Debunking Lies The Public Swallows About Israel Part I

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

Jews were born from Isaac, Abram and Sarah's first baby, a long awaited baby.  Jews have managed to remain in Eretz Yisrael ever since.  Abram was born in the 2nd millennium, about 1948 BCE.  This is documented in the Bible.  

Lie:  1. Israel was 1st created in 1948 after the Holocaust.

Truth:  The Jewish people have maintained ties to their historical homeland for more than 3,000 years, since the time of Abraham when the family went into Canaan. Jews speak a national language of Hebrew; comprise a distinct civilization. Return and resettlement in Israel has gone on for centuries, and 67 years of nation-building, beginning in 1881, produced a Jewish state that the UN officially recognized in 1948. 

                                             

 

Lie:2. Before 1948, Arabs owned 95% of Israel.

Truth:  Jews owned 8.6% of the land of Israel.  Arab who remained in Israel owned 3.3%;  16.5% was owned by Arabs who fled. Many who fled had sold their land to Jews who paid ridiculous high prices because of the religious value to Jews.   The remainder was state land that legally passed from the British Mandatory government to the successor, the government of Israel; okayed by law of League of Nations and United Nations. 

                                         

 Lie:3.  The British aided a Jewish takeover of Palestine.  

Truth:  This accusation is the very opposite of the truth.  The British government progressively limited Jewish immigration into the Mandate in 1921, 1929, and finally in 1939.  Britain severely restricted Jews from buying land on a large scale, even at exorbitant prices.  Yet, at the same time, Arabs from Egypt and Syria freely entered the Mandate to take advantage of the higher wages and living standards generated by Jewish settlement. (They were biting the hand that was feeding them.)  According to British census figures, Arab population increased 75% between 1922 and 1931. British had the job of helping the Jews to create a Jewish Homeland, but they were destroying it by their prejudice against Jews.  Britain fought the drive for Jewish statehood in Palestine as they saw that as a threat to their Empire and its relations with the Arabs. But they sure grabbed that mandate from the League of Nations promising to uphold it, no doubt.                                

Lie:4.  Israel usurped (take (a position of power or importance) illegally or by force.) all of Palestine in 1948. 

Truth: Almost 80% of historical land of Palestine was given to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan by the British in 1922.  By 1948, the UN partitioned the REMAININGr land into 2 states:  Arab Palestine and Jewish Israel.   

Israel's Declaration of Independence, like the USA's 4th of July, extended the hand of friendship to her neighbors.  ON THE SAME DAY, 5 Arab armies, with planes and tanks, invaded  the Jewish piece of land.  The Egyptian and Jordanian armies swept into Israel and occupied the land that was to have been the new Arab state of Palestine.  Jordan later annexed the West bank and Egypt and controlled the Gaza Strip.  Thus, it was EGYPT and JORDAN who usurped Palestine, not Israel.  Israel in 1948 claimed only those areas allotted to her by the partition plan and the adjustments caused by the 1948 War of Independence.  That is all Israel held for almost 20 years.  

Lie:5.  The basic issue in the Middle East is Israel's creation of the Palestinian refugees and its responsibility for them.

Truth:  Since 1948, there have been 2 refugee problems:  (1)the Arabs who left Israel while Jews begged them to stay, and (2)the Jews who were forced out of Arab countries.  British pre-1947 population figures and post 1948 assessments place the number of Arabs who left at between 530,000 and 590,000:  on October 18, 1948, Ralph Bunche, then acting UN mediator in the Palestine dispute, fixed the number at 472,000.  Some 140,000 Arabs stayed in what became Israel.  The 850,000 Jews in Arab countries suffered harsh persecutions.  Of those, 794,000 emigrated and 600,000 of them settled in Israel.  

In 1948, Arab attacks upon Jews were the rule.  By contrast, Jewish defense groups hit military targets only.  Recently released documents from the US archives contain many 1948 dispatches from American Consul Aubrey Lippencott, repeatedly insisting that the Jews were urging Arabs to remain.

The Arab exodus occurred in 3 stages. (1) December 1947-February 1948 upper-middle class Arabs left to sit out the unpleasantness, creating a Palestinian leadership vacuum. (2) March-June 1948 panicking Arabs in central Palestine moved to the West bank and Gaza-Arab Palestine-as fighting increased; (3) last half of 1948, at urging of the Arab leaders, Arabs in the north and Galilee fled the intense battles.   

According to the UN, 74% of Arab refugees moved to Gaza, the West bank, or Transjordan--all parts of historic Palestine.  There was a population exchange, in which Israel absorbed a greater number of Jews from Arab lands and did so without the land or resources of the Arab states.   

Resource:

NEAR EAST REPORT: a Washington letter of American policy in the Near East, , from Jewish Digest of December 1975