Israel Advocacy
Resources to help you stand for israel
Understanding Israel
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Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel (English subtitles)
Ben Gurion declaring the establishment of the Jewish state. -
Conflict in Israel and Palestine: Crash Course World History 223
In which John Green teaches you about the conflict in Israel and Palestine. This conflict is often cast as a long-term beef going back thousands of years, rooted in a clash between religions. Well, that’s not quite true. What is true is that the conflict is immensely complicated, and just about everyone in the world has an opinion about it. John is going to try to get the facts across in under 13 minutes.
Thought CafĆ©’s series on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGAL9TcH76MBKR5hywFZ4CA
Citation 1: Arthur James Balfour, Balfour Declaration (letter to Baron Rothschild, leader of British Jewish community). 1917.
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CC Kids: http://www.youtube.com/crashcoursekids -
November 29, 1947: The Story of a Vote
Toldot Yisrael (http://www.toldotyisrael.org ) presents the story of the November 29th, 1947 UN vote for the Partition of Palestine. A vote that lasted a mere three minutes changed the course of Jewish History and brought 20 centuries of Jewish homelessness to an end.
This movie is the second episode in the “Eyewitness 1948” short film series produced by Toldot Yisrael and the History Channel. It is the centerpiece of an educational pilot program developed with The iCenter and made possible through the generous support of the Jim Joseph Foundation and others.
Producer
Eric Halivni (Weisberg)
Director and Editor
Tal Ella
Production and Research
Peleg Levy
Cinematography
Natasha Dudinski
Joshua Faudem
Peleg Levy
Promo Films
Narrator
Troy De Lowe
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Editor
Nahum Grinberg
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Original Score and Sound Editor
Uri Kalian
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Golda Meir discusses the Palestinian identity
1970–Thames Television–Golda Meir discusses the Palestinian identity, and asks why the Arabs in the West Bank became more Palestinian than the Arabs in the East Bank, after June 5 1967 -
Who are the Palestinians? An Arab Invention. CBN.
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Origins of the Word Palestine
We often hear claims that Palestinians are “native” or indigenous to the land of Israel, but does history back this up? It’s worth taking a look. -
Origins Of “Palestine”
Where does the word “Palestine” come from? How has it evolved through time? What does it mean in today’s geopolitical context?
Filmed in 2018 -
The History of the Israel and Palestine Conflict
A mini-documentary exploring the tense relationship between Israel and Palestine; from the establishment of Jerusalem as a holy city, through Israel’s 2014 invasion of Gaza.
Video by Bryce Plank
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The History of Israel and Palestine -
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Prager University
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Why Don’t You Support Israel?
Israel is one of the most free and most prosperous countries in the world. Not only is Israel a booming economy and a wellspring of innovation, it is the only democracy in the Middle East. So why is it so controversial to support the Jewish state? Stephen Harper, the 22nd Prime Minister of Canada, lays out several fundamental truths about Americaās most critical ally.
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Script:
When I was Prime Minister of Canada, I was often asked this question: āWhy do you support Israel?ā
My response, in effect, was always the same: Why wouldnāt I support Israel?
Why wouldnāt I support a fellow democratic nation where open elections, free speech, and religious tolerance are the everyday norm? Why wouldnāt I support a country with a vibrant free press and an independent judiciary? Why wouldnāt I support a valuable trading partner and a well-spring of amazing technological innovation? Why wouldnāt I support our most critical ally in the Middle East, and in the international struggle against terrorism?
In a rational world, in a world where simple common sense prevailed, the question āwhy do you support Israel?ā would be like asking āwhy do you support Australia?ā orā¦āCanada?ā
But we donāt live in that rational, common-sense world. So the case for Israel has to be made over and over. I, for one, am happy to make it.
Let me start with this:
Every military action Israel has ever taken has been to protect itself. Israel is not an aggressor state; itās a defensive state. This has been true from its founding to this day.
As a fledgling nation in 1948, Israel was immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors. Their goal was not to contain the tiny new country; it was to annihilate it. No nation came to Israelās aidānot the United States, not my country, Canada, not the United Kingdomāno one. They all thought Israel would lose. But it didnāt lose. It won.
In 1967, Israelās neighbors again sought to utterly destroy the Jewish State, a nation that had then existed for two decades. Again, Israel prevailed. And It survived another all-out attack in 1973.
Those are the big wars, but Iām not sure there has been a single day in Israelās entire history when some act of terror has not been waged against itāinside or outside its borders.
There have been two bloody waves of terror, so-called intifadas, in the late 1980s and the early 2000s, when Israelis were blown up on buses, at pizza parlors and celebrating weddings. There have been incursions from terror groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon. There have been thousands of rocket attacks from Hamas in the Gaza Stripāeven after Israel completely withdrew from that territory in 2005.
In between the wars, in between the terror, Israel has sought peace with its neighbors. And it has achieved peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. For others, however, every Israeli gesture for peace is met with incitement and violence.
I recount this history for one reason: Any nation that has endured what Israel has endured could easily have become a police state. But through it all, Israel has never abandoned its commitment to the rule of law, to democracy, to tolerance. One-fifth of its citizens are Muslim. They enjoy the same rights as Jewish citizens. They occupy key positions in the nationās courts, press and government. And they have their own parties representing them in the Knesset, Israelās parliament. To say that Muslims in Israel are the freest Muslims in the region is an understatement.
How about this as a human rights test: Prisoners in Israel, be they Jewish or Arab, are well-treated, well-fed, and have access to the best possible medical care. Parents and spouses of these prisoners know where they are and that they are safe. Who else in the region but Israel can make that claim?
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/why-dont-you-support-israel -
If You Hate Israel, You’re No Friend of the Jews
Itās one thing to criticize Israel. Itās another thing entirely to be against the very existence of the Jewish state. In this clarifying video, Dennis Prager defines the difference and explains why anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same.
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Script:
Imagine a group of people who work to destroy Italy because, they claim, Italyās origins are illegitimate. Imagine further that these people maintain that of all the countries in the world, only Italy doesnāt deserve to exist. And then imagine that these people vigorously deny that they are anti-Italian. Would you believe them?
Now substitute āIsraelā for āItaly,ā and youāll understand the dishonesty and absurdity of the argument that one can be anti-Zionistāthat is, against the existence of a Jewish stateābut not anti-Semitic.
But that is precisely what anti-Zionists say. They argue that Israelās existence is illegitimate. They donāt believe this of any other country in the world, no matter how bloody its origins. And then they get offended when theyāre accused of being anti-Semitic.
How can they make this argument?
First, they change the topic. They say itās unfair to charge those who merely ācriticizeā Israel with being anti-Semitic. But criticism of Israel is fine. Denying Israelās right to exist isnāt. Anti-Zionism isnāt criticism of Israel. Anti-Zionism is opposition to Israelās existence.
Zionism is the name of the movement that advocates for the return of Jews to their historic homeland. Over the past 3,000 years, there were only two independent states located in what is called Israel. Both were Jewish states, and invaders destroyed both. No Arab or Muslim or any other country ever existed in that land, which was only named Palestine by the Romans to remove all memory of the Jewish state they destroyed in the year 70.
Second, anti-Zionists claim they canāt be anti-Jewish because Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. Thatās equally false. It is the same as saying Italy has nothing to do with being Italian.
Judaism has alwaysāalwaysāconsisted of three components: God, Torah and Israel. If Israel isnāt part of Judaism, neither is the Bible or God.
Third, anti-Zionists claim that Judaism is only a religion; therefore, Jews are only members of a religion, not a nation. But the Jews are called a ānationā more than a hundred times in the Bible. That is why there can be irreligious, secular and even atheist Jewsābecause Jews are not only a religion. They are also a people, or a nation. There are no atheist Christians because Christianity is only a religion.
Fourth, the anti-Zionists claim that Israel is illegitimate because it is racist. This is the fraudulent charge Israel-haters and America-haters make against two of the least racist societies in the world. Half of Israelās Jews are not even white, and anyone, of any race or ethnicity, can become a Jew.
Plus, 1 of 5 Israelis isnāt a Jew. And these Israeli citizens, mostly Arab Muslims, have the same rights as Jewish Israelis.
As for Israelās control of the West Bank, that has nothing to do with race. Israel doesnāt control the West Bank because Palestinians are of another raceābut because Palestinians and their Arab allies tried to destroy Israel in 1967, and they lost the war. Palestinians have rejected offers to found their own state on five separate occasions since 1947. Thatās the only reason they donāt have their own state. And why have they always rejected building a Palestinian state? Because they have always been more interested in destroying the Jewish state.
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/if-you-hate-israel-youre-no-friend-of-the-jews -
Why Does America Spend So Much on Israel?
With so much that must be done at home in the United States, why does America send so much of its resources to Israel? Itās a fair question, but according to U.S. Gen Chuck Wald, America doesnāt spend enough on Israel. Watch to understand why.
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Script:
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Script:
Why do we spend so much money on Israel?
Over my decades of military service, as the Deputy Commander of United States European Command and now as a security advisor, Iāve often heard people make this complaint.
The truth is we donāt spend enough. We should spend more. And for purely selfish reasons.
Every dollar we spend on Israel is a dollar spent, in effect, in our own defense. As a value proposition, itās all in Americaās favor.
Let me explain, but before I do let me say this:
I can easily defend why America supports Israel on moral grounds alone.
Iāve been there on numerous occasions. Itās a good and decent country. Given the neighborhood it lives in, I find that both remarkable and admirable.
But I will make this argument solely on the basis of Americaās security.
Our partnership with Israel is unique.
Unlike most of our current treaty alliances — say with South Korea — our ties with Jerusalem are not premised on American troops serving as tripwires on Israelās frontlines.
This is because Israel takes care of itself.
America, for good reason, remains wary of any further military engagement in the Middle East. And this only strengthens the case for giving Israel the tools it needs to defend its borders.
Here are three things we can do ā again, all in our own self-interest.
First, the United States should front load its financial commitment to Israel.
We have agreed to provide Israel $38 billion in defense assistance over ten years. Thatās a big number, but itās also a great deal ā for America.
In addition to giving Israel the financial wherewithal to purchase the weapons it needs, it also benefits the American economy. Under the agreement, Israel must spend these funds on U.S. products. And itās happy to do so. Without adding a cent to the total, the United States should āfront-loadā this assistance to reflect the changing strategic situation in the Middle East, specifically the rising danger presented by Iran and its proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.
An accelerated timetable would allow Israel to acquire critical capabilities like more F-35 air attack squadrons, more air refueling tankers and more precision munitions. It will need this hardware to defend itself and American interests against these persistent, and growing, threats.
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/why-does-america-spend-so-much-israel -
An Arab Muslim in the Israeli Army
Why would an Arab Muslim serve in the Israeli military? Because he, like many Israeli Arabs, proudly defend the nation that has given them freedom and opportunity. Mohammad Kabiya, Israeli Air Force reservist, shares his remarkable story.
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Script:
I am an Arab. I am a Muslim. And I love my country. In fact, Iām prepared to die for it. Which is why I serve in its army.
I donāt have to do this. I want to do this. Because my country is a special place, unlike any other.
Free. Diverse. Vibrant.
Yet, other countriesācountries not so free, not so diverseācall for my countryās complete destruction. The moment my country lets its guard down, it will be destroyed.
My country is Israel.
I grew up and still live in a small village named after my familyās Bedouin Arab tribe. Our roots in this land run deep.
In 1948, when Arab armies invaded the new state of Israel, my family thought of leaving our village. Some of them did. But when the Jewsā leaders heard that, they implored us to remain. āThis is our country, for both Arabs and Jews,ā they said. āStay, and we will work together to build it.ā
My family stayed. My parents were born here, made their lives here, started their own family hereāin Israel.
In 2002, I was a teenager. It was a violent time. Palestinian suicide bombers were blowing up Israeli civiliansāa danger to Arabs and Jews alike. Israeli troops entered to the West Bank to stop them at their source. As a result, many Palestinians were killed.
I was torn. Whose side was I on, I thought: Israelās or the Palestiniansā? Is it possible to be an Arab and an Israeli? The question became even more difficult when I saw men from my own village wearing the uniform of the Israeli army. Only Jews are required to serve in the military. No one forced these Arab men to join; they chose to. āWhy?ā I asked them.
āOur home is here, in Israel,ā they said. āOur home is under attack. Our neighbors in this home are Jews. They are being attacked. We fight together.ā
Still, I struggled.
I went to high school in Nazareth. There, unlike the village where I grew up, most of the Arab students identified as Palestinians even though they are citizens of Israel.
Some of the studentsāmy friendsāhated Israel. They couldnāt understand me. āYouāre a Palestinianā, they said, āso you must hate Israel.ā When I said that I didnāt, that we had far more freedom and opportunity than Arabs anywhere in the Middle East, they called me a traitor.
After high school, I went on to study electrical engineering at Technion, a leading Israeli university. During my first semester, heavy rocket fire from Gaza forced Israel to launch a counterattack.
Not long after the war began, I witnessed a group of Arab-Israeli students expressing their solidarity with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization that controls Gaza and is committed to Israelās violent destruction.
Did these students not understand that those rockets could just as easily be aimed at them? Hamas didnāt care who they killed as long as they landed inside the borders of Israel. Had my fellow Arab students forgotten that Israel had left Gaza a few years before? That there wasnāt a single Israeli living there?
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/arab-muslim-israeli-army -
Does Israel Discriminate Against Arabs?
Does Israel discriminate against Arabs? Is it today’s version of apartheid South Africa? Olga Meshoe, herself a South African whose family experienced apartheid, settles the question once and for all. Donate today to PragerU! http://l.prageru.com/2ylo1Yt
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Script:
Maybe youāve heard someone say that Israel is an apartheid state. That Israel has a policy of segregating and oppressing the minority population within its borders ā like South Africa once did.
Maybe youāve been so outraged by this information that you have considered joining the BDS movementāāthe effort to boycott, divest and sanction Israel until it ends its alleged āracistā policies.
I donāt blame you.
Apartheid is a great evil and deserves to be fought wherever we find it.
But hereās the thing: You wonāt find apartheid in the State of Israel.
So, Iāll put it bluntly: The BDS movement is a slick propaganda effort built on lies.
I think I have the credibility to make this claim.
Having grown up in South Africa, and having spent a fair amount of time in Israel, I know what apartheid is and what it is not. My parents were raised under real apartheid where blacks were, by law, separated from whites at every level, from education to drinking fountains.
Blacks couldnāt vote, couldnāt own land, couldnāt live next to, or use the same transportation system as whites. I remember my father telling me about how my grandfather was kicked and humiliated in public by a young white boy. All he was permitted to say was, āPlease stop, little boss.ā That was the world my family lived in.
That was the world of apartheid South Africa.
But in Israel, the law is color-blind. Israeli Arabs have the same rights as Israeli Jews. They ride the same buses, study in the same schools, and are treated in the same hospitals. Arabs are elected to Israelās parliament, serve as judges, and fight in the Israeli military.
On my first trip to Israel, the group I was with had a Jewish tour guide and an Arab bus driver. Imagine our surprise, having heard that Israel is an apartheid state. This would have been inconceivable in apartheid South Africa.
All these things would be self-evident to anyone who did any kind of actual research, or, even better, visited Israelāāsomething I encourage everyone to do.
BDS doesnāt want you to do research or visit Israel. It depends on the ignorance of its audience. Sadly, on American college campuses, BDS has a significant presence. It succeeds by playing on the good intentions of good people through deliberate deception.
In short, they lie.
And lies really make me angry because lies empower evil.
Lies about blacks empowered apartheid in South Africa.
Lies about Jews made the Holocaust possible.
And lies about Israel are misleading a lot of good-hearted young people into opposing the only country in the entire Middle East that doesnāt segregate and oppress its minority population. Just ask the next Egyptian Copt or Iraqi Christian you meet on campus.
So, the question people should really be asking is: What does the BDS movement want?
The answer is simple. They want to destroy Israel. They canāt do it militarily, so they try to do it through lies.
For the the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/does-israel-discriminate-against-arabs -
Why Isn’t There a Palestinian State?
Why don’t the Palestinians have their own country? Is it the fault of Israel? Of the Palestinians? Of both parties? David Brog, Executive Director of the Maccabee Task Force, shares the surprising answers.
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Script:
If Israel just allowed the Palestinians to have a state of their own, there would be peace in the Middle East, right? Thatās what you hear from UN ambassadors, European diplomats and most college professors.
But what if I told you that Israel has already offered the Palestinians a state of their own – and not just once, but on five separate occasions?
Donāt believe me?
Letās review the record.
After the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following World War I, Britain took control of most of the Middle East, including the area that constitutes modern Israel.
Seventeen years later, in 1936, the Arabs rebelled against the British, and against their Jewish neighbors.
The British formed a task force ā the Peel Commission ā to study the cause of the rebellion. The commission concluded that the reason for the violence was that two peoples ā Jews and Arabs ā wanted to govern the same land.
The answer, the Peel Commission concluded, would be to create two independent states ā one for the Jews, and one for the Arabs. A two-state solution. The suggested split was heavily in favor of the Arabs. The British offered them 80 percent of the disputed territory; the Jews, the remaining 20 percent. Yet, despite the tiny size of their proposed state, the Jews voted to accept this offer. But the Arabs rejected it and resumed their violent rebellion. Rejection number one.
Ten years later, in 1947, the British asked the United Nations to find a new solution to the continuing tensions. Like the Peel Commission, the UN decided that the best way to resolve the conflict was to divide the land.
On November 7, 1947, the UN voted to create two states. Again, the Jews accepted the offer. And again, the Arabs rejected it, only this time, they did so by launching an all-out war. Rejection number two.
Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria joined the conflict. But they failed. Israel won the war, and got on with the business of building a new nation. Most of the land set aside by the UN for an Arab state ā the West Bank and east Jerusalem ā became occupied territory; occupied not by Israel, but by Jordan.
Twenty years later, in 1967, the Arabs, led this time by Egypt and joined by Syria and Jordan, once again sought to destroy the Jewish State.
The 1967 conflict, known as the Six Day War, ended in a stunning victory for Israel. Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the area known as the Gaza Strip, fell into Israelās hands. The government split over what to do with this new territory. Half wanted to return the West Bank to Jordan and Gaza to Egypt in exchange for peace. The other half wanted to give it to the regionās Arabs, who had begun referring to themselves as the Palestinians, in the hope that they would ultimately build their own state there.
Neither initiative got very far. A few months later, the Arab League met in Sudan and issued its infamous āThree Noās:ā No peace with Israel. No recognition of Israel. No negotiations with Israel. Again, a two-state solution was dismissed by the Arabs, making this rejection number three.
For the complete script, visit https://www.prageru.com/videos/why-isnt-there-palestinian-state -
Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?
It’s been seven decades since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and yet there are still an estimated 4 million Palestinian refugees…and zero Jewish refugees. With so many nearby Arab allies of the Palestinians, how did this happen? What does it say about Israel? What does it say about its Arab neighbors? Dumisani Washington, Diversity Outreach Coordinator for Christians United for Israel, explains.
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Script:
Visit Israel and youāll be startled by how many colors youāll see. I donāt mean the colors of the buildings or landscape; I mean the colors of the people — black, white, olive, brown and everything in between. Israel is a true United Nations. Thatās because Israel is a nation of refugees — from everywhere.
And more than half of them are from — are you ready? — Arab countries.
Over 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from the Middle East and North Africa following the Arab countriesā attack on Israel when it gained its independence in 1948.
For over two thousand years these Jews had lived in the Arab countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq — and in the Muslim but non-Arab countries such as Turkey and Iran. Today, they form over half of Israelās Jewish population.
Many of these Jews from Middle Eastern lands look, well, just like other people from Middle Eastern lands — of darker complexion with dark hair. Other Jews migrated from North Africa. So, why is their story so unfamiliar to most people?
The most important reason is that they didnāt remain refugees for long. But refugees they most certainly were: the vast majority forced to leave their homes, possessions and businesses behind. In other words, they came to Israel with nothing.
Some 650,000 of the Jews forced to flee North Africa and the Middle East became citizens of Israel. The other 200,000 fled to the United States and other Western countries.
To give you an idea of how few Jews remain in Arab countries, consider these numbers: There were 150,000 Jews in Iraq in 1948; today there are less than 10. There were 140,000 Jews in Algeria; today there are less than 50. There were 75,000 Jews in Egypt; today less than 20. The pattern is the same across North Africa and the Middle East.
Now contrast these forgotten Jewish refugees with the most celebrated refugees in the world — the Palestinians. How is it that the Jewish refugees are not even an afterthought, but the Palestinians are the longest lasting, most lavishly supported refugee population in the history of the world?
The answer is purely political.
After Israel gained its independence in May of 1948, the surrounding Arab nations attacked the new Jewish state. As a result about 700,000 Arabs living in Israel fled. Many left because of the war, and many did because they were told by Arab leaders to leave the Jewish areas. The idea was that they would return once the Jews and their state had been destroyed.
Khalid al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-49, admitted this Arab role in persuading Palestinians to leave. In his memoirs, he wrote: āSince 1948, we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave.ā That’s how the Arab, later re-named Palestinian, refugee crisis was created.
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Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army
Is the Israeli military a paragon of morality and wartime ethics? Or is it an oppressive force that targets innocent Palestinian civilians and commits war crimes as a matter of policy? Colonel Richard Kemp, who was the commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, was in Israel during its war against Hamas in 2014, and analyzes whether Israel’s military is ethical, evil, or somewhere in between.
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Script:
There are two views of the Israeli Military — what you hear in most of the media, and the truth. Iām going to tell you the truth.
I was the Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan. I have fought in combat zones around the world including Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Macedonia and Iraq.I was also present throughout the conflict in Gaza in 2014.
Based on my experience and on my observations: the Israel Defense Force, the IDF, does more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.
Why is this so?
Firstly, Israel is a decent country with Western values, run on democratic principles. Israel has no more interest in war than Belgium does. In fact, Israel has never started a war. The only reason it ever goes to war is to defend itself. And it has to defend itself because, unlike Belgium, it is surrounded by countries and armed groups that want to destroy it.
Secondly, Judaism, with its unsurpassed moral standards, remains a major influence on the citizens of Israel. I say this as a non-Jew.
Thirdly, the army is composed overwhelmingly of citizen soldiers.
Israel is a small country with a small professional army. To fight a war it depends on its conscripts and its reservists. These are ordinary citizens, from professors to plumbers, called upon to defend their homes. They donāt want to be fighting and they donāt want to harm others.
Nowhere was the essential morality and decency of the IDF more evident than in the Gaza War of 2014. If ever there was a purely defensive war, this was it.
The war was started by Hamas, the terror organization, designated as such by the US State Department, that runs the Gaza strip. In the first six months of 2014, Hamas launched hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilians.
After repeated warnings from Israel to stop, the Israeli Air Force finally conducted precision strikes to halt the rocket-fire. And the IDF advanced into Gaza to destroy a network of terror tunnels that Hamas had constructed to attack Israeli communities near the Gaza border.
The IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping millions of leaflets, broadcasting radio messages, sending texts and making tens of thousands of phone calls. Let me repeat that. The Israelis called Gazans on their cell phones and told them to leave their residences and move to safety. Never in the history of warfare has an army phoned its enemy and told them where they are going to drop their bombs.
Many IDF missions that could have taken out Hamas military capabilities were aborted to prevent civilian casualties, increasing the risk to Israeli citizens and soldiers.
Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. Every war is chaotic and confusing, and mistakes are frequent. But mistakes are not war crimes.
Hamas, on the other hand, committed war crimes as official government policy.
Hamas deliberately positioned its military assets among the civilian population, hiding weapons in schools and hospitals, and placing rocket launchers alongside apartment buildings, then forced those civilians to stay in areas they knew would be attacked. They also instructed their people to report the lie that every Gazan killed was a civilian, even if they were actually fighters.
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Israel’s Legal Founding
When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, it was done so with the approval of the United Nations. But today, Israel’s enemies routinely challenge the legitimacy of its very existence. So, under international law, who’s right? Israel? Or its enemies?
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Script:
Of all the countries that have come into existence in the last century, no country’s birth certificate is more legitimate than that of Israel.
One reason is that many of the men who founded the country — Theodore Herzl, Ze’ev Jabotinosky, David Ben Gurion, Menecham Begin, and Yitchak Shamir — were either lawyers or had legal training. They were obsessed with “making it legal.”
Unlike almost every other country, lawyers, not generals, were the midwives of Israel’s birth — or more accurately re-birth, since it had existed as an independent country twice before in history.
Step by legal step Israel moved legally toward nationhood — from the Balfour Declaration in 1917, to the San Remo Agreement in 1920, the League of Nations Resolution in 1922, to the Anglo-American Convention on Palestine in 1924, to the partition of land ordained by the United Nations in 1947 into a nation-state for the Jewish people and an Arab state.
Yet, immediately upon its lawful establishment in 1948 as the nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel was illegally attacked by all the surrounding Arab states as well as by elements of the local Arab population. In defending its right to exist during that war, Israel lost one percent of its population, including many civilians and Holocaust survivors. It also lost some of the land assigned to it by the United Nations. It captured other land from the aggressors that was originally assigned to the Arab state. The end result of that war against Israel was an armistice line that prevailed until 1967, when Israel was once again attacked by Jordan during Israel’s war with Egypt and Syria.
Between 1948 and 1967, despite the armistice, Arab terrorists continued to infiltrate Israeli borders and to injure and kill Israeli citizens. This was part of an official policy by the surrounding governments and by leaders of local Palestinian groups. All of it was in violation, obvious violation of International law.
Following the establishment of Israel a transfer of populations occurred. Several hundred thousand Arabs who fled from Israel during the War of Independence were not allowed to return. Some had chosen to leave, assured by their Arab leaders that the fledging country would not last a week. Others were forced to leave. At that time, approximately the same number of Jews were forced to leave Arab countries — another violation of International law — where they had lived for thousands of years. The difference was that Arab countries kept the Arabs who left Israel in refugee camps, where many of them still live more than half a century after leaving Israel. And Israel, on the other hand, fully integrated all the Jewish refugees from Arab countries into Israeli society, where many of their descendants now serve in the highest positions of Israeli life.
Israel’s establishment as the nation-state of the Jewish people by entirely lawful means is quite remarkable for several reasons. First, there is no country in the world that is as surrounded by hostile enemies as is Israel. It’s been that way since 1948. Yet Israel sought the way of the pen rather than of the sword. It has needed the sword to survive. But its preference has always been for the pen, that is, for peaceful negotiations. Its peace treaty with Egypt in 1978, its peaceful abandonment of Gaza in 2005, and its many attempts to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians are examples.
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Are Israeli Settlements the Barrier to Peace?
Is Israel’s policy of building civilian communities in the West Bank the reason there’s no peace agreement with the Palestinians? Or would there still be no peace even if Israel removed all of its settlements and evicted Israeli settlers, as it did in Gaza in 2005? Renowned Harvard professor and legal scholar Alan Dershowitz explains.
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Script:
Is Israel’s policy of building civilian communities in the area known as the West Bank the reason there is no permanent peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
The answer to that question, despite all the sound and fury regarding the so-called settlement issue, is no.
The Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not the major barrier to a peace agreement.
A little historical context will make this clear.
For two decades before June of 1967, the West Bank, including much of Jerusalem, was controlled by Jordan. During that time — a time when Israel did not have a single settlement — there were numerous Palestinian terror attacks against the nation state of the Jewish people. In other words, Palestinians committed terror attacks against Israel when there were no settlements and they committed terror attacks against Israel when there were settlements.
If Israel were to pull out of every single settlement in the West Bank tomorrow, it’s unlikely that anything much would change. In fact, if history is any indicator, Israel could be worse off.
In 2005, Israel abandoned every single community, every house, every farm, every structure it had built in the Gaza Strip. How did the Palestinians of Gaza react? They launched thousands of rockets and numerous other terror attacks against the nation state of the Jewish people. The attacks continue to this very day. And every year the range of these rockets get longer and their payloads more lethal. Only a very sophisticated Israeli anti-missile defense keeps the country secure. Can you blame Israel for not wanting to risk a two-front rocket war?
But Israel has no right to be in the West Bank at all, many say. So, permit me, a law professor at Harvard, to say that on the basis of international law this position is incorrect.
Military occupations are clearly permitted under international law following an aggressive attack by a neighboring state. Jordan, Israel’s neighbor to the East, attacked Israel in 1967, despite Israel’s repeated efforts to keep Jordan out of the Six Day War.
In defending itself against Jordan, Israel captured the West Bank and the eastern part of Jerusalem. Under international law, until a meaningful peace is achieved and all terrorism against it ceases, Israel has every right to retain military control over this area. Since no peace treaty has been reached and the terrorism continues with new attacks threatened almost daily, Israel is under no legal obligation to leave. Given the danger that Israel would be putting itself in if it did leave the West Bank — exposing its major cities and international airport to rocket attacks — it would be irresponsible to do so, which is why Israel is still there.
Nevertheless I fully acknowledge that a military occupation is significantly different, both as a matter of law and politics, from building civilian settlements even in a territory that is legitimately subject to a military occupation. That’s why I have long opposed the building of settlements in the West Bank. I believe it has caused resentment and has given enemies of Israel an excuse to attack the legitimacy of the occupation in general.
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Israelophobia and the West – PDF
Israelophobia and the West – PDF
George Deek is an Arab-Israeli diplomat. In 2018, Deek was appointed Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan. He is the first Israeli Arab Christian to become an ambassador. Deek grew up in an Eastern Orthodox Christian family in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, in a building where the other tenants included Muslims, Catholics, Jews and a Catholic priest of Jewish ancestry.[2][3] His father, who worked as a tax advisor,[3] was one of the leaders of the Christian community in Jaffa who served as chairman of the Orthodox Association, and was considered a well-known and popular figure in the city until in 2015 a square was inaugurated in his memory in Jaffa in the presence of Mayor Ron Huldai.[4] According to Deek, his grandparents fled to Lebanon for safety when the 1947ā1949 Palestine war, having been told that the Jews would slaughter them if they remained in their homes, but expecting to return home once Arab armies defeated the Jews.[3] According to Deek, when the war ended, his grandparents felt that they had been “deceived”, and decided to return illegally to their home in Jaffa rather than remaining in Lebanon as refugees. Since reentering the country was illegal, Deek’s grandfather, an electrician, was arrested and jailed.
