There are four leading myths — propagated by the left — around the history of Israel and its place in the Middle East.
Myth #1: Israel is historically Muslim territory.
This is a pure and absolute lie.
Israel is historically Jewish territory. According to the Bible, Joshua entered the land of Israel in 1400 BCE; even that followed several centuries after God’s promise to Abraham about the provenance of the land. The kingdom of David was founded around 1000 BCE; the First Temple of Solomon was built in approximately 957 BCE; the Second Temple was built in approximately 515 BCE; the Hasmonean Dynasty was founded in 166 BCE; Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE, and the Jews exiled from Israel in 136 BCE after the defeat of the Bar Kochba revolt.
The Romans, in an attempt to shame the Jews, renamed the area Palestine as an insult. Even during the exile, there was a continuous Jewish presence in the land. Islam was not founded until the 7th century and Arab rule began in 636 CE. No independent Arab state ever existed in the area known as Palestine.
For more than 2,000 years, Israel was first and foremost, the land of the Hebrews.
Myth #2: Israel is the cause of the failure of land partition in the Middle East.
In 1917, the British promised the Jews the entire area of Palestine – at the time, Israel and Transjordan. In 1920, the Arabs began pogroms against Jews in Jerusalem as a sign of anger at the British Mandate in Palestine.
In 1922, the British government announced in a white paper that the Transjordan area – 70 percent of Palestine – would be sliced off and made an Arab state. In 1929, Arabs again began pogroms against Jews in Hebron. The next year, in response, the British Mandate announced that it would restrict land transfers to Jews. In 1937, the Peel commission recommended a rump state for the Jews, in which the British would retain control over Jaffa and Jerusalem, the Arabs would get the entire Negeve desert and nearly the entirety of Judea and Samaria, and the Jews would get a tiny swath of territory along the coast, including Tel Aviv and Haifa. In 1939, the British restricted Jewish immigration to Palestine just as the Nazis began World War II and just before the Holocaust. Nonetheless, the Jews sided with the Brits and the Arabs with Hitler.
In 1947, the UN Partition Plan retaining Jerusalem as internationally governed was rejected by the Arabs and accepted by the Jews. Low-level conflict began. In 1948, the British Mandate ended; Israel declared its independence. In 1964, with the Arabs still in full control of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded, calling for the destruction of Israel. In 1967, after Israel conquered the Golan Heights, Sinai Desert, all of Judea and Samaria and Gaza, the UN called for Israel to withdraw from “occupied territories,” not “the occupied territories.”
That same year, the Arab League announced the three no’s:
No peace, no recognition, no negotiations.
In 1973, the Arabs launched an all-out war again on Yom Kippur. Israel survived. In 1979, Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt in return for peace; in 1993, Israel agreed to the Oslo Accords, which promised a step-by-step process to establish a Palestinian state. In 1998, Israel conceded more territory to the Palestinian authority. In 2000, Israeli PM Ehud Barak offered Yassar Arafat 91 percent control over the West Bank in contiguous territory and an Israeli security presence along 15% of the border with Jordan. Arafat responded by launching the Second Intifada.
In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip; Hamas immediately took it over and began using it as a base for terrorist activity. In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered even more than Barak in terms of territory, with some land swaps to maintain Jewish populated areas in exchange for some Israeli territory. Olmert even offered to relinquish Israeli sovereignty at the Temple Mount and the entire Old City of Jerusalem to a five-member non-sovereign international trusteeship comprising Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, the United States and Saudi Arabia. PA head Mahmoud Abbas walked away without a counter.
Myth #3: Israel expelled all Palestinian Arabs from British Mandate Palestine.
This is, again, a lie.
Israel’s founding documents asked Arabs to stay. Israel’s declaration of independence, in the middle of an ongoing war with the Arab nations, reads, “WE APPEAL – in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months – to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
Debate has raged for decades over how many Arabs left the nascent state of Israel thanks to expulsion and how many left because they were told to leave by their leaders; an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 refugees left before their homes were even in a war zone. The collapse of Arab society during the 1947-1948 war, leaving many Arabs without a means of support, has been well-documented. In any case, hundreds of thousands of these refugees ended up in the West Bank and Gaza, which remained Arab territory until 1967.
Furthermore, Arab nations refused to take in hundreds of thousands of Arabs, turning their co-religionists into refugees who have maintained that status for literally decades – a situation unparalleled in human history. Fully 62 percent of such refugees live outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip according to the UNRWA. Meanwhile, Israel took in over 800,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands between 1948-1951.
Myth #4: Israel Is An Apartheid State.
Israel is not an apartheid state. Arab citizens of Israel have the same rights as Jewish citizens. The vast majority of Palestinians live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank. Israel’s population is 20% Arab; an Arab Party is currently sitting in the Israeli government, an Arab sits on Israel’s Supreme Court. There are zero Jews living under Palestinian rule.The only apartheid state is any state of Palestine.
This piece is adapted from an episode of Ben’s series, Debunked, available exclusively to Daily Wire Members.