Answering the anti-Israel lies:
First let us be clear:
Criticising Israel is NOT 'antisemitic'.
Condemning policies, actions and politicians in Israel is NOT 'antisemitic'.
Israel, like any other democratic nation, has to be subject to criticism and analysis.
Denying Israel's right to exist; erasing Jewish historical presence in Israel; lying and smearing Israel with false accusations of 'ethnic cleansing' and 'apartheid' - THESE ARE ANTISEMITIC.
Treating Israel differently to every other nation on earth, and holding Israel to a different standard of behaviour than every other country on the planet - THESE are antisemitic.
Often, especially on social media, racists just use 'zionist' instead of 'jew'. By doing this, they are getting away with saying the most obscene things about Jews, and about the Jewish state.
The only way to fight back is with facts. Here then is our guide to answering the anti-Israel misinformation. These are clear, concise, accurate responses. You are welcome to copy and paste them, change them, adapt them - whatever helps you the most.
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Isn't the Israel-Palestine problem just a conflict over land?
THE FACTS:
Israel is less than 0.2% of the size of the Arab world. When the Arab world refused the 1947 UN partition plan, Israel was even tinier and even more fragmented.
The conflict has never been about land, clearly.
Rather, it's about Arabs rejecting Jewish self-determination in the Middle East.
After the 1967 war during which Israel took a significant amount of land in a war of self-defence, Israel sought to return land for peace, but the Arab world’s response was three Nos: no peace, no negotiations, and no recognition of Israel.
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But Gaza is an open-air prison and under siege?
THE FACTS:
When Israel voluntarily left Gaza in 2005 it imposed no blockade on Gaza.
Even the anti-Israel Al Jazeera admits that the blockade “has been in place since Hamas violently took over power Fatah in 2007”, two years after Israel’s withdrawal.
The blockade was imposed by Israel and Egypt only after the Hamas authority in Gaza started attacking Israel.
The purpose of the blockade is to stop Hamas and other terrorist groups from obtaining weapons with which to attack Israel. The legitimacy of the blockade was even recognized by the United Nations, not usually known as a friend of Israel since it is controlled by a majority of countries hostile to the Jewish state.
The definition of 'siege' is: surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making
capture possible.
This simply does not apply to Israel's blockade on Gaza. Israel enables the regular transfer of non military goods into Gaza from Israel - even when Israel is under attack from Gaza.Each day, some 800 trucks enter Gaza carrying food, medical equipment, fuel, building materials, textile products and more.
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Why does Israel keep stealing Palestinian land
THE FACTS:
Israel’s victories in defensive wars do not equate to 'stealing land'.
The land of Israel that is within the armistice lines resulting from the 1948 war was legitimately acquired by Israel in a war of self-defence.
Judea & Samaria and Gaza were also legitimately acquired by Israel in another war of self-defence in 1967 when several Arab armies gathered at Israel's borders with the intent of attacking.
Israel later gave back the vast majority of that land in a peace treaty with Egypt. Israel also voluntarily relinquished Gaza, and voluntarily agreed to allow the Palestinian Authority to administer a large part of Judea & Samaria, referred to as areas A and B.
If the Palestinians want peace, then why did they immediately transform Gaza into a terrorist base? Why are they funding terrorism in Judea and Samaria?
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Is Israel an apartheid state?
THE FACTS:
Israeli laws do not give preference to any race or ethnicity. All ethnicities, including Arabs, are treated equally.
Freedom of religion is also guaranteed and strictly enforced, and so is protection of holy sites of all religions. Perhaps the clearest proof of this is the fast growing Muslim population.
Israel also guarantees freedom of assembly, movement, and voting to all citizens, which include Arabs. There are a dozen Arabs in the Knesset (Parliament) and an Arab judge of the Supreme Court.
Further, Arabs are very well represented in Israeli universities, both among students and staff.
As journalist Fred Maroun writes: 'As a left-wing Arab who knows the level of bigotry and racism that exists in the Arab world, Israel is a breath of fresh air. I want the same for us!'
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"What about the the “West Bank” ?
THE FACTS:
Yes there is certainly apartheid in the 'west bank' - against Jews.
Arabs can live and travel anywhere in Judea and Samaria. Jews, meanwhile, can only live in the 1% of the area that is allocated to Jewish communities.
Jews cannot travel to the large areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA).Arabs have far more rights than Jews in Judea and Samaria.
This ban on Jews in the areas controlled by the PA, just reveals the Arab attitude towards Jews. Let's remember that Arab nations have expelled virtually all of the Jews who once lived in them, many for centuries.
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"Why does Israel commit genocide against Palestinians?"
THE FACTS:
This would be risible, if it wasn't so obscene. The populations of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, keep increasing - by record numbers.
Even the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency, reported in 2011 that the Palestinian population had grown 8-fold. That's an average of 3.4% annual growth - higher than the average world population growth.
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"Did Israel create the Palestinian refugee crisis?"
THE FACTS:
There would not be a single Palestinian refugee today if the Arab world had accepted the 1947 UN partition plan, which the Jewish leaders did – even PA President Mahmood Abbas admits that the Arab refusal was a mistake.
Both Jewish and Arab refugees resulted from a war that Israel did not want but the Arab world imposed on Israel.
While the Israel-Arab conflict generated 711,000 Palestinian refugees, it also generated 856,000 Jewish refugees from Arab lands.
The Jewish refugees were absorbed by other countries, mostly Israel, but the Arab world refused to absorb Arab refugees, keeping them in camps with limited rights.
So yes - the Palestinian Arabs do suffer, because of the Arab states and their behaviour.
In 1952, the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) director, Sir Alexander Galloway, put it bluntly when he said:
“It is perfectly clear that the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”
The Arab world, not Israel, created the Palestinian refugee crisis and ensured that 70 years later, it is still not resolved.
Imagine if Canada, 70 years after a Syrian refugee came here, he, his children, grand-children, and grand-grand-children were still considered refugees and had much less rights than citizens?
There is no doubt that it would be denounced as racism and xenophobia, yet the Arab world gets away with the same crime when it comes to Palestinians.
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"Zionists are the new Nazis!"
THE FACTS:
Like the accusation of genocide, this accusation is easy to refute and is used as the ultimate insult.
Nazism was marked by two significant aspects: Military expansionism and a form of racism/bigotry that led to the coldblooded murder of ten million non-combatants, including six million Jews.
Israel is not engaged in any racist activity nor any genocide. Israel’s wars were always undertaken in self-defence to stop military and terrorist attacks.
Any land acquired by Israel was legitimate under the laws of war, and Israel has already returned the vast majority of that land (most notably the Sinai which alone is more than double the size of Israel) in exchange for peace, and it would have returned even more if Syria and the Palestinians had agreed to peace agreements that Israel was able to accept.
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"Even some Jews don't support Israel."
THE FACTS:
The number of Jews who buy the dishonest anti-Zionist rhetoric is very small and very marginal.
They are a convenient tool in the hands of Israel’s enemies, so they are quoted often and their importance is magnified well beyond their numbers.
Their existence, in fact, demonstrates the democratic nature of Israel and the Jewish community. The Muslim world, on the other hand, tolerates no dissent from imposed opinions.
Fred Maroun notes: 'In Lebanon, my country of origin, it is even illegal to communicate in any fashion with an Israeli. Because of my support for peace with Israel, I can never visit my own native country.'
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There is also a tiny minority of ultra religious Jews who oppose Israel - but they don't oppose the existence of a Jewish state, they merely believe that the maschiach (messiah) is meant to arrive FIRST.
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If some Palestinians behave badly, it is out of desperation.
THE FACTS:
There are hundreds of groups worldwide that are actively seeking independence and typically under far worse conditions and with far fewer options than the Palestinians.
Those include: Armenians in Azerbaijan, The Jumma people, Bengali Hindus in Bengladesh, a dozen different groups in Burma, Mongolians, Tebetans, and Uyghurs in China, Abkhazians, Ossetians, and Armenians in Georgia.
There are numerous others. If any of them were offered a state, as Palestinians were offered several times already, it is highly unlikely that it would have turned it down, yet terrorism is typically a very rare occurrence among those groups.
Palestinians have been mistreated and continue to be mistreated by Arab regimes, and they face apartheid in Arab states and some may be understandably frustrated that they do not yet have an independent state, but they receive extensive support and funding, and they do not face any sort of genocide at the hands of Israel.
Compared to practically any other group that seeks statehood, Palestinians have far less reason to feel desperate, yet they are extensively involved in terrorism.
Hamas even admits to targeting civilians while predictably claiming to have excuses to do it.
Palestinians have had many choices to make over the last 70 years, and they have far too often made the wrong ones.
Palestinian terrorism continues in fact because Palestinians are not desperate and can afford, due to international aid, to hold off on accepting any solution until they can get what their terrorist organizations have always openly demanded – the destruction of the Jewish state.
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Is The BDS movement a reasonable response to Israel?
THE FACTS:
The boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS) movement is not an appropriate response to Israel because Israel’s actions are lawful and justified.
The BDS movement – founded by Omar Barghouti who opposes the concept of a Jewish state – is in fact detrimental to peace, and it is driven by antisemitism, not by peaceful idealism.
Even if we ignore the anti-Semitism widely promoted by BDS advocates on university campuses, social media, and elsewhere, the stated demands of the BDS movement alone show the truth about the BDS movement.
The BDS movement presents an image of respectability, but that is far from the truth.
Since, its objectives, if achieved, would result in the killing of Jews and the return of the remaining Jews to the stateless and precarious status that they had before May 1948, the BDS movement represents an anti-Semitism on a par with Hamas.
Jordanian Parliament member Abed Almaala:
"BDS is a reckless act of hatred that threatens the security and stability of not only Israel, but also my country, Jordan, and the entire Middle East. BDS is a threat to us all – a threat to America as much as it is a threat to Israel, Jordan and our Palestinian brothers. BDS is not only hateful and shameful, but also strengthens Arab dictators who hypocritically criticize Israel for alleged human rights violations when they, themselves, are the world’s top human rights violators."
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'Is Israel’s support for LGBT rights a cover?'
Israel’s support for LGBT rights should be praised, not demonized.
Accusations of “pinkwashing” are in fact themselves a smokescreen for supporting Israel’s enemies who consistently use terrorism and hatred to ensure that the conflict continues.
Fred Maroun states: 'As a left-wing Arab, I have supported LGBT rights all my life and I have always been disturbed by the fact that LGBT rights are practically non-existent in the Arab world. Instead of denouncing Israel’s support for LGBT rights, leftists should show their support for Arabs by demanding that Arab states emulate Israel.'
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'Is Israel's maritime blockade of the Gaza Strip illegal?'
THE FACTS:
We all know that Hamas and other terror groups such as the Islamic Jihad have turned Gaza into a base for mounting terror attacks against Israel.
To this end Hamas produces, smuggles into the area and stockpiles missiles, guns, and ammunition for use against Israel and its civilian population.
It periodically directs such missiles randomly at Israeli civilian targets, in violation of all accepted norms of international humanitarian law.
In light of this acknowledged situation of armed conflict, Israel has the prerogative to institute a naval and land blockade with a view to prevent the introduction of weapons and materials that could serve the belligerent purposes of Hamas.
The institution of such a blockade is well established in international law and practice.
A naval blockade in such a situation once instituted and maintained in accordance with the rules of international law with the appropriate public notification as to the area of sea that it covers effective enforcement, impartiality and consideration of humanitarian needs of the population, is fully in accordance with accepted international law and practice.
In accordance with the findings of the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Inquiry on the 2010 Flotilla Incident: The fundamental principle of the freedom of navigation on the high seas is subject to only certain limited exceptions under international law. Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza.
The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.
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