Twenty facts about Israel and the meaddle east

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Dear Friends,
This is an excellent and concise summary of the past century and Israel's part in history.Please, read this and pass on to others who may need to be informed.
It is our priviledge to "not hold our Peace", for Jerusalem's sake. While you pray for the Peace of Jerusalem, and all Israel, please call out our names before the throne.
Shabbat Shalom, Burt and Pam
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Isa 62:6-7 I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem;
They shall never hold their peace day or night.
You who make mention of the LORD, do not keep silent,
7 And give Him no rest till He establishes
And till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
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TWENTY FACTS ABOUT ISRAEL AND THE MIDDLE EAST
By William Bennett, Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick
May 22, 2002 - http://www.israelinsider.com

Used with permission of Empower America.

The world's attention has been focused on the Middle East. We are
confronted daily with scenes of carnage and destruction. Can we
understand such violence? Yes, but only if we come to the situation with
a solid grounding in the facts of the matter -- facts that too often are
forgotten, if ever they were learned. Below are twenty facts that we
think are useful in understanding the current situation, how we arrived
here, and how we might eventually arrive at a solution.

ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT

1. When the United Nations proposed the establishment of two states in
the region -- one Jewish, one Arab -- the Jews accepted the proposal and
declared their independence in 1948. The Jewish state constituted only
1/6 of one percent of what was known as "the Arab world." The Arab
states, however, rejected the UN plan and since then have waged war
against Israel repeatedly, both all-out wars and wars of terrorism and
attrition. In 1948, five Arab armies invaded Israel in an effort to
eradicate it. Jamal Husseini of the Arab Higher Committee spoke for many
in vowing to soak "the soil of our beloved country with the last drop of
our blood."

2. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 --
three years before Israel controlled the West Bank and Gaza. The PLO's
declared purpose was to eliminate the State of Israel by means of armed
struggle. To this day, the website of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian
Authority (PA) claims that the entirety of Israel is "occupied"
territory. It is impossible to square this with the PLO and PA
assertions to Western audiences that the root of the conflict is
Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

3. The West Bank and Gaza (controlled by Jordan and Egypt from 1948 to
1967) came under Israeli control during the Six Day War of 1967 that
started when Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran and Arab armies amassed
on Israel's borders to invade and liquidate the state. It is important
to note that during their 19-year rule, neither Jordan nor Egypt had
made any effort to establish a Palestinian state on those lands. Just
before the Arab nations launched their war of aggression against the
State of Israel in 1967, Syrian Defense Minister (later President) Hafez
Assad stated, "Our forces are now entirely ready. to initiate the act of
liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab
homeland. the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." On
the brink of the1967 war, Egyptian President Gamal Nassar declared, "Our
basic objective will be the destruction of Israel."

4. Because of their animus against Jews, many leaders of the
Palestinian cause have long supported our enemies. The Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem allied himself with Adolf Hitler during WWII. Yasser Arafat,
chairman of the PLO and president of the PA, has repeatedly targeted and
killed Americans. In 1973, Arafat ordered the execution of Cleo Noel,
the American ambassador to the Sudan. Arafat was very closely aligned
with the Soviet Union and other enemies of the United States throughout
the Cold War. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Arafat aligned himself with
Saddam Hussein, whom he praised as "the defender of the Arab nation, of
Muslims, and of free men everywhere."

5. Israel has, in fact, returned most of the land that it captured
during the 1967 war and right after that war offered to return all of it
in exchange for peace and normal relations; the offer was rejected. As a
result of the 1978 Camp David accords -- in which Egypt recognized the
right of Israel to exist and normal relations were established between
the two countries -- Israel returned the Sinai desert, a territory three
times the size of Israel and 91 percent of the territory Israel took
control of in the 1967 war.

6. In 2000, as part of negotiations for a comprehensive and durable
peace, Israel offered to turn over all but the smallest portion of the
remaining territories to Yasser Arafat. But Israel was rebuffed when
Arafat walked out of Camp David and launched the current Intifada.

7. Yasser Arafat has never been less than clear about his goals -- at
least not in Arabic. On the very day that he signed the Oslo accords in
1993 -- in which he promised to renounce terrorism and recognize Israel,
he addressed the Palestinian people on Jordanian television and declared
that he had taken the first step "in the 1974 plan." This was a thinly
veiled reference to the "phased plan," according to which any
territorial gain was acceptable as a means toward the ultimate goal of
Israel's destruction.

8. The recently deceased Faisal al-Husseini, a leading Palestinian
spokesman, made the same point in 2001 when he declared that the West
Bank and Gaza represented only "22 percent of Palestine" and that the
Oslo process was a "Trojan Horse." He explained, "When we are asking all
the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at
other agreements as 'temporary' procedures, or phased goals, this means
that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them." The goal, he
continued, was "the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea,"
i.e., the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea -- all of Israel.

9. To this day, the Fatah wing of the PLO (the "moderate" wing that was
founded and is controlled by Arafat himself) has as its official emblem
the entire state of Israel covered by two rifles and a hand grenade --
another fact that belies the claim that Arafat desires nothing more than
the West Bank and Gaza.

10. While criticism of Israel is not necessarily the same as
"anti-Semitism," it must be remembered that the Middle East press is, in
fact, rife with anti-Semitism. More than fifteen years ago the eminent
scholar Bernard Lewis could point out that "The demonization of Jews [in
Arabic literature] goes further than it had ever done in Western
literature, with the exception of Germany during the period of Nazi rule."
Since then, and through all the years of the "peace process," things
have become much worse. Depictions of Jews in Arab and Muslim media are
akin to those of Nazi Germany, and medieval blood libels -- including
claims that Jews use Christian and Muslim blood in preparing their
holiday foods have become prominent and routine. One example is a sermon
broadcast on PA television where Sheik Ahmad Halabaya stated, "They [the
Jews] must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight
them: Allah will torture them at your hands.' Have no mercy on the Jews,
no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are.
Wherever you meet them, kill them."

11. Over three-quarters of Palestinians approve of suicide bombings --
an appalling statistic but in light of the above facts, an unsurprising
one.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL

12. There are 21 Arab countries in the Middle East and only one Jewish
state: Israel, which is also the only democracy in the region.

13. Israel is the only country in the region that permits citizens of
all faiths to worship freely and openly. Twenty percent of Israeli
citizens are not Jewish.

14. While Jews are not permitted to live in many Arab countries, Arabs
are granted full citizenship and have the right to vote in Israel. Arabs
are also free to become members of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset).
In fact, several Arabs have been democratically elected to the Knesset
and have been serving there for years. Arabs living in Israel have more
rights and are freer than most Arabs living in Arab countries.

15. Israel is smaller than the state of New Hampshire and is surrounded
by nations hostile to her existence. Some peace proposals including the
recent Saudi proposal demand withdrawal from the entire West Bank, which
would leave Israel 9 miles wide at its most vulnerable point.

16. The oft-cited UN Resolution 242 (passed in the wake of the 1967 war)
does not, in fact, require a complete withdrawal from the West Bank. As
legal scholar Eugene Rostow put it, "Resolution 242, which as
undersecretary of state for political affairs between 1966 and 1969 I
helped produce, calls on the parties to make peace and allows Israel to
administer the territories it occupied in 1967 until 'a just and lasting
peace in the Middle East' is achieved. When such a peace is made, Israel
is required to withdraw its armed forces 'from territories' it occupied
during the Six-Day War -- not from 'the' territories nor from 'all' the
territories, but from some of the territories."

17. Israel has, of course, conceded that the Palestinians have
legitimate claims to the disputed territories and is willing to engage
in negotiations on the matter. As noted above, Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak offered almost all of the territories to Arafat at Camp David
in 2000.

18. Despite claims that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are
the obstacle to peace, Jews lived there for centuries before being
massacred or driven out by invading Arab armies in 1948-49. And contrary
to common misperceptions, Israeli settlements -- which constitute less
than two percent of the territories -- almost never displace
Palestinians.

19. The area of the West Bank includes some of the most important sites
in Jewish history, among them Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jericho. East
Jerusalem, often cited as an "Arab city" or "occupied territory," is the
site of Judaism's holiest monument. While under Arab rule (1948-67),
this area was entirely closed to Jews. Since Israel took control, it has
been open to people of all faiths.

20. Finally, let us consider the demand that certain territories in the
Muslim world must be off-limits to Jews. This demand is of a piece with
Hitler's proclamation that German land had to be "Judenrein" (empty of
Jews). Arabs can live freely throughout Israel, and as full citizens.
Why should Jews be forbidden to live or to own land in an area like the
West Bank simply because the majority of people is Arab?

In sum, a fair and balanced portrayal of the Middle East will reveal
that one nation stands far above the others in its commitment to human
rights and democracy as well as in its commitment to peace and mutual
security. That nation is Israel.