Margaret Waspe (Australian humanitarian) (2017): “An adequate historical knowledge is important for our leaders. When history is distorted or re-invented, how can appropriate foreign policy be formed? When the Israeli Prime Minister and our Prime Minister met, it was publicly said that we had a 100 year old history of friendship, since the Battle of Beersheba. Was this corrected at all? Who advises our leaders? Israel became a state in 1948. What are the facts? From the nineteenth century the European Zionists (in Europe) planned to acquire and expand territorial control in the Middle East and intended to use diverse methods to separate the inhabitants from their land. That was an age when European imperialism was still the norm. Palestine then was a thriving agricultural society with approx. 500,000 inhabitants. In the 1920s the British and the Zionists assured the Palestinian leaders, that by allowing in persecuted European Jews, Palestinian rights would be strictly preserved. On that basis, Palestinian leaders agreed to limited immigration of persecuted European Jews – as long as their land, Palestine was able to retain its Arab identity. There is evidence that Muslims were encouraged by a leader to welcome the Jews as brethren according to the hospitable traditions of their religion.8 As the true Zionist intentions became evident, resistance then grew. The British authorities struggled with what they regarded as Zionist terrorist gangs who acted violently to destabilise the social context. The problem was handed to the United Nations, who with difficulty and intense pressure and lobbying, voted in favour of partition in 1947. Was that biased or not? In 1948, in the Naqba (catastrophe) the Palestinians experienced massacre, were forced to flee from their villages and lands, many still now living in permanent refugee camps elsewhere. Evidence from the writing of Zionist government leaders, shows that a deliberate policy was followed, of – covertly provoking an incident over the border in order to incite a retaliatory response, which would instill fear of danger in their people, and could be used as means of further Israeli powerful military attack and extended territorial control. Peace was never intended… In 1974, I worked as a volunteer on Kibbutz Reshafim in Israel, for about 4 months, followed by a similar time living and working with Palestinians in Eastern Jerusalem. I grew to love the land and its people, but I realised I was in a type of apartheid state. As a concerned person I had been working to bring justice and positive change in the Police State of apartheid-era South Africa, with Jewish friends amongst my working associates” (Margaret Waspe, “Open letter to the Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Defence, Senators and Members of the Australian Parliament. In search of truth. The Middle east and Australia’s future foreign policy”, 25 March 2017: https://www.fpwhitepaper.gov.au/sites/g/files/net3551/f/submission/170331-715-margaret-waspe.pdf ).