3 great, and 2 smaller, Palestinian lies

If I didn’t know the truth, I might be swayed by the  three great lies, and two half truths, of Palestinian supporters.

But I do know the truth, which the majority of their supporters — especially on college campuses — don’t know, and in some cases don’t want to know. They are the ignorant, who, like parrots, repeat empty words with no knowledge of what they mean. Then there are the evil, who know they are trafficking in lies. Everything I report here is verifiable fact.  

We start with the three great lies, using words you see on their posters:

Genocide. As defined by the U.N., genocide is committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.

That is what happened to the Jews during the Nazi era, what Stalin and Mao did to their own unwilling peasants, what the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia, what the Hutus did to the Tutsis in Rwanda. Mass, unrelenting murder. 

Israelis have killed Palestinians, there is no denying that. But they were not killed because of who they were, which was exactly what befell up to 1,400 Israeli Jews during the Oct. 7 Hamas slaughter. If there is genocide in the Mideast, it is on the part of Hamas. It is in their charter, right in the second paragraph.

If Israel wanted to kill millions of Arabs, it has the means to do so. As awful are the attacks on military targets in Gaza — with civilian casualties because Hamas deliberately and unlawfully locates in neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and mosques — they are not massive attacks, such as both sides conducted during World War II. The Palestinian population is increasing, not decreasing.

The other side often calls Israel “Nazis.”

What kind of Nazis would make citizens of the 2 million Arabs who live, unmolested, in Israel? Those 2 million Arabs are the most free in the Arab world. They are educated like all Israelis, they get health care, they can live anywhere, they vote, and they are elected to the Knesset, which is Israel’s parliament. What kind of “genocide” is that? And that brings us to 

Apartheid. The Arabs in Gaza and in the West Bank are not Israeli citizens and don’t have the rights of 2 million Arab citizens living in Israel. They border Israel, but are not part of Israel, as Canada is not part of the U.S., and Canadians don’t have U.S. rights.

Apartheid, in its traditional sense of separating people by race or caste — such as was practiced in South Africa — the oppressed group of citizens were denied the rights of citizens. That does not happen in Israel, where citizen Arabs, Jews, Muslims, and Christians, all have identical rights, including free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of employment, and freedom of movement. This is true nowhere else in the Arab world. What happens in Israel is not apartheid. That is a lie.

Colonizers. How can indigenous people be colonizers? 

How long were the Jews in this land? Since before the birth of Christ, who you may recall was Jewish. You may also recall that he was born in Bethlehem, which was — and is — in a place called Israel, or Judea. Say Judea aloud. It tells you all you need to know about whose land it is. 

The Jews were living there long before that, before being conquered by Rome, which adopted the name Palestine in an attempt to sever Jews from their heritage. The Romans were  successful with the name, but not with their attempt to expel Jews from their land. Jews have had a continuous presence there for 3,000 years.  

Palestinian supporters endorse a popular false narrative that all or most of the Jews in Israel arrived in the wake of World War II, usurping a land that was not theirs. The new arrivals were (ugh) Europeans.

Many Jewish Holocaust survivors did migrate to Israel, but in the thousands, not millions. Some 700,000 dark-skinned Sephardic came from Arab countries, from which they were expelled. (About an equal number of Arabs fled or were forced out of Israel during the 1948 war. No Arab state took them in.) Modern Jerusalem had a Jewish majority as early as the 1850s. Colonizers is a lie.

The two half truths:

Blockade. Palestinian supporters say Israel is “blockading” the northern entrance to 25-mile long Gaza out of sheer meanness. They never mention that Egypt blockades the southern entrance.

The “blockade” began in 2005 to prevent the smuggling of weapons and terrorists into Gaza and to impede Hamas’ ability to attack its neighbors. Have you ever heard the protestors complain about the Egyptian “blockade?” I doubt it. 

2005 was the year that Israel withdrew its military, and 9,000 civilian residents, from Gaza, leaving intact 3,000 greenhouses the Gazans could use, but they were promptly looted.

The term “blockade” is false because Israel — until the Oct. 7 massacre — had allowed food, fuel, water, medicine, and construction materials to pass through.

Occupation. When the poster says, “Free Palestine, from the river to the sea,” that is an explicit denial of Israel’s right to exist, because its borders are from the Jordan River (now) to the Mediterranean sea. It suggests that all of Israel is occupied land. That is a lie.

In 1947, the U.N. voted to divide what was left of Palestine (after the British had taken more than half of it to create what is Jordan) between the Jews and the Arabs, because the two communities had been warring against each for decades. The Arabs’ innate anti-Semitism prevented them from accepting Jews as neighbors.

For their part, the Jews felt cheated because they had been promised more land by the 1917 Balfour Declaration to establish a Jewish national home, but they accepted what was offered.

The Arabs — granted their own state — did not accept it.

In 1948, after installing a democratically elected government, Israel declared independence and was immediately attacked by five Arab nations with the declared intent of destroying Israel and finishing the job Hitler had started.

The aggression failed and as a result of losing a war the Arabs had started, some of their land was conquered by Israel. The new borders were accepted by the world. It was not an occupation.

Occupation typically refers to foreign control of an area under another state’s previous sovereignty. In the case of the West Bank, there was no legitimate sovereign because Jordan itself had illegally occupied the territory from 1948 to 1967. 

As previously mentioned, Gaza is not occupied.

During the 1948 war, Jordan’s armies drove across the river and occupied the West Bank and half of Jerusalem. No one complained about  that “occupation,” during which Jordan could have permitted the Palestinians to declare independence, but that did not happen. More than half of Jordan’s population is Palestinian Arab.

Israel remains on the West Bank today, to protect the safety of its citizens in Israel. So, yes, that is an occupation, one that is defensive, and  will end as soon as there is peace between the Arabs and Israel.

Don’t hold your breath.