Nine American Socialists And The UN Mock Israel’s Independence Day

On Friday, May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence—one day before the British ended their Palestine Mandate and left the region. The timing wasn’t accidental. Israel’s founding leaders wanted the moment to be marked with reverence, not paperwork, so the declaration was made in advance of the Jewish Sabbath, allowing the entire Jewish people to enter its rebirth with dignity and joy.

The joy wasn’t shared. Within hours, neighboring Arab armies invaded the nascent state, launching a war to crush Jews in the shadow of the European Holocaust. That contempt hasn’t faded. It echoes today in the halls of foreign governments, NGOs, and the mouths of extremist politicians thousands of miles from the region.

To “commemorate” Israel’s 77th birthday, the United Nations hosted a session dedicated not to peace or coexistence—but to “the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.” One speaker after another vilified Israel, slandering its conduct in defending itself in a war it never wanted. Accusations of “racism,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” flowed freely—from China, South Africa, Guyana, and others eager to hijack human rights rhetoric for anti-Israel theater.

Not to be outdone, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution to formally mark Israel’s independence as Nakba Day—”the catastrophe.” The language mirrored the UN’s smear campaign, ignoring context, facts, and Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation. The resolution outrageously called on Israel to accept seven million Arab descendants of refugees and internally displaced people—almost all of whom have never set foot in Israel—negating a fundamental right of statehood by erasing Israel’s right to control its own borders. It called for the United States to withhold all diplomatic and military support from Israel as it defends itself in the midst of a multi-front war, to facilitate a genocide of Jews.

As Israel marked its 75th year in 2023, Jewish civilians were massacred by genocidal jihadi Arab terror groups on the Sabbath and Simchat Torah, a holiday celebrating the Jewish Bible. Rockets, kidnappings, and slaughter were launched from Gaza, with terrorists using Palestinians as human shields and Jewish hostages as bargaining chips—while cheering voices thousands of miles away offered rhetorical cover.

Today’s political war against Israel is led by the unholy alliance of far-left ideologues and Islamist extremists. They’ve inherited the mantle of the Arab armies defeated in 1948—and continue their campaign, not for coexistence, but for the erasure of the Jewish homeland. This is a Global Intifada dressed in human rights language but aimed at ethnic cleansing. In 1948, the horde successfully removed all Jews from eastern Jerusalem, the “West Bank” and Gaza. They strive to finish the job.

For them, Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland remains a “catastrophe,” and Israel’s Independence Day is a day for revolutionaries to perpetuate the war. Not just for the 30 countries which continue to refuse to recognize Israel—but for shrill voices in the U.S. Congress who speak as if the past 77 years never happened.

After Arab armies failed to destroy Israel in 1967, the Arab League produced its “Three No’s“: no peace with Israel; no negotiations with Israel; and no recognition of Israel. It has an underlying three principles which continue to drive Jew haters: Jews have too much; Jews enjoying fundamental human rights is a provocation; and Jewish joy is triggering.

The trifecta of Israel’s Independence Day is too rich for global antisemites to ignore.

Related articles:

The Toxicity of The Latest “Nakba” Resolution (May 2023)

The Disgraceful Promotion of Refugee-Washing ‘Nakba’ In The U.S. Congress (May 2022)

Does the UN Only Grant Inalienable Rights to Palestinians? (May 2021)

Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the “Inalienable Rights of Palestinians” (December 2017)

The Original Nakba: The Division of “TransJordan” (August 2017)

The UN And Western Muslim Groups Helped Set The Stage For The October 7 Massacre

On May 15, 2023, the United Nations held its first “Nakba Day” event. In discussing the various activities to be held, the UN stated it wanted to “highlight that the noble goals of justice and peace, require recognizing the reality and history of the Palestinian people’s plight and ensuring the fulfillment of their inalienable rights.”

The difference in understanding those “inalienable rights” is the crux of why no solution to the conflict has been realized.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas speaks during a high-level event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba at the United Nations headquarters in New York on May 15, 2023. (Photo by Ed JONES / AFP)

At the event, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas demanded “the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland, to their cities and villages, of which they were displaced by aggression and terror.” Abbas added “the issue of the refugees must be resolved. There are refugees and they should return. I am a refugee. I am a Palestinian refugee. I want to return to my town. I cannot live even in Paris or New York. I won’t have it. I want Safed. It is such a small town. I want it.”

Several countries sent solidarity messages to the Nakba event including: Algeria; Venezuela; Indonesia; Senegal; Tunisia; Türkiye; Qatar; Egypt; Jordan; Iran; Suba; Kuwait; Guyana; Malaysia; Bangladesh; Saudi Arabia; Bahrain; Namibia; Nicaragua; China; Syria; UAE; Lebanon; Maldives; South Africa and Mozambique.

Most of the Western countries officially stayed away but the Palestinian diaspora made itself felt.

At the evening of the launch of the event, Abbas “praised the role of the Palestinian community in the United States in supporting the Palestinian people, stressing the importance of their work in forming an American public opinion in support of the Palestinian national cause.” He was referring to groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, CAIR, American Muslims for Palestine and Palestine Youth Movement, all of which have been fomenting unrest and antisemitism on American streets.

When addressing the UN at the event, Abbas furthered the point “that the Palestinian narrative of the Nakba has begun to make its way to the awareness of the peoples, who have come to uncover the fraudulence of the Israeli narrative and listening to the Palestinian narrative and their tragedy.” The anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish talk-track is now found in California public schools and on college campuses.

The United Nations led Palestinian Arabs to believe that they will all get to return to towns where ancestors once lived inside of Israel, and the world has begun to accept that narrative as told by local Muslims living in the West. It is a bastard of the fabled “two-state solution” in which a new country of Palestine is purely Arab and Jew-free, and Israel is transformed into a bi-national state. One and one-half states for Arabs and half a state for Jews.

United Nations “refugee” camp with a key on top informing Palestinians that the key to their homes inside of Israel is via the United Nations

A few weeks after the UN’s 2023 Nakba event, Palestinians polled themselves. A majority stated that they believe that the Jewish State will cease to exist within twenty-five years. Specifically, “two-thirds say Israel will not celebrate the centenary of its establishment, and the majority believes that the Palestinian people will be able in the future to recover Palestine and return its refugees to their homes.

The logical outcome of such thinking soon became manifest. Why should Palestinians negotiate a compromise with Israel when they believe that they will achieve all of their aims with global support?

The United Nations handed the microphone and held a celebration for jihadists who seek to end the Jewish State, while colleges were educating their student bodies in a radical, antisemitic Palestinian narrative that Israel is a colonialist, imperialist, illegal project. The toxic belief became mainstreamed and realized in the heinous October 7th massacre, celebrated by an unholy socialist-jihadi alliance on Western campuses and streets.

#ThereIsNoRightOfReturn

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The Empathy Swamp (January 2024)

It Is Not 1947 And We Don’t Make Policy As If It’s 1947 (January 2024)

The Three “Two-State Solution”s (December 2023)

The Only Way The Conflict Can End (November 2023)

The Antisemitic Campus: Decolonize Palestine (October 2023)

Majority of Palestinians Believe Israel Will Soon Cease to Exist (June 2023)

The Toxicity of The Latest “Nakba” Resolution (May 2023)

The Noxious Anti-Semitism Of “European Settler Colonialism” (September 2022)

Does the UN Only Grant Inalienable Rights to Palestinians? (May 2021)

When the Democrats Opposed the Palestinian “Right of Return” (August 2018)

Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the “Inalienable Rights of Palestinians” (December 2017)

The Left-Wing’s Two State Solution: 1.5 States for Arabs, 0.5 for Jews (January 2016)

The Israeli Peace Process versus the Palestinian Divorce Proceedings (June 2015)

Imagine You Were Abbas, Giving A Speech To The United Nations

Acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, was lucky enough to be given a platform at the United Nations on May 15, 2023 to discuss the 75th anniversary of what Palestinians call the “Nakba,” the events surrounding the formation of Israel in which Arabs first rejected Jews being given any part of Palestine and then lost a war to destroy Israel. At war’s end, Israel denied admitting roughly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs who had left the fighting area while they waited for the Jewish State to be destroyed by five invading Arab armies. It was the first time that the United Nations held such event, and Abbas was given the floor to address the global body.

If you were in Abbas’ shoes, you probably would have prepared and rehearsed a compelling speech of 25 to 30 minutes, meant to draw support for your positions.

You would have thanked the world for forming UNRWA, a distinct body only for Palestine refugees, funded at levels far more than every other actual refugee fleeing wars overseen by UNHCR. Such appreciation would hopefully make the generous sponsors continue to fund their perennial Arab wards.

You would have relayed the refugee situation in a sympathetic light, as people who have benefited from the work of several UN agencies but still long for citizenship, whether in a new state of Palestine or in Israel.

You would have described the desire for coexistence with the Jewish State. In evidence of such, you might have shown empathy with Jews to show sincerity of living together in peace.

Abbas did none of these things.

He actually did the exact opposite.

Abbas rambled to the audience for roughly an hour, seemingly without care that he lost the crowd’s attention early on.

He lied about the Palestinian Arabs, saying that they were descendants of Canaanites when it is common knowledge that ARABS came from ARABIA in the seventh and eighth centuries as part of the Muslim invasion of the Middle East and North Africa. He said that roughly 1 million Arabs became refugees due to Israel’s wars in 1948 and 1967, when the commonly used figures range from 700,000 to 750,000 (even though those figures are often doubted). Why exaggerate the Arab position to undermine your credibility?

Rather than thank the United States and the United Kingdom for billions of dollars in aid donated to Palestinians over the decades, Abbas blamed them for launching a “colonial” implant in Palestine and demanded an apology.

Rather than portraying the Palestinians as ready for peace, Abbas declared that Jews have no history in the holy land and the Jewish temples never existed in Jerusalem – as if billions of Christians never read the bible.

Rather than talking about homes in Israel that had belonged to Arabs, he talked about towns that no longer existed and were replaced with forests and parks.

Mahmoud Abbas sporting a key on his lapel as if he owns a home in Israel and is ready to move in, addressing the United Nations in May 2023

Rather than display an understanding of international law and argue in a consistent fashion, Abbas argued both sides of UNGA Resolutions 181 and 194, saying that it was wrong and unlawful for foreign countries to create a Jewish State in Palestine and to make Greater Bethlehem and Greater Jerusalem a holy basin under international rule on one hand, but on the other hand Israel should be forced to admit the descendants of refugees per the same resolution.

Most tellingly, Abbas ignored the key phrase in UNGA Res. 194 Article 11 which conditioned any return of refugees or compensation to be based on the Arabs’ willingness “to live at peace with their neighbors [in Israel].” Abbas’ various slanders against Israel – including calling Jews Nazi-like – made clear to everyone that Palestinians deserve absolutely nothing.

Abbas comparing Jews to Nazis, the people who committed a genocide against them, a heinous antisemitic comparison.

Abbas squandered an opportunity to show himself a statesman, with the ability to forge peace with Israel. Instead, he showcased why the majority of Palestinian Arabs want him to resign and consider the Palestinian Authority to be a corrupt burden on their lives.

The only people who stayed for Abbas’s disgraceful speech were die-hard Palestinian supporters, and even they must have cringed at the performance. Unless they also see the pathway to a Palestinian State as trampling upon the sovereignty of a member state by a raging antisemite.

ACTION ITEM

EMAIL REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN (NY16) “Mahmoud Abbas’s vile display of antisemitism at the ‘Nakba Day’ event at the UN made readily apparent the unwillingness of Palestinians to ‘live in peace with Israel’, and negates any supposed rights of descendants of refugees to move into Israel.”

Related articles:

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Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

Does the UN Only Grant Inalienable Rights to Palestinians?

The Anti-Semitism In Anti-Zionism

Abbas Declares All of Israel is a “Painful Settlement”

“Mainstream” and Abbas’ Jihad

Abbas Knows Racism

There Is No Backing For A Palestinian “Right Of Return”

The United Nations Applauds Abbas’ Narrative

Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians

The United Nations Can Hear the Songs of Gazans, but Cannot See Their Rockets

The Toxicity of The Latest “Nakba” Resolution

On May 10, 2023, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) sponsored a resolution, “H.Res.388 – Recognizing the ongoing Nakba and Palestine refugees rights” which was co-sponsored by five fellow extremist members of Congress, Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). The same cohort pushed a resolution last May called “H.Res.1123 – Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights.” The two bills are similar but by no means the same, and the latest version reveals the deep toxicity of the current anti-peace anti-Israel narrative.

The insertion of one word in the resolution’s title – “ongoing” – captures much of the difference between the 2022 and 2023 versions of the bill. While the 811-word, May 2022 Res.1123 gave an alternative version of actual history, whitewashing the crimes committed by Palestinians in the 1930s and 1940s when it worked with the Nazis in Europe and British in Palestine to facilitate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Holocaust and to launch a war on Jewish survivors in Palestine, the 2023 resolution claims that the war of Israel’s independence is very much part of the Palestinian psyche TODAY.

The May 2023 1,327-word Res.388 claims the so-called “nakba” “is the root cause” of the Palestinian conflict and that there will not be peace “without addressing the Nakba and remedying its injustices toward the Palestinian people.” The resolution holds the United States accountable that it must force the State of Israel to accept millions of Stateless Arabs whose parents or grandparents left Israel while they waited for five Arab armies to perform a second genocide of Jews in a generation.

Both the Democratic and Republican Parties were historically very clear on the issue of “refugees.” The 2008 Democratic platform specifically said “The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.” The 2004 letter from U.S. President George W. Bush to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said almost the exact same, that “It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.” The entire idea of a two state solution is a Jewish state and an Arab state, not a bi-national state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine.

Palestinian polls, as recently as January 2023, show that Palestinians believe that the conflict started with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promoting a Jewish State, together with the immigration of Jews. Relatively few blame the conflict on the 1948 or 1967 wars. It is the presence of Jews that is the core problem for Palestinian Arabs, not Arabs being unable to live in the same apartments as their grandparents had lived in.

If the 2023 resolution simply misrepresented the core of the conflict or misquoted bipartisan policy for the descendants of Palestine refugees, that would be bad enough. The resolution went much further.

The resolution called upon the president to use the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018, named after a Jewish Holocaust survivor, against the Jewish State in regards to its treatment of Arabs. The fact that Hamas, a political-terrorist group governs half of the Palestinian Arabs and has over half of the seats in the Palestinian parliament is ignored, as is its antisemitic charter which calls for a jihad on Jews and destruction of the Jewish State. Today, nearly two-thirds of Palestinians (61%) support killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. Somehow, this resolution turns an act meant “to prevent and mitigate acts of genocide and other mass atrocities against civilians” AGAINST THE DEFENDERS OF CIVILIANS IN FAVOR OF THE PERPETRATORS.

Nearly two-thirds of Palestinians (61%) support killing Jews inside of Israel, but Rep. Tlaib and her antisemitic squad want to use the Elie Wiesel Genocide Prevention Act to protect Arabs killing Jews

The “Nakba” was a self-inflicted event in the 1940s when Arabs rejected coexistence with Jews and launched a war to destroy Israel, which they fortunately lost. Outrageously, on the 75th anniversary of the rebirth of the Jewish State, six extremist members of congress put forward a resolution asking the United States to join the Arabs to continue their fight to end the Jewish State.

ACTION ITEMS

EMAIL REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN (NY16) “Your ongoing extremism and co-sponsorship of an ‘ongoing Nakba’ resolution at Israel’s 75th anniversary is both a whitewashing of the contribution of Palestinians to the deaths of thousands of Jews in the 1940s, and a hostile action to dismantle the only Jewish state today.”

EMAIL SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY) “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”

EMAIL SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY) “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”

EMAIL WHITE HOUSE “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”

You must register as a Democrat to PrimaryBowman.com New York State. Registration in (English) and (Spanish).

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Palestinian Actions Matter

“Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”

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NakbaWashing Crimes Against Jews

The Holocaust and the Nakba

The 1948 “Intafa”

Well before the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) launched the First Intifada in 1987, and the guerilla war from 2000 to 2004 which they whitewash calling the “Second Intifada” to make it sound like a peaceful uprising, the Arab world launched the “Intafa”, expelling Jews from Muslim countries.

After Israel declared itself as an independent country on May 14, 1948, the surrounding Arab nations invaded the Jewish State. Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and Saudi Arabia sent their armies and weapons to annihilate the 650,000 Jews in Israel. Meanwhile, the rest of the Arab World set their sites on driving 850,000 Jews from their lands.

The Muslim Arab countries of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen ethnically cleansed their countries of Jews over the next decades. The Muslim (non-Arab) countries of Afghanistan and Iran would do much the same.

In 1948, Palestinian Arabs sought to kill 650,000 Jews and to destroy Israel but failed in their goals which they call a “nakba” meaning “catastrophe.” However, the greater Arab world succeeded in ethnically cleansing 850,000 Jews from their countries starting in that year, in their “intafa” or effort to “expel” the Jews.

Palestinians ask that you remember their failure and forget their success, a red flag of a deep victim mentality. It’s a thin veneer masking the attempted genocide and successful ethnic cleansing of Jews which they continue to pursue. Ideally, they urge, with your support.

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NakbaWashing Crimes Against Jews

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The Original Nakba: The Division of “TransJordan”

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NakbaWashing Crimes Against Jews

As Israel celebrates its 75th birthday, it is appalling to watch Palestinian Arabs and their supporters turn the remarkable and historic reestablishment of the Jewish state into some sort of offense against Arabs. The inversion of facts turning the Arabs into the victims is a modern day blood libel, attempting to whitewash the historic crimes committed by Palestinians.

Consider the leading anti-Israel voices in the U.S. Congress, Ms. Tlaib (D-MI), Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ms. Omar (D-MN), Ms. McCollum (D-MN), Ms. Newman (D-IL), Mr. Bowman (D-NY), and Ms. Bush (D-MO) who put forward a resolution in congress to commemorate the “Nakba”, which called for 7 million descendants of refugees to be pushed into Israel, ending the two state solution. The anti-Zionist Congresspeople noted that “on November 29, 1947, [the United Nations voted] to partition Palestine into two states against the wishes of Palestine’s majority indigenous inhabitants,” but they simultaneously ignored that the majority of Israelis today are against allowing 7 million Arabs who never lived in Israel a so-called “right of return.” These same Congresspeople claim that the Nakba continues today, with the “ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land.”

The Palestinian Arabs committed massacres against the Jews in Palestine in the 1930s, and effectively got the British to stop Jewish immigration just as the European Holocaust was starting. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with leading Nazi Heinrich Himmler to encourage his genocide of the Jews. Himmler sent a telegram to the mufti on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, noting that both the Nazis and Palestinian Arabs were partners in a fight to eradicate the Jews.

After the slaughter of 6 million Jews, the Arabs in Palestine did not let up on the local Jews nor Holocaust survivors who had lost everything. The Arabs continued to reject a Jewish presence in the Jewish historic homeland. They voted against partitioning the land and giving a slice of the Jewish holy land for a new Jewish state. They opted to wage a war to annihilate the persecuted Jews. Thousands of Arabs left the field of battle as they encouraged five Arab armies to converge on the nascent Jewish state to annihilate the Jews completely.

This is the vile truth of the Arab war against Jews before, during, and in the shadow of the Holocaust. No amount of NakbaWashing will remove the indelible stain of Palestinian Jew hatred. The current pathetic attempts at Nakbawashing are a latest form of antisemitism, disgustingly turning the Jews into aggressors and Palestinian Arabs as peace-loving victims.

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The Original Nakba: The Division of “TransJordan”

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The Disgraceful Promotion of Refugee-Washing ‘Nakba’ In The U.S. Congress

Teaching Palestinian Youth Compassion

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Nakba 2: The Victory of a Democracy

The world has been long educated by Palestinian Arabs about the “Nakba”, the “disaster.” It was during 1948-9 when the newly established country of Israel withstood the onslaught of five Arab armies to not only survive, but to accumulate additional territory. All of that land was considered by the Arabs to be “Arab Land,” and Israel’s victory was not only an affront to their sensibilities as the rightful owners of the land, but was exacerbated by the fact that Israel did not allow the Arabs that left the region during the war – which they themselves had started – to return to their houses.

The Palestinian Nakba of 1948-9 was the founding of a Jewish State that the Arabs considered without merit, and the status of 711,000 Arabs who lost their homes to such foreign transplant. Adding insult to their situation was Egypt taking over Gaza without giving the local population citizenship. The Arabs on the west bank of the Jordan River at least got Jordanian citizenship.

In solidarity with their Arab brothers, over the following years the Arab countries from the MENA region evicted 1 million Jews from their midst, performing an ethnic cleansing of Jews for thousands of miles. Many of those Jews moved to Israel, to become citizens alongside the 160,000 Arabs who were already granted Israeli citizenship.


Israeli flags over Latrun Tank Museum,
scene of important battles in the Israeli War of Independence
(photo: First.One.Through)

The Palestinian Nakba would repeat in 1967.

Once again the surrounding Arab armies poised to destroy the Jewish State.

  • “The problem before the Arab countries is not whether the port of Eilat should be blockaded or how to blockade it – but how totally to exterminate the state of Israel for all time.”   –  President Gamal Abdel-Nasser of Egypt, May 25, 1967
  • The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united. I believe that the time has come to begin a battle of annihilation.”  –  Syrian Defense Minister Hafez Al-Assad (later President)
  • Those [Israelis] who survive will remain in Palestine. I estimate that none of them will survive.”  –  PLO Chairman Ahmed Shukhairy

However, once again Israel would defeat those that were ready to annihilate them. Once again the Israelis would take over more land. And once again the local Arab population would cry out to the world that they were the victims, and ask the world to isolate the Jewish State.

Nakba #2 left more of the local Arab population under Israeli authority. The Arabs in Gaza, Sinai, “West Bank”, and even the Golan Heights were no longer under Arab control or authoritarian rule. They were now subject to a democracy; and a Jewish one at that.

The Arabs claim that Nakba #1 had its roots in the western powers of Britain, France, Italy and Japan carving up the Ottoman Empire to fit their global ambitions. Those democracies chopped up “Arab land” (note that the Ottomans are not Arab) into fiefdoms and added an alien Jewish democracy squarely into the middle of it. To this day, Palestinian leadership asks Britain for an apology for the actions of 100 years ago, and Iranian leadership declares that the region needs to “cut out the cancer of Israel.

Nakba #2 of June 1967 continued to spread the foreign democracy into the Middle East, but only in part. Israel only annexed the eastern part of Jerusalem and gave everyone – Jews and non-Jews – in the area full rights. However, Israel declined to annex the other regions in the hope of trading portions of the land for peace. In 1979 it traded Sinai (which was never part of the Palestine Mandate) with Egypt for peace. It abandoned Gaza for war. And it negotiates with the Palestinian Authority about the future of the land east of the Green Line (EGL).

The short windows of Israeli control failed to instill long-term democratic values into the areas. Sinai is just another part of Egypt that is quickly removing the removing its Christian minority. Gaza is run by the terrorist group Hamas that is backed by the local radical Islamist population. And Area A of the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority has control, is managed by a corrupt regime that refuses to hold elections.

The newborn democracy survived an Arab onslaught in 1948, and the fledgling democracy would not be annihilated by the forces of hate and intolerance in 1967. While countries like the Islamic Republic of Iran still threaten to destroy the region’s only democracy, others have since given up on the pledge. Still, regrettably, Israel’s lessons of tolerance and democracy seem to be a hard tradition to instill in its neighbors.

For the Palestinians, the Nakba is that the foreign democracy still exists in their midst. For the western world, the disaster is that the Arabs in the region still cannot tolerate democracy.


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Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

750 Years of Continuous Jewish Jerusalem

Nicholas Kristof’s “Arab Land”

Israel, the Liberal Country of the Middle East

Stabbing the Palestinian “Right of Return”

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