[American Thinker] Rachel Neuwirth - There are things we can do if we are willing to work to protect our rights and stand up to the massive defamation campaign waged against us. Each of us can help by acting immediately whenever we encounter a distortion in the media, to correct it with a letter to the editor or news manager. We can also actively monitor the mass media on the Internet in order to correct as many distortions as we can. But in order to counter the endless flow of lies and distortions about Israel, we must first learn the true facts. The Israelis are not colonists or alien "settlers" in the Land of Israel; on the contrary, we Jews have lived in Israel for at least 3,200 years, far longer than most peoples have lived in their present national homelands. Jews had lived in the Land of Israel in large numbers for at least 1,800 years before the Arabs conquered it in 635 CE. While it is true that some Arabs have lived in the Land of Israel for many centuries, they have never been ethnically or culturally distinct from the Arabs who live in other lands, including the Arabian Peninsula. The Jews, however, are a people who originated in the Land of Israel and never had any other national homeland. The Arab population of Israel/Palestine only began to grow in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, at the same time that Jews began to resettle the land. The Arab population of Palestine was under 500,000 in 1891, and grew because of extensive immigration from many Arab countries. As a result, many of the Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" have ancestors who originated in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and other Arab countries. Israel has now withdrawn from 90% of the territories that it occupied in 1967, including all of the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza region, large parts of Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank"), and part of the Golan Heights. But these very substantial concessions have failed to persuade the Arab world to make peace.
2008-03-11 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive