Our second excerpt from Sandra Teplinsky's ‘Why Still Care About Israel?’

Palestinian Injustice

A sad reality is that the War of Independence was not fought without collateral damage to both Palestinian and Jewish civilians. For the sake of perspective, no war can be fought without collateral damage - and in this instance, there would not have been a war if the Arabs had not insisted on starting one. Nevertheless, some Arab families and villages were wrongly expelled or inexcusably overrun by Jewish soldiers.^q In at least one such raid at Deir Yassin, genuinely innocent victims were massacred.³¹ Upon learning of the sordid event, Israel denounced it and sought to compensate the victims.^r

The Palestinian narrative claims that since 1948, Israel has stolen or destroyed over four hundred Arab villages. This figure, based on a recently created map of dubious veracity, cannot be objectively verified. Israeli historians point out that many Arab families who were forced to leave their homes did not actually own the lands or homes they left. Some were long-term renters - for generations - of lands sold legally, but without their knowledge, to the Jews.^s

Moreover - and without diminishing the loss some Arabs have suffered - a large Palestinian state (Jordan) existed just across the border. Those who might be displaced were expected to seek refuge there, just as 800,000 Jewish refugees were forced to leave their homes and wealth behind and relocate to Israel.^t (More on this momentarily.)

No war can be fought without collateral damage - and in 1948, there would not have been a war if the Arabs had not insisted on starting one.

Lacking objective documentation of their plight, Palestinians have amassed global sympathies through a narrative that inverts history.^u Many share tragic personal tales - that prove either unverifiable or outrageously embellished.^v Their stories tend either to romanticize Arab tribal-village life or misrepresent it as a bustling society.^w Sadly, some of these accounts are presented by Christians as honest-to-God facts. Their pitiable tales tug at the heartstrings of any hearer. It’s their personal story, we reason. How can it not be true - and how can we not be deeply moved? Emotions are stirred, then inflamed - against Israel. Gradually, hearts are hardened against the Jewish people and what God is doing with them today.

Jesus loves and died for the Palestinian people: He does not want us to disparage them. We must compassionately acknowledge their suffering and seek a right response to it. But even genuine suffering must be viewed in context to rightly ascertain truth and transform realities justly.

Palestinian - and Jewish - Refugees

Palestinians were not the only refugees to result from the War of Independence. According to official UN figures, over 800,000 Jewish refugees were forced to flee homes and lands in North Africa and the Middle East where they had lived for generations.³² Unlike some Palestinians, they were in no sense “voluntary refugees”. Jews were expelled, stripped of citizenship or both in retaliation for Israel’s declaration of statehood. Arab nations have persistently refused to compensate these refugees for their confiscated properties, valued today at billions of dollars.³³

Meanwhile, during the War of Independence, unincorporated areas proposed by the Partition Plan for a second Palestinian Arab state were illegally annexed and occupied - not by Israel but by Jordan and Egypt. Jordan seized Judea and Samaria, including East Jerusalem, while Egypt staked claim to Gaza.

Now, the Arabs’ publicly stated goal for the war had been to liberate Palestine. But neither Jordan nor Egypt ever gave the territories they annexed back to the Palestinians to liberate them. Instead, the latter were compelled - by their own brethren - to stay put indefinitely in refugee camp limbo.^x Why? you may ask. They would not talk about it; let me explain.

Lacking objective documentation of their plight, Palestinians have amassed global sympathies through a narrative that inverts history.

Israel began offering, as early as 1949, to negotiate for the refugees’ return - and full repatriation - back into the Jewish state. But no Arab leader was willing to negotiate with the Jews. Transacting with Israel, they said, would involve an implicit recognition of her existence. This they had vowed never to do.³⁴ Further, by refusing either to negotiate for the refugees’ return or to absorb them themselves, they could continue the war against Israel in the political realm.^y This they had vowed never to cease doing.

Children in Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza. See Photo Credits.In 1949 the UN established a relief fund (United Nations Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA) to provide for the refugees’ basic needs. Soon thereafter, UNRWA acceded to Arab demands to grant refugee status - for the first time in history - not only to those who fled but to their descendants, indefinitely. This redefinition of “refugee” guaranteed the Palestinian population would dramatically increase over time.³⁵ By 2013, of an estimated Palestinian population of five million, only 30,000 - or approximately half of 1 percent - actually ever left a home in Israel.³⁶

Meanwhile, many billions of dollars have been given to Palestinians by Israel and other nations to provide for their “basic needs”.^z At this writing, UNRWA remains the largest employer in the West Bank, with thousands of Palestinians on its payroll and, according to some, padding the personal fortunes of Palestinian leaders.³⁷

Former UNRWA director Ralph Galloway concluded early on:

The Arab States do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore…as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.³⁸

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly noted:

The consistent refusal of Arab leaders to solve this problem is particularly tragic because it would have been so easy to do…That the fifty million Arabs In 1948 could not absorb 650,000 Arab refugees - and have not finished the job even after half a century, and even after the fantastic multiplication of their oil wealth - is an indication of [how] the Arabs have manipulated the refugee issue to create reasons for world censure of Israel.³⁹

Of the situation an Arab American journalist comments:

What are the real roots of this [Palestiman-Israeli] conflict?...That Palestinians want a homeland and Muslims want control over sites they consider holy?...These two demands are nothing more than strategic deceptions. propaganda ploys. They are nothing more than phony excuses and rationalizations for the terrorism and murdering of Jews. The real goal of those making these demands is the destruction of the State of Israel.⁴⁰

Israel began offering, as early as 1949, to negotiate for the refugees’ return - and full repatriation - back into the Jewish state. But no Arab leader was willing to negotiate.

Palestinian Statehood and the Phased Plan

In 1964, Yasser Arafat assumed leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a terror group with the stated purpose to liberate all of Palestine. It was not, however, created to liberate the West Bank and Gaza; this was never the “Palestine” to which it referred. Recall that in 1964, Gaza still belonged to Egypt and the West Bank was governed by Jordan. Since 1964 the Palestinian agenda has been to liberate a Palestine that includes, by definition, every square inch of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River - that is, all of Israel.^{41 aa}

Shortly after the PLO published its goals, Israel fought for her life in the Six Day War of 1967. To the world’s surprise, she defensively acquired Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan. Then, in 1973, Egypt and Syria launched another unprovoked attack, the Yom Kippur War. Again Israel prevailed. As a result of these mounting Arab defeats, the PLO announced its “Phased Plan” the following year. The Phased Plan has never been revoked and still represents Islamist/Arab/Palestinian strategy today.

The Phased Plan refers to the slightly revised goal of liberating Palestine not all at once, but in stages. Phase One is the establishment of an independent, combatant national authority consisting of Gaza and the West Bank. This was to a large degree accomplished by developing the PLO into the PA and by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. Phase Two is the reconfiguration of Gaza and the West Bank into launching pads for provoking an all-out regional war, in which Israel is wiped off the map.⁴²

This is to be accomplished by military operations, lawfare diplomacy, cyberattack or any combination thereof.

On the Occupation

When Israel pushed back her attackers in the Six Day War and gained Gaza and the West Bank, she acquired land that had been originally allotted to her in 1920. By 1967, however, the areas were inhabited by over a million Jew-hating Palestinians and angry insurgents.⁴³ Israel had no desire to “rule over” them.⁴⁴

The Six Day War ended with UN Security Council Resolution 242, a truce that purposefully did not define borders. Resolution 242 authorized Israel to remain in possession of newly acquired territories until peace was established and final borders secured. It was meticulously and explicitly worded so that Israel would not be forced to withdraw from all the newly acquired territories, back to the boundary lines from which she had just been attacked.⁴⁵

When Israel pushed back her attackers in the Six Day War and gained Gaza and the West Bank, she acquired land that had been originally allotted to her in 1920.

Those boundaries, the 1949 armistice lines ending the War of Independence, were never meant to be permanent. Nor were they intended to substitute for negotiations to determine final borders. In less than twenty years, the lines had proved indefensible,^{46 bb} leaving the middle and most populous section of the country only nine miles wide. With Palestinians having shown themselves unwilling or unable to make peace, some Israeli leaders have termed the 1949 lines “Auschwitz Borders”, referring to a notorious Nazi death camp. Nevertheless, by 2011 the international community would euphemistically call them “pre-1967 borders” and urge Israel to retreat to them - with no enforceable guarantee of peace in return.

After the Six Day War, Egypt and Jordan eventually signed peace treaties with Israel. These nations refused, however, to take back either Gaza or the West Bank. Reclaiming these territories would have betrayed the pan-Arab plan, notoriously reaffirmed after the war,⁴⁷ to leave in place a local population to help destroy Israel. As a result, Gaza and the West Bank remained in a state of perpetual war with Israel, ruled by the increasingly militant PLO. That being the case, Israel was authorized by international law to administratively govern the territories, with quasi-military powers of enforcement, until peace could be achieved. The administration of law and order in a hostile, enemy population in such circumstances is called an occupation.

Some Israelis say, however, that they have not occupied any of these areas because the land rightfully belongs to them under customary international law. Customary international law refers to the body of international law and policy that Western nations have traditionally practiced and followed.

In either case, Israel’s quasi-military administration known as the “occupation” is not illegal. The term “illegal occupation” is a pejorative mischaracterization, intended to conjure up images of oppression and abuse. Admittedly, Israel has not always acted fairly or justly during the difficult course of governing people dedicated to her demise. But to brand her lawful jurisdiction “illegal” or “oppressive” obscures the reality that if Palestinians sincerely accepted Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, the war and the occupation would be history. Allow me to explain.

Peace Negotiations

In 1993, the PLO morphed into the Palestinian Authority under an agreement called the Oslo Accords. At that time Palestinians gained the right to negotiate peace with Israel for themselves.^cc Sadly, rather than pursue a peaceful coexistence alongside Israel, history records how they proliferated terror instead.

Nevertheless, in 2000, Israel offered the Palestinians full sovereignty over 95 percent of the disputed territories, including East Jerusalem, with secured geographic contiguity. There was virtually nothing left for the Jews to give away. But the Palestinians said no. Offering no counterproposal to the offer, they literally walked out on negotiations⁴⁸ and immediately launched a violent intifada (“uprising”) of deadly terror lasting several years.^dd US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who was present, said the Palestinians’ main objection was the insertion of one critical clause in the agreement: “This is the end of the conflict."^{49 ee} The Palestinians could not end the conflict with anything less than ending Israel.^ff

In 1993, the Palestinians gained the right to negotiate peace with Israel for themselves – but rather than pursue this, they proliferated terror instead.

Yasser Arafat, who signed the Oslo Accords and walked out on the offer of a sovereign state, said (in Arabic): “I do not consider the [Oslo] agreement any more than the agreement which was signed by our prophet Muhammad and the Qurayish.”⁵⁰ Arafat referred to an agreement that established the right, called hudna, for Muslims to fake peace when they are weak so they can wait for better timing to fight when they are strong.^gg Thus an Arab saying goes like this: “When your enemy is strong, kiss his hand and pray that it will be broken one day.”⁵¹

Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Shimon Peres signs the Oslo Accords outside the White House, alongside PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. See Photo Credits.Faisal Husseini, a moderate Palestinian leader, compared the whole peace process to a proverbial “Trojan horse”.⁵² From the Arab perspective, it had been designed to fool Israel into letting the Palestinians arm themselves in order to destroy it. Said Husseini, “If you are asking me as a pan-Arab nationalist what are the Palestinian borders according to the higher strategy, I will immediately reply, from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea.”⁵³

Perhaps that would explain why, in 2008, when Israel offered Palestinians 93 percent of the territory they desired - including 98 percent of the West Bank - they again said no.⁵⁴ And why, in 2009, PA leaders said they would resume negotiations on the pre-condition that Israel stop all settlement construction - but still refused to talk when Israel complied with their demand. After that, with one perceived betrayal following another, Israelis were not so willing to believe Palestinians were sincere about peace.^hh

In 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu tried to restart peace talks and pleaded at the UN with PA President Abbas to meet face-to-face, without preconditions. Abbas refused, demanding that Israel first agree to an expanded list of preconditions.ⁱⁱ Under the Oslo Accords and other agreements, however, these preconditions were in fact supposed to be the subject of the negotiations. By agreeing to all the preconditions first, there would be very little left to negotiate. So Netanyahu replied with one precondition of his own. He demanded that Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. If the PA would agree to the one precondition, Israel would agree to their whole list of them. But the Palestinians refused.^jj

In 2012, Palestinians sidestepped negotiations, and thus breached the Oslo Accords, by seeking to forge a path for statehood in the UN. At the same time, they launched a war from Gaza and a terror wave in the West Bank. In 2013, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon commented on the situation:

This is our history: Every time a proposal was raised to partition the land, the other side started a war. Every time we expressed willingness to give up territory, terror rose to new heights.⁵⁵

In 2012, Palestinians sidestepped negotiations, breaching the Oslo Accords, by seeking to forge a path for statehood in the UN.

Palestinians often say they resort to terror because Israeli proposals do not offer them a universal “right of return”. Israelis reply this is because Palestinians are unwilling to limit the “right” to refugees who personally left Israel; they insist on extending it to every Palestinian in Gaza, the West Bank or anywhere else in the world. Therefore, when Israel has expressed willingness to give them land, Palestinians have sometimes agreed to recognize a country named Israel - but never as a Jewish state.^kk The difference is critical. If Palestinians acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, they relinquish a strategy for turning it into a Palestinian/Islamist one by flooding it with millions of Arabs “returning” there.^ll

The right of return has remained, at this writing, uncompromisable - even though “homeland” is only a few miles away, and even though Palestinians would finally be getting a second sovereign state. From Israel’s perspective, granting several million Muslims, many of whom are murderously militant, permission to immigrate and repopulate the country is tantamount to committing national suicide.

Israeli Settlements

In 2012, the PA began claiming that Israeli settlements were the main reason for the failure of the peace process. In fact, settlements represent only 1.6 percent of the disputed territories,⁵⁶ and 70 percent of settlers live in suburbs adjacent to major Israeli cities, not deep inside the West Bank.⁵⁷ Settlements do not disrupt Palestinian geographic contiguity. Despite public opinion to the contrary, settlements officially authorized by the Israeli government are not illegal under standards of customary international law.^mm To be sure, settlements have been built on lands whose ownership is disputed. But in this dispute, Israel actually possesses the best claim to lawful - if not politically feasible or practical - ownership.ⁿⁿ

Recall that when Israel acquired the West Bank, no state or political entity held legal title to it. The last rightful owner of the land had been Israel, and historically, a Jewish presence has been maintained in Judea and Samaria for thousands of years. After World War I, Britain obtained the land and, through international agreements, returned recognized legal title to the Jews. When the UN offered the land to Palestinian Arabs in 1947, it wrongfully tried to take that title away. But the Palestinians rejected the offer, thereby rendering it null and void.

Years later, Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank, but Israel defensively - and therefore, legally - acquired it from Jordan in the Six Day War. Under international law, the land has been technically “disputed” since 1967.^oo In the future, international bodies may decide to rule on the legality of the territories and settlements built on them. Given the nations’ collective stance toward Israel, it would likely take an act of God for a ruling in her favor to result. Which of course we cannot rule out.

In this dispute, Israel actually possesses the best claim to lawful - if not politically feasible or practical – ownership of the ‘disputed’ territories.

Meanwhile, Israel’s settlement policies are not necessarily perfect. Growing numbers of extremist settlers (and Palestinians) have turned violent, and the violence must be stopped. Some Israelis have tried to stake claim to biblical lands by erecting self-declared, unauthorized outposts. Usually these are dismantled by Israel within a short time. Jewish settlement construction has resulted in genuine hardship for some Bedouin and other Arabs, not always handled properly by Israeli courts.^pp But these proportionately few unfair cases do not make all the settlements illegal. Nor do they provide a reason to suspend peace negotiations, if the parties sincerely desire peace.

Future Palestine

Repeatedly, Israel has demonstrated her willingness and even desire to accept Palestine as a new sovereign state. But as this book goes to print, Palestinians still insist (in Arabic) their state must stretch from the “river to the sea” and encompass all of Israel.⁵⁸ Surveys consistently reveal that a solid majority of Israelis would agree to live alongside a peaceful Palestinian state. (The operative word is peaceful.) But similar surveys consistently show the majority of Palestinians say they would never accept peaceful coexistence with a Jewish state.^qq In 2011, 66 percent of West Bank Palestinians said that while they would accept a two-state solution as a “first step”, they wanted to eventually replace Israel with a single Palestinian state.⁵⁹ In 2012, 88 percent of all Palestinians preferred a strategy of terror, or another intifada, over diplomacy to achieve it.⁶⁰ In 2013, similar polls yielded similar results.⁶¹

As you can see, the root of the Palestinian plight is well hidden beneath the surface tension exposed to public view. Deep-seated realities that will not change unless faced forthrightly are disguised and distorted. I do not minimize the genuine suffering, frustration and injustice that affects some Palestinians. But, fundamentally, these conditions are not the cause of Arab and Islamist enmity toward Israel; they are the result of it. Moreover, injustices have repeatedly come about at the hands of Arab, not Israeli, leaders betraying their own people. That the world faults Israel - and threatens her survival - for a Palestinian plight that is Islamist/Arab generated, is highly unjust.

God wants transformational justice for both Israelis and Palestinians. But justice must be pursued and attained His way - according to righteousness based on truth - however His enemies try to obscure it. He wants us to “test and approve what [his] Will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will" (Romans 12:2) as He restores His ancient covenant people. Toward them we must “not be arrogant, but tremble" (Romans 11:20).

About the author: Sandra Teplinsky is a Messianic Jew who lives in Jerusalem and teaches about Israel. With her husband, Sandra runs a ministry called Light of Zion. Find out more about the book 'Why Still Care About Israel?' on its website.

References

Letters q-qq can be found on this page.

31 Bard, “The Refugees”, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed April 30, 2013; Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 122

32 Auguste Lindt, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, “Report of the UNREF Executive Committee, Fourth Session”, Geneva, January 29 to February 4, 1957; Dr. E. Jahn, Office of the UN High Commissioner, “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Document No.7/2/3," Libya, July 6, 1967, as cited in Alan Baker, ed., Israel's Rights as a Nation-State in International Diplomacy (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and World Jewish Congress, 2011), 50.

33 “Refugees Forever? Issues in the Palestinian-lsraeli Conflict," International Jerusalem Post, February 21, 2003, special supplement; Bard, “The Refugees."

34 Terence Prittie. “Middle East Refugees,” in Michael Curtis, Joseph Neyer, Chaim Waxman, and Allen Pollack, ed., The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1975), 66—67.

35 Daniel Pipes, “Peculiar Proliferation of Palestinian Refugees,” Washington Times, February 20, 2012.

36 Donna Cassata, “Defining a Palestinian Refugee,” Associated Press. May 31, 2012.

37 Jonathan Shanzer. “Chronic Kleptocracy: Corruption within the Palestinian Political Establishment,” Hearing before House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Congressional Testimony, July 10, 2012.

38 As cited by Prittie, “Middle East Refugees," 71, emphasis mine.

39 Netanyahu, A Durable Peace, 155.

40 Joseph Farah, speech given at Messiah College, Grantham, Pennsylvania, July 3, 2003.

41 See for example Palestinian Media Watch, “PA Depicts a World Without Israel,” 2011; “Mashaal: We Will Never Give Up Any of Palestine,” International Jerusalem Post, December 14-20, 2011.

42 “Political Plan of the PLO Council," June 8, 1974.

43 Jewish Virtual Library, “Demography of Palestine & Israel, the West Bank & Gaza."

44 See for example Michael B. Oren, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (New York. Ballantine Books, 2002), 306-27.

45 Jewish Virtual Library, “The Meaning of Resolution 142"; Dore Gold, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West and the Future of the Holy City (Washington D.C.: Regnery, Inc, 2007), 172-74; Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Disputed Territories-Forgotten Facts About the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” February 1, 2003.

46 Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Israel's Critical Security Requirements for Defensible Borders (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs).

47 The Arabs' Khartoun Resolutions of 1967 solidified the notorious “Three No’s”: No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel. Jewish Virtual Library, “The Khartoun Resolutions.”

48 Benny Morris, “Camp David and After: An Exchange (Interview with Ehud Barak),” New York Review of Books 49, no. 10, June 13, 2002.

49 Ambassador Dennis Ross, in a Fox News interview, as reported by David Kupelian, “The Real Reason Arafat Rejected a Palestinian State,” Whistleblower 12, no. 3 (March 2003): 7.

50 Speech by Arafat in Johannesburg, May 10, 1994 (while Oslo was in effect), as cited in Daniel Pipes, “Lessons from the Prophet Muhammad in Diplomacy,” Middle East Quarterly, September 1999.

51 Kupelian, “The Real Reason,” 8-9; Pipes, “Lessons.”

52 “Faysal al-Husseni in His Last Interview,” MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 236, July 6, 2001.

53 lbid.

54 Reuters and Aluf Benn, “PA Rejects Olmert‘s Offer,” Haaretz, August 12, 2008.

55 Mazal Mualem, “New Defense Minister No Threat to Netanyahu’s Policies,” Al-Monitor, March 13, 2013.

56 See Michelle Whiteman, “To the Media, Building Settlements in Israel’s a Crime,” Huffington Post, December 26, 2012; and Mitchell G. Bard, “The Settlements,” Myths and Facts Online, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed April 30, 2013.

57 Bard, “The Settlements.”

58 “Jerusalem-on-the-Line,” Jerusalem News Network, Prayer Letter, April 3, 2013, quoting Palestinian Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal’s speech in Arabic at a rally in Gaza City, March 30, 2013.

59 United Press International, “Poll: Arabs Reject Two-State Solution," July 26, 2011.

60 Elhanan Miller,“88 Percent of Palestinians Believe Armed Struggle Is the Best Way," Times of Israel, December 16, 2012.

61 Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, “Palestinian Public Opinion Poll No. 47," press release, April 1, 2013.

An excerpt from Sandra Teplinsky’s book ‘Why Still Care About Israel’. Part I of II.

Last week on Prophecy Today UK we reviewed ‘Why Still Care About Israel’ as part of our ongoing coverage of Israel’s 70^th anniversary. This week, we are pleased to bring you the first of a two-part excerpt from this book (taken from chapter 10), focusing particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Please see the base of the page for more information about the author. Reprinted with permission.

 Israeli Statehood and the Arab/Palestinian Plight

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2

A true story opens on May 14, 1948, as the Jewish people prepare to declare a state. The air is electric. After two thousand years of exile, the sons and daughters of Jacob have come home. High-pitched excitement circles the globe.

That morning, Israel's founding father and first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, pores over maps showing the array of Arab armies poised to attack. The Jews are outnumbered 100 to 1.¹ “I feel like a mourner at a wedding," he writes in his diary.²

In a few hours Ben-Gurion will deliver Israel’s Declaration of Independence. He scribbles down notes for his speech on the only writing material at hand - sheets of toilet paper.^a

At exactly 4:00pm, he steps to the podium in an overcrowded hall in Tel Aviv, before a hushed audience. This is the moment for which millions of Jews have lived and died. As Ben-Gurion reads the Israeli Declaration of Independence, those present cling to his every word. He speaks of Bible history and the Jews’ undying hope to return to their ancestral home. Then with prophetic clarity Ben-Gurion decrees: “By virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people…we hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called the State of Israel…for the fulfillment of the dream of generations—the redemption of Israel.”

At once, cheers and tears resound. Golda Meir, who would later serve as prime minister, cannot stop crying. Her sobs, she explains, are for the many who should have been there, but are no more.³ According to the nation’s chief rabbi, “The dawn of redemption has broken.”⁴

As the Jewish people prepare to declare a state, the air is electric. After two thousand years of exile, the sons and daughters of Jacob have come home. High-pitched excitement circles the globe.

Euphoria erupts in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where traffic stops as streets swell with singing and dancing. But the party is soon interrupted. Sirens wail to warn of Egyptian bombers overhead. Joining them are the armies of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq, together with militants from throughout the Arab world. All have a common goal: to annihilate the Jewish state in Allah’s name.⁵ The War of Independence has begun. Happy birthday, Israel.

Since 1948, tomes have been written on the history of Israel’s restoration, and the Islamist/Arab/Palestinian resistance against it. Time and space permit us to summarise only basic facts (for more detail, please refer to the notes at www.whystillcareaboutisrael.com). I think you will discover a surprising perspective on today’s conflict emerges when you consider the context from which it arose. You will see that Israel is not so much in a fight for land as for her life - and that changes everything.

Palestinian History: The Back Story

In the first century AD, Israel was renamed Palestine by the Romans who conquered her. This was done in derisive remembrance of the Jews’ former - and extinct - enemy, the Philistines. The Philistines had by then already died out, so despite the similarity in name, they are not related to the Palestinians of today.^b Collectively, Palestinians have no traceable ancient tie to the land of Israel and never identified as a self-governing people group. Like other Arabs in the Middle East, most of their ancestors dwelt as scattered family tribes on lands they often did not personally own. Generally, they coexisted alongside Jews who had, in small numbers, lived in Palestine since biblical times on inherited or legally purchased land.⁶ But periodically, Islamic terror would erupt⁷ and jihadi expropriation of Jewish real estate took place.⁸

From the 1500s up until World War I, the entire Middle East was ruled by the Ottoman Turkish Empire, a type of Muslim caliphate. No autonomous Arab state was on the map; most Arabs belonged to nomadic tribes wandering all over the Middle East.^c At the same time, hundreds of thousands of Jews also lived in the region under Ottoman rule. According to a census taken in 1882, approximately 25,000 of them lived in Palestine, along with 260,000 Arabs.⁹ As tourists and pilgrims testified, Palestine was by then mostly desolate and depopulated,¹⁰ a far cry from the land of milk and honey it had once been for millions of Jews.

Israel is not so much in a fight for land as for her life - and that changes everything.

By the early 1900s, Palestinian Arab identity was said to be extremely mixed.¹¹ Persons counted as indigenous Palestinian Arabs included ethnic Balkans, Greeks, Syrians, Latins, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Kurds, Germans, Afghans, Circassians, Bosnians, Sudanese, Samaritans, Algerians, Tartars and others.¹² An official British document published in 1920 stated the majority of people living in Palestine were not indigenous Arabs but only Arabic-speaking.¹³

When Zionist pioneers began arriving in the early twentieth century, the number of Arabs immigrating to Palestine also sharply increased. With Jews from the West came new job opportunities, vastly improved medical care and a higher standard of living, all of which attracted their tribal neighbors.¹⁴ Once inside Israel, most Arab immigrants continued living as bedouin, built simple villages or served for decades as tenants on farmlands owned by others. Later, countless more poured in from surrounding countries - not to carry on normal lives but to fight the formation of a Jewish state.¹⁵ Together with the small indigenous Arab population, these individuals and their descendants comprise the Palestinian people of today.

Palestinians are not, as some have rather unkindly said, “an invented people". They are flesh-and-blood human beings created in God’s image, with inherent dignity and worth. Though most of their ancestors came from across the Middle East and even beyond, they did form an identifiable collective by the mid-twentieth century. Palestinians are not the first people group formed by the force of history. They are, however, the only modern group whose creation and self-definition, as one Palestinian journalist writes,¹⁶ rests largely on the planned elimination of another, namely Israel - or as they prefer to call her, “the Zionist entity."

Zionism and the Reestablishment of a Jewish State

Zionism is defined, in a broad secular sense, as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. The Zionist movement contends that the Jewish nation, like every other indigenous people, is entitled to live autonomously in its ancestral homeland. As such, Zionism cannot be viewed as something separate from the Jewish people and nation-state. To be anti-Zionist is akin to being anti-Israel and, to a degree, anti-Jewish.

Zionism is not and has never been entirely secular; a strong religious element has always underlain it.^d Officially launched in 1896, modern-day Zionism involves the return of the Jewish people to their God-given ancestral homeland.^e The name of the movement derives from the Bible, where Zion is used over 150 times. “You will arise and have compassion on Zion; for it is time to show favour to her; the appointed time has come…For the LORD will rebuild Zion and appear in his glory” (Psalm 102:13, 16). Zionism precipitates His Kingdom glory.

Palestinians are not the first people group formed by the force of history. They are, however, the only modern group whose creation and self-definition rests largely on the planned elimination of another, namely Israel.

In rebuilding Zion, Sovereign God has worked through nations and human beings. The modern story starts with World War I, when the Ottoman Turks aligned with Axis nations, and collectively they lost the war. As a result, the Allies dismantled the Ottoman Empire and created Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq for the Arabs and Persians to inhabit.^f In an international agreement known as the San Remo Resolution of 1920, they set Palestine aside for the Jews.^g Great Britain was made responsible for implementing the resolution by unanimous vote of the League of Nations, predecessor organisation to the UN. The League of Nations directive, called the Mandate for Palestine, reserved explicitly for the Jews not just present-day Israel, but all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jordan.¹⁷

The Mandate for Palestine was scarcely issued when Palestinian Arabs began rioting and conducting terror operations in protest of it. The deadly terror had nothing to do with occupation, settlements or allegedly disproportionate military force. From the beginning, Islamic terror had everything to do with opposing the existence of a Jewish state.

In an effort to appease Palestinian Arabs - and although international law forbade such an action^h - Great Britain unilaterally took back 78 percent of the land allotted to the Jews. She then gave it to Palestinian Arabs—specifically to create a Palestinian state. Today that state is known as Jordan. Palestinian Arabs were expected to move to Jordan, and any Jews living in Jordan would relocate to the 22 percent of land remaining from the San Remo and Mandatory allotments. A smaller section of land in the Golan Heights, originally designated for the Jews, was also given away by Britain to Syria. But appeasement did not work - which we would do well to remember. Those who forget history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it. The acts we engage in for appeasement today, Britain’s Winston Churchill presciently forewarned, we will have to remedy at far greater cost and remorse tomorrow.¹⁸

Not surprisingly, after Jordan was established, Palestinian rioting and terror killings of Jews persisted.ⁱ An exasperated Great Britain finally turned the political foray over to the UN (when the League of Nations failed to prevent World War II, the UN was formed to replace it). The UN’s charter required that it adopt all laws and resolutions passed by the League of Nations. So when it inherited the Mandate for Palestine, the UN became responsible for creating a Jewish state.

As you can see, plans for the reestablishment of Israel were underway well before the onset of World War II. Israel’s right to exist by international law is not fundamentally based on the Nazi Holocaust, as compelling a cause as that is from a humanitarian point of view. Certainly, the Holocaust demonstrated the need for a Jewish state to protect Jewish lives. But if we believe Israel’s right to exist is rooted in a compassionate response to the Holocaust, when that compassion wears off, so will our belief that Israel has a right to exist. Israel’s fundamental right to exist under international law rests on the recognition of the Jews’ ancestral, sovereign control over identifiable land that, since their forced removal from it, remained sparsely occupied and mostly undeveloped.

Israel’s right to exist by international law is not fundamentally based on the Nazi Holocaust, as compelling a cause as that is from a humanitarian point of view.

Notwithstanding Israel’s historical and legal right to the land, and dismissing international commitments to the Jews, the UN continued with a policy of Arab appeasement. In 1947, it partitioned the remaining 22 percent of the original Mandate for a Jewish homeland into two proposed states: one for Jews and yet another, second state for Palestinian Arabs. The Partition Plan, also called UN Resolution 181, recognized the Jews’ right to sovereign control over a sliver of space amounting to a mere 10 percent of the original British Mandate. It offered the Arabs who lived within Mandate territory a state - in addition to Jordan - consisting of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Zionist pioneers felt it best to accept the UN’s offer. Ten percent of the Promised Land after nearly two thousand years was better than zero. Moreover, they had no political clout or practical means with which to resist whatever the world community told them to do. The Arabs, however, thoroughly rejected the Partition Plan, which legally voided the offer to them. Ninety percent of the land, they insisted, was not enough. They wanted it all - an empire spanning the entire Middle East, leaving no place on earth for the Jews. They mobilised for a war against Israel they felt certain they would win. The world wondered, much as it does today. Will Israel survive?

Israel's Rebirth—Into War

Israel did not want the War of Independence to occur and tried extremely hard to prevent it.¹⁹ When her every effort toward peace was rebuffed, Ben-Gurion extended a final appeal to the Arabs in his Declaration of Independence speech:

We yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions…We extend our hand in peace and neighborliness to all the neighboring states and their peoples, and invite them to co-operate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all.²⁰

The same invitation had been offered daily for weeks.^j British Mandate authorities who were stationed on the ground testified: “Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab populace to stay and carry on with their normal lives…and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.”²¹ Most, however, chose to flee, creating a local refugee crisis that would upend history. A Palestinian priest who watched the events unfold stated, “[The Arabs] fled in spite of the fact the Jewish authorities guaranteed their safety and rights as citizens of Israel.”²²

Arab-Nazi Alliance

Why did so many Palestinians run from their homes and livelihoods? An overlooked historical fact is perhaps one of the most pivotal and still fuels the conflict today. An unshakeable Islamic/Arab-Nazi alliance predated World War II, and as a result of it, many Arabs vehemently despised and feared the Jews.

Early in his career, Hitler formed a pact with Jerusalem’s grand mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The notoriously anti-Semitic mufti held religious and political sway over Muslims throughout Palestine and the larger Middle East. He and Hitler schemed together to annihilate the Jewish people worldwide. The fuehrer would focus on Europe and the extraordinarily influential mufti would target Palestine’s growing Jewish population.²³

An unshakeable Islamic/Arab-Nazi alliance predated World War II, and as a result of it, many Arabs vehemently despised and feared the Jews.

Building on fundamental Islam’s anti-Jewish ideology, Husseini mobilized an Arab militia, which served as a formal Nazi brigade. Supplied with German weaponry, the brigade murdered Palestinian Jews in acts of heinous terror throughout World War II.²⁴ To keep the violence going, Husseini saturated the Middle East with lies about the Zionists via propaganda broadcasts radioed in from Berlin.^k So after the Holocaust ended in Europe, he and other Arab leaders hoped to immediately start another.

Creating a Refugee Crisis

When, to their profound dismay, Israel declared statehood, Palestinian Arabs panicked. An estimated 600,000 to 700,000 fled.^{25 l} Approximately 150,000 to 160,000 chose to remain inside the Jewish state.²⁶ Today, they and their descendants enjoy full democratic rights of Israeli citizenship, including a standard of living much higher than that of their brethren anywhere else in North Africa or the Middle East.

Under the influence of Muslim/Nazi anti-Semitism, the majority of Arabs who left their homes did so because their leaders told them to. Evacuations were ordered to make way for approaching armies that would quickly destroy the Jewish state.^m Arab leaders boasted that lsrael would be “driven into the [Mediterranean] sea" within a few days. Accordingly, the Higher Arab Executive gave Palestinians a choice: Quit and run, or accept Jewish protection and be regarded as a renegade in the Arab world that would imminently take over. The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem ordered its constituency out of their homes, adding “Any opposition to this order…is an obstacle to the holy war…and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts.”²⁷

The Arab Legion and Arab Liberation Army directed whole-sale civilian flight form entire villages. Leaders like Iraqi prime minister Nuri Said warned, “We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.”²⁸ To ensure compliance, some leaders planted rumours of Israeli terror operations and non-existent atrocities.^{29 n} Shortly after the war – which to their deep humiliation they did not win – Arab leaders freely admitted to having created the refugee crisis.^o Mahmoud Abbas,^p who would later serve as president of the PA, confessed:

The Arab armies entered Palestine to protect the Palestinians from the Zionist tyranny, but instead they abandoned them, forced them to emigrate and leave their homeland, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live.³⁰

Next week: Part II concludes the chapter, looking in more depth at the refugee crisis (including claims of Israeli atrocities) and the attempts at peace settlements since.

About the author: Sandra Teplinsky is a Messianic Jew who lives in Jerusalem and teaches about Israel. With her husband, Sandra runs a ministry called Light of Zion. Find out more about the book 'Why Still Care About Israel?' on its website.

References

Letters a-p refer to notes on this page.

1 The Peace Encyclopedia: Palestine, 2002.

2 Charly Wegman, “Friday May 14, 1948: Israel’s Debut”, Agence France Presse-English, 1998; Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 178-79.

3 Golda Meir, My Life (London: Futura Publications, 1989), 186.

4 Mark Lacqueur, “The Struggle for a Jewish State,” The Palestine-Israel Journal.

5 Palestine Post [predecessor to the Jerusalem Post], May 16, 1948.

6 Jewish Virtual Library, “Demography of Palestine & Israel, the West Bank and Gaza”.

7 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 392.

8 Benzion Dinur, “From the Conquest of the Land of Israel by the Arabs to the Crusades”, Israel in the Diaspora, Vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1960), 27-30, as cited in Netanyahu, A Durable Peace, 27.

9 Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1996), 24, 167.

10 Michael Rydelnik, Understanding the Arab-Israeli Conflict: What the Head-Lines Haven’t Told You (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2004), 58-59. Israel consisted mostly of swampland, desert and barren wasteland due to the Ottoman policy of denuding forests through the centuries. Peters, From Time Immemorial, 221-68.

11 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 156-7, citing Jacob de Haas, History of Palestine (New York: Macmillan, 1934), 145, 258.

12 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 155-56, citing The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911 ed. While some of Peters’ research is disputed, it has also been recently corroborated.

13 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 157.

14 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 223, 396; Shimon Apisdorf, Judaism in a Nutshell: Israel (Pikesville, Md.: Leviathan Press, 2003), 62-64; see generally Walter Lowdermilk, Palestine: Land of Promise (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1944).

15 Netanyahu, A Durable Peace, 84.

16 Ray Hanania, “The Wandering Palestinians”, Jerusalem Post, December 20, 2011.

17 See Howard Grief, The Legal Foundations and Borders of Israel Under International Law (Jerusalem: Mazo Publishers, 2008); Martin Gilbert, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Its History in Maps (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 10-11.

18 As quoted in Peters, From Time Immemorial, 412.

19 Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 21-38.

20 The New Palestine 38, no. 18 (May 18, 1948): 1.

21 British Superintendent of Police Memo, Haifa, April 26, 1948, as quoted in Samuel Katz, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine (New York: Bantam Books, 1973), 19.

22 Monsignor George Hakim, Greek Catholic Bishop of Galilee, New York Herald Tribune, June 30, 1949.

23 Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, 662-683, referencing Joseph Schechtman, Mufti and the Feuhrer (Loneon: Thomas Yoseloff Publishers, 1965), 139ff., 147-52; Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, 16-20, 30, 62-63.

24 Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, 62-63.

25 Peters, From Time Immemorial, 16; Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge, Mass.; Cambridge University Press, 2004), 603-04; Karsh, Palestine Betrayed, 264-272, see also 8-15.

26 See for example Morris, Palestinian Refugee Problem, 588-89; Gilbert, The Arab Israeli Conflict, 57.

27 As reported in Middle Eastern Studies, January 1986, cited in Mitchell G. Bard, “The Palestinian Refugees,” Jewish Virtual Library, accessed April 30, 2013.

28 Myron Kaufman, The Coming Destruction of Israel (New York: American Library, 1970), 26-27, cited in Bard, “The Palestinian Refugees”; Iraqi prime minister Nimr el-Hawari, Sir Am Nakbah (Nazareth, Israel: 1952), as cited in “Refugees Forever?,” International Jerusalem Post, February 21, 2003, special supplement.

29 Karsh, Betrayed, 241-42.

30 Reported in Falastin a-Thaura, March 1973, as cited by Mitchell G. Bard, “The Refugees”. Myths and Facts Online, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed April 30, 2013.

British delegation repents over shameful episode

A dark shadow of imminent war hangs over Israel’s 70^th anniversary celebrations, just as it had done at the nation’s re-birth in 1948.

President Trump’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran hastened the prospect of the rogue state taking out its frustration on Israel for striking its military installations in Syria.

In the latest incident (on Tuesday night), at least nine Iranian soldiers are reported to have been killed.¹ And in the early hours of Thursday, the IDF launched an unprecedented massive air strike destroying Iranian and Syrian targets in response to a barrage of rockets fired from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Britain’s Shameful Past

Also coinciding with what should have been a joyful birthday is an event recalling a very sad – indeed shameful – episode in Britain’s history.

At a special ceremony organised by Love Never Fails (an alliance of Christian groups supporting the Jewish state) and held today in Atlit, near the port of Haifa, Israelis spoke of how they suffered at the time and UK representatives responded with expressions of sorrow for our failures both then and now.

Granted a League of Nations mandate to prepare a safe homeland for Jews, we instead severely restricted immigration just when it was needed most during the Nazi genocide.

A dark shadow of imminent war hangs over Israel’s 70^th celebrations, just as it had done at the nation’s re-birth in 1948.

Atlit detention camp, Israel.And in the immediate aftermath of World War II, we shattered the hopes of traumatised survivors by turning their ships away or by herding them into detention camps. Some were even sent back to Germany where millions of their fellow Jews had been slaughtered.

Thousands of Jewish refugees were held in the Atlit Camp, interred behind barbed wire complete with watchtowers – and this in their own land, promised by Britain in 1917.

Declaration of Sorrow

As part of a prepared declaration of sorrow, the UK delegation told their Jewish friends: “We grieve that [Britain’s policies] led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews who could have escaped Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ if the gates to their ancient homeland had been fully open.”

And they added: “We are deeply sorry that our nation caused indescribable distress to untold numbers of your people and their surviving families, and that as a nation we dared to stand against the purpose of Almighty God to restore you to Eretz [the land of] Israel.”

A particularly shocking incident – on 18 July 1947 – involved an attack by British forces on a ship carrying 4,515 Holocaust survivors, spraying fuel and throwing smoke bombs in order to deter the immigrants from landing.

In the aftermath of World War II, Britain shattered the hopes of traumatised survivors by turning their ships away or herding them into detention camps.

I have touched on this and many other aspects of Britain’s role with Israel in my new book, A Nation Reborn (Christian Publications International, 2018).

As Italian author Edda Fogarollo put it: “Quite apart from the suffering experienced by these exiles during the Nazi atrocities, they also had to face the humiliation of having hoped in vain for freedom as their dream turned into a nightmare. After seizing the ship, the British re-routed it back to Europe – to the former concentration camp of Poppendorf, near Hamburg, of all places!”²

Called to Comfort and Bless

One of our great callings as Gentile Christians is to bring comfort to God’s chosen people, who have experienced so much suffering at the hands of those who hate them, just as Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, was despised and rejected of men.

Like him, they were led like lambs to the slaughter during the Holocaust – and we too have blood on our hands, having played our part in causing them to suffer such terrible grief and horror. For that we must repent.

Yet out of the ashes – a valley of dry bones – rose a new nation reflecting something of the resurrection power of Christ. Surviving a series of wars against overwhelming odds to emerge as a world leader in hi-tech innovation and much else besides has been nothing short of miraculous. They are even first on the scene of major disasters to help other nations in distress while their doctors treat the wounded among their enemies.

And they have been so keen to live at peace with their neighbours that they have given up land to which they were legally entitled. But that hasn’t proved enough for Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, who have vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

However, God has not called us to join the UN-sponsored chorus of disapproval, but to “Comfort, comfort my people…” and tell them that “her sin has been paid for…” (Isa 40:1f).

Out of the ashes – a valley of dry bones – rose a new nation reflecting something of the resurrection power of Christ.

Not only must we bless and support them, but we are especially charged to tell them that their sins have been paid for – in other words, that the Lord Jesus, whom we Christians serve, also died for them. We have the awesome privilege of sharing the good news that our beloved Christ is their Messiah, who came to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Furious Battle

But a furious battle for truth rages on as belligerent rioters further inflame tensions on the Gaza border in the mistaken belief that they have been robbed of their land and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is forced to counter Iranian propaganda about their nuclear programme.

Citing intelligence reports, he said Iran had lied about never having pursued nuclear weapons and had continued to preserve and expand its knowledge of the same even after signing the 2015 deal with global powers designed to curb Iranian capabilities.³

The Bible clearly speaks of such deceit, thus: “Not a word from their mouth can be trusted; their heart is filled with malice. Their throat is an open grave; with their tongues they tell lies” (Ps 5:9).

All who desire to follow the truth – specifically manifested in Jesus Christ (John 14:6) – must surely see where the path leads.

References

1 Several Iranian soldiers killed in Israeli strike in Syria. World Israel News, 9 May 2018.

2 Towards the Establishment of the State of Israel, Christians for Israel.

3 JNN, 1 May 2018, quoting Reuters.