The Facts

1. Israel became a people and a nation, more than 3,200 years ago, some 2,000 years before the advent of Islam. Palestinian nationalism first began to flicker sometime in the late nineteenth century.

2. After Joshua conquered the country, the Jews controlled it almost uninterruptedly for some 1,300 years. Since then - from the year 70 C.E. to this day - there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the Land.

3. King David made Jerusalem the capital of his Kingdom and Jerusalem was the capital of the Jewish states in Eretz Israel thereafter. In about 1,300 years of Muslim control, Jerusalem never once became the capital of a Muslim political entity.

4. Jerusalem is a city holy to the Jewish people. It is mentioned more than 700 times in the Bible and the Temple, on ruins of which the Muslims built the Dome of the Rock, stood in Jerusalem; when Jews pray, anywhere, they face towards Jerusalem. In contrast, the Qur'an does not mention Jerusalem even once and Muslims face towards Mecca when they pray.

5. The number of Arab refugees who fled Palestine, in the war that they had instigated, is estimated at 630,000. Most fled without having seeing a single Israeli soldier. The Arab countries deliberately refrained from absorbing the refugees, even though this was territorially, culturally, and economically feasible. Of approximately 100,000,000 refugees in the world since the end of World War II, this is the only group that has neither been taken in, nor been integrated.

6. At the end of World War II, there were about a million Jewish refugees in Europe and at the end of Israel's War of Independence, hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Israel, a country no larger than New Jersey, absorbed them all.

7. Israel guarantees freedom of religion and worship for all creeds. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze, Samaritans and Bahai may freely pray at their own holy places and houses of worship. Not so in Arab countries. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, for example, did not honor the clauses in its 1949 armistice agreement with Israel, and did not allow Jewish worshippers access to their holy places. The Palestinians have displayed their "tolerance" by torching Joseph's Tomb, near Nablus and turning it into a mosque; by setting the ancient synagogue in Jericho ablaze; and by relentlessly attacking Jewish worshippers at Rachel's Tomb.

8. There is only one State of Israel but many Arab countries. The Arabs exploit their numerical edge to pass anti-Israel resolutions in international organizations. This not only cheapens these institutions' resolutions, but also diverts them from their purpose - dealing with the serious problems that beset the world.

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