Recently I was forwarded an email purportedly claiming certain facts about Israel, Jerusalem, the Palestinians and the Muslim/Arab world. The email seems to be doing the rounds and the ‘facts’ are what one may commonly hear and read about the Palestine/Israel issue. I thought it was time to answer these ‘facts’ and banished them to the realm of ‘myths’.

Looking at the ‘facts’, 17 in all, the overall reason for the them is to justify the creation of Israel in 1948 at the expense of the displaced Palestinians. So some of the ‘facts’ concern supposedly the founding of Jerusalem by Jews and that it was mentioned 700 times in the Bible but not once in the Quran, and thus by implication the right of Jews to it, and that Palestinians when they were made refugees should have assimilated with their Arab brethrens but did not (and thus their fault if they remained refugees), and so on and so forth.

First of all, let me say that this not an issue about facts at all but of perspective - a wrong perspective: The issue should not be about Muslims or Arabs but about the Palestinians – a people who have been displaced from their land when Israel was created. We should not look at this issue from a religious perspective but rather from a humanitarian one. So whether there are 22 Arab states as opposed to one Jewish state, no Arab leader or Prophet Muhammad has ever been to Jerusalem, or Jerusalem is mentioned 700 times in the Bible but not once in the Quran, is of no consequence or relevance to the issue. And if the Palestinians don’t want to assimilate with other Arabs or Arabs don’t want Palestinians to assimilate with them, again, it is of no relevance to the issue.

Let us look at the ‘facts’ more specifically.

1.Israel became a state in 1312 B.C., two millennia before Islam;

Again, this has no relevance to the Palestinian being displaced. Nevertheless let us look at it. According to Juan Cole, Professor of History specialising on the Middle East at the University of Michigan, Jews didn’t even exist at that time, if by Jews we mean people adhering to Judaism. What existed were the Canaanites, a people who were ancestors to Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians, Jordanians and many Jews. Furthermore according to Cole, there is no archeological record of Solomon and David, who supposedly established Jerusalem. I quote from Cole’s blog [1]:

‘The ‘Jewish people’ were not building Jerusalem 3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE...Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent ‘Jewish people’ in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not 'the city of David,' since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens, don't know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine.’

Or as Shlomo Sand, professor of history from Tel Aviv University, put it, ‘the mythical Kingdom of David’. [2]

2. Arab refugees from Israel began calling themselves ‘Palestinians’ in 1967, two decades after (modern) Israeli statehood.

I don’t know what this is about. Palestine is a name given by the Romans when they conquered the area in 6 CE (Common Era or AD). So anybody living there would be called Palestinians.

3. After conquering the land in 1272 B.C., Jews ruled it for a thousand years and maintained a continuous presence there for 3,300 years;

In Fact (1) we note that around 1000 BCE there was no Kingdom of Israel and so there was no such thing as ‘ruling for a thousand years.’ Anyway, in this 1000 years that Jews were supposed to be ruling, the land was conquered by different groups: ‘The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in the 330s BCE. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE’. [1]

The other part of the ‘fact’ is that Jews ‘maintained a continuous presence for 3,300 years’, i.e., till the present. The trick is in the ‘maintained a continuous presence’. It does not state whether that presence is in the majority, minority or just be a few people. So what do we make of this ‘maintained a continuous presence’?

There are two histories of the Jewish people. The standard history is that Jews were expelled into Diaspora by the Romans when they revolted against the Roman rule. This was some 2,000 years ago. Thus, Palestine was emptied of most Jews but may still maintain some presence till the eve of the State of Israel. The argument seems to be, since Jews established the land (well, by the Canaanites) and had maintained a continuous presence (however tenuous) they have a right to the whole land. But international law does not recognise this as a right.

The extreme Zionist position is that they have a right to the whole land – Eretz Yisrael or Greater Israel. This seems to be what various Israeli governments have been trying to achieve by putting settlements - or we should call it by its correct aame, colonies - in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza previously. This is in line with the vision of Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, who ‘remained committed to a vision of Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine as the ultimate goal of Zionism’, as noted by Benny Morris, an Israeli historian.

The other history of the Jews is by Shlomo Sand (mentioned above) in his book, Invention of the Jewish People . According to Sand , researching the alleged emptying of the Jews by the Romans, found no such act. There was no expelling of Jews. They stayed on and over the years converted first to Christianity and later to Islam. This version of history is agreed to by Professor Cole:

‘The Jews of the Roman province of Palestine were not for the most part expelled in the second century CE, as popular history sometimes has it, but went on farming there and gradually converted to Christianity. The majority then later gradually converted to Islam and became what we now call the Palestinians.’ [3] So, the so-called ‘Palestinian Arabs’ are in fact the original Jews of Palestine.

So, either way, the Palestinians who have lived on the land for generations, whether they are of Arab stock or the original Jews of Palestine, should have more rights than Jews coming from Europe and other parts of the world. And who are these Jews of Diaspora?

If they indeed originated from Jews expelled from Palestine by the Romans they do not have a legal right to the land after a 2000 year absence what more to displace the Palestinians already on the land. But Sand says that these Jews who migrated to Palestine are those who converted to Judaism in foreign lands and thus have nothing to do with Palestine. According to Sand, quoting the Israeli newspaper Haaretz :

‘...the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins...are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for the most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century).’ [2]

These Jewish converts who have no ties at all to Palestine are all given the right to be citizens of Israel whereas the original Jews, the Palestinians, are denied theirs. This is ironic to say the least. And the converts are now oppressing the original Jews.

Let us put figures to the presence of Jews (adherents of Judaism, not the original Jews, the Palestinians) in Palestine. Again according to Cole: In 1851, there had been 327,000 Palestinians and other non-Jews, and only 13,000 Jews. In 1925 there were a little over 100,000 Jews, and there were 765,000 mostly Palestinian non-Jews in the British Mandate of Palestine.

In the British Mandate of Palestine, the district of Jerusalem was largely Palestinian. The rise of the Nazis in the 1930s impelled massive Jewish emigration to Palestine, so by 1940 there were over 400,000 Jews there amid over a million Palestinians. [4] So, at the onset of the creation of Israel, Jews were very much in the minority. In 1851, Jews were only 4% of the population, the figure to the ‘maintained a continuous presence’.

The 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine was 55% to Israel and 45% to Palestinians even though the latter was in the majority. Furthermore, to compound the injustice, Jews only owned 6% of the land [4] while Palestinians owned more than 90%. The present accepted international plan, a Palestinian state to be established within the pre-1967 war border with Israel would leave the Palestinians with only 22% of the original Mandate Palestine with East Jerusalem to be part of the state. Israel wants even less for the Palestine state by grabbing land through their settlements/colonies.

4. The only Arab rule following conquest in 633 B.C. lasted just 22 years

Even at first glance you know this is wrong. Basic history tells us the Caliphates ruled it for a long time, hundreds of years. To be precise, according to Juan Cole: ‘Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 [CE] and ruled it until 1099 when the Crusaders conquered it. The Crusaders killed or expelled Jews and Muslims from the city. The Muslims under Saladin took it back in 1187 CE and allowed Jews to return, and Muslims ruled it until the end of World War I, or altogether for about 1192 year.’ The Levant, the area that includes Palestine, was conquered and ruled by various groups and Muslims ruled it the longest while ‘Jewish rule may have been no longer than 170 years or so, i.e., the kingdom of the Hasmoneans’ (given that there is no archeological record of the David an Solomon rule). [1]

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem was the Jewish capital.

It was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity or even under Jordanian rule, (East) Jerusalem was not made the capital, and no Arab leader came to visit it;

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Bible, but not once is it mentioned in the Qur'an;

7. King David founded Jerusalem ; Prophet Mohammed never set foot in it;

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem; Muslims face Mecca .

If they are between the two cities, Muslims pray facing Mecca , with their backs to Jerusalem

Five to 8, fact or otherwise, have no relevance to Palestinians being displaced from their land. But 5 and 7 are factually wrong as we have seen above.

9. In 1948, Arab leaders urged their people to leave, promising to cleanse the land of Jewish presence. 68% of them fled without ever setting eyes on an Israeli soldier

There is no truth to this. According to Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar and formerly of DePaul University, this lie has been demolished way back in the early 1960s by Erskine Childers, a British scholar, and Walid Khalidi, a Palestinian scholar. They checked the back files of the Near East monitoring stations of the British and US governments, which covered both radio broadcasts and the local papers, and found no such orders issued. [5]

The Israeli historian, Benny Morris, agrees: ‘I have found no contemporary evidence to show that either the leaders of the Arab states or the Mufti [of Jerusalem] ordered or directly encouraged the mass exodus...There is no evidence that the Arab states and the AHC [Arab Higher Committee] wanted a mass exodus’. (As reported in [5]) But because of Zionist dominance in international media and publishing in general, this lie keeps on being resurrected and the refutation suppressed. But now that an Israeli historian has agreed it may just be harder to ignore.

The Palestinians fled for the simple reason that the Israeli attacks were ferocious and brutal. As written by Finkelstein, ‘the widely publicised slaughter at Deir Yassin, the massacres in Khirbet Nasr ad Din near Tiberias, and Ein az Zeitun near Safad, the indiscriminate and protracted mortaring in Haifa and Acre, the use of loudspeakers broadcasting ‘black propaganda’ (i.e. terrifying messages) in Arabic, crop burnings, and so on, spurred into exile’ the Palestinians. [5]

10. Virtually the entire Jewish population of Muslim countries had to flee as the result of violence and pogroms;

11. Some 630,000 Arabs left Israel ; in 1948, while close to a million Jews were forced to leave the Muslim countries;

I don’t really know how far this true. At least there is still a large Jewish population in Tehran and seemingly quite satisfied with their life as reported by Roger Cohen (by the name is himself Jewish) in the New York Times . By law they have a representative to the country’s legislative body.

Note that not 630,000 Arabs were forced to flee but 750,000 as noted by Finkelstein, and also by Noam Chomsky, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) [6]. This is the generally accepted figure.

But by and large I won’t be surprised if the above ‘fact’ about Jews being forced to flee is indeed true. There was a lot of anger at the creation of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians. The British Mandate of Palestine created by the UN is regarded as a Class A Mandate, which according to Juan Cole, is a country ready to be given independence within, say, a decade. [4] Instead of giving independence Britain announced the Balfour Declaration pointing the way to the creation of Israel. And till today the Palestinians still have no independent state while other Class A Mandates, such as Iraq and Syria, have obtained theirs.

Note that this hostility to Jews is a recent thing that came about only because of the creation of Israel and the subsequent plight of the Palestinians, as documented by Finkelstein. Historically, Arabs and Jews lived together in relative harmony - Jews flourished becoming merchants and thinkers within the Islamic empire. Jews fared much worse in a Christian Europe up to the Second World War.

When Christians overthrew the Muslim rule in Spain, Jews who had prospered there were persecuted by the new rulers through the cruel Spanish Inquisition forcing them to flee to Muslim lands, many taking refuge in Sarajevo and Istanbul under the Turkish Ottoman rulers. (Which is probably why Israel and Turkey till just recently have been on good terms. Note also that the mother of Kemal Attaturk, the modern founder of Turkey, was Jewish.)

And as mentioned above, Jews and Muslims lived together in Jerusalem under Muslim rule whereas the Crusaders killed or expelled both Jews and Muslims and that when Saladin (Salah Ad-Din) recaptured it Jews were allowed to return.

Of course, the worse example of the treatment of Jews was by the Nazis even if their policies were not said to be in the name of religion but the long history of European animosity to Jews certainly play a large part in those policies. And to assuage the conscience of a guilty Europe by creating a homeland for the Jews the Palestinians pay the price. And we may add, also the guilty conscience of the US because they refused entry of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. The Zionists were quite happy with this because they wanted Jews to be in Palestine.

13. There are 22 Muslim countries, not counting Palestine. There is only one Jewish state. Arabs started all five wars against Israel , and lost every one of them

Let us consider the June 1967 war or the Six Day War. Norman Finkelstein has gathered convincing evidence to put the aggression on the Israeli side. Dean Rusk, the US Secretary of State at the time said, ‘the Israelis launched a surprise offensive’; US President Johnson told Abba Eban [Israeli Foreign Minister] that ‘there is no Egyptian intention to make an imminent attack’; Mossad chief Meir Amir said, ‘Egypt was not ready for a war; and Nasser did not want a war’; and most telling of all, an admission by former Prime Minister Menachem Begin years later, ‘We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him [President Nasser of Egypt].’

Finkelstein writes, ‘Israel’s version of the June 1967 and the October 1973 wars has shown remarkable resilience. In both instances, Israel is seen as the unprovoked victim of Arab aggression...My conclusion is that the Israeli narrative does not in either case withstand close scrutiny.’

The Israeli wars against Lebanon are clearly Israeli wars of aggression as documented by Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor. [6] It is widely accepted that Hizballah chased out the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from Lebanon in 2000. And nobody has ever claimed that the IDF defeated Hizballah in the 2006 war. Well, Ehud Olmert, may be. And according to Avi Shlaim, an Israeli who is a Professor of International Relations at Oxford, Hamas drove out the IDF from Gaza in 2005. (Guardian, 7 January 2009,)

The 2009 war against Gaza was provoked by Israel. ‘It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men,’ according to Avi Shlaim. And Uri Avnery, an Israeli veteran peace activist, agrees: ‘And indeed, after several such small actions, in which Hamas fighters were killed, Hamas retaliated with a massive launch of rockets, and – lo and behold – the cease-fire was at an end. Everybody blamed Hamas.’ ( Counterpunch , Jan 2, 2009).

There are three other ‘facts’ which I can’t determine their truthfulness but given that all the others have come into question I am not holding my breath they are the gospel truth. But what do we make of the ‘fact’ below? Are we supposed to sympathise with poor miss-understood Israel?

16. Out of 175 United Nations Security Council resolutions up to 1990, 97 were against Israel ; out of 690 General Assembly resolutions, 429 were against Israel;

The forwarded email ends with the following: ‘Truth and peace are values common to all of us. Everyone must know!’ Now, this is where I totally agree.

The writer teaches at Universiti Malaya.

References:

[1] Top Ten Reasons East Jerusalem does not belong to Jewish-Israelis. 23/3/10 .

[2] Shlomo Sand

[3] March 01, 2010. Al-Khali l - Hebron and Jerusalem Protests Point to the Dangers of Nationalizing Sacred Space .

[4] March 16, 2010. The Map : The Story of Palestinian Nationhood Thwarted After the League of Nations Recognised It .

[5] Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, 2003. Verso. London.

[6] Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle , 1999. South End Press Classics. Cambridge, Massachusetts.