“On May 14, 1948, Israel declared itself an independent nation once again. Israel's Proclamation of Independence stated: "We extend our hand to all neighboring States and their peoples in an offer of peace...and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land...placing our trust in the Almighty...." That olive branch was trampled by the regular armies of at least five Arab nations attacking Israeli settlers in what they described as a war of extermination. That to exterminate Israel is required by Islam (no Arab map shows Israel's existence) makes real peace in the Middle East impossible--but political correctness won't admit it.
More than 800,000 Jews fled from Muslim lands to Israel for refuge, leaving behind virtually everything they had possessed. This was almost double the number of Arab refugees who fled from Israel during the war of independence. Yet these Jewish refugees who fled persecution and slaughter are ignored in the media. For example, in 1948 there were about 265,000 Jews in Morocco, today there are about 5,000. There were about 140,000 Jews in Algeria, while today there are none. There were about 135,000 in Iraq, 75,000 in Egypt, and 30,000 in Syria, with only about 100 remaining in each of these countries.
The Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 (in spite of Israel's urgent invitation to remain to build a new country together) did so at the insistence of the Arab military. They were warned that those who remained would be considered traitors to the Arab cause. Most of those who fled never saw an Israeli soldier. They are the only "refugees" in the Middle East as far as the world is concerned and to whom all the sympathy is given. Jewish refugees count for nothing. The families of those who did not flee comprise about 25 percent of Israel's citizens today and have full voting rights. Some are even members of the Knesset, in spite of their opposition to Israel's existence. In stark contrast, no Jew can be a citizen of any Muslim country, where the few remaining have almost no rights.
One would expect that the Jewish refugees, numbering about twice as many at the time and having fled indescribable persecution in Muslim lands, would be more than a fair exchange for the Arab refugees. Jews would never want to go back to these Muslim lands, and have been well absorbed into normal Israeli life. But the Arab "refugees" (in spite of the Arabs possessing 700 times the land given to Israel, and with vast sums of oil money available for assistance) have been deliberately kept in squalid camps as a festering sore to support Islam's controversy with Israel. They have multiplied into millions and would literally destroy Israel if the world could ever force Israel to receive them back. On October 11, 1949, Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Saleh el-Din, declared that in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine [i.e., Israel], "the Arabs intend that they shall return as masters.... More explicitly: they intend to annihilate the state of Israel."
The Islamic Threat To Israel, by Dave Hunt