Anti-Semitism > Nakba - What's worse 700,000 Arabs or 900,000 Jews being displaced?

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Israel’s UN ambassador: Mideast Jews were victims of the ‘real Nakba’

November 30, 2022

Israel’s UN ambassador: Mideast Jews were victims of the ‘real Nakba’Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan

addresses the UN Security Council, April 25, 2022. (UN Photo/Evan Schneider)

Gilad Erdan inaugurated an exhibition highlighting the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries in the wake of the UN decision to partition British-controlled Mandatory Palestine.

By JNS

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan inaugurated an exhibit on Tuesday highlighting the expulsion of Jews from Middle East countries, calling the story of these Jewish refugees the “real Nakba.”

The Palestinians have long used the Arabic term “Nakba,” or catastrophe, to describe Israel’s creation and the resulting displacement of some 700,000 of Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 war initiated by Arab nations to destroy the nascent Jewish state.

Marking the 75th anniversary of the UN’s adoption of a resolution to create Israel, Erdan said that “those who really suffered from ‘Nakba’ following the decision were Jews—almost a million were expelled from Arab countries and Iran.

Since the vote [on Nov. 29, 1947,] which the Arabs rejected, the United Nations has been telling a completely false story about the ‘disaster’ the Palestinians brought upon themselves,” he added.

While the vast majority of Jewish refugees from Arab countries were absorbed into Israel, the United Nations, by contrast, created the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to tend uniquely to Palestinian refugees. Today, the organization recognizes some five million Palestinians as “refugees,” having effectively transformed the status into a hereditary trait applicable only to Palestinians.

“A day after the [partition] decision, Jews were violently and cruelly expelled from Arab countries and Iran. This year, after a long struggle, we managed to place an exhibition with photos that document the story of the real Nakba. I will continue to fight for the truth and against the false narrative that the Palestinians and their supporters spread,” said Erdan.

The exhibit, whose launch also coincides with Wednesday’s Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from Arab Countries, which has been marked annually in Israel since 2014, will run at the UN headquarters in New York City for one week.

See the link just above for the story of the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

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US No Longer Recognizes Israeli Settlements as Breaking International Law - Pompeo

In a Monday statement, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Washington no longer regards Israeli settlements in the West Bank as violating international law, reversing the Obama administration’s position and taking no legal position on the question or that of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank itself.

Pompeo announced the US would repudiate its previous legal opinion on the status of the settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The US will no longer adopt a position on the legality of those settlements, breaking with the Obama administration’s decision that they did violate international law.

The settlements are home to more than 600,000 Israelis, who live mostly in settlements scattered across the territories, which Israel seized from Jordan in 1967 in the so-called Six-Day War.

However, the West Bank is also home to 2.7 million Palestinian Arabs, with another 327,000 living in East Jerusalem.

Since 1978, the Legal Adviser of the Department of State has regarded Israeli civilian settlements in the occupied territories as explicitly contravening the Fourth Geneva Convention. However, When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he reversed that decision; Pompeo indicated Monday the US was returning to the Reagan-era position.

“There will never be a judicial resolution” to the conflict, Pompeo said, noting it can only be solved by negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

However, the Trump administration has previously recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a position also opposed by the United Nations. Pompeo clarified the US was taking no position on the "final status" of the boundaries of the city.

The United Nations has regarded the settlements as illegal, with numerous resolutions denouncing both the Israeli occupation as well as the civilian settlement of those lands as unquestionably illegal, calling on Israel to abandon the projects.

The UN Security Council is hopelessly antisemitic, dominated by Muslim countries and antisemitic western leaders like Obama.

In recent months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to push forward with incorporating the West Bank settlements into Israel proper, a move widely interpreted as a prelude to annexation.

Israel's foreign minister praised Pompeo's comments, saying Israeli welcomes the US decision and thanking the Trump administration for its support.

NPR's Deplorable Reporting Covers Up the Ethnic Cleansing of Jews in Holy Land

Jewish family: Hebron, 1928.

Daniel Pomerantz, Honest Reporting

In its article, “7 Things To Know About Israeli Settlements,” National Public Radio manages to demonstrate just how little its writers know about settlements, Israel and how to practice journalism.

Our critique of this article is not about settlements, but about basic journalistic standards.

Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank

Reporters Greg Myre and Larry Kaplow begin by claiming:

When Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War, no Israeli citizens lived in the territory.

This stunning lack of context ignores that Jews had indeed lived in Hebron, Bethlehem and many other towns in the land historically called “Judea and Samaria,” until 19 years earlier – when Jordanian forces (with the help of local Palestinians) expelled or killed all of the indigenous Jews, and then re-named the entire area “The West Bank.”

The only reason the population of the West Bank was entirely Palestinian by 1967 was because they expelled the indigenous Jews in 1948.

Thousands of photographs from the 19th century confirm that Jews were in the land, and at that time, few, if any, Palestinians were.

Doesn’t the ethnic cleansing of an entire indigenous Jewish population deserve a mention from NPR?

Kaplow and Myre further distort history in the very same sentence by saying “Israel captured the West Bank…” yet covering up the reason why: Jordan had turned those lands into a launching point for a massive assault against Israel, with the intent to destroy the entire country.

Israel was forced to capture the West Bank in order to prevent Jordan’s advance, save Israel’s very existence, and save all the Jews in Israel from the same fate suffered by those Jews referenced above: total and complete ethnic cleansing.

Again, not even a mention?

Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem

In an encore of ignorance, Kaplow and Myre claim:

Shortly after the 1967 war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, which is part of the West Bank and had a population that was then entirely Palestinian.

First of all, there was never any such entity as “East Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was one united city for several thousand years until Jordan invaded its eastern part in 1948. At that point, Jordan’s military (with the assistance of local Palestinians) expelled or killed all the Jews living in the areas it captured. Again: total and complete ethnic cleansing.

It was around 1948 when the expulsion of the Jews from across Middle East and North African Islam, went into high gear and more than 800,000 Jews were driven from those countries. The West Bank and east Jerusalem being under the authority of Jordan at the time would have been included in that massive attempt at ethnic cleansing. Have you ever heard of this before?

Kaplow and Myre also cover up from their readers that the area they call “East Jerusalem” includes the Temple Mount (the holiest site in Judaism) along with its famous Western Wall, the Old City, and Jerusalem’s ancient Jewish Quarter.

Yet all the authors have to say is “…a population that was then entirely Palestinian.”

HonestReporting interviewed Jewish refugees from the Jordanian invasion of Jerusalem, in order to paint a more complete picture of Jerusalem’s recent history.

Journalistic Failures

Kaplow and Myre indulge in a number of other misleading falsehoods, such as the claim:

While the Israelis tend to speak of East Jerusalem and the West Bank as two separate entities, the Palestinians regard them as a single body — the occupied West Bank.

In fact, Palestinians do not typically use the term “occupied West Bank,” but rather “occupied Palestine,” which they clearly define as being all of Israel.

When discussing Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza NPR selectively omitted the thousands of rockets fired at Israel from the Strip. Kaplow and Myre also criticize Israel’s military presence in the West Bank but fail to acknowledge that Palestinian terrorism forces Israel to maintain that military presence.

A journalist may explore complex topics and present varying viewpoints, but journalistic ethics do not allow the omission of critical context nor the distortion of objective historical facts, as Kaplow and Myre have done here.

NPR has covered up the massive scale ethnic cleansing of Jews in their own historic homeland. The result is not only offensive to the Israeli victims of these attacks and misleading to NPR readers, but also an embarrassment to the very profession of journalism.

NPR's reporting is typical of the antisemitic attitude that permeates most western media and is somewhat responsible for the growing anti-Jewish attitude that could well result in another Jewish holocaust within 100 years of the previous. Such a thing should be impossible but it is becoming more and more likely everyday to the great shame of humanity.

Israel's U.N. Ambassador: West Bank Settlement Criticism Shows 'Disconnection' to Facts

By Ed Adamczyk, UPI


Building cranes stand near new housing units under construction in the Israeli settlement of Har Homa in southern East Jerusalem on August 2. The U.S. State Department strongly condemned Israel's recent decision to expand construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Monday Israel rejected a U.N. envoy's comments that such construction is eroding the peace process. Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

JERUSALEM, (UPI) -- Israel's U.N. ambassador was critical Tuesday of a United Nations official who called Israeli West Bank settlements an obstacle to peace.

After Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N.'s Middle East envoy, referred to "Israeli settlement expansion" as eroding the possibility of a two-state solution with Palestine, Danny Damon, Israel's U.N. ambassador, called the remarks a "complete disconnection from the facts on the ground."

"Israel will continue to build in its eternal capital of Jerusalem, just as the nations of the world will continue to build in their capitals without asking the permission of the United Nations. The U.N. should concentrate on the main obstacle to a solution in the region, which is the Palestinian refusal to condemn terrorism and return to the negotiating table," Damon said. He called Mladenov's assertions baseless.

Israel has built thousands of homes for Jews in the West Bank, and construction has expanded in the past two months. The United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union, known as the Quartet, have called for a halt to construction of Jewish housing on Palestinian land. The Quartet, formed in 2002, has also urged an end to Palestinian violence.

In 1979, the U.N. Security Council declared Israeli settlements in occupied territory illegal. 

The UN is dominated by Muslim states which condemn every breath the Jews take. 

Settlements have grown in East Jerusalem and across the West Bank, an indication Israel has no plans to cede the territory to a future Palestinian state.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also rejected Mladenov's comments, saying Monday, "The remarks of the U.N. envoy to the Security Council today distort history and international law and only distance peace. Jews have lived in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria for thousands of years and their presence there is not an obstacle to peace. 

The obstacle to peace is the attempt to incessantly deny the relationship of Jews to their historical land and the stubborn refusal to acknowledge that they are not foreigners there... The Palestinian demand for ethnic cleansing of Jews in its future state is horrifying, and the U.N. should be condemning it instead of adopting it."