Germany: Berlin schools asked to distribute leaflet describing the 1948 Nakba as a ‘myth’
The brochure states there are five “myths” around the creation of the state of Israel, which are subsequently refuted in short essays by various authors.In the first section, debunking myth #1, that Jews and Arabs lived together in peace before Israel was founded, Israel’s pre-state militia, the Haganah, responsible for the destruction of 531 Palestinian villages and the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians between December 1947 and the summer of 1948, is promoted as a merely “defensive” Jewish resistance movement.
Under 'Myth #2: Israel was established on stolen Palestinian land’, Masiyot states that the acquisition of land by Jewish immigrants to Palestine took the form of a legal exchange of capital for an official title deed.At no point in history was land illegally conquered by Jewish immigrants, the author of the text, Michael Spaney, claims.Even land conquered following the wars of 1948 and 1967 and the subsequent construction of settlements, which are internationally recognised as a violation of international law, did not occur unlawfully, it says.
“Anyone who uses the accusation of land theft as an argument demonises Israel and denies its legitimacy, i.e. acts out of antisemitic motives,” Spaney wrote.
“Myth #5: Israel is to blame for the Nakba”, includes a text by researcher Shany Mor titled “the UN is distorting the meaning of the Nakba: its view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is extremely one-sided”.
In the text, Mor states that “displacement during war - then and now - was nothing unusual”.He also labels the UN’s attention to the Palestinian cause “obsessive” and the Arab defeat of 1948 a myth.This isn’t some random propaganda group making brochures either: Germany’s leading Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the opposition Christian Democratic Party (CDU) are encouraging high schools in Berlin’s borough of Neukolln to distribute these brochures full of blatant misinformation.