WHOSE LAND? WHOSE TRUTH?
For decades, Western governments have claimed to support peace, international law, and historical truth in the Middle East. Yet when it comes to Israel and Jerusalem, many of those same governments have abandoned consistency, rewarded rejectionism, and embraced narratives that erase Jewish history and legal rights.
The result is not peace. It is the normalization of a double standard that increasingly resembles a modern form of antisemitism. Antisemitism has morphed through the ages. Modern day anti-Zionism is antisemitism wrapped in a different guise.
The historical record is clear. In 1947, the United Nations proposed partitioning the territory of the British Mandate into Jewish and Arab states. Much of the middle east had already been divided up into Arab states. Despite the British White Paper carving up the original land committed to the Jews, the Jewish leadership accepted the proposal. The Arab states rejected it and launched a war to destroy the nascent Jewish state.
The refugee crisis that followed did not emerge from acceptance of partition, but from its violent rejection. It is worth noting that in launching the war of annihilation against Israel in 1948, the Arab leadership also advised its people to leave, supposedly temporarily, to make way for the invading armies to deal with the Jews. The plan was for them to return and reclaim their property, only things didn’t go to plan. Had the Arab leadership accepted the UN proposal, there would have been both a Jewish state and an Arab state in 1948. Ironically, there is never any mention of the similar number of Jews ethnically cleansed from Arab lands – from Yemen to Iraq and Egypt to Morocco.
The consequences of that war are often forgotten. Jordan occupied eastern Jerusalem and the Judea and Samaria, which Jordan referred to as the ‘West Bank’. During its occupation, Jewish residents were expelled, ancient synagogues were destroyed, and Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter was effectively made Judenrein. This was the only period in history where Jerusalem had no Jewish inhabitants. Yet these........
