May 15, 2008
How to answer the most common anti-Israel charges
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Israelis are also victims. The Palestinians would have had a state long ago if they had truly accepted Israel's right to exist and put down their arms. Israel was willing to give back nearly all the land it took in the 1967 War for peace. It accepted the U.N. Partition Resolution, gave back all of the Sinai Peninsula without an agreement after the 1956 Sinai War, and negotiated a return of the Sinai again after the Yom Kippur War for peace with Egypt. Israel withdrew from some areas of the West Bank, as well during the Oslo period. Consistently, in good faith, Israel has withdrawn from territory it took in wars forced upon it for nothing more than the promise of peace.Having said this, despite Israel's official policy and principles based on respect for human rights, there have been human rights violations against Palestinians. Israel is a democracy and those violations are usually addressed. The Israeli Supreme Court even reversed a decision of the Israeli government upon an appeal by Palestinians (represented by Israeli Jewish lawyers) who claimed that the security fence cut unfairly and unnecessarily through their land.
In contrast, the Palestinian Authority has a history of corruption and denial of human rights as a matter of policy. The PA, for example, executed nine Palestinians without trial in the last several years on charges of "collaboration" with Israel, and arrested five more on similar charges. Israel does not have the death penalty (except in the case of genocide -- only Adolph Eichmann has been executed by a civilian Israeli court in all the years of Israeli statehood), and even Palestinian terrorists guilty of the most heinous offenses are never executed.
John L. Rosove is senior rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood and president of ARZA for the Pacific Southwest region. This guide was prepared by Rabbi Rosove including material taken from the Internet and in consultation with professors Adam Rubin (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion, Los Angeles) and Michael Meyer (HUC-JIR, Cincinnati) and "Myths and Facts: 1985" (prepared by the Near East Report).
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