Submitted by Dr RJP (United States), Oct 15, 2007 at 22:45
Thanks to a very well-organized, well-funded, and unrelenting Palestinian media campaign, even some Jews have been duped into thinking that they are the bad guys and the Palestinian Arabs are the good guys. This is the Big Lie, and it has been repeated so often that too many people accept it as the Gospel.
Here are 15 "inconvenient truths" that everyone needs to know before they can separate out reality from the false one that the Palestinian PR machine has manufactured:
- Palestinians firmly believe that the end justifies the means, especially when the means require lying and deception. They not only condone it, they literally canonize those who do it.
- Palestinians have turned lying and deception into an art form, literally. "Pallywood" has staged such defining acts of Israeli "atrocities" as the shooting of Al-Dura, the bombing at Qana, and the alleged "massacre" in Jenin, to name a few.
- There are Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza that have existed there continuously for 3,000 years. When Palestinians call them "illegal settlements," they are lying through their teeth. There is no UN resolution prohibiting Israel or Palestinians from building settlements in disputed territories. What Palestinians falsely call "occupied territories" are, in fact, disputed territories for which permanent ownership has yet to be determined.
- The land that Palestinians claim is their own was originally Israel. There has never been a country or state known as Palestine, and Palestinians are no different from ordinary Arabs.
- Over 95% of the new settlements build by Israelis in the West Bank are legitimate. They are built on land bought by Jewish organizations. The reason that the other 5% of settlements are not legitimate is because building permits were not requested for them..
- Palestinians claim that all new Jewish settlements are "illegal." The truth is, for every one of those Jewish settlements built without permits, there are a thousand Palestinian settlements built without permits -- none were obtained because Palestinians are using this as a way to illegally steal Jewish lands.
- Palestinians have no legitimate claim to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the capital of Israel. It is mentioned only once in the Koran and several hundred times in the Jewish Scriptures. The Temple Mount marks the place where the 2nd Jewish temple stood. Jews have every right to go there. Sharon have every right to go there. It belongs to the Jews. The Dome of the Rock was deliberately build on top of the old Temple to prevent Jews from going there and to delegitimize the Jews If Mohammed had actually made his "ascent into heaven" from there, it would have been mentioned by name, just like Mecca and Medina were.
- At the end of the 1948 War of Israel Independence, Jordan seized control of the West Bank and occupied it for19 years. The Jordanian army killed 20,000 Palestinians. The UN Security Council didn't so much as raise an eyebrow to this violent occupation in those 19 years. During those 19 years, Jews were forbidden to enter the West Bank anf banned from Jerusalem
- At the end of the 1948 War of Israel Independence, Egypt seized control of Gaza and occupied it for those same 19 years without any complaints from the UN.
- There have never been any formal borders established for Israel because Arab countries have refused to recognize them and have attacked Israel on four more occassions to steal back the land that Israel recovered.
- There is a already an independent "Palestinian state" in the Middle East: it is called Jordan. OVer 70% of Jordan's residents are Palestinian.
- Unlike Israel, there has never been any apology made by any Palestinian group for the accidental killing of any Israeli child. Instead, they celebrate the act.
- While Israel does, in fact, comply with UN resolutions, the majority of which are bogus and one-sided, the Palestinian Authority has never complied with any of the major demands made of them in UN resolutions. Hamas has continued this pattern of deliberately ignoring them.
Palestinians have done nothing to show that they want peace with Israel.
- If Palestinians would lay down their arms tomorrow, there would be peace in the Middle East. If Israel were to lay down its arms, there would be no Israel in the Middle East.
- There is no "Two-state solution" that Palestinians would accept -- only a one-state solution: an Arab state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".