There are many historical myths related to the Palestinians promoted by anti-Zionist forces. Without these myths, many of the pro-Palestinian narratives crumble and Zionist positions are strengthened.
Myth 1: European Jews were settlers who migrated to the land of Israel at the end of the 19th century, displacing Arabs who had resided there for centuries.
After the Crusades had driven Jews out of Israel, they quickly reentered, creating four long-standing communities. In the 1850s, Jews were the majority of the Jerusalem population.
THE GAZA GENOCIDE LIE HAS BEEN DEBUNKED BY AN UNLIKELY SOURCE
In addition, the 19th century saw substantial Arab migration from Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, and Czarist Russia to areas that became known as “Palestine.” Moreover, during the Mandate period, a large number of Arabs from the West Bank moved to the coastal areas for economic opportunity. They married women from their home villages and often went back there to help during harvest season. Thus, a large share of Arabs who fled in 1948 did not have long-standing ties to the areas that became Israel.
Myth 2: Palestinian nationalism is deeply rooted, going back at least a century.
However, before the British Mandate began in 1920, there was no Palestinian entity within the Ottoman Empire. Indeed, the clan system dominated Arab village life. Only in the largest cities was there political consciousness and it was overwhelmingly pan-Arabist. Palestinian nationalism doesn’t really begin until the 1960s.
Myth 3: Nationalism grew substantially when the 1936-39 Revolt unified the Arab populace.
This was central to the recent film, “Palestine” 1936. The Grand Mufti led this revolt, though he is never mentioned in the film. His focus was not an independent state but to eliminate any further Jewish migration. Indeed, during the first stage of the revolt that terminated at the end of 1936, attacks on Jewish settlements were more numerous than attacks on British installations.
That the revolt was overwhelmingly in response to the increasing Jewish presence is reinforced by the Grand Mufti’s actions during the yearlong lull in fighting when the British agreed to set up the Peel Commission. It recommended a Jewish state on 12% of the land with a Palestinian state on 80%, and Jerusalem remaining under British control. However, as long as there was even a miniscule Jewish state, the Grand Mufti rejected it.
When the Woodward Commission extensively toured the land of Israel seeking responses to the proposal, the Grand Mufti’s allies began killing Arab leaders who were open to the proposal. They announced, “Those who go to meet the commission should bring their shroud with them.” The historian Hillel Cohen estimates that his allies killed 1,000 Arabs whom the Grand Mufti feared would support the Peel partition plan. While Arabs renewed the revolt, they were no longer unified. After fleeing the land of Israel, the Grand Mufti worked with the Nazis during WWII, and when he returned to Egypt in 1947, he was anointed by the Arab League as the political leader of the Palestinian people.
Myth 4: Zionists were able to defeat the Arabs in the 1948 war because of superior military equipment provided by the U.S. and Soviet Union.
The first six months of conflict were a civil war as foreign Arab armies waited until the British left on May 15th. The Arab League initiated the Arab Liberation Army and appointed its leader, Fawzi al-Qawuqji, a Lebanese-born pan-Arabist who had also fought with the Nazis.
Given how the Grand Mufti had alienated many with his past efforts to silence opposition, many local Arab communities sought to reach accommodations with the Zionists. As a result, historian Ilan Pappe estimated local Arabs made up as little as 10% of the ALA volunteers. Without a supportive local population, one that would supply manpower and materials, the ALA suffered from inadequate supply lines, making sustained campaigns impossible in most cases. These shortcomings were the primary reason for Zionist successes during the civil war period as they had yet to receive any armament from abroad.
Myth 5: The Zionists faced five invading armies.
Almost immediately, Lebanon refused to send fighters as both the Christian and Shiite communities in southern Lebanon had favorable relationships with neighboring Zionist communities. Due to his antagonistic attitude toward the Grand Mufti and his designs on the West Bank, Jordanian King Abdullah was unwilling to participate fully in the war. In particular, the British-trained legion under Jordanian control chose not to enter areas that the UN had assigned to the Jewish state and so remained throughout the war in the West Bank and Jerusalem areas.
The Iraqi troops, after an initial rebuff by the Sea of Galilee, also chose to remain in the West Bank. And the Syrian forces were weakened when their Druze contingent, after some defeats, disbanded with many joining Israeli Druze in fighting in a non-Jewish contingent of the Zionist army. Thus, only the Egyptians and a weakened Syrian force confronted the Zionists in the areas that became the Israeli state.
Myth 6: The Nakba (Catastrophe) has always meant the 1948 Arab refugees.
No, when coined by Constantin Zureiq, a leading Palestinian intellectual, it meant the catastrophe of having any Jewish state on Arab lands. Hillel Cohen reported that in 1958, the Nakba was commemorated by radio stations of the United Arab Republic, calling on the world’s Arab and Muslim states to hold a symbolic five minutes to mourn the establishment of Israel without any mention of the Arab refugees.
The meaning only changed in the 1990s when Arafat, in order to forestall a two-state solution, made the right of return a central demand.
Robert Cherry is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, professor emeritus at Brooklyn College, and a member of the 1776 Unites campaign.