The real history of Israel

Note: The following was written by me on February 16, 2003, five years before I started blogging.

For 2,000 years the Jews had been looking for a home. Hatred of them over the years was unlike hatred for any other nationality in the history of the world. During WWII over two million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and, as a result of that, there was a lot of pressure following the war to provide the Jews with a homeland.

The liberation of Israel, the search for a homeland, is called Zionism. In the late 1940s it was believed that much of the hate for the Jews -- called anti-Semitism -- may have stemmed from the fact that they were without a home. After the war, the British and French had obtained land in the Middle East that had been ruled by the Ottoman Turks for over two hundred years. The land was divided up, and a very small portion was given to the Jews so they could form their nation state of Israel.

The area was small and broken up into three parts. At it's narrowest spot the new nation was a mere ten miles wide. At this time there were Jews and Arabs scattered all over the Middle East, and only ten percent of the Palestinians made their homes in the land that was to become Israel at that time. And there was no talk of creating a Palestinian homeland. In fact, the Palestinians didn't even exist.

However, almost immediately after the inception of Israel, most Arab nations in the Middle East declared war against Israel, figuring Israel would be quite vulnerable. And, since they figured the Arabs would easily win, most of the Palestinians (the 10% of them that happened to actually live in Israel) left Israel thinking they would return as soon as the war was over.

No Arab was kicked out of Israel, as many progressive historians will tell you, or as many Arab nations will tell you, or as anti-Semites around the world will have you believe. In fact, the Israeli government wanted the Arabs to live in peace in Israel with the Jews. Yet the Arabs did not want that; they did not want peace with Israel.

So the Palestinians left, and they never returned. Israelis, many only recently removed from concentration camps, were determined to win this war -- and they did. Therefore, the Arabs who left Israel vowed never to return until Israel was defeated, which they (many of them anyway) still believe will happen.

After this war Israel had gained access to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, but declined this land. The Arabs refused to admit defeat, and they also refused to provide any help for the Palestinian refugees either. They wanted to use the Palestinians (as they were now termed) as pawns to make the rest of the world look as though Israel was the bad guy here. They wanted people to think the Jews forced the Palestinians out of Israel, and now refuse to let them back in. But that's not what happened at all.

The Israeli's, on the other hand, developed a very successful democracy and gave all the people the freedoms that came with it. The Palestinians that chose to remain in Israel were allowed to enjoy those same freedoms. Israel became the only democracy in that part of the world at that time, and, thus, developed one of the greatest economies in the region.

Despite this, however, the Arabs continued to tell the world that Israel refused to let the Palestinians back into their homeland. But the Arabs were claiming that all the Palestinians were from Israel not simply the 10% that lived there in 1948 and fled on their own accord -- but all of them. This created much world-wide animosity toward the Israelites. In many cases, the Israelites fought to keep the Palestinians out, but this was only to protect their homeland, for if all the Palestinians were allowed into Israel, the Jews would become far outnumbered by Arabs and the Jews would be easily driven out.

And the Palestinian refugees gained sympathy from the rest of the world as planned by the Muslim nations, and a whole lot of money too. They even received money from the Israelites. They even received (and still do) money from the U.S. Much of this money was used by PLO leader Yasser Arafat to support terrorism against Israel.

In 1967 Egypt, Syria and Jordan attacked Israel for a second time, only to be defeated once again. At this time Israel did not annex the West Bank or the Gaza Strip (however they had every right to), but did maintain control of the land. David Horowitz, "Why Israel is the Victim", (http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/), wrote, "No responsible Israeli government could relinquish a territorial buffer while its hostile neighbors were still formally at war. This is the reality that frames the Middle East conflict."

The Arabs, despite the defeat, continued to declare war. In 1973, Israel was again attacked by the Arabs, and this time by a total of eleven Arab nations. And, once again, Israel came out as the victors.

Horowitz writes:

Even to this day the Arabs claim that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are the obstacle to peace. But there are Arab settlements in Israel that are not a problem for Israel, so why should Jewish settlements be a problem for the Arabs? The claim that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are an obstacle to peace is based first of all on the assumption that the Jews will never relinquish any of their settlements, which the Camp David Accords prove is false. It is really based, however, on the assumption that Jewish settlements will not be allowed in a Palestinian state -- which is an Arab decision and is the essence of the entire problem: the unwillingness of the Arabs to live side by side with the 'infidel' Jews... The Middle East conflict is not about Israel's occupation of the territories; it's about the refusal of the Arabs to make peace with Israel, which is an inevitable by-product of their desire to destroy it."

Another lie, Horowitz writes, is that the Palestinians want a Palestinian State and the Israelites refuse to give it to them. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was not even formed until 16 years after the Arabs first declared war against Israel, and at the time the West Bank wasn't even under Israeli control.

But it doesn't matter because the world was buying it. If you tell a lie enough times people begin to believe it as fact. Most liberal (progressive) world leaders supported the PLO cause, most media outlets support the PLO, many leaders have made statements regarding Zionism being a racist movement, and the U.N. even passed a resolution stating this. (Typical of progressives who don't seem to care about facts anyway -- just change history, and twist the truth).

A few years ago former President Jimmy Carter went to Syria, a country which is responsible for a large number of crimes against humanity, but instead of crying out against those crimes, he complained about the way the Israeli's were fighting Palestinians who were stoning Israelis. It gets ridiculous.

And, as I stated earlier, you cannot negotiate with a terrorist. The Palestinians, like all Arabs, have only one goal and that is absolutism. They will not settle for anything less. Oh, they say they want peace, but by Arafat's refusal to accept the Oslo Peace Accords, which would have provided the Palestinians 95 percent of everything they wanted, nearly everything they wanted was turned down by Arafat. The reason he turned it down is because "These concessions confronted Arafat with the one outcome he did not want: Peace with Israel. Peace without the destruction of the 'Jewish Entity,'" stated Horowitz.

As part of preaching hate in Arab schools, Horowitz writes that the Arabs refuse to do anything to ease the Palestinian refugees problem because that is part of their strategy to incite hatred of Jews in "the wars to come." Arafat may talk big, but when it comes right down to it he will not sign any peace agreement, and neither will his eventual successors.

Horowiitz writes:

It is hatred, moreover, that is increasingly lethal. today, 70% of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza approve the suicide bombings of women and children if the targets are Jews. There is no Arab 'Peace Now' movement, not even a small one, whereas in Israel the movement demanding concessions to the Arabs in the name of peace is a formidable political force. There is not Arab spokesman who will speak for the rights and sufferings of Jews, but there are hundreds of thousands of Jews in Israel -- and all over the world -- who will speak for 'justice' for the Palestinians. How can the Jews expect fair treatment from a people that collectively does not even recognize their humanity?"

Well, perhaps after we defeat Iraq we can help clean up the Middle East, and make changes for the better of all -- especially Israel.