What you've heard about Israel and what you think you know about Israel may be all wrong.
I just finished reading an outstanding book that asks and answers 32 questions about Israel. For example:
Did European Jews replace Palestinians?
(Short answer: The Palestine to which the European Jews...immigrated was vastly underpopulated, and the land unto which the Jews moved was, in fact, bought primarily from absentee landlords and real estate speculators").
Have the Jews always rejected the two-sate solution?
(Short answer: "As soon as partition into two states or homelands was proposed, the Jews accepted it and the Arabs rejected it").
Have the Jews exploited the Holocaust "at he expense of the Palestinians who bear no responsibility for Hitler's genocide against the Jews?
(Short answer: "The Palestinian leadership with the acquiescence of most of the Palestinian Arabs actively supported and assisted the Holocaust and Nazi Germany...").
Were Jews a minority in what became Israel?
(Short answer: "The Jews were a substantial majority in those areas of Palestine partitioned by the United Nations for a Jewish state").
Has Israel's victimization of the Palestinians been the primary cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict?
(Short Answer: Arab rejection of Israel's right to exist has long been the cause of the problem").
Did Israel create the Arab refugee problem?
(Short answer: "The problem was created by a war initiated by the Arabs").
Has Israel made serious efforts at peace?
(Short answer: "Israel has offered the Palestinians every reasonable opportunity to make peace but the Palestinians have rejected every such offer...").
Was Arafat Right in turning down the Barak-Clinton peace proposal?
(Not only have Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush placed all the blame on Arafat but so have many of Arafat's closest advisers").
Is Israel a racist state?
(Short answer: Every other state in the area...has an officially established religion, Islam, and discriminates both in law and in fact against non-Muslims, especially Jews. Israel, in contrast, is a secular state that is religioiusly and racially pluralistic with freedom of religion for all").
Is the settlement in the West Bank and Gaza a major barrier to peace?
(Short answer: The Arabs and Palestinians refused to make peace before there was a single settlement, and the Palestinians refused to make peace when Ehud Barack offered to end the settlements").
Is there a moral equivalence between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli responses?
(Short answer: "Ever reasonable school of philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and common sense distinguishes between deliberately targeting civilians and inadvertently killing civilians while targeting terrorists who hide among them").
These are just a few of the questions asked and answered in the book. In each case the short answer is followed by extended documented proof--not from Israeli apologists, but from neutral sources and often from sources ordinarily antagonistic to Israel.
Among other things, the book demonstrates the remarkable inconsistency and hypocrisy of those who continually attack Israel (the author is not hesitant to criticize Israel for its mistakes) while turning a blind eye to so many other nations which have been far, far worse than Israel.
The book is entitled, The Case for Israel by lawyer Alan Dershowitz. It is outstanding and should be at the top of everyone's reading list.
