Now this is a hoot. I love it when people that know absolutely nothing about the middle East pretend they do. Their anti-Semitism is so thinly veiled.
MYTH
“The Jews have no claim to the land they call Israel.”
FACT
A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into the
Diaspora by the
Romans after the destruction of the
Second Temple in
Jerusalem in the year 70
C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to
Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.
The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people; 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch
Abraham.
Even after the destruction of the
Second Temple in
Jerusalem, and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in the Land of Israel continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in
Jerusalem and
Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah,
Gaza,
Ashkelon,
Jaffa and
Caesarea. The
Crusaders massacred many Jews during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent
rabbis established communities in
Safed,
Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years.
By the early 19th century — years before the birth of the modern
Zionist movement — more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel.
1 The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the
reestablishment of the Jewish State.
Israel’s international “birth certificate” was validated by the promise of the
Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of
Joshua onward; the
Balfour Declaration of 1917; the
League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations
partition resolution of 1947; Israel’s
admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel’s people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
“Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist.’
Israel’s right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel’s legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement.... There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its ‘right to exist’ a favor, or a negotiable concession.”
MYTH
“Palestine was always an Arab country.”
FACT
The term “Palestine” is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century
B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the
Romans first applied the name
Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word
Filastin is derived from this Latin name.
3
The Hebrews entered the Land of Israel about 1300 B.C.E., living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch,
King Saul. The second king,
David, established
Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 B.C.E. David’s son,
Solomon, built the
Temple soon thereafter and consolidated the military, administrative and religious functions of the kingdom. The nation was divided under Solomon’s son, with the northern kingdom (Israel) lasting until 722 B.C.E., when the
Assyrians destroyed it, and the southern kingdom (Judah) surviving until the
Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty afterward before most Jews were finally driven from their homeland in 135 C.E.
Jewish independence in the Land of Israel lasted for more than 400 years. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States.
4 In fact, if not for foreign conquerors, Israel would be more than 3,000 years old today.
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most of the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the
Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.”
5
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in
Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds.
6
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: “There is no such country as Palestine! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.
7
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the
United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said, Palestine was part of the Province of Syriaand that, politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity. A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the
PLO, told the Security Council: “It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.”
8
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the
1967 Six-Day War and Israel’s capture of the West Bank.
MYTH
“The Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites and were in Palestine long before the Jews.”
FACT
Palestinian claims to be related to the
Canaanites are a recent phenomenon and contrary to historical evidence. The Canaanites disappeared from the face of the earth three millennia ago, and no one knows if any of their descendants survived or, if they did, who they would be.
Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia, said the Palestinians’ ancestors had only been in the area for 1,000 years.
9 Even the Palestinians themselves have acknowledged their association with the region came long after the Jews. In testimony before the
Anglo-American Committee in 1946, for example, they claimed a connection to Palestine of more than 1,000 years, dating back no further than the conquest of
Muhammad’s followers in the 7th century.
10 And that claim is also dubious. Over the last 2,000 years, there have been massive invasions (e.g., the
Crusades) that killed off most of the local people, migrations, the plague, and other manmade or natural disasters. The entire local population was replaced many times over. During the
British mandate alone, more than 100,000 Arabs emigrated from neighboring countries and are today considered Palestinians.
By contrast, no serious historian questions the more than 3,000-year-old Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, or the modern Jewish people’s relation to the ancient Hebrews.
MYTH
“The Balfour Declaration did not give Jews the right to a homeland in Palestine.”
FACT
In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration:
His Majesty’s Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The
Mandate for Palestine included the Balfour Declaration. It specifically referred to “the historical connections of the Jewish people with Palestine” and to the moral validity of “reconstituting their National Home in that country.” The term “
reconstituting” shows recognition of the fact that Palestine had been the Jews’ home. Furthermore, the British were instructed to “use their best endeavors to facilitate” Jewish immigration, to encourage settlement on the land and to “secure” the Jewish National Home. The word “Arab” does not appear in the Mandatory award.
11
The Mandate was formalized by the 52 governments at the League of Nations on July 24, 1922.
MYTH
“The ‘traditional position’ of the Arabs in Palestine was jeopardized by Jewish settlement.”
FACT
For many centuries,
Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated and widely-neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts and malarial marshes. As late as 1880, the American consul in
Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. “The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years,” he said.
12
The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission quotes an account of the Maritime Plain in 1913:
The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts...no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the Jewish village of Yabna Yavne....Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen....The ploughs used were of wood....The yields were very poor....The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist....The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert....The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.
13
Surprisingly, many people who were not sympathetic to the
Zionist cause believed the Jews would improve the condition of
Palestinian Arabs. For example, Dawood Barakat, editor of the Egyptian paper
Al-Ahram, wrote: “It is absolutely necessary that an entente be made between the Zionists and Arabs, because the war of words can only do evil. The Zionists are necessary for the country: The money which they will bring, their knowledge and intelligence, and the industriousness which characterizes them will contribute without doubt to the regeneration of the country.”
14
Even a leading Arab nationalist believed the return of the Jews to their homeland would help resuscitate the country. According to Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia:
The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants. One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering over the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1000 years. At the same time we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, America. The cause of causes could not escape those who had a gift of deeper insight. They knew that the country was for its original sons (
abna’ihi­l­asliyin), for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland. The return of these exiles (
jaliya) to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually [to be] an experimental school for their brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades and in all things connected with toil and labor.
15
As Hussein foresaw, the regeneration of Palestine, and the growth of its
population, came only after Jews returned in massive numbers.
Mark Twain, who visited Palestine in 1867, described it as: “...a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent mournful expanse....A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action....We never saw a human being on the whole route....There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”16
MYTH
“Zionism is racism.”
FACT
In 1975, the
UN General Assembly adopted a
resolution slandering Zionism by equating it with racism.
Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, which holds that Jews, like any other nation, are entitled to a homeland.
History has demonstrated the need to ensure Jewish security through a national homeland. Zionism recognizes that Jewishness is defined by shared origin, religion, culture and history. The realization of the Zionist dream is exemplified by more than five million Jews, from more than 100 countries, who are Israeli citizens.
Israel’s Law of Return grants automatic citizenship to Jews, but non-Jews are also eligible to become citizens under naturalization procedures similar to those in other countries. More than one million Muslim and Christian Arabs,
Druze,
Baha’is,
Circassians and other ethnic groups also are represented in Israel’s population. The presence in Israel of thousands of dark-skinned
Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen and India is the best refutation of the calumny against Zionism. In a series of
historic airlifts, labeled Moses (1984), Joshua (1985) and Solomon (1991), Israel rescued more than 20,000 members of the ancient Ethiopian Jewish community.
Zionism does not discriminate against anyone. Israel’s open and democratic character, and its scrupulous protection of the religious and political rights of Christians and Muslims, rebut the charge of exclusivity. Moreover, anyone — Jew or non-Jew, Israeli, American, or Saudi, black, white, yellow or purple — can be a Zionist.
Writing after “Operation Moses” was revealed, William Safire noted: “...For the first time in history, thousands of black people are being brought to a country not in chains but in dignity, not as slaves but as citizens.”17
By contrast, the Arab states define citizenship strictly by native parentage. It is almost impossible to become a naturalized citizen in many Arab states, especially
Algeria,
Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait. Several Arab nations have laws that facilitate the naturalization of foreign Arabs, with the specific exception of
Palestinians.
Jordan, on the other hand, instituted its own “law of return” in 1954, according citizenship to all former residents of Palestine, except for Jews.
18
To single out Jewish self-determination for condemnation is itself a form of racism. When approached by a student at Harvard in 1968 who attacked Zionism, Martin Luther King responded: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”
19
The 1975 UN resolution was part of the Soviet-Arab Cold War anti-Israel campaign. Almost all the former non-Arab supporters of the resolution have apologized and changed their positions. When the General Assembly voted to
repeal the resolution in 1991, only some Arab and Muslim states, as well as Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam were opposed.
MYTH
“The delegates of the UN World Conference Against Racism agreed that Zionism is racism.”
FACT
In 2001,
Arab nations again were seeking to delegitimize Israel by trying to equate
Zionism with racism at the
UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. The United States joined Israel in boycotting the conference when it became clear that rather than focus on the evils of racism,
anti-Semitism and xenophobia that were supposed to be the subject of the event, the conference had turned into a forum for bashing Israel.
The United States withdrew its delegation “to send a signal to the freedom loving nations of the world that we will not stand by if the world tries to describe
Zionism as racism. That is as wrong as wrong can be.” White House Press Secretary
Ari Fleischer added the President is proud to stand by Israel and by the Jewish community and send a signal that no group around the world will meet with international acceptance and respect if its purpose is to equate
Zionism with racism.
20
The UN's Durban Review Conference, dubbed “Durban II, ” has been scheduled for April 2009. Though the conference is intended to target racism, many fear the agenda will again be hijacked and turned into another hate fest directed at Israel.
The Obama Administration had declared its intention to participate in the planning for Durban II to try to prevent
Iran,
Cuba,
Libya, the
Organization of the Islamic Conference (all gross violators of human rights) and hostile nongovernmental organizations from again promoting
Holocaust denial,
anti-Semitism and the demonization of Israel. The United States was determined to see the conference play a positive role in combatting global racism and supporting human rights.
20a After sending negotiators to Geneva to help draft the outcome document of the conference, the U.S. withdrew from Durban II, while frustrated State Department officials declared that the document was “unsalvageable” and had gone “from bad to worse.”
20b Israel has declared its intention to boycott the event and has publicly asked the ‘free world’ to do the same.
20c.
Italy has also declared its intention to boycott the conference, becoming the first EU nation to do so. However, other European nations, including
France and the
Netherlands have stated that unless drastic changes are made to the draft document, they too will withdraw.
20d
MYTH
“The Zionists could have chosen another country besides Palestine.”
FACT
In the late 19th century, the rise of religious and racist
anti-Semitism led to a resurgence of pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, shattering promises of equality and tolerance. This stimulated Jewish
immigration to Palestine from Europe.
Simultaneously, a wave of Jews immigrated to Palestine from Yemen,
Morocco, Iraq and
Turkey. These Jews were unaware of
Theodor Herzl’s political Zionism or of European pogroms. They were motivated by the centuries-old dream of the “Return to Zion” and a fear of intolerance. Upon hearing that the gates of Palestine were open, they braved the hardships of travel and went to the Land of Israel.
The Zionist ideal of a return to Israel has profound religious roots. Many Jewish prayers speak of
Jerusalem, Zion and the Land of Israel. The injunction not to forget Jerusalem, the site of the Temple, is a major tenet of Judaism. The Hebrew language, the
Torah, laws in the
Talmud, the
Jewish calendar and
Jewish holidays and festivals all originated in Israel and revolve around its seasons and conditions. Jews pray toward Jerusalem and recite the words “next year in Jerusalem” every
Passover. Jewish religion, culture and history make clear that it is only in the land of Israel that the Jewish commonwealth can be built.
In 1897, Jewish leaders formally organized the
Zionist political movement, calling for the restoration of the Jewish national home in Palestine, where Jews could find sanctuary and self-determination, and work for the renascence of their civilization and culture.
MYTH
“Herzl himself proposed Uganda as the Jewish state as an alternative to Palestine.””
FACT
Theodor Herzl sought support from the great powers for the creation of a Jewish homeland. He turned to Great Britain, and met with Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary and others. The British agreed, in principle, to Jewish settlement in East Africa.
At the
Sixth Zionist Congress at Basle on August 26, 1903, Herzl proposed the British
Uganda Program as a
temporary emergency refuge for Jews in Russia in immediate danger. While Herzl made it clear that this program would not affect the ultimate aim of Zionism, a Jewish entity in the Land of Israel, the proposal aroused a storm at the Congress and nearly led to a split in the Zionist movement. The Uganda Program, which never had much support, was formally rejected by the Zionist movement at the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905.
MYTH
“All Arabs opposed the Balfour Declaration, seeing it as a betrayal of their rights.””
FACT
Emir Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein, the leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks, signed an agreement with
Chaim Weizmann and other
Zionist leaders during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. It acknowledged the “racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people” and concluded that “the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab states and Palestine.” Furthermore, the agreement looked to the fulfillment of the
Balfour Declaration and called for all necessary measures “...to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.”
21
Faisal had conditioned his acceptance of the Balfour Declaration on the fulfillment of British wartime promises of independence to the Arabs. These were not kept.
Critics dismiss the Weizmann-Faisal agreement because it was never enacted; however, the fact that the leader of the Arab nationalist movement and the Zionist movement could reach an understanding is significant because it demonstrated that Jewish and Arab aspirations were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
MYTH
“The Zionists were colonialist tools of Western imperialism.”
FACT
“Colonialism means living by exploiting others,” Yehoshofat Harkabi has written. “But what could be further from colonialism than the idealism of city-dwelling Jews who strive to become farmers and laborers and to live by their own work?”
22
Moreover, as British historian Paul Johnson noted,
Zionists were hardly tools of imperialists given the powers’ general opposition to their cause. “Everywhere in the West, the foreign offices, defense ministries and big business were against the Zionists.”
23
Emir Faisal also saw the Zionist movement as a companion to the Arab nationalist movement, fighting against imperialism, as he explained in a letter to Harvard law professor and future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter on March 3, 1919, one day after
Chaim Weizmann presented the Zionist case to the Paris conference. Faisal wrote:
The Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement....We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home....We are working together for a reformed and revised Near East and our two movements complete one another.
The Jewish movement is nationalist and not imperialist. And there is room in Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success without the other (emphasis added).
24
In the 1940s, the Jewish underground movements waged an
anti-colonial war against the British. The Arabs, meanwhile, were concerned primarily with fighting the Jews rather than expelling the British imperialists.
“Our settlers do not come here as do the colonists from the Occident to have natives do their work for them; they themselves set their shoulders to the plow and they spend their strength and their blood to make the land fruitful. But it is not only for ourselves that we desire its fertility. The Jewish farmers have begun to teach their brothers, the Arab farmers, to cultivate the land more intensively; we desire to teach them further: together with them we want to cultivate the land -- to ‘serve’ it, as the Hebrew has it. The more fertile this soil becomes, the more space there will be for us and for them. We have no desire to dispossess them: we want to live with them. We do not want to dominate them: we want to serve with them.....”
MYTH
“The British promised the Arabs independence in Palestine in the Hussein-MacMahon Correspondence.”
FACT
The central figure in the Arab nationalist movement at the time of World War I was Hussein ibn 'Ali, who was appointed by the Turkish Committee of Union and Progress to the position of Sherif of Mecca in 1908. As Sherif, Hussein was responsible for the custody of Islam’s shrines in the Hejaz and, consequently, was recognized as one of the Muslims’ spiritual leaders.
In July 1915, Hussein sent a letter to Sir Henry MacMahon, the High Commissioner for Egypt, informing him of the terms for Arab participation in the war against the Turks.
The letters between Hussein and MacMahon that followed outlined the areas that Britain was prepared to cede to the Arabs. The Hussein-MacMahon correspondence conspicuously fails to mention Palestine. The British argued the omission had been intentional, thereby justifying their refusal to grant the Arabs independence in Palestine after the war.
26 MacMahon explained:
I feel it my duty to state, and I do so definitely and emphatically, that it was not intended by me in giving this pledge to King Hussein to include Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was promised. I also had every reason to believe at the time that the fact that Palestine was not included in my pledge was well understood by King Hussein.
27
Nevertheless, the Arabs held then, as now, that the letters constituted a promise of independence for the Arabs.
MYTH
“Israeli policies cause anti-Semitism.”
FACT
Anti-Semitism has existed for centuries, well before the rise of the modern
State of Israel. Rather than Israel being the cause of anti-Semitism, it is more likely that the distorted media coverage of Israeli policies is reinforcing latent anti-Semitic views.
As writer Leon Wieseltier observed, “The notion that all Jews are responsible for whatever any Jews do is not a
Zionist notion. It is an anti-Semitic notion.” Wieseltier adds that attacks on Jews in Europe have nothing whatsoever to do with Israel. To blame Jews for anti-Semitism is similar to saying blacks are responsible for racism.
Many Jews may disagree with policies of a particular Israeli government, but this does not mean that Israel is bad for the Jews. As Wieseltier noted,“Israel is not bad for the Jews of
Russia, who may need a haven; or for the Jews of
Argentina, who may need a haven; or for any Jews who may need a haven.”
28
“Israel is the only state in the world today, and the Jews the only people in the world today, that are the object of a standing set of threats from governmental, religious, and terrorist bodies seeking their destruction. And what is most disturbing is the silence, the indifference, and sometimes even the indulgence, in the face of such genocidal anti-Semitism.”
— Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler29
MYTH
“Supporters of Israel only criticize Arabs and never Israelis.”
FACT
Israel is not perfect. Even the most committed friends of Israel acknowledge that the government sometimes makes mistakes, and that it has not solved all the problems in its society. Supporters of Israel may not emphasize these faults, however, because there is no shortage of groups and individuals who are willing to do nothing but focus on Israel’s imperfections. The public usually has much less access to Israel’s side of the story of its conflict with the Arabs, or the positive aspects of its society.
Israelis themselves are their own harshest critics. If you want to read criticism of Israeli behavior, you do not need to seek out anti-Israel sources, you can pick up any Israeli newspaper and find no shortage of news and commentary critical of government policy. The rest of the world’s media provides constant attention to Israel, and the coverage is far more likely to be unfavorable than complimentary.
Notes
1Dan Bahat, ed.
Twenty Centuries of Jewish Life in the Holy Land, (Jerusalem: The Israel Economist, 1976), pp. 61-63.
2New York Times, (November 18, 1981).
3Yehoshua Porath,
The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929 , (London: Frank Cass, 1974), p. 4.
4Max Dimont,
Jews, God and History, (NY: Signet, 1962), pp. 49-53.
5Moshe Kohn, “The Arabs’ ‘Lie’ of the Land,”
Jerusalem Post, (October 18, 1991).
6Yehoshua Porath,
Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion: 1929-1939, vol. 2, (London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1977), pp. 81-82.
7Moshe Kohn, “The Arabs’ ‘Lie’ of the Land,”
Jerusalem Post, (October 18, 1991).
8Avner Yaniv,
PLO, (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Study Group of Middle Eastern Affairs, August 1974), p. 5.
9Al-Qibla, (March 23, 191
, quoted in Samuel Katz,
Battleground-Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, (NY: Bantam Books, 1977), p. 128.
10British Government,
Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, 1946, Part VI, (April 20, 1946).
11Howard Sachar,
A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 129.
12Ben Halpern,
The Idea of a Jewish State, (MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 108.
13Palestine Royal Commission Report, p. 233.
14Neville Mandel, “Attempts at an Arab-Zionist Entente: 1913-1914,”
Middle Eastern Studies, (April 1965), p. 243.
15Al-Qibla, (March 23, 191
, quoted in Samuel Katz,
Battleground-Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, (NY: Bantam Books, 1977), p. 128.
16Mark Twain,
The Innocents Abroad, ( London, 1881).
17New York Times, (January 7, 1985).
18Jordanian Nationality Law, Article 3(3) of Law No. 6 of 1954, Official Gazette, No. 1171, February 16, 1954.
19Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Socialism of Fools-The Left, the Jews and Israel,”
Encounter, (December 1969), p. 24.
20White House briefing regarding U.S. threat to boycott the UN Conference on racism, (July 27, 2001).
20aGerald Steinberg, “Obama's High-Risk Engagement at the Durban Review Conference,”
Jerusalem Post, (February 16, 2009).
20bLynch, Colum, “U.S. May Boycott U.N. Racism Conference Over Document,”
Washington Post, (February 28, 2009).
20cShlomo Shamir and Raphael Ahren, “Obama Officials Meet U.S. Jews to Explain Durban II Policy,”
Haaretz, (February 17, 2009).
20dGoodenough, Patrick, “Italy Withdraws from ‘Durban II’,”
CNS News, (March 6, 2009).
21Chaim Weizmann,
Trial and Error, (NY: Schocken Books, 1966), pp. 246-247; Howard Sachar,
A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979), p. 121.
22Yehoshofat Harkabi,
Palestinians And Israel, (Jerusalem: Keter, 1974), p. 6.
23Paul Johnson,
Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties, (NY: Harper & Row, 1983), p. 485.
24Samuel Katz,
Battleground-Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, (NY: Bantam Books, 1977), p. 55.
25From an open letter from
Martin Buber to Mahatma Gandhi in 1939, quoted in Arthur Hertzberg,
The Zionist Idea, (PA: Jewish Publications Society, 1997), p. 464.
26George Kirk,
A Short History of the Middle East, (NY: Frederick Praeger Publishers, 1964), p. 314.
27London Times, (July 23, 1937).
28Leon Wieseltier, “Israel, Palestine, and the Return of the Binational Fantasy,”
The New Republic, ( October 24, 2003).
29Jerusalem Post, (February 5, 2004).
al-Masjid al-Aqsa (help·info) translit: "the Farthest Mosque"), also known as al-Aqsa, is an Islamic holy place in the Old City of Jerusalem. The mosque itself forms part of the al-Haram ash-Sharif or "Sacred Noble Sanctuary" (along with the Dome of the Rock), a site also known as the Temple Mount and considered the holiest site in Judaism, since it is where the Temple in Jerusalem once stood.[1][2] Widely considered as the third holiest site in Islam, Muslims believe that the prophet Muhammad was transported from the Sacred Mosque in Mecca to al-Aqsa during the Night Journey.[3] Islamic tradition holds that Muhammad led prayers towards this site until the seventeenth month after the emigration, when God ordered him to turn towards the Ka'aba.[4]
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