Vox gets some things right in its “11 biggest myths about Israel-Palestine” feature, but in the end leaves readers even more misinformed.
I’ve written an article titled “Top Ten Myths about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” that is among my all-time most popular, so when I learned that Vox has a feature called “The 11 biggest myths about Israel-Palestine”, I naturally took an interest. Unfortunately, while Vox gets some things right, what it gets wrong it gets badly wrong.
So, to set the record straight, here’s a quick examination of each of Vox’s eleven supposed myths and corrective for its egregious misinformation.
“Myth #1: The conflict is too complex to possibly understand”
Although I don’t include it on my own list of myths, I agree this is indeed false. In fact, I’ve written an article titled “The Simplicity of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” that starts with, “There is a general perception that the reason the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued for so long is because it is extremely complex. Nothing could be further from the truth. Placed in historical context, understanding the root cause of the conflict is simple, and in doing so, the solution becomes apparent.”
Apart from asserting an opinion as an absolute truth, though, the problem here is that Vox and the feature’s editor, Max Fisher, are feigning to understand the conflict and to be able to help you understand it, too. Unfortunately, Vox only serves to muddy the waters by getting absolutely critical points wrong.
“Myth #2: The conflict is all about religion”
Here, again, Vox gets it right. I would go further, though, and say it’s not about religion at all. It’s about the rejection of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and the consequences of that rejectionism.
“Myth #3: They’ve been fighting for centuries”
Again, Vox gets it right. In fact, my own “Myth #1” is that “Jews and Arabs have always been in conflict in the region.”
“Myth #4: Europe created Israel to apologize for the Holocaust”
Here, Vox is certainly correct to say that the belief that the Holocaust was “the only significant impetus for Israel’s creation” is false.
However, Vox gets it wrong in a major way by falsely asserting that “Israel was not a creation of European colonialism”.
Yes, it most certainly was!
Zionism Was Absolutely a European Colonialist Project!
Vox tries to sustain this falsehood by arguing, “Israel’s creation was in large part the work of Jews who moved to present-day Israel, despite European efforts to stop them, and who dragged the world into accepting them as a state. It is true that in 1917, Britain issued its famous Balfour Declaration promising the Jews a homeland in British-controlled Palestine as long as this did not undercut the rights of non-Jews there. But in the 1930s, as Jewish immigration and Jewish-Arab tension increased, the British tried to sharply limit Jewish immigration into the area, forcing many Jews into refugee camps in Cyprus and elsewhere.”
In other words, Vox is arguing that since the British “tried to sharply limit Jewish immigration into the area”, therefore the Zionist project to reconstitute Palestine into a “Jewish state” was not a European colonialist project.
For starters, this argument overlooks the fact that the Zionist movement originated in Europe. Its leaders were European. And most of the Jewish immigrants who colonized Palestine were also European. It was a European movement promoting a colonization project.
So in what way was it not a European colonization project?
One of the Jewish colonization organizations, incidentally, was literally called the “Palestine Colonization Association” (PICA), established in 1924 by Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, a French member of the famous European banking family.
Plainly, with or without British support, the Zionist project was ipso facto a European colonialist project.
But Vox is also woefully wrong to suggest that European powers by and large “tried to stop” the Zionist project and that the British, too, eventually stepped in to oppose it.
This claim is completely false.
Whereas Vox states that “the British tried to sharply limit Jewish immigration into the area”, a more accurate way to put it is that the British facilitated Jewish immigration to the full extent that it was politically feasible to do so, given the Arab inhabitants’ opposition to the reconstitution of their homeland into a “Jewish state”.
Indeed, while the British government’s support for Jewish immigration was by no means unrestricted, British policy was explicit in its aim of helping the Zionists to increase the proportion of Palestine’s Jewish population!
Moreover, the whole purpose of the League of Nations’ Mandate that the British were operating was to facilitate the Zionist project. While Vox tries to downplay the significance of the Balfour Declaration, the text of it was actually incorporated into the Mandate, which was actually drafted by organized Zionists to serve their interests—as the British themselves observed at the time.
For discussion and documentation of this, see my article “What Was the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and Why Is It Significant?”, as well as my book Exposing a Zionist Hoax.
The British were in essence the hired guns of the Zionists. Not literally hired, but there was a quid pro quo, which, again, the British themselves explained, and which was that the Balfour Declaration was a propaganda documented intended to garner Jewish support for its war effort.
The British also promised the Arabs their independence in support for the war effort, but that was a promise they never intended to keep. Instead, the whole purpose of the Mandate was, to put it another way, to establish an occupation regime in Palestine precisely to prevent the majority Arab inhabitants from exercising their right to self-determination. British officials were quite candid about this, emphasizing that for the Arabs to exercise this right would be contrary to the Balfour policy incorporated into the Mandate to facilitate the Zionist project.
So, you see, Vox’s claim that Israel was not a European colonialist project is a whopper. The effect of this outrageous lie, of course, is to completely misinform Vox readers about the fundamental cause of the conflict.
No, the UN Did Not Create Israel!
Next, to the same end, Vox tells another whopper: “The United Nations did come around to creating a Jewish state with its 1947 plan for partitioning Palestine”.
No, no, no, no, NO!
That is absolutely false!
What Vox is referring to is UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which contrary to popular myth, neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionists for the unilateral declaration of the existence of Israel on May 14, 1948.
This huge lie from Vox once again serves to misinform readers fundamentally about the cause of the conflict by leaving them falsely to believe that Israel was established through some kind of legitimate political process in 1947. It was not.
For more on that, read my article “The Myth of the UN Creation of Israel”.
On the contrary, Israel was established in 1948 through violence and the ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population from their homes in Palestine.
For more on that, read my essay “Benny Morris’s Untenable Denial of the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, also available as an e-book here.
“Myth #5: Palestinians/Israelis aren’t a real nationality”
Here, Vox makes the appropriate point that “the world is organized on an idea called national self-determination, which says people are allowed to determine their own national identity and then organize politically around it. Israelis and Palestinians clearly each see themselves as holding a strong national identity, so the world should respect that.”
In his hoax book “What Justice Demands”, Elan Journo claims that the Palestinian national movement never existed until the 1960s. I debunk that nonsense in Exposing a Zionist Hoax. The point Vox is making here, in addition to pointing out that “Palestinians began developing a distinct national identity in the early 1800s”, also suffices to do so.
The problem is that Vox is implying that the establishment of Israel was nothing more than an exercise of the Jews’ right to self-determination. As we’ve already seen, that is totally false.
“Myth #6: Most Israelis and Palestinians hate everyone on the other side”
The point Vox makes here is that the routine violence we see between Israelis and Palestinians “does not mean that Israelis and Palestinians broadly hate one another or are racist against one another”.
And this is correct.
That’s true going back to the Mandate. Another claim Journo makes in his hoax book is that the Arab violence against Jews during this time was due to their inherent anti-Semitism. In fact, the British observed that until the Zionist project began, Jews and Arabs had gotten along as neighbors in Palestine. They observed how, during the implementation of that project, in colonies where Jewish National Fund (JNF) racist land policies didn’t apply, Jews and Arabs were friendly with each other. Their inquiries into the root causes of the violent outbreaks concluded that there was no inherent anti-Semitism among Arabs, but that they were frustrated about Britain’s broken promise to recognize their independence and the knowledge that the Zionists and their British benefactors aimed to deny them their rights.
The British attitude about that was reflected in how they described Arabs who were willing to collaborate with their occupation regime as “moderates”, while Arabs who demanded that Britain respect their right to self-determination were dubbed “extremists”.
For details and documentation, again see Exposing a Zionist Hoax.
“Myth #7: The US could force Israel to end the conflict if it wanted”
Here, Vox argues that if the US ended its support for Israel and instead “used its influence to bring the conflict to an end”, the conflict would not end “overnight”.
The “overnight” renders that argument a meaningless strawman. But Vox goes even further by absurdly claiming that the US’s support for Israel does not make it “the de facto sponsor of the conflict”.
Well, yes, it does.
I demonstrate that incontrovertibly at great length and in extraordinarily well-documented detail in my book Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. (Don’t take my word for it; Noam Chomsky has described it as a “carefully documented and highly informative study of how Washington has joined Israel in undermining the efforts to achieve a peaceful political settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict”.)
Vox tries to sustain this absurd assertion by arguing that “Israel was already engaged in the conflict before it enjoyed so much US support”.
But this is a logical fallacy. The syllogism being employed here is that since the conflict already existed before the US provided Israel with the level of support it does today, therefore this US support does not contribute to perpetuating the conflict. It’s a non sequitur. The conclusion does not follow from the premise.
Next, Vox delves even deeper into absurdity by arguing that US support for Israel doesn’t contribute to the conflict because the US and Israel “bicker frequently”.
Once again, the syllogism presented is a non sequitur.
Vox acknowledges that “the US does provide Israel with an awful lot of military, financial, and diplomatic support”, but persists in its preposterous denial by thirdly arguing that this support “does not buy much real leverage on Israel-Palestine conflict issues.”
But that is just plain nonsense. Ridiculous sophomoric nonsense. And it’s made all the more ridiculous by the fact that Vox here links to another Vox article that talks all about how much leverage and influence the US could have by eliminating or even just reducing aid to Israel, but how consecutive US administrations are just totally unwilling to do so!
It’s laughable!
“Fourth,” Vox continues, “when the US has overtly pressured Israel on the conflict, as Obama did during his first term, Israel’s response has often been to defy the US by doing the opposite of what is asked.”
But what is Vox even talking about when it says that the Obama administration “overtly pressured Israel on the conflict”?
Well, Vox doesn’t say, but I can tell you what they are referring to. They are talking about how the Obama administration asked the Netanyahu government in Israel to freeze its expansion of illegally constructed Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Netanyahu government effectively said “No”, and the Obama administration effectively said “Okay” and proceeded to shower even more support on Israel, including vetoing an uncontroversial UN Security Council Resolution condemning Israel’s illegal settlement regime.
That’s the evidence Vox is presenting to support its argument that the US just can’t do anything about it, has no leverage, and isn’t contributing to the conflict by showering Israel with military, financial, and diplomatic support.
It’s downright idiotic!
But Vox isn’t done with its idiocy yet. It proceeds by arguing that this support is not intended to support “Israel’s role in the conflict”, but to “nudge the Israelis to the negotiating table”.
But it’s not even a question of intent. The US militarily, financially, and diplomatically ipso facto supports Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Therefore the US is ipso facto a “sponsor” of the conflict.
The whoppers just keep getting bigger as Vox next asserts that to nudge them to the table “is the same reason the US gives heavy financial and political support to the Palestinian Authority [PA].”
No.
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
First of all, the US has given the PA about $216 million on average annually since 1994. Israel, on the other hand, receives more than $3 billion annually just in military aid.
Second, the purpose of the US aid to the PA is to enable the PA to fulfil the function for which it was created under the Oslo Accords, which is to serve as Israel’s collaborator in enforcing its occupation regime. (More details on that, also, in Obstacle to Peace.)
Next, Vox states, “There is a valid case to be made that the high level of American support for Israel does, to some extent, enable its policies in the conflict.”
But there is also a valid case to be made, of course, that the high level of US support for Israel to a very large extent enables Israel’s criminal policies.
Finally, Vox argues that there’s also a “valid” case to be made that “withdrawing American support would make Israelis and their leaders feel more threatened and isolated, thus empowering anti-peace politics and making peace that much less likely.”
But this just makes no sense. By “anti-peace politics”, Vox means the politics of Netanyahu and the Israeli right (which we can learn by clicking a link Vox provides here that says as much). So, how, exactly, does unconditionally giving more than $3 billion in annual military aid to the Netanyahu regime in Israel not empower anti-peace politics?!
Vox at this point is just insulting the intelligence of its readers.
It concludes by reiterating its basic claim that “it is not the case that American support for Israel is so overwhelmingly decisive that switching it off would end the conflict.”
Not “overnight”, at least. But it would certainly be a step in the right direction.
Simply stated, the status quo of Israel’s occupation regime could not be sustained without the US’s military, financial, and diplomatic support.
Just read my book Obstacle to Peace. You’ll see what I’m talking about. I also show in it how the media—like this Vox feature—serve to manufacture consent for the US government’s policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians by systematically misinforming the public about the true nature of the conflict.
“Myth #8: A Palestinian Gandhi could bring peace”
Here, Vox addresses the “popular view among Americans that Palestinians have rejected nonviolent resistance, and that if only they took up the lessons of nonviolent Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi, then that would bring the conflict to an end.”
The point made is that, actually, nonviolent resistance has long been tried by Palestinians, but that the outcome has always been that “they’re put down by Israeli security forces, or because they lose momentum against the overwhelming force of the occupation itself.”
Which is correct.
“Myth #9: Things are basically peaceful during periods of relative calm”
This is an absurdity, and Vox is right to say it is false, but it leaves me wondering who the heck Vox has in mind when it suggests that there are people who actually believe that, outside of periods of escalated violence, the conflict is not “destroying lives and communities, and still scarring these two societies every day.”
Perhaps such people exist. I don’t recall ever having heard of one, much less having met or spoken to anyone holding that view.
“Myth #10: Israel is explicitly seeking Palestinians’ total destruction”
Here once again Vox simply manufactures a strawman to beat down rather than addressing any real misconception. The supposed “myth” Vox is challenging here is that “all Israelis” want the Palestinians to suffer “under a suffocating blockade in Gaza and military occupation in the West Bank”.
But who has ever claimed that there are no Israelis who oppose their government’s criminal policies?
This is just more sophomoric intellectual flatulation.
Worse than that, though, Vox here once again simply misinforms its readers by going further and arguing that the Israeli government itself has no “nefarious secret plan” to oppress the Palestinians.
To support this assertion, Vox offers the following: “Take, as a micro example, Israel’s approach to Gaza since Hamas took over in 2006. Israel has invaded or launched extended bombing campaigns in Gaza every few years; this costs many Israeli lives, in addition to the much higher Palestinian death toll, and it never actually solves the underlying problems.”
Yet Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weissglass characterized the purpose of Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza by saying, “It’s like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won’t die.”
“Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions”, a 2008 State Department cable to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed, “that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.”
The cable reiterated, “As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to econoffs [US embassy economic officers] on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge”.
So much for Vox’s absurd denial that the Israeli government’s nefarious plan is to deliberately oppress the entire civilian population of Gaza!
Next Vox argues that the Israel government would not have signed the Oslo Accords if their intent was to sustain the status quo of Israeli occupation, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would not have “offered the Palestinians a two-state peace deal” in 2008.
But this simply overlooks that the whole purpose of the Oslo Accords to sustain the Israeli occupation!
That is why the Palestinian Authority was established under the Accords, for example.
The PA’s purpose, in the words of former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami, was to serve as “Israel’s collaborator” in enforcing Israel’s occupation regime. As former Knesset member Natan Sharansky explained in 2008, “the idea of Oslo was to find a strong dictator to … keep the Palestinians under control.” Hebrew University professor Dr. Israel Shahak explained that the PA’s role was to serve as “Israel’s Enforcer”.
As for Olmert’s supposed “offer” in 2008, here’s an excerpt from my book Obstacle to Peace:
“Olmert initially proposed in August that Israel would annex 6 percent of the West Bank with a 5.5 percent land swap in which Israel would keep the good land it wanted and in exchange give the Palestinians desert territory next to the Gaza Strip. By December, Olmert’s proposal was slightly revised to include Israeli annexation of 6.3 percent of the West Bank corresponding largely with the route of the separation wall and a 5.8 percent swap for land in the Judean Desert. Moreover, illustrating the lack of seriousness with which Olmert’s proposal was made, a key aspect was its inclusion of the precondition that the PA must oust Hamas and regain control of Gaza. ‘There is going to be no agreement, period,’ an Israeli official explained to Haaretz. Olmert was merely concerned with establishing his legacy. Abbas’s spokesman appropriately called Olmert’s proposal a ‘waste of time’ and reiterated the PA’s adherence to the international consensus on a two-state solution: complete Israeli withdrawal and a Palestinian state along the pre-June 1967 boundaries, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
In other words, Olmert wasn’t offering anything to the Palestinians. The amount of concessions Olmert was “offering” were negative. Olmert did not make an “offer” so much as issue a demand that the Palestinians cede even more of their land to Israel.
The fact that Vox takes the so-called “peace process” and such Israeli “offers” so seriously is exactly why its supposed “myth”-busting article cannot be taken seriously.
Myth #11: Everyone knows what a peace deal would look like
The myth challenged here is “that everyone broadly agrees on the terms of a peace deal”. Vox is correct to say that this is false.
Unfortunately, Vox badly mangles the reasons why that is false.
The real reason this is false is because the entire so-called “peace process” is the means by which the US and Israel have long blocked implementation of the two-state solution.
Yet Vox confuses the goal of the “peace process” with the two-state solution, in favor of which there is indeed otherwise a strong international consensus.
For example, Vox treats the status of Jersualem as controversial, characterizing it as disputed territory despite it being a completely uncontroversial point of fact under international law that East Jerusalem, along with the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, is “occupied Palestinian territory”.
Vox notes that Israel in 1967 undertook measures to annex East Jerusalem but declines to inform its readers that Israel’s annexation measures are illegal, null and void under international law, as confirmed time and again by over by seventeen UN Security Council resolutions, as well as the 2004 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The second issue Vox addresses is the problem of the five million Palestinians who are today refugees as a consequence of the Zionists’ ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948. Here’s how Vox treats this one: “Palestinians frequently ask for what they call the ‘right of return’: permission to return to their land and live with full rights.”
So, as Vox characterizes the issue, the right of return is merely something Palestinians claim to have.
That is a malicious lie.
The right of refugees of war to return to their homeland is in fact an internationally recognized universal right, as reflected in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which resolved “that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible . . . .”
Although today rejecting the Palestinians internationally recognized rights, the US was among the majority of member states that voted in favor of the resolution.
Conclusion
Vox’s feature “The 11 biggest myths about Israel-Palestine” fails miserably in its purported aim of dispelling misconceptions about the conflict.
This is not so surprising given that the person credited as editor on this feature is Max Fisher. For another example of Fisher serving as crude state propagandist, see my article “The ‘Forgotten’ US Shootdown of Iranian Airliner Flight 655”
Far from properly informing its readers, Vox is simply fulfilling the typical role of the US media of manufacturing consent for the US’s policy of supporting Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.
Far from illuminating the problems in order to further progress down the path to a just peace, Vox has simply chosen to be part of the problem by grossly deceiving its readers about the true nature of the conflict.
For a remedy, read Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
This article was originally published at JeremyRHammond.com.
I was going to comment on some of the points the author made in which he claimed as a fact that which are merely his opinions.
Then I read his self-serving bio in which he claims that he ‘frees people’s minds’ and that he (and apparently he alone) knows ‘the truth.’
I think any rational soul would believe VOX over this self-styled prophet of Truth
Nope — his critique of VOX is accurate in all particulars. Every one of them.
Sorry, Charley, but factually, No.
The return of a large body of Jews to their ancestral homeland to join with other Jews already there is not, by any definition of the word, a colonial project ( colonialism by definition owes allegiance to the mother country, Jews were going To their mother country).
Claims that UN 181 does not give Israel legitimacy is a popular trope among Israel haters, but holds no real thought in international law.
I could go on, but my guess is that you, like the author , buy into Israel hatred wholesale and any myth or lie that supports that position.
Israel is hardly perfect, but neither is out the abject evil those with no sense of balance or porpotion want to claim.
A project by Europeans to colonize a foreign land is by definition a European colonization project. Denying this simple logical truism doesn’t make it any less of a truism.
UN Resolution 181 neither partitioned Palestine nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration of May 14, 1948. Denying this simple fact doesn’t make it an less true, either.
So then a project by Arabs to colonize areas outside the Arabian peninsula would be, by your same logistic syllogisms, a colonization project.
And this is a perfect example of my critique of your work. Not ad hominem, but factual. You take positions of your own, can which are nothing but opinion and refer to them as fact.
No matter how many times you want to say ‘it’s a fact’, it’s still merely Your opinion.
A project to colonize is not a colonization project by “my” logic. It is so by logic, period.
It is not an opinion that a project by Europeans to colonize is a European colonization project. This is a simple logical truism.
And thus my initial comment – you insist on conflating Your Opinion with fact.
It is not an opinion that a project by Europeans to colonize is a European colonization project. This is a simple logical truism.
“Europeans to colonize a foreign land ”
Judea and Samaria are hardly “foreign land” for the Jewish People. It is the land in which the Jewish People came into being; the land they identify with; the land that identifies them; the land upon which the Jewish People have lived continuously, in greater or lesser numbers, for 4000 years.
The “truism” of that history was recognized in the preamble to the international law that was the Mandate for Palestine, written in 1922, accepting the right of the Jewish People to re-establish their national home in a small part of their ancestral homeland.
UNGA 181 was nothing more than a recommendation of the UNGA to the Mandatory British government – a recommendation rejected by the Arabs, and as a result consequently ignored by the British, who simply abandoned their Mandate.
I am using words meaningfully. You are simply not. To a European Jew in the 1900s who had never before set foot in Palestine, had no familial ties there, had little to no familiatirty with its people or their culture, etc., Palestine was by definition a foreign land.
The League of Nations had no authority to take land from Arabs to give to the Jews. Nor did it claim to. The Mandate neither created Israel nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration of May 14, 1948.
The fact is that a Jew, born and living in Europe, is still a member of the Jewish Nation and People. That Nation and that People came into being, originated in, are indigenous to, the Land of Israel. That Jew can trace his/her roots to that land, over the past 4000 years. Therefore, regardless of passage of time, a Jew cannot be foreign to the land of Judea. Much like a native Sioux, born and raised in Paris, returning to his land in Minnesota would not be “colonizing” it.
As for “international law” you either accept the concept, or you don’t. By definition, “a body of rules established by custom or treaty and recognized by nations as binding in their relations with one another.” That is exactly what happened when the League of Nations was established by the international community, and the Charter that was agreed to gave the LON the right to assign Mandates, developed from the territories of the losing side in WW 1, to be held in trust for the developing nations until they were considered ready for independence. In the case of the Mandate for Palestine, there were 2 nations to be brought into being – an Arab one called TransJordan, and a “national home for the Jewish People”. You may not like the law as it was written, or agree with that law, but the “truism” is that it WAS the law. Just as the UN Charter states that resolutions passed under Chapter VII of the Charter (and ONLY those resolutions) comprise international law, and are legally binding.
The fact a European’s ancestors might have once lived in a foreign land thousands of years ago does not make that land any less foreign to the European who has never set foot there, has no familial ties there, has little to no familiarity with the people living their or their culture, etc.
And project by Europeans to colonize a foreign land is by definition a European colonization project.
And once again, contrary to your false belief, the League of Nations had no authority to take land from Arabs to give to the Jews. Nor did it claim to. The Mandate neither created Israel nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration of May 14, 1948.
Where would you put Jewish converts, such as Ivanka Trump, williambilek?
Or a native Sioux, born and raised in Paris, having converted to Judaism, could he/her have a legitimate claim to Palestinian land?
The Balfour Declaration and the later LoN mandates never intended that part,or all of Palestine should be an Exclusive home for Jews, from the very beginning Jewish immigration to Palestine was intended to be limited to numbers that could be acceptably absorbed into Palestinian society.
Judaism accepted – Zionism rejected sharing any land with the intrinsic population.
What a shame! the majority of Jews live in their own respective homelands, where they integrate very well as a religious minority, having neither the need nor the desire to live on occupied Palestinian land.
Support for Israel is acceptable, as should be criticism of the implementation of Zionist ideals.
“I am using words meaningfully. ”
Then when you speak of “illegal settlements”, perhaps you could post a link to the legally binding verdict handed down by a competent court to that effect. That would make it a fact, rather than a case of your (mistaken) opinion.
When you claim that Israel’s settlements are not in violation of international law, perhaps you could post a link to a UN Security Council resolution or an Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice to that effect.
Oh, wait. No. You couldn’t. Because none exist. Why? Because it’s a completely uncontroversial point of fact under international law that Israel’s settlements are illegal.
Actually, TN Steve, If anywhere were to claim to be the Jewish ancestral home, it would have to be Southern Iraq.
That`s where the Hebrews originated (when it was Egypt obviously), Abraham was born in the ancient city of Ur, close to to-days Basra.
Abraham traveled to Filistine (Canaan)and lived most of his life in Hebron, it was 400 years later when David and Solomon ruled there, and for no more than 69 years.
Lot`s of Jewish leaders emerged in the Levant and elsewhere, Hiram, a convert to Judaism ruled in Tyre, a Biblical friend of David!
There were longer lasting Jewish “Kingdoms” in Kurdistan, Yemen, Ethiopia and the Ukraine, but non of them could be claimed to be “The Homeland of Jews”
During David and Solomon`s time, the majority population were pagan in fact, it`s difficult for anyone to claim Jews were ever a majority population – anywhere.
As for Israel today, it`s difficult to support the Zionist policies that seek to remove intrinsic Palestinians from their homeland and refuse to integrate with them (in one State) simply because they are non-Jewish.
It`s Zionism that has caused the problems, not Judaism.
And it`s a misleading fallacy to claim criticism of Israeli policies is based only on Jewish hatred, almost 200 Palestinians shot dead on the Gaza border, simply because they demonstrate their right to return to their homeland (1 Israeli injured) is very difficult to justify.
Nary a one.
well I haven’t been over it yet but look at what you’re saying – ‘any rational soul…’ Right there you claim as fact that which is merely your opinion.
In fact any rational soul would investigate both claims.
And when investigating such statements as:
quote:
Although today rejecting the Palestinians internationally recognized rights, the US was among the majority of member states that voted in favor of the resolution.
unquote:
Will be easy to check by looks of it and is immensely significant in the argument.
Yes, when someone writes in their bio that they ‘free people’s minds’, then any rational soul would question whether this particular person claims to have special insight lacking to the rest of us OR, if they are just full of bluff and bluster.
As I said above, I started to comment on those points he made which he states as fact, but which are obviously merely opinion. When I read his bio, it seemed a waste of time.
So you say, to paraphrase:
. Anyone would check.
. Your opinion is his facts are merely opinions.
I refer you to my first post.
Nope. It’s not an opinion that he states opinion as fact.
Saying it’s a fact that red is a happier color than blue is stating an opinion as a fact.
He makes the same logical fallacy repeatedly.
See MY previous post.
Unfortunately it is not possible to communicate sensibly with you.
Yes. It’s me and not you.
But 2+2=4 will still be a fact and red is a pretty color will still be an opinion.
Shame that’s too complicated for you.
So there’s a clear demonstration of what I mean.
I rest my case.
And will respond no more.
TN Steve, I can’t free everyone’s minds. Some people, like you, choose to go on believing lies despite those lies being exposed as such right in front of them.
TH Steve, it is instructive that you resort to ad hominem argumentation. I have shown in explicit detail how Vox deceives its readers. If you wish to challenge anything I wrote, I welcome you to produce a valid argument.
Actually it’s even more simple. Wherever there are Muslims … you will have problems. But we can say that because it’s not PC …
No. You can say that, just like a lot of other people say it, but it is not true. It is the cheap shortcut of racism.
One could say that with more justice about Jews, no?
On target!
Bigotry is not welcome here.
Apparently unless it’s by the author and against Jews.
TN Steve,
I am going to give you one opportunity to substantiate your assertion that I have demonstrated bigotry against Jews in my above article. And when you prove incapable of doing so since it’s an idiotic ad hominem attack you are leveling because you’re incapable of identifying even a single factual or logical error on my part, I will ban you for violating the terms of use of the comments section.
Go!
Like many others, you have learned well to use the word Zionist instead of Jew, but you did manage to slip and let your feeling show more than once in your article. While I harbor no belief that you will listen, I am happy to point out your demonstrations of bigotry and anti-semitism.
In Myth 4, you attempt to show that Israel was a colonizing project by using reference to the Rothschilds “the famous European banking family.” While there were dozens and and dozens of groups which promoted Jews to return to their homeland – many if not the majority of which were religious, the fact is that you chose the Rothschilds with the canard of Jewish banking. You had the entire world of Jewish Zionist activities, yet you purposely chose the one for which the lies of Jewish control over money have perpetuated for nearly 200 years.
Your one-sided views of the conflict are common enough fare and easily debunked by anyone sophisticated enough to understand the conflict is many sided with Both sides having right And wrong on their side. But your claim the British were ‘hired guns’ of the Zionists is another harking to the timeworn anti semitic tropes of Jewish control by money,
I could point out examples where you attempt, poorly, to substitute Zionist for Jews (as in your claims of ethnic cleansing), but I doubt such would have any effect.
Nothing in the article above, nor in your posts have shown anything Other than your desire to ban. Muzzle critics away!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_canard
I gave you one opportunity to support your charge of racism against me. Here’s what you came up with:
So pointing out the fact that the Palestine Colonization Association was financed by a Rothschild is anti-Semitic? So in order for me not to be racist, I must withhold that fact from my readers?
That’s the best you can do? Speaking truth is an act of racism?
Begone, you intellectual and moral coward.
Mostly BS, with a touch of self-aggrandizement.
The re-establishment of a nation state of the Jewish People rests on international law written in 1922, and made international law by unanimous vote of all 50+ members of the League of Nations.
False. Israel was not established through any kind of legitimate political process, but through the ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population from their homes in Palestine.
The Mandate for Palestine securing that Mandate for re-establishing a national home for the Jewish People there is, in fact, valid, standing international law. Are you disputing that?
Re: “ethnic cleansing”:
Research reported by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, stated “the majority of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled, but that 68% left without seeing an Israeli soldier.”
“The Arab exodus from the villages was not caused by the actual battle, but by the exaggerated description spread by Arab leaders to incite them to fight the Jews” - Yunes Ahmed Assad, refugee from the town of Deir Yassin, in Al Urdun, April 9, 1953
The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies. - Falastin (Jordanian newspaper), February 19, 1949
“It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees’ flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem.” - Near East Arabic Broadcasting Station, Cyprus, April 3, 1949
“Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees… while it is we who made them to leave… We brought disaster upon Arab refugees, by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave… We have rendered them dispossessed… We have accustomed them to begging… We have participated in lowering their moral and social level… Then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson, and throwing bombs upon… men, women and children – all this in service of political purposes…” - Khaled al Azm, Syria’s Prime Minister after the 1948 war
“The refugees were confident that their absence would not last long and that they would return within a week or two. Their leaders had promised them that the Arab armies would crush the ‘Zionist gangs’ very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.” - Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, in the Beirut newspaper Sada al Janub, August 16, 1948
“The Arabs did not want to submit to a truce they rather preferred to abandon their homes, their belongings and everything they possessed in the world and leave the town. This is in fact what they did.” amal Husseini, Acting Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee, speaking to the United Nations Security Council. Quoted in the UNSC Official Records (N. 62), April 23,1948,p.14
“As early as the first months of 1948 the Arab League issued orders exhorting the [Arab Palestinian] people to seek a temporary refuge in neighboring countries, later to return to their abodes in the wake of the victorious Arab armies and obtain their share of abandoned Jewish property.” – bulletin of The Research Group for European Migration Problems, 1957
“This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boasting of an unrealistic Arab press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of some weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to re-enter and retake possession of their country.” - Edward Atiyah (then Secretary of the Arab League Office in London) in The Arabs (London, 1955), p. 183
“The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by order of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city…By withdrawing Arab workers, their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.”. - Time Magazine, May 3, 1948, p. 25
“The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab States in opposing Partition and the Jewish State. The Arab States agreed upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem, - Emil Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, the official leadership of the Palestinian Arabs, in the Beirut newspaper, Daily Telegraph, September 6, 1948
“The Arab governments told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.” - from the Jordan daily Ad Difaa, September 6, 1954
“The Arab civilians panicked and fled ignominiously. Villages were frequently abandoned before they were threatened by the progress of war.” - General Glubb Pasha, in the London Daily Mail on August 12, 1948
“[The Arabs of Haifa] fled in spite of the fact that the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel.” - Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, according to Rev. Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949
“Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe. [However] …A large road convoy, escorted by [British] military . . . left Haifa for Beirut yesterday. . . . Evacuation by sea goes on steadily. …[Two days later, the Jews were] still making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to remain and to settle back into their normal lives in the towns… [as for the Arabs,] another convoy left Tireh for Transjordan, and the evacuation by sea continues. The quays and harbor are still crowded with refugees and their household effects, all omitting no opportunity to get a place an one of the boats leaving Haifa.”” - Haifa District HQ of the British Police, April 26, 1948, quoted in Battleground by Samuel Katz
“the military and civil authorities and the Jewish representative expressed their profound regret at this grave decision [to evacuate]. The [Jewish] Mayor of Haifa made a passionate appeal to the delegation to reconsider its decision” - The Arab National Committee of Haifa, told to the Arab League, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963
“The Arab exodus, initially at least, was encouraged by many Arab leaders, such as Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, and by the Arab Higher Committee for Palestine. They viewed the first wave of Arab setbacks as merely transitory. Let the Palestine Arabs flee into neighboring countries. It would serve to arouse the other Arab peoples to greater effort, and when the Arab invasion struck, the Palestinians could return to their homes and be compensated with the property of Jews driven into the sea.” - Kenneth Bilby, in New Star in the Near East (New York, 1950), pp. 30-31
“We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.” - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, quoted in Sir Am Nakbah (“The Secret Behind the Disaster”) by Nimr el Hawari, Nazareth, 1952
“The Secretary General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade… He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean. . . Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes, and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.” - Habib Issa, Secretary General of the Arab League (Azzam Pasha’s successor), in the newspaper Al Hoda, June 8, 1951
“Some of the Arab leaders and their ministers in Arab capitals . . . declared that they welcomed the immigration of Palestinian Arabs into the Arab countries until they saved Palestine. Many of the Palestinian Arabs were misled by their declarations…. It was natural for those Palestinian Arabs who felt impelled to leave their country to take refuge in Arab lands . . . and to stay in such adjacent places in order to maintain contact with their country so that to return to it would be easy when, according to the promises of many of those responsible in the Arab countries (promises which were given wastefully), the time was ripe. Many were of the opinion that such an opportunity would come in the hours between sunset and sunrise.” - Arab Higher Committee, in a memorandum to the Arab League, Cairo, 1952, quoted in The Refugee in the World, by Joseph B. Schechtman, 1963
“…our city flourished and developed for the good of both Jewish and Arab residents … Do not destroy your homes with your own hands; do not bring tragedy upon yourselves by unnecessary evacuation and self-imposed burdens. By moving out you will be overtaken by poverty and humiliation. But in this city, yours and ours, Haifa, the gates are open for work, for life, and for peace, for you and your families.” The Haifa Workers’ Council bulletin, 28 April 1948
“…the Jewish hagana asked (using loudspeakers) Arabs to remain at their homes but the most of the Arab population followed their leaders who asked them to leave the country.” The TIMES of London, reporting events of 22.4.48
“The existence of these refugees is a direct result of the Arab States’ opposition to the partition plan and the reconstitution of the State of Israel. The Arab states adopted this policy unanimously and the responsibility of its results, therefore is theirs.” …The flight of Arabs from the territory allotted by the UN for the Jewish state began immediately after the General Assembly decision at the end of November 1947. This wave of emigration, which lasted several weeks, comprised some thirty thousand people, chiefly well-to-do-families.” - Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab High Council, Lebanese daily Al-Telegraph, 6 Sept 1948
“One morning in April 1948, Dr. Jamal woke us to say that the Arab Higher Committee (AHC), led by the Husseinis, had warned Arab residents of Talbieh to leave immediately. The understanding was that the residents would be able to return as conquerors as soon as the Arab forces had thrown the Jews out. Dr. Jamal made the point repeatedly that he was leaving because of the AHC’s threats, not because of the Jews, and that he and his frail wife had no alternative but to go.”
“The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa.” - London Times, May 5, 1948
“Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent. “We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.” - David Ben-Gurion, in Israel’s Proclamation of Independence, read on May 14, 1948, moments before the 6 surrounding Arab armies, trained and armed by the British, invaded the day-old Jewish micro-state, with the stated goal of extermination.
“The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny but, instead, THEY ABANDONED THEM, FORCED THEM TO EMIGRATE AND TO LEAVE THEIR HOMELAND, imposed upon them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe, as if we were condemmed to change places with them; they moved out of their ghettos and we occupied similar ones. The Arab States succeeded in scattering the Palestinian people and in destroying their unity. They did not recognize them as a unified people until the States of the world did so, and this is regrettable”. - by Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), from the article titled: “What We Have Learned and What We Should Do”, published in Falastin el Thawra, the official journal of the PLO, of Beirut, in March 1976
“The first group of our fifth column consists of those who abandon their houses and businesses and go to live elsewhere. . . . At the first sign of trouble they take to their heels to escape sharing the burden of struggle.” - Ash Shalab (Jaffa newspaper), January 30, 1948
“The Arab streets are curiously deserted and, ardently following the poor example of the more moneyed class there has been an exodus from Jerusalem too, though not to the same extent as in Jaffa and Haifa.” - London Times, May 5, 1948
“Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the -Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit.. . . It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.” - The London weekly Economist, October 2, 1948
Yes, I am disputing your ahistorical nonsense.
The League of Nations had no authority to do with Palestine as it pleased without regard for the will of most of its inhabitants. Nor did the Mandate either establish Israel or lend any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration of May 14, 1948.
Israel was established by ethnically cleansing Palestine of most of its inhabitants. Your denial of this documented historical fact is untenable:
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/11/14/benny-morriss-untenable-denial-of-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine/
“Yes, I am disputing your ahistorical nonsense.”
Which part SPECIFICALLY do you allege is “ahistorical”; which is “nonsense”?
As for “Your denial of this documented historical fact is untenable:” you present the changing and changeable opinions of the so-called “new historians. I posted pages of contemporaneous objective reporting by any number of neutral media, some of them Arab, and you pretend that documentation does not exist.
I will leave it to the readers whose “minds you have freed” to judge which facts are the more “tenable”.
What a puzzling question, given the fact that I already specified in the very comment you replied to to ask this question.
That suits me just fine. It is you pretending that the documentation of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine does not exist. For readers who would like to learn just how untenable and willfully ignorant denials like yours are:
https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/11/14/benny-morriss-untenable-denial-of-the-ethnic-cleansing-of-palestine/
You are so typical of those haters, all those like you who, bereft of FACTS believe that repeating their idiotic lies as nauseam will somehow make them true, or at least make others believe that they are true. You ignore refuting facts because you have nothing to refute them with, and must resort to the Goebbels philosophy. Hopefully, those who are truly seeking having “their minds freed” will be able to see through you.
Now you are engaging in purely ad hominem argumentation in lieu of addressing any point of fact or logic in what I said, which violates the terms of use of the comments section.
Once again, the League of Nations had no authority to do with Palestine as it pleased without regard for the will of most of its inhabitants. Nor did the Mandate either establish Israel or lend any legal authority to the Zionists for their unilateral declaration of May 14, 1948.
And once again, Israel was rather established by ethnically cleansing most of the Arab population from their homes in Palestine.
Wow, wiliambilek – Lifted straight from the Hasbara Archives – something that hasn`t happened for a few years now.
I thought the days of myopic Hasbara volunteers had ended, most gave up when they realised that the Hasbara archives had long been discredited.
The post WW2 world and the world media were strongly sympathetic towards Jewish claims for a secure homeland in Palestine – In 1945 Arabs and Africans were widely regarded as little more than a sub species, openly referred to as Wog`s and Niggers, with no value, at the very best the phrase “Palestinian peasant” was used.
Use 1940`s references by all means but only if you wish to remain in the past retaining a myopic view.
Nothing at all wrong with anyone wishing to live in Palestine, providing they assimilate with the intrinsic population.
Not much right with any group of people occupying land by force then claiming that land for their own exclusive use, and sustaining that opinion for over 70 years only with superior military force.
6 million or so Israelis of mainly European origin, cannot hope to permanently subjugate 12 million Palestinians, let alone 400 million Arabs, plus 80 million Iranians.
Sooner or later, unconditional USA financial, military and diplomatic support will not be enough, that`s just a fact of history.
Best that Israel makes itself acceptable to the people of the Middle East, there is just no alternative, well there are, but all will bring tears.
October 18
Herzl meets with the Kaiser in Istanbul and lectures him on the need to settle the Jews in Palestine. He tells Herzl: “Tell me in one word: what should I demand from the Sultan?” Herzl replies: “A franchise company [that will accept Eretz Israel] with German backing.”