Lisa Terracina Rosenberg

So people keep going back to “Israel invaded the land” and “Israel stole the land” and “Nakba-this” and “Nakba-that” and all sorts of other stories about why they justify Oct 7 and why Israel is in the wrong. Let’s clear a few things up. The land that is now Israel was lived in by both Muslims and Jews for a long time. If you want to get technical about who was there first, it was the Jews. How do we know this for a fact? Well, first of all, Jews have been around for about 2000 years longer than Muslims. Not enough for you? OK. How about the fact that the word “Israel” is mentioned in the Quran about 43 times. Palestine? Never once. Jewish people have been around longer than Muslim people have – fact. Jewish people were living in the place where Israel is much longer than Arabs have – also fact. In about 1250 BCE, the Jewish people went to what was then called Canaan – where Israel sits today. This is when they escaped slavery in Egypt, and wandered the dessert for 40 years. 1250BCE. About 1860 years before the founding of Islam. Fast forward to modern times. 1940s. Yes, there were both Arab-Muslims and Jews living on the land that is now called Israel. And yeah, there was fighting. On both sides. After the Holocaust, the push for the Jewish people to have their own country intensified. During WWII, too many countries turned their backs on Jews. A Jewish homeland would ensure that Jews always had somewhere to go. There could never be another Holocaust, another ethnic cleansing of Jews. Additionally, the UK was tired of dealing with all the fighting in the British Mandate of Palestine (what Israel was called before it was Israel), and wanted to wash their hands of it. So what did they do? They offered to split the land amongst the two groups living there. The Arab-Muslims and the Jews. Sounds fair, right? Each could have their own State, completely autonomous. Pretty good deal, wouldn’t you think? I think it was a good deal. The Jews thought it was a good deal. Do you know who didn’t think it was a good deal? The Arab-Muslims. Do you know why? Because they didn’t want the Jews to have anything. So the day after Israel became a nation, the Arabs attacked. 5 Arab nations attacked, in what would be known as the Arab-Israeli war. Do you know what else it became known as? The Nakba. Nakba for catastrophe. Because they lost. The Arab world says it’s because Arabs were displaced. But they chose to be displaced. Because they chose not to accept their own nation. They left. They ran away. Because they thought the Jews would lose and they'd be able to go back. The Arabs have been fighting ever since. At some point in time in the 1960s, the Arab-Muslims who were trying to claim Israel as theirs, started to refer to themselves as Palestinians. Land has been offered. A Palestinian state has been offered. All that the Palestinians had to do, was accept Israel’s right to exist. To stop attacking and trying to destroy them. Why don’t the Palestinians have their own State? Because they refuse to. They refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Muslim nations in this world, take up 29.13 million square km. Israel is 21,671 square km. Jews have 0.1% of the land that Muslims have. And according to the Radicalized Muslims, that’s too much. This isn’t about the land. This is about Radicalized Muslims not wanting Jews to exist.