A Few Forgotten Facts
1. Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE, two thousand years before the rise of Islam.
2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.
3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.
4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE lasted no more than 22 years.
5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.
6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.
7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.
8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.
9. In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.
10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution, and slaughter.
11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.
12. Arab refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people's lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.
13. The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.
14. The PLO's Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.
15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.
16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.
17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.
18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.
19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.
20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeJust saw this and thought it was the funniest thing I've seen in a long while.
Image by Mez Love via Flickr
Well done Amy! For the rest of the essay click hereIn the late 1800s, some Jews began looking for a solution to the violent Judeophobia (I prefer this term to “anti-Semitism”) in Europe that they had been enduring for centuries. (Concise timelines of Judeophobia are here and here.) It was obvious to people like Theodor Herzl that the Jews needed their own land where they would no longer be persecuted. (Examples of brutal, racist treatment can be seen here and here.) Jews bought more land in Palestine (whenever possible – many Palestinians refused to sell land to Jews), and Russian Jews immigrated there to flee the waves of pogroms, increasing the Jewish presence in Palestine, even before the British issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917. However, the British also promised the land to the Arabs, and had separately made a deal with France to make Palestine internationally controlled. The Arabs revolted against the British (killing Jews as well, just for good measure) in 1936. Although the Arabs weren’t successful in kicking out non-Arabs, this revolt started some cultural shifts – namely, increased hostilities between Arabs and Jews (two groups whose ancient histories had been intertwined in this area for thousands of years), and Britain revoked their promise to give land in Palestine to the Jews.
You say the Israelis are brutal and racist. However, I think you are seeing only the ugliness of war on one side. It is ugly on both sides. The Israelis did not start the war. On May 15, 1948, just one day after the independent state of Israel was created, six Arab nations declared war on Israel. The war could have been avoided if the Palestinians had agreed to the U.N.-proposed two-state proposal. And still, the war could end at any time if they would agree to a two-state proposal.
After all, what’s the world coming to, when a murderous terrorist operating outside the arm of justice can get snuffed achieve martyrdom while attempting to make more mayhem?
