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It is hard to tell Israel's story these days. In writing any article for this site I try to document my sources carefully. Nevertheless, sometimes people dismiss the article without even looking at the sources. It's in support of Israel, therefore it must be biased, is what I sometimes hear. It is hard to change a mind that is already made up.
The Palestinian Disinformation Campaign has been very successful at implanting an image of the conflict in people's minds that is difficult to overcome. It is the image of the Palestinian as victim, as heroic underdog waging a "resistance" against Israeli settlements and against a "brutal occupation." The Arabs have invested billions of dollars - far more than Israel has at its disposal - into public relations, and has successfully created a popular image that is close to a complete reversal of the truth.
The truth is that this war is not a war against settlements or against occupation. It is a war against the existence of Israel. It is a genocidal war, because its aim is the complete destruction of Israeli society and the murder and expulsion of the Jewish population.
In many other articles I have tried to support this position with facts, logic, and references to current events. This feature is a little different. For those who are not inclined to believe Israel's supporters when they tell this story, here we will allow the Arabs to speak for themselves. In their own words they will tell us what this war is really all about and what their intentions really are.
We will not be relying merely on the opinions and sentiments of individual Palestinians, but on material from official sources, including government newspapers and TV broadcasts and statements by political and religious leaders. Expressions of mutual hostility by isolated individuals are easy to find; there is much of it on both sides. But only on the Arab side do we find a calculated and officially supported strategy to liquidate the other community.
Two basic points will emerge: first, this is not just a war against Israel but a war against the Jewish people, and second, its goal is not peaceful coexistence in two separate states but the complete destruction of Israeli society.
I will now step aside and allow the Arabs to tell us through these official sources what their intentions are. If the world at large will not believe the Israelis, maybe it will believe the Arabs.
"Thanks to Hitler, blessed memory, who on behalf of the Palestinians, revenged in advance, against the most vile criminals on the face of the earth. Although we do have a complaint against him for his revenge on them was not enough."
- Columnist Ahmad Ragab in the Egyptian Government Daily Al-Akhbar, April 18, 2001.
"Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine and is therefore a strategy and not tactics."
- Article 9, The Palestinian National Covenant, 1968 (never rescinded).
"We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem.... All the rich Jews who will get compensation will travel to America.... We of the PLO will now concentrate all our efforts on splitting Israel psychologically into two camps. Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.... You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State.... I have no use for Jews; they are and remain Jews. We now need all the help we can get from you in our battle for a united Palestine under total Arab-Muslim domination!"
- Yasser Arafat, "The Impending Total Collapse of Israel" (address to 40 Arab diplomats at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden), January 30, 1996.
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Boasting with bloody hands: After the murder of two Israeli reservists.
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Two Israeli reservists who made a wrong turn into Ramallah were murdered by a Palestinian crowd inside the PA police station where they sought shelter. The Palestinians celebrated the killings (see photo).
In a sermon broadcast live on Palestinian TV the next day, Dr. Ahmad Abu-Halabia, a member of the "Fatwa Council," appointed by the Palestinian Authority, urged:
“The Jews are Jews, whether Labour or Likud, the Jews are Jews. They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They are the ones who must be butchered and killed. As Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them.' Allah will torture them by your hands and will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers....
"Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Whenever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them - and those who stand with them - they are all in one trench, against the Arabs and the Muslims - because they established Israel here, in the beating heart of the Arab world, in Palestine."
- Dr. Ahmad Abu-Halabia, Friday Sermon, Zayd bin Sultan Nahyan mosque in Gaza, October 13, 2000.
"The PLO's aim is not to impose our will on the enemy, but to destroy him in order to take his place... not to subjugate the enemy, but to destroy him."
- Filastin al-Thawra (official weekly magazine of the PLO), June 1968. (Cited in Barry Rubin, "The Terror and the Pity: Yasir Arafat and the Second Loss of Palestine," Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 6 no. 1, March 2002.)
"The Return of all the refugees to Palestine will mean that we are again bringing up the solution of the full liberation [of Palestine] from the sea to the river."
- Yasser Abed Rabbo, former Palestinian Minister of Information and Culture and chief Palestinian negotiator of the Geneva Accord, in defense of the Geneva Accord, Al-Hayat (London), January 18, 2004. (Reported by Middle East Media Research Institute.)
"All the weapons must be aimed at the Jews, Allah's enemies, the cursed nation in the Koran, whom Allah describes as monkeys and pigs, worshipers of the calf and idol worshippers.... Nothing will deter them except the color of blood in their filthy nation...unless we blow ourselves up, willingly and as our duty, in their midst....
"May Allah make the Muslim rule over the Jew. We will blow them up in Hadera, we will blow them up in Tel-Aviv and in Netanya, so that Allah will make us masters over this riff-raff. We will fight against them and rule over them until the Jew will hide behind the trees and stones and the tree and stone will say: "Muslim! Servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, kill him." We shall enter Jerusalem as conquerors, and Jaffa as conquerors, and Haifa as conquerors and Ashkelon as conquerors...."
- Dr. Muhammad Ibrahim Madi, Friday Sermon broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV, August 3, 2001.
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
Peace with Realism