If Israel has no right to exist, what is America's right to exist? - YJ Draiman

If Israel has no right to exist, what is America's right to exist? - YJ Draiman

Both countries U.S. and Israel give the same answer: refugees and settlers from around the world came to our land and built up a nation over more than a century, making major sacrifices in blood and toil to establish a new nation based on shared ideas rather than long-time indigenous residence. If anything, Israel's claim to legitimacy is MUCH stronger than the U.S. claim for three reasons:

1) No one claims that the British (and others) who settled North America were coming back to an ancestral homeland.

2) No international organization ever recognized their right to that homeland, As the Faisal Weizmann Agreement of January 1919 and as the San Remo Conference of April 1920 partially implemented by the League of Nations did for Israel in 1923 and the United Nations did confirm the 1920 international agreement in 1947.

3) No one can possibly claim that Israeli communities and settlements caused a demographic disaster for the native population since the Arab-Palestinian population of the country is now more than 50 times greater than it was when additional Jewish people returned to their homeland began in earnest in the 1880's. At no time—in no decade—did Arab-Palestinian population decline in Palestine aka The Land of Israel, but the Native American population in the U.S. drastically declined (mostly through disease, and armed conflict against the newcomers by the way) from the beginning of European colonization (1607) until 1900 (when Indian numbers began a dramatic rise).

Four questions:

1) If Palestine aka The Land of Israel was the ancient homeland of an ancient people with their own strong sense of national identity, can anyone name, please, the most famous Arab-Palestinians produced in those centuries and millennia of history? Who was the most celebrated of all in the long line of Arab-Palestinian kings, or viceroys, or prime ministers? Which Arab-Palestinian poet or philosopher stirred the world with his words and ideas? Which great Arab-Palestinian scientist or inventor or composer or painter achieved international or even regional renown? The inability to answer that question doesn't testify to a lack of ability or brilliance: it testifies to the synthetic, phony nature of the invented "Arab-Palestinian" identity. There were no remarkable or brilliant kings of Arab-Palestine because there were no kings of Arab-Palestine at all—no Arab nation ever existed in this area, only ill-defined pieces of various Islamic, Turkic, Byzantine and Roman empires over the course of 2,000 years.

The only time any national identity existed centered on this particular piece of real estate, that national identity was Jewish: that's why the only famous "Palestinians" who ever existed were Jews, from King David to Jesus to Moses Maimonides (died in Israel in 1215) to David Ben Gurion. No Arab "Palestinian" nationalism ever existed, as distinct from Pan-Arabism, until Yasser Arafat at the Russian urgings (born in Egypt, raised in Kuwait) invented it as a pure fabrication after the June war of 1967.

2) If Arab-Palestinians merely yearn to establish their own homeland on the West Bank aka Judea and Samaria, Gaza and in East Jerusalem, why did they make no effort to do so—and no progress in doing so—during the twenty years when all those territories were in unquestioned Arab control (1947-1967) without a single Jewish "settler" or even resident allowed to live there? The ancient Jewish Quarter of the old city of Jerusalem, inhabited by a religious Jewish community without interruption for more than 3,000 years, had been liquidated of all Jews after 1949, with more than 58 major synagogues and houses of worships utterly destroyed—by explosions and bulldozers and Jewish homes and property taken over by the Arabs—after the Old City fell to Jordanian troops in 1949 and Jewish cemeteries destroyed and Monuments used for construction.

Before the war of extermination launched by President Abdul Nasser of Egypt in May, 1967, there were ZERO Israeli communities anywhere in the so-called "Arab-Palestinian territory" but no moves toward Arab-Palestinian statehood. Isn't this a definitive proof that the whole purpose of "Arab-Palestinian nationalism" has nothing to do with building an Arab-Palestinian state (where one never, ever existed) but in destroying a Jewish state (which did exist in the region going back over 3,000 years ago for more than 1,000 years, with a continuous Jewish habitation)?

3) Zionism and additional Jewish people returning to that ancient homeland of The Land of Israel began in the 1800's. Before Hitler even came to power, over a half million Jewish people had resettled permanently in today's Israel and built whole new cities where none ever previously existed and turned the land into green pastures (Israel's largest city, Tel Aviv, was founded in 1909 on empty sand dunes, purchased from their absentee owners, and today the metro area is home to over 4,000,000 Jews and more than 44% of Israel's population).

Question: during all this energetic and fateful Jewish resettlement, when did the very first Arab-Palestinian refugees lose their homes and find themselves driven from their so-called ancient patrimony? Answer: only AFTER 1948, and the war of destruction launched by local Arabs and, ultimately, their Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian Lebanese and Iraqi allies in 1948-1949.

The population figures in Palestine aka The Land of Israel are unequivocal, undeniable, compiled not by Jews and Zionists but by Ottoman Turks, British, and Arab-Palestinians themselves: Jewish settlement didn't drive Arab-Palestinians from the land, but rather attracted them to it in unprecedented numbers, due to improved economic conditions. In fact, the Arab-Palestinian population not only increased alongside the Jewish population while Jewish population in the Arab countries decreased, due to terror, violence and forced expulsion, but Arab population increased at faster rates: between WWI and WWII (1918-1929) the Jewish population went up by 495,000 and the Arab-Palestinian population rose even quicker and went up by 598,000, since thousands of Arabs came into Palestine aka The Land of Israel from neighboring Arab countries. Arab-Palestinian life expectancy, living standards and education levels also improved spectacularly, as measured by all international and Arab organizations.

4) If Israel is truly an alien presence imposed on the region by the imperialist, colonialist designs of the United States and its Western allies, due to the overwhelming power of conspiring Zionists and Jewish voters, then how many American troops have lost their lives or even risked their lives on Israel's behalf in the 69 years of the nation's history? Answer: absolutely zero. In none of Israel's wars did American military forces take an active role. In fact, in Israel's War of Independence (1948-49), while the young nation lost more than 1% of its total population on the battlefield (the equivalent of 3,200,000 Americans today), the Israel Defense Forces were crippled by an all-encompassing American arms embargo that prevented any material or military assistance to the Jewish state. Arab oil interests have always been more influential on shaping Western policy than Zionist pressure or pleas.

During all the years of Hitler's Holocaust (1939-45), and in the three years immediately following the war, the British government did nothing to help Jewish refugees who tried to flee to Israel and in fact blocked and banned their emigration entirely, arresting and deporting any Jews who attempted to enter the area of Mandatory Palestine (today's Israel, Arab-Palestinian controlled territories, and Jordan). The British went as far as blowing-up Jewish refugee Ships bound for Israel after WWII under “Operation Embarrass”.

As recently as 1967, when Egypt's dictator Abdul Nasser repeatedly announced his intention to "eliminate" the Jewish presence in the region and ordered the UN peace-keeping troops to get out of his way (they immediately complied), the US Secretary of State Dean Rusk announced to the world that America would remain "neutral in thought, word and deed" and would do nothing to rescue the threatened Jewish population.

Major US Foreign Aid to Israel didn't begin until after the October War of 1973, as part of an effort by the Nixon and Carter administrations to bribe the Israelis, basically, to return the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Part of the peace agreement brokered by Carter involved promises of aide at its current levels to both Egypt and Israel. In 1967, Israel won its war against Egypt, Syria and Jordan without any American planes in its air force; the nation relied on French "Mirages" it had purchased to confront the advanced Russian MIG’s used by the other side, the Arabs.

Finally, if pro-Israel policies are the result of Jewish influence rather than American self-interest, then why do Jewish voters remain unshakably committed to the Democratic Party which has been consistently less supportive of Israel's interests than the Republicans? The most pro-Israel political figures in American history—“Mr. Republican" Bob Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush—never attracted a majority of Jewish votes, but the most anti-Israel nominees—George McGovern and Jimmy Carter—unfailingly performed well in the Jewish community as long as they were Democrats. Since FDR, only one Democrat failed to win more than 60% of the Jewish vote: Jimmy Carter in 1980, who saw the Jewish vote split three ways (and nearly evenly) between himself, liberal independent candidate John Anderson, and Reagan. In 2012, Romney (a personal friend of Netanyahu's for 30 years) was clearly, unabashedly more pro-Israel than Obama (who had feuded publicly and bitterly with the Israeli government) but Obama still drew 70% of the Jewish vote.

As to the belief that a more pro-Arab Palestinian policy on the part of the U.S. would lead to reduced terrorism against American targets, consider that the worst, bloodiest terrorists outrages in U.S. history all were launched and planned under the most pro-Arab Palestinian administration in U.S. history. Bill Clinton not only presided over the Oslo Accords, granting recognition to the Arab-Palestinian Authority, but met more frequently with Yasser Arafat than he did with any foreign leader. Yet under Clinton, Islamist terrorists plotted the first and second World Trade Center bombings (yes, 9/11 was entirely planned and set up during Clinton), the Embassy Bombings in East Africa, Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, and so forth. Under that pro-Palestinian U.S. regime, and the similarly pro-Arab Palestinian Israeli regimes of "peace makers" Rabin and Peres, Israeli deaths at the hands of terrorists averaged nearly 200 per year; under the "get tough" policies of Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Netanyahu, those deaths have averaged less than 20 a year.

These are facts.

Please invite any doubters to check them out, with independent sources.

The facts—and the four questions posed above—simply do not conform to the anti-Israel narrative. How, for instance, can you describe Arab-Palestinians as a people dispossessed when their population swelled and their conditions dramatically improved simultaneous to mass Jewish immigration?

YJ Draiman