Debunking The Myths

A lot of what the mainstream media is telling you about Israel is simply not true. On Friday, The Daily Wire posted an article detailing four of the biggest myths being spread about Israel.

Here is the list:

1) Jews did not “steal” Israel after World War 2. There has been a Jewish presence in Israel for thousands of years

2) Israel is not the roadblock to peace, or a Palestinian state. Israel agreed to give the Palestinians their own state on multiple occasions.

3) Israel is not occupying the Gaza Strip.

4) Israel is not an apartheid state

The article includes the history of the area being called Palestine:

Contrary to the notion that “Palestinans” pre-existed Jews in Israel, the name “Palestine” wasn’t even introduced until the Romans applied the name Palaestina to Judea in the second century C.E. “in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel.” Indeed, the Arabic word, “Filastin” is derived from this Latin name.

Another factor in the false narrative that Jews “stole” Palestinian land is the fact that Jews legally purchased land in the decades leading up to Israel’s declaration of independence as part of the early Zionist movement. Between the 1880s and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews actively purchased land in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine — as it was known at the time — procuring the land from British or Arab landowners. By the end of 1945, various Jewish organizations had purchased 906.8 square kilometers of land.

The article notes that a two-state solution has been proposed an turned down:

The Jewish Agency, representing the region’s Jewish residents, accepted the plan. Had the Arab Higher Committee accepted it too, there would have been an independent Palestinian state since 1947. Instead, Arab nations refused and invaded, violating Resolution 181 and the UN Charter. They were later defeated by Israeli forces.

This pattern of refusal is common, with Palestinian leaders refusing to negotiate or accept generous offers, despite their repeated military failures to achieve their goals through force. In 2000, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected a proposed peace plan known as the “Clinton Parameters,” which would have provided the Palestinians with “‘custodianship’ over the Temple mount, sovereignty on all Islamic and Christian holy sites, and three of Jerusalem’s four Old City quarters,” choosing instead to return home and arguably oversee a flood of terrorist violence, including suicide bombing attacks against Jewish civilians.

Just for the record, I believe that if Yasser Arafat had accepted the “Clinton Parameters,” he would have been assassinated very quickly. It needs to be understood that the Arabs want a one-state solution–an Arab state–and that peace is not the goal of their leaders although it may be the goal of some of the Arab residents in the area.

The article notes that Israel is not occupying the Gaza Strip:

However, when it comes to the Gaza Strip, Israel has not been an “occupying” force — ignoring that the term occupying implies an illegitimate presence — for 16 years. Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, dismantling Israeli settlements, removing military members, and evacuating Jewish civilians — sometimes by force. Gaza is now under complete Palestinian control.

When the people living in the Gaza Strip took over the land in 2005, one of the first things they did was destroy the greenhouses that supported the area. The economy in that area has never recovered–the leaders live very well and the poor people barely survive.

The article notes that Israel simply does not qualify to be an apartheid state:

This is demonstrably false. Not only do Arabs in Israel have equal voting rights, but Israel is also one of the few countries in the Middle East where Arab women are even permitted to vote. Four members of Israel’s parliament — the Knesset — are members of “Ra’am – United Arab List.”

As Rich Lowry of National Review noted, “Arab Israelis are full participants in Israeli society.”

“There are Arab justices on the Supreme Court. About 20 percent of doctors in Israel and about half of pharmacists are Arab,” Lowry added. “Roughly 17 percent of students seeking an undergraduate degree are Arab, a number that has roughly doubled over the past decade.”

As usual, the media follows a narrative whether it is true or not. We all need to learn to look beyond the media narrative.