30 Little-Known
Facts About Israel
1. Did you know that non-Jewish Israelis
cannot buy or lease land in Israel? A Jew from any country in the
world is guaranteed citizenship in Israel, while the Palestinians
who have been there for centuries are oppressed and persecuted.
2.Did you know that instead of sewing an
insignia on clothing to distinguish race (like the Germans did to
the Jews before WW2), Palestinian license plates in Israel are
color coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews?
3. Did you know that East Jerusalem, the
West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights are all considered by the
entire world community, including the United States and the
United Nations, to be occupied territory and NOT part of the
State of Israel?
4. Did you know that Israel allots 85% of
the water resources for Jews, and the remaining 15% is divided
among all Palestinians in the territories? For example in Hebron,
85% of the water is set aside for about 400 Jewish settlers,
while the remaining 15% is distributed among Hebron's 120, 000
Palestinians?
5.Did you know that the United States
awards Israel $5 billion in aid each year from American tax
dollars?
6.Did you know that US aid to Israel ($1.8
billion annually in military aid alone) exceeds the aid the US
grants to the entire African continent? This aid is used both to
buy American weaponry and to buy arms made in Israel.
7. Did you know that Israel is awaiting an
additional $4 billion worth of American military hardware,
including new F-16s and Apache and Blackhawk helicopters. As
Israel's main ally and supporter internationally, the United
States is committed to maintaining the Jewish state's
"qualitative edge" in weapons over its neighbors.
8. Did you know that the U.S.
administration has notified Congress on numerous occasions that
Israel has violated the rules on how US-supplied weapons are
used? (In 1978, 1979 and 1982 during fighting in Lebanon, and
once after Israel's bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.)
9. Did you know that Israel is the only
country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the nuclear
non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections from
its sites?
10. Did you know that high-ranking military
officers in the Israeli Defense Forces have admitted publicly
that unarmed prisoners of war have been summarily executed by the
Israeli forces?
11. Did you know that Israel blew up an
American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a US warship
in international waters (the USS Liberty), killing 33 and
wounding 177 American sailors and the US did nothing about it?
(Imagine if an Islamic country like Iraq did this!)
12. Did you know that Israel stands in
defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council Resolutions?
13. Did you know that Israel is explicitly
dedicated to the policy of maintaining a distinct Jewish
character?
14. Did you know that Israel's current
Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was found by an Israeli court to be
"personally and directly responsible" for the Sabra and Shatilla
massacre in Lebanon where more than a thousand innocent
Palestinian men, women, and children were axed to death or lined
up and shot in cold blood?
15. Did you know that on May 20, 1990, a
group of unarmed Palestinian laborers were lined up and murdered
by an Israeli solider as they sat waiting for transportation back
to Gaza? The terrified laborers who gathered in an area of
southern Israel known as Rishon Lezion (known to Palestinians by
its Arabic name Oyon Qara) handed their ID cards to the Israeli
soldier. The soldiers ordered the distressed laborers to kneel
down and face the ground and unexpectedly showered them with a
barrage of bullets, killing seven and wounding many others.
Needless to say, the soldier was not charged with any crime.
16. Did you know that until as recently as
1988, Israelis were permitted to run "Jews Only" job ads?
17. Did you know that the Israeli Foreign
Ministry pays six US public relations firms to promote a
"positive image" of Israel to the American public?
18. Did you know that Sharon's coalition
government includes a party--Molodet--which advocates ethnic
cleansing by openly calling for the forced expulsion of all
Palestinians from the occupied territories?
19. Did you know that recently-declassified
documents indicate that David Ben-Gurion approved of the forced
expulsion of Arabs from all Palestininan territory in 1948?
20. Did you know that the former chief
rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, who is also a founder and
spiritual leader of the religious Shas party (Israel's third
largest political party) openly advocates a 'Final Solution' to
annihilate the Palestinians? Speaking at the widely broadcast
sermon marking the last Passover, he declared of the
Palestinians: "The Lord shall return their deeds on their own
heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and
vanish them from this world. It is forbidden to be merciful to
them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They
are evil and damnable."
21. Did you know that Palestinian refugees
make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the
world?
22. Did you know that Palestinian
Christians are considered the "living stones" of Christianity
because they are the direct descendants of the disciples of Jesus
Christ? And the Palestinian Christians stand united with their
Muslim brethren in the struggle against the Israeli occupation.
23. Did you know that despite a ban on
torture by Israel's High Court of Justice, torture has continued
unabated by Shin Bet interrogators on Palestinian prisoners?
24. Did you know that despite every Israeli
attempt to disrupt Palestinian education, Palestinians have the
highest ratio of PhDs per capita in the world?
25. Did you know that the right of
self-determination is guaranteed to every human being under the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights [December, 1948], yet
Palestinians were/are expected to negotiate for this right under
the Oslo Accords?
26. Did you know that despite what is
widely perpetuated and written in the history books that the
Arabs attacked Israel in the 1967 war, it was Israel who attacked
the Arab countries first, capturing Jerusalem and the West Bank,
and called the attack a pre-emptive strike? 27. Did you know
that, as an occupying power, Israel has a particular
responsibility under the Geneva Conventions to protect
Palestinian civilians?
28. Did you know that, despite Ariel
Sharon's public call for a unilateral ceasefire, Israeli soldiers
have not stopped shooting, killing or bulldozing Palestinian
homes? The most recent example of this is the murder of three
innocent women who were shot by an Israeli tank as they sat in
their tent!
29. Did you know that the Zionists have
been trying to destroy Masjid al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock
for the last 50 years by digging underground tunnels beneath the
sites to weaken its foundation causing it to collapse?
30) Nelson Mandela called the Israeli
government an apartheid regime, just like South Africa used to
be.
House demolitions represents one
of the cruelest expressions of the Israeli policy of
repression. More than 7000 houses have been demolished by
Israel since 1967, leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians
traumatized and homeless, and the zionist occupation regime
continues on with with its war crimes complete impunity.
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