They present 1922 population statistics for the region called Palestine (was never a country) which purport to show that Arabs greatly outnumbered Jews at the time, so in other words, why are the Jews trying to create a country there for themselves?
The true comparison would be the populations, and the relative size of the Jewish and Arab nations, in the ENTIRE Middle East. After all, Palestine was never a nation, and the so-called "Palestinian" people are in reality Arabs, just like their Syrian, Labanese, Egyptian, Saudi, etc. cousins who happen to have lived, or claim their origin in the ancient region referred to as Palestine, which was just a small piece of the whole Middle East, and one small piece of Arabia.
Plus there is the silly assertion that "Britian devised several partition plans, but the Arabs opposed division, insisting that Britian had no right to carve up the area". To carve up what? There was no "Palestinian" nation to carve up! Britian and France had just carved up the whole damn region into spheres of influence following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the Balfour Declaration, and later the UN partition plan merely attempted to set aside a very tiny portion of the Middle East as a Jewish homeland and much needed sanctuary. As stated above, it's wildly inaccurate and misleading to view this newly created homeland as a "disproportionately large" piece of the mythical Palestine, rather than the truth of a disproportionately small piece of the entire Middle East. And after all, why should the entire Middle East be 100% Arab? Wouldn't that only be achieved by the ethnic cleansing of Jews, out of Arabia, out of the West Bank and Gaza, out of Israel itself?
As the contemporary population figures show, Israel tolerates and extends citizenship rights to a sizable Arab minority, perhaps 15% of the Israeli population. Yet the Palestinians refuse to consider a similar, small Jewish minority in the intended Palestine state in the West Bank and Gaza. They claim that a relatively small number of settlements are "illegal" despite the fact that Jewish communities lived in these regions for centuries. The Jewish community in Hebron for instance, was ethnically cleansed by an Arab massacre in 1929.
Another remarkable omission in this substandard and highly biased article is the 850,000 Jews who were ethnically cleansed out of hostile Arab states following the creation of Israel (yet they do mention the Arab refugees from Israel).
Off Topic » in reply to If you start last week, they're right.
That Washington Post primer is highly misleading
