Enough is enough: truth about Israeli conflict must be told
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 28, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Ben Shapiro Shapiro is a first-year
philosophy student bringing reason to the masses. E-mail him at
[email protected].
Click Here for more articles by Ben Shapiro
There are not always two sides to a story. Sometimes, there is
only truth and falsehood. The Israeli-“Palestinian”
conflict is one of these cases. Many organizations on campus have
bought into the Arab myths, including the Daily Bruin, which
repeatedly prints anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic articles (and will
surely do so in response to this column).
With USAC’s voting down of a resolution to condemn Zionism
and Israel, it showed good sense and courage ““ but how did
that racist resolution ever get on the agenda? That resolution
shouldn’t have had to be voted down; it should have been
immediately struck from the agenda. Enough is enough. It’s
time to set the record straight about what actually happened and
what is a concoction of the Arab propaganda machine.
The history of the situation is clear and unequivocal. Since the
destruction of Jewish rule in Israel over 2,000 years ago, no state
ever emerged until 1948. The land of what is today Israel was
continuously occupied by Arabs and Jews. It was not
“Palestine” ““ there was no state present, and the
name Palestine was given to the land by the Romans in order to
spite the Jews, whose mortal enemies were the Philistines.
With the rise of Zionism, the nations of the world saw that the
Jews needed the homeland that God had promised them millennia
before. In 1920 the British, who controlled what is today Israel
and Jordan, allotted all of what is now Israel and Jordan to the
Jews, confirming the Balfour Declaration. Soon, however, the
British reneged on their promise, believing that the Arabs were a
more powerful ally than the Jews, and that by establishing a Jewish
state they would lose Arab support.
In 1922 the British lopped off 80 percent of the land already
allotted to the Jews under the Balfour Declaration, giving it to
the Arabs for the purpose of a Trans-Jordanian state. The British
effort to gain Arab support was a dismal failure ““ during
World War II forces from Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia fought on the
side of the Nazis.
But the betrayal of the Jews continued ““ when the United
Nations partitioned the land in 1947, they gave 46 percent of the
remaining Jewish land to the Arabs for the purpose of yet another
Arab state, despite the fact that the Arabs already had 500 times
the amount of land that tiny Israel had. This appeasement
failed.
In 1948, the Arabs launched an all-out attack on the state of
Israel. Miraculously, even while outnumbered with their backs to
the Mediterranean Sea, the Israelis fought off the Arab
onslaught.
 Illustration by JASON CHEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Here
begin the Arab claims. They claim that Israel expelled the Arab
population in order to “clear the land.” They claim
that over 700,000 “Palestinians” were thrown off of
their property by the Jews. They claim that the Israelis were the
perpetrators of a “great ethnic cleansing.”
And here is the truth. In 1948 Arab radio stations broadcast
messages to all the Arabs living within the “Zionist
Entity,” telling them to temporarily leave so Arab troops
could “cleanse” the land of the Jews.
According to the New York Lebanese Daily Al-Hoda (1951),
“Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to
leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in
neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab
armies mow them down.” The Israeli Declaration of
Independence specifically asks the Arabs living within Israel to
stay ““ and yet the 500,000 Arabs chose to leave.
When the Arab nations failed to “drive the Jews into the
sea,” the former Arab inhabitants of Israel became refugees.
But the Arab nations, instead of taking them in, made them tools
for the destruction of the newly formed state of Israel. It would
not have been difficult to take in the refugees; they were
identical to the Arabs of neighboring states in language, religion
and culture (as they still are).
Many reports, including a U.S. congressional study done in 1953,
established that the refugees could be easily incorporated into
Arab states. While the Arab nations never repatriated their
brethren, the Jewish state took in 800,000 Jewish refugees who were
expelled from Arab states.
But for the express purpose of the destruction of the state of
Israel, the Arabs manufactured their claim to a state within
Israeli borders called “Palestine” (a state which the
Arabs had never even considered when the “West Bank,”
Gaza Strip and Jerusalem were under Arab jurisdiction) and created
and maintained the image of the poor Palestinian refugee.
The Arab nations kept the refugees in squalid conditions. They
claimed that the Israelis were responsible for the Arab plight,
educating their children in the greatness of “Jihad,”
in killing Jews, and indoctrinating them with books and cartoons
that looked frighteningly like those of Nazi Germany (Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America).
After years of breeding hate for the Jews, the Palestine
Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat appeared with one goal:
to eradicate the Jewish state.
Yitzchak Rabin granted Arafat a false legitimacy; Arafat ““
a dangerous terrorist ““ was the leader of the organization
that slaughtered 11 Israelis at the 1972 Munich Olympics and he
participated in the shooting and drowning of an elderly Jewish man
aboard the Achille Lauro. Arafat also walked into the U.N. with a
gun.
Arafat (who is actually Egyptian) claimed in the 1992 Oslo
Accords that he would stop violence in return for the initial step
of returning the “West Bank” and Gaza Strip.
The Israelis handed over land, compromising their security and
putting them at the strategic mercy of the Arabs, but the
“Palestinians” have yet to show any sign of peace. They
have continuously suicide bombed, shot at Israeli soldiers, killed
Israeli settlers, and desecrated Jewish holy sites.
The PLO Charter still calls for the destruction of the state of
Israel (PLO Charter, Articles 9, 21 and 26). Palestinian
“collaborators” with Israel have been shot without
trial. Palestinian civilians have been tortured and killed. They
have put their children out in the front lines to be shot for
publicity purposes. If one must speak of human rights violations,
what is more heinous than sacrificing children?
And yet the Palestinian authority now controls much of the
“West Bank” and almost all of Gaza. The rest of the
“West Bank,” sovereignty over East Jerusalem and joint
control of the Temple Mount was offered in return for peace. This
offer was flatly refused by Arafat, who never even submitted a
counteroffer, instead orchestrating an “Intifada.” It
was this refusal that led to the election of Ariel Sharon.
Would America tolerate the kind of terrorism Israelis must
suffer? When Colonel Muamar Qadafi, a Libyan terrorist, blew up a
Pan Am flight, Ronald Reagan bombed Libya ““ Qadafi
disappeared from the international scene overnight. Israel has been
far less severe and that has compromised its security.
The first step to a safe, secure, peaceful region is to study
the facts. Enough of inculcating hatred in children against Israel.
Enough rewriting of history. Enough of the propaganda put forth by
a manufactured nation whose sole goal is to eradicate Israel. Truth
must be the first priority.
