FACT: Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other detractors of Israel have mounted a campaign to discourage American law enforcement and first responders from engaging with their Israeli colleagues. In what they refer to as “deadly exchange,” JVP asserts that the U.S. and Israeli government “exchange methods of state violence …
Read More »Myths & Facts.
Mandate for Palestine.
Mandate for Palestine Sovereignty over the Land of Israel London – July 24, 1924 The Mandate for Palestine, a historical League of Nations document, laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere western Palestine, a 10,000- square-miles area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The Mandate’s roots …
Read More »MYTH: Israelis overreact to harmless rock throwing by Palestinians.
FACT: Of the many “David versus Goliath” images that are portrayed in the media to dramatize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the most common may be that of the seemingly helpless Palestinian throwing rocks at heavily armed Israeli soldiers. These images are powerful but also frequently misleading, failing to distinguish between the …
Read More »MYTH: Palestinians care more about saving lives than boycotting Israel.
FACT: Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir is reputed to have said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Since her time, the truthfulness of those words has been demonstrated repeatedly. and it was again last month when the Palestinian Authority said it would …
Read More »MYTH: Israel was created to compensate the Jews for the Holocaust.
FACT The Jewish claim to statehood in their homeland dates to ancient times when the Israelite and Hasmonean kingdoms ruled for more than 400 years in the region that later came to be known as Palestine. The Jewish people never left the area but were forced to live under the …
Read More »MYTH: Israel prevents Gazans from getting equipment & treatment to fight COVID-19.
FACT: As in the specious claim that Israel is refusing to help Palestinians in the West Bank contain the coronavirus, similar lies are being disseminated about Israel’s treatment of those in Gaza. The Guardian reported, for example, “An Israeli blockade, in place since 2007 although eased in recent years, has …
Read More »MYTH: Israel refuses to help Palestinians contain the coronavirus.
FACT: One of the many ironies of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is that its proponents routinely use Israeli products, innovations and medical treatments. Now they face another challenge: should they risk dying from the coronavirus rather than accept help from Israel? Just as most Palestinians in the …
Read More »MYTH: The Jews started the first war with the Arabs.
FACT: The Arabs made clear they would go to war to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state. The chairman of the Arab Higher Committee said the Arabs would “fight for every inch of their country.” Two days later, the holy men of Al-Azhar University in Cairo called on the …
Read More »MYTH: The UN blacklist of companies operating in the disputed territories will promote peace.
FACT. Acceding to pressure from BDS-supporting organizations, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) published a database of 112 companies operating in Judaea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem on February 12, 2020. The intention was to create a blacklist that would identify companies that Israel’s detractors could target for boycotting because their …
Read More »Myth: Palestinians do not encourage children to engage in terror.
Fact: Most Palestinians who adopt terror in the hope of either “ending the occupation” or destroying Israel do so because they freely choose murder over any other option. Palestinian terrorists also use children, however, to do their dirty work. On March 15, 2004, Israeli security forces caught an eleven-year-old boy …
Read More »MYTH: Israeli Settlements are Illegal.
FACT: On November 18, 2019, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo expressed the Trump administration’s position that “the establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.” This was inaccurately described in the media as a reversal of long standing American policy. In …
Read More »MYTH: Journalists covering the Middle East are driven by the search for the truth.
FACT. It will come as no surprise to learn that journalists in the Middle East share an interest in sensationalism with their colleagues covering domestic issues. The most egregious examples come from television re-porters whose emphasis on visuals over substance encourages facile treatment of the issues. For example, when NBC’s …
Read More »MYTH: Israel has no justification for applying Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley.
FACT: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on September 10, 2019: “Today I’m announcing my intention, with the establishment of the next government, to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea. This is our essential safety belt in the east” (Ben Sales, “Netanyahu’s push to annex …
Read More »MYTH; Labelling products from West Bank made in an “Israeli Settlement” will advance the cause of peace.
FACT: On November 12, 2019, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that products coming from Jewish localities in the West Bank could not carry the label “Made in Israel” and must be labelled as a product originating from an “Israeli Settlement.” This decision reflects an all-too-familiar double-standard applied to …
Read More »MYTH: Palestinian teachers are making a positive contribution to peacemaking.
FACT: One reason Israelis have little confidence in the prospect of peace with the Palestinians is that they see how the young generation of students is being indoctrinated in Palestinian Authority schools. Textbooks erase Israel’s existence, provide misinformation about the Jewish people and Israel, promote violence and martyrdom and demonize …
Read More »MYTH: Defensible borders are unrealistic in an era of ballistic missiles.
FACT: History shows that aerial attacks have never defeated a nation. Countries are only conquered by troops occupying land. One example of this was Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, in which the latter nation was over-run and occupied in a matter of hours. Though the multinational force bombed Iraq for close …
Read More »MYTH: Israel has no justification for applying Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley.
FACT : Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on September 10, 2019: “Today I’m announcing my intention, with the establishment of the next government, to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea. This is our essential safety belt in the east” (Ben Sales, “Netanyahu’s push to …
Read More »MYTH: There are no Palestinian settlements.
FACT: An international furor erupted when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that if he won the election he would assert Israeli sovereignty over parts of Area C where the Oslo Accords already grants Israel full administrative control. This hysteria was magnified by the usual assertions that Jewish settlements in that …
Read More »MYTH: PM Netanyahu’s visit to Hebron was an act of “defilement” & “war.”
FACT. On September 4, 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the city of Hebron to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the massacre of Jews by Palestinians that occurred on August 23, 1929. “While we are not coming to banish anyone,” Netanyahu said, “neither will anyone banish us. To cite …
Read More »MYTH – Palestine was heavily populated with Arabs before the Zionists arrived.
FACT. For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated, and widely neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts, and malarial marshes. This was Mark Twain’s description when he visited in 1867: A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent mournful …
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