be noted that since 1967, since Israel has administered the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Arab population has increased from 954,898 to 4,654,421. This indicates a 387% increase in the local population.
In this context, the life expectancy of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza rose from 68.5 years in 1990 to 72.9 years in 2014.
One may therefore wonder how these statistics can be used as a logical basis or be considered compatible with the manifestly false, erroneous and manipulative allegation of a so-called alleged genocide of the Palestinian people.
2 – “Jews are not a people and cannot have rights in the Middle East” – FALSE!
This bizarre assertion seems to be taken in the total denial of the history of civilization, from the biblical times to the present day.
The very existence of the Jews as an indigenous people, as well as their roots, in their own historical homeland in the “Holy Land”, or through the various diasporas and exiles, are inscribed in the Biblical Scriptures, in the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Gospel and the Muslim Koran. They have been preserved over the centuries by available and duly documented archaeological evidence, and exhibited in many museums around the world.
Judaism, the Hebrew language, and the Jewish people were born more than 3,000 years ago in the Holy Land. Christianity was born of Judaism, and Christian existence was an integral part of the local Jewish community. The presence of the two Jewish temples in Jerusalem, and their destruction (in 587 BC and in the year 70), were recognized by the Greeks, Persians and Romans, as well as by Christians, travelers and historians, and it appears in the Qur'anic references.
The right to re-establish a national home for the Jewish people was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917. International legal recognition was granted in the San Remo Declaration in 1920 by the Supreme Council of Allied Powers. This Declaration was subsequently reaffirmed by the League of Nations in 1922 as part of the British mandate of Palestine. In the first paragraphs confirming this recognition, we read: “the historical connection of the Jewish people in Palestine is one of the reasons for rebuilding their national home in that country”.In addition to their historical and legal rights, Jews, as one of the oldest and still existing peoples, have indigenous rights that are recognized by the international community.
3 – “The creation of Israel was a catastrophe for the Palestinians” – FALSE!
The perception of the creation of the State of Israel as a “catastrophe” (Nakba) reflects a constant in the Palestinian narrative. In fact, it rejects the creation of a national state for the Jewish people in any part of Palestine mandatary.
This extreme narrative proves an uncompromising struggle against Israel. It serves as the common national objective of the Palestinians, and is at the heart of the conflict.
However, it should be noted that the creation of the State of Israel was nevertheless carried out following a recommendation of the international community in the resolution of sharing adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947. It advocated the creation of two independent states in proxy Palestine – one Jewish and one Arab. This reflects the international community’s acceptance of the fundamental rights of the Jewish and Arab populations to govern themselves in their own sovereign and independent entities.
The State of Israel was not established instead, nor as an alternative entity to a Palestinian state. It was not established in the denial of the existence of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine proxy. It was intended to coexist with an Arab state within the framework of the Palestinian proxy.
Rather than accepting this plan and thus renouncing their maximalist objective of creating an Arab State throughout the territory of Palestine, the Arabs of Palestine, in collaboration with the Arab States members of the Arab League, the Mufti of Jerusalem and the Muslim Brotherhood, rejected the partition plan and started the war against the Jewish state. This despite some elements within the Palestinian Arab community that were willing to live in peace with the Jews.In spite of the fact that the sharing plan did not fully realize the hopes of the Jewish population of Palestinian authority, Nevertheless, the latter has chosen to accept it in the hope that it will serve as a basis for peaceful coexistence between the Arab and Jewish communities in proxy Palestine.
It is widely acknowledged that the refusal by the Arab community and neighbouring Arab countries to accept the plan of sharing, and their inability to forcibly eliminate the Jewish State, were the result of short-sightedness, an unfortunate error of judgment, and a lack of clear and rational leadership within the Arab communities.
The creation and subsequent acceptance of Israel by the international community was seen by the Arabs as a disastrous blow and a serious mistake. That is why they use the term “disaster” (Nakba) to symbolize the issue of Palestinian refugees. Nakba Day became a day of mourning, violent demonstrations and incitement to hatred in an attempt to undermine Israel’s legitimacy.
It is also revealing that the 1948 Arabs still reject the right to the existence of the State of Israel. It remains a central objective in their narrative.
Through brainwashing and a well-orchestrated and hateful international incitement, the Palestinian leadership seeks to pursue this false and fictitious narrative.
This attempt to undermine Israel’s very legitimacy as a Jewish state is particularly evident in recent calls by Palestinian leaders for the revocation of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, and their manipulation within international organizations.Those who subscribe to this false narrative, rather than relying on real historical facts, are in fact manipulated to become part of this deception.
4 – “Israel prevents water supply to the Palestinian population” – FALSE!
This false claim that Israel is waging a water war in order to thirst the Palestinian population and prevent it from living a dignified life as a form of collective punishment has been deliberately taken up and amplified by the international media.
Additional false allegations evoked thousands of Palestinians without access to safe drinking water during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which sometimes falls in summer, when temperatures can exceed 35°C. Of course, This is a gross accusation that has no basis. On the contrary, in order to meet the needs during the holy month of Ramadan, the water supply was increased during the night.These water accusations were recently repeated in a report published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) stating: Palestinians are prohibited from maintaining or digging water wells, while Israel uses much more water than the level provided for in the 1993 Oslo Accords. The Palestinians therefore have no choice but to import water from Israel to cover 50% of their consumption.”
The reality is quite the opposite. Since the Oslo Accords, Israel has increased the water supply of the Palestinian population by more than 20%. In practice, over the past 15 years, the water supply has increased by about 50%, a large part of which has been directed towards domestic consumption.
Global water consumption statistics indicate a general decrease in per capita consumption, due to population growth and deteriorating water resources. However, with respect to Palestinian water, in 1967 only 10% of Palestinian households were connected to water infrastructure, while today that figure has risen to 95%. Palestinian access to running water is much better than for residents of Amman and Damascus.
Per capita water consumption in Palestine is well above the minimum consumption estimated by the World Health Organization. This quantity is well above 50 litres per day per inhabitant.
In violation of its commitments in the Oslo Accords, and ignoring the resulting dangers to water quality deterioration and salinization, the Palestinians are illegally using water by drilling and exploiting unauthorized private wells. In addition, water is stolen from Palestinian villages to irrigate the fields.
Due to poor management and poor maintenance, the Palestinians have failed to increase their water supply independently.Moreover, there is no control of the meters, so most Palestinians do not pay for their water consumption and there is no body to conserve water.
5 – “Israel violates its obligations under the Oslo Accords” – FALSE!
Israel considers the Oslo Accords to be a major element in maintaining peaceful relations with the Palestinians. To this end, Israel has implemented its obligations under the agreements. He did so in good faith, regardless of the continued denigration and malice of the Palestinian leadership:
Israel has redeployed its forces in areas A and B as indicated in the Security Annex to the Interim Agreement. It transferred powers and responsibilities in more than 40 areas of civil administration to the Palestinian Authority, as set out in the Civil Affairs Annex of the Interim Agreement.Despite ongoing threats by the Palestinian leadership to suspend security cooperation and coordination, Israel has always maintained close security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, including the provision of law and order weapons by the Palestinian police.Israel has regularly transferred funds, taxes and import duties to the Palestinian Authority as part of its obligations under the Economic Relations Annex. These funds were transferred despite huge debts and unpaid notes for Israel’s provision of electricity and medical care in Israeli hospitals.While Israel has attempted to maintain and maintain daily professional relations with the various Palestinian administrative authorities, the Palestinian leadership has refused to allow this cooperation and has hindered such ongoing relations.Unfortunately, the Palestinians refuse to implement the annex on Israeli-Palestinian cooperation programmes, including the People-to-People programme initiated by Norway to strengthen dialogue and mutual relations between the two peoples.
The list of Palestinian violations is long and includes:
Active support, encouragement and financing of terrorism and violence against Israel and its people. The maintenance of terrorist infrastructure despite the obligations to dismantle it.The acquisition, manufacture and supply of illegal weapons for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities.An indoctrination of hatred and incitement to violence and terror, within the Palestinian leadership and governance. This indoctrination is systematically carried out by the Palestinian media and education services from primary schools and kindergartens.Attempts to unilaterally change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip outside the negotiation process, through unilateral initiatives within the United Nations and its specialized agencies.The false representation of the Palestinian Authority as a state. Accession to international conventions and the conduct of external relations are in flagrant violation of the agreements.The organization, encouragement and support of economic and cultural boycotts and sanctions against Israel.Israel has consistently expressed its willingness to resume and complete negotiations in accordance with the Oslo Accords, without any preconditions, including on the basic issues agreed by both parties on permanent status. They include borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, security arrangements, relations and cooperation with other neighbouring countries and other matters of common interest.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian leadership imposed preconditions for any resumption of negotiations. These preconditions, avoid any possibility of conducting serious negotiations in good faith.
6 – “Israel denies the “right of return” to millions of Palestinian refugees” – FALSE!
There is no “right of return” for refugees under international law, no international treaty or binding resolution imposes such an obligation on Israel.
Similarly, none of the agreements and documents signed between Israel and Egypt, the Palestinians and Jordan grant refugees a right of return.
The only non-binding reference to the “return” of Palestinian refugees is found in article 11 of the UN General Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948. The UN recommends that refugees “who wish to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours should be allowed to do so at a possible date, and compensation should be paid for the properties of those who choose not to return.”
This resolution, which was rejected by the Arab States, does not establish any rights or obligations.
Security Council Resolution 237 of 4 June 1967 on «the return of the inhabitants who have fled the areas since the outbreak of hostilities», does not consider it as a «right» of return and, like most Security Council resolutions, it is of the nature of a recommendation.Throughout the peace process, Israel recognized the need to resolve the refugee issue through negotiation. In this context:Israel accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), which “affirmed the need for a just resolution of the refugee problem”
In the 1978 Camp David agreement, Israel and Egypt agreed to establish “procedures to establish a just resolution to the refugee problem”. They also set up a “standing committee” of representatives of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians to agree on the terms of admission of displaced persons in 1967 from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.Israel actively participated in the Working Group on Refugees established by the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference and led by Canada.
Israel and the Palestinians agreed in the 1993 Declaration of Principles (Oslo I) that the modalities for admitting displaced persons should be decided by a “standing committee”, and that the refugee issue should be one of the key issues in the permanent status negotiations.Similar provisions were adopted in 1995 on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.Jordan and Israel agreed in the 1994 Peace Treaty to resolve the refugee problem both within the framework of the multilateral working group established after the 1991 Madrid Conference, in conjunction with the negotiations on the permanent status. The treaty also refers to the UN and other international economic programs relating to refugees and displaced persons.In the same context, Israel has always maintained that the issue of Jewish refugees and displaced persons from Arab countries is an inherent component of any negotiation on refugees.
7 – “BDS is a progressive movement, non-violent in the best tradition of peaceful activism” – FALSE!
The publicly stated goal of the BDS campaign is to delegitimize and isolate Israel in the international arena. His tactic is to portray Israel as the illegitimate new apartheid of South Africa, with a strategic objective to bring about the destruction of Israel through a global political and economic war.
BDS leaders and activists characterize their activities as a complementary strategy to the policy of terror and political violence advocated by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. Their aim is to dismantle Israel as a sovereign state.
This policy is quite evident in the statements made by the leadership of the BDS, and in particular by the words of their leader Omar Barghouti who states clearly: "Certainly, we certainly oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine."
Ahmed Moor, BDS activist on campuses: "BDS is not another step on the road to the final confrontation, BDS is the final confrontation."
As'ad Abu Khalil, BDS activist at California State University: "Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the State of Israel."
The anthem of BDS supporters, «From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free», refutes the repeated formula that the BDS is limited to a political and economic agenda, and is only a means of pressuring Israel to withdraw from the territories.
On the contrary, the BDS program reveals real intentions to “liberate” two disputed territories from before and after 1967. The same stated objective of Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, and various groups of the PLO, and radical Islamic organizations, to destroy the nation-state of the Jewish people.
This is exactly what Michael Gove, former British Minister of Justice and Education, described as a “resurgence, a mutation, of the deadly virus of anti-Semitism,” recalling the Nazi boycotts of Jews on the eve of the Holocaust.
A fundamental objective of the BDS campaign is to promote the deligitimation of Israel and to fight against the existence of a nation-state for the Jewish people in Israel. This is based on a Palestinian narrative that denies both the existence of the Jewish people as a sovereign nation, as well as its historical relationship of the Jewish people to the land of Israel/Palestine. This story presents the Palestinians as innocent victims of Western and Israeli colonialism.
The BDS movement is putting in place a sophisticated tactic by camouflaging its radical and extremist ties. It uses a so-called peaceful language, talks about peace, justice and human rights to sensitize progressive Western groups and individuals and organizations that generally support human rights.
In this way, the BDS movement manipulates and benefits from the good faith of peace-loving people. He misleads them by making them believe that he is a real social movement propelled by non-violent resistance and economic boycott, seeking to advance a fair solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
While the economic boycott of Israel is not a new phenomenon since it has been used by the Arab League since Israel’s creation in 1948, its reincarnation in the form of the BDS campaign is important. Its supporters are members of terrorist groups but also radical activists of the Christian extreme left, and even Jewish and Israeli groups and individuals.In the context of globalization and integration, BDS has also managed to penetrate traditional Western groups, including trade unions, academic institutions, and even the cultural and entertainment world.
Rather than advancing the prospects of peace and normal relations between the Palestinians and Israel, the BDS campaign is pushing forward a policy of total boycott and anti-normalization with Israel. This serves to reinforce polarization and hostility against Israel in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as in the international arena.
The BDS campaign had little effect on Israel’s GDP. It must be said that several countries have taken steps to ban BDS tactics, recognizing that the path to peace and reconciliation is open through mutual social, economic and cultural political commitment and normalization. In this context, Palestinian workers and managers, who lost their jobs due to BDS pressure, began to publicly oppose the BDS campaign.
At the same time, black South African intellectuals who suffered under apartheid also became adversaries of the global BDS campaign.
A similar sentiment was recently expressed by Jordanian Member of Parliament Abed Almaala: "BDS is an irresponsible act of hatred that threatens the security and stability not only of Israel, but also of my country, Jordan, and the entire Middle East. BDS is a threat to us all: a threat to America as much as it is a threat to Israel, Jordan and our Palestinian brothers. BDS is not only odious and shameful, but also reinforces the Arab dictators who hypocritically criticize Israel for alleged human rights violations when they themselves are the champions of human rights violations in the world"
8 – Israel undermines the “two-state solution”. FALSE!
All Israeli leaders have successively reiterated their support in principle for the vision of “two States for two peoples living side by side in peace and security” as the outcome of the negotiation process. This vision, originally envisioned by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehoud Barak in 2000, was articulated by President George W. Bush in 2002. It is universally recognized by the majority of the international community.
Accusing Israel of undermining or torpeding the two-state solution seems to be an ingenuous, unrealistic and misleading way.
Logically, a two-state vision cannot be imposed by unilateral resolutions generated politically by the United Nations, by an international conference or any other form of intervention by a third party.
The Palestinian imposition of preconditions for any return to negotiations, prejudging the substantive issues to be negotiated, in the spirit of an “all or nothing” strategy, is incompatible with any bona fide logic and any negotiation process. This strategy has consistently undermined efforts to resume negotiations.
The support of the Palestinian Authority and the open incitement and encouragement of acts of terror against Israel, their attempts to undermine the very legitimacy of Israel and to bring legal proceedings against Israeli leaders, demonstrate a clear determination against any negotiated solution for two States or any form of peace, and good neighbourly relations.
A viable two-state solution provides for a unified Palestinian leadership. Unfortunately, this is not the case today. Rather than using the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 to advance the two-state solution, the Palestinian leadership quickly lost power and control to the terrorist organization Hamas that established its own terror regime in Gaza.
The Hamas regime, identified with the Muslim Brotherhood, is in constant conflict with the Palestinian Authority. It rejects any possibility of political dialogue with Israel, and launched three major campaigns of terror against Israel in 2009, 2012, and 2014.
The failure of the Palestinian Authority to ensure a viable governance administration in Gaza, as well as Hamas' views to expand its control in other Palestinian cities in the West Bank, does not inspire confidence, and prove that the Palestinian leadership would not be able to honour and maintain order and security or any other agreement with Israel.
Radicalization, the structure of corrupt Palestinian governance, internal and intense violence in schools, mosques and the media in the West Bank and Gaza, are undermining the new opportunities to move towards a two-state solution.
The demand of the Palestinian leadership that Israel make concessions, while at the same time it regularly refuses to achieve the end of the war and the conflict, and thus negotiate a final status, does not bode well for an equitable solution for both States.
9 – “The Israeli maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip is illegal”. FALSE!
It is widely recognized that control of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza has been usurped by Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization, which is sponsored by Iran and receives arms from Tehran. Hamas and other terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad have turned the entire region into a hub of terrorist attacks against Israel.
Hamas produces weapons, promotes smuggling and has an arsenal of missiles, rockets and ammunition used against Israel and its civilian population. It directs this arsenal on Israeli civilian targets, in violation of all recognized norms of international humanitarian law.
In light of this situation recognized as an armed conflict, Israel has the prerogative to establish a naval and ground blockade to prevent the introduction of weapons and materials that could be used for bellicose purposes by Hamas. The institution of such a blockade is well established in international law practice.
This naval blockade is maintained in accordance with the rules of international law with the appropriate public notification to the sea area. It is also practiced to the humanitarian needs of the population, is fully consistent with accepted international law and practice.
In accordance with the conclusions of the UN Secretary-General’s Group of Experts which investigated the various fleets in 2010:The fundamental principle of freedom of navigation on the high seas is subject only to certain limited exceptions under international law. Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complies with the requirements of international law.»
Despite the hostile intentions of the Hamas administration in Gaza, the continued construction of tunnels and the manufacture of rockets, Israel maintains a continuous civil policy allowing the transfer of goods across different land crossings. It focuses on the evacuation of Palestinian patients for medical treatment in Israel, promotes projects initiated by the international community, and coordinates operations and assistance in agriculture, transport, trade and industry.
In accordance with the recent agreement between Israel and Turkey, Ankara has increased the amount of aid in the Gaza Strip.
10 – “Israel carries out murders against the Palestinians without trial, randomly and in cold blood”. FALSE and malicious!
In light of the video footage of the stabbing attacks on Israelis, it is shocking to see how Palestinian leaders and spokesmen, as well as the Arab League, have the nerve to misinform and to fabricate a blatant false narrative, accusing Israel of executing Palestinians at random and in cold blood.
It is no less scandalous to see how easily these lies are accepted by the international media. It is also appalling to see how Western and Arab politicians and even foreign and Israeli academics are rushing to accuse the Israeli police of «extrajudicial and barbaric executions».
By allowing themselves to be influenced and manipulated by such lies and by agreeing to propagate them, the international media and Western political figures encourage and offer the Palestinian leadership to continue its provocation and to incite acts of violence. The Palestinian leadership, instigator of this incitement, knows perfectly well that these lies will be perceived with sympathy in the West and that Israel will be condemned in advance, even if it defends itself legitimately against these attacks.
The Palestinian leaders considered by the international community to be “moderate” justify the stabbing or vehicular attacks by referring to “lack of hope”. Of course, their words justify terror and are unacceptable.
It should be noted that even the UN General Assembly decided that “criminal acts designed or calculated to provoke terror within a general public, against a group of persons, or for political purposes are unjustifiable in all circumstances, regardless of political, philosophical or ideological considerations, racial, ethnic, religious or other nature that may be invoked to justify them.”
11 – “Israel committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and blindly murdered children” – FALSE!
Almost inevitably, whenever Israel is forced to defend its people and its territorial integrity against Hamas' terror in the Gaza Strip or against Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is accused of exercising “disproportionate force”. and commit war crimes.
These accusations are gratuitous and intrinsically false. They ignore the unique and unprecedented nature of terrorism unleashed against Israel, the tactics and strategy that deliberately abuse and violate accepted civilized and humanitarian norms, and the realities of combat in the Gaza Strip.
The allegations against Israel knowingly manipulate accident statistics to establish false and disproportionate equivalences between Israel, a sovereign country bound by international humanitarian standards, and terrorist groups that deliberately violate all standards.
They are unaware of the fact that terrorist groups are operating and are taking advantage of the humanitarian limits that Israel imposes on its army to avoid civilian casualties. Both Hamas and Hezbollah use the following tactics:
They are cruelly forcing civilians, including women and children, to act as human shields by denying them access to shelter and housing.They deliberately use private homes, schools, medical facilities and religious sites to store rockets and various munitions, and as access points to operational tunnels.They deliberately and blindly target civilian centres, public facilities, schools and religious places in Israel.Their stated objective is the kidnapping of Israeli citizens and soldiers for hostage taking.The use of civilian facilities and the forced use of human shields is a deliberate tactic and strategy widely used in the arsenal of these terrorist groups. They rely on the likelihood that any military action or defensive retaliation launched by Israel would be likely to endanger and harm these innocent civilians, and thus generate charges against the Jewish state.The former Hamas minister of the interior, Fathi Hamad, boasted in 2008 that Hamas fighters were "forming human shields of women, children, the elderly and the mujahideen to oppose the Zionist bombing machine."These tactics and strategy are widely known and recognized by the international community. Politicians in the United States and Europe, as well as various international organizations and organizations claiming to uphold humanitarian standards, are fully aware of the serious humanitarian dilemmas and challenges Israel faces in trying to defend itself against this terrorism, while at the same time minimizing civilian casualties.Military experts who scrutinized Israel’s military actions said, “Israel has made extraordinary efforts to limit collateral damage and prevent civilian casualties in the Gaza conflict.” (General Martin Dempsey, US Chief of Staff).Similarly, the British military expert, Colonel Richard Kemp, testified before several commissions that Israeli forces have done more to protect the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of the war.In the absence of clear accepted international criteria for dealing with violations of humanitarian standards by terrorist organizations, all those who continue to condemn Israel instead choose to ignore and neglect the dilemmas and challenges in the fight against terrorism.Humanitarian standards are an integral part of the Israeli army’s legal obligations. The judicial and military authorities of Israel are required to investigate the charges and, where appropriate, to take appropriate legal action.
12 - "Israel is an apartheid state comparable to South Africa in the 1980s". FALSE!
And not just a little false; blatantly false, misleading and erroneous!
The treatment of Arabs in Israel is in no way comparable to the treatment of People of Colour in South Africa in the 1980s.
Apartheid was a unique repressive system, in which South Africa's white minority imposed its rule on blacks and other non-white racial groups that constituted over 90% of the population. Apartheid - which means 'separate development' in the Afrikaans language - was implemented through a systematic framework of racist legislation that imposed strict segregation, including laws that denied blacks access to 'white areas', prevented blacks and whites from marrying or even having sex with each other, and regulated the education of black children according to their 'servile' social position. The regime imposed on 12 million black South Africans "Bantustans", impoverished autonomous homelands whose borders were designed to exclude economically viable land.
Such laws have never existed and fortunately still do not exist in Israel which, in its Declaration of Independence, commits itself to safeguarding the equal rights of all citizens. Arab citizens of Israel enjoy the full range of civil and political rights, including the right to organise politically, the right to vote and the right to express themselves and publish freely. Israeli Arabs and other non-Jewish Israelis are members of the Israeli security forces, are elected to Parliament and appointed to the country's highest judicial bodies. They have equal educational opportunities, and initiatives are under way to further improve the economic situation of all minorities in Israel. These facts counter the apartheid argument and demonstrate Israel's commitment to democratic principles and equal rights for all its citizens.
Moreover, Israel's acceptance of a two-state solution as the result of bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations belies accusations that Israel's objective is the persecution of Palestinians.
Certainly, Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and in the West Bank face difficulties due to Israeli policies, including checkpoints, access to Israel, the security fence and other problems. However, these procedures and structures have been developed to promote security and counter possible terrorist actions, not to persecute or isolate.
Finally, disinvestment and boycott campaigns singularly demonise Israel and portray it as a pariah, while ignoring other states, many in the Middle East, that systematically violate human rights. If anti-Israeli disinvestment and boycott activists were truly interested in helping Palestinians and promoting Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation, they would advocate constructive initiatives between Israelis, Palestinians and others. Unfortunately, most of these activists ignore such initiatives and focus solely on denigrating Israel and promoting punitive actions against the state. Indeed, former South African Constitutional Court Justice Richard Goldstone wrote in a New York Times article that accusing Israel of apartheid "is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to delay rather than advance peace negotiations".
Since April 1967, the situation in the Middle East has been explosive. Serious incidents have taken place between Syrian and Israeli air traffic. For his part, Egyptian President Nasser is demanding the departure of the UN troops stationed in Gaza since the Suez expedition. On May 10, Nasser took a step by blocking the Gulf of Aqaba to prevent Iranian oil from reaching Israel. Feeling threatened by the encirclement of Arab armies, Israel launched an offensive against Egypt, Jordan and Syria on 5 June of the same year. For the Hebrew state, this was a preventive war.
Israeli Blitz Victory
The Israeli attack is sudden. The Egyptian air force is destroyed in a few hours. Israeli ground forces enter the Sinai and the West Bank. On 6 June, they captured Gaza, and the next day they captured the Arab area of Jerusalem as well as Nablus and Jerichos. On 9 and 10 June, the Israelis drove the Jordanians out of the West Bank and the Syrians out of the Golan Heights.
In only six days, from 5 to 10 June, the Israeli army won the victory. It demonstrated its know-how, the result of a sophisticated organization: military preparation for girls and boys, compulsory military service followed by periods of one month during which the reservists return to the army. Victory was also due to a strong national feeling and the tenacious idea of an external threat. Nothing would have been possible either without high-tech military equipment, manufactured locally or delivered by the United States. The hero of this war is the Minister of Defence, General Moshe Dayan.
The Israelis have won on all fronts.They are once again occupying the Sinai as far as the Suez Canal, but also Gaza, the West Bank, the eastern part of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights. These are territories where the Arab population is dense. As a result, more than a million Arabs find themselves under Israeli administration in what will be called the "Occupied Territories". At the time, the Israeli leaders said they did not want to keep these territories (with the exception of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which is a water reservoir). There is no question of managing such a large Arab population. They wanted to exchange the conquered lands for peace treaties with the Arab states, which would thus recognize Israel's borders, the 1949 borders to which they add Jerusalem.They are once again occupying the Sinai as far as the Suez Canal, but also Gaza, the West Bank, the eastern part of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights. These are territories where the Arab population is dense. As a result, more than a million Arabs find themselves under Israeli administration in what will be called the "Occupied Territories". At the time, the Israeli leaders said they did not want to keep these territories (with the exception of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which is a water reservoir). There is no question of managing such a large Arab population. They wanted to exchange the conquered lands for peace treaties with the Arab states, which would thus recognize Israel's borders, the 1949 borders to which they added Jerusalem.
The Israeli victory was welcomed by the Western countries (with the exception of France, which from the outset condemned the Israeli offensive). For their part, the USSR and the socialist countries broke off diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
On 22 November 1967, the UN Security Council instructed Israel to withdraw its forces from the occupied territories, to respect the sovereignty and integrity of the states in the region and to find a just solution to the refugee problem. This is the famous "resolution 242". Israel does not compromise and goes further by annexing the Arab part of Jerusalem...
October 6, 1973. Egypt and Syria launch a vast offensive on the very day the Israelis celebrate the great religious festival of Yom Kippur. Surprisingly, the Israeli air force was unable to escape the Egyptians' Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles. It suffered heavy losses. The Egyptian army crosses the Suez Canal and settles on the east bank, in the Sinai. Syria attacks in the Golan Heights. The objective of the Arab countries is to recover the territories occupied by Israel since the Six Day War of 1967, but also to force the Israelis to negotiate.
Two days later, Israeli troops under the command of General Ariel Sharon retaliate. They launched raids on Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Within days, the Egyptian armies were surrounded. Israel takes back the Golan Heights and settles in the south of Lebanon. The Israeli troops manage to infiltrate as far as 80km from Cairo and 50km from Damascus.
On October 24th, Tel Aviv and Cairo accept the cease-fire demanded by the UN but the next day, a rumour runs about an intervention of the USSR alongside the Arab countries. Fortunately, the crisis was quickly defused. At the instigation of Saudi Arabia, the oil-producing countries triggered an embargo which put the Western countries in a critical position, forcing them to dissociate themselves from Israel. The oil crisis deprives Europe of its indispensable sources of energy. It will lead to a serious economic crisis that will shake all Western economies.
The consequences of the Yom Kippur War:
Diplomatically isolated, dependent on the United States for rearmament, the Israelis must bow to the American policy led by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. On November 11, 1973, thanks to American mediation, Israel and Egypt sign an agreement. The two countries agreed to resolve their conflict by peaceful means and renounced force.
The UN sends a 7000-strong peacekeeping force (the Blue Helmets) to the Sinai. The conflict in the Middle East now concerns the whole world.
In Israel, the disappointments caused by the consequences of the Yom Kippur War are disturbing political life. Prime Minister Golda Meir resigns to make way for General Rabin, one of the architects of the victory of the 1967 war.
Palestinian fighters are called fedayin, which means "those who sacrifice themselves". They are part of Fatah but also of other movements such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) or the even more radical Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). In their view, armed struggle, including guerrilla warfare, attacks, hijackings, is the only possible way to "liberate Palestine". Israel sees this as terrorist acts.
The actions of the fedayeen disrupt the stability of Arab countries, as the Jordanian example shows. Using a succession of hijackings as a pretext, King Hussein of Jordan decided to put an end to the Palestinians who were refugees in great numbers in his country, where the most radicals had tried to seize power. In September 1970, he launched armoured tanks against the Palestinian camps. It is called "Black September". The fighting causes hundreds of victims. After several clashes and fragile agreements, they ended with the regrouping of nearly 5,000 fedayeen in the north of the country, who were massacred in July 1971. After an agreement signed between Yasser Arafat, King Hussein and Colonel Nasser (who died shortly afterwards, on 28 September 1971), the Palestinian resistance takes refuge in Lebanon. The PLO seems to have lost the upper hand...
Established in Lebanon, and taking advantage of the rivalries between religious communities that are tearing the country apart, Palestinian organizations are trying to seize power as well. A civil war broke out in 1975. It will last until 1990. The Palestinians are fought by the Syrians and the Israelis.
It is in this context that a new secret fedayeen organization, "Black September" (in reference to the massacre of Palestinians in Jordan) is born. "Black September" launches into a series of very violent actions. The most spectacular was the hostage-taking of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. On September 6, 1972, a group of fedayeen broke into the Olympic village. Israeli athletes were killed, others taken hostage. Palestinians demand the release of political prisoners. During this period of violence, the Israelis will launch reprisals: destruction of Arab villages in the occupied territories, raids in Lebanon... Israel hunts down the terrorists but without really succeeding in destroying the liberation movements which, for their part, maintain links with liberation and resistance movements from other countries (Ireland, the Basque Country...)
Driven out of Jordan, isolated in Lebanon, Yasser Arafat's PLO chose, after the Yom Kippur War (1973), another strategy: diplomacy. The balance of military forces is, in fact, unfavorable to the Palestinians. This new policy is bearing fruit. In 1974, the Arab summit in Amman, then the UN, recognized the PLO as "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people". The movement became a member of the Arab League in 1976.
This new policy is not shared by all Palestinian movements. Some continue the armed struggle and launch terrorist actions towards the cities of Israel from their bases in Lebanon.
For its part, Israel has not given up on destroying the PLO, which remains, for the country, a "terrorist organization". On June 6, 1982, the government of Menachem Begin launched a military offensive in southern Lebanon, in principle to protect the northern border, but in fact intended to destroy the OLM. This is the operation "Peace in Galilee" led by General Ariel Sharon, Minister of Defense. Despite strong resistance, Arafat and his fighters had to leave Beirut and take refuge in Tunisia. This exile does not prevent the PLO from continuing to exist politically. Palestinian nationalism will be expressed in the occupied territories with the outbreak of the Intifada in December 1987.
On November 15, 1988, the Palestinian National Council, meeting in Algeria, accepted UN resolution 242 as the basis for a peace conference, thus implicitly recognizing Israel. The PLO renounces terrorism. A new step taken on May 2, 1989 during a visit by Yasser Arafat to Paris. He declares to French President François Mitterand that the article of the Palestinian National Charter which calls for the destruction of Israel is "obsolete". Thus, the PLO publicly admits the coexistence of two states in Palestine.
December 1987. A serious traffic incident involving Israelis results in the death of several Palestinians. Conflicts erupt in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza. Young Palestinians are throwing stones at the Israeli military and police. It is the "Revolt of the Stones", or Intifada. Very quickly, the movement gained momentum. The Palestinian rioters are careful not to use firearms to prevent the Israeli army from being able to respond with weapons itself. Filmed by televisions around the world, the violent clashes between soldiers and young people, sometimes children, arouse unease in public opinion. Until then, Israel is seen as a people struggling for survival against the Arab powers. There, it is repression that it is. And, for many, it seems disproportionate. A growing number of Israelis see in it the urgency of a political solution to the conflict. The Intifada also shows that negotiation and reciprocal recognition can only exist if the Palestinian people feel recognized. During this First Intifada, 1,162 Palestinians were killed, including 359 that were killed by other Palestinians.
277 Israelis were killed, including 175 civilians.
The second Intifada, or Al-Aqsa Intifada, is triggered in a completely different context, as the Oslo Agreements have been signed. On September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon, then deputy and leader of Likud (the Israeli right-wing party) visited the Muslim holy place of Jerusalem, the Esplanade of the Mosques. For the Palestinians, this visit was a provocation. The next day in Jerusalem, the exit of the Friday prayer degenerates; seven Palestinians are shot. Like a trail of gunpowder, the clashes spread throughout the territories.
146 suicide attacks targeting mainly civilians were carried out in Israel shortly after the outbreak of the Intifada in 2000.
On June 1, 2001, an attack was carried out in a Tel Aviv discotheque, killing 21 people and injuring 120, mainly teenagers. This attack had a very lasting effect on the minds of Israelis. This attack will be one of the reasons given by the Israeli government for the construction of a separation wall or security fence that is supported by the majority of the Israeli population. Although validated as a provisional security measure by the Israeli Supreme Court, the UN will vote a resolution against it (by 90 states out of 181) and will ask Israel to dismantle it, although it will probably be the cause of the end of the conflict.
In 2002, the attack on the Park Hotel in Netanya, which resulted in 29 civilian victims, pushed the Israeli government to launch Operation Rampart, whose objective was a partial reoccupation of the autonomous territories under the direct control of the Palestinian Authority in order to stop the attacks.
The Palestinians also attacked Israeli civilians in the Arab-occupied territories (the West Bank and Gaza) by ambushing the Israelis. Marouan Barghouti is establishing himself as "a true warlord. His role in the suicide bombing campaign against Israel made him one of the Palestinians most wanted by the Israeli security forces. On 15 April 2002, Israel captured Barghouti. He will be indicted by a civil court for murder and attempted murder in a terrorist undertaking under his command.
Since the beginning of the second intifada, several hundred Palestinians have died in inter-Palestinian armed clashes, according to figures from the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of the Interior.
According to an NGO, between 2000 and 2005, this violence resulted in at least 267 victims by firearms (excluding other categories of weapons), 98 of which in 2005 alone.
In 2005, the departure of Israeli troops and the Jewish population from the Gaza Strip, decided by Ariel Sharon, now Prime Minister, left a tense situation. Exchanges of fire between members of Hamas and Fatah are common and armed incidents also took place in October 2005 between rival Palestinian groups in Lebanon. Finally, among the victims are Palestinians accused of being collaborators.
The Second Intifada caused 1,137 deaths on the Israeli side including 719 civilians and 4,745 Palestinians were killed. Yes, there are four times as many deaths on the Palestinian side. No, these 4,700 people were not all killed by Israel and all killed unjustly.
Indeed, among these 4,000 people killed, there were :
-466 Hamas members
-408 Fatah's Tanzim and al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades
-205 Palestinian Islamic Jihad
-101 Palestinians were killed by Palestinian civilians on suspicion of collaborating
-29 killed by members of the Palestinian security forces
-3 Palestinians killed by gunfire from Palestinians shooting at Israeli civilians
And 1,671 rioters, assaulters...
The strategic rift between Hamas and Fatah is growing. Arafat and the Palestinian authorities are weakened, Arafat is confined to his presidential residence in Ramallah and is no longer a reliable interlocutor for the Israelis. The Palestinian society escapes the control of its leaders.
The third Intifada begins on October 1, 2015 and is improperly called the "Knife Intifada": while the first modus operandi was the use of knives by terrorists, soon all available means of killing were used, such as battering cars, weapons of all kinds. These actions are part of the global terrorist wave initiated by the Daesh organization from Syria: if some large-scale actions are coordinated, others are based on individual acts. This is the case in Israel where the movement is not centralized, the perpetrators are religiously radicalized, the operations are rarely organized but are widely publicized on social networks. Indeed, most terrorists are young.
The movement is large: the attacks in Israel have been almost daily, taking place on the coastal promenade of Tel Aviv as well as in the streets of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and affecting passers-by of all origins. In a few months, 47 Israelis, 2 Americans, 2 Jordanians, 1 Eritrean, 1 Sudanese and 1 British were killed, hundreds were wounded, while 290 Palestinians were shot dead after the attacks.
The movement indicates a transformation of the mobilization against Israel: the protest against the occupation of the Palestinian Territory takes second place to a religious demonstration of hostility to non-Muslims and a defense of the Mosque Esplanade.
Mahmoud Abbas, before the first attacks, when the tension with Israel was high in Jerusalem, affirmed in September 2015 "every drop of blood shed in Jerusalem is pure, all the martyrs will go to paradise and each wounded will be rewarded by God." It was only later, when the situation escaped him, that he tried to regain control and changed his remarks by calling for calm; above all, the Palestinian and Israeli security forces have stepped up their cooperation, stepped up surveillance of social networks and carried out hundreds of preventive arrests. The number of attacks decreased at the end of 2016, without ceasing completely.
The construction of the security fence began with local and non-governmental initiatives as early as 2001. Residents near the former Green Line, from Mount Gillboa, near the Jezreel Valley in northern Samaria, began building fences to limit Palestinian incursions and the risk of attacks. It was only in a second phase, faced with the reality of construction, that the Government of Ariel Sharon in 2002 took up the issue. It asserted the need to protect Israelis from "Palestinian terrorist intrusions" and launched a project to build a 700-kilometer long "barrier", the shape of which varies according to the location. On its longest length, it consists of a fence equipped with electronic detection devices and fortified watchtowers. At its feet, on the Israeli side, there is a strip of loose sand on which footprints are to be found and a military road that is regularly patrolled by border guards.
In urbanized areas, the barrier takes the form of a wall and watchtowers about 7 meters high, designed to avoid firing from the Palestinian Territory. On the Israeli side, an environmental effort is made; on the Palestinian side, the inhabitants face a concrete wall. Passages are made through secure areas, checkpoints, which can be locked in case of tension.
For the Israelis, the fence stops terrorists and secures Israel; despite its cost, it has contributed to economic growth, both for construction and especially for electronic research, stimulating research and innovation in the field of electronic detection. For the Palestinians, in addition to the materialization of the border, the wall accentuates the fragmentation of the Palestinian Territory and greatly reduces the freedom of movement of its inhabitants.
Its route is a source of tension; while in its southern part, near Hebron, it follows the Green Line, it departs from it from Bethlehem, and is built in the area that was Jordanian until 1967; the barrier includes blocks of Israeli settlements located in the West Bank. It thus contributes to an annexation of territories materialized by a physical border. The UN was seized and the General Assembly condemned the construction of the "wall" on October 21, 2003 by 144 votes for and 4 against. For its part, on July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice judged the construction to be contrary to international law, it was therefore illegal and the Court demanded its dismantling.
Inside, Palestinian demonstrations are frequent. Under the leadership of doctor Mustafa Barghouti, a supporter of non-violent resistance in Israel, founder of the association Al-Mubadara ("The Initiative") with the support of Israeli non-governmental organizations, Palestinians are protesting to demand access to their land located on the other side of the barrier, on the Israeli side. Near Ramallah, the agricultural village of Bil'in becomes the place and symbol: while the barrier places Bil'in's land on the Israeli side, separating it from the West Bank and assigning it to the settlement of Matityahu East, the residents of Bil'in hold non-violent demonstrations every Friday and file an appeal with the Israeli Supreme Court for breach of law. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor and had the route of the barrier changed, thus returning Bil'in's agricultural land to the West Bank side. But in 2006, the barrier was completed, and if the protests continue, they no longer have any media impact and the form of peaceful protest loses its effectiveness.
In Gaza, a similar barrier was built. But Islamist Jihad militants dig tunnels to go underneath and infiltrate commandos in Israel; this strategy leads to the war in Gaza in 2012, many tunnels are destroyed, but some remain operational and others can be broken through. Therefore, in the summer of 2017, the Government announced a new security project: the construction of an underground wall.
Inseparable from the barrier is the checkpoint. Its appearance on the borders of the West Bank and Gaza is recent: until the late 1980s, the entry of Palestinians into Israel was little controlled, as 39% of active Palestinians work in Israel. The general entry permit was suspended in January 1991, during the First Intifada: the possession of a movement permit is now mandatory, and in 1995 checkpoints were introduced, placed under the authority of the new Directorate of Passages, under the Ministry of Defense.
They become essential with the construction of the security fence and signal the inequality of status: Palestinian vehicles are forbidden to circulate in Israel, while Israeli vehicles drive freely in the West Bank, luggage is inspected by scanners and metal detectors, identity papers and permits are systematically checked for Palestinians and Israelis. These checkpoints make the border a reality.
The security barrier is now part of the landscape, it materializes the territorial separation and durably shares the populations whose neighborhood contacts are now impossible. But clandestine crossings are possible, especially for young Palestinians seeking work in Israel, as reported by some testimonies.
Zionism is both an ideology and nationalist movement among the Jewish people that espouses the re-establishment of and support for a Jewish state in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (roughly corresponding to Canaan, the Holy Land).
(Source: Wikipedia)
On the opposite, Anti-Zionism is a prejudice against the Jewish movement for self-determination and the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in the State of Israel. It may be motivated by or result in anti-Semitism, or it may create a climate in which anti-Semitism becomes more acceptable.
Anti-Zionism can include threats to destroy the State of Israel (or otherwise eliminate its Jewish character), unfounded and inaccurate characterizations of Israel’s power in the world, and language or actions that hold Israel to a different standard than other countries. (ADL)
For decades now, Israel has been described as a racist state, compared to the Nazi regime and worse. Many antizionist protests have turned antisemitic and sometimes even violent, endangering Jewish lives and property, and in a number of cases police and prosecutors have been slow to respond to such obvious hate crimes.
On some American college campuses, anti-Israel events have been accompanied by age-old antisemitic slurs, creating a hostile environment for Jewish students, leaving them feeling isolated, and even threatening their physical safety. (AJC)
In a nutshell, Zionism is the struggle of the Jews to have a land and a country.
By denying this struggle and opposing Zionism, you are denying the right for Jews to self-determination, you are denying their rights and therefore you are antisemitic.
CAREFUL: Being critical of the Israeli Government is obviously not antisemitic, but it is also not anti-Zionist; if you read the definition of Anti-Zionism again, you will not see the term "Government" in one place. By criticising the Israeli Government, you are not anti-Zionist but opposed or anti-Government.
I can't stand Trump, but that doesn't mean that I am anti-USA.
I can't stand the appalling policies of the Chinese Government, that doesn't mean I am anti-China.
From this reasoning, being anti-Israeli government does not mean being anti-Zionist and anti-Israel.
As long as you don't cross certain boundaries, there is absolutely no problem in criticizing a government. It's freedom of speech.
The boundaries not to be crossed are holding all Jews around the world accountable for the actions of the Israeli Government, advocating the end of the existence of the State of Israel saying that this State is not equal to others, or sharing antisemitic drawings, cartoons, images, tropes or symbols.
WHAT IS ANTISEMITISM?
Short definition: The belief or behaviour hostile toward Jews just because they are Jewish. It may take the form of religious teachings that proclaim the inferiority of Jews, for instance, or political efforts to isolate, oppress, or otherwise injure them. It may also include prejudiced or stereotyped views about Jews.
Throughout history: Hostility towards the Jews dates back to ancient times, perhaps to the beginning of Jewish history. From biblical times to the Roman Empire, Jews were criticised and sometimes punished for their efforts to remain a unique social and religious group.
The rise of Christianity greatly increased the hatred of Jews. They were no longer considered to be mere strangers, but a people who rejected Jesus and crucified him, despite the Roman authorities ordering them to carry out the crucifixion. In the late Middle Ages (11th-14th centuries), Jews were widely persecuted as 'Christ-killers' and barely human 'demons'. Forced to live in an all-Jewish ghetto, they were accused of poisoning rivers and wells when they were sick. Some were tortured and executed for kidnapping and killing Christian children, drinking their blood and using it to cook matzoh. Many were forced to convert to Christianity after their conversions to avoid death, torture and deportation, even though they secretly practiced Judaism. (More recently, the Catholic Church and other Christian churches have denied these anti-Semitic lies.)
In the 18th century, as the influence of Christianity began to diminish during the Enlightenment - which celebrated the rights and opportunities of men and women to a far greater extent than ever before - hatred of Judaism based on religion gave way to non-religious criticism: Judaism was attacked as an outdated belief that blocked human progress. Jewish separatism was once again targeted. As European countries began to take on a modern form in the 19th century and national pride grew, Jews, who were still generally deprived of their civil rights and lived throughout Europe as foreigners, were subjected to additional hostility. This hostility sometimes resulted in deadly persecution, as in the Russian pogroms of the late 19th century - violent attacks on Jewish communities with the help or indifference of the government.
At the same time, in response to the decline of Christian belief and the growing number of Jews beginning to join the mainstream of European society (a trend known as "assimilation"), antisemites have turned to the new "racial science", an attempt by various scientists and writers to "prove" the supremacy of white non-Jewish people, which has since been discredited. Opponents of the Jews argued that Judaism was not a religion but a racial category, and that the Jewish "race" was biologically inferior.
Belief in a Jewish race would later become Germany's justification for seeking to kill every Jewish person in the lands occupied by Germany during World War II, whether that person practised Judaism or not. In fact, even the children or grandchildren of those who had converted to Christianity were murdered as members of the Jewish race. The Holocaust, as this systematic mass extermination was called between 1939 and 1945, resulted in the death of six million Jews, more than a third of the world's Jewish population. Although the rise to power of the Nazis (Germany's rulers during World War II) in the 1920s and 1930s involved many social and political factors, the views that contributed to making antisemitism an official government policy included the belief in the innate superiority of "Aryans", or whites ; the belief that Jews were destroying societies; that Jews were secretly working together to take control of the world; and that Jews already controlled finance, business, media, entertainment and communism in the world.
In the half century after World War II, public antisemitism became much less frequent in the Western world. While stereotypes about Jews remain common, Jews are hardly in physical danger. The hatred of Jewishness and conspiracy beliefs of past eras are for the most part shared by only a tiny number of people on the margins of society (although, as the attacks on the World Trade Center and Oklahoma have shown, even a handful of extremists can commit acts of great violence). There are, of course, exceptions: Disagreements over policy towards the State of Israel have created opportunities in which the speech "Zionist" - support for Israel as a Jewish homeland - is often used as an antisemitic code word for "Jew" in the general debate. Holocaust denial and other recent rewrites of history - such as the false claim that Jews controlled the Atlantic slave trade - lie about past events in order to make Jews appear devious and evil.
More seriously, many nations in Europe and in the former Soviet empire are struggling, mainly due to unstable or chaotic economic and social conditions, with movements opposing "foreigners" - including recent immigrants and traditional enemies. These movements defend racial or national supremacy and claim the kind of charismatic and authoritarian leadership that historically persecuted Jews and other minorities.
But while parts of Europe remain caught up in racial unrest, the Middle East is the hotbed of the harshest antisemitism in the world today. The media and the governments of countries opposed to Israel and the West regularly use Nazi language. And as dozens and dozens of terrorist incidents have demonstrated, many people in Middle Eastern countries are prepared to act on these beliefs. (ADL)
As said in What is Zionism?, CAREFUL: Just because the Middle East is a heaven for antisemitism does not mean Europe and America are JewFriendly! It is obviously insanely ignorant to think that your country loves Jews because you do not live in the Middle East!
It is even crazier to think that just because you have seen an antisemitic attack means there is no antisemitism in your country! Wherever you live, from Australia to Sweden, there is antisemitism! It is a sad but actual fact! Not acknowledging is not only antisemitic but also dumb and ignorant: EVEN if there was no antisemitism in your country, does that mean you could not fight for the Jews around the world? But wherever you live -except Israel of course-, there is antisemitism, whether you like it or not, and refusing to acknowledge and fight it is dangerous and ignorant, and it makes you part of the problem.
To sum up, constantly comparing Antisemitism to Islamophobia saying that Muslims are more oppressed than Jews is not only false but also (again) dumb. I am not going to dwell on the fact that statistically there are more antisemitic crimes than Islamophobic crimes because my aim here is not to denigrate the fight against Islamophobia merely because I am part of it.
On the flip side, minimising antisemitism by saying that Muslims are more affected and oppressed is certainly not the best technique to help Muslims, let alone Jews. Minimising is apology, and apology is complicity. By minimising antisemitism and denigrating it you are complicit in this hatred.
Having a Jewish friend or acquaintance does not in any way excuse your antisemitism. This is called tokenisation. And tokenisation, to put it simply, really very very simple, well it's not right.
To say that a movement - like BDS - is not antisemitic because it has Jewish activists is the same thing; tokenisation and honestly without wanting to hurt anybody, stupidity.
Candace Owens, a woman of colour, has supported Donald Trump many times. Trump is still a racist.
Finally, supporting antisemitic politicians or even idolising them makes you antisemitic yourself.
This applies to both right-wing politicians (Donald Trump, David Perdue...) and left-wing politicians (AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib...).
You must find politicians who are honest and not hostile to Jews (and other minorities of course).
One subject I would like to address is the famous phrase "Arabs did nothing to the Jews", because it is false.
Here is a small timeline of the massacres of Jews throughout history carried out by Arab peoples.
624-600: Jews are beheaded in Saudi Arabia.
624: The Byzantine Emperor orders the execution of thousands of Jews and expels the remaining Jews from Jerusalem.
640: Jews are expelled from Saudi Arabia.
692: Christians in Turkey refuse to associate with the Jews.
722: Byzantine forces force the Jews of the Byzantine Empire to convert to Christianity.
807: Abbassid Caliph Harun al-Rashid orders all Jews in the Caliphate to wear a yellow belt.
850: Jews are forced to wear special garments to differentiate Jews from Muslims and their synagogue is destroyed.
1016: Jews in Tunisia have the choice between exile and conversion to Islam.
1032: 6000 Jews are slaughtered in Morocco.
1096: First Crusade, 5000 Jews are killed.
1107: Moroccan Jews face the same dilemma as the Jews of Tunisia a few decades earlier; conversion or exile.
1165: Massive forced conversion in Yemen.
1232: Massive forced conversion in Morocco.
1333: Mass forced conversion in Baghdad.
1438: First ghettos established in Morocco.
1465: An entire community of Jews is massacred in Fez, Morocco.
1517: Pogroms in Hebron, including Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews.
1600s: Bukharan Jews are forced to wear different garments, not allowed to interact with Muslims, slapped in the head as punishment, and confined to Jewish quarters with high taxes.
1619: Massive forced conversion to Persia.
1790-1792: Virtually all Moroccan Jewish communities are annihilated.
1805: Algerian Jews are massacred.
1834: Antisemitic pogroms in Ottoman Palestine in Safed. 500 Jews are killed, including Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews.
1838: The Jewish neighbourhoods of Tzfat and Safed are destroyed.
1840: Jews are arrested in Syria, Jewish communities are attacked all over the Middle East and 63 children disappear.
1844-1902: Blood lives in Egypt.
1862: Ethiopian Jews try to escape from Christian missionaries and try to go to Ottoman Palestine; they die of hunger.
1870: The Turks seize the synagogue of Hebron.
1875: 20 Jews are killed in Morocco.
1886: Arabs attack Jews at Petah Tikvah.
1905: Jews are forbidden to build houses bigger than those of Muslims and forbidden to work in Yemen.
1907: 30 Jews are massacred, 200 women and children are kidnapped, raped and held hostage.
1912: 60 Jews are massacred in anti-Jewish riots.
1917: Jewish neighbourhoods are destroyed in Tunisia.
1920s: Jews are banned from commerce, forbidden to travel to British Palestine in Yemen, Burrakhan are forbidden to teach Hebrew and Zionism. The richest Jews are purged.
1920: Anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem kill 5 Jews.
1920: 5 Jews are killed during the Nebi Musa riot.
1921: 50 Jews are killed in antisemitic riots.
1921: A knife attack kills 5 Jewish children.
1929: Massacre of Hebron. 67 Jews are killed, houses and synagogues looted and ransacked.
1929: 20 Jews were killed in the Safed Massacre.
1930s: 20 Jews are massacred in Iraq, banned from government jobs, banned from teaching Hebrew.
1932: Anti-Jewish riots.
1934: Pogrom of Constantine in Algeria. 34 Jews are killed.
1934: Pogrom of Thrace in Turkey. Jewish homes and Jewish shops are vandalized. Quantity of deaths unknown since the Turkish government falsified it.
1936: Shooting of Anabta. 2 Jews are killed.
1936: Bloody Day in Jaffa. 9 Jews are killed.
1936: Riots in Jaffa. 14 Jews were killed.
1937: A family is killed, including 3 children, in Safed.
1937: 5 Jews are killed near Har Haruach.
1938: 6 Jewish passengers are killed during a flight from Haifa to Safed.
1938: Massacre of Tiberius. 70 Arabs set fire to Jewish houses and synagogues. 19 Jews are killed, including 11 children.
1941: Farhud Pogrom in Iraq. 780 Jews were killed.
1941: Gabes Pogrom in Tunisia. 7 Jews are killed.
1945: Anti-Jewish riots in Tripoli, Libya. 140 Jews are killed including 36 children.
1945: Anti-Jewish riots in Egypt. A synagogue is burnt down, 5 Jews are killed.
1947: Riots in Jerusalem. The Jewish quarter is badly damaged and 20 Jews are killed.
1947: Riots in Manama, Bahrain. Jewish houses and shops are vandalized.
1947: Anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo. 75 Jews are killed.
1948: Bomb attack in Cairo. 70 Jews are killed.
And the list goes on after the creation of Israel. Not to mention the alliance that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Amin al-Husseini made with the Nazis in 1936, his antisemitism and his support for the Holocaust.
1.09 billion people in the world harbour antisemitic attitudes.
29% of them are men, 24% are women.
29% of them are 50 years old or older, 25% are 35-49 or 18-34.
24% are Chrisitian, 49% are Muslim, 21% are atheist.
This poll was realised by the Anti-Defamation League, which polled over 4 billion people.
The first allegation that 41% of the people think is true is "Jews are more loyal to Israel than other countries". No need to say how antisemitic this allegation is.
But the worst is "Jews talk too much about the Holocaust". 30%. Overwhelming.
(Click on the underlined link above in the text to access the survey.)
PLAYING ANTISEMITIC OR NOT ANTISEMITIC?
Disclaimer: This is a sarcastic game. I obviously do not take this subject for granted. This 'game' aims to raise awareness and educate people.
FIRST CARD: Ilhan Omar
Antisemitic or not antisemitic?
ANSWER
Antisemitic.
Ilhan Omar has accused Jews of possessing dual loyalty, alleged that Jews buy their influence with money stating "It's all about the Benjamins baby", accused Israel of having hypnotised the world, showed support to the BDS movement, submitted a bill at the Senate comparing boycotting Israel to boycotting Nazis, refused to take back any antisemitic statements she has made and as a result of her antisemitism, got the endorsement of David Duke, a former KKK Grand Wizard.
Omar has also publicly expressed support for the antisemitic BDS movement, saying quote: "BDS opposes Israel's denial of Palestinian rights & dignity. People are entitled to express their views in this country and should support this nonviolent movement."
SECOND CARD: ALEXANDRIA OCASIO CORTEZ
Antisemitic or not antisemitic?
ANSWER
Antisemitic.
Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, is antisemitic but hides it better (which is not something positive by the way).
Ocasio-Cortez has ignored requests to meet with Jewish leaders of her district, has compared the Trump Administration's policies on Mexican Immigrants to the Nazis' policies on Jews, has endorsed Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, two other antisemites and also Jeremy Corbyn (who has been suspended from his own party over antisemitism), and has refused to condemn the BDS movement.
THIRD CARD: RASHIDA TLAIB
Antisemitic or not antisemitic?
ANSWER
Antisemitic.
Since I was talking about her a few seconds ago, let's talk about Rashida Tlaib!
Let's start with a recent one: Tlaib has promoted a Tweet that contained a phrase that is associated with calling for the elimination of Israel.
She has also planned to participate in a Zoom meeting with Marc Lamont Hill (fired from CNN for antisemitism, described Mizrahi Jews as an "identity category" that had been detached from "the Palestinian identity"), Barbara Ransby (defended Lamont Hill and raised bail money for terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who bombed a supermarket and killed two Jewish students) and Peter Beinart, an Anti-Zionist Jew -which represents 5% of Global Jewry-, he is used to prove a kind of innocence in the face of accusations of antisemitism (tokenisation). What are they going to discuss? Antisemitism. They are going to "dismantle antisemitism". A group of three antisemites and one Anti-Zionist Jew are going to dismantle antisemitism. No comment.
She has retweeted a false assertion accusing Jews of murdering a Palestinian child; this is blood libel. She has deleted the tweet, without apologising.
She has written articles for Nation of Islam, an antisemitic hate group which calls Judaism "a gutter religion".
Tlaib has partnered with Miftah to travel to the West Bank. Same Miftah which claims that "Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover".
Tokenised Jewish voices, although she herself has said "Tokenism in racism". Although 95% of Jews are Zionists, she regularly elevates anti-Zionist Jewish voices and treats them as representative of the Jewish people.
Promoted a tweet saying 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free' -- a trope that was first used by Hamas, a terrorist organisation that wants to genocide the Jewish people.
(Hen Mazzig/Tel Aviv Institute/Stop Antisemitism)
FOURTH CARD: DONALD TRUMP
Antisemitic or not antisemitic?
ANSWER
Antisemitic.
I've focused a lot on left-wing politicians, so let's talk a little bit about right-wing politicians; and let's start with Donald Trump, former President of the United States.
The list is sadly long, so let's just remember the worst.
Donald Trump has described those marching with Neo-Nazis chanting "Jews will not replace us" as "Very fine people".
He has claimed that Jews who vote for Democrats show "either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty", invoking antisemitic tropes.
He has employed the dual loyalty trope, telling Jews that Israel is "your country".
He has called Jews "brutal killers" and "not nice people at all".
Trump has stated that "Jews will not vote for the wealth tax", using THE antisemitic tropes; Jews are loaded.
He has told the Jewish Republican Coalition "you're not gonna support me because I don't want your money. You wanna control your politicians" using THE other antisemitic trope; Jews control the politics. (Jewish Democratic Council of America)
FIFTH CARD: DAVID PERDUE
Antisemitic or not antisemitic?
ANSWER
Antisemitic.
In case you don't know, David Perdue was the Republican candidate for the Senate seat in Georgia.
And thankfully, he was not appointed. I say 'thankfully' not just for his antisemitism. But let's focus on his Antisemitism Status.
He is less famous than people like Trump or Omar, but he is still a threat to the Jewish people of Georgia, and if he is elected, to The US.
Perdue ran an antisemitic ad that enlarged the nose of his Jewish opponent, Jon Ossoff, while accusing Ossoff and the Jewish Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer, of "trying to buy Georgia".
The Jew with the hooked nose is a Nazi stereotype. An exhibition was held in Paris in the 1940s, when it was occupied by the Nazis, in which models of Jews were shown with a hooked nose.
SIXTH CARD: KAMALA HARRIS
Antisemitic or not antisemitic?
ANSWER
Not Antisemitic.
Let's finish with our Non-Antisemitic Vice President.
During several years in public office, the frank views of the 55-year-old legislator on a range of issues and her run for the presidency gave Jewish voters much to consider.
She is also married to Jewish lawyer Douglas Emhoff, who will become the country’s first Jewish second husband.
As a senator, Harris has been aligned with Biden on Israel: She is seen as a strong supporter with ties to AIPAC, the country’s largest pro-Israel lobby, and unlike some Democrats has not broached the idea of conditioning aid to Israel to influence its policies. During her presidential run, Harris separated herself somewhat from even the mainstream moderates in the pack, firmly opposing the idea of condemnatory UN votes or even strong public criticism aimed at swaying Israeli policy.
She has repeatedly condemned Antisemitism, and condemned the BDS movement.