Debunking the Biggest Lies About Israel on Campus
The files attached are what students feel are the "the most common lies" told on campus about Israel, and how to respond to each claim.
"Palestinians are the indigenous people to the land of israel"
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- Jews, not Arabs, are Israel’s indigenous people. Jews are from Judea (Israel). Arabs are from Arabia.
- Jews are Israel's indigenous people building the First Temple in Jerusalem, the capital of their country Judea (Israel), in the 10th century BC. Arabs, arriving from Arabia, and did not appear in Israel/Judea until the 7th century BC. All other early groups in the land a la Jebusites, Phoenicians and Philistines, etc., have long since vanished.
- Islam did not exist when the Jewish people made Israel their state and Jerusalem their capital. Palestinian Arabs are descended from Islamic Arabia, not from any long vanished group a la Jebusites. Jews are from Judea (Israel). Arabs are from Arabia. There has never been an established Arab, Islamic, or Palestinian-Arab state in Israel.
"Israel is ethnically cleansing the palestinian people"
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- There is no evidence to support the expulsion or ethnic cleansing of Arabs.
- By spreading antisemitic rumors of Jewish blood libels, killings of women and children etc., Palestinian leaders instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Palestinian-Arabs, until they fled leaving their homes and properties.
- "The Arab state which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees." - The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, Feb. 19, 1949.
- According to the 1948 acting chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Committee (AHC), the Arabs living in Palestine willingly chose to leave rather than to submit to a truce.
"Israel commits genocide"
- The narrative Israel commits “genocide against the Palestinians,” “Israel exterminates the Palestinians,” “Israel commits mass murder of the Palestinians,” Israel “ethnically cleanses the Palestinians,” and “Israel is a Nazi state,” (implying Israeli extermination of Palestinians), Israel supporters/Zionists are “genocide-sympathetic," are all false and malicious blood libels, and anti-Semitic statements.
- “From the regional demographic standpoint, since Israel’s entry into the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria and into Gaza in 1967, the Palestinian Arab population has increased from 954,898 to 4,654,421. This indicates an increase of 387% of the Palestinian-Arab population since 1967.
- Ma’an News Agency, a Palestinian news agency, reported in 2011 that since Israel’s independence in 1948, the Palestinian population had grown at an average of 3.4% yearly growth rate, - higher than the average world population growth, which varied between 0.8% and 2.1% during the same period.
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"Israel is an apartheid state"
- All ethnicities, including Arabs, are treated equally in Israel.
- Freedom of religion is also guaranteed and strictly enforced, and so is protection of holy sites of all religions.
- Israel also guarantees freedom of assembly, movement, and voting to all citizens, including Arabs.
- There are a dozen Arabs in the Knesset (Parliament) and an Arab judge of the Supreme Court.
- Arabs are very well represented in Israeli universities, both among students and staff.
- The dispossession and ethnic cleansing of nearly one million Jewish refugees was done under the color of law and today there are very few Jews remaining in most Arab countries.
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"Israel is illegally occupYING Palestinian land"
Land as an obstacle to peace
- The conflict has never been about land but about Arabs rejecting Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
- Beginning in 1919, Grand Mufti and ally to Adolf Hitler, Haj Amin al Husseini, organized, “fedayeen,” (“one who sacrifices himself”), small groups of terrorists who were willing to die while killing Jews.
- “The conflict” is often alleged to have begun with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 or as a result of Israel’s capture in 1967 of territories occupied by Jordan. But systematic violence began in early 1920 with murderous assaults by groups of local Arabs and by Muslim nomads against Jews.
- In 1921, Arab rioters attacked Jews in Jaffa and its environs. The leader behind these attacks was Haj Amin al Husseini, who assembled the violent riots over Jewish immigration.
- Between 1918 and 1928, the Jewish population in “Palestine” doubled, to about 150,000. Palestinian-Arabs concern for this were initiated by Haj Amin al Husseini who in 1929 orchestrated violence and murderous acts using the Western Wall as the focal point.
- The Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel, attacked by 13 combatants, took a significant amount of land. Israel offered to return land for peace, but the Arab world’s response were the “3 No’s”: NO peace, NO negotiations, and NO recognition of Israel.
"Settlements are an obsticle to peace"
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Palestinian "refugees"
- Since the Second World War the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has been responsible for the welfare of all refugees in the world and has assisted in their resettlement and relocation – so that nearly all of them are no longer refugees – with one exception: the Arabs from Palestine.
- The Palestinian refugee crisis was created by an attack of seven Arab countries against the re-established state of Israel - a defensive war that was won by Israel. During the war, the high Arab committee encouraged Arabs in mandatory Palestine to leave their homes to which they could return following the victory over the Jewish state - a victory that never happened.
- One of the greatest obstacles to peace today, and certainly the least acknowledged, is the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem and the inflation of its scale by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). If the descendants of the Arab refugees from the Arab-Israeli war were treated like all other refugees, including the Jewish ones, they would not quality for refugee status because almost all of them (upward of 80%) are either citizens of a third country, such as Jordan, or they live in the places where they were born and expect to have a future such as Gaza and the West Bank.
| right_of_return.pdf |
