Opinion & Commentary:

Stewardship of the truth is our responsibility

By Debbie Israel

When we were younger, we used to read biographies and autobiographies about historical characters. We played with presidential statues and coloring books and the game "Landslide" (about presidential elections). We memorized the order of the kings and queens of England, the beginning and ending dates of all the wars the U.S. participated in, and other historical trivia.

Our mother is a mystery buff. She loves to read mystery novels. She introduced my brother and me to a book by Josephine Tey called "The Daughter of Time". I think my mom may have been one of the only people who knew what this would lead to.

"The Daughter of Time" is about the English King Richard III. The real Richard III was nothing like the Shakespearean version.

In order to make his claim to the throne more palatable to the people who remembered Richard III as a good and kind man and courageous leader, Henry VII (the king who killed and then succeeded Richard III) needed to rewrite history and make it seem as though Richard III was the most evil man ever to wear the crown as King of England. It is this distorted version that Shakespeare portrayed in his politically expedient but inaccurate play "Richard III".

But my brother and I had learned at an early age that history is written by the victors. We learned world history from the general secular perspective, in which the Crusades are portrayed as a great religious quest, 1492 was the year Columbus sailed to the "New World" and Francisco Franco was an evil fascist leader who oppressed his people. But from a Jewish historical perspective, the Crusades were an excuse to kill Jews and steal their money and property, 1492 was the year the Jews were exiled from Spain, and Franco was the ruler of a Spain who gave refuge to Jews during the Holocaust.

So it should come as no surprise to me that people like Jimmy Carter and Pat Buchanan are rewriting history to blame the victim. It should come as no surprise to me that college students are falling hook, line, and sinker for Islamist propaganda.

In about 135 C.E., after the Jewish revolt was crushed, the Romans took over Jerusalem after destroying the second Temple. They renamed the southern portion of the West Bank Palaestina. This name stayed with the area that was still home to Jews even after the mass exile. Islam, by the way, didn't appear until 500 or so years later.

For quite a bit of the time from the end of the Roman rule of Israel to the British rule, the land that is now Israel, that the Romans called Palaestina, was under the rule of various non-Arab Turks. In the 16th century, when the land of Israel was under Turkish rule, the Sultan allowed Gracia Naci (also known as Hanna Mendes), a former converso born in Portugal and very influential in the Jewish community and with the Turkish government, to found the city of Teveria (Tiberius).

The British won Palestine (the name derived by Westerners from Palaestina) from the Ottoman Turks in World War I. It was the British who passed the Balfour Declaration. In 1948, the area that was supposed to go to the Jews was split into two with about two-thirds of the land becoming Transjordan (which is now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) and one-third becoming Israel, a Jewish country.

Israel accepted this, but the Arab residents of British Palestine did not. They attacked Israel and the new country was forced to defend itself, which it did. But the Arab attackers told the Arab people living in this area to leave their homes so that the Arab nations could destroy Israel. So these people left their homes voluntarily.

It is the leaders of the Palestinian Arabs who have kept them as refugees, not the Israeli government. It is the leaders of the Palestinian Arabs who have kept them in poverty, squandering the billions of dollars given to them yearly on terrorism and weapons (and the leaders' own Swiss bank accounts).

So what is the moral of this story? Firstly, remember that "Palestine" has never been an independent country and that the "Palestinian people" are not the descendants of an ancient nation called "Palestine". The coins and stamps that were from "Palestine" were the coins and stamps of the Zionists who were building a Jewish nation (not country) in the area labeled Palaestina by the Romans and Palestine by the British (and other European countries throughout the years of the Common Era). Secondly, do not believe everything you read in a newspaper or book and do not believe everything you hear on the TV/radio news. Thirdly, try to learn from history. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler by handing land over to him on a silver platter. This didn't work because people like Hitler will never be appeased. So why are we making the same mistake with the Palestinians? We handed over Aza (Gaza) for nothing. And how do they reward us for our generosity? Are they using this land to build homes and schools and an infrastructure for their people? No, they are using the land to lob missiles on communities like Sderot.

It is our responsibility to be the standard bearers of the truth. It is our responsibility to see to it that our friends and neighbors understand the truth. It is our responsibility to pass on a world where the next generation of Jews and Americans can live in freedom and enjoy the gifts of liberty that the United States has given to us. It is our responsibility to protect this world from historical revisionism and outright lies. And if we take on this job, we may be able to defeat the enemies of peace, freedom, and tolerance.

Debbie Israel is a graphic artist (see https://www.cafepress.com/compugraphd2 for some of her work) and tutor living in Highland Park.