Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

(JNS) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently tweeted to her eight million Twitter followers that the U.S. should cut aid to Israel. “It has to stop,” she said, claiming without evidence that the IDF killed Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh “with U.S. funding.”

It is worth pointing out that a large number of war reporters — including some from Al Jazeera — have been killed or wounded on the job. It’s a risky career path. But few have been mentioned in such fervent terms by congressmen and congresswomen. When Israel is involved, it seems, things are different.

The American people expect Congress to act appropriately when one of its members defames Israel with unsubstantiated accusations. Yet all we heard from the Democrat majority in Congress was crickets.

As Ocasio-Cortez was libeling Israel, her friend and fellow “Squad” member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) introduced a congressional resolution titled “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights” in order to incite against Israel and Jews. Joined by her “Squad” underlings, all of whom despise Israel, Tlaib sees the 1948 establishment of a Jewish state as a nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe.”

The resolution was replete with lies and animosity toward Israel and Jews. For example, it falsely claims that seven million Arabs who are descendants of 1948 Arab refugees have the “right” to return to Israel and thus overrun and annihilate the Jewish state. This is nothing but hateful propaganda, and the nakba resolution is nothing but an opportunity for “The “Squad” to infect Congress with their antisemitic rhetoric. Moreover, it is clear from this rhetoric that Tlaib and her congressional minions seek Israel’s demise.

The Arabs’ hatred of the Jewish state is ongoing, and it was this hate that prompted the creation of the term nakba, which expresses their distaste for the Jews’ success in returning to their historical homeland and establishing their third commonwealth.

The term, and the use of it by “the Squad,” obfuscates historical facts. The Land of Israel belonged to the Jews from time immemorial and was invaded by Arabs in the seventh century C.E. In the early 20th century, the international community sanctioned the re-establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. This was done first by the League of Nations and then its successor, the United Nations. The Arabs could have accepted this and reached an agreement with the Jews of the Land of Israel, but they chose not to.

In 1948, the Jews were forced to fight a war against five invading Arab armies in order to hold on to their nascent state’s independence. After the war, however, part of the Jewish people’s sovereign land — eastern Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, dubbed the “West Bank” by illegal Jordanian occupiers — remained in the hands of the Arabs.

Nineteen years later, attacked by Arab countries once again, Israel won the battle to liberate the occupied territory in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Arabs point to the refugees from the War of Independence in order to justify their use of the term “Nakba.” Prior to and during the war, many Arabs who lived in British Mandatory Palestine fled to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. They hoped the war would end quickly, the new Jewish state would be erased and they would return to their homes. This was their mistake. Israel won and the Arabs were not allowed to return — they remained refugees. Their refugee status has been prolonged for the past 74 years and granted to their descendants as a tool to sabotage Israel.

The creation of the nationalist and militant Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964, along with the idea of a “Palestinian people,” was deliberate and clearly intended to destroy the sovereign and legally mandated Jewish state. In 1969, Yasser Arafat, the father and guardian of “Palestine,” and its myths, hopes and possibilities, became PLO leader. By 1974, he already garnered significant support for the PLO’s campaign to establish a “Palestinian” homeland.

But Arafat’s political goals of reconciling his people’s factions and creating an independent “Palestine” on the ruins of Israel overwhelmed all other prerequisites, including the welfare of his own people.

In 1993, Arafat signed the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to deliver peace between Israel and the “Palestinians.” Instead, the accords turned out to be an open door to vicious Arab terrorism against Israelis, incitement against the State of Israel and the stoking of hostile “Palestinian” nationalism, all in order to foment as much hatred of Israel as possible among Arafat’s own people and internationally, with the end goal of destroying the Jewish state.

Reps. Tlaib, Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other “Squad” members have been duped by Arafat’s lies, antisemitism and hatred of Israel, which causes them to see the creation of the Jewish state as a catastrophe.

Using lawfare and malicious public diplomacy, the “Palestinian” leadership, from Arafat on down, has been successful in convincing much of the world that they are the victims of Jewish “colonialism,” deprived of a homeland stolen by the Jews. Tlaib and her cohorts are now trumpeting this propaganda in Congress.

The Bible, history and international law leave no doubt that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jews, but the “Palestinians” have mastered the art of lying and obfuscating these facts, whether in Congress, the media or elsewhere.

The anti-Israel agenda has spread worldwide. Can the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, repeated as often as possible, begin the process of ending this empire of lies?

Nurit Greenger was born in the British Mandate for Palestine in 1947 and now writes from Southern California.