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Why boycott Israel?
Arab leaders persecuted their Jewish population from the 1920s, and launched a relentless campaign, against the interests of their own people, to obliterate the Jewish national revival …before any “occupation” and even before the establishment of the State of Israel.
They flatly rejected the restoration of the Jewish homeland as mandated by the League of Nations. Even after Jordan was created from 80% of the British Mandate of Palestine, they rejected the 1937 Peel Commission proposal to partition the remaining 20%.
In 1947, the UN partition would have created an even larger Arab state. If not for the Arabs' violent attempt to abort the partition, there would have been no war and there would now be a Palestinian state over 60 years old.
…and the rejection continues to this day… In 1949, Israel offered to return captured land as part of a formal peace agreement. Arab rulers refused.
From 1948 to 1967, Israel did not control the West Bank and Gaza.
The Arab nations could have created an independent Palestinian state there, but did not. Instead of peace and reconciliation, they chose rejection and global terrorism.
The Arabs also rejected the offer of Palestinian autonomy in the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace negotiations. They scuttled the Oslo process that began in 1993 leading toward the creation of a Palestinian state, by violating their commitments. In 2000 and 2008, they also rejected offers to create a Palestinian state.
Since their self-inflicted, violent and catastrophic rejection of the UN partition, misguided, self-serving oil-rich Arab leaders have kept the refugees of 1948 and their descendants in squalor and dependent on international aid, as cannon fodder, fed on hatred and false hope, and squandered repeated opportunities for statehood and economic progress.
Yet here we are, six decades later, and they continue the futile policies of vilifying and de-legitimising Israel, in their vain hope of destroying the Jewish nation.
Similarly Australian "Friends of Palestine" support Arab despots and terrorists by vilifying Israel and agitating for its political isolation. Instead they should demand a new and fundamentally different Arab leadership, and stop importing the conflict to Australia.
Neither Israel, nor Australian friends of Israel are the enemies of the Arab refugees. Their own leaders are.