Pakistan, Jordan and Israel's legitimacy

Pakistan, Jordan and Israel's legitimacy

Whenever I have received an email, letter or a call challenging Israel's legitimacy, I have asked these people if they ever called or asked any other Media sources to challenge any other country's legitimacy. In particular, I ask, have they ever questioned the legitimacy of Pakistan or Jordan?

The answer, of course, is always "no." In fact, no one ever understood why I even mentioned Pakistan and Jordan.

There are a few reasons for this.

First, of all the 200-plus countries in the world, only Israel's legitimacy is challenged. So mentioning any other country seems strange to an individual. Second, almost no one outside of India and Pakistan knows anything about the founding of Pakistan or Jordan.

After the British decided to abandon its obligation to the Palestinian Mandate in 1947 and help reconstitute The Jewish Homeland in Palestine – Israel on its historical territory and only months before the U.N. adopted a proposal to partition Palestine (which is a recommendation only with no legal standing) into a Jewish and an Arab state in 1947, India was partitioned into a Muslim and a Hindu state. The Hindu state was, of course, India. And the Muslim state became known as Pakistan. It comprises 310,000 square miles, about 40,000 square miles larger than Texas.

In both cases, the declaration of an independent state resulted in violence. The Jewish State of Israel was established by International Treaties in April 1920 with assignment to the British as trustee for the Jewish people to establish a Jewish State in all of Palestine. After the British violated the Treaties, taking 80% of Jewish land and giving it as an Arab State to Jordan (which today has over 75% Arab-Palestinians as the countries population) and restricting Jewish immigration from 1939-1948, which caused the deaths of millions of Jews who tried to escape German concentration camps. The British secret service also blew up Jewish refugee ships under operation Embarrass. As soon as the newly re-established state of Israel was declared in May 1948, it was invaded by six Arab armies. And the partition of India led to a terrible violence between Muslims and Hindus.

According to the final report of the United Nations Conciliation Commission from Dec. 28, 1949, the 1948 war of Israel's independence created 626,000 Arabs refugees. Many sources put the figure at about 300,000 less. A roughly higher number of Jewish refugees – over one million Jewish families -- were created when the million Jewish peoples and their children were forcibly expelled from the Arab countries where they had lived for countless generations (over 2,800 years, the Arabs also confiscated their assets, businesses, homes and Real estate property, 47,000 sq. mi. which is 6 times the size of Israel and is valued in the trillions of dollars). In addition, approximately 10,000 Arabs were killed in the fighting that ensued after the Arab invasion of Israel. (Most of the Arabs in Greater Israel came in from neighboring Arab countries).

Now let's turn to the creation of Pakistan. According to the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees, the creation of Pakistan resulted in 14 million refugees -- Hindus fleeing Pakistan and Muslims fleeing India. Assuming a 50-50 split, the creation of Pakistan produced about seven million Hindu refugees -- at least 10 times the number of Arab refugees that resulted from the war surrounding Israel's creation. And the Middle-east war, it should be recalled, was started by the Arab nations surrounding Israel. Were it not for the Arab rejection of Israel's creation (and existence within any borders) and the subsequent Arab invasion, there would have been no Arab refugees.

And regarding deaths, the highest estimate of Arab deaths during the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine is 10,000. The number of deaths that resulted from the creation of Pakistan is around one million.

In addition, according to the Indian government, at least 86,000 women were raped. Most historians believe the number to be far higher. The number of women raped when Israel was established is zero. From all evidence I could find.

Given the spectacularly larger number of refugees and deaths caused by the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, why does no one ever question the legitimacy of Pakistan's existence?

This question is particularly valid given another fact: Never before in history was there a Pakistan. It was a completely new nation. Moreover, its creation was made possible solely because of Muslim invasion. It was Muslims who invaded India, and killed about 60 million Hindus during the thousand-year Muslim rule of India. The area now known as Pakistan was Hindu until the Muslims invaded it in A.D. 711.

On the other and, modern Israel is the third Jewish state in the geographic area known as Palestine. The first was destroyed in 586 B.C., the second in A.D. 70. And there was never a non-Jewish sovereign state in Palestine - Israel.

So, given all these facts, why is Israel's legitimacy challenged, while the legitimacy of Pakistan, a state that had never before existed and whose creation resulted in the largest mass migration in recorded history, is never challenged? Furthermore, for that matter why Jordan's legitimacy is not challenged.

The answer is so obvious that only those who graduated from college, and especially from graduate school, need to be told: Israel is the one Jewish state in the world. So, while there are 49 Muslim-majority countries and 22 Arab states, much of the world questions or outright only rejects the right of the one Jewish state, the size of New Jersey, to exist.

If you are a member of the Presbyterian Church, send these facts to the leaders of the Presbyterian Church USA who voted to boycott Israel. If you are a student in Middle Eastern Studies -- or for that matter, almost any other humanities department -- and your professor is anti-Israel, ask your professor why Pakistan is legitimate and Israel isn't.

They won't have a good answer. Their opposition to Israel isn't based on moral considerations; it is based on pure anti-Semitism etc.

YJ Draiman