Stealing Israel's history - by Melanie Phillips

[Nannette]

In the Jerusalem Post, Max Singer makes a point that has long seemed to me to be absolutely central to the campaign to delegitimise Israel. It is painfully apparent to anyone who attempts to set out the facts about the Arab war against Israel that whatever evidence is brought forward is dismissed – because of the widespread belief that the Jews stole the land of Israel from the Palestinians. So no matter how many Israelis are murdered, or how nefarious is the Palestinian Authority in concealing its real intention to destroy Israel, people brush it all aside because they think Israel stole the land from the Palestinians.

This is, of course, historically illiterate. There was never an Arab country called Palestine. For about 400 years the Jews had sovereignty in what is now Israel and the West Bank, despite losing parts of it to foreign conquest, until they were finally driven out in 135 CE. It was the Romans who renamed Judea Palaestina to expunge all traces of the Jews. The land of Israel was stolen from the Jews, first by the Romans and then by the Arabs. Jews did not conquer Arabs; Arabs conquered Jews. Jews did not ethnically cleanse Arabs from the land; Arabs ethnically cleansed Jews. Even so, a continuous Jewish presence remained in Palestine. Israel was not created in 1948, but restored. As Singer writes:

‘The disputed land, we should remember, became available in 1920 when its former sovereign, the defeated Ottoman Empire, was removed. The League of Nations heard the dispute between the Jews, represented by the Balfour Declaration of Great Britain, and the Arabs living in the land, represented by other Arab countries. Aware that the Jews had ruled the land in ancient times, had no other homeland, and were displacing no existing state, the League decided that the Jewish people should be invited to settle the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as its homeland. The Arabs, including the Palestinians, never accepted this decision - which has never been rescinded. Some argue that the League of Nations decision was a "colonial" decision and should not stand against the right of self-determination. But the League decision was the binding legal authority in 1922 and all Jews who came to the land after that date to build a state came on the basis of that authority. And the many Arabs who moved to the land after 1922 came knowing that it had been legally designated as the future Jewish homeland. While this may not be the end of the story it is an essential beginning.

‘Israel's rights are not perfect or exclusive, but they are certainly strong enough so that it does not come to the table as a "thief of Palestinian land." The Palestinians' claims may be strong enough to justify giving them some of the land they want. But since the Palestinians have never been rulers of the land, it could not have been stolen from them. Palestinians, therefore, are claimants, not the victims of theft. Their behavior should be judged as the acts of a claimant seeking land to which he thinks he is entitled, not as the acts of a dispossessed owner.’

All very true. The problem is, however, that this argument is simply not being aired. The Israelis, who of course have the most direct interest in ensuring that the facts about their own history are made known, refuse to do so. They refuse even to acknowledge the argument that lies behind the libels – that Israel has no right to exist because the Jews stole the land from the Arabs – because they say no other country is singled out in this way by having its right to exist called into question and that to answer the charge is to give legitimacy to the question.

Which has got to be one of the most stupid and self-defeating positions ever. Turning a cloth ear to this libel has allowed ignorance to be colonised by the propaganda of hatred and extermination. While Israel is on its high horse, it hasn’t noticed that someone has cut it off at the knees.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001247.html
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He who is merciful with the cruel, will end-up being cruel to the merciful
- Kohelet Rabba 7:16

[sparky]

Yup. No such thing as "palestine". No such thing as a "palestinian"

[Nannette]