Germany’s leading Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the opposition Christian Democratic Party (CDU) have ordered high schools in Berlin’s borough of Neukolln to distribute brochures titled The Myth of Israel #1948.
The brochure states there are five “myths” around the creation of the state of Israel, which are subsequently refuted in short essays by various authors.
In the first section, debunking myth #1, that Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before Israel was founded, Israel’s pre-state militia, the Haganah, responsible for the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians between December 1947 and the summer of 1948, is promoted as a merely “defensive” Jewish resistance movement.
“Myth #5: Israel is to blame for the Nakba”, includes a text by researcher Shany Mor titled “the UN is distorting the meaning of the Nakba: its view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extremely one-sided”.
In the text, Mor states that “displacement during war - then and now - was nothing unusual”.
He also labels the UN’s attention to the Palestinian cause “obsessive” and the Arab defeat of 1948 a myth.
I‘m fine with discussion. But I see little value in discussing a text with someone who has not read it. We don’t have to guess their intentions when they already wrote it down quite clearly. Neither do I see a reason to doubt their intentions based on timing. Antisemitism (violence against Jews) in Germany has been sharply on the rise in the last few years and it is the job of the Landeszentrale to debunk some of the myths that foster it.
The main point of the paper is to correct these five myths about Israel and that is what it does. It is very focused on this and one-sided, obviously. One might think it is bad taste to ignore current events. Maybe. But it does exactly what it says and I found it informative.
Yes. That might be a good first step. It takes about one hour. There is much one can critique Israel for - let’s stick to the truths.