A sharp piece by David Singer on the Global Politician website points out some of the egregious distortions about Israel which are believed as settled fact and trotted out by the western media, in this case in Australia.

A classic case in point is the article ‘War over, but the fight goes on’ written by Ed O’Loughlin, which appeared in two of Australia’s most respected newspapers - the Sydney Morning Herald and the Brisbane Times - on 2 June 2007 to mark the 40th Anniversary of the Six Day War in 1967.

Consider these five gems (and there are many more) in Mr O’Loughlin’s article:

1. ‘A native of New Jersey, he is one of several hundred Jews who live under heavy military protection in the first and most extreme of all Jewish settlements on the West Bank, carved out of the historic heart of the Palestinian city of Hebron.’

The author fails to mention that ‘the historic heart of the Palestinian city of Hebron’ happens to include the ancient Jewish Quarter of Hebron built on land purchased by Jews in 1540.

Jews lived there until 24 August 1929 when 67 Jewish men women and children were slaughtered by a crowd of rampaging Arabs . The remaining Jewish population of 750 were forced to flee. Some returned in 1931 but were forced to leave when the Arabs rioted again in 1936. Jews returned to the Jewish Quarter after the Six Day War to a very hostile welcome from the Arab residents.

Hebron contains the traditional burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Leah and Rebecca - one of Jewry’s holiest sites - which the Bible records was purchased by Abraham in 1753BC.

Hebron is therefore more than just a Palestinian city. It has a far longer Jewish history - one of great religious significance for Jews.

I’m glad he singled out this particular misrepresentation. It is beyond grotesque that people shriek about Israel’s ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Palestinians from the West Bank, which hasn’t happened, when the people who really were ethnically cleansed by Palestinian pogroms from their ancestral homes in this area were the Jews, slaughtered in and driven out from places like Hebron. What people fail to realise is that, far from being a Palestinian city, Hebron is an ancient Jewish city. The Israel-haters are right about one thing — that these territories are occupied by colonialists bent on ethnic cleansing. The historical fact, however, is that the colonialists are the Arabs, and the Jews have been their victims.