Popular Myths

by admin

 

“When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive
the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to
forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will
come when the Arabs will love their children more than they
hate us.”
Golda Meir

The Nazis believed that if you told a lie often enough it would eventually be accepted as truth. Nowhere is this more evident than in the so called Palestinian/ Israeli conflict. One lie has been heaped upon another until the myth has become popular legend and accepted everywhere as truth. Those who try to put the record straight are ridiculed and not even given a hearing. Why is this so and, more important still is the question, why do learned people who know better accept this scenario? I will leave you to find an answer to this question.

On the 14th May 1948, in response to international approval voiced through the United Nations, David Ben Gurion announced Israeli’s existence as a nation. The very next day five Arab armies attacked Israel with the express intention of, as they put it, “driving the Jewish people into the sea”. This was illegal and an act against the will of the international community and was thus a blatant case of pan Arab aggression against the fledgling Jewish State. Listening today to the media one would never believe that Israel was attacked in this way. If anything the Arabs and the Palestinians are victims of Israeli aggression!

Speaking of Palestinians; up until 1948 Arabs and Jews were all considered Palestinians. I recently met a Jew who showed me his identity card from that era which clearly designated him a Palestinian. The truth is anyone who lived in that region up until 1948, and thus under the British Mandate, was designated Palestinian. No particular racial or ethnic group had that exclusive identity. There were Jewish Palestinians or Arab Palestinians and even International Palestinians and that was it. However, again, you would not know this today. The conventional wisdom is that Arab Palestinians were the only racial group bearing this title. In fact the Arabs in the region up until then were not even thinking in this way. This “exclusive thinking” is a recent development! But then who cares about facts?

Thankfully and rather remarkably Israel won the so-called War of Independence, but the beautiful Holy City of Jerusalem fell into the hands of Jordanian forces and that country then promptly and illegally annexed Jerusalem and the West Bank (Judea/Samaria). This was a real occupation but it drew no real outcry from the world. So, for nineteen years when the Arab/Palestinians had what they say they want now they never lifted a hand to establish a state of their own with East Jerusalem (The Old City) as its capital. An independent Palestinian State was definitely not on their minds; the destruction of the Jews was! So, in 1964 when they held East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank they founded the PLO with the express mandate to liquidate the State of Israel. They not only agreed on a phased plan by which they would accomplish this, but they also launched a terror campaign against the Jews in what was Israel proper. That is, what today is undisputed Israeli territory. Yasser Arafat, up until the day he died, never moved away from the 1964 phased plan for the destruction of Israel and he said it. However, you would never believe this if one listens to the politicians that strut the world and the media that follows them. For them Israel is the obstacle to peace and any declaration by an Arab or Palestinian leader to the contrary is not to be taken seriously. Actually, some of these politicians, sadly from Western Democracies, are now calling for Israel to be reasonable and talk to the leadership of Hamas. The mythological war continues and sadly infects minds across the globe with error posing as truth.

In 1967 Israel was again in the firing line of the pan Arab alliance that thought that they could again destroy her. Emboldened by Russian support, and new generation weaponry from that state, Abdul Nasser removed the United Nations peace keepers from the Sinai, he blocked the Straits of Tiran and mobilized his armed forces and those of Jordan, Syria and Iraq for war with Israel. In addition, he made fiery speeches predicting the destruction of Israel and the arrival of a new era of Pan Arab power. Israel, with little options, seized the opportunity and with lightening speed destroyed Egypt’s airpower in one day and in six days inflicted a crushing defeat on the surrounding Arab armies. The rest is indeed history but today, in many cases, because Israel struck first, she is accused of being an aggressor. These accusers rewrite history by ignoring the hostile posture adopted by Nasser’s Arab alliance coupled with his military mobilization that dragged Israel into a war that she never wanted or initiated. The conventional wisdom is that she should have waited for the “death blow” before defending herself. The Arabs and Palestinians were again projected as the victims!

In 1973 the same scenario unfolded on the Day of Yom Kippur. This time Israel was attacked and taken totally by surprise. Golda Meir, the Prime Minister of Israel, at one point feared that the state would be lost and even said as much. Thankfully the tide of battle turned and with much loss of life Israel survived. Not only did she survive but she almost took Damascus and Cairo! To save Arab honor the world stepped in and Israel agreed to a ceasefire. Strangely today the Yom Kippur war is celebrated as a victory in Syria and Egypt. The myth continues.

In the 1990s and up until the year 2000, by virtue of the Oslo Accords, Israel did the unthinkable and eventually offered Yasser Arafat 97% of the West Bank including significant parts of East Jerusalem including the Temple Mount. A trade off for the remaining 3% of territory was to be made. It was an unprecedented offer that even alarmed many Israelis. Arafat refused it demanding that a right of return of millions of Palestinians be agreed upon that would grant them permission to live, not in Palestine, but in Israel. Israel could not agree to this and thus an offer that would have led to Palestinian statehood was rejected on the grounds of something that had nothing to do with that proposed state. The Palestinians broke with discussions and returned to war by provoking the Second Intifada. Many Israelis died in the most horrific suicide attacks but Israel was the aggressor in the minds many international leaders. The media happily played along with this myth and even fabricated scenarios of so called Israeli abuse of Palestinians. And, as for the Temple Mount where this Intifada began, according to Palestinian historians, including Mahmoud Abbas, a Jewish Temple never ever did stand there, and the Holocaust never happened! The mythological march continued.

And just in case you are doubting all of this, for many in the West, sadly, thousands upon thousands of missiles aimed at Israeli civilians by Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists are not a problem and Israel should definitely not vigorously defend itself from this outrage. She is an aggressor and so, for more than a decade now, the international community has done nothing about these attacks that continue until this day. There were no demonstrations in the streets of Europe, and no one cared up until the day that Israel decided to defend itself. Then the world cared enough to condemn her and the masses came out onto the streets to express their rage against her. All the while millions of people were dying in Sudan, Iraq, Syria and central Africa but no one cared. In Nigeria thousands of Christians are being murdered every month by Boko-Haram, Islamic terrorists, and no one lifts a finger to help them because what really matters is the problem of the Jewish State. It must be delegitimized, discredited and ultimately dismantled and so perpetuating the myths surrounding her conflict with the Palestinians is essential because the ultimate goal is to return the region to the Dar al Salam! (The House of Islam)

Now President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have agreed upon a reasonable and promising peace plan that will afford the Palestinians one last opportunity to acquire a state of their own with the hope of peace, economic development, investment and the delivery of much needed social services to the Palestinian people. Their answer so far has been one of rejection. In fact, Mahmoud Abbas called President Trump a dog! This is not without meaning in the Islamic world since Muslims are forbidden to have dogs because they are considered demonic and evil. It is an insult that one only levels against those that one hates and detests the most. This will surely be to their loss because, should they persist in their rejection, Israel will have no other option than to press ahead with resettling Judea and Samaria, which after all is their ancient biblical and historical heartland. When one builds castles on sand one should not be surprised if they collapse. It is this reality that now faces the Palestinian Authority.

Malcolm Hedding

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