Israel | Advocate for Israel
ANSWERING ISRAEL'S CRITICS
QUICK ANSWERS TO FALSE CHARGES
A new “Answering Israel’s Critics” tip appears each week in the Detroit Jewish News.
The Charge:
Israel’s critics came out of the woodwork last week, during the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, to claim that peace will only be possible when the “occupation” of the West Bank ends.
The Answer:
Israel has already given civilian control over 90% of the West Bank population to Palestinian leadership, and withdrawn from territory there twice the size of Gaza. It is the violent actions of the Palestinians, not Israel, that prevents more peace moves.
The Charge:
Israel talks peace but makes war.
The Answer:
In the summer 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel responded to an unprovoked border raid which killed Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two. Regarding the Palestinians, Israel has agreed to every peace proposal, cease-fire and international mediation. Israel has withdrawn from captured territory, taken other risks for peace against the advice of its military leadership, and responded to humanitarian issues on enemy territory even in the heat of war.
The Charge:
Israel refuses to come to the negotiating table with the Palestinians and rejects dialogue.
The Answer:
Israel is joined by the U.S., the European Union, the U.N. and Russia in expecting certain confidence-building measures from the Palestinians before a peace process can be resumed. These include a rejection of terrorism, disarming of terror groups, recognition of Israel, abiding by past signed agreements, ending incitement to hatred and violence, and accepting that compromise will be the result of a negotiated outcome.
The Charge:Israel has missed opportunities for peace with the Palestinians.
The Answer:
Israel has agreed to every ceasefire, peace initiative and international conference proposed before them and their Arab neighbors. At present, Israel awaits the current Palestinian leadership’s rejection of terror and acceptance of Israel as its negotiating partner – two basic requirements all parties to peace negotiations anywhere in the world must fulfill.
The Charge:
The Palestinian/Israeli conflict can only be resolved by addressing the injustices done to the Palestinian people in 1948.
The Answer:
This is a direct attack on the legitimacy of Israel, the Jewish state created after the United Nations voted in 1947 to partition the Palestine Mandate into a Jewish and an Arab state. The creation of both was seen by the entire world, except the Arabs, as a just solution to the conflict. The Arabs rejected the plan, attacked the Jews, and the war which ensued left them as stateless refugees.
The Charge
The only thing standing in the way of a peace agreement with Israel is Israel’s “occupation” of “Palestinian land.”
The Answer:
Peace negotiations have to be conducted with representatives of a people who want peace. Opinion polls show that only 51% of Palestinians support a peaceful settlement with Israel; over half, 55%, agree that Hamas should not change its by-laws that call for the destruction of Israel; a vast majority, 97%, support Hezbollah; and 75% believe that Israel is “not a peace partner.”
The Charge:
The Israeli “occupation” continues to be the main obstacle to peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
The Answer:
Israel has withdrawn completely from Gaza, and partially from the West Bank. It is willing to negotiate peacefully over its claims to the West Bank, and to make further significant compromise and withdrawals, if the Arabs end terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist. In other words, Israel has been prepared for many years to end its military presence on the West Bank, in exchange for a true peace with security.
The Charge:
All Israeli communities in the West Bank are built on Palestinian-owned land.
The Answer:
Despite legal, historical and religious claims to the land, Israel in 2005 completely withdrew its Jewish communities from Gaza and from an area in the northern West Bank twice the size of Gaza. Israel’s current government was elected on a platform of further withdrawals in exchange for peace.
The Charge:
In his new book, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter charges that Israel's security fence and the “honeycomb” of settlements and roads behind it constitute a permanent Israeli control regime over Palestinian life.
The Answer:
In the Israeli political debate of today, there is nothing permanent about Israel’s settlements and the security barrier. For a real peace, most Israelis are prepared to take down or alter the route of the barrier and remove settlements. (Even without a peace agreement, Israel completely withdrew settlers and army from the Gaza strip in 2005.)
The Charge:
The American media downplays Palestinian suffering, and takes Israel’s side in the Middle East conflict.
The Answer:
Numerous examples of Arab manipulation of the media – inflated death counts in Qana, Lebanon, a false report by Reuters, and the kidnapping of CNN’s Steve Centanni – reveal that accurate media coverage from the Arab side is difficult, if not impossible. Complete freedom of the press and freedom of movement encourages fair coverage when reporters are on Israeli soil, while press restrictions and intimidation are the rule in Israel’s neighboring Arab countries.
The Charge:
A UM-Dearborn professor teaches a class which describes the Palestinians as a “conquered people.”
The Answer:
The Palestinians, beginning in 1937, have several times in recent decades declined the opportunity to establish an independent nation-state. They have since lived under the rule of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Hezbollah and other dictatorships.
The Charge:
Israeli forces deliberately attack civilians and peacekeepers.
The Answer
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), perhaps more than any other military force in the world, does its utmost to avoid hitting noncombatants. This strategy sometimes results in higher casualties of its soldiers, and gives an advantage to terrorists who use those civilians as human shields.
The Charge:
Israel’s military operations in Lebanon last summer included instances of mental and physical torture.
The Answer:
While war is a traumatic event, Israel’s army abides by both a moral and legal code, and operates within the international conventions on warfare. Torture has been declared illegal, and Israel’s courts have upheld that standard.
The Charge:
The United Nations Human Rights Council has strongly condemned Israeli actions.
The Answer:
The Human Rights Council is one-sided and obsessed with Israel. Even former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan wondered aloud whether the Council has a sense of fair play, he said it should broaden its focus beyond the Palestinian-Israeli issue and address the clear human rights violations taking place in Darfur, Myanmar, and North Korea.
The Charge:
Israel's suspected nuclear weapons are a “threat” to regional peace and stability.
The Answer:
While Israel does not admit to having nuclear weapons, its nuclear program reportedly began in the 1950s after two wars launched by the Arabs to annihilate it. Israel is the refuge of the Jewish people, the only Jewish nation, and the assurance there will never be another Holocaust against Jews. If it has nuclear weapons, they are meant not as a threat, but as a deterrent to her destruction.
The Charge:
Recent surveys of Americans’ attitudes toward Israel, while showing that there is solid support for the Jewish state, reveal that the country is viewed as embattled, militaristic and less than fully democratic.
The Answer:
The surveys’ results point to the need for Jews and others who have visited Israel to share their knowledge with their friends, neighbors and co-workers – speaking about Israel’s normality and modernity, its freedoms, and its vibrant and open politics, media and society.
The Charge:
Iranian President Ahmadinejad claimed at his country’s recent Holocaust denial conference that the Palestinians’ plight results from Israel’s creation. He connects the Holocaust to that event by stating that three years after the Holocaust, the European powers created Israel to assuage their guilt over the slaughter of six million Jews.
The Answer:
The creation of Israel, while it did provide a refuge to Holocaust survivors and a bulwark against future such atrocities against Jews, was created by the United Nations in an attempt to end the 70-year old conflict between Jewish Palestinians and Arab Palestinians in what was then called Palestine.
The Charge:
Iranian President Ahmadinejad has written, “The peoples of the Middle East have…borne the brunt of the Holocaust. By raising the necessity of settling the survivors of the Holocaust in the land of Palestine, they have created a permanent threat in the Middle East….”
The Answer:
Ahmadinejad’s purpose in making this charge is to deny the legitimacy of Israel and the historic Jewish claim to the land. His hosting of Holocaust deniers’ conferences this month was a transparent trick unmasked by students inTehran last week who derided him as a dictator.
Click here for more “Myths and Facts” that can help answer Israel’s critics.
HOW YOU CAN ADVOCATE FOR ISRAEL
HOW TO CONTACT THE NEWS MEDIA
HOW TO CONTACT GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS
TALKING POINTS ON ISRAEL
ISRAEL ADVOCACY NETWORK (IAN)
ADVOCATING ON CAMPUS
|
