Palestine's Lies and Facts

 Palestine's Lies and Facts

The diligently cultivated scenario is in place. The black and white hats have been put in their proper places. It runs something like this:

The Palestinians, a homogenous and prosperous culture onto themselves, were brutally expelled from their homeland as an integral part of the master plan of the West; partly to assuage guilt for the Holocaust, partly to maintain control of a strategic oil rich region.

After the expulsion, the rationale goes, the remnants of the Palestinians were treated like second class citizens in their own land, powerless to protect their rights from the oppressor, who stole their property and, through various machinations, usurped their birthright.

The epic continues. As a result of the manifest injustices done they formed the Palestine liberation Organization [PLO], a democratic, secular, popular movement dedicated to restoring Palestine. Said restoration would result in a secular, democratic state, where all citizens would have equal political and religious rights. For the West, this so-called Palestinian question was not a major source of international concern until the 1974 Arab oil embargo.

But a lie is still a lie.

Lie No. 1: The Palestinians were a sovereign people and nation until they were "expelled" in 1948.

Facts: The area known as Palestine was a province of the Ottoman Empire from the 16th Century until the British took control in 1917. From 1917 until 1948, the area was under British operational control and, later, mandate.

There was never a Palestinian nation.

Further, the population of the entire area, according to a 1879 Encyclopedia Britannica, was never substantial and was ethnically diverse. Any inhabitants there were concentrated in two cities, Jerusalem and Jaffa, and in the nomadic Bedouin tribes.

There was also a constant Jewish community. From the time of the first census in 1844 to the present, there have always been more Jews in Jerusalem than Moslems. Large-scale Jewish immigration during the Ottoman period made the Jewish community. From the time of the first census in 1844 to the present, there have always been more Jews in Jerusalem than Moslems. Large scale Jewish immigration during the Ottoman period made the Jewish community a significant presence.

It was only after the Jewish settlers bought land and made the area economically productive that the Arabs returned in significant numbers. Between the World Wars, the Arab population in predominantly Arab towns rose only insignificantly, e.g. 16,000 to 23,000 in Nablus. The population trends in the three major Jewish cities show a different story. The Arab population increased in Jerusalem by 97 percent, from 28,500 to 56,400, in Jaffa by 134 percent, from 27,400 to 62,600 and in Haifa by 216 percent, from 18,400 to 58,200.

The massive Arab immigration into Palestine during the Mandate period accounts for roughly 75 percent of the supposedly "Palestinian" population present at the time of the partition in 1948.

Lie No2: Israel occupies historical Palestine.

Facts: Israel only covers roughly 25 percent of what used to be the province of Palestine. In 1922, the British government violated its League of Nations Mandate over Palestine by partitioning the territory into a truncated Palestine and a nebulous entity called "Transjordan."

In 1947, the United Nations voted to form two states out of what was left of Palestine, and the Jewish leadership pledged to abide by the borders. The Arab world refused and invaded.

As the world knows, Israel won its war and the ensuing armistice lines resulted in Israeli sovereignty over 20 percent of the land within the 1917 borders of Palestine. The remainder, the so-called West Bank, was grabbed by the Bedouin King Abdullah. For 19 years, he and his successor and grandson, Hussein, controlled the territory; at any time during that period either could have returned this so-called birthright to the Palestinians. They did not, and since none of the other Arab countries would grant full refuge to the refugees, they were dumped into policed camps.

Meanwhile, Jordan (the name was changed In 1950 is more than 75 percent Palestinian in population. Palestinians are prospering in that nation-in-an area comprising most of historical Palestine.

Lie No. 3: The PLO is a freedom-seeking, democratic organization.

Fact: Anyone who witnessed the tragedy of Lebanon from 1975 through last summer's invasion by Israeli forces saw the true face of the PLO. At best, it is a shadow organization in chaos.

The Lebanese gave refuge to the Palestinians and the PLO, and in "gratitude," the PLO established a state within Lebanon, mocking its sovereignty, murdering its citizens and slashing its social fabric.

The Lebanese have suffered enough from PLO democracy and freedom. They consider themselves somewhat lucky-a few more years of PLO freedom and guarantees and Lebanon might not have survived.

An American wit once said, "Trust everyone, but cut the cards yourself." Through all of the lies, the truth is coming out, and right will triumph.

By Sister Margaret Ellen Traxler:- is director of the Institute of Women Today and founder and a member of the board of the National Coalition of American Nuns, both based in Chicago. 

http://radiobergen.org/history/liefact.html

Israel-Palestine: When the Map Lies

Perhaps you have seen this map before. It is quite widespread all over the internet. It claims to illustrate the "Palestinian loss of land" from 1946 to 2000. In the words of the Friends of Sabeel, a Palestinian Christian organization, the map "succinctly illustrates Israel's expansion and West Bank settlement policies since 1948." According to other websites, it exposes the "strategy of a greater Israel" at the expense of Palestine.

But the problem is that this map has little to do with reality and completely misrepresents the recent history of Palestine-Israel.

The map's deceptiveness was already exposed several times on blogs and websites such as Roy Osherove,solomonia.com, giyus.org, Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic, Dvar Dea, zionism-israel.com and frontpagemag.com. But old lies die hard, and so we have decided to present our own summary of the evolution of the map of the Middle East, based on the aforementioned sources.

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Map 1 (1946): No State of Palestine but the British Mandate

The first map (labeled "Palestinian and Jewish land 1946") shows "Palestinian land" in green comprising more than 90% of "Palestine," suggesting that, in 1946, nearly all of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean was "Palestinian." Land designated as "Jewish" in this map constitutes maybe five percent of the total. This map is ridiculous, not only because the term "Palestinian" in 1946 referred, generally speaking, to the Jews who lived in Palestine, not the Arabs, but because there was no Palestine in 1946 (nor was there an Israel.) There was only the British Mandate. Jews lived throughout the territory then occupied by the British, including on land that today constitutes the West Bank.

So most of this land was not owned by either Jews or Arabs, but was under the political control of the British Empire and was vacant - especially the bottom half of the map which was mostly unpopulated desert.

The intent of this propaganda map is to suggest that an Arab country called "Palestine" existed in 1946 and was driven from existence by Jewish imperialists.  In reality, most of this "Palestinian" land was "Palestinian" only in the sense that it was public land owned by the British mandatory government of "Palestine."

Not only was there no such country as "Palestine" in 1946, there has never been a country called Palestine. Before the British conquered Jerusalem, Palestine was a sub-province of the Ottoman Empire. (And after the British left, of course, Jordan and Egypt moved in to occupy Gaza and the West Bank.)

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Map 2 (1947): The U.N. Partition Plan - never came into existence

The second map is a rendering of the U.N. Partition Plan, which would have divided the British mandate into two equal parts, one part for Arabs and one part for Jews. It appears to show a massive loss of "Palestinian land", but in fact it reflects the fact that the largely vacant and inarable Negev desert was partitioned by the U.N. to Israel.

The Jews accepted this partition of Palestine, and the Arabs rejected it. When Israel declared independence, the Arabs sought to eliminate the U.N.-supported Jewish state, but they failed.

So this map was only a theoretical solution proposed by the U.N. but it never came into existence on the ground because of the refusal of the Arabs to accept the existence of a Jewish State in what was formerly the British Mandate of Palestine.

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Map 3 (1949-67): Jordanian West Bank, Egyptian Gaza

The third map shows further decline in "Palestinian land" which resulted from Arab losses in the 1948 war. That map fails to mention that this was a war of aggression started by the Arab states, thereby absolving them of responsibility for those losses.

That map also falsely describes the Gaza Strip and  West Bank and East Jerusalem as "Palestinian land," whereas in fact Jordan annexed the entire West Bank, and Gaza was held under Egyptian occupation.

The map also omits the fact that Arabs owned (and still own) private property in those white areas - in Israel, as does the Muslim Waqf and the Greek Orthodox Church.

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Map 4 (2000): Omitting the key facts

The last map (labeled "2000") is especially deceptive because it omits an impressive list of key facts:

• It is silent about several other wars launched against Israel by its Arab neighbors, most notably the Six-Day War in 1967 (Egypt, Jordan, Syria) and the Yom Kippur War in 1973 (Egypt, Syria). 
• It omits the Israeli withdrawal from the territories gained in these wars, especially the entire Sinai peninsula.
• It omits the fact that it was Israel who gave land to the Palestinians, and not Egypt or Jordan who ruled the Gaza Strip and the West Bank prior to 1967.
• It omits the facts that more land was offered by Israel in exchange for peace in 2000 and the Palestinian leadership rejected it completely.
• It omits the murderous violence launched against Israeli citizens after that rejection.
• It omits the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in 2005, surrendering it entirely to Palestinian control, and the subsequent rise of the Islamic terrorist organization Hamas.
• It omits the Qassam rockets attacks on Israeli population centers in the south of Israel, Prime Minister Olmert’s offer to PA President Abu Mazen in 2008 of more land, and Abu Mazen rejection of that offer.

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In closing, we would like to propose a more accurate map (produced by StandWithUs) for those interested in a more objective view of the evolution of the Middle East (click here for the full-sized pdf map):

http://www.canarymission.org/