"Officials of the Jewish state will sweep the US president into their own powerful and compelling narrative: The birth of Israel from the ashes of the Holocaust on May 14, 1948, the invasion of the state a day later from Arab armies marching from the north, south, and east and the loss of one per cent of the Jewish state's population in a fierce defence that evokes Israel's unofficial motto - "never again".

What the president will not hear is the Palestinian story.

He will not be told that one side's "War of Independence" is the other side's "Nakba", or "Catastrophe"."