NowThis News declares that it will give us a condensed history of the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Well, that could be good – a bit of clarity to the story for those who don't know it could be educational. Sadly, given the intense anti-Israeli tendencies on the progressive Left, that's not what we get. Instead, something horribly misleading.
“The British helped European Jews immigrate to Palestine. As a result Jewish people went from making up 9% of the total population in 1922 to almost 27% by 1935, and tens of thousands of Palestinians were displaced in the process, according to Al Jazeera,” according to NowThis News.
We'd not put Al Jazeera as the most impartial of witnesses ourselves. Far from encouraging Jewish migration, the British Mandate authorities limited it – a quota was imposed, in fact.
“…in 1947 the British asked the UN to decide what to do with Palestine and the body called for it to be partitioned into two independent states,” NowThis writes. “Many Palestinians were against the UN's plan, seeing it as a betrayal. But in 1948 the UK's mandate over Palestine ended and Israel declared independence.
The war that followed saw Israel capture more Palestinian territory than the UN had allocated. Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians were forced to flee their homes.”
“The war that followed” is gross and absurd. The surrounding Arab countries invaded with the aim of wiping Israel off the map. Egypt, Transjordan (what we now call Jordan), Syria and expeditionary forces from Iraq all took part. The forcing of people to flee – at least a good portion of that was the Arab armies insisting that Palestinians should do so to leave the land free for military action. Note that aim – to wipe out Israel in defiance of that UN plan.
“In 1967 the Six-Day War broke out between Israel and neighbouring states, forcing an additional 250k plus Palestinians to flee Gaza and the West Bank.”
The Six-Day War “broke out” when Egypt, Jordan and Syria (with troops from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Algeria) invaded intending to wipe Israel off the map. Israel didn't lose again, much to the annoyance of some.
NowThis hasn't even bothered to mention the 1973 (“Yom Kippur”) War when Egypt and Syria invaded with – guess what? – the intention of wiping Israel from the map.
Yes, it is all a difficult issue, and a condensed and unbiased history would be useful. It's a pity that NowThis decided to go with something so horrendously biased as to be disinformation. After all, actual information would at least give the cause of the three major wars in the area, no?
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News. This article was first published by Accuracy In Media.
