Tell the basic facts over and over again.

VICTOR SHARPE 

In June, 1976, during a visit to London, the former Israeli Prime Minister, Mrs. Golda Meir, was asked what needed most to be done for her country in the field of information. Her answer was, "Tell people the basic facts about Israel and Israel's case over and over again."

Most of the facts about the reconstituted Jewish state are self-evident but the relentless and enormous petro-dollar funded Arab propaganda campaign against embattled Israel have all but obscured the message.

Though the Arab and Muslim world repeatedly has sent its armies against Israel and failed in their genocidal aggression, and though unspeakable and barbaric terrorism against Israel's civilian population has been the road map followed by the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, all such campaigns of violence and hostility have failed.


But now, to paraphrase 19^th century British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli's, aphorism, lies, damned lies, and anti-Israel calumnies in descending order are being employed by a loathsome alliance of Muslim and Leftist anti-Semites. It is even more necessary now to follow Golda Meir's advice and counter the myths of Muslim-Arab propaganda with the basic facts.

The Arab and Muslim world has consistently denied Israel its right to be a sovereign nation in its ancestral and biblical Jewish homeland. It is this that has made the Islam-Israel conflict (for that is what it is) the most one sided in history. Quarrels have been forced upon Israel, but Israel had quarrels with none. So let us look at a few of the many illegitimate charges that Muslim Arab propagandists have issued against the Jewish state and which, alas, many uninformed folks, especially those in the colleges and universities, have embraced without question.
Muslim Arab charge against Israel:
The Jews came to "Palestine" to dispossess the Arabs who owned 95% of the land and were the legitimate owners of the country.
The facts: 
Jews have always lived in their ancestral homeland in whatever numbers they could sustain, even under a succession of alien conquerors. That their independence as a sovereign nation was ended under the brutal occupation by the Roman Empire did not mean that for the next 500 years they were still a large and significant population. Over the dark centuries of statelessness, Jews nevertheless continued to return to Zion (Jerusalem) and to all parts of their spiritual and physical homeland.
There is no single case of Jews returning armed with weapons or with any thought of using them, except in self-defense. Returning Jews in the 19^th century began purchasing the arid and long neglected wastelands and wilderness that had lain fallow since Roman times. They were forced to pay exorbitant prices for acreage from absentee landlords - at a far greater cost, for instance, than the rich and productive soils of Iowa.

The British Government survey of Mandatory Palestine in 1946 gave the following facts: Land in the area, now known as Israel, and owned by Jews amounted to 8.5%. Land owned by Arabs amounted to 19.8%. More than 70% of the land was owned by Government - that of the British Mandate as the successor to the 400 year old occupation of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. The Arab claim of 95% ownership is patently false.
Muslim Arab charge against Israel: 
The Jews failed to settle down with their Arab neighbors and were responsible for the worsening relations which led up to the 1948 war.
The facts: 
Jews not only came in peace but tried to live in peace in their own land. Only in 1907 did they create a self-defense organization against the continuous harassment and violence by Arabs. In 1920 the Home Guard, or Haganah, was formed because of the increasing Arab attacks on Jewish villages and the murder of Jewish civilians. It was not until 1937, after particularly vicious Arab violence erupted, not only against Jews but against British Mandatory troops, did the Haganah respond by forming "night-squads" under the guidance of a charismatic British officer and Christian Zionist, Capt. Orde Wingate.
Two other Jewish self-defense organizations were formed, Lehi and the Irgun, who resisted Arab aggression but also the British Mandatory Power, thus giving the lie to yet another false Arab claim that Britain backed the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine.
After Israel became an independent, sovereign nation on May 14, 1948, the Arab response was total war and an invasion by the regular armies of five Arab states, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.  The aim of the Arab belligerents was the total destruction of Israel and the extermination of its population.
As the Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha,  said at the time: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
It was not the Jews who failed to settle down with their Arab neighbors, it was the Arabs who were responsible for the ever worsening relations; then as now.
Muslim Arab charge against Israel: 
In establishing the State of Israel, the Jews violated the rights of the "Palestinian" Arabs from achieving statehood.
The facts: 
The Arabs refused the offer of a State of their own under the UN Partition Plan. Then, as now, they would only accept a state in place of Israel instead of side by side with Israel. There could have been an Arab state in existence now since 1947, but the Arabs refused: Period.
Jordan occupied the so-called West Bank and parts of Jerusalem (in reality Jewish ancestral and biblical Judea and Samaria) and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip (also territory with ancient Jewish ties). These were military occupations, with no legal basis. During the nineteen years of Jordanian and Egyptian occupation, neither Arab country offered the local Arab population a state of their own. Instead, the local Arabs approved Jordanian occupation and annexation.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip was treated by Egypt as solely a military district. Incidentally, during the period of the British Mandate from 1922 to 1948, huge numbers of illegal alien Arab immigrants from neighboring Arab states flooded into the geographical territory (not state) of Palestine. These are primarily the relatively recent ancestors of the present day Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
A fact that must be repeated over and over again is that at no time in all of recorded history has there ever been a sovereign, independent state called Palestine. It has always been a geographical term like, for example, Siberia or Patagonia.
These few basic facts about Israel should make plain to all who are not deliberately deaf and blind to the truth that the Muslim and Arab charges against the reborn Jewish state are fabrications, misrepresentations and pure untruths.
It is undeniably sad that Golda Meir's advice in 1976 needs to be pursued even more today as Israel has become the target of infernal demonization and de-legitimization verging on outright anti-Semitism.
Such are the bitter and poisoned fruits of Muslim and Arab propaganda, aided and abetted by an unrepentant Left.  

Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of several books including The Blue Hour, a collection of short stories, and Volumes One and Two of Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.

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