ISRAEL  & JERUSALEM:  SOME HISTORIC FACTS

by Brian Gill
(No Date)

(1)  Israel became a state in 1312 BC – two millennia before Islam. 

(2)  Arab refugees from Israel began calling themselves “Palestinians” in 1967, two decades after (modern) Israel became a sovereign state. 

(3)  After conquering the land in 1272 BC Jews ruled it for one thousand years and maintained a continuous presence there for 3,300 years. 

(4)  The only Arab rule following conquest in 633 BC lasted just 22 years. 

(5)  For over 3,300 years Jerusalem was the Jewish capital. It was never the capital of any Arab or Moslem entity even under Jordanian rule when they occupied East Jerusalem. It was not declared their capital and no Arab leader ever visited it. 

(6)  Jerusalem is mentioned 736 times in the Bible but not once is it mentioned in the Koran. 

(7)  King David founded Jerusalem; Mohamed never set foot in it.

(8)  Jews pray facing Jerusalem; Moslems face Mecca. Moslems are between the two cities. Moslems pray facing Mecca with their backs to Jerusalem. 

(9)  In 1948 Arab leaders urged their people to leave, promising to cleanse the land of the Jewish presence. 68% of them fled without setting eyes on an Israeli soldier. 

(10)  Virtually the entire Jewish population resident in neighbouring Moslem states totalling some one million Jews were forced to flee as the result of violence and pogroms. All their assets were confiscated and no compensation has ever been paid. 

(11)  Some 650,000 Arabs chose to leave Israel in 1948 while the one million Jewish refugees were gradually integrated into Israeli society. 

(12)  By contrast and in spite of the vast territories at their disposal, Arab refugees were deliberately prevented from being assimilated into their host Arab countries and instead were concentrated in refugee camps to be used as political pawns in the Islamic fight against Israel.  Of the 100 million refugees displaced following the Second World War, the Arab refugees from the erstwhile region of Palestine were the only ethnic group to have never been integrated by their co-religionist neighbours. In the case of the Jewish refugees from Europe and the Middle East Arab nations, the majority were settled in the new state of Israel, a land no bigger than New Jersey or Wales.   In this context it should be remembered that Britain in 1922, unilaterally and contrary to its mandate, gave away 78% of the Jewish homeland, granted under the Balfour Declaration and ratified by the League of Nations, to what is now the state of Jordan. To its shame Britain took this action to pacify Arab hostility towards Jewish immigration at that time. It failed and to this day Jordan and its Moslem neighbours refuse to assimilate their co-religionist Palestinian Arabs. 

(13)  There are 22 Moslem sovereign states. There is only one Jewish state. Arab nations started all five wars against Israel and lost every one of them, subsequently demanding that the United Nations call upon Israel to give up territory gained or recovered from Jordan’s occupation of East Jerusalem and lands to the west of the River Jordan now known as the West Bank – Judea & Samaria. 

(14)  Fatah & Hamas constitutions still call for the destruction of Israel. As a peace overture Israel ceded most of the West Bank and all of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority and even provided it with arms for its embryonic police force. 

(15)  During the Jordanian occupation Jewish holy sites were systematically vandalised and were put off-limits to all Jews. Under Israeli rule all Moslem & Christian holy sites are accessible to people of  any and all faiths. 

(16)  Out of 175 U.N. Security Council resolutions up to 1990, as many as 97 were against Israel; out of 690 U.N. General Assembly resolutions as many as 429 were against Israel. 

(17)  Israel is the only member state which is denied a seat by rotation on the U.N. Security Council. 

(18)  The U.N. was silent when the Jordanians destroyed 58 synagogues in the old city of Jerusalem. It also remained silent while Jordan desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives and it remained silent again when Jordan enforced apartheid laws preventing Jews from accessing the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall.

These are indeed trying times and we must ask ourselves what we should be doing and what we should tell our children and grandchildren about our actions and especially Britain’s actions from 1920 to the present time and most especially during the British Mandate period which ended in 1948, when we had the chance to make a difference! 

Britain’s policy of appeasement was and continues to be shameful. 

It is not too late to repent, to seek forgiveness and to act by lobbying our church and political leaders.