The continuous stream of slander that Palestinians and their BDS supporters aimed at Israel is based on something more devious than mere lies: their accusations are a reversal of truth.  The Palestinians routinely accuse Israel of doing precisely the terrible things they themselves are doing.

​Palestinians claim that Israel endangers holy sites, yet they themselves attempt to destroy sacred places.  In 2002 Palestinians lit fires inside the Church of the Nativity in Nazareth intending to blame Israel for the destruction of one of the holiest Christian sites.  Luckily the IDF was able to put out the fires before irreparable damage was caused.  In 2010 and again in 2014 Palestinians partially succeeded in burning Joseph’s tomb, a Jewish holy site.

More recently the Palestinian Authority has claimed that Israel is endangering the Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem, while they carry out destructive and illegal excavations beneath it.  Palestinian terrorists often cite this slander as their motive in the most recent spate of attacks against Jews.  In reality Israel scrupulously protects the Al Aksa Mosque as it does the holy sites of all religions.  To prove this Israel agreed, last October, to a Jordanian proposal to place cameras in the mosque.  The Palestinian Authority rejected the proposal.

In another reversal of truth, Palestinians claim that the IDF uses “excessive” force and deliberately targets civilians.  To substantiate this claim, the Palestinians regularly initiate conflicts with Israel by firing from civilian areas in order to provoke an Israeli response that will cause civilian casualties.   Knowing this, Israel takes extraordinary measures to avoid civilian losses, including warning Palestinian civilians when a building containing terrorists is about to be targeted.  To avoid civilian casualties and to the detriment of her own forces Israel refrains from using artillery or airpower to destroy the enemy’s strongholds in civilian areas.  Instead Israel risks the lives of her soldiers by sending them house to booby-trapped house, as in the battle of Jenin and the multiple wars in Lebanon and Gaza imposed upon her by her enemies.  As the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey stated, “Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties”.

It is the Palestinians who have made terrorism against civilians their primary modus operandi since the founding of the PLO in 1964.  Starting long before there was an Al-Qaeda or ISIS, the PLO, PLFP, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian terror organizations murdered thousands of Israeli civilians in stabbings, shootings, car attacks, and bombings.

They target Jewish children in particular; 28 Israeli school children were slaughtered in the 1974 Maalot massacre; In 1979 Palestinian terrorists grabbed a baby in Nahariya from her mother’s arms and her head smashed against a rock; A Hamas a terror tunnel from Gaza was recently discovered opening up directly under an Israeli kindergarten.   Yet it is Israeli soldiers, not Palestinian terrorists, who are vilified as war criminals and baby killers by the Palestinians’ supporters.

​The Palestinians frequently compare Israel to the Nazis, a particularly vile slander considering many Israelis are holocaust survivors or the children of survivors.

The Palestinian national movement was founded and led by a Nazi collaborator, the Grand mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who was later succeeded by his nephew Yasser Arafat.  The movement’s goals were, and remain, genocide against the Jews of Israel.  As the Hamas charter puts it: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

​An equally false Palestinian tactic is to label Israel an apartheid state.  Arabs in Israel enjoy more civil rights and freedoms than they do in any Arab country including the Palestinian territories.  Israeli Arabs, including Arab women, sit in the Knesset, on the judiciary, and in the government; they participate as news commentators, sports figures, and in every aspect of Israeli society.  Their rights to vote, a fair trial, free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, are guaranteed by law.

​It is the Palestinians who preach apartheid claiming that no Jew should be allowed to live in the Palestinian territories and attempt to expel them through terror.  If peace is the goal, why should Jews not be allowed to live in predominantly Palestinian areas just as Palestinians live in Jewish areas?   In what democratic state is one restricted from living anywhere based on their religion or ethnicity?

​The Palestinians’ supporters would certainly object to such racism in their own countries, yet they enthusiastically support this demand for ethnic cleansing of the Jews.   How do the Palestinians justify their call for ethnic cleansing of Jews?  By repeating the biggest lie underlying the whole of the Palestinian cause: the claim that Palestinians are indigenous to the Land of Israel while the Jews are foreign occupiers.

​The reality is that Jews are neither foreigners nor occupiers, but the original native inhabitants of the land of Israel having lived there continuously for 3,200 years.  Proof of this can be found in the fact that the whole world still uses the original Hebrew name for almost every major city and town in the land of Israel:  Jerusalem, Jaffa, Jericho, Beersheba, Hebron, Nazareth, Bethlehem, etc.

​Further evidence of the continuity of Jewish life in the land of Israel comes from over a century of biblical archeology and extensive historical literature, including the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Holy Scriptures.

​It was the Arabs who usurped Jewish rights when they first appeared in the land during the Arab conquest of the 7th Century CE over two millennia after the Jews. History records no Palestinian state, or even a call for one, prior to the founding of the PLO terror organization in 1964.  The name Palestine itself is not Arabic but originated with the Romans who so renamed Judea after conquering it.

​In reality, it is  Palestinians who usurped Jewish rights in the Land of Israel, and not the reverse.  It is the Palestinian national movement, not Zionism, that was founded by a Nazi and continues to preach Nazi like ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Jews.  It is the Palestinians who have shown utter disregard for sacred sights, and human life.  Palestinian slanders against Israel stand truth on its head and are nothing other than a window into their own dark actions and goals.

Devin Sper

Original Published Version