Viewpoint:

Debunking the BDS Myths

SAMUEL SHRAGO

This past Monday, Rami Faraj authored an article titled An unsafe campus climate, in
which he dismissed the barrage of insults targeted at pro-Israel students and death threats
received by CSG officials. He went on to accuse Jews (codeword: Zionists) of theft:
you have taken our lands, taken our rights, and are now taking our seats in classrooms.
These accusations are based on gross distortions of historical facts. Sadly, they also
manifest an underlying philosophy of hatred and intolerance, which seems to be a
common trait running throughout the Arab world hatred of Sunnis or Shiites or
Christians or Hindus or Jews or any human being who does not subscribe to a particular
set of beliefs.

For centuries, there has always been a Jewish presence in Israel, particularly in the holy
cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safad, and Ashkelon
1,2
. This was long before the Romans
conquered Judea and renamed it Palestine to dejudaize it
3
. Contrary to Mr, Farajs
assertions, the Jews of the First and Second Aliyot (1882-1903 and 1904-1914) lawfully
and openly purchased land from Arab landowners
4,5,6
. They fertilized what was said to
be non-arable land, established peaceful Kibbutzim and were happy to employ hundreds
of Arabs looking for work.
7


Aggressive wars initiated by Arab countries that vehemently rejected the two state
solution in 1937
8,9
, 1947
10
, 2000
11,12,13
and 2008 not only took land from the Palestinians,
but also created the first and second refugee problems
14,15,16
. Jordan (like Egypt) actually
rescinded citizenship of all its refugees
17,18,19
, ultimately leaving Israel to absorb the
refugee crisis created by their wars. Jordan even booted the PLO out of Jordan several
years after the 1967 War
20
. Even today, the catastrophic war in Syria another Arab war
that Mr. Faraj ignores even though it is right in our faces and has created (and continues
to create) enormous human suffering has given rise to a massive refugee problem for

1
Palestine Royal Commission Report (Peel Report) (London: His Majestys Stationary Office, 1937), pp. 44-45
2
The research of a French geographer, Vital Cuint are relied on for this conclusion. Quoted in Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial
(Chicago: JKAP Publications, 1984), p. 156.
3
Clayton Miles Lehmann, Palestine, http://www.usd.edu/erp/Palestine/history.htm
4
Buber to Gandhi, quoted in Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1997), p. 464
5
Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens, eds., Blaming the Victims (London: Verso, 2001).
6
Benny Morris, Righteous Victims (New York: Vintage Books, 2001), p. xiv.
7
A. Druyanow, Ketavim Letoldot Hibbat Zivyon Ve-Yishshuv Erez Yisrael (Odessa, Tel-Aviv, 1919, 1925, 1932), vol. 3, pp. 66-67.
8
Ibid., p. 394-395.
9
Ian Bickerton and Carla Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2002), p. 56
10
Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (Hoboken, N.J., 2003), p. 65.
11
Ibid.
12
Faisal Bodi, Israel Surely Has No Right to Exist, The Guardian, January 3, 2001. This view is also reflected in the Palestinian
National Covenant of 1968.
13
Morris, p. 219.
14
Ibid., p. 214.
15
Dershowitz, p. 79.
16
Ibid., p. 204.
17
Peters, p.16
18
Abu Mazen Charges that the Arab States are the Cause of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2003.
19
Peter Dodd, River Without Bridges (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1969), p. 43; as quoted in Peters, p. 445 n. 21.
20
Dershowitz, p. 89
Turkey. The suffering of Palestinian Muslims has been the direct result of actions by
tyrannical leaders of the Arab states which have practiced discrimination against
Palestinians for decades and which have used the conflict in the Middle East to divert the
attention of their own subjects from the sorry state of their own condition.

In contrast, Israel has treated its Muslim and Christian residents in a manner that would
be unheard of in Arab states. Indeed, Muslim residents of Israel vote and serve as
members of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament), justices on the Supreme Court and
soldiers in the army. Palestinian students comprise 20% of Israeli university students and
many pursue successful careers in medicine, law and business. If Mr. Faraj still believes
in a mythical Israeli plot to debase the status of Palestinians, he is welcome to contact the
Technion Medical Schools valedictorian of 2013, Mais Ali-Saleh, a Muslim Palestinian
woman and staunch opponent of BDS.

Israel has gone to great lengths to reach an agreement with the Palestinians on a two-state
solution. Not too long ago, that proposal was rejected by the Palestinian leadership under
Yasser Arafat
21,22,23
(who stole many millions of dollars from the Palestinian people and
deposited the money in offshore bank accounts for the benefit of his family
24,25
), which
then embarked on an intifada against Israel that accomplished nothing but misery that has
been disproportionately borne by the Palestinians
26
.

Mr. Farajs claim that the Jews do not qualify as an oppressed people is, in a word,
absurd. Perhaps he should study a little bit of modern European history and become
acquainted with the activities of Adolf Hitler. His actions were the subject of open trials
at Nuremburg and caused displacement, torture and execution of millions of human
beings. Or perhaps Mr. Faraj should focus on the openly hostile and violent
discrimination practiced by Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims and vice versa and the
executions of, and destruction of property belonging to, Christians and Buddhists in
places like Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, Libya and Syria. How many millions of human
beings have died because of this hatred and intolerance over the last 30 years in wars with
Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria? This is a very clear historical record of hatred,
intolerance and yes, discrimination, but these facts inconveniently require Mr. Faraj and
the BDS movement to look in the mirror.

21
Dershowitz, pp. 110-111.
22
Phyllis Chesler, The New Anti-Semitism (John Wiley & Sons, advance proof), p. 117.
23
Karen Bichard, Hep B Case Makes Suicide Bombers an Infection Risk, Medical Post, MacLean Hunter Ltd., September 10, 2002.
24
Tricia McDermott, "Arafat's Billions." CBS News. CBS Interactive, 07 Nov. 2003. Web.
25
"Arafat Diverted $900 Million to Private Account, IMF Says." Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, n.d. Web. 08 May 2014.
26
Alan Dershowitz, Why Terrorism Works (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 9.79. Khaled Abu Toameh, How
the War Began, Jerusalem Post, September 20, 2002.