Israeli Muslims to fly to Hajj (plus a lie in Ma'an)

From Ma'an:

For the first time ever, Palestinian Muslims who live in Israel will be able to travel to Saudi Arabia for hajj pilgrimage by air instead of having to make the journey by bus.

Owner of the Ramla-based Milad Aviation Company Ibrahim Milad told Ma'an Sunday that flights would be organized from Ben Gurion Airport to Amman and then onward to Jeddah Airport in Saudi Arabia.

"We have contacted the Israeli and Jordanian civil aviation authorities and obtained all the needed permission to organize flights for hajj pilgrims," he said.

In the past, he said, it used to take pilgrims about 24 hours to travel from Israel to Amman due to the situation at the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge into Jordan, but the journey has now been reduced to a 20-minute plan ride.

An initial group of 766 hajj pilgrims will fly Sept. 23-26, and the flight will cost about $600.

Those Israeli Islamophobes!

Of course, this being Ma'an, it has to throw in some anti-Israel lies as background information:

Although the majority of Palestinians were expelled from their homes inside Israel during the 1948 ethnic cleansing that led to the creation of the State of Israel, some Palestinians managed to remain in their villages.

There are no credible historians who claim that the majority of Arabs in Palestine were expelled in 1948. The vast majority fled out of fear of war, the crumbling of Arab infrastructure from the initial panicked flight and some at the behest of Arab leaders.

The ones who stayed didn't "manage to remain," implying that despite Israeli efforts they managed to hang on to their homes. They simply didn't flee and no one bothered them.

But the Arabs know very well Goebbel's rule "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." It is pretty much the basis of Palestinian Arab nationalism.