Tom, I know you’re not going to give up the myth. Even the most basic search reveals a different reality than the myth, including Israeli massacres of Palestinians to encourage their moving out. But myths are powerful. It’s a rare person who can confront even such a distant myth such as this.

The Israelis themselves seem to view it differently than do you. And they have all along. Their history books are beginning to reflect the reality, not the myth. I’ve posted innumerable statements by responsible Israelis, including Dayan, Ben-Gurion, and Barak that you have to disregard, ignore and discount in order to hang on to the myth.

Here are a few more. However, they don’t support the myth. So you'll have to discount them, somehow.

"The very point of Labor's Zionist program is to have as much land as possible and as few Arabs as possible!" --Yitzhak Navon ("moderate" ex-Israeli president and a leading labor party politician.) Cited on p.179 of Nur Masalha's A Land without a People who cites Bernard Avishai's The Tragedy of Zionism 1985 p.340. (Sounds like ethnic cleansing to me.)

"In our country there is room only for the Jews. We shall say to the Arabs: Get out! If they don't agree, if they resist, we shall drive them out by force."
--Professor Ben-Zion Dinur Israel's First Minister of Education, 1954 from History of the Haganah. (Someone on this board called this guy an “extremist”. He was, but it was mainstream Israeli political belief.)

And some links. For anyone who might want to grow past the myth. These, by the way, quote Israeli, not Palestinian authors.

Triumph and Calamity: Israeli Historians Expose Myth of Israel's Birth
Exposing Israel’s Original Sins

And finally, this is of the “hockey puck” type statements.

T. B. - "What kind of citizenship and rights are Jews given in Arab nations? Second-class? Maybe none?"

I read that as an attempt to excuse Israel's religious discrimination against it's own citizenship.

Israel was created out of a land where there were Palestinians living. Had been for a long time. The UN resolution guaranteed the Palestinians full citizenship in the new nation. Made sense, after all, they had been living there longer than most Jews.

So, in their own homeland they now have second-class citizenship. And the world outside the US knows that, and knows the US supports that discrimination. Wouldn’t fly in the US, but we encourage Israel's discrimination against Muslims over there, and protect Israel from international sanctions through vetoes in the UN, and recently withdrawing from an international conference, etc.

The Muslims read that as a US anti-Muslim policy, and have for 50 years.

And, I know you will go to your grave with the myth. You can have it, it’s yours. I can accept that.

And, some of us might be able to learn from the Israelis themselves.