Hugo Chavez, the whacked-out Venezuelan leader who is meeting with the terrorist-leaning head of Syria this week, called Israel a “genocidal” country in a speech in which he informed the latter that the United States and Israel are the world’s most despicable nations.

I’d like to set straight the unfortunately delusional Mr. Chavez and anyone inclined to believe his rantings – with some facts, though I realize nutcase megalomaniacs like him typically tend to be wildly disinterested in facts that fly in the face of whatever propaganda they’re pushing.

Nevertheless, there may be a couple people out there retaining some capacity for independent thought, who might be able to draw a rational conclusion from some actual facts.

Anti-Semites like Chavez are fond of constantly regurgitating the “Palestine-as-occupied territory” lie, and suggest that since Israel was proclaimed a state in 1948, the Israelis have conducted a campaign of genocide against the area’s Arabs.

These are the same people, generally, who assert that Israel is the Goliath in this scenario, despite the country being speck-like compared to the vast “Arab world” that surrounds it.

They constantly complain that “the Zionist entity” is a genocidal Jewish monster, completely ignoring the fact that if Israel really desired to exterminate all the Palestinian Arabs, they could have done so at any time without breaking a sweat, at least by their own argument.

But, there’s an even better measure of whether or not there’s a genocide under way against the Palestinian Arabs – (outside of the one they’re imposing on themselves by grooming their young people to become walking bombs.)

When Israel was declared a state in 1948, most objective sources say there were some 1.1 million Palestinian Arabs (and about 650,000 Jews) living in what is now Israel.

By the time of the 1967 war, the number of Arabs had grown to about 1.3 million.

Sources reveal there were just over 1 million Arabs in Israel in 1973, suggesting the decrease was due to refugees fleeing that year’s war. But by 1982, there were about 2.1 million Arabs living in Israel and there are more than 5 million now.

In what previous historical genocide did the target population increase?

I mean, isn’t the whole raison d’être of a genocide to wipe out a particular group of people? Wouldn’t it stand to reason then, that the number of members of that group would begin to diminish under the weight of the killers’ murderous ambitions?

In fact, the issue is so salient that I just don’t think you can reasonably call something a genocide when the target population increases.

By contrast, there were some 860,000 Jews living in Arab countries in 1948, and by 2001, there were fewer than 8,000.

If one were judging whether or not a genocide were taking place somewhere by the population size of the target group, one would have to conclude the Jews in the Arab world were the victims, and not vice-versa.

Take the country of Lebanon, for instance.

According to United Nations’ figures, in 1948, there were about 5,000 Jews living there, and they were down to about 100 by 2001. In the nation of Aden, where there were some 8,000 Jewish souls in 1948, none whatsoever remained in 2001.

There were nearly 40,000 Jews in Libya in 1948, according to the figures, and, again, zero by 2001. Algeria went from having a Jewish population of about 140,000 in 1948, to, take a guess… absolutely none in 2001.

And in Syria, whose leader is even now discussing in Venezuela the issue of Jewish genocide against Palestinian Arabs, there were some 30,000 Jews living in 1948 and only about 100 souls remained by 2001.

The argument will be made that most of the Arab world’s Jews left for Israel between 1948 and 2001, and that may be true to a significant extent.

But human nature is such that most people who are comfortable in their situations, don’t pick up and move to another country. Most people don’t choose to leave behind everything they’ve ever known and start over in a strange, new land, unless it has become intolerable in the old one.

The world’s Jews have perhaps the most experience of any people in being forced under violent duress to leave various “homelands.”

It is most notable, I think, that no flood of Palestinian and Israeli Arabs pour out of the region seeking asylum in other countries.

How terrible could it be, then?

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