The wide acceptance in the world of the Zionist narrative is based on a cluster of mythologies that, in the end, cast doubt on the Palestinians’ moral right, ethical behavior, and the chances for any just peace in the future. The reason is that these mythologies are accepted by the mainstream media in the West, and by the political elites there, as truth. Once accepted as a truth, these mythologies become a justification not so much for the Israeli actions, but for the West’s inclination to interfere.
Listed below are ten common myths that have provided an immunity and a shield for impunity and inhumanity in the land of Palestine.
Myth 1: Palestine was a land without people, waiting for the people without land
The first myth is that Palestine was a land without people waiting for the people without land. Its first part was successfully proved to be false by a number of excellent historians who showed that before the arrival of the early Zionists, Palestine had a thriving society, mostly rural but with a very vibrant urban center. It was a society like all the other Arab societies around it, held under Ottoman rule and part of the empire, but nonetheless one which witnessed the emergence of a nascent national movement. The movement would probably have turned Palestine into a nation-state like Iraq or Syria, had Zionism not arrived on its shores.
The second part of this mythology is also doubtful, but less significant. Several scholars, among them Israelis, doubted the genetic connection between the Zionist settlers and the Jews who lived during Roman times in Palestine or who were exiled at the time. This is really less important, as many national movements create artificially their story of birth and plant it in the distant past. The important issue, however, is what you do in the name of this narrative. Do you justify colonization, expulsion, and killing in the name of that story, or do you seek peace and reconciliation on its basis? It does not matter whether the narrative is true or not. What matters is that it is vile if, in its name, you colonize, dispossess, and in some cases even commit acts of genocide against indigenous and native people.
Myth 2: Palestinians resorted to acts of terror against Jewish settlers prior to the creation of Israel
The second foundational mythology was that the Palestinians, from early on, resorted to an anti-Semitic campaign of terror when the first settlers arrived and until the creation of the state of Israel. As the diaries of the early Zionists show, they were well received by the Palestinians, who offered them abode and taught them in many cases how to cultivate the land. It was only when it became clear that these settlers did not come to live next to or with the native population, but instead of it, that the Palestinian resistance began. And when that resistance started it was no different from any other anti-colonialist struggle.
Myth 3: Myths around the creation of Israel
Myth 3a: Palestinians are to be blamed for what happened to them because they rejected the UN Partition Plan of 1947
Myth 3b: Palestinians left their homes voluntarily or as a result of a call by their leaders
Myth 3c: Israel was a David fighting an Arab Goliath
Myth 3d: After its war of creation, Israel extended its hand for peace to its Palestinian and Arab neighbors
The third myth is set of Israeli fables about the 1948 war. There are four foundational mythologies connected to this year. The first was that the Palestinians are to be blamed for what occurred to them since they rejected the UN partition plan of November 1947. This allegation ignores the colonialist nature of the Zionist movement. It would have been unlikely that the Algerians, for instance, would have accepted the partition of Algeria by the French settlers—and such a refusal would not be deemed unreasonable or irrational. What is morally clear is that such an objection, in the case of any other Arab country, should not have justified the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians as a “punishment” for rejecting a UN peace plan devised without any consultation with them.
Similarly absurd is the myth that the Palestinians left their homes voluntarily or as a result of a call by their leaders and those of the neighboring Arab states, supposedly to make way for the invading Arab armies that would come to liberate Palestine. There was no such call—this myth was invented by the Israeli foreign minister in the early 1950s. Later Israeli historians changed the mythology and claimed that the Palestinians left, or fled, because of the war. But the truth of the matter is that half of those who became refugees in 1948 had already been expelled before the war commenced, on May 15, 1948.
Two other mythologies associated with 1948 are that Israel was a David fighting an Arab Goliath and that Israel, after the war, extended its hand for peace, to no avail, as the Palestinians and the Arab rejected this gesture. The research on the first proved that the Palestinians had no military power whatsoever. On the second point, the Arab states sent only a relatively small contingent of troops to Palestine, and they were smaller in size and far less equipped and trained than the Jewish forces. Moreover, and highly significant, is the fact that these troops were sent into Palestine after May 15, 1948, when Israel had already been declared a state, as a response to an ethnic cleansing operation that the Zionist forces had begun in February 1948.
As for the myth of the extended hand of peace, the documents show clearly an intransigent Israeli leadership that refused to open up negotiations over the future of post-Mandatory Palestine or consider the return of the people who had been expelled or fled. While Arab governments and Palestinian leaders were willing to participate in a new and more reasonable UN peace initiative in 1948, the Israelis assassinated the UN peace mediator, Count Bernadotte, and rejected the suggestion of the Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC), a UN body, to reopen negotiations. This intransigent view would continue; Avi Shlaim has shown in The Iron Wall that, contrary to the myth that the Palestinians never missed an opportunity to miss peace, it was Israel that constantly rejected the peace offers that were on the table.
Myth 4: Israel was a benign democratic state prior to 1967
The fourth mythology is that Israel was a benign democratic state, seeing peace with its neighbors and offering equality to all its citizens, before the June 1967 war. This is a myth propagated, alas, by some notable Palestinian and pro-Palestinian scholars—but it has no historical foundation in facts. One-fifth of the Israeli citizenry was subjected to ruthless military rule based on draconian British mandatory emergency regulations that denied them any basic human and civil rights. Within this period more than fifty Palestinian citizens were killed by the Israeli security forces. At the same time, Israel pursued aggressive policies towards its Arab neighbors, attacking them for allowing refugees to try to return or at least to retrieve their lost property and husbandry. In collusion with Britain and France, Israel also tried to topple Gamal Abdel Nasser’s legitimate regime in Egypt.
Myth 5: The Palestinian struggle has no aim other than terror
The fifth myth is that the Palestinian struggle is that of terrorism and nothing more. The struggle led by the PLO was a liberation struggle against a colonialist project. Somehow the world finds it difficult to grant legitimacy to anti-colonialist struggle when most of the oppressed are Muslims and the oppressor is Jewish.
Myth 6: Israel was forced to occupy the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, and must hold these territories until others are ready for peace
The sixth myth is that the 1967 war forced Israel to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and keep them in custody until the Arab world, or the Palestinians, are willing to make peace with the Jewish state. The Israeli political and military elite regarded the 1948 war as a missed opportunity: