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Among the most historically inaccurate libels directed against Israel is the false accusation that Israel was established as a colonial surrogate to imperialist European nations.

Nothing could be further from reality.

Israel was established as a reaction to European colonialism, imperialism and oppression. Palestinianism, as distinguished from Zionism, had its origins in Nazi German colonialism.

The leader of the Palestinian cause before, during and even after World War II was Muhammad Amit Al- Husaini, who spent the war years in Berlin under Adolf Hitler’s protection.

He preached, “In Heaven Allah, on earth Hitler.”

Hitler’s goal was to colonize Palestine for the third Reich, as he colonized areas in Europe, Africa, and the Mideast.

Hussaini agreed with that goal.

Together they planned death camps for the Jewish residents of Palestine, employing killing machines of the kind the Nazis built in Poland.

Only the military defeat of Nazi Germany thwarted this jointly planned genocide.

Hitler regarded Arabs as racially inferior, subject to colonization of the kind he imposed on Slavic and other “subordinate races.”

He did not treat Palestinians as equal partners, as he did fellow Aryans.

But both Hitler and Husaini shared a common belief that Jews were subhuman, subject only to annihilation.

Despite their second-class status under Nazi racist ideology as “untermenschen,” many Palestinians displayed in their homes the picture of their nazi-supporting leader, sometimes along with Hitler’s.

This continued even after Husaini was declared a Nazi war criminal and had to escape to Egypt in order to avoid being tried and executed.

The origin of Palestinianism is therefore colonialism.

While the Jews of Palestine were fighting against British colonialism, the Arab leadership in Palestine was supporting German colonialism over the area.

The Palestinians did not want an independent state of their own, as Hussaini testified at the Peale commission in the late 1930s.

All they wanted was there must not be an independent Jewish state.

They favored colonial control over the region.

They were the colonialists.

The Jews were the anti-colonialists.

The Palestinian leaders were the advocates of genocide.

The Jews were their intended victims.

You wouldn’t know this well documented history if you listened to the ignorant accusations of “colonialism” directed against Israel.

Nor would you know that Israel is virtually the only anti-colonialist nation in the region.

Most of the others were creations of post-World War I colonialism.

Their artificial boundaries were drawn by European cartographers, and their leaders were selected by their colonial masters.

Only Israel is a democracy established, from the ground up, by hard working pioneers (chalutsim) on land historically connected to the Jewish people.

The UN partition of the stateless area that Romans had named Palestine allocated to the Jewish nation only that area with a majority of Jewish residents.

The remainder was allocated to the Palestinians, who refused to create their own nation, rejected the partition and joined the other Arab states in a genocidal attack against the newly declared Jewish nation.

The Jews fought back in defense of their democratic state and their families and won a hard-fought war against overwhelming odds.

This is not colonialism; it is democratic national liberation.

It is anti-colonialism. It is anti-imperialism. It is anti-genocide.

But the current false accusations against the Mideast’s only democracy are based on inversions of history and morality.

• Anti-colonialists are accused of colonialism.

• The victims of genocide are accused of genocide.

• Self-defense is called aggression.

The accusers are in fact guilty of the crimes of which they accuse their victims.

The accused may not be perfect — no nation or group is — but they are more deserving of support than are the hypocritical accusers.

In this pseudo world of inversion, facts and history do not matter.

Identity trumps all.

The phony concept of “intersectionality” divided the universe into victims and victimizers based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and other factors generally beyond the control of individuals.

Status is permanent, without regard to individual culpability or changing circumstances.

This is the propaganda many young people are being fed in high schools and universities.

It is not surprising that so many of them uncritically accept such nonsense.

If the historical truths were to be taught instead of these ahistorical polemics, the complex realities would be better understood.

There are rights and wrongs on all sides of history.

In the case of Israel, the historic rights overwhelm the wrongs.

The Jews were willing to accept a two-state solution in 1938, 1948, 1967, 2001 and 2007.

The Palestinian leadership rejected these opportunities because they wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than they wanted there to be a Palestinian state.

Until that view is categorically rejected, there will be no peace and no two-state solution.

Israel will carry on as an embattled but self-reliant democracy, while Palestinians will hopelessly rely on the pressures of other nations in the true spirit of colonialism.

The boot of colonialism is on the other foot.

Dr. Anthony Fauci not only had the right to plead the Fifth Amendment before a congressional committee, he was probably right to do so.

The Fifth Amendment protects the innocent and the guilty alike. No one should infer guilt from anyone invoking that constitutional privilege. Had I been Dr. Fauci’s lawyer I probably would have advised him to do exactly what he did, despite the fact that many people will wrongly infer guilt from his refusal to testify.

The committee that was examining Fauci has an agenda. It is not seeking the whole truth. It is seeking partisan advantage.

Members of congress and their staff frequently use these hearings to bully witnesses. They often cut them off in the middle of their answers and refuse to allow them to comply with their oath to “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Congressmen and their staff then have the ability to distort the testimony out of context and create soundbites for their campaigns.

Let me begin with Fauci’s constitutional right to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Yes, he was pardoned for any past crimes but the pardon does not operate prospectively. The committee was trying to prove that he had committed crimes not only before his pardon but after it. He surely had the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment as to any potentially incriminating information that would allow prosecution for post-pardoned crimes. To refuse to answer is not to acknowledge guilt; it’s to acknowledge prosecutors can indict innocent defendants using evidence obtained in congressional hearings.

Senator Rand Paul tried to avoid this constitutional barrier by specifically asking him questions that are clearly covered by the pardon President Biden gave him. This may make it appear that Dr. Fauci had nothing to fear from answering questions limited to that period. But that ignores a line of Supreme Court cases that hold that if a defendant answers some questions about a particular subject, he may not refuse to answer other questions about that subject. He may not turn the spigot on and off. Once he opens the door by answering questions about a subject, he may not close it in response to other questions.

So any good lawyer will always advise a client who seeks to invoke the Fifth Amendment to invoke it across the board and not try to pick and choose safe areas. That’s what Dr. Fauci’s lawyer did here, and that’s what I would’ve done had I been Dr. Fauci’s lawyer.

There is of course a price to pay in the court of public opinion for invoking the Fifth Amendment in response to hundreds of questions. Opportunistic politicians are eager to cite the number of times a witness has invoked the privilege, without explaining that there is no real difference between invoking it once and continuing to invoke it as for every question. This tactic was used commonly during the McCarthy era, when witnesses refused even to give their names or dates of birth. Similarly, Dr. Fauci refused to answer questions about the color of his tie for fear that he might be waiving his Fifth Amendment right as to other questions.

So whether you like dr Fauci or not, all Americans who care about const rights should be supporting his fifth amendment right to refuse to incriminate himself. 

The fact that Dr. Fauci was within his constitutional rights does not mean that he is out of trouble. The congressional committee may well recommend that he be held in contempt. And congress may vote to hold him in contempt. The Trump Justice department could indict him and he would have to litigate these issues. Although there is no guarantee that he will win, the law seems clearly to be on his side. Moreover it may take a considerable amount of time for this case to work its way through congress and the courts.

If the committee were seriously interested in learning the facts rather than going after dr Fauci, it could recommend that congress bestow total immunity on dr Fauci up until the present. This would not give him immunity from a perjury prosecution if he were to testify falsely, but it would immunize him from all other crimes and deny him the right to invoke the fifth amendment. But congress seems more interested in Fauci’s blood than in his truthful testimony.

We will never know the whole truth about the sources and causes of the terrible virus that killed so many people. But we can truly learn from our collective mistakes in responding to the pandemic once it occurred. Dr. Fauci almost certainly has useful information that would help in this process. So the best thing for our nation and for the world, would be to give Dr. Fauci total immunity and question him about everything he knows without giving him the right to refuse to answer question on the ground that his answers might tend to incriminate him.