"Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. So truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey." Isaiah 59:14-15

LIES! An extraordinary feature of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the blanket of misrepresentation, lies and the rewriting of history which more than ever characterises it. Indeed, this has long been a feature of Jewish history, even going back to the so-called Blood Libel, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, amongst many other misrepresentations.

There indeed seems to be a dark lying spirit which today influences everything, and includes the media and the Church, as well as world leaders and politics. It touches every area of life, it seeks to misrepresent Israel, to rewrite history, to poison attitudes, and in particular to create an attitude of almost hatred in the hearts of some Christians who, above all, should love the Jewish people and pray for Israel. Indeed the worst culprits in the Church appear sometimes to be not the ordinary lay Christian but their leaders of any denomination.

Such lies find an easy foothold in the minds of those who are ill-informed about both the past and the present, and it is the purpose of this article to highlight some of the myths and misunderstandings which are changing attitudes and are even now driving international politics. It seems clear that many years ago the Arab world took hold of the dictum of Joseph Goebbels of the Nazi era who, with regard to the so-called Big Lie, said that if any lie is big enough, repeated often enough and loud enough it will in the end be believed. (It was in fact also used by the British as a weapon in the Second World War!)

This strategy has been so successful that a twisted history of the Middle-East and her people has now become received truth at all levels of the media, politics and Church. Indeed, for this reason we should be very careful from where we get our information and from where the opinions of our minds and the attitudes of our hearts are formed.

Although Palestinian terrorism and other attacks against Israeli targets continue at the rate of roughly one an hour, one would be hard?pressed to know this from the world media. Neither CNN nor the BBC discuss the Arab violence in their Middle East stories today, other than by a mention of an Arab woman killed by soldiers in the course of her attempt to stab them.

It would seem that the BBC is deliberately promoting a policy of portraying Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinians as victims. It is inevitable that by a process of drip feeding the average person, including the Christian, is absorbing this perspective.

Thus, in reporting the current conflict between Israel and the Palestinians the BBC usually presents Israel as taking the initiative, by opening its reports with sentences such as "Israel continued its attacks on Palestinian targets by land, sea, and air." Only then is mention made of prior Palestinian terrorist attacks. Reports direct from Israel exaggerate the imbalance even more strongly.

A particular aspect of the faulty presentation of facts is illustrated in the reporting on the recent 'Saudi Peace Proposal' which, at the time of writing, is occupying some BBC media attention. The proposal is presented in successive news reports as being conditional on "Israel's withdrawal from Palestinian lands occupied in 1967" or, "Israel's withdrawal from occupied Arab land." With co-operation from the world's media, coupled with ignorance, apathy, and anti-Semitism among the nations, Israel is losing the battle for the facts as opposed to the myths.

The propaganda line that Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are 'Occupied Arab lands' or 'Palestinian lands occupied in 1967' is just one of the myths requiring clarification for the sake of many who remain confused regarding the history of the region. The deliberate myths and misrepresentations which surround events in the Middle East are not in the main based on misunderstanding or ignorance, but all too frequently derive from a deliberate agenda to distort truth and rewrite history.

Let us look at just a few of the 'Middle East myths' - of which some of us may be guilty.

MYTH: ISRAEL IS PERFECT.

Israel does make mistakes, and is not perfect either in policy or practice.

War is brutalising. If after some suicide attack Israel does nothing then it is interpreted as a sign of weakness which thus exacerbates the problem. So soldiers and tanks go into a Palestinian area to seek to apprehend the terrorists or take some punitive action. Imagine the thoughts and feelings of the young soldiers who know that a few days before a crowd of teenagers etc have been terribly injured or killed by a Palestinian, what is their frame of mind? Others too, many of whom are young men of only 19 or 20, are understandably tense, afraid and insecure.

This is not to excuse brutality, but to recognise that it can become part of the conflict. Degrees of injustice seem to be endemic in war.

As regards Israel's past and present actions, some would seek to justify everything Israel has done, not least as regards the Palestinian people, but this arises from an unrealistic outworking of a desire to support Israel. Israel has made, and does make, mistakes. However it must be clearly said that compared with the behaviour of other nations, including our own, Israel has an exceptional record for justice and restraint in war, and in helping other peoples.

What then is the bottom line determining our attitude to Israel and our support? It is the character of God and the faithfulness of God which includes the grace of God.

Israel is a divine parable, yet to be worked out in history, of the final preservation of all the people of God. If Israel's blindness and sin could separate her from the love and covenant faithfulness of God, then the assertion of Romans 8:35 "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" would fall to the ground. Hence Paul says concerning Israel: "For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11:29)

MYTH: THE NEWS MEDIA GIVES A FAIR COVERAGE OF EVENTS IN ISRAEL ·

Why does the media not remind the whole world that this war was initiated by Yasser Arafat, who in September 2000 initiated the Intifada as the Palestinian response to Israel's offer to give them 98% of what they asked for ? ·

Why does the media not highlight the fact that Israel only targets known terrorists and those responsible for or planning acts of terror, but the Palestinians attack innocent men, women and children going about their daily lives? ·

Why does every news report begin with what Israel did in response, instead of first reporting what the Palestinians did to initiate Israel's reaction? ·

Why does almost every news report start with how many Palestinians have been killed, instead of how many Israelis have been killed ? ·

Why does the media usually only report that Israeli 'people' have been killed, but when Israel mistakenly kills Palestinian children, it is highlighted over and over that they were children? As an example, there was an attack on an Israeli education centre recently and five 'people' were killed. But they weren't just 'people' - they were school-age Jewish teenagers. ·

Why are Palestinian fighters called 'Palestinian Policemen' when they are really the Palestinian army?

MYTH: JESUS WAS A PALESTINIAN

It is claimed that the Palestinians are descendants of the original Canaanites inhabiting the land, and Palestinian Christians are descendants of the original Christians of the New Testament. Yasser Arafat has further claimed that Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian. These would seem mildly amusing were it not for the fact that they represent a programme to erase the Jewishness of Jesus and lay a claim to the Christian sites in the Land.

MYTH: THE MYTH OF 'PALESTINE'

"Palestinians" have never been a distinct people and they have never had a sovereign land called Palestine. Jerusalem has never been their capital, there is no Palestinian language or culture, and there is no Palestinian people. It is a myth created after the Jews liberated Jerusalem in 1967.

Before the birth of the State of Israel, Arab leaders themselves denied the existence of an Arab country called Palestine. In 1937, Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi said, "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. 'Palestine" is alien to us; it is the Zionists who introduced it."

The British Palestine Royal Commission reported in 1937 that "it is time, surely, that Palestinian 'citizenship' . . . should be recognized as what it is, as nothing but a legal formula devoid of moral meaning." (Palestine Royal Commission Report, Command Paper 5479,1937, p. 120, para. 14) In 1946, a distinguished Princeton professor and Arab historian said, "There is no such thing as Palestine in Arab history, absolutely not."

All who lived in the Land, Jews, Arabs, and Christians, were called Palestinians. In fact, the Jerusalem Post was called the Palestine Post.

Events have moved on since the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and there is now a people who, for whatever reason, now desire a national identity as 'Palestinians'. However it should be clearly recognised that the idea of a 'Palestinian state' is a relatively recent political manoeuvre, and has no historical basis.

MYTH: THE MYTH OF A PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

There have always been some Arabic people (who refused to call themselves Palestinians because the Jews were so named) living in the land, as there have been Jewish people. The mass immigration of Arabs and others including Egyptians, Bosnians, Syrians, Lebanese and others from adjacent lands took place in the 1930s and 1940s, drawn by the employment opportunities created by Jewish immigration and development of the land. The general impression given in the media is that Palestinians have lived in the Holy Land for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

In spite of the historical evidence, the media has succeeded in implanting the idea that there is a people called the Palestinians. No wonder then that a recent poll of French citizens shows that the majority believe (falsely) that prior to the establishment of the State of Israel an independent Arab Palestinian state existed in its place. In fact, no independent Arab state ever existed in the geographic area Arabs call Palestine. Nor was there ever, throughout human history, a country called Palestine. The last independent state to exist in the region, prior to the establishment of the modern State of Israel in 1948, was the ancient Jewish State of Judea 2000 years ago. (www.israelinsider.com/views/articles/views_0240.htm Jan 2002)

MYTH: ISRAEL CREATED THE ARAB REFUGEE PROBLEM

As a result of the 1948 war, which was launched by Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon against Israel, 820,000 Jewish refugees fled from the Moslem Arab states to Israel. Of these Jewish refugees, whose land and money had been confiscated by the Arabs, 590,000 were absorbed in the fledgling new state and became productive citizens of Israel.

At the same time 630,000 Palestinian refugees fled the conflict for their neighbouring countries, but in contrast, these were confined to camps, by Arab and PLO leaders as political pawns, fomenting terrorism. (yoramtex@netvision.net.il)

The causes of the Arab flight as refugees is complex. There were some Israeli expulsion orders. In other cases they were encouraged to flee by the Arab leadership, although the Jewish authorities encouraged them to stay. There is convincing evidence from Arab sources to support the conclusion that the signal for mass exodus was given by the rich and respected Arabs, and even by the Arab leaders themselves who then left, leaving their people leaderless. The Palestinians were forced to flee because the Arab armies abandoned them, rather than that they were ordered from their homes. The great majority of Arabs were not expelled by the Jews but left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. (See The Claim of Dispossession by Arieh Avneri Chap 13)

On September 6, 1948, the Beirut Daily Telegraph quoted Emil Ghory, secretary of the Arab Higher Committee as saying: "The fact that there are those refugees is the direct consequence of the action of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agreed upon this policy unanimously..." (http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/quotes.html)

In March 1976, PLO spokesman Abu Mazen wrote in the PLO's journal Falastin a-Thaura, "Arab armies entered Palestine to protect Palestinians from Zionist tyranny but, instead, they abandoned them, forced them to leave their homeland, threw them into prisons similar to [Jewish] ghettos."

The Jordanian daily al-Urdun, for April 9th 1953, quoted a refugee saying their leaders were to blame for the capture of Palestinian villages "because of the dissemination of rumours exaggerating Jewish crimes, describing them as atrocities in order to inflame Arabs. [Instead] they instilled fear and terror into [their] hearts… until they fled, leaving homes and property to the enemy."

On June 8, 1951, Habib Issa, secretary-general of the Arab League, wrote in the New York Lebanese daily al-Hoda that in 1948, Azzam Pasha, then League secretary, had "assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and of Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade... Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property, and to stay temporarily in neighbouring fraternal states."

Another refugee told the Jordanian daily a-Difaa, Sept 6, 1954: "Arab governments told us, Get out so we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in."

The London Economist Oct 2 1948 reported: "There... were announcements made over the air by the Arab Higher Executive urging all Arabs in Haifa to [leave]; it was clearly intimated that Arabs who remained and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades."

Even K. al-Azem, Syria's 1948 Prime Minister, in his 1973 memoirs declared, "We brought destruction on a million Arab refugees by pleading with them to leave their land." (www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/quotes.html) Finally, from a British diplomat who visited Gazaan refugees: "But while they express no bitterness against Jews they speak with utmost bitterness of Egyptians and other Arab states: We know whoour enemies are, they say referring to their Arab brothers who persuaded them unnecessarily to leave their homes" (British Foreign Office Document). (Collection of historical quotations relating to Arab Refugees, Moshe Kohn, IMRA, 29 Dec 2000)

MYTH: ISRAEL IS OCCUPYING ARAB LAND

The world media are constantly referring to Judea and Samaria and Gaza as 'occupied Arab lands' or 'Palestinian lands occupied in 1967'. Even East Jerusalem is referred to as 'occupied Arab land'. The current Saudi initiative, which has received wide international support, has as one of its conditions for peace with Israel, Israeli withdrawal from 'occupied Arab land'. These areas should however correctly be described as 'disputed territories' rather than 'occupied territories'.

Constant reference is made to UN Resolution 242 (22 November 1967) in support of this demand. Israel entered and occupied Judea, Samaria and Gaza in response to a war of aggression by Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

The first point emphasised by this Resolution is the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." Some people read Resolution 242 as though it ends here and proves the case for requiring a total Israeli withdrawal from the territories. On the contrary, this clause does no such thing, because the reference clearly applies only to an offensive war. If not, the resolution would provide an incentive for aggression. If one country attacks another, and the defender repels the attack and acquires territory in the process, the former interpretation would require the defender to return the land it took. Thus, aggressors would have little to lose because they would be insured against the main consequence of defeat.

The most controversial clause in Resolution 242 is the call for the "withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict." It should be noted that this is linked to the second clause calling for a "termination of all claims or states of belligerency" and the recognition that "every state in the area" has the "right to live in peace within secure and recognised boundaries free from threats or acts of force." The resolution does not make Israeli withdrawal a prerequisite for Arab action. Moreover, it does not specify how much territory Israel is required to give up. The Security Council did not say Israel must withdraw from "all the" territories occupied after the Six-Day war. This was quite deliberate. The Soviet delegate wanted the inclusion of those words and said that their exclusion meant "that part of these territories can remain in Israeli hands." The Arab states pushed for the word "all" to be included, but this was rejected.

The literal interpretation was repeatedly declared to be the correct one by those involved in drafting the resolution. On October 29, 1969, for example, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Caradon, who as British UN Ambassador at the time introduced the resolution to the Council, told the House of Commons that the withdrawal envisaged by the resolution would not be from "all the territories."

When asked to explain the British position later, Lord Caradon said: "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial." Similarly, the UN Ambassador at the time, former US Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg explained: "The notable omissions - which were not accidental - in regard to withdrawal are the words 'the' or 'all' and 'the June 5, 1967 lines'....the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal."

The resolutions clearly call on the Arab states to make peace with Israel. The principal condition is that Israel withdraw from "territories occupied" in 1967, which means that Israel must withdraw from some, all, or none of the territories still occupied. Since Israel withdrew from 91% of the territories when it gave up the Sinai, it has already partially, if not wholly, fulfilled its obligation under 242.

The Palestinians are not mentioned anywhere in Resolution 242, except in the second clause of the second article, which calls for "a just settlement of the refugee problem." Nowhere does it require that Palestinians be given any political rights or territory. In fact, the use of the generic term "refugee" was a deliberate acknowledgement that two refugee problems were products of the conflict - one Arab and another Jewish. In the case of the latter, almost as many Jews fled Arab countries as Palestinians left Israel. The Jews, however, were never compensated by the Arab states, nor were any UN organisations ever established to help them. (www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00p40; www.us?israel.org/jsource/UN/meaning_of_242.html)

MYTH: A PALESTINIAN STATE WILL LEAD TO PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

On March 12th the UN Security Council passed a U.S. drafted resolution referring for the first time to a Palestinian state existing side by side with Israel.

The 14-0 vote, with Syria abstaining, marked the first time the 15-nation council had approved a resolution on the Middle East since October 2000 and was the first text in recent memory touching on the troubled region to be written by Washington.

Although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has publicly accepted the concept of a Palestinian state he has said that it must be of a specified character. "If such a state is established by agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, if it's demilitarised, if it's not a hostile base of terror and particularly if it's the end of the conflict between the Jews and Arabs once and for all, most people in Israel feel they have no problem with such a Palestinian state." (Ha'Aretz Wed. March 13, 2002)

The truth may be otherwise.

On the official Fatah website we find the following statement: "A legitimate Palestinian entity forms the most important weapon that Arabs have against Israel." (www.fateh.net/e_editor/01/311201.htm - March 2002)

The same day that Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles on September 13th 1993 on the White House lawn, he spoke the following words on Jordan TV: "Since we cannot defeat Israel in war we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."

The idea is not new. In 1977 Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council said: "Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel....". (Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977)

MYTH: THERE IS NO JEWISH CONNECTION WITH THE TEMPLE MOUNT

We discover that Jerusalem is mentioned over 800 times in the Bible. There are 657 references in the Old Testament and 154 references in the New Testament. Yet, Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran. And there is no reason that it should be because Mohammed never went to Jerusalem. In Mohammed's lifetime, Jerusalem was outside the sphere of Islam.

In spite of Arab propaganda to the contrary, the Temple Mount is not sacred to Islam. The Temple Mount is the focus of Islam only when it is not under Moslem control. Jordan controlled East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from 1948-1967. During that time, no Arab leader thought it important to make Jerusalem an Arab capital and no significant leader from the Arab world thought it necessary to come to pray at the mosque. It was only in 1967, when the Jews liberated the Temple Mount from Arab control that it became the "third holiest site in Islam."

"The Al-Buraq [Wailing] Wall is part of the Al-Aqsa [Mosque]. I tell this to foreign reporters who refer to the Al-Buraq Wall as Jewish [property] because Jews call it the 'Wailing Wall'. We stress that the Al-Buraq Wall belongs to the Muslims alone. This is not my personal view, but rather, that of Islam." (Friday sermon of 12 June 1998 at Al-Aqsa mosque by Sheik Iqrima Sabri, the Palestinian Authority-appointed Mufti of Palestine and Jerusalem)

Yasser Arafat is among those Arab leaders making the incredible suggestion that there was never a Jewish Temple at the site. "Until now, all the excavations that have been carried out have failed to prove the location of the Temple," he claims. "It is 30 years since they captured the city and they have not succeeded in giving even one proof as to the location of the Temple."

MYTH: ISLAM IS A RELIGION OF PEACE

Reporting on Dr Carey's recent visit to the Gulf states, the Church of England Newspaper for 9th November, 2001 quoted him as saying, "We are not regarding Islam as responsible for the events of September the 11th. We must destroy that link once and for all and focus on what happened.... Let's get religion out of it."

During a lecture at an Islamic Cultural Centre he said that inter-faith dialogue was not an option but a necessity. Praising Mohammed as a great religious leader whose influence on millions has been for the good, Dr Carey acknowledged the gentle and compassionate aspects of Islam.

It is noteworthy that in the same edition of this newspaper a report on violence against the Christian community in Indonesia stated that an eight year-old boy was dragged from his mother and carried off into the jungle by Islamic militants. Hundreds of buildings, including homes and churches, have been burnt to the ground as the militant Islamic group Laskar Jihad conducted their campaign against the Christian communities of the Moluccas and Sulawesi.

The report concluded by saying that the leader of the Laskar Jihad recently criticised Muslims who seek peace and reconciliation with Christians. He declared that Laskar Jihad's war will not cease until Muslims can celebrate their festival of Eid in all the Christian areas of the country.

The number of myths and distortions relating to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict seems endless.

NOT POLITICAL BUT SPIRITUAL

Ultimately we must recognise that the conflict is not political or military but spiritual. We can only be thankful that some of Israel's spiritual leaders called Israel to a day of prayer and fasting for March 13th, in which some Jewish people in this country also joined, as well as Christians. A London based Jewish rabbi affirmed to us also that the real battle is spiritual - even though the majority fail to recognise it. The Jerusalem Post carried an article on July 26th 2001 saying that "it is time for advocates of Israel to reconsider an unfortunate taboo that has taken hold in recent years, one that has weakened Israel's position and requires a thorough reassessment: 'Thou shalt not mention in public the Biblical right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.'

In 1937, when David Ben-Gurion appeared before the British Peel Commission, established to investigate the situation in the British-controlled Mandate of Palestine, he vigorously defended the Jewish people's right to the Land of Israel, asserting that 'the Mandate is not our Bible - the Bible is our mandate.'" (Jerusalem Post June 16th 2001)

This spiritual battle of myths and facts will be met by the God of Israel rising up to vindicate His own Name and to deliver His people. Those who love the God of Israel are called to both speak out in Church and society, and at the same time to call upon God for his intervention, knowing that God's ultimate purpose is to bring salvation to both Arab and Jewish peoples.