Although you hear so much about the Arab-Israeli conflict, there are many basic aspects that
people don’t know about.
So I’ve summarized the essentials here.
Now let’s start at the beginning.
Israel said yes.
You might look at the situation and think to yourself: Why not just split the land into
two?
A Jewish state where Jews live and an Arab state where Arabs live.
Well, this is exactly what the UN said in 1947.
The Jews said yes.
The Arabs said no and started a war.
And by the way, the partition plan didn’t specify a Palestinian state, but an Arab state,
and I will say why in a minute.
Now you might say: Why should they share it?
It is their land.
The Jews stole it from them.
And so here we come to point number two.
Israel wasn’t established on stolen Arab soil.
Unlike the first European settlers in North America and Australia, who took the land from
the natives, the Jews bought all the land they settled on.
Show me one case in which Jews took land that didn’t belong to them before 1948.
And, by the way, I can give you many names of Jewish villages that had to be evacuated
because of Arab violence in the 20s and the 30s: Hebron, Har Tuv, Bny Yehuda, Kfar Hashiloach.
I will leave the complete list below.
And by the way, another fact that people are not aware of is that Jews have always lived
in the land of Israel.
Even before the advent of Zionism there were more Jews living in Jerusalem than Muslims.
In 1870 there were 11,000 Jews and only 7,000 Muslims in Jerusalem.
After the 1948 war, the Arabs lost some land.
But this is what happens when you start a war.
You might lose.
Look at the Germans.
They started a war in 1939 and lost 25% of their territory.
You don’t hear about any Germans wanting to reclaim their lost territory from Poland.
The State of Israel wasn’t established as compensation for the Holocaust.
Another misconception that many people have, including Israelis by the way, is that Israel
was established as compensation for the Holocaust.
The notion that the world was so shocked by the Holocaust that it gave the Jews a country
is very naïve.
This is not how world politics work.
The establishment of Israel, like the establishment of many other countries, has more to do with
the outcome of World War II.
After every world war, World War I, World War II and the Cold War, there is a new world
order.
After World War II, many countries were established on the territories of the French, British
and Japanese empires that had collapsed: Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, India, South and North Korea,
and Israel.
Jews and Arabs didn’t live together peacefully in Arab countries.
The idea that Jews lived peacefully in Muslim countries before the advent of Zionism is
false.
Yes, there was a golden age of peaceful coexistence, but it was short and it dates back 800 years.
In all Muslim countries where Jews lived, from Morocco in the west to Iran in the east,
from Syria in the north to Yemen in the south, Jews suffered discrimination, pogroms, and
racial violence before the advent of Zionism.
After the establishment of Israel, almost all of the Jews who lived in Arab countries,
some 800,000 people, had to flee to Israel.
The name says it all.
We are called Jews because we come from Judaea, the area around Jerusalem.
Simple.
But where does the name Palestine come from?
In order to understand this, you need to go 2,000 years back.
Jews lived in the land of Israel under Roman rule.
In the year 132 the Jews rebelled.
The Romans wanted to punish the Jews, so they changed the name from Judaea to Palestine.
The Romans didn’t invent the name.
The name was first mentioned in the writing of Herodotus, the Greek historian, to describe
the land of the Philistines.
The name then spread out from the Romans to many European languages.
But it was never a name of a people, only a name of a region.
My grandmother, who was born in 1937 in Mandatory Palestine is actually more Palestinian than
most Palestinians living today.
True Palestinians are only those Jews, Christians, Muslims, who were born in Mandatory Palestine
between 1920 till 1948.
Now let's say that you don't agree with me, and you believe that Palestinians existed
in the past, then please write me in the comments below the name of one Palestinian leader from
the 18th century, from the 13th century, from the 5th century.
Put a link to an ancient Palestinian coin or a flag.
But you don't need to go that far back.
Even in the 30s, when the Arabs revolted against the British, it was called the Arab Revolt,
not the Palestinian Revolt.
Some who are anti-Israel say that Israel is a colonialist project.
No.
It is the other way around.
When the British and the French drew lines on maps at the end of World War I they created
not only borders, but nations: the Palestinians and the Jordanians.
Now you might say that I’m dwelling on history too much.
What about the problems of today?
Which brings me to the next point.
The Palestinian refugees.
There is a lot of exaggeration surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict, but there is also
one huge lie and it involves the Palestinian refugees.
As a result of the war in 1948, some 700,000 Arabs had to leave their homes.
Many of them had to leave their homes because the Arab leadership had told them to leave
their homes and that they could come back after they had killed all the Jews.
And, yes, like all wars, there were some acts of evacuation.
At the same time, as I said before, some 800,000 Jews had to flee Muslim countries and start
a new life in Israel.
Unlike the Arabs, who had started a war against the Jews, the Jews living in Muslim countries
had never committed acts of violence against Muslims.
In the 20th century there have been tens of millions of refugees.
After World War II, entire populations migrated.
Here are two examples.
More than 10 million Germans had to leave their homes in what was previously an eastern
territory of Germany.
When India and Pakistan were founded, about 15 million Muslims and Hindus became refugees.
Now, on which topic have you heard more in recent years?
About the 700,000 Palestinian refugees or about the millions of Germans, Pakistani and
Hindu refugees?
There is one topic that you hear about all the time: the Palestinian refugees.
And why is that?
This brings us to the next point.
Two refugee agencies.
Here is a fact that most people don’t know: the UN has two agencies for refugees.
One for all the refugees in the world, and another one, UNRWA, just for the Palestinian
refugees.
Sounds crazy but it is true.
Just google UNRWA.
One agency for more than 200 million refugees from 1945 till today, and another one only
for the 700,000 Palestinian refugees.
The Palestinian refugees also enjoy a different definition to the word refugee.
There is a regular refugee and a Palestinian refugee.
The Palestinian refugees get to keep the title refugees and pass it on to their children
and grandchildren so with each generation there are actually more and more Palestinian
refugees.
Understand?
The UN, instead of helping the real people in need, is paying for the grandchildren of
the Palestinian refugees from 1948.
The Palestinian refugees also hold to the idea of what they called the “right of return”.
This idea is as crazy as if all the, I don’t know, 30-40 million Germans would want to
go back to their grandparents’ home in what is today Poland.
Just imagine what would happen if all the 200 million refugees from ’48, ’47, ’49
would want to go back to what was their grandparents’ home: total mayhem.
The freedom to complain.
Another reason why you hear so much about the Palestinians is that they enjoy the freedom
to complain.
Let's say that you’re watching TV and you see an Arab from Nablus complaining about
the Israelis.
And you think to yourself: the Israelis are really mean.
Now let's think for a second on what you’ve just seen.
A journalist could freely travel to the West Bank where he could interview whoever he wanted.
The person that is being interviewed doesn’t have his face blurred and you see his name
on the screen.
Now when was the last time that you’ve seen a Syrian in Damascus or an Iranian in Tehran
complaining about their government?
The freedom to complain about the government is a luxury that most people in the world
don’t enjoy.
Now, I hope that a day will come when all people in the world will be able to complain
about their government, it is very important, but until then it is important to remember
the huge paradox: You don’t see and hear the ones who are really suffering, as they
are the ones being silenced and you can’t hear their voices.
Are the Palestinians really suffering that badly?
Let’s have a look at the facts.
In 1967 in the West Bank the life expectancy was 48 years.
Today it is 75 – higher than all the Arab countries surrounding Israel.
In 1967 there were no universities in the West Bank.
Today there are 11 universities and 13 colleges.
In 1967 only four Arab settlements had running water.
Today more than 640.
In Amman, the capital of Jordan, just tens of kilometers away, there is running water
only one day a week.
The Palestinians get more aid from the United Nations, the United States, the European Union,
and the Arab countries, than any other group.
Somehow everybody knows that the US supports Israel.
Nobody knows that the Palestinians get more money per capita than any other group in the
history of the world.
But what about the killings of Palestinians by the Israeli Army?
Let's have a look at the numbers.
Body count.
If a tree fell in the forest and a thousand cameras filmed it, did a thousand trees fall?
Apparently so.
Polls conducted in European countries show that most Europeans see Israel as the biggest
threat to world peace.
Israel: a tiny democracy in the Middle East.
And I don’t blame them, by the way.
This is what the media has been feeding them for years.
Now let’s have a look at the numbers.
So, did you ever think how many Palestinians died from 1948 till today?
It’s around 20,000.
That's it.
And I will add that most of them were terrorists.
Now let's have a look at who is really killing Muslims in the Middle East.
In Syria in the last ten years, around a half a million people died.
In Lebanon about 130,000 dead as a result of the civil war that continued from the 70s
to the 90s.
In Jordan the king killed around 15,000 Palestinians in a single year between 70 and 71.
About 150,000 died in a war between Yemen and Egypt.
And about a million and a half died in the war between Iraq and Iran.
And the list goes on and on.
Now check and see how many articles and publications have been published against Israel in newspapers
(like the British Guardian) or in universities (like Berkeley) and how many publications
were about the real atrocities that Muslims are committing against one another in the
region.
Israel is the smallest problem that Muslims have in the Middle East.
Too bad that most Muslims and “human rights” organizations are not honest enough to admit
this simple obvious fact.
Back to basics.
I’m just an Israeli tour guide with an MA in Israeli history.
I’m not the first and certainly won’t be the last person that you will hear talking
about this issue.
Though sometimes it is good to go back to basics, to see what each side says about itself.
In the Israeli Declaration of Independence it says: “We extend our hand to all neighboring
states and their peoples in an offer of peace”.
In the Hamas Covenant, it says: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until
Islam obliterates it.”
I find it interesting.
They don’t say that they want a Palestinian state; they say that they want to destroy
Israel.
And it is not only Hamas, by the way.
When the PLO talks about freeing Palestine they talk about Haifa and Jaffa.
The idea that there will ever be a democratic Palestinian state is western wishful thinking.
There are no Arab countries with human rights, democracy and all the values that are important
to us.
They want to destroy Israel.
I believe them and so should you.
That's it, I hope you enjoyed this video.
If you did, then please subscribe and share this video on social media.
If you don't agree with me, then write your reasons below.
See you in the next video.
Yallabye.