Media Do Hamas' Dirty Work, Claim Israel Is Killing 'Protesters.' That's A Lie. By BEN SHAPIRO @BENSHAPIRO

On Monday, in an attempt to depict America’s decision to open its embassy in Jerusalem as a provocative act of incitement, Hamas-backed terrorists attacked the Gaza border en masse, seeking to harm Israeli soldiers and invade Israeli territory. Israeli soldiers were forced to respond, and some 50-plus Palestinians have now been killed. The media dutifully reported the Hamas line, suggesting that Israel was to blame for the violence against “protesters.”

Take, for example, this Washington Post headline: “Israelis kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza protesting US Embassy move to Jerusalem.” This makes it sound as though a bunch of peaceful protesters gathered in Gaza for a sit-in. Not so much. The same article quotes one of the “protesters,” 23-year-old Mohammed Mansoura: “We are excited to storm and get inside. … Whatever is possible, to kill, throw stones.” The New York Times similarly headlined, “Israeli Troops Kill Dozens of Palestinian Protesters.” The Wall Street Journal headlined, “Scores Killed, Thousands Injured as Palestinians Protest US Embassy Opening In Jerusalem.” That same article acknowledged, however, that “Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, which controls the territory, suggested last week that more than 100,000 people could storm the fence on Tuesday. Israeli military officials say it has information that Hamas is using the protests as a pretext to stage an attack into Israel. Earlier in the morning Israel’s military dropped leaflets over Gaza warning residents not to approach the border.”

Organizers of the “protests” are telling demonstrators that they should attempt to burst through the border fence, and lying that Israeli soldiers were “fleeing their positions.” According to the Jerusalem Post, “Some 35,000 Palestinians were reported by the IDF as taking part in violent protests at 12 different locations along the fence, throwing stones, explosive devices, and Molotov cocktails at the fence and IDF troops, burning tires, and other burning objects with the intention of setting fires in Israeli territory. The Jerusalem Post witnessed at least six incendiary kites, with two setting fires in fields near Kibbutz Nahal Oz.” At one outpost, Palestinians laid an explosive device. The IDF spokesman, Ronen Manelis, says that Hamas is paying families to protest, and that Hamas was planning to use the protests as cover to abduct soldiers.

As always, Hamas and other terrorist groups hide their terrorists among civilian populations in an attempt to portray Israeli troops as targeting civilians. That’s untrue. Israel has utter air and ground superiority — if it wanted to kill protesters en masse, there would be no logistical problem in doing so. Israel stringently attempts to protect civilians on both sides.

All of which prompted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to respond:

Benjamin Netanyahu

✔@netanyahu

לכל מדינה החובה להגן על גבולותיה. ארגון הטרור חמאס מצהיר שבכוונתו להשמיד את ישראל ושולח אלפים לפרוץ את גדר הגבול כדי לממש מטרה זו. נמשיך לפעול בנחישות כדי להגן על ריבונותנו ואזרחינו

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This translates roughly this way: “Each country must protect its borders. Hamas' terrorist organization states that it intends to destroy Israel and send thousands to breach the border fence to realize this goal. We will continue to act firmly to protect our sovereignty and our citizens.”

The media’s willingness to do Hamas’ dirty work in distributing their propaganda is horrendous. These are not protesters being killed. These are rioters attacking a sovereign nation’s border and attempting to harm its soldiers. To cover them as peaceful protesters merely hoping to spread flower power is a lie, and a lie on behalf of one of the world’s worst terror organizations.

College students learn Israel advocacy

Rabbi David Eliezri uses a video of a Muslim student protest to teach college students from around the country to stand up for Israel.

The video shows Muslim students on the University of California's Irvine campus in February 2010 shouting anti-Israel epithets at guest speaker Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States.

Produced by the international pro-Israel organization StandWithUs.com, the video is a vehicle for Rabbi David Eliezrie to engage students from college campuses throughout the United States in an Israel advocacy exercise during Chabad's National Jewish Retreat at the Hyatt Regency Bonaventure in Weston.

Eliezrie, director of the North County Chabad Center in Yorba Linda, Calif., said he was at the Irvine campus event and spoke with Oren several times throughout the evening.

Oren continued to try to talk until the students, many of whom were from the university's Muslim Student Union, were taken out of the room and arrested or walked out in protest. He finally was able to speak to the audience.

"This event caused a convulsion in our Jewish community," Eliezrie said. "How should the Jewish community respond? Maybe they should do nothing. Maybe the Jewish community should do to them what they did to us. Maybe we should demand the university suspend or expel the students."

There was a big debate, he said. "The Jewish community was shocked in Orange County. They felt vulnerable."

The university suspended the Muslim Student Union for three months and the local district attorney indicted 11 student organizers on charges of disrupting the peace.

"How do we express our support for Israel on campus" Eliezrie said. "Are we afraid of being too outspoken about Israel? A lot of times we're too afraid to bring the true issues to the front."

Students need to "flip the conversation," he said, and become more assertive.

"Go on the offensive," someone in the audience said.

"I think it's time for us to be a little more outspoken and put them on the defensive," Eliezrie said. And we need to ask "What connects us to Israel? What is the connection between us and the homeland of the Jewish people?"

The 11 students who organized the vocal protest, dubbed the "Irvine 11," were found guilty and given a sentence of community service, Eliezrie said. "The Jewish community was tested," he said. "A lot of the Jewish establishment groups were afraid to do the right thing."

The lesson, Eliezrie said, is people will respect you if you stand up, are assertive and have the self-respect to not run away.

Michael Lebovitz, 22, a junior at the University of Kansas, said the Muslim organizations and the groups that support them are neither active nor vocal. "They might not like Israel but they are not interested in starting any fights," he said. "Once we get that one student….We have to be prepared," Lebovitz said, and know arguments and strategies.

"I think he's right on the ball," Rabbi Vidal Bekerman said of Eliezrie's presentation. Bekerman, 35, is the Chabad rabbi at York University in Toronto where in February 2009 Muslim students barricaded Jewish students inside the Hillel and "verbally assaulted" them. Police escorted the students from building.

"We should totally reverse the discussion," Bekerman said. "When we're defending, the whole conversation is in their control."

Zionist response to Metro-North lying map ads As a response to the Metro-North ads showing the Map That Lies - which even the bankroller of the ads all but admitted were a lie - StandWithUs is placing a series of its own ads, starting next week.

STAND WITH US: Billboard Wars in New York

The anti-Israel billboard campaign has hit New York 

with 100 billboards placed throughout NY & CT Metro North train stations

As always, StandWithUs will respond, and the anti-Israel messages will not get a free pass. StandWithUs did the same thing in September 2011, when anti-Israel ads appeared in NYC subway stations. 

BACKGROUND

Throughout the United States, anti-Israel groups have put up billboards calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, claiming Israel stole Palestinian land and blaming Israel for the lack of peace. 

From Seattle to San Francisco and from Denver to Washington State and Washington, DC, these billboards are meant to demonize Israel and misinform the public. 

Last September, anti-Israel billboards appeared in the New York City subway system in Times Square, Penn Station, Columbus Circle, and more. Just last week, we found out that there were over 100 anti-Israel billboards spread throughout the Metro-North Railroad system in Westchester County.

Anti-Israel Billboard

In response, StandWithUs will put up its own informative pro-Israel billboards to set the record straight about the Jewish connection to Israel and to inspire people by educating them about how Israel makes the world a better place. The billboards will direct viewers to StandWithUs websites like www.onlyisrael.org andwww.sayyestopeace.org.

At StandWithUs, our goal is to strengthen Israel`s voice around the world. We have been doing this for 11 years, and now we have 15 offices in locations worldwide.

Reuters: It All Started When Israel Fired Back

Reuters headline claims that Israel broke the cease-fire while in reality Israel was responding to rocket fire. Article at http://tinyurl.com/cq4aheb. Click on "Contact Reuters"to complain. Watch HR presentation 'Defending Israel Against Claims of Excessive Force" at http://honestreporting.com/hot-topics/defending-israel-against-claims-of-exce...

IDF Spokeswoman's Message to Jewish Diaspora

Netanyahu: Dr. Who Fought Adura Libel - Israeli Hero

Middle East history – a distortion of the truth Andrew Tucker

Even those who aren’t particularly sympathetic to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview aired on the BBC during the Gaza crisis:
The interviewer asked him: “How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?”Netanyahu: “Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?” Interviewer: (Falling into the trap) Why not?

Netanyahu: “Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the war was caused by Germany’s aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children’s hospital, killing 83 little children. Perhaps you have another question?”

Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave another interview and was asked about Israel’s occupation of Arab lands. His response was, “It’s our land”. The reporter (CNN or the like) was stunned.

Journalist simply don’t know the history
The problem is that many journalists simply do not know the history of this piece of land, and are propogating a distorted view on the Middle East conflict.

Here are overlooked facts in the current & past Middle East situation. These were compiled by a Christian university professor:

SOME BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY… (It takes just 90 seconds to read!)

1. Nationhood and Jerusalem: Israel became a nation in 1312 BC, two thousand (2000) 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 (in 1948).

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC, the Jews had dominion over the land for one thousand (1000) years, and have had a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion over the land since the conquest in 635 lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 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 Jerusalem.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures.  Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Koran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never even came to Jerusalem.

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

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. No doubt the Jews, and individual Jewish soldiers, made mistakes during the war of Independence, and some Arab Palestinians suffered hardships. But it was war, and the fact is sixty-eight percent of the Arab refugees left (many in fear of retaliation by their own brethren, the Arabs), without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The Arabs who stayed were afforded the same peace, civil rights and citizenship in the new State of Israel as everyone else.

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab countries (Jordan, Syria, Egypt …) due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same or only slightly higher.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab countries to which they fled (Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt), despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own people’s lands. The Jewish refugees, on the contrary, were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by eight separate nations in the Middle East, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation.

14. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost.  Israel defended itself each time and won.

15. The PLO and Hamas Charters still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

16. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

17. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

18. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

19. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians in the period 1948 – 1967.

20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

These are incredible times.

Who can deny that we are living in those days?We don’t have to agree with or condone everything that Jews or Israel do. And we do have to recognize the miserable plight of the Palestinian refugees. But our attitude towards both the Jews and Arabs MUST at all costs be based on the truth. Without the truth, our supposed love will be misplaced.

What will we tell our grandchildren about what we did when there was a turning point in Jewish destiny, and we had an opportunity to make a difference?

Media Distort Mideast Debate; Renewed by the tensions between Netanyahu and Obama, the media are adopting misleading language in the Israel-Palestinian dispute. by Michael Medved

Careless language, reflexively recycled from Palestinian propaganda, contributes to contemporary confusion about the stalled Middle East peace process. In the wake of Bibi Netanyahu’s tense sit-down with President Obama, it’s worth examining how certain words and phrases distort the debate.

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, rather than emerging through gradual, bottom-up development, like every other new nation.

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—rather than recognizing the dramatic increases in the area’s Arab population due to the economic development and improved living standards that the new Jewish immigrants brought with them.

Both these mindless distortions appeared in the same sentence of an Associated Press report about bloody demonstrations on Israel’s borders on the weekend of May 15, described as “a sign of rising tensions on the eve of Palestinian commemoration of their uprooting during Israel’s 1948 creation” (italics added).

In truth, Israel was no more “created” in 1948 than the United States was created in 1776. The patriots who gathered in Philadelphia represented a robust, fully functional society with its own economic, political, educational, and even military institutions. They hardly assembled their new nation out of nothing, but looked back to a courageous history of growth, development, and self-defense that, for the oldest colonies, stretched back more than 150 years.

By the same token, when Israeli leaders declared their own independence in 1948, it represented a culmination of their nation-building efforts, not their initiation. More than 650,000 Jews already lived in a vibrant, dynamic, surprisingly cohesive civilization spread through several major cities (including the new metropolis of Tel Aviv, constructed on empty sand dunes in 1909) and scores of agricultural communities built on previously unoccupied land purchased from absentee owners. Intensive Jewish immigration began in the 1880s, more than two generations before independence, and produced distinctive political parties, labor unions, universities, newspapers, theater companies, and even symphony orchestras. This nation in formation also managed to defend itself against murderous Arab riots in 1921, 1929, 1936, and 1939, giving rise to the Haganah (“The Defense” in Hebrew), a militia that averaged 30,000 members over 30 years pre-independence, ultimately developing into the Israel Defense Forces. Like the Minutemen who gave rise to the Continental Army, these citizen soldiers fought a bloody struggle after formal independence, combating formidable foes determined to exterminate their new nation.

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.

President Barack Obama meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, May 20, 2011. (Charles Dharapak / AP Photo)

Israel, in other words, wasn’t created by the U.N., the U.S. (which observed an arms embargo and provided no aid during the War of Independence), or any other outside agency. The nation grew from the patient, incremental, organic efforts of the Halutzim (pioneers) who risked everything to build a homeland for themselves and their posterity.

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. Even then, in the midst of massive bloodshed and widespread violence, the Palestinian Arab population increased, rather than declining. In 1941, before Israeli independence and the claimed “uprooting” of Palestinians, 1,111,398 Arabs lived in what later became Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Nine years later, after the turmoil of war and dislocation, that number had risen (slightly) to 1,162,100. By 1980 (with Israel controlling all territory west of the Jordan), the Palestinian numbers had nearly doubled, and they more than doubled again by 2005. Most recent figures show that the Palestinian population of Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank has increased by more than fivefold since independence and the flight of the famous refugees—hardly evidence of some ruthless program of ethnic cleansing.

Unfortunately, anti-Israel propagandists choose to ignore these facts and to distort history with misleading and manipulative language. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recently wrote in The New York Times about the 1947 U.N. vote to partition the British Mandate into two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian. “Minutes after the State of Israel was established on May 14, 1948,” he notes, “the United States granted it recognition. Our Palestinian state, however, remains a promise unfulfilled.”

He neglects to mention that 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.

To this day, major Palestinian factions (like the unreconstructed terrorists of Hamas) ignore the challenges of nation-building to focus on the bloody dream of nation-destroying. Sloppy terminology serves to mask the core contrast between the Israeli agenda (peace and security) and announced Palestinian aims (replacing the world’s only Jewish state with a 23rd Arab Muslim state). 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. Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz formulated the contrast in stark but accurate terms: If the Palestinians put down their arms, there would be peace tomorrow. But if the Israelis lay down their arms, there would be genocide tomorrow.

Michael Medved hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio talk show heard by more than 4 million listeners. He is also the author of 12 nonfiction books, most recently The 5 Big Lies About American Business.

Ayalon Video Drives Palestinians Nuts

For far too long, Israeli diplomats have spent much of their time trying to avoid the basic arguments about the Middle East conflict. Rather than take every possible opportunity to hammer home the facts about why Israel is in the West Bank and the right of Jews to live there, the country’s foreign ministry has instead often concentrated its energies on smoothing over differences. It has also sought to avoid the arguments entirely with well-intentioned but largely pointless efforts to “brand” Israel in such a way as to make people think about pretty girls, beaches and scientific innovations.

But Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has ignored this convention and created a clever and informative six-minute  YouTube video answering the question of “The Truth About the West Bank.” This is driving the Palestinian Authority up the wall.

PA negotiator Saeb Erekat issued a statement last week claiming that by asserting Israel’s historical rights to the West Bank and debunking the conventional wisdom that claims the territory is “illegally occupied,” Israel is pursuing a “pro-conflict agenda.” Erekat went on to assert Ayalon’s video is filled with false information showing Israel is “denying the Palestinian people their inalienable right to self-determination.”

But all Ayalon does is tell the basic truth about the history of the last century. Israel did not capture the West Bank in 1967 from the Palestinians but from Jordan in a war of self-defense. Jordan had illegally occupied the area as well as half of Jerusalem in the course of its participation in a war to destroy the newborn state of Israel in 1948. Ayalon also says something that is indisputably true but almost never mentioned in the mainstream media: Jews were guaranteed the right of settlement in the West Bank by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.

To assert the Jewish state’s rights is not the same thing as saying Israel should never retreat from an inch of the West Bank. The borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state can only be determined by negotiations. But for too long, Israel and even most of its defenders in the United States have been so intent on trying to appear reasonable, they have appeared to concede the Palestinians’ false charge the land was stolen from them. That’s the problem for those who worry about the nation’s image and media coverage. If the West Bank is stolen property then it should merely be returned to its owners and not be a subject for talks. By rightly putting forth Israel’s claims, Ayalon is buttressing his country’s negotiating position, not undermining it.

So long as the Palestinians talk of rights and the Israelis speak of security, the Palestinians will win the argument every time. Thus, it’s no surprise Erekat and the Palestinians are so exorcised by Ayalon’s video. If it becomes, as it should, the model for a new Israeli diplomatic offensive, the deputy foreign minister’s mantra that the terms “illegal occupation” and “67 borders” are “simply not politically correct” will become an effective talking point for the country’s defenders.

Ayalon launches campaign to tell 'truth about W. Bank' - Deputy foreign minister asks YouTube video’s viewers to stop calling Judea and Samaria "occupied territories."

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon stars in a video released by his ministry on Thursday, in which he presents a historical narrative meant to help wage the public diplomacy battle.

The video, titled The Truth About the West Bank, was made in cooperation with the StandWithUs student NGO, by filmmaker Shlomo Blass of Rogatka Ltd, and director Ashley Lazarus.



In his day job, Blass works as the TV director for the Latma political satire website, which is best known for theWe Con the World video that lampooned the Turkish participants in the 2010 Gaza protest flotilla.

Blass also produced an online video called “Israel’s Critical Security Needs for a Viable Peace.” Created for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, it describes strategic arguments to keep the West Bank, and racked up hundreds of thousands of hits following Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s public disagreement with US President Barack Obama over making the June 4, 1967, lines the baseline for a peace deal.

Blass told The Jerusalem Post last week that the videos are important because these days “people don’t have the time to read long books and essays, and these clips do people a good service. If you can break down the arguments and make them interesting but still true, and put it forth quickly, it’s a real service for people.”

South African-born, Jerusalem-based director Ashley Lazarus, who has directed many commercials and documentaries in a career spanning decades, said that The Truth About the West Bank represented an opportunity for him to use his talent to aid Israeli public diplomacy.

“I come from outside Israel and I see the nightmare of publicity that is put against Israel and how very little counter-information is fed to the Jewry of the world... Suddenly the Foreign Ministry said here’s a chance to do something, and we’re open to counter these misperceptions in a contemporary way.

“Whichever angle you’re coming from in journalism, Israel faces enormous prejudice and criticism that is fueled by unbelievable PR and press-manipulation. It’s not a level playing field, and that’s why I got involved and I had to put my money where my mouth is,” Lazarus said.

When asked if the clip could be perceived as propaganda in that it features the deputy foreign minister, Lazarus said, “Stop right there, what is the legal point of view on the issues? The film can of course be perceived as propaganda, it’s still representing an official body of Israel and anyone who is prejudiced will jump all over it. But if you present it honestly and it’s based on fact, you might have some chance and some people might say this [the issue] is worth reconsidering.”

The six-minute video begins with a soundtrack of smooth jazz. Then Ayalon appears in front of an animated backdrop, and begins tackling the “very simple question” of from whom Israel conquered the West Bank.

He mentions how there was never an Arab state in the West Bank known as “Palestine.”

“Actually, was there ever [a state of Palestine]?” he then asks.

Ayalon then breaks down the timeline from the Balfour Declaration in 1917 through Six Day War, along the way discussing UN Security Council Resolution 242 that followed the 1967 war. It talks about how Jordan had “no legal justification” for holding the West Bank following the War of Independence, and how Israel’s giving up its claim to the East Bank of the Jordan River, promised under the Balfour Declaration, shows that “I guess you can’t say the Jewish people haven’t accepted some painful compromises already.”

Ayalon goes on to say there was never an international border on the Green Line and that a new legal definition is needed for the West Bank, arguing it should be considered a disputed area, like Western Sahara, Tunbs Island (controlled by Iran but claimed by the United Emirates) and Kashmir, among others.

“Israel’s presence in the West Bank is the result of a war of self-defense and should not be seen as occupied territory; because there was no sovereign body there before, it should be called disputed,” Ayalon says.

“Please, let’s stop using the terms ‘occupied territories’ and ‘’67 borders,’ they’re simply not politically correct,” Ayalon says.

The Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that the “concise, easy to follow video” is meant to explain “where the terms ‘West Bank’ ‘occupied territories’ and ‘’67 borders’ originated and how they are incorrectly used and applied.”

Ayalon’s office said that the video was meant to put forward Israel’s “long-standing but neglected position” ahead of the Palestinians’ attempt to have a unilaterally declared state recognized at the UN in September.


"For too many years, our public diplomacy has been mainly based on a ‘peace narrative,’ where Israeli officials talk about how much we are willing to concede for peace, while the Palestinian public diplomacy is all about supposed rights and international law,” Ayalon said.

“It is time for Israel to return to a ‘rights-based diplomacy’ and talk about the facts, rights, history and international law which are little known but give a dramatically different viewpoint to what is currently accepted.”

His office went for the online video format because “Israel’s case is harder to make in an era where context, background and history are less important than an image or a headline. Social media in general and YouTube in particular are major battlegrounds in the clash of narratives and public diplomacy. It is vital that a strong rights-based Israeli presence is seen and heard, especially for the YouTube demographics who are more interested in easy to digest explanations.”

The video will eventually be translated into a number of languages including Arabic, Spanish, French, Russian and German, and will be shown in “hundreds of schools and educational centers worldwide as part of their curriculum on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Ayalon’s office said.

The video bears a striking similarity to a video released by the YESHA council of Jewish settlements in May dealing with the same subject, entitled "The Territories: Who Do They Belong To?" The video has the same graphics and the script is almost exactly the same word for word.

That video was also produced by Shlomo Blass.

"The ministry saw it [the YESHA video] and said they wanted to do something similar to that, so we made some adaptations to it so that I would work for an audience that wasn't familiar with the same things as an Israeli audience," Blass said last week.

Even Israelis think I'm crazy By Chas Newkey-Burden

The fact that I support Israel despite not being Jewish seems to prompt a certain amount of curiosity and even suspicion. Particularly as I am not a Christian Zionist, nor an Islamophobe. Rather, I love Israel because… I love Israel. It might not be a common position but as far as I am concerned it should be. It is a sad indictment that a love of Israel is what confuses people when the real puzzle is surely hatred of Israel.

Nevertheless, the speculation is constant . One commenter shows up on my blog every few weeks to ask me: "So, how much are they paying you?" He also sometimes asks who it is that is paying me: "The Americans or the Jews?" The truth is of course I am not being paid a penny, shekel or a cent, for my Israel advocacy. It is done for love. But that's not exciting enough for some, and this anonymous guy still shows up (normally around pub closing-time I cannot help but notice) to broadcast his latest fiscal fancies.

There are other conspiracy theorists. A Christian chap from Nigeria has been warning me for years that a gang of rabbis is going to "forcibly convert" me. Sounds fun, but I'm still waiting. Despite Judaism not being a proselytising religion - unlike Christianity - this particular Christian promises he can "save me" from the Jews. Back in the real world, just the other week, a wonderful rabbi I was having tea with looked at me with a concerned expression on his face and asked: "I hope you're not hoping to convert?"

When I was invited to give a talk to a Jewish organisation about my love of and advocacy for Israel, one citizen of that country took me aside afterwards, looked deep into my eyes and said: "There is something I just have to ask you: what the heck does your mother think about all this?" Another Israeli was also curious about my mother: "How come you don't hate us like sensible people? Did your mum drop you on your head as a baby?"

I’m asked who pays me - the Americans or the Jews

I don't remember my mother ever dropping me, and as to what she "thinks about all this", well, when I recently began experimenting with facial hair, she announced that I suddenly "looked very Jewish".

You can see from the photo accompanying these words that, as far as there is any sort of "Jewish look" at all, I do not have it - however much or little fuzz I am sporting. Bless her, though, when I played an April Fool on my blog declaring that I had "converted to Judaism", she read the post, took it at face value and left a proud, congratulatory voicemail on my phone. When I phoned back to tell her it had been a joke, she did her best to laugh it off but I could hear a faint note of disappointment in her voice. Were any of these "forcible" rabbis to appear in real life, I don't think my mother would stand in their way.

Back to the hostile comments left on my blog, I find that the best way to respond is with a little creative imagination. Someone once left the comment under one of my posts: "I don't like Jews. Free Palestine!" To which I replied: "I don't like Jews-free Palestine either. It's so much better with Jews there." And that was the last I heard of him.

I wonder if his mum dropped him on his head as a baby?

Chas Newkey-Burden is an author of bestselling books and a radio pundit. He blogs in defence of Israel at OyVaGoy.com and is on the advisory boards of StandWithUs UK and Honest Reporting