More on the War of Semantics

From Michael Medved's Media Distort Mideast Debate who illustrates why words can be as powerful as bullets:-

Careless language, reflexively recycled from Palestinian propaganda, contributes to contemporary confusion about the stalled Middle East peace process...Major media, for instance, regularly cite Israel’s “creation” in 1948—as if the Jewish state came into existence like an oddball lab experiment—through a sudden, arbitrary top-down process...

Commentators also frequently mention the “displacement” or “uprooting” of Palestinians, suggesting that the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland resulted in ethnic cleansing of the indigenous inhabitants...

...Israel was no more “created” in 1948 than the United States was created in 1776...when Israeli leaders declared their own independence in 1948, it represented a culmination of their nation-building efforts, not their initiation...This nation in formation also managed to defend itself against murderous Arab riots in 1921, 1929, 1936, and 1939...

Greater care and clarity in describing the history of the conflict will encourage policymakers and the public to grasp its essential contours, and to recognize the absence of any real equivalence in the goals or strategies of the two sides.

...Nor did these efforts in any way “uproot” or “displace” Palestinian society. During the years of intensive immigration between World War I and World War II, the Jewish population west of the Jordan increased by 470,000 while the non-Jewish population swelled by 588,000. According to respected British census figures, the number of Palestinian Arabs exploded on the eve of Israeli independence, increasing 120 percent between 1922 and 1947. These figures prove that the rise of the Jewish state (with its greatly heightened economic development) drew more Palestinians into the area, rather than driving them away.

Palestinians became refugees only after fighting began in the War of Independence, especially after five Arab states with well-equipped armies invaded the fledgling Jewish state, pledged to achieve its total annihilation...

...the Palestinian leaders themselves (led by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, a close Hitler ally during the war) rejected the U.N. partition and made no effort to set up a Palestinian state, either before or after the War of Independence. Between 1949 and 1967, Arabs (the Egyptians and Jordanians) controlled every inch of territory that Abbas now seeks for his new state—all of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. They could have established a Palestinian homeland at any point during those 18 years and, incidentally, continued denying Jews any access to their holy sites. With scant protest from Palestinians, the Arab states made no effort to “fulfill the promise” because they concentrated all their attention and effort on destroying Israel rather than building Palestine. They cared far more about expelling Jews than they did about re-settling Palestinians.

...The success of propagandistic distortions leads to odd reactions from the West, which saw Israeli housing projects in Jerusalem as a greater threat to peace than Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza, worrying far more about Jewish building than about Arab bombing.

...Greater care and clarity in describing the history of the conflict will encourage policymakers and the public to grasp its essential contours, and to recognize the absence of any real equivalence in the goals or strategies of the two sides...

Good summary.

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