How accurate is this video talking about the history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine? (link in text)

by bigbenmar
tayaravaknin

In terms of getting events, it seemed fairly accurate (from the first minute and a half). I stopped watching, however, because of how it describes and how it explains issues. First of all, it seems to act like Jews were plopped down in the region by some other figure. They were moving of their own free will, and the process took 60 years.

Then, it describes the partition plan. Sure, the Jewish state was to make up 55% of the land. But it leaves out:

  1. 90% of the history between 1881-1947, including riots, attacks both ways, how wars went and affected it all, etc..

  2. The partition plan's Jewish state was 60% desert (the Negev).

The other thing it does is act like Palestinians had no part in the entire process. If you listen to the first minute and a half, almost no actions are attributed to the Palestinians. It spends a lot of time explaining the Palestinian rationale, but pretty much chalks the Israeli rationale up to "well, they were fleeing anti-Semitism, but they displaced others". It leaves out that the partition plan would leave no one displaced, it leaves out the various attempts at resolution earlier on and how they all fell apart, it leaves out every Palestinian action in between...in short, it pretends Palestinians had no part in anything, and whatever they did (for example rejecting partition) was entirely justified, without even presenting the other side.

If you want to learn in an educational sense where both sides are coming from, this is not the video for you. Real, honest, vigorous debate that looks at how both sides talk to each other and what they believe is definitely not going to come from a short Youtube video, sadly, because it couldn't include everything if it wanted to. But this one is very sparse on details, it seeks to assign blame rather than just explain events or timelines.