Purging Jewish history by Elizabeth Berney July 1, 2009 http://thejewishstar.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/opinion-purging-jewish-history/ In George Orwell’s classic, “1984,” the ruling totalitarian regime ensures its power by re-writing history. Documents evidencing real past events are thrown down “memory holes,” presumably to be incinerated. Israel’s enemies use the same revisionist propaganda tool. The PLO Charter declares that “claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history,” and that Palestinian Arabs’ “material, spiritual, and historical connection with Palestine are indisputable facts.” The still unchanged Fatah Constitution states that “the Israeli existence in Palestine is a Zionist invasion…” The Hamas Charter likewise refers to Israel as a “Zionist invasion” and claims that “Palestine has been a Islamic Waqf throughout the generations.” These historical fabrications are used to call for violently eradicating Israel. Arab Palestinian revisionist history obliterates the most basic facts about Israel’s Jewish history from ancient times onwards - including Jewish Biblical rulers, King Solomon’s building of the first Temple (957 B.C.E.), the 50-year Babylonian exile and return of Jews to Israel to build the Second Temple (538 B.C.E.), the Maccabean era and revolt, the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.), the Bar Kochba revolt (135-132 C.E.), and the writing of the Mishnah, Jerusalem Talmud and other religious works in Israel (200-1000 C.E.). A portion of the Jewish people always remained in Israel throughout the millennia, and Jews constituted the majority of Jerusalem’s population from the 1800s until today. Jews who returned to Israel from the diaspora and purchased swamps and desert wastelands from absentee Turkish owners and redeveloped the land; most Arabs moved in afterwards. Jews living in ancient communities such as Hebron for centuries were murdered in Arab pogroms in the 1920s and 1930s. Although the Balfour Declaration (1917) and League of Nations San Remo conference (1920) promised a Jewish State in the British Mandate, 78 percent of the British Mandate in which a Jewish state was to be created was carved out and given to Jordan. Alarmingly, from day one, the Obama administration has adopted what is essentially Arab Palestinian revisionist history: Islam and Islamic nations are glorified; Jewish history has been thrown down a “memory hole,” and Jews are viewed as “invaders” of “Palestinian” Arab land. In Cairo, Obama ignored the historic connection of the Jewish people to Israel, instead claiming that the aspiration of Jews to have a home in Israel was “rooted” in the European Holocaust, and blamed the establishment of the State of Israel for the “dislocation,” “suffering,” and “humiliation” of Palestinians. Obama’s Cairo speech was part of an extremely disturbing pattern. When Obama took office, apparently a modern-day version of Orwell’s history re-writers and expungers quietly revised the U.S. State Department’s official descriptions of the countries of the world on the department’s public website. The website now glorifies Muslim nations’ thousands-of years long histories, language, archeology, and contributions to science, culture and poetry - and has completely eliminated millennia of Israel’ s history, language and contributions to culture, science and the world. The U.S. Department of State thus far has not responded to my requests (including a Freedom of Information Act request) for a copy of the 2008 pre-Obama State Department website descriptions of Israel and Muslim nations, which I sought in order to confirm the recent changes. However, there is little doubt that the Obama administration re-wrote the country descriptions. In September 2008 a State Dept. report referred to Israel as the historic homeland of the Jewish people - which the current administration and State Department website refuse to acknowledge. Moreover, the website now mirrors the Muslim glorification language found in numerous Obama speeches. For instance: “Iran has always reasserted its national identity and has developed as a distinct political and cultural entity,” and, “Saudi Arabia is known as the birthplace of Islam.” Ancient cultures which lived in Saudi territory over a 5,000-year period, and the Saud family’s rise and fall several times from 1750 onwards are described. By contrast, the official U.S. State Department description of Israel’s history starts just a little over 100 years ago, with efforts “initiated” by Theodore Herzl for a sovereign homeland for Jews “in Palestine.” The State Department gives absolutely no indication that a single Jew ever lived in Israel prior to recent decades, or that Jews remained in Israel throughout the millennia. None of the numerous archeological sites left by Israel’s ancient Jewish inhabitants are mentioned. Instead, the State Department leaves the false impression that the region was a Palestinian entity and then suddenly Herzl came up with the idea of inserting a Jewish state. Simply put, the State Department blackout of Israel’s history assists the fraudulent Palestinian narrative. In addition, in contrast with glowing descriptions of Muslim countries’ cultures and languages, the State Department’s official description of Israel never mentions the ancient Hebrew language or Israel’s historical (or recent) cultural, religious, poetic, artistic and scientific contributions to the world. Unlike their rare Arab counterparts, Israel’s prominent Nobel laureates are never mentioned. The State Department description of the “people of Israel” also promotes the false claim that Jews are usurpers of the land who all originate from outside of Israel: “The three broad Jewish groupings [in Israel] are the Ashkenazim, or Jews who trace their ancestry to western, central, and eastern Europe; the Sephardim, who trace their origin to Spain, Portugal, southern Europe, and North Africa; and Eastern or Oriental Jews, who descend from ancient communities in Islamic lands.” The real “origin” and “ancestry” of Sephardim, Ashkenazim and Eastern Jews - namely, dispersed Jews who had lived in Israel in past eras - is not mentioned. The State Department also neglects to mention that today’s “people of Israel” includes Jews whose ancestors lived in Israel through thousands of years of turmoil and persecution. Moreover, the State Department’s mention that Israel’s people includes Jews who “originated” in Arab lands does not explain that 870,000 Jews came to Israel as refugees from Arab lands; having fled for their lives in the face of Arab persecution, including Iraqi laws which made “Zionism” punishable by death; burnings of synagogues and hundreds of Jewish homes in Syria; pogroms in Baghdad, Morocco and Yemen; and expulsions of Jews from Egypt, Yemen and Libya. By contrast, the State Department frequently describes people in Muslim lands as “Palestinian refugees” and greatly exaggerates the number of individuals who might conceivably qualify for Palestinian refuge status. Jordan’s people are claimed to include “approximately 1.7 million registered Palestinian refugees;” Syria’s people “some 500,000 Palestinian… refugees;” and Lebanon “about 400,000 Palestinian refugees, some in Lebanon since 1948.” In fact, there were only approximately 600,000 Arabs living in Israel prior to 1948 - and many of them remained in Israel as Israeli citizens. The U.S. State Department country histories also speak of “Palestinian nationalists” long before “Palestinian nationalism” existed. The State Department’s history of Jordan states that: “Transjordan was one of the Arab states which moved to assist Palestinian nationalists opposed to the creation of Israel in May 1948, and took part in the warfare between the Arab states and the newly founded State of Israel.” However, the Palestinian Liberation Organization was first created in 1964, and first called for the creation of a Palestinian state in 1974. Prior to 1974, the stated Arab goal was simply to destroy Israel; after 1974 the goal changed to destroying Israel and replacing Israel with a Palestinian state. Orwell noted: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” It’s time to let President Obama know that his administration’s efforts to control the future by distorting and blacking out Israel’s and the Jewish people’s past are unacceptable.