MYTH

“The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 changed the borders of independent Arab states that had existed for centuries.”

TRUTH

The boundaries of Middle East countries were arbitrarily fixed by the Western powers after Turkey was defeated in World War I and the French and British mandates were set up. The areas allotted to Israel under the UN partition plan had been under the control of the Ottoman empire, who ruled Palestine for 400 years from 1517 until 1917.

When Turkey was defeated in World War I, the League of Nations gave the French  the mandate over the area now known as Lebanon and Syria. The league of Nations gave the British control of Palestine and Iraq.

The British Mandate promised a homeland to the Jewish people in historic Palestine east of the river Jordan including Judea and Samaria. It was not until the UN partition plan of 1947 that Israel was reduced in size to less than 20% of the land promised by the League of Nations as a Jewish Homeland. Israel accepted the UN partition. The Arabs rejected it.

It is sheer historical ignorance to accept the notion that the Israel/Arab conflict started with Israel’s victory in the six day war in 1967. It is  historical ignorance to accept the notion that Israel stole Arab lands. The truth is that Israel’s flourishing economy drew tens of thousands of Arabs from the surrounding areas who were looking to benefit from Jewish industrial ingenuity and success in working a land that lay barren for centuries.

·         When was Palestine founded and by whom?

·         What were its borders?

·         What was its capital?

·         What were its major cities?

·         What constituted the basis of its economy?

·         What was its form of government?

·         Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?  

·         What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell me what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, British pound, or Japanese yen.

·         And if you are still mourning the demise of a “once proud Palestinian” nation… then please tell me, when exactly was that “nation” proud and what was it so proud of… what caused its demise and when did it occur?

And here is the most basic question of all: If the people called "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over the Middle East, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become a sovereign independent entity until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?