A SHORT HISTORY LESSON

The War Against Israel - Melanie Phillips
People assume Israel itself was an artificial creation resulting from Holocaust guilt, when a load of European Jews were transplanted into a land owned for millennia by Palestinian Arabs. That itself is false. Israel was the nation state of the Jews centuries before the Arabs took it by force, and an unbroken Jewish presence remained in Jerusalem and other cities, some of which, indeed, had a Jewish majority. It is not surprising that people with perfectly decent instincts are enraged by the continued "occupation" of the West Bank. But they have been led to believe something that is not true.

For a start, Israel's occupation of this territory is perfectly legal and legitimate as an act of self-defense, after a war of aggression against it in 1967. But at a deeper level still, the idea that Israel had no locus in this territory until 1967 is simply false. This West Bank land was never owned by the Palestinians. Following the war of extermination waged by the Arabs against the fledgling Israel at its creation in 1948, Judea and Samaria - as they then were - were illegally occupied by Jordan, and became "the West Bank" as a result. Furthermore, and even more significant, Judea and Samaria were part of Mandatory Palestine, within which Britain was enjoined to re-establish a Jewish national home. Hebron, for example, is one of the four most sacred Jewish cities. Jews lived there continuously for some 38 centuries - Abraham settled there some 1800 years before Christ - until they were driven out by an Arab pogrom in 1929. To be told that Hebron is a place where Jews have no claim is therefore nauseating beyond belief.

It is very important that people come to understand that Israel's core claim is one of justice, and the way this has been misrepresented is profoundly unjust. Indeed, it is monstrous. There are those who believe that the vilification of Israel is a prejudice which is not susceptible to reason. I beg to differ. Much of this madness is based on profound ignorance. Only when people are taught the truth will the big lie finally be nailed. (www.melaniephillips.com)