Answering the Lies. What every Jew should know.

"From the river to the sea..."

 

Addressing a crowd in Gaza on 14 December, Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh said,

"Today, we say, in a clear and unambiguous fashion: the armed resistance and armed struggle are our strategic choice and our path to liberate the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River, and to drive the usurping invaders out of the blessed land of Palestine."

He added, "The fact that Hamas, at one stage or another, accepts the goal of gradual liberation - of Gaza, of the West Bank, or of Jerusalem - is not at the expense of our strategic vision with regard to the land of Palestine."

 

Lie: Israel intentionally targeted civilians.

(IDF statistics)

·         177 Palestinians were killed in Operation Pillar of Defence.

·         120 were ‘engaged in terrorist activity’ and 57 civilian deaths.

·         That total is a tiny number of deaths from 1500 air strikes.

·         A ratio of more than two terrorists for every civilian killed.

·         Afghanistan ratio was 3 civilians for every one combatant killed.

·         Iraq ratio 4 civilians for every one combatant killed.

This is a staggering feat of precision the Israelis achieved.

This is even more astonishing given that the Hamas situated their rockets and ammunitions in the middle of civilian areas in order to get its own people killed to score propaganda points.

There is a whole army department whose job it is to warn Palestinians of an impending attack. Amongst other things, they phone families in surrounding buildings of a target and warn them to evacuate. No other army does this.

 

 

Lie: There is a cycle of violence which only Israel can stop.

Hamas attacks are not caused by ‘frustration with the blockade’. The blockade is only there because of the murderous attacks by the Palestinians.

The cycle is only driven by one side. There is Palestinian aggression and Israeli defence and prevention!

 

Lie: All the Palestinians want is a state of their own.

The media fail to understand that the real goal of the Palestinian rulers is not the establishment of a viable independent state but the destruction of Israel.

Even a cursory investigation would prove this:

• Palestinian media outlets shout out this message every day.
• Official public recognition for terrorists who murdered Jewish civilians as national heroes.
• Religious leaders on public radio and TV preach hatred and incite to murder on a daily basis.
• Palestinian schools teach this as well as children’s TV.
• They define occupied land as the whole of Israel, not just “The West Bank”.

 

Just a search in YouTube for “Palestinian media watch”

Go to Palwatch.com

 

Lie: There is an Israeli Blockade which is starving the Palestinian people.

·         No one ever talks about the Egyptian border! The media forgets that there are in fact two borders. It is Egypt which keeps its border with Gaza sealed not allowing any aid, yet turns a blind eye to a free flow of weapons being smuggled in over the border.

Mysteriously the Hamas isn’t firing rockets at Cairo!

·         Israel only restricts certain goods from coming in on security grounds.

·         Israel not only allows in a huge amount of humanitarian and medical supplies each and every day, it provides a large percentage of that aid itself.

·         Most importantly however, Israel insures a two way free flow of trade goods 24 hours a day.

·         Due to signed trade agreements, Israel is the biggest buyer of Palestinian exports.

Look at YouTube videos showing Palestinian markets and shopping centres, restaurants and cafes.

 

Lie: The core obstacle to ME peace is the illegal Jewish Settlements on Palestinian land.

The core obstacle to peace between Israel and any Arab nation is the Arab’s refusal to recognise the State of Israel as a Jewish State. There will never be peace so long as the central policy of the Palestinian rulers is not the establishment of a Palestinian state with peaceful borders (as the world media keeps telling you) but the destruction of the State of Israel.

Note also that the central goals of both the Palestinian Authority and Chamas are the same.

Even a cursory investigation would prove this:

• Palestinian media outlets shout out this message every day.
• Official public recognition for terrorists who murdered Jewish civilians as national heroes.
• Religious leaders on public radio and TV preach hatred and incite to murder on a daily basis.
• Palestinian schools teach this as well as children’s TV.
• They define occupied land as the whole of Israel, not just “The West Bank”.

 

Just a search in YouTube for “Palestinian media watch”

·         Jewish settlements on land over the 1967 border constitute just fewer than 2% of the entire land.

 

·         Israel is offering to give up on 98% of what is historically, the heartland of the land of Israel.

The question itself assumes that the settlements are in fact illegal whereas in fact they are legally disputed!

 

See http://www.2nd-thoughts.org/id351.html for various expert legal opinions.

 

·         The Jews have the legal – as well as the moral and historical right to settle within Judea and Shomron, historically the heartland of the land of Israel, a right given to them by the Great Powers after the First World War on account of the unique historical claim by the Jews to the land then called Palestine. This Jewish right to settle anywhere in that land was entrusted to Britain to deliver under the terms of the Mandate for Palestine – an obligation which it proceeded to break. Yet this history and law are denied or ignored by European and United Nations legal experts.

 

·         Judge Stephen Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, determined that Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria was rooted in self-defense and therefore did not constitute “occupation.”

 

·         Eugene Rostow, former dean of Yale Law School, former undersecretary of state and co-author of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which sets out the criteria for Israel-Arab peacemaking said U.N. Resolution 242 does not call for withdrawal to the pre-1967 boundaries; Israel’s withdrawal from Sinai amounts to a 90 percent withdrawal from post-1967 areas; the legality of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria “cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors, and perhaps not even then, in view of Article 80 of the U.N. Charter, ‘the Palestine article,’” which upholds the 1922 British Mandate for Palestine. This 1922 international legal instrument considered Judea and Samaria part of the Jewish national homeland: “Jews have the same right to settle [in Judea and Samaria] as they have to settle in Haifa.”

 

·         The 1993 Oslo Accord does not prohibit the construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria.

 

The Real Solution.

There would be peace between Israel and the Palestinians which would include a Palestinian State living peacefully with Israel if the Palestinian Authority would declare, in Arabic as well as English, that it accepts the right of the state of Israel to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people, and announce to its own people (in Arabic and English) that their policy is no longer to wage a war of destruction against the Jewish State of Israel.

If the Palestinian Authority were to say that and to match those words by actions, for example, by ending the constant message that their aim is to capture the incitement in the educational materials and media under its authority, to hatred and murder of Jews and Israelis, then there would be peace and a state of Palestine. This would happen despite right-wing Israeli objections because Israel is a democracy and the overwhelming majority of Israelis favour a compromise over land for a true long lasting peace.