I wonder what an extraterrestrial being would think if he/she landed on Earth and observed the way that politics, history, economics, and other subjects are depicted by many mainstream media outlets. For example, if you believe what you are told by some media outlets and many self-proclaimed "progressives," Israel--a country that is less than half the size of San Bernardino County, California, and is in the middle of a hostile neighborhood of over 20 Arab and/or Islamic countries extending from Morocco all the way to Pakistan--is a powerful imperialist and colonialist apartheid state, or (if that slander is not considered to be sufficiently attention-grabbing/outrage-provoking) is dominating not only the Mideast but also the United States, and maybe even the world's entire economic system.
Look at a map of the world. You can cover Israel with a child's fingernail clipping. Is it rational to believe that a tiny country is bullying an entire region, let alone controlling a superpower and the world's economy? How does that even make sense?
Part of the confusion may stem from the map shown by many media outlets when they report about the Mideast: they often do not show a map of the entire region, but instead they show a map with Israel front and center, next to Lebanon and tiny portions of Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt; that distorted perspective makes Israel look like a huge regional power, not a tiny nation located in a region filled with much larger countries that are not democratic and that are actively trying to destroy her.
Then, another layer of nonsense is added when we are told that Jews are not a persecuted minority but are in fact participants in white supremacy and beneficiaries of white privilege (which must really be a newsflash to Nazis, neo-Nazis, members of the Klan, and a host of others who consider Jews to be anything but white).
In a world where so many dangerous delusions are presented as important facts, it is refreshing to catch a glimpse of truth emerging from the darkness. In How the true story of Mizrahi Jews defeats anti-Zionist mythology, James Sinkinson writes:
What most anti-Zionists miss is that despite the perception that
resettling Israel was largely (though not completely) an Ashkenazi
initiative, the majority of today's Israelis are ancestors of refugees
from the Middle East and Africa. Most are brown-, black- or
olive-skinned—not what anyone could describe as white—and as a group are
called Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews...
While for millennia Jews lived with unbroken continuity in the land
of Israel, many Jews also lived in neighboring countries, predating the
birth of Islam and the Arab conquest, occupation and colonization of the
region. While many think of the region today as "Arab," places like
Morocco, Syria and Egypt were invaded 1,300 years ago by Muslims, and
their indigenous populations killed or forced to convert and adopt the
Arabic language and culture.
In Iraq, for example, Jews had lived for almost 2,500 years—since the
destruction of Jewish sovereignty in the First Temple period—but all
this ended just a couple of generations ago with an orgy of bloody
pogroms and public hangings.
Few indigenous populations survived the centuries of onslaught on
their authentic identity, and simply disappeared. Despite having
second-class, dhimmi status imposed on them by Muslim rulers,
Jews refused to relinquish their culture and tradition. They were made
subservient to the majoritarian Muslims, who had arrived via invasion
and colonization.
This history of conquest, occupation and colonization is one many
anti-Zionists would like to hide, since it turns every popular Middle
East narrative on its head. Today, strong forces and lobbies ensure that
anything exposing Muslim colonial history is censored.
Far too few people know the real history, and far too many people refuse
to read/listen/learn. In addition to the points that Sinkinson makes,
it is worth thinking about why the United Nations created a separate organization (United Nations Relief and Works Agency--UNRWA)
to deal with the "Palestinian" refugees but every single other refugee
situation in the world--which includes the fates of tens of millions of refugees--falls under the domain of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It is also worth thinking about why there is no UN agency to help the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees who were expelled from
Arab/Islamic countries in the late 1940s.
Much has been said and written about the "Palestinian" nation and about "Palestinian "
rights. I agree with anyone who fights for the basic human rights of
every single human being, but I have some questions about Palestine as a
nation. When did a sovereign country named "Palestine" exist? What was its
capital, and what were its borders? What distinct, unique language was
spoken there? Such questions arouse outrage and venom from some people, but I have yet to hear or see any answers--and there is a simple reason for that: it is a demonstrable historical fact that no such sovereign country ever
existed.
Palestine is a geographic term, much like the term Midwest is used to describe the portion of the United States that includes Ohio, Michigan, and a few other states. In the early 20th century, the geographic term Palestine was used to describe a territory including what is now known as Israel, Gaza, the so-called West Bank (the areas properly called by their historic names Judea and Samaria), and Jordan; after World War I, the League of Nations approved a Mandate granting control of Palestine to Great Britain with the express understanding that the territory would be a homeland for the Jewish people. Great Britain sliced off the eastern 80% of the Palestine Mandate to create Transjordan (which later became the independent Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan). After the demise of the League of Nations and after World War II, the United Nations proposed that the remaining 20% of the Palestine Mandate be divided into a Jewish state and a second Arab state (in addition to Jordan). The Jewish leadership in Palestine accepted the UN's proposal--but the Arab leadership in Palestine rejected the UN's proposal and joined forces with armies from the surrounding Arab nations in what they expected to be a war of annihilation against the nascent Jewish State--but Israel won the war, and ended up controlling less than 20% of the original Palestine Mandate, with most of the remaining territory under Jordanian control (Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip, which has never been historically part of Egypt).
There has never been a sovereign country called Palestine, nor is there a distinct Palestinian people. If you don't believe me, then consider the words of Zuheir Mohsen, who was a high-ranking PLO leader in the 1970s. In a March 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, Mohsen declared:
The
Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state
is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel
for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between
Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and
tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian
people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence
of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.
For
tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined
borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian,
I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem.
However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will
not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
The word
Palestine has nothing to do with Arab or Islamic history, but it dates back to the Latin name that the Romans gave to Judea (the second Jewish Commonwealth) after conquering and
subjugating the Jewish people (and the Latin name is derived from a Greek word). After destroying the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the Romans renamed the city Aelia Capitolina, and they proudly printed coins bearing the words
"Judea Capta." The Roman Empire was long ago consigned to history's dustbin, but the Jewish people are still here and the Jewish people have reestablished their historical state in their historical land. We know when the first Jewish Commonwealth was founded
(roughly 3000 years ago), we know its approximate and fluctuating borders, we know that Jerusalem was its political capital and main
religious center, we know when that state was conquered by the Babylonians
(roughly 2500 years ago), we know when the Maccabees established a second Jewish Commonwealth (roughly 2200 years ago), we know when the second Jewish Commonwealth was conquered by the Roman Empire (roughly 2100 years ago), and we know
when the final Jewish revolt against Rome was defeated (less than 2000
years ago). We know that the people in the first and second Jewish
Commonwealths spoke Hebrew.
In contrast, the notion of a distinct Palestinian Arab nation is quite recent, and has no historical basis. The PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was founded in Cairo, Egypt in 1964, with funding and support provided by the Soviet Union. What exactly was the PLO founded to "liberate"? In 1964, Egypt controlled Gaza, while Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria plus the eastern portion of Jerusalem. If the PLO had been truly interested in creating a Palestinian national state in Gaza plus the West Bank then why was the PLO conducting terrorist attacks against Israel, a nation that had no control over the areas that the PLO supposedly wanted to "liberate"? Of course, the reality is that the Soviet Union helped create the PLO to destabilize Israel and thus increase the Soviet Union's influence and power in the region. This was all about oil and about expanding Communism's reach, and had nothing to do with helping "Palestinians" or creating a "Palestinian" nation. That is why the PLO and other Arab/Islamic terrorist groups are still waging war against Israel decades after Israel gave up control of Gaza and of portions of the so-called West Bank: the goal is not creating a "Palestinian" state but rather destroying the Jewish State. The PLO has not even attempted to create a functioning government in Gaza, because the PLO was not created to govern, does not know how to govern, and has no interest in governing.
This is a tragedy not only for Israel, but also for the innocent Arabs who are not terrorists and who just want to live in peace; being placed under the control of the PLO was the worst thing that happened to those Arabs, but many media outlets would rather blame Israel than examine and explain historical truths.
After one understands the historical facts and timeline, then one realizes that the creation of one UN agency to treat one set of refugees differently and separately from every other group of refugees in the world is not a decision that was made on a rational or humanitarian basis, but rather for propaganda reasons: the "Palestinian" refugees are used as a propaganda tool against Israel, as Zuheir Mohsen admitted. That explains why Arab/Islamic countries
generally refuse to welcome "Palestinian" refugees, or expel them shortly after
welcoming them.
Most refugee situations in world history have been resolved by repatriating the refugees somewhere else, usually in a nearby country. Only one group of refugees has their own special UN agency, and only one group of refugees has been living in refugee camps for decades instead of being resettled like every other group of refugees in world history. "Palestinians" who live in the Gaza Strip are still officially listed as refugees even though they have been under the control of the Palestinian Authority since Israel ceded control of most of Gaza in the Oslo Accords; it is a tactical, political decision by the Arab/Islamic countries and their media supporters to never resolve the "Palestinian" refugee situation as long as the existence of that situation has propaganda value.
Here is another question to ponder: Out of all of the nations in the world, why is Israel the only nation that is asked to make tangible concessions in exchange for recognition of its basic right to exist? No one questioned the right of the Soviet Union to exist, no one suggested that Germany should cease to exist even after Germany started two World Wars and killed most of Europe's Jews, no one questions China's right to exist, no one questions Iran's right to exist--name any country that committed or is currently committing atrocities, and there has never been a question that those countries have a right to exist. Israel is the only functioning democracy in the Mideast, yet among all of the world's nations only Israel's right to exist is questioned, and is actually considered to be a bargaining chip: Israel has repeatedly traded "land for peace," which means that Israel relinquished control of territory not for strategic or economic considerations (which is how countries normally behave) but in exchange for a simple acknowledgement of her right to exist.
One could argue that Israel is at least partially responsible for this absurd situation, because no other country in history would consider its right to exist to be a bargaining chip, but it is a bit harsh to blame a tiny nation for doing what she thinks she has to do to survive in a world that treats Jewish blood as very expendable.
Many illogical and nonsensical thought processes have become so deeply ingrained that they are no longer questioned or challenged. Perhaps the most dangerous thing to do intellectually is to be a passive consumer of information. Don't blindly accept and believe what you are being told when what you are being told makes no sense. If you are being told that a nation that never existed has been destroyed or is being destroyed by a nation that is smaller than a large U.S. county--and that this tiny nation is controlling the policies of the most powerful nation in the world--take a moment to think about how ridiculous that sounds.
Let's also be crystal clear that setting the historical record straight is not meant to state or imply that individual "Palestinians" do not have or should not have basic human rights, nor is it meant to state or imply that "Palestinians" have not suffered; indeed, they have suffered tremendously due to the shortsighted polices of Arab and Islamic countries that have focused on trying to destroy Israel at the expense of the quality of life of all people in the Mideast.
An extraterrestrial being looking at the Mideast with fresh eyes and a neutral perspective would be puzzled that the least successful and least advanced countries in the region keep trying to destroy their smallest but most successful and advanced neighbor instead of learning from Israel how to make the desert bloom, how to build a functional economy, and how to create a scientific and technological infrastructure that is among the best in the world.
When lies are no longer presented as sacred truths, and when one nation's very right to exist is not treated as a bargaining chip, there will be an opportunity not just for Mideast peace but for Mideast prosperity. Sadly, that is unlikely to happen any time soon. The media outlets and the self-proclaimed "progressives" who promulgate falsehoods are perpetuating the suffering of Jews and Arabs alike, instead of speaking truths that could form the basis of coexistence; as long as lies are told, wars will be fought, and that has been the real story of the Mideast for over 100 years.
