Arab’s play offense while Israelis play defense. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of propaganda.
But first I want to look at the negotiations. Can anyone tell me what the Israelis are demanding. I’m waiting.
On the other hand,the Arabs are demanding the holy city in Jerusalem, the greenline as the border and the “right of return”. It seems Israel is always struggling to meet their demands in part, hoping it will suffice. No such struggle on the part of the Arabs, Just the reiteration of their demands. They have a sense of entitlement while the Israelis have a sense of indebtedness. That’s no way to win a ball game.
The Arabs always rejected the State of Israel and in the seventies made a conscious decision to convince the world to do likewise. So they began a propaganda war to demonize and delegitimate Israel and Zionism. The infamous, Zionism is Racism, resolution at the UN was the first volley.
David Matas, famed human rights lawyer from Canada, in his excellent book Aftershock, written in 2002, reviewed the attacks on Jews and Israel throughout the world, and asked how could this happen sixty years after the Holocaust? He answers,
1. “The root cause of the revival of antisemitism is anti-Zionism. Zionism is the expression of the right to self determination of the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism, by definition, denies and rejects this right by denying the right to a state by the Jewish people. Anti-Zionism is a form of racism. It is the specific denial to the Jewish people of the basic right to which all people of the world are entitled.
2. Israel exists because of the Holocaust, because of antisemitism and as a place of refuge for Jews fleeing persecution, for the cultural survival of the Jewish people and their right to self-determination, because of the ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, and because of international acceptance and recognition. The logic of anti-Zionism requires attacking each and every one of these reasons for the existence of Israel.”
Thus the Holocaust is denied or trivialized and the creation of Israel is discredited as western colonialism or a “mistake”, if you will. In addition, the Arabs have created a narrative to compete with the Jewish narrative. The Arabs deny that both the First and Second Temples were located at or near the Temple Mount. In their narrative they have the roots and rights in and to the land and the Jews have virtually no connection to it. They also deny the peoplehood of the Jews while at the same time claiming their own and their right to self determination.
Beyond that, they attack the Jews/Israel for all the worst crimes known to man. Their charges are not at all based in reality. It doesn’t matter if there is any evidence to support them, nor that they are outrageous or perverse. They will distort facts or fraudulently present “facts” to support their allegations. They also misrepresent the law in order to more easily conclude that Israelis have committed a crime, or better still, a war crime.
The list of “crimes” include; perpetrating genocide or another holocaust, ethnic cleansing, the commission of war crimes for disproportionality, intentionally killing innocents and creating an humanitarian disaster.
They are relentless in stigmatizing Israel as an Apartheid State so that they can create a worldwide movement to delegitimate Israel similar to the movement that undermined a real apartheid regime, namely South Africa. Once again, to do this, the reality and the nature of an Apartheid regime are distorted and falsified.
Their lies also include the following;
1. the occupation is illegal
2. the settlements are illegal
3. Judea and Samaria are Palestinian lands
4. Israel is the aggressor
5. Jerusalem is holy to Islam
6. the Arabs support a two-state solution
7. the Jews want to take over the world pursuant to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
David Matas and others have convincingly debunked all of these lies.
The Arabs follow Goebbels dictum to a “T”,
1. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
The phrase, “big lie”, was also used in a report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler’s psychological profile.
1. His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
This too they follow to a “T”. Its only natural since Haj Amin al Husseini, the father of militant Palestinian Arab nationalism, a previously unknown concept, was a close confident of Hitler and asked of him to acknowledge the Arab right
1. … to settle the question of Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries in accordance with the national and racial interests of the Arabs and along the lines similar to those used to solve the Jewish question in Germany and Italy.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
What the Israeli government must do is to challenge every one of these lies at every opportunity. That’s what its PR should be about and not about the babes on the beach.
That is playing offense.
ADDENDUM
I received this email from a fair minded person
A quick question is there, at the very least, one settlement that is illegal? If you say, no, please explain in simple terms, why Haaretz keeps presenting articles, by articulate, and famous Israelis that say that most of the settlements are illegal. Is Haaretz an anti-Israeli newspaper or does it know something that you don’t want to admit? And, no, I’m not in the least defending the vitriol of Arab propoganda, e.g. the Protocols. But, I am lookinhg for some balance.
In my opinion Haaretz spins the news and facts to suit their agenda. Here is the law. You decide.
The British Mandate gave the Jews the right to settle in Judea and Samaria and all of the lands in the Mandate. That right has never been ceded. It has never been cancelled because no one has the right to do that except for the beneficiaries of the trust (Mandate).
I might mention that the international community in supporting the Arab desire that Judea and Samaria be “Judenrien” is itself in violation of Human rights. Canada and other countries have long ago held that restrictive covenants are illegal. Would this restriction not fall to the same axe. That is to say nothing about the crime of ethnic cleansing.
So what then is the international community hanging its hat on?
The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War contains an obligation not to transfer civilian populations to occupied territories. This was put there to protect against what Germany did in WW II when it carried out forced transfers.
This provision was so minor that there is no individual liability and there is no duty on states to penalize violations.
A Protocol to this Convention does make it a serious offense. The object of the exercise is to protect the people being transferred. In other words it is against forced transfers. Even so, Israel did not sign this protocol so isn’t bound by it.
To get around this obvious barrier many argue that the Convention not only means a state can’t force transfers but also can’t induce them. This argument gets no support from legal scholars. For instance if the crime is inducement, the settlers are not guilty of it. Ordinarily the Criminal Code makes it an crime to induce people to commit a crime. You see the distortion here yet again.
There is more legal arguments that to be made, but the foregoing is the essence.
So , yes, all settlements are legal.
Now if the Haaretz’ eminent writers take a contrary position, they need to support it and not just allege it.
Now a distinction has been made where some settlements are “unlawful”. But that doesn’t mean they are illegal. This adjective applies only to settlements that didn’t have Israeli administrative approval.
The foregoing question and my answer prove my point. The propaganda has been so pervasive that fair minded people assume it as fact.
