By Peter Fernandez
Real History, and not revisionist alt-left history taught by anti-West ideologues, merged with the proof of neutral geographical maps illustrates how erroneous and disingenuous anti-Israel narratives are.
Real History 101: To appease the surrounding Arab nations in 1921, Great Britain’s Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill cleaved three-quarters of the original British Mandate of Palestine, and declared this land mass off limits (to this day) to Jewish settlement. To objective researchers, reporters, and political scientists, this is common knowledge, yet this reality is ignored or labeled Zionist propaganda by Arab Street.
Since 1948, Israel has been standing upon roughly one-fourth of historic Palestine. Jordan, home to 2,117,000 Jordanian citizens of Palestinian descent and 634,000 refugees is historically and literally, Palestine ( figures from UNRWA 2014 sources). After the Judean Bar Kochba revolt in 137 ACE (After the Christian Era), the Romans punished the Jews by erasing the conquered nation’s original Jewish identity. Cruel Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Israel (Judea and Samaria) Palestina. 1,000 years before that, King David conquered Jerusalem. But, today, mobs of protesters, professors, and politicians lie about Israel’s historical origins.
Of course, geo-history doesn’t change the horror, death, and destruction of this seemingly Sisyphean conflict, but baseless “liberal and politically correct” pro-Arab variants are routinely repeated by much of the world media.
It is almost as if Israel has become “the Jew among the nations,” and through Islamo-inspired left-wing bigotry, the world squints myopically through a glass darkly. According to Israeli statesperson, and former Knesset member, Dr. Einat Wilf, thirty seconds into most anti-Israel speeches, the Jewish state is predictably accused of genocide, apartheid, and racism.
Genocide? According to WorldDate.info: “From 1990 to 2022 the population of Palestine increased from 1.98 million to to 5.04 million people.” That is a growth of 155.0 percent in 32 years. “The highest increase in Palestine was recorded in 1999.” In real or imagined genocides, the victimized population always decreases, instead of increases.
Apartheid? “Israel has proved that for fifty years its real power is in its democracy,” wrote columnist Dr. Talal Al-Shareef in the Palestinian newspaper, Al Quds, May 27, 1999, “guarding the rights of its citizens, applying laws to the rich and poor, the big and small.” Arabs make up 20% of Israel today and have equal voting and political rights. Since 1949 Arab Israelis have been elected to the Knesset. In 1999 Ahmad Tibi was elected and today is the longest-tenured Arab-Israeli Knesset member. “The Israeli occupation,” according to Tibi, “is the main source of violence in the region.” Yet loud, proud and legitimate voices, such as Tibi’s, really do exist in Israel’s pluralistic society.
Here is a link revealing 100 past to present Arab Knesset members. In 1999, Arab Israeli Rana Raslan became Miss Israel. At present, there are 13 Arab Knesset members, and Khaled Kabub, a Muslim, is a supreme court judge in the Jewish state. Ghassan Alian, an Arab-Druze, is an Aluf or Major General in the IDF. IDF sees record number of Israeli Arab conscripts.
In 2011 Arab Israeli judge George Karras sentenced Moshe Katsav, a former Israeli president, to prison for seven years.
Racism? Of course, it exists in Israel. There was cultural friction between Ashkenazi (North-Central European) and Sephardic (Arabic) Jewish immigrants, and it took time for the Ethiopians to fit into Israeli society, but everyone is represented in this technologically and agriculturally advanced start-up nation. Contrary to Arab sexual identity bias, Israel is “a safe place” for gay and transgender rights.
Racism is a problem in the Palestinian school system, according to Wikipedia, and Belgian, and Israeli newspapers. The Beit Awaa Elementary School, near Hebron, was renamed the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School. Five other schools are currently named after Mughrabi, who, along with other Palestinian terrorists, hijacked an Israeli bus in 1979, killing 39 people.
Mughrabi and her comrades were exterminated by IDF forces, but since that time, they have been repeatedly hailed as martyrs by the Palestine Authority, and honored with events and facilities.
Winston Churchill, the erudite statesman and kingmaker, wrote in 1920, ‘The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such an intensity as in the Jewish race…It would almost seem…that this mystic and mysterious race has been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.”
The author is a children’s book author living in Northfield.