Delegitimization by Map : From Blog Posts to Book
The purpose of “Delegitimization by Map” and these blog posts is to combine them into a published book entitled Safe Schools for Jewish Students: An Educator’s Guide to Preventing Antisemitism and Strengthening Belonging.
Go here for the full Table of Contents.
Chapter 3 – Delegitimization by Map
Delegitimization by Map
The most common map used to portray Israel as a state created by ethnically cleansing the land of Arab Palestinians is below.
The map compares “Palestine” with “Israel” as if they had equal state status. There’s no indication that the first image of the Palestine region refers to the British Mandate, and the second image of the Palestine region belonged to no one. The inference is clear: what used to belong to Palestinians was taken by Israelis. And who are the Israelis? They are mostly Jews, so Jews are the ones to blame.
There’s also the inference that the land was once a green, flourishing region when, in fact, the land was mostly desert and swamps. Mark Twain described Palestine in 1867. “There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
The following map is less subtle.
Notice that the first image ignores how 85% of the land belonged to the British and claims that Palestinians owned it. The yellow regions are called Palestinian, separate from the green Jewish land, as if the Jews who lived there weren’t Palestinian even though Jews had Palestinian passports at the time.
The green regions start off as Jewish land, then changes to Israeli, suggesting all Israelis are Jews and none of the Arab Palestinians stayed in the land, when in fact, 20% of the newly formed state of Israel were Arab Palestinians who became Israeli citizens by staying peacefully in the land during the 1948 war.
“Jewish settlers had paid for most of the land they occupied.” The language used implies that even when Jews buy land legally, they’re considered occupying someone else’s land. Though it’s true that Jews turned uninhabitable lands like mosquito-infested swamps that caused malaria into places people could settle down, the term “settlers” conjures the tone of taking over someone else’s land. Today, the Jews in their ancestral homeland of Judea (the West Bank) are called settlers, but the Palestinians there are never referred to as settlers.
“…the Palestinians rejected the plan, resulting in uprisings.” The passive voice hides the fact that the Arab Palestinian were the ones doing the uprisings.
The section on the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 is stated in a way for the viewer to conclude that had the Jewish community not declared itself an independent state, the neighboring Arab states wouldn’t have had to intervene.
The Suez Crisis doesn’t mention that, by surrounding Israel with tanks and readying for battle, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria provoked the war.
Lastly, with the constant Arab attacks against the Jews living in Gaza, the IDF found it too challenging to protect the Jews living there, so the Unilateral Disengagement from Gaza required all the Jews to leave their homes, Hamas fired rockets from Gaza into Israel, Israel focused on stopping Hamas, and the map calls this entire section of history “The Gaza Expulsion Plan.” I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean. Israel planned to expel the Palestinians from Gaza? Israel planned on expelling the Jews from Gaza? Whatever the meaning, anytime “Israel” is associated with the word “expulsion,” Westerners read that as the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Israel.
Below is a more accurate portrayal of the land owned by Arabs and Jews, and the history of the borders of Israel.
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Author Biography of Safe Schools for Jewish Students
Ezra Barany, son of a Bronx father and a Dutch mother from Nazi-occupied Netherlands, loves riveting readers with Jewish thrillers. His first two books in The Torah Codes series were award-winning international bestsellers. In his free time, he has eye-opening discussions on the art of writing novels with his wife and book coach Beth Barany. A high school physics teacher, Ezra lives in Oakland with his beloved wife and two cats working on the next book. Ezra, not the cats.
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