Conveniently Overlooked Facts on the Middle East

 

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem.  Israel became a nation in ca. 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam.

2. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1976, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in ca. 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslin entity.  Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures (O.T.). Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem, Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem, and face toward Mecca, their holy city.

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees.  In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews; Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The Arabs created their own refugee problem. The Jews did not expel the Arabs, as it often reported in the Arab and even western press.

10.  The Jewish refugees wee forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.  They wee forced to leave the Arab countries often with only the shirts on their backs, leaving all their other possessions behind.

11.  The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory.  Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples’ lands.  Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict.  The Arabs are represented by 16 separate nations, not including the Palestinians.  There is only one Jewish nation.  The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

14.  The P.L.O.’s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.  Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them with weapons. (This is really insane: Israel actually supplied the guns and ammunition, which since then are being used to kill Jews.)

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslin and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16.  The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs.   Of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

17.  Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

18.  The U.N. was silent while 58 synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians in East Jerusalem when it was captured by Jordan in the 1948 war.

19.  The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

20. The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

Submitted by Lim Han Young, Singapore.  From Petah Tikvah magazine, Oct-Dec 2001 Vol. 19, No. 4, p. 43