Anyone wondering how deeply a one-sided interpretation of Israel's history has penetrated the Democratic Party need look no further than former President Barack Obama's recent remarks in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

He said that it was "undeniable" that Israel "took the land of people and they were expelled." He went on to say that "those people, understandably, said, 'This is an injustice, and I want my land back.'"

I have considerable respect for the former president and vividly recall chatting with him during his first presidential campaign. There's no doubt he's a brilliant man, which makes his comments all the more disappointing. He has embraced an account of Israel's founding that acknowledges Palestinian grievances while giving insufficient weight to a century of Arab rejection, failed peace negotiations and the consequences of Israeli concessions.

Let's run through some history. Jews have resided in the Holy Land continuously for over 3,000 years. After World War I, the League of Nations assigned the territory then known as Palestine to the United Kingdom with the mandate to establish there "a national home for the Jewish people."

After World War II, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into an Arab state and Jewish state. The Jews accepted the vote. Arab Palestinians and the surrounding Arab states did not. On May 14, 1948, the modern state of Israel was proclaimed. Local Arab Palestinian forces were joined by invading troops from Egypt, Transjordan (Jordan), Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to fight against the new state.

Some Arab civilians fled expecting to return after an Arab victory. Others fled before the Israeli armed forces and others were forcibly expelled. All told, around 700,000 Arabs left territory that became Israel with more than half relocating to the West Bank and Gaza, territories encompassing much of the land the United Nations had designated for an Arab state that was never established. Jordan took over the West Bank, and Egypt took Gaza. Jordan ethnically cleansed all Jews from the West Bank and destroyed dozens of synagogues in East Jerusalem. Jordan also barred Jews from holy sites, including Jerusalem's Western Wall, despite provisions in the armistice agreement addressing access.

Also, during the years following Israel's establishment, about 900,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab and other Muslim-majority states including Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen. Most resettled in Israel.

Certainly, a well-read, well-educated member of the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School such as Obama would have known these facts. And yet why didn't he think they were worth mentioning?

In May 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared a war, saying that it would be "a general battle to destroy Israel." In the ensuing Six-Day War, Israel took control over Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria.

According to former President Bill Clinton, in 2000, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, "walked away from a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, 96% of the West Bank, and 4% of Israel." Clinton calls Arafat's rejection of the peace negotiations he himself oversaw one of the great tragedies of the 21st century. Obama did not cite this missed opportunity either.

In 2005, Israel dismantled its settlements in Gaza and withdrew its permanent ground forces, leaving the Palestinian Authority responsible for internal administration. Hamas, deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and then seized control of Gaza by force in 2007. It used aid from Iran and other countries to acquire missiles and build tunnels. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas launched a murderous attack against Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people, committing acts of sexual violence, including rape, and taking 251 hostages.

In Belfast, Obama said that if Israel refuses to make concessions because of its position of strength, "That may work short-term ... but you have ceded moral ground if that is the position you take." But Israel has made concessions, and the consequences have often been tragic. Israel withdrew its settlers and permanent ground forces from Gaza in 2005, only to see Hamas seize control and ultimately launch the Oct. 7 massacre. Why should Israel believe additional unilateral concessions would bring peace rather than invite further attacks?

The burden is now on Palestinian Arab leaders to prove they can be peace-abiding neighbors committed to building a country based on peace, law and justice, rejecting any intention to destroy the world's only Jewish state.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that to fully understand the situation in the Middle East, "you could literally go back thousands of years." Her one-time boss, President Obama, would do well to remember that history cannot be told selectively. The suffering of Palestinians is real. So is Israel's long search for security, its willingness at critical moments to negotiate, and the devastating consequences when opportunities for peace have failed. Any moral accounting that overlooks those facts is incomplete.

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com.

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