Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
Palestine never existed in history. Prove me wrong
Great article below
The History and Meaning of "Palestine" and "Palestinians"
Presented by: A Time To Speak "There is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nation. Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Eretz Yisrael with the express purpose of infuriating the Jews. Why should we use the spiteful name meant to humiliate us?
The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity." —Golda Meir quoted by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, 25 November 1995
Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough. — from "Myths of the Middle East", Joseph Farah, Arab-American editor and journalist, WorldNetDaily, 11 October 2000
From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries. — Professor Bernard Lewis, Commentary Magazine, January 1975
Talk and writing about Israel and the Middle East feature the nouns "Palestine" and Palestinian", and the phrases "Palestinian territory" and even "Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory". All too often, these terms are used with regard to their historical or geographical meaning, so that the usage creates illusions rather than clarifies reality.
What Does "Palestine" Mean?
It has never been the name of a nation or state. It is a geographical term, used to designate the region at those times in history when there is no nation or state there.
The Philistines were not Arabs, they were not Semites. They had no connection with Arabia or Arabs.
The word itself derives from "Peleshet", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". The name began to be used in the Thirteenth Century BCE, for a wave of migrant "Sea Peoples" who came from the area of the Aegean Sea and the Greek Islands and settled on the southern coast of the land of Canaan. There they established five independent city-states (including Gaza) on a narrow strip of land known as Philistia. The Greeks and Romans called it "Palastina".
The Philistines were not Arabs, they were not Semites. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palastina" derived from the Peleshet.
How Did the Land of Israel Become "Palestine"?
In the First Century CE, the Romans crushed the independent kingdom of Judea. After the failed rebellion of Bar Kokhba in the Second Century CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian determined to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea. Therefore, he took the name Palastina and imposed it on all the Land of Israel. At the same time, he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.
The Romans killed many Jews and sold many more in slavery. Some of those who survived still alive and free left the devastated country, but there was never a complete abandonment of the Land. There was never a time when there were not Jews and Jewish communities, though the size and conditions of those communities fluctuated greatly.
The History of Palestine
Thousands of years before the Romans invented "Palastina" the land had been known as "Canaan". The Canaanites had many tiny city-states, each one at times independent and at times a vassal of an Egyptian or Hittite king. The Canaanites never united into a state.
After the Exodus from Egypt — probably in the Thirteenth Century BCE but perhaps earlier — the Children of Israel settled in the land of Canaan. There they formed first a tribal confederation, and then the Biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the post-Biblical kingdom of Judea.
Israel-Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River.
From the beginning of history to this day, Israel-Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River. (In Biblical times, Ammon, Moab and Edom as well as Israel had land east of the Jordan, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation took their place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the 1920s.)
After the Roman conquest of Judea, "Palastina" became a province of the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. In 638 CE, an Arab-Muslim Caliph took Palastina away from the Byzantine Empire and made it part of an Arab-Muslim Empire. The Arabs, who had no name of their own for this region, adopted the Greco-Roman name Palastina, that they pronounced "Falastin".
In that period, much of the mixed population of Palastina converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language. They were subjects of a distant Caliph who ruled them from his capital, that was first in Damascus and later in Baghdad. They did not become a nation or an independent state, or develop a distinct society or culture.
In 1099, Christian Crusaders from Europe conquered Palestina-Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule. The Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, but never developed a national identity. It remained a military outpost of Christian Europe, and lasted less than 100 years. Thereafter, Palestine was joined to Syria as a subject Travellers to Palestineprovince first of the Mameluks, ethnically mixed slave-warriors whose center was in Egypt, and then of the Ottoman Turks, whose capital was in Istanbul.
During the First World War, the British took Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and among its subject provinces "Palestine" was assigned to the British, to govern temporarily as a mandate from the League of Nations.
The Jewish National Home
from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins
Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. — English pilgrim in 1590
The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population — British consul in 1857
There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] — not for 30 miles in either direction. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings.
For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee. Nazareth is for lorn. Jericho lies a moldering ruin. Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation untenanted by any living creature.
Mark Twain said this, when he visted the land in 1868. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds a silent, mournful expanse a desolation. We never saw a human being on the whole route. Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes . . . desolate and unlovely. — Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867
Their [the Jews] labors created newer and better conditions and opportunities
The restoration of the "desolate and unlovely" land began in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century with the first Jewish pioneers. Their labors created newer and better conditions and opportunities, which in turn attracted migrants from many parts of the Middle East, both Arabs and others.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917, confirmed by the League of Nations Mandate, commited the British Government to the principle that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. . . . " It was specified both that this area be open to "close Jewish settlement" and that the rights of all inhabitants already in the country be preserved and protected.
Mandate Palestine originally included all of what is now Jordan, as well as all of what is now Israel, and the territories between them. However, when Great Britain's protégé Emir Abdullah was forced to leave the ancestral Hashemite domain in Arabia, the British created a realm for him that included all of Manfate Palestine east of the Jordan River. There was no traditional or historic Arab name for this land, so it was called after the river: first Trans-Jordan and later Jordan.
By this political act, that violated the conditions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, the British cut more than 75 percent out of the Jewish National Home. No Jew has ever been permitted to reside in Trans-Jordan/Jordan.
Less than 25 percent then remained of Mandate Palestine, and even in this remnant, the British violated the Balfour and Mandate requirements for a "Jewish National Home" and for "close Jewish settlement". They progressively restricted where Jews could buy land, where they could live, build, farm or work.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel was finally able to settle some small part of those lands from which the Jews had been debarred by the British. Successive British governments regularly condemn their settlement as "illegal". In truth, it was the British who had acted illegally in banning Jews from these parts of the Jewish National Home.
Who Is A Palestinian?
During the period of the Mandate, it was the Jewish population that was known as "Palestinians" including those who served in the British Army in World War II.
British policy was to curtail their numbers and progressively limit Jewish immigration. By 1939, the White Paper virtually put an end to admission of Jews to Palestine. This policy was imposed the most stringently at the very time this Home was most desperately needed — after the rise of Nazi power in Europe. Jews who might have developed the empty lands of Palestine and left progeny there, instead died in the gas chambers of Europe or in the seas they were trying to cross to the Promised Land.
At the same time that the British slammed the gates on Jews, they permitted or ignored massive illegal immigration into Western Palestine from Arab countries Jordan, Syria, Egypt, North Africa. In 1939, Winston Churchill noted that "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied . . . ." Exact population statistics may be problematic, but it seems that by 1947 the number of Arabs west of the Jordan River was approximately triple of what it had been in 1900.
The current myth is that these Arabs were long established in Palestine, until the Jews came and "displaced" them. The fact is, that recent Arab immigration into Palestine "displaced" the Jews. That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is attested by the ruling of the United Nations: That any Arab who had lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a "Palestinian refugees".
Casual use of population statistics for Jews and Arabs in Palestine rarely consider how the proportions came to be. One factor was the British policy of keeping out Jews while bringing in Arabs. Another factor was the violence used to kill or drive out Jews even where they had been long established.
For one example: The Jewish connection with Hebron goes back to Abraham, and there has been an Israelite/Jewish community there since Joshua long before it was King David's first capital. In 1929, Arab rioters with the passive consent of the British — killed or drove out virtually the entire Jewish community.
It is now often proposed as a principle of international law and morality that all places that the British and the Arabs rendered Judenrein must forever remain so.
For another example: In 1948, Trans-Jordan seized much of Judea and Samaria (which they called The West Bank) and East Jerusalem and the Old City. They killed or drove out every Jew.
It is now often proposed as a principle of international law and morality that all places that the British and the Arabs rendered Judenrein must forever remain so. In contrast, Israel eventually allotted 17 percent of Mandate Palestine has a large and growing population of Arab citizens.
From Palestine To Israel
What was to become of "Palestine" after the Mandate? This question was taken up by various British and international commissions and other bodies, culminating with the United Nations in 1947. During the various deliberations, Arab officials, spokesmen and writers expressed their views on "Palestine".
"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it." — Local Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937
"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not" — Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." — Ahmed Shukairy, United Nations Security Council, 1956
By 1948, the Arabs had still not yet discovered their ancient nation of Falastin. When they were offered half of Palestine west of the Jordan River for a state, the offer was violently rejected. Six Arab states launched a war of annihilation against the nascent State of Israel. Their purpose was not to establish an independent Falastin. Their aim was to partition western Palestine amongst themselves.
They did not succeed in killing Israel, but Trans-Jordan succeeded in taking Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem, killing or driving out all the Jews who had lived in those places, and banning Jews of all nations from Jewish holy places. Egypt succeeded in taking the Gaza Strip. These two Arab states held these lands until 1967. Then they launched another war of annihilation against Israel, and in consequence lost the lands they had taken by war in 1948.
During those 19 years, 1948-1967, Jordan and Egypt never offered to surrendar those lands to make up an independent state of Falastin. The "Palestinians" never sought it. Nobody in the world ever suggested it, much less demanded it.
Finally, in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Movement was founded. Ahmed Shukairy, who less than 10 years earlier had denied the existence of Palestine, was its first chairman. Its charter proclaimed its sole purpose to be the destruction of Israel. To that end it helped to precipitate the Arab attack on Israel in 1967.
The outcome of that attack then inspired an alteration in public rhetoric. As propaganda, it sounds better to speak of the liberation of Falastin than of the destruction of Israel. Much of the world, governments and media and public opinion, accept virtually without question of serious analysis the new-sprung myth of an Arab nation of Falastin, whose territory is unlawfully occupied by the Jews.
Since the end of World War I, the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa have been given independent states in 99.5 percent of the land they claimed. Lord Balfour once expressed his hope that when the Arabs had been given so much, they would "not begrudge" the Jews the "little notch" promised to them.
Presented by: A Time To Speak "There is no such thing as a Palestinian Arab nation. Palestine is a name the Romans gave to Eretz Yisrael with the express purpose of infuriating the Jews. Why should we use the spiteful name meant to humiliate us?
The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity." —Golda Meir quoted by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, 25 November 1995
Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough. — from "Myths of the Middle East", Joseph Farah, Arab-American editor and journalist, WorldNetDaily, 11 October 2000
From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries. — Professor Bernard Lewis, Commentary Magazine, January 1975
Talk and writing about Israel and the Middle East feature the nouns "Palestine" and Palestinian", and the phrases "Palestinian territory" and even "Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory". All too often, these terms are used with regard to their historical or geographical meaning, so that the usage creates illusions rather than clarifies reality.
What Does "Palestine" Mean?
It has never been the name of a nation or state. It is a geographical term, used to designate the region at those times in history when there is no nation or state there.
The Philistines were not Arabs, they were not Semites. They had no connection with Arabia or Arabs.
The word itself derives from "Peleshet", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". The name began to be used in the Thirteenth Century BCE, for a wave of migrant "Sea Peoples" who came from the area of the Aegean Sea and the Greek Islands and settled on the southern coast of the land of Canaan. There they established five independent city-states (including Gaza) on a narrow strip of land known as Philistia. The Greeks and Romans called it "Palastina".
The Philistines were not Arabs, they were not Semites. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palastina" derived from the Peleshet.
How Did the Land of Israel Become "Palestine"?
In the First Century CE, the Romans crushed the independent kingdom of Judea. After the failed rebellion of Bar Kokhba in the Second Century CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian determined to wipe out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea. Therefore, he took the name Palastina and imposed it on all the Land of Israel. At the same time, he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.
The Romans killed many Jews and sold many more in slavery. Some of those who survived still alive and free left the devastated country, but there was never a complete abandonment of the Land. There was never a time when there were not Jews and Jewish communities, though the size and conditions of those communities fluctuated greatly.
The History of Palestine
Thousands of years before the Romans invented "Palastina" the land had been known as "Canaan". The Canaanites had many tiny city-states, each one at times independent and at times a vassal of an Egyptian or Hittite king. The Canaanites never united into a state.
After the Exodus from Egypt — probably in the Thirteenth Century BCE but perhaps earlier — the Children of Israel settled in the land of Canaan. There they formed first a tribal confederation, and then the Biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the post-Biblical kingdom of Judea.
Israel-Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River.
From the beginning of history to this day, Israel-Judah-Judea has the only united, independent, sovereign nation-state that ever existed in "Palestine" west of the Jordan River. (In Biblical times, Ammon, Moab and Edom as well as Israel had land east of the Jordan, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation took their place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the 1920s.)
After the Roman conquest of Judea, "Palastina" became a province of the pagan Roman Empire and then of the Christian Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. In 638 CE, an Arab-Muslim Caliph took Palastina away from the Byzantine Empire and made it part of an Arab-Muslim Empire. The Arabs, who had no name of their own for this region, adopted the Greco-Roman name Palastina, that they pronounced "Falastin".
In that period, much of the mixed population of Palastina converted to Islam and adopted the Arabic language. They were subjects of a distant Caliph who ruled them from his capital, that was first in Damascus and later in Baghdad. They did not become a nation or an independent state, or develop a distinct society or culture.
In 1099, Christian Crusaders from Europe conquered Palestina-Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule. The Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, but never developed a national identity. It remained a military outpost of Christian Europe, and lasted less than 100 years. Thereafter, Palestine was joined to Syria as a subject Travellers to Palestineprovince first of the Mameluks, ethnically mixed slave-warriors whose center was in Egypt, and then of the Ottoman Turks, whose capital was in Istanbul.
During the First World War, the British took Palestine from the Ottoman Turks. At the end of the war, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and among its subject provinces "Palestine" was assigned to the British, to govern temporarily as a mandate from the League of Nations.
The Jewish National Home
from the Western world left records of what they saw there. The theme throughout their reports is dismal: The land was empty, neglected, abandoned, desolate, fallen into ruins
Nothing there [Jerusalem] to be seen but a little of the old walls which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss and weeds. — English pilgrim in 1590
The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population — British consul in 1857
There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent [valley of Jezreel] — not for 30 miles in either direction. One may ride 10 miles hereabouts and not see 10 human beings.
For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee. Nazareth is for lorn. Jericho lies a moldering ruin. Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation untenanted by any living creature.
Mark Twain said this, when he visted the land in 1868. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds a silent, mournful expanse a desolation. We never saw a human being on the whole route. Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes . . . desolate and unlovely. — Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, 1867
Their [the Jews] labors created newer and better conditions and opportunities
The restoration of the "desolate and unlovely" land began in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century with the first Jewish pioneers. Their labors created newer and better conditions and opportunities, which in turn attracted migrants from many parts of the Middle East, both Arabs and others.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917, confirmed by the League of Nations Mandate, commited the British Government to the principle that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object. . . . " It was specified both that this area be open to "close Jewish settlement" and that the rights of all inhabitants already in the country be preserved and protected.
Mandate Palestine originally included all of what is now Jordan, as well as all of what is now Israel, and the territories between them. However, when Great Britain's protégé Emir Abdullah was forced to leave the ancestral Hashemite domain in Arabia, the British created a realm for him that included all of Manfate Palestine east of the Jordan River. There was no traditional or historic Arab name for this land, so it was called after the river: first Trans-Jordan and later Jordan.
By this political act, that violated the conditions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, the British cut more than 75 percent out of the Jewish National Home. No Jew has ever been permitted to reside in Trans-Jordan/Jordan.
Less than 25 percent then remained of Mandate Palestine, and even in this remnant, the British violated the Balfour and Mandate requirements for a "Jewish National Home" and for "close Jewish settlement". They progressively restricted where Jews could buy land, where they could live, build, farm or work.
After the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel was finally able to settle some small part of those lands from which the Jews had been debarred by the British. Successive British governments regularly condemn their settlement as "illegal". In truth, it was the British who had acted illegally in banning Jews from these parts of the Jewish National Home.
Who Is A Palestinian?
During the period of the Mandate, it was the Jewish population that was known as "Palestinians" including those who served in the British Army in World War II.
British policy was to curtail their numbers and progressively limit Jewish immigration. By 1939, the White Paper virtually put an end to admission of Jews to Palestine. This policy was imposed the most stringently at the very time this Home was most desperately needed — after the rise of Nazi power in Europe. Jews who might have developed the empty lands of Palestine and left progeny there, instead died in the gas chambers of Europe or in the seas they were trying to cross to the Promised Land.
At the same time that the British slammed the gates on Jews, they permitted or ignored massive illegal immigration into Western Palestine from Arab countries Jordan, Syria, Egypt, North Africa. In 1939, Winston Churchill noted that "So far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied . . . ." Exact population statistics may be problematic, but it seems that by 1947 the number of Arabs west of the Jordan River was approximately triple of what it had been in 1900.
The current myth is that these Arabs were long established in Palestine, until the Jews came and "displaced" them. The fact is, that recent Arab immigration into Palestine "displaced" the Jews. That the massive increase in Arab population was very recent is attested by the ruling of the United Nations: That any Arab who had lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a "Palestinian refugees".
Casual use of population statistics for Jews and Arabs in Palestine rarely consider how the proportions came to be. One factor was the British policy of keeping out Jews while bringing in Arabs. Another factor was the violence used to kill or drive out Jews even where they had been long established.
For one example: The Jewish connection with Hebron goes back to Abraham, and there has been an Israelite/Jewish community there since Joshua long before it was King David's first capital. In 1929, Arab rioters with the passive consent of the British — killed or drove out virtually the entire Jewish community.
It is now often proposed as a principle of international law and morality that all places that the British and the Arabs rendered Judenrein must forever remain so.
For another example: In 1948, Trans-Jordan seized much of Judea and Samaria (which they called The West Bank) and East Jerusalem and the Old City. They killed or drove out every Jew.
It is now often proposed as a principle of international law and morality that all places that the British and the Arabs rendered Judenrein must forever remain so. In contrast, Israel eventually allotted 17 percent of Mandate Palestine has a large and growing population of Arab citizens.
From Palestine To Israel
What was to become of "Palestine" after the Mandate? This question was taken up by various British and international commissions and other bodies, culminating with the United Nations in 1947. During the various deliberations, Arab officials, spokesmen and writers expressed their views on "Palestine".
"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it." — Local Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937
"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not" — Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." — Ahmed Shukairy, United Nations Security Council, 1956
By 1948, the Arabs had still not yet discovered their ancient nation of Falastin. When they were offered half of Palestine west of the Jordan River for a state, the offer was violently rejected. Six Arab states launched a war of annihilation against the nascent State of Israel. Their purpose was not to establish an independent Falastin. Their aim was to partition western Palestine amongst themselves.
They did not succeed in killing Israel, but Trans-Jordan succeeded in taking Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem, killing or driving out all the Jews who had lived in those places, and banning Jews of all nations from Jewish holy places. Egypt succeeded in taking the Gaza Strip. These two Arab states held these lands until 1967. Then they launched another war of annihilation against Israel, and in consequence lost the lands they had taken by war in 1948.
During those 19 years, 1948-1967, Jordan and Egypt never offered to surrendar those lands to make up an independent state of Falastin. The "Palestinians" never sought it. Nobody in the world ever suggested it, much less demanded it.
Finally, in 1964, the Palestine Liberation Movement was founded. Ahmed Shukairy, who less than 10 years earlier had denied the existence of Palestine, was its first chairman. Its charter proclaimed its sole purpose to be the destruction of Israel. To that end it helped to precipitate the Arab attack on Israel in 1967.
The outcome of that attack then inspired an alteration in public rhetoric. As propaganda, it sounds better to speak of the liberation of Falastin than of the destruction of Israel. Much of the world, governments and media and public opinion, accept virtually without question of serious analysis the new-sprung myth of an Arab nation of Falastin, whose territory is unlawfully occupied by the Jews.
Since the end of World War I, the Arabs of the Middle East and North Africa have been given independent states in 99.5 percent of the land they claimed. Lord Balfour once expressed his hope that when the Arabs had been given so much, they would "not begrudge" the Jews the "little notch" promised to them.
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$135.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network
The word 'palestinian' is merely a label created by the Egyptian president Nazer in his efforts to destroy Israel.
While there is no doubt in my own mind that Arafat has no interest in governing a new Arab state neighboring Israel and living at peace with it, many in the West – even in Israel – remain convinced pursuing such a plan still represents the best hope for the region.
I just read a 1998 book, "Arafat," by Said K. Aburish, an author quite sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, which should dispel any such fanciful notions by those still daydreaming about any peace brokered by this man.
The most enlightening section of the book deals with the 1970 civil war in Jordan between Arafat's forces and those of the late King Hussein's.
Israel and the West could learn quite a lesson from this history.
"Between mid-1968 and the end of 1969, there were no fewer than 500 violent clashes between members of the various Palestinian guerrilla groups and the Jordanian army and security forces," Aburish writes. "Serious incidents included the kidnapping of Arab diplomats and unfriendly Jordanian journalists, unprovoked attacks on government offices, rape and the humiliation of army and security officers. The Palestinians, who were legally entitled to set up road blocks, molested women, levied illegal taxes and insulted the Jordanian flag in the presence of loyal Jordanians."
Just like today's conflict between Palestinians and Israelis, there were debates as to whether Arafat controlled the violence or whether he was unable to impose discipline on his followers or challenge groups behind the attacks.
Repeatedly, shows Aburish, Hussein and Arafat hammered out extensive and specific agreements to bring the chaos under control. Repeatedly, Arafat ignored the treaties and personally violated them.
Aburish documents in detail the many steps Hussein took in trying to defuse the conflict between his regime and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which had established a nation within a nation in Jordan. Even while members of Arafat's coalition were actively working on behalf of Hussein's overthrow, the king made the unprecedented and astonishing gesture of offering to form a government with Arafat – one in which the PLO leader would serve as prime minister.
"An amazed, almost speechless Arafat turned him down because he had no plan for Jordan, or for incorporating the PLO into a functioning nation state with or without Hussein," writes Aburish. "With this refusal Arafat, who survives on improvisation and constantly turns turmoil to personal advantage, was left with no option but to continue to contribute to the existing untenable chaotic state of affairs. Unable to control his followers or assume power, he was cornered into trying to maintain the status quo. As if to underscore the absurdity of the situation, immediately afterwards, in June, there was yet another failed attempt by renegade guerrillas to assassinate Hussein by ambushing his motorcade."
How far did Hussein bend to accommodate Arafat? So far as to offer him a partnership in the Jordanian government – one in which Arafat would serve as prime minister.
If Arafat was even tempted to govern a Palestinian state, this opportunity represented the best chance. Jordan's population is 80 percent Palestinian. There are far more Palestinians in Jordan than there are in Arafat's Palestinian Authority today.
Arafat would have none of it. Why? Because he knew that such a deal would come with a string attached. He would have to curtail his terrorist operations against Israel. That price tag was too high for Arafat – and it always will be.
Instead, following more terrorist operations against Jordan – including what was until Sept. 11 the most dramatic series of airline hijackings in history on Sept. 6, 1970 – Hussein declared war on Arafat's forces. As many as 15,000 people died in the fighting that lasted nearly a year. So ferocious was the final Jordanian attack on Arafat's forces that many of his fighters chose to surrender to Israelis rather than face the terror from their own Arab brethren.
Arafat fled with about 2,000 of his fighters first into Syria and later into Lebanon – where they were eventually responsible for launching yet another bloody Arab civil war.
What's the lesson here?
It is one that has been overlooked by history. Arafat will settle for nothing less than all of Israel. There is little point in negotiating with him. Other Arab leaders have learned this first hand – which is why he will never again be allowed to operate on their turf.
1000 jews among 2 million arabs and chrirstians-MAKES->0.5%
(pag 295)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?D29F511F2
http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/news/2002/04/18298.php
STOP ZIONNAZI LIES AND PROPAGANDA
STOP ILLEGAAL AND CRIMINAL OCCUPATION (Key phrase)
FREE PALESTINA
For the people that think these are lies, face the fact. Its the truth. You can put up your own emotions as a wall, or make up your own beliefs but in the end the truth is still there. Face reality.
This is what Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said:
The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
Discussion over.
So what you are saying is that because Palastine did not exist as an official historic entity, its ok to invade and occupy it when the british said it was ok?
Right on. Thats what we did to the Natives here too. Finder's keepers, losers weepers. Just don't go around saying Israel is anything than an imperialist entity grabbing land it wants to have.
Why are we supporting it? Because by supporting Israel we not only control the Oil, we also control the Jews and with control over Oil and Jews, we don't have to worry about anything! Remember, Arabs control oil, Jews control banks, and if we can keep them fighting each-other, then they won't bother my holiday shopping!
Don't even piss me off, or I will run you over with my SUV!
We need to publicize the $14 BILLION DOLLARS of aid (ethnic cleansing subsidies) being requested by Israel right now. It's totally unacceptable.
We need to help Americans understand that at a time when American schools can't afford copy paper, BILLIONS and BILLIONS of our tax dollars goes to prop up illegal settlements, an illegal occupation, and terrorism against a whole captive population.
Yes I support a two state solution, but the only way this can possibly happen is if the United States takes an even-handed approach to the Israel/Palestine problem.
Our democracy is in jeopardy: The Israel Lobby spends hundreds of millions of dollars to buy politicians and influence American elections. Why do you think the politicians are so willing to send BILLIONS to Israel?
Our standing in the world is in jeopardy: Israel is one of the world's great scoflaws. They have violated many more UN resolutions than Iraq. They have nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. They have engaged in ethnic cleansing on a scale that dwarfs anything in Serbia.
Israel has bombed American libraries (in Egypt -- look in the index for the "Lavon Affair" in any reasonably unbiased history of Israel in the 1950s). Israel has intentionally attacked an American spy ship (the USS Liberty, see James Ennes, ASSAULT ON THE LIBERTY). They have sent their spies to steal American secrets (Jonathan Pollard is still in jail although the Israel Lobby keeps trying to spring him).
Israel is not our ally! Israel is a rogue state. Israel is the tail wagging the American dog.
Too long America has allowed guilt to dictate our policy toward Israel. My mother's generation felt tremendous guilt that we didn't stop the Holocaust, that we didn't accept Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe.
I didn't do it and I don't feel any guilt about it. Just as I stand up for the rights of Palestinians, I would have stood for the rights of all those who were victims of the Nazi boot. We who are anti-Zionist are also anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist.
Too long we gone without challenging Zionist propaganda about the weak Israeli "David" against the massive Arab "Goliath." Too long we have averted our eyes from the damage our money and our weapons are causing to the civilians that inconveniently lived where the Zionists dictate Israel should be.
It's a new day folks.
(For the record. Racist anti-Semites (of all stripes) kiss my ass. Just because I'm pro-Palestinian does not mean I am anti-Jewish. All you Holocaust denial folks can kiss my ass too.)
Ok, Palestine, as a sovereign state, exists only in the human heart.
Israel, a white European settler colonial state, imposed on the region by Europeans out of guilt over European anti-Semitism, exists in fact.
The question is where should the borders be? I say lets go back to the 1948 UN partition plan where the UN decided how much to give to the Palestinians and how much to the Israelis.
I also say it is wrong for America to give Israel $14 Billion Dollars per year in aid so that Israel can steal land from the Palestinians.
It's so absurd for anyone to say there wasn't a Palestine. It's been around for thousands of years! So the borders weren't defined.... but guess what? Neither are Israel's! And Israel was artificially, immorally created by the UN which gave away Palestinian land that was not the UN's to give away to the Eastern European Zionist Jews who were intent on creating a Jewish supremacist country in a country that is predominately Muslim!
Ethnic cleansing can NEVER be justified, and WE THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA refuse to pay for Israel's ethnic cleansing campaigns anymore now that we KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT RACIST, ANTI-DEMOCRATIC, APARTHEID ISRAEL!
For newcomers, check out http://www.cactus48.com
So what's your point, that national borders exist because of some divine right and not because of force of arms?
Where's the proof of that?
____________________________________________________
YISRAEL
Yisrael 'Israel' seems like a straightforward enough word, but it isn't. It's been the name of an individual, the name of a people, and only very recently the name of a state.
In the Bible, Yisrael is first the personal name awarded to the patriarch Jacob after he wrestles with an angel. The name means, loosely, 'overpowers a mighty force'. Soon, as his descendants the Hebrews multiply in their Egyptian enslavement, the name Bnei Yisrael 'sons of Israel' -- or simply Yisrael -- comes to denote the emerging Israelite nation. Meanwhile, the Bible usually refers to the Promised Land as Eretz Kenaan 'the Land of Canaan'. Moving on a few hundred years, the Israelites split into two kingdoms upon the death of Solomon; the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom call themselves Yisrael while the southern kingdom, based around jerusalem, calls itself Yehuda (Judea) after the dominant tribe of the southern region. And still the country is generally called Eretz Kenaan.
When, in the 8th century BCE, the northern kingdom of Yisrael is crushed by the invading Assyrians and the 10 tribes exiled into oblivion, the name Yisrael seems to have had it -- the surviving Israelites will call themselves Yehudim 'Judeans' (from whence the name 'Jew').
However, the name Yisrael survived. Jews began calling the Holy Land 'Eretz Yisrael', and Yisrael also came to denote 'Jew', in other words a singular noun, like American, Arab. That's how Yisrael was used in the Talmud (200-500 CE), and Jews continued to refer to a fellow Jew as Yisrael and to their motherland as 'Eretz Yisrael' right down to modern times.
Then came May 1948. A Jewish state was to be declared, quite unexpectedly. And its government had to decide on a name for it. Two names were debated: Zion and Yisrael. Some felt that the name Yisrael was unsuitable, but on the insistence of the Jewish state's first premier, David Ben Gurion, the choice fell on Yisrael. And its citizens, be they Jewish or not, would be called 'Yisraelim'. One more twist in a long tale.
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~damell/hebrew/words.html
Meileann muilte Dé go mall ach meileann siad go mín.
(God's mills grind slowly, but they grind finely.) (i.e. Justice is sure.)
Denials and Justifications: This is the age old cry of the oppressor.
The fact is the indigenous population of Palestine lived there for millenia. There religion slowly changed, but the people were the same people. They went from polytheism, to Judaism (no relation whatsoever to European Judaism of the Khazars), then most switched to Christianity, and after that most switched to Islam. Zionists' claims to the holy land are based on the bible and completely unsupportable.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Greg Felton writes:
"...the Zionist Jews who founded Israel are another matter. For the most part, they are not Semites, and their language (Yiddish) is not semitic. These Ashkenazi ('German') Jews -- as opposed to the Sephardic ('Spanish') Jews -- have no connection whatever to any of the aforementioned ancient peoples or languages.
They are mostly East European Slavs descended from the Khazars, a nomadic Turko-Finnic people that migrated out of the Caucasus in the second century and came to settle, broadly speaking, in what is now Southern Russia and Ukraine.
In A.D. 740, the khagan (ruler) of Khazaria, decided that paganism wasn't good enough for his people and decided to adopt one of the 'heavenly' religions: Judaism, Christianity or Islam. After a process of elimination he chose Judaism, and from that point the Khazars adopted Judaism as the official state religion.
The history of the Khazars and their conversion is a documented, undisputed part of Jewish history, but it is never publicly discussed. It is, as former U.S. State Department official Alfred M. Lilienthal declared, 'Israel's Achilles heel,' for it proves that Zionists have no claim to the land of the Biblical Hebrews.
Thus what we know as the 'Jewish State' of Israel is really an ethnocentric garrison state established by a non-Semitic people for the declared purpose of dispossessing and terrorizing a civilian semitic people. In fact from Nov. 27, 1947, to May 15, 1948, more that 300,000 Arabs were forced from their homes and villages. By the end of the year, the number was close to 800,000 by Israeli estimates. Today, Palestinian refugees number in the millions.
That the Jews knew they were committing a criminal act is shown by a eulogy Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan delivered for a Jew killed by Arabs on the Gaza border in 1956:
'Let us not heap accusations on the murderers,' he said. 'How can we complain about their deep hatred for us? For eight years they have been sitting in the Gaza refugee camps, and before their very eyes, we are possessing the land and the villages where they and their ancestors have lived. We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home.'
In April 1969, Dayan told the Jewish newspaper Ha'aretz: 'There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.'
Clearly, the equation of Zionism with racism is founded on solid historical evidence, and the charge of anti-Semitism is absurd."
http://www.mediamonitors.net/gregfelton2.html
-----------------------------------------------------------
They basically stole another people's homeland for themselves, quite unapologetically and by force (including gruesome massacres like in Deir Yassin).
And these were a people that had never done a thing to Jews but had lived in peace with one another (Jews, Christians, and Muslims).
And don't let them fool you with the "We accepted the UN partition but they did not so they deserved what they got" argument. The fact is, Palestinians' at the time suggested a one state solution in which Jews would live as equals by they would have to obtain their property through legal means like purchase rather than conquest. The Zionists rejected this as though it were their right to kick people out of their own homes and steal it for themselves without paying for it and killing thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) in the process. We know of Deir Yassin because it was highly documented by UN workers. A few Israeli historians have documented several dozen more villages that were completely massacred just like Deir Yassin. In addition, around 400 Palestinian villages were ethnically cleansed.
Another fairy tale the Israelis have produced is that Arab countries asked Palestinians to leave, but upon investigation, not only were there no infamous "Arab Broadcasts" found, Christopher Hitchens and Edward Said actually found broadcasts of Arab leaders urging the Palestinians to stay put. But that was impossible for obvious reasons -- they were being massacred.
All this leads up to the present in which Israel's ethnic cleansing is STILL on going and being bankrolled by me (and every other American) -- as if US Foreign Policy is important only for Zionists.
Sure. Sure. No one is saying leave (except for maybe some on the fringe).
What everyone is saying -- including Palestinians -- is that Palestinians should live as equals with you and your children. You should not have greater rights than them or treat them as inferiors. There should not be Jews only neighborhoods or schools. Also, Palestinians kicked out should have a right to return over the right of return accorded to Jews right now who have never set foot there.
Even the settlers wouldn't have to leave. They could stay right where they are. Live with the Palestinians as equals and no one will criticize you. Create racist laws to give you supremacy over Palestinians and you and those laws will rightfully be criticized.
As for my part and that of other Americans, we should end all aid to Israel and allow the UN to play its role till those conditions are met. That is the minimum anti-racist position we should meet. It's only right and just.
But I truly believe if that happens, you and your children will not only live in peace right there in Israel/Palestine, but will be able to travel throughout the Arab world in safety and security because the conflict will have ended. Try to visualize this -- it is possible.
No more bloodshed for anyone -- especially the main victims today, the Palestinians.
Palestine is not Israel. The state of Palestine should be established on ALL the lands Israel occupied in the defensive 67 war.
All Palestinians who choose to do so should be able to exercise their right fro self-determination in Palestine (not in Israel)
Palestine, if they so choose, can become a democratic country or it can become a country based on Muslim Sharia law (as proposed in the draft Palestinian constitution)
Palestinian cannot impose their laws on Israelis.
Once there will a state called Palestine the pressure to turn Israel into the 2nd Palestinian state hopefully will be reduced.
All people who belong to the Jewish nation (the Hebrews) should be able to exercise their right for self-determination in the country called Israel - This is the essence of Zionism, a secular movement that brought to the establishment of the state of Israel.
The Hebrews and non-Hebrews citizens of Israel are from many ethnicities: Some are refugees from (Nazi era) Europe, some are Africans from Ethiopia, some are from Asia , some are refugees from Arab countries, some are fro the former soviet union and many of them are not Jewish at all but they have become citizens of Israel.
Only the Americans deserve to have the contineny they stole from the indians. Why ? because american are NOT a single ethnic group.
Wel nessie nither are the jews - they are many ethnicities in Israel all part of the same nation - The hebrews.
This is, of course, utter nonsense. Joan Peters attempted to prove the same thesis in her infamous fraud, "From Time Immemorial," which even her staunchest supporters had to admit was thoroughly bankrupt scholorship.
Matti Suviolahti provides not a single shred of reliable evidence to support his rather incredible thesis. It is likely that this is due to the fact that there simply isn't any.
One wonders why these theories keep popping up. Israel Zangwill first coined the Zionist catch-phrase, "A land with no people for a people with no land." Yet, in 1904, in a speech in New York, he basically recanted, calling the Zionists' attention to the fact that there were loads of people already in the land that they wanted to settle. He wondered if eventually the Zionists would have to revert to conquering them by force, as the Biblical Hebrews had done to the inidigenous population they had found living there.
I wonder if those who keep trying to revisit this theory really think that it has any hope of actually solving today's horrific situation?
Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that there were no non-Jewish Palestinians living in Hebron 120 years ago (a completely false assumption, but let's assume it anyway). Does this make it alright, either politically or morally, for the IDF to stand by and laugh as they watch the Jewish settlers topple over Palestinian benches filled with fruits and vegetables in their market? Does if justify the IDF completely destroying the Palestinian market in Hebron?
Of course not. It has no bearing on it at all. The facts are still that the Israeli government is undertaking a very specific strategy to ensure that Palestinians are not allowed to live normal, secure lives.
They have every bit as much a right to live in Hebron as any Jew. In fact, according to international law, at the moment they have more of a right, for the nations of the world consider it to be their homeland.
What people need to discuss is not how to prove that the Palestinians never existed -- end therefore do not really exists now -- but how to stop the Israelis from breaking international and moral law, which is impoverishing the lives of real human beings (I don't care if what nationality you call them), and creating such hatred among them that some of them want to turn themselves into living bombs.