Ms Audrey Griffin:

I thank an Cathaoirleach and members of the committee for the opportunity to speak. A major indictment against the report is the deliberate decontextualisation of a conflict. According to Amnesty, Israel was born out of the 1947 to 1949 conflict, thus creating the illusion that Jews used military aggression to take over the land. This is not true. Rather, the international community voted, in November 1947, in favour of the UN partition plan to provide a state for the Jewish people in their ancient homeland, alongside another state for the Arabs.

It was the Arab leaders' rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan and their subsequent goal to annihilate the fledgling State of Israel in May 1948 that was the source of the conflict that ensued. Indeed, as many as seven nations on today's atlas, whose populations totalled 140 million formed an alliance and attacked Israel within hours of the implementation of its statehood. Despite the odds being 200:1, Israel, with its meagre population of 650,000, survived the genocidal attack and somehow emerged victorious, not forgetting, that 1%, or one out of every 100 Israelis, was killed in this, the war of independence.

Incidentally, the majority of Arabs who were living there at the time, were recent immigrants from other parts of the Middle East and North Africa who had heard of the amazing restoration of the land by Jewish immigrants, a land that had been virtually uninhabitable for centuries. According to author Mark Twain, who toured what was then called Palestine in 1866, this was a desolate country and a mosquito-infested swampland. There had been no interest in reviving it before small Jewish colonies began to arrive from Europe from the late 1800s onwards.

Arab-Israeli journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh, explains how his ancestors were the ones who refused to take the advice of Arab leaders in 1947 to 1948, to temporarily leave their homes and lands until the Jews had been eliminated, after which they were promised they could return. In solidarity, the State of Israel subsequently granted full Israeli citizenship to these Arabs and to other minority groups that had not abandoned it or sought its annihilation. Other loyal native ethnic groups, such as Arameans, also became Israeli citizens.

The Arabs, however, who took the advice of their conspiring and genocidal leaders and left the land became the original 720,000 refugees, known since the 1960s, as Palestinian refugees. It is important to understand and yet it is omitted from the report, that prior to 1964, the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza were not designated Palestinians. Those who call themselves Palestinians today are non-distinguishable in culture and language from other Arabs. The strategic designation was devised and applied by the terrorist leader, Yasser Arafat, when he formed the militant Palestine Liberation Organization, PLO, in 1964.

This report has ignored the historical context in which the conflict is embedded. Amnesty International has proven that it is neither interested in history nor in truth and it is certainly not interested in the reconciliation of the groups in question. There are those who seek peace and reconciliation, such as Fr. Gabriel Naddaf, who boldly declares that Israel is a shining example of human rights in the Middle East. Fr. Naddaf is a native Aramean Israeli who encourages young Israeli Arabs to join the Israel Defense Forces.

One can read the testimonies and quotations of numerous Arab Israelis, Palestinians and many other brave advocates of Israel in my book, Hey Ireland! Israel's On The Line: Are We Prepared For A Potential Holocaust?Muintir na hÉireann, will we turn a blind eye, as Amnesty has, and be on the wrong side of history? To quote Fr. Naddaf, "end ... [the] witch hunt of [Israel] the only free country in the region".