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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Funny Numbers part 2: Fatah member doubles number of PalArabs

This video from MEMRI is notable for a couple of reasons:



For one thing, it is just another indication of how ticked off the Palestinian Arabs were from Obama's UN speech.

But more interestingly is the astonishing ease by which Jibril Rajoub lies about the number of Palestinian Arabs there are.

He claims that there are 18 million PalArabs, of whom some 8 million live in Israel and the territories and the other 10 million in "refugee camps."

In reality, even the most generous (and questionable) statistics say there are 11 million Arabs of Palestinian  descent worldwide.

2.5 million are in the West Bank and 1.5 million in Gaza according to Palestinian Arab estimates. Some 1.5 million live in Israel, which adds up to 6 million - 2 million less than Rajoub claims.

But his "diaspora" numbers are really out of whack - he doubles that number.

Even more ridiculous, he claims that all of the PalArabs outside "Palestine" are in "refugee" camps, when in fact only a small percentage - about one million - are in camps, according to UNRWA.

We've seen Palestinian Arabs make stuff up before. And why shouldn't they? No one really challenges them.

(h/t Dan)