Last Wednesday (April 6, 2011) while driving I happened to turn on the radio and while my radio was scanning through the channels; my ear caught a discussion involving Israel. Naturally I stopped the scan to listen. The program was Marti Moscowayne’s Radio Times on the local NPR WHYY station.
I typically do not listen to political programs on NPR/WHYY, because most of the time they have a left leaning bias, and as many misinformed liberals, they are typically anti-Israel – i.e., they are for Israel to self destruct itself through continuing appeasement of the Arabs. The challenge with their approach, however, is that they are not openly anti-Israeli. Their discussions seem to be reasonable and logical to unsuspecting listeners who are not familiar with the details of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They do not bring guests who represent the center or center right Israeli views, but they make it seem this way by bringing someone who is on the extreme left and someone else who is on the less extreme left.
I typically do not listen to political programs on NPR/WHYY, because most of the time they have a left leaning bias, and as many misinformed liberals, they are typically anti-Israel – i.e., they are for Israel to self destruct itself through continuing appeasement of the Arabs. The challenge with their approach, however, is that they are not openly anti-Israeli. Their discussions seem to be reasonable and logical to unsuspecting listeners who are not familiar with the details of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They do not bring guests who represent the center or center right Israeli views, but they make it seem this way by bringing someone who is on the extreme left and someone else who is on the less extreme left.
April 6th program was titled “Grieving Palestinians & Israelis work for peace” and the guests were from the organization called Parents Circle Families Forum. According to WHYY, this is an “organization of bereaved families on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle who are becoming a powerful force for peace there” (note the word “struggle” instead of conflict). The two guests representing this novel and peaceful organization were Ali Abu Awwad and Yuval Rahamim.
When I dialed into this program, Ali was in the process of explaining to the radio audience that Israelis must understand the Palestinian perspective of the Naqba (meaning the catastrophe – the term Arabs gave the creation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948). In order to get true peace, Israelis must understand how it felt to the Palestinians to be expelled from their homeland to live for years in refugee camps where they have not had equal rights – he gave an example that Palestinians in Lebanon do not have the right to live outside of the designated refugee camps and do not have the equal rights of the other Lebanese because they are refugees from Palestine (as if lack of these rights was the fault of the Jews and not of Lebanon). Ali repeated the Arab claim that 5 million Palestinian refugees live this way.
Of course, in his heart breaking appeal for Israeli recognition of the significance of the Naqba, Ali omitted some of the important historical facts – such as that Jews in 1948 agreed to a much smaller partition of the land of Israel than what was promised to them in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine for the sake of living in peace with the Arabs. The Arab villages that lived in peace and friendship with their Jewish neighbors before 1948 came under pressure by the Arab political and religious leaders (such as the Mufti of Jerusalem) to join the murderous terror activities against the Jewish population. Those Arabs that resisted the call to murder their Jewish neighbors were treated harshly by the Mufti militia and many were brutally executed.
Despite the many atrocities committed by the local Palestinians Arabs and despite being attacked from all sides by the Arab armies, once the Jews repelled these attacks and prevailed, they pleaded with their Arab neighbors to stay in their homes in Israel, and many of those Arabs stayed and became equal citizens of Israel – erroneously, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs enjoy equal rights and democracy. Many Arabs, however, were influenced by the Arab propaganda and social political pressure and chose to leave. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine estimated about 472 thousand Arab refugees resulted from the events of creation of the state of Israel in 1948. This number included thousands of wealthy Arabs leaving Israel voluntary for economic reasons and hundreds of thousands leaving to the areas now known as the West Bank and Gaza (only few miles away). Objective analysts estimated only between 200 to 300 thousands refugees leaving outside of the area allocated to the Jewish state under the League of Nations Mandate (you can refer to the following detailed explanation and history of the Arab refugees from Israel: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html).
Why do Arabs and UNWRA report 5 million Palestinian refugees? Since Arabs were not able to destroy Israel by force, they looked for other means to delegitimize Israel by creating the “Palestinian problem”. They forced real refugees, those who left Israel on their own will (who should not had been considered refugees at all), and those who belonged to tribes with “Palestinian” affiliation (tribes that at one time or another lived between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea) to refugee camps. They did not let them integrate into Arab societies in any of the Arab countries including Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudia Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, etc. They used fraudulent counts to misrepresent the true numbers of this population (for example, the census counts of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza were proven to be grossly inaccurate by factors of 2 and 3!). In addition to all of this, Arabs have instituted the unprecedented practice of refugees inheriting their refugee status – i.e., expanding the count to include the spouses and off-springs of refugees.
The other Radio Times program participant, Yuval, made a seemingly reasonable point that only a negotiated solution will bring peace, and that Israeli leaders must be willing to enter into a sincere peace negotiating process. He said this as if the only impediment to peace is the willingness of Israeli leaders to enter into peace negotiations – ignoring the facts that repeated Israeli gestures and unilateral territorial withdraws only brought increased terrorism. Yuval ignored the fact that many Israeli governments starting with Yitzhak Rabin through Olmert made unprecedented offers for concessions without any willingness and ability by the Palestinian leadership to abrogate their continuing effort to destroy the State of Israel.
This small segment on the Radio Times that I happened to catch is a great example of how Arab propagandists and their Jewish liberal allies mislead and misinform the American general public and delegitimize Israel. Yuval may truly believe in peace for Israel, but his actions only hurt his state and erroneously the prospects of peace. The liberal American media is happy to play along and help these sheep in wolf clothing in their murderous propaganda against the Jewish state.
Listening to Radio Time, I had to take a stand. I knew that if I stated my true question to the NPR screener, I would not had a chance to get on the air (I already tried many times in the past). This time I tried another approach – I told the phone screener that my question to Ali and Yuval was how the Israeli settlements were impacting their movement – my intuition was right – I was put right through. When I got on the air, I directed a question to Yuval – As an Israeli and a Jew, why are you allowing yourself to be used as a propaganda instrument by the Arabs; Why you did not speak up when Ali described the establishment of Israel as a Naqba, and why you did not tell the truth about 1948 when a handful of Jews willing to partition Israel in order to live in peace with their Arab neighbors were butchered for just being Jews?!
Yuval’s response was predictable – “you can go back in history and find many excuses for any current situation, but I am taking it to the future, I am looking for the future of my kids and I am patriotic. I think that for the best of Israel and the best of my kids’ future, we should reconcile with Palestinians.” This is a typical Israeli leftists’ response. It would be novel and practical if not for the reality that many Israeli leaders have tried and failed, if not for the reality that Arabs intentions since 1948 have been the destruction of the Jews in Israel.
We need to develop a new strategy of defending Israel in the court of public opinion – one that is based on countering the Arab propaganda with truths about the Jewish rights in their historical homeland under the international law, truth about history and Arab intents. We need to face and explain implications of establishing another terrorist Arab state within the small territory between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. Yes, truth matters, and truth wins in America!
