DE BORCHGRAVE: The specious and the specific

Why is a Palestinian state, at least on the Internet, a bridge too far? This quickly becomes clear in the blizzard of factoids that circumnavigate the globe in nanoseconds. The latest barrage (from an anonymous Christian university professor) asks for 1.5 seconds of your time —

(1) Israel became a nation in 1312 BCE (Before Common Era), 2,000 years before the rise of Islam.

(2) Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

(3) Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BCE the Jews have had dominion over the land for 1,000 years with a continuous presence in the land for the last 3,300 years.

(4) The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 CE (Common Era) lasted no more than 22 years.

(5) For more than 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

(6) Jerusalem is mentioned more than 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

(7) King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Muhammad never came to Jerusalem.

(8) Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.

(9) Arab and Jewish Refugees: In 1948 Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier.

(10) The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

Another 10 points, a blend of information and disinformation, follow. The Arabs also dish it out with the same lethal mix of horse sense and bull feathers. Imams and mullahs use their Friday sermons that are then amplified by Al Jazeera, the global television network were the villains are, more often than not, Israel and the United States.

Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, on his popular Al Jazeera television program, called on Muslims to boycott Starbucks, and implored Allah “to take this oppressive, Jewish band of people … and kill them, down to the very last one.”

The 82-year-old sheik’s “history” lesson has the Islamic countries receiving the Jews with open arms when they were “banished from Europe… but they turned their backs on us and we have become their victims.

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