Jewish Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nBelow are the ten common lies… lies that contribute not only to the world\u2019s fixation on and cultivation of the \u201cbig bad Jew,\u201d but also erode the pursuit of truth and critical thinking\u2014goals that once informed the institution of learning.<\/p>\n
Lie #1:<\/strong>\u00a0During his life, he [Jesus] traveled around northern Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0In this extract from a document, given to the students on the origins of the three monotheistic religions, Jesus is described as having lived in Palestine. But during Jesus\u2019 lifetime, the term \u201cPalestine\u201d did not exist. It was called Judea, which means \u201cJew,\u201d as Jesus was born in a Jewish sovereign kingdom called Judea,\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0Palestine. This historical anachronism incorrectly signals to students that there once was a country or political presence known as Palestine, and implicitly denies Jesus was a Jew.<\/p>\nLie #2:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cAlthough the population of the Holy Land was very diverse, the majority of people who were living in Palestine around 1900 were ethnically Arab and majority Muslim.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0In 1900, the land was called the Ottoman Empire and the land we call today Israel was, according to the Ottoman Empire, marked according to municipalities. As such, the Ottomans themselves did not call it Palestine, but rather the \u201cmunicipality of Jerusalem\u201d or the \u201cmunicipality of Damascus.\u201d This incorrect term leads to historical misinformation. In fact, in 1896 the denizens of Jerusalem were majority Jewish (62%).<\/p>\nRhetoric that continues to refer to Israel as Palestine is not only a lie, but one that contributes to what I call \u201cthe Great Occupation Lie,\u201d a libel no different than the blood libel or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.<\/p>\n
Lie #3:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cIsrael won the [1967] war and captured Palestinian territory, nearly doubling its size.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0Israel did not capture \u201cPalestinian territory\u201d as there was no sovereign Palestinian state or kingdom to capture. Likewise, Israel did not \u201cdouble its size\u201d because when the Arabs rejected the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, the borders outlined by the U.N. were thus not binding: the borders outlined by the U.N. would be considered binding\u00a0ONLY<\/u>\u00a0if\u00a0both<\/em>\u00a0sides (Jews and Arabs) agreed. Since the Arabs rejected it, the borders were nullified, and the U.N. proposal was thus not binding.<\/p>\nLie #4:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cThe Allied forces [of World War I] betrayed the Arabs and claimed Palestine, Transjordan, and Iraq.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0This is historically inaccurate. Before World War I, there were no countries known as Palestine, Transjordan, or Iraq. The League of Nations (the Allied forces)\u00a0created\u00a0<\/em>these countries out of mandates and gave them largely to the Arabs.<\/p>\nLie #5:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cDuring the 1948 war Israel forcibly displaced 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0Like the \u201dGreat Occupation Lie,\u201d the \u201cNakba Lie\u201d is not only false but contributes to demonizing Jews and Israel. But like all great propaganda that latches onto truths and then manipulates them, the \u201cNakba Lie\u201d latches onto the reality that as a result of the war\u00a0started<\/em>\u00a0by the five Arab countries, people on the ground fled war zones. What it fails to mention is that many of the Arabs who fled their homes were told to do so by Arab leaders who promised a swift victory. This has been well-documented by historians.<\/p>\nIn fact, the term \u201cnakba\u201d was first used by Syrian historian Constantin Zureiq. But for Zureiq, \u201cnakba\u201d meant something entirely different.\u00a0 In his book\u00a0Ma\u2019na al-Nakba (The Meaning of the Disaster)<\/em>, Zureiq described the flight of the Arabs from the region as a direct result of the pan-Arab attack on the nascent Jewish state. \u201cWe [Arabs] must admit our mistakes,\u201d he wrote, \u201cand recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot.\u201d The mistake Zureiq is referring to is that instead of accepting the 1947 U.N. partition plan to divide the British Mandate for Palestine into a Jewish country and another Arab country, the surrounding Arab countries waged a war, putting Arab civilians on the ground in direct danger. Years later Zureiq doubled down in his book published after the Six-Day War,\u00a0The Meaning of the Catastrophe Anew,\u00a0<\/em>again employing the term \u201cnakba\u201d to mean the pan-Arab inability to \u201cconfront Zionism.\u201d At that time, Dr. Raphael G. Bouchnik-Chen writes, \u201cthe term \u2018Nakba\u2019 was glaringly absent from Arab and\/or Palestinian discourse.\u201d<\/p>\nLie #6:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cPalestinians, deprived of their land by Israel, lived in 58 refugee camps, both in Palestine and in neighboring countries.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0In 1949, Jordan and Egypt, two countries that waged war against Israel in 1948, illegally occupied Judea andSamaria (what many today call the \u201cWest Bank\u201d) and Gaza. Jordanians placed the Arabs in refugee camps; Egyptians likewise placed the Arabs in refugee camps and did not give them citizenship. Between 1949 and 1967 when the \u201cWest Bank\u201d and Gaza were\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>under Israeli control, there were\u00a0no\u00a0<\/em>calls to \u201cfree Palestine.\u201d Jordan did not liberate the Palestinians from Jordanian occupation; Egyptians did not liberate the Palestinians from their occupation. Jordan treated the Arabs as second-class citizens and Egypt kept them in refugee camps, never giving them a path toward citizenship.<\/p>\nLie #7:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cAgain [in 1967] Israel won & captured the Egyptian territory of the Sinai Peninsula, the Syrian territory of the Golan Heights, and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0Another lie that latches onto reality is the lie that Israel willy-nilly decided to \u201ccapture Palestinian territories.\u201d While it is true that after the Second Arab-Israeli War of 1967, Israel tripled in size, the document fails to mention that the war was once again started by the Arabs when Egypt enacted a\u00a0casus belli<\/em>, a declaration of war, by closing the Straits of Tiran.\u00a0Telling the UN who were stationed at the Sinai border with Israel to leave, Egypt began to mobilize their troops to the border thus signaling preparation for all-out war \u2014 not a fantastical reality since Egyptian President Nasser had employed genocidal language in newspapers and on radio programs. The document fails to mention that Israel had fought a defensive war.<\/p>\nLie #8:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cPalestinians are mistreated under Israeli occupation.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0Deploying language rich with references to decolonization, this highly damaging statement is fraught with lies. First, what is the occupation referred to? Israel unilaterally left Gaza in 2005, uprooting living and dead Jews from the Gaza Strip in hopes that the Palestinian Arabs would finally accept what they had been calling for, their land. And while in Judea and Samaria there is a military occupation, entirely legal according to the Geneva Convention, the land is divided into Areas A, B, C. In Area A the Palestinian Authority has entire control politically over the land.<\/p>\nLie #9:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cGaza is an open-air prison.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0In 2005, Israel unilaterally left Gaza. What this means is that the Israeli government took all Israeli presence, from political and military institutions to Jewish Israeli citizens, and uprooted them from Gaza. Moreover, Jewish graves were exhumed and reburied in Israel because the Israeli government knew that the graves would be destroyed and that the Jewish family members would not be able to visit for no Jew would be allowed into Gaza. Please let that sink in. A future Palestinian state means no Jew can physically enter. This is not a theory, it is a reality. In Area A of Judea and Samaria, where the Palestinian Authority fully governs the land and the people, no Jew is allowed to enter.<\/p>\nSo how exactly is Gaza an open-air prison after 2005? Of course, as in all great propaganda that sinks its teeth into truths, the truth is that Arabs in Gaza cannot easily enter Israel as there is a border wall. (Gaza also borders with Egypt, whose border with Gaza is on perennial lockdown.) But why would Israel open borders with Gaza, from which rockets have rained ever since 2006? Why would Israel open their borders to a population that has been raised to hate Israel? Sadly, Israel made this mistake as many of the workers from Gaza had work permits and were instrumental in the October 7 massacre. The libel that \u201cGaza is an open-air prison\u201d is meant to demonize Israel.<\/p>\n
Lie #10:<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cIsrael began building its separation wall in the occupied West Bank in 2002.\u201d<\/p>\nTruth:<\/strong>\u00a0Language is critical to shaping our reality. The word \u201cseparation\u201d echoes language used to describe apartheid in South Africa and, for American students, the dark history of segregation. Imagine if the sentence read, \u201cIsrael began to build a security wall \u2026\u201d thereby using the correct word for the wall built as a direct result of the Second Intifada\u2014a surge of violent attacks against Israelis coming from Judea and Samaria. Likewise, the term \u201coccupied West Bank\u201d is ironic since the term \u201cWest Bank\u201d originates with Jordan, which illegally occupied this region after the War of Independence in 1948.<\/p>\nAs we know, antisemitism is the age-old alarm bell: where there is antisemitism, morality and culture are broken.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe revolutionary strategy, therefore, must not solely focus on antisemitism, for this is a symptom. The danger beyond is the lies that inveigle students into believing they have become educated. We must get rid of the Ethnic Studies curriculum not because there is an antisemitism problem, but because there is a truth problem.<\/p>\n
\nNaya Lekht<\/b>\u00a0received her PhD in Russian Literature and wrote her dissertation on Holocaust literature in the Soviet Union. Naya is currently the Education Editor for White Rose Magazine and a Research Fellow for the Institute for Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since the October 7 massacre, the role of antisemitism in teaching has once more been highlighted. \u00a0Below are some examples, with counters, as found in classrooms in the state of California, USA. A section published, with permission, from an opinion piece penned by Naya Lekht in the Jewish Journal. Below are the ten common lies… […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[997,23],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8420"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8432,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8420\/revisions\/8432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelinstitute.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}