I have always wondered about the many "arguments" against Israel (or for the "Palestinian cause") but I never could understand where they came from.

Surely the sources of the most-often-cited "arguments" have been discredited a long time ago and are now only believed by stupid illiterate people but not well-educated western students?

However, despite the fact that "Mein Kampf" and the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" are not accepted as factual in the west, lies about Israel are still believed and made up. And I wonder why.


Recently I was lucky enough, here in these forums, to see a common lie used as an argument and ask the person using it where he had it from. USUALLY such questions result in only insults but never a source. But this time the person in question was, ultimately, an honest debater (or thought he was) and gave me a source.

And that's when the big surprise hit me.

Here's the original argument:

"All I know for sure is the following, Palestinian settlements are bulldozed down and in their place Israeli settlements are built."

It sounds really bad, what with it being ethnic cleansing and all. Surely if Israel does such things, attacking Jewish kindergardens to stop it is justifiable?

And that Israeli practice appears to be the cause for the conflict, as the argument continues:

"Well quite simply because if a foreign goverment came into my town, bulldozed some buildings and built a settlement I'd be sure as hell willing to fight to take it back."

Is it not obvious that a terrorist group shooting rockets into a Jewish school is just trying to prevent the destruction of homes by the Israeli army?

But I asked for a source, and finally got a source, a BBC article on Israeli bulldozers:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1539426.stm

"Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into the Palestinian town of Jenin early on Wednesday and destroyed a police building."

This was in 2001 during the second Intifada, during a war.

I assume the BBC article is more or less correct, except for the fact that it uses the word "uprising" to describe the breaking of a peace treaty for some reason.

So it appears that the legend of Israeli ethnic cleansing, which is often used as an argument for why the Intifada started(!) is based on the destruction of a police station that happened DURING that Intifada.

But why do people make the jump from "bulldozing a police station" to ethnic cleansing? Why is it obvious to so many that Israel is guilty of ethnic cleansing to replace Arabs with Jews? Would the same people read any report about the destruction of a police station during a war as evidence for ethnic cleansing?

I think many people have decided that Israel simply cannot be the angel Zionists claim it is. (They know this. It must be true. How could Jews be such good guys now, really!) Hence they are jumping to conclusions to find Israeli crimes whereever they can.

Why would anybody attack Israel if Israel is so harmless, right?

People in the west don't understand hatred.

I also assume that the individual in question simply didn't realise that the ethnic cleansing accusation could be a lie and hence assumed that any report on bulldozers would prove any story about bulldozing. Maybe I wasn't doubting the ethnic cleansing accusation but the part that it was done with bulldozers?

P.S.: Yes there are Israeli settlements in the West-Bank. Yes they are illegal according to the peace treaty (which obviously is still binding for Israel even though the Arabs broke it during their "uprising" and it is certainly not anti-Semitism to apply two different standards to the two sides, in fact NOTHING is anti-Semitism these days). However, those settlements have NOT, as a rule, been built on destroyed Arab homes, and certainly not in the middle of Jenin on the ruins of a former police station; that would have been suicide.

P.P.S.: It is also quite clear to many people that a Jew forced from his property in an Arab country, who then fled to Israel, does not enjoy the right to fight back violently; even though Arabs have that right. Incidentally, I assume that if Israel had bulldozed Arab homes, the BBC who call breaking a peace treaty an "uprising" would have pointed it out.