Does Israel Mistreat the Palestinians?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him. Last week, Dave, we discussed Yasser Arafat, and what an enigma. I mean, it’s not that he was an enigma, but why the world not only accepted this mass murderer, terrorist, from the get-go, but then they give him the Nobel Peace Prize, Dave! It’s insanity.

Dave: And then they forced Israel to make peace with this man, made him a great statesman for peace. The UN gives him a standing ovation. They invite him to make a speech, and he calls for the destruction of Israel—he gets a standing ovation. The PLO that killed, as we mentioned last week, 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympics, they are invited to bring a team to the Olympics. And last Olympics in Greece, Athens, it was the Palestinians who received the greatest applause as all the teams marched in. Tom, it’s not only an enigma and insane, I think it’s Satanic. It’s part of a delusion that is sweeping this world.

Tom: If you’re new to our program, this is our main article segment. We’ve been discussing Dave Hunt’s new book Judgment Day! Islam, Israel, and the Nations.
Dave, at the end of chapter 9, you have a section titled “The Re-Made Arafat,” and in it you have a quote from Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe which I think is a synopsis of what we’ve been talking about. Let me read this. I’m quoting—again, this is from the Boston Globe: “In 1993, following secret negotiations in Oslo, Israel embarked on a ‘peace process’ designed to elevate Arafat and the PLO to heights of power, wealth, and respect they had never before known. In exchange for Arafat’s written promise of peace, ‘The PLO renounces the use of terrorism and other acts of violence.’”

Dave: Unbelievable. The man lies…

Tom: It gets worse: “Israel agreed to forget the PLO’s long history of mass murder and to treat it as the legitimate representative of the Palestinians. The deal was sealed at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave Arafat his hand and affirmed his new status as Israel’s partner in peace. What followed was unprecedented in the history of statecraft. Arafat and thousands of PLO killers, now reconstituted as the Palestinian Authority, entered Gaza and the West Bank in triumph. In short order, Israel transferred virtually every Arab city and town in the territories to Arafat’s control. It allowed the Palestinian Authority to assume full administrative power over the Palestinian people. It not only agreed to the creation of an armed Palestinian Authority militia, it supplied the Authority with weapons.” Dave…

Dave: It’s insane, Tom.

Tom: “It began paying Arafat a multimillion-dollar monthly allowance, and lobbied internationally for additional financial support.”

Dave: This was all because they believed his lies.

Tom: Right.

Dave: They should have known better.

Tom: “It permitted the Palestinian Authority to build an airport, operate radio and television networks, and deal with other countries as a sovereign power.” Now, this is a guy who is banished to Tunisia. Wasn’t that the case back just prior to the Oslo Accords?

Dave: Yeah. Sharon would have killed him in Lebanon, but Reagan insisted, “Let this mass murderer go free.” Well, he didn’t say it in those terms. “Let’s set him up as a statesman for peace.” Tom, again, we’ve already said it, but it’s beyond comprehension. But the world accepts the lies of the PLO. They accept the revision of history that they make, claiming that they are the original Palestinians or descended from the original Palestinians when there never was such a people. And on the basis of the PLO lies (this is what really angers me), the world forces a peace upon Israel when Arafat has clearly said, “Peace for us means the destruction of Israel.” Now, of course Arafat knows better now, but it’s too late for him. But hopefully it’s not too late for the rest of the world if they would wake up.

Tom: Dave, at the end of that quote, there’s another quote from Netanyahu.

Dave: Netanyahu writes, or he wrote at that time: “My party and I were virtually isolated in our warning that Arafat would not keep his word. We were widely castigated as enemies of peace. Our argument was that handing Gaza over to Arafat would immediately create a lush terrorist haven.” Of course, Netanyahu was right.

Tom: Now, starting at the beginning of chapter 9, you have a phrase in there, and you make a comparison between Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler and what’s going on in Israel right now. And by the way, Netanyahu and others are not for this—obviously that quote—so there are some that don’t go along with this in Israel. But the thrust, the pressure is forcing the country to do these kinds of things. So what about this comparison between Chamberlain and what’s going on?

Dave: It’s pressure from the world, of course. The UN, the European Union, the United States, and we’ve pressured them to pull out of Gaza, and that was a big mistake. That actually caused Netanyahu to resign from his position in the Cabinet. I just show some parallels because Chamberlain—oh, my gracious, he’s a pitiful figure with his umbrella and winged collars. He’s become the symbol of appeasement, and appeasement doesn’t work. You can’t appease a murderer when he’s in control of the situation and he has a gun to your head. But this is what the world is doing, and Chamberlain believed Hitler. He came back from meeting with him and “Oh, what a wonderful man he is, and he’s a great leader, and we will have peace.” And then, of course, he…

Tom: And Parliament, they stood on their chairs and cheered him on and got excited as he returned from Germany.

Dave: “Peace in our day.” That was the phrase. And, of course, England was not thinking of the Czechoslovakians. They virtually handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler and he took that over. And of course it’s very similar to today, because the Germans somehow were the abused and mistreated people. This minority, like the Palestinians, are being abused and mistreated. They’re attacking Israel, but it’s all justified because of the way Israel has mistreated the Palestinians and so…

Tom: So-called.

Dave: So-called, right. Thank you, lest someone listening get the wrong impression.
And that was the situation in that day. Chamberlain was confident that Hitler was a reasonable man, that you could really deal with him on a reasonable basis, that he was an honorable man, and this was the history of Israel with Arafat. One deal after another, they signed one agreement after another. It’s not worth the ink in Arafat’s signature. He broke every agreement that he ever made.
Before the so-called peace treaties and the Oslo Accords and so forth, I think, you know, several hundred Israelis have been killed. The next few years after signing it, more than a thousand (1,200) Israelis have been killed, 5,000 maimed. It got worse; it only got worse. With every deal they signed with Arafat it got worse.
I show how Arafat’s widow and Perez on Israeli radio, they said, “Oh, wow, fantastic!” In fact, he even said, “Utopia has arrived. Why, the PLO have removed from their charter the section that calls for the extermination of Israel.” In fact they hadn’t removed it, and they will not remove it. If they did, the whole Muslim world would come down on them, because Islam teaches Israel must be destroyed.
So, Tom, unbelievable then, and even more unbelievable now with the history that we have behind us. We ought to be a little wiser. But who was it that said the only thing we learn from history is that we never learn from history.

Tom: One of the ruses that they use was the alleged Jenin Massacre, and they pumped that into the press like nobody’s business.

Dave: Yeah, Tom, again, it’s an example of the fact that the press is eager to get something on Israel. Eager, somehow, to justify what the Palestinians are doing so they can say, “See, it’s all the fault of Israel.” And the Jenin Massacre was a lie. Jenin was on the West Bank, and it was a nest of terrorism. This was the main area from which the terrorists were launching their attacks deliberately aimed at innocent women and children—not accidentally killing a few civilians, but deliberately aimed at civilians. That was their major target, because the military were a bit more difficult to attack. And Israel, finally, was forced to go in there, and the whole world said, “Oh, it was a slaughter. They bombed them, they destroyed Jenin, and they have slaughtered so many civilians.” You know, it was written up in the papers. They were demanding a UN investigation. In fact, they were demanding that UN troops went in there to keep the peace. Well, there were newspapers like the Minneapolis Star Tribune that were embarrassed. They finally had to admit that their handling of the alleged Jenin Massacre had been “an egregious stumble.” The New York Times and Associated Press at last admitted that Human Rights Watch had found no evidence of a massacre. The final count for the 10 days of fierce fighting was 45 Palestinians, most of them terrorists, killed, and 23 Israeli soldiers killed. Now, a suicide bomber can do away with that many in one bomb in a shopping center or on a bus.

Tom: And it gets no outrage in terms of the world’s view.

Dave: Never! Tom, I have never heard on CNN, I’ve never read in a newspaper any complaint, any outrage against what the terrorists are doing! It’s always Israel’s fault for how they have oppressed these people. Israel did not put them in the camps. We give all the documentation in the book. But what did Israel do? Instead of using bombs and rockets, which they could have launched, in order to minimize civilian casualties, they risked the lives of their men. They went door to door—these homes were booby-trapped. There were people who had bombs on them, who would come and pretend to surrender, and the restraint with which Israel has acted—nobody does this in a war! And Israel, in fact, has given back 95 percent of all the land they ever took, and why did they take that land in the first place? They took it in self-defense against an enemy that had sworn to exterminate them.
Now, I’m not saying that everything that Israel has ever done—they’re human beings, but you’ve never had a war and you’ve never had soldiers who acted with such restraint as the Israelis have against an enemy that has sworn to exterminate them.
So it was exposed as a lie, this whole Jenin Massacre, but what does that mean to the world? It doesn’t mean anything to the world. Well, The New York Times did apologize a bit, I guess, as the Associated Press did, but that’s all forgotten. Now they are eagerly waiting for some other evidence, “so-called,” of Israel’s abuse of these people.

Tom: Dave, there’s also a dilemma here for some Muslims, for Arabs, especially those who are of a moderate view—they can’t do anything. I mean, they’re putting themselves in harm’s way to raise a moderate voice. Isn’t that the case?

Dave: Well, many, many Palestinians have been killed, because they dared to even suggest, “Maybe we could have peace with Israel. Maybe we could get along with them.” Some of them have been willing to sell property to Israel in an effort to equalize the situation, you know, boundaries and so forth, and they’re slaughtered. They’re hauled out in the streets and shot, or they’re strung up, you know, or they’re dragged behind cars. It’s…

Tom: By the Palestinian Authority.

Dave: By the Palestinian Authority, right. Tom, it’s maddening, absolutely maddening! And we give the whole history of how this—and I can’t go back, and don’t want to go back over that. I presume we’ve already given it, but there never was such a place as Palestine, there never were a Palestinian people. Just let me summarize quickly: The Arabs claim that they’re descended from the original Palestinians and that this land belongs to them because they’re descended from Ishmael. But wait a minute, Ishmael’s father was Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees—he was a Chaldean; Ishmael’s mother was Hagar the Egyptian. So you’ve got a Chaldean father and an Egyptian mother, and when they arrived, before Ishmael was born, when they arrived in Canaan, it had already been settled, and you claim to be descended from the original Palestinians? Tom, it is such a lie! It is such a fraud, and the world accepts it! And this becomes the basis for the world opinion: “Well, these Israelis, they’ve come in there, and they’re taking land away from these original inhabitants and they’re occupying this land.” Tom, you have churches who are doing this. The Presbyterian church, as you know, is leading a movement among many churches to divest themselves from investments in any company that does business with Israel. They’re trying to put Israel out of business; they’re trying to destroy Israel just like the Muslims are. So, Tom, it’s maddening! I guess I’ve said that before. What are you going to do? You speak out, you try to give the facts, and nobody listens!

Tom: Well, a few may be listening to us, Dave, but we’re just going to give them the facts. Could you explain, foundational to all of this—well, really the Qur’an is foundational of all of this—but what I’m getting at here is, based on all the deception that we have just articulated, there’s the 1974 PLO Plan of Phases. What’s that about?

Dave: Well, Tom, first of all, you hear the cry, “If you would just move the borders back to 1967, then that would solve the problem. That’s all they want.” But the PLO was founder in 1964, so what was it that they were attacking? Why were they attacking the Israelis in those days? You had your ’67 borders. It makes no sense. But the PLO is founded on the premise that Israel must be destroyed. These are Muslims, and this is what Islam teaches. And the 1974 Plan of Phases, this is a ten-step plan. It calls for the destruction of Israel, and—“This is how we are going to do it. We will pretend peace. We’ll get territory within Israel.”

Tom: “We” being the so-called Palestinians.

Dave: Right. By the way, the PLO, Palestinian Liberation Organization, was not founded by Palestinians. The originator was Gamal Abdel Nasser, the dictator of Egypt. It was not even founded by Palestinians, and we quote in the book many Arab leaders who said, “There is no such place as Palestine. Palestine is a Zionist invention.”
I quote Ahmed Shukeiri, for example—1956 he is testifying to the UN, “There’s no such place as Palestine. If there’s any Palestinians, it’s those Jews. We Arabs are not Palestinians.” Eight years later, 1964, Ahmed Shukeiri became the founding chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization! They just lie. They change history and the world accepts it. There’s never a murmur of disapproval; everything is aimed at Israel, complaining about Israel, and so forth.
But anyway, the whole idea of the PLO was, “How are we going to destroy Israel? We will do it by pretending peace. We will do it by subterfuge. We will get position within Israel. We’ll have an army inside of Israel. We’ll be within the borders of Israel, and that is where we will launch our final destruction of Israel.”
In 1974 they didn’t yet have Temple Mount. That had been given—in 1967 that had been given to the King of Jordan, but he turned it over to the PLO in 1994. The PLO now even has the heart of Jerusalem—the holiest site to the Jews is in the hands of the PLO. It’s incredible, Tom, what is going on over there. And the world opinion is governed by the media, which never reports the truth; they are giving you a skewed view of this—well, it’s worse than skewed, it’s a lie.
Well, Tom, I guess I’ve said that before—I get so frustrated. Who will listen to the truth, much less who will stand up for the truth? And maybe some of our listeners out there—I’m not trying to sell books, but if you would get Judgment Day and study it and learn the facts, maybe you could write to your congressman, to your senators, to the president. Let us flood the president with letters and phone calls, and turn him around so that he stops repeating this lie that Islam is peace! He doesn’t have to say Islam is a false religion (leave that to the rest of us), but neither does he have to say that Islam is peace. Why doesn’t he just go about his business of promoting an equitable arrangement over there, and stop forcing the Israelis to give back more land to an enemy that has sworn to exterminate them?