Last sentence summed it all up pretty well for me. But then again I'm a gentile neocon, so go figure.
ill have to read this later
Bookmarked - thanks!
Excellent review and analysis.
anyone have that map of Israel in the Arab world? always very instructive when discussing how Jews are "occupying" Arab land.
Bump for later.
THE MOSLEM CLAIM TO JERUSALEM IS FALSE
by Dr. Manfred R. Lehmann
The Moslem "claim" to Jerusalem is based on what is written in the Koran, which although Jerusalem is not mentioned even once, nevertheless talks (in Sura 17:1) of the "Furthest Mosque": "Glory be unto Allah who did take his servant for a journey at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque."
But is there any foundation to the Moslem argument that this "Furthest Mosque" (Al-Masujidi al-Aqtza) refers to what is today called the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, none whatsoever.
In the days of Mohammed, who died in 632 of the Common Era, Jerusalem was a Christian city within the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem was captured by Khalif Omar only in 638, six years after Mohammed's death.
Throughout all this time there were only churches in Jerusalem, and a church stood on the Temple Mount, called the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, built in the Byzantine architectural style. The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. The name "Omar Mosque" is therefore false.
In or around 711, or about 80 years after Mohammed died, Malik's son, Abd El-Wahd - who ruled from 705-715 - reconstructed the Christian- Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine "basilica" structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular "ship" in the center. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.
Therefore it is crystal clear that Mohammed could never have had this mosque in mind when he compiled the Koran, since it did not exist for another three generations after his death. Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the "Sacred Mosque," and the mosque in Medina as the "Furthest Mosque." So much for the Moslem claim based on the Aksa Mosque.
With this understood, it is no wonder that Mohammed issued a strict prohibition against facing Jerusalem in prayer, a practice that had been tolerated only for some months in order to lure Jews to convert to Islam. When that effort failed, Mohammed put an abrupt stop to it on February 12, 624. Jerusalem simply never held any sanctity for the Moslems themselves, but only for the Jews in their domain. [DR. MANFRED R. LEHMANN is a writer for the Algemeiner Journal. Originally published in the Algemeiner Journal, August 19, 1994.]
God gave this land to his chosen people.
It doesn't matter who "was there first".
Deuteronomy 1:8 is the official deed to the land.
The Jews of Israel have the same right to the land that America has to Nebraska.
They conquered it, they moved out or suppressed the indigenous barbarians, and they are productively using the land in furtherance of civilization.
The Israeli fixation on "legitimacy", as something that can or should be given by a fictitious international "community" is likely to destroy them in the long run, because any non-Jewish supranational organization powerful enough to bestow "legitimacy" or a "right to exist" is also powerful enough to take it away.
Israel's (and America's) right to the land it now occupies grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Never forget.
Very interesting read.
As a strictly legal matter, the Jews didn't take Palestine from the Arabs; they took it from the British, who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel's declaration of independence in 1948.
This assumes that the illegitimate League of Nations that was never recognized by the US (so why are purported US citizens using this to justify Israeli actions?) had some sort of power to give away willy-nilly the land inhabitated by other people to various occupying powers. Americans rejected that concept in 1920, when we refused to ratify the League of Nations treaty.
In that case, this territory is not Arab land but Turkish land, a province of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years until the British wrested it from them during the Great War in 1917.
Well, strictly speaking, the British wrested it from the Turks by using a mainly Arab force from free Arabia to take the land from occupying the Turkish Army.
The Byzantines, who (nice people—perhaps it should go to them?) didn't conquer the Levant, but, upon the division of the Roman Empire in 395, inherited Palestine from: The Romans, who in 63 B.C. took it over from:
This just goes to show you what a biased twit the writer is. "Byzantines" were and are Romans. The Arabs and Turks still correctly call both the Greeks and the Arabized Christians of the Middle East "Romans".
As the foregoing suggests, any Arab claim to sovereignty based on inherited historical control will not stand up.
The claim is not so much to sovereignty as to the write to live in the land of your birth secure in your property. This is an obfuscation and smoke screen.
terroritories comprising all other "Arab" states outside the Arabian peninsula—including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as the entity now formally under the Palestinian Authority—were originally non-Arab nations that were conquered by the Muslim Arabs when they spread out from the Arabian peninsula in the first great wave of jihad in the 7th century
Not true as far as Jordan, Syria, and western Iraq go. These areas were the Roman province of "Arbaia Felix" and were of course inhabitated by Arabs. The Punic inhabitants of Tunisia and Algeria and Lybia and Morrocco were Carthaginian Phoenicians, Phoenicians being the direct continuation of the Canaanites. The Arab conquest of these areas from the Romans caused most Romans to flee to the East Roman Empire or Italy or Spain, while the Punics and Berbers became integrated with the Arabs.
The recent assertion by the Palestinian Arabs that they are descended from the ancient Canaanites whom the ancient Hebrews displaced is absurd in light of the archeological evidence. There is no record of the Canaanites surviving their destruction in ancient times.
The Phoenecians were the direct continuation of the Canaanites (who were clearly not displaced by the Hebrews as openly admitted by the Bible - "So the children of Israel dwelt in the midst of the Chanaanite, and the Hethite, and the Amorrhite, and the Pherezite, and the Hevite, and the Jebusite: And they took their daughters to wives, and they gave their own daughters to their sons, and they served their gods." - Judges 3.5-6).
See: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/2938/histcult.html
And also:
"In the Tell-el-Amarna tablets Canaan is found under the forms of Kinakhna and Kinakhkhi. Under the name of Kanana the Canaanites appear on Egyptian monuments, wearing a coat of mail and helmet, and distinguished by the use of spear and javelin and the battle-axe. They were called Phoenicians by the Greeks and Poeni by the Romans."
http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/canaanites.html
So obviously, the native inhabitants of Palestine at 1917, and those who moved to the land from Syria and Lebanon were undoubtedly Canaanite/Phoenician in origin. This especially applies to the Palestinian Christian population, which has no Arab admixture. And also, as noted above, the native population of North Africa outside Egypt.
"In the days when the trading Phoenicians held a prominent place, especially among the Canaanites, this word (Kena'ani), and even Canaan (e.g. Is., xxiii, 8), got the signification of "merchant, trader." As the name of the country it occurs under the forms Kinahhi, Kinahni, and Kinahna, as early as two centuries before Moses in the cuneiform letters of Syrian and Palestinian princes to Egyptian Pharaos, found at Tell el-Amarna; and earlier still in Egyptian inscriptions, in the form Ka-n-'-na. The Phoenician town of Laodicea calls itself on coins from the second century B.C. "a mother in Kena'an". In Grecian literature too, evidence remains that the Phoenicians called one of their ancestors, as well as their country, Chna, and even at the time of St. Augustine the Punic country people near Hippo called themselves Chanani, i.e. Canaanites." - Catholic Encyclopedia, Cana, Canaanites
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03569b.htm
In any case, today's "Palestine," meaning the West Bank and Gaza, is, like most of the world, inhabited by people who are not descendants of the first human society to inhabit that territory.
As far as any normal history shows, the Canaanites were the first known civilized inhabitants of the land, and the Palestinian Arabs are partially descended from the Canaanites. See above.
The only nations that have perfect continuity between their earliest known human inhabitants and their populations of the present day are Iceland, parts of China, and a few Pacific islands.
There are many more than this. We could start with the Armenians, Kurds, Georgians and other Caucassians, Basques, Picts, Dravidians, Australian Aboriginies, Ukranians, the Queycha Indians of Bolivia and Peru, etc., etc. This is totlally disingenuous lies.
Given the fact that the Jews and Arabs were unable to coexist in one state, there had to be two states.
This isn't a "fact". It is a situation created by colonial aspirations of Britain and the European Jewish population. many Jews had lived relatively peacefully among the Arabs for centuries until the poison of Zionism was thrown into the mix.
At the same time, there were no natural borders separating the two peoples, in the way that, for example, the Brenner Pass has historically marked the division between Latin and Germanic Europe.
Brenner Pass has never and still does not mark the division of Latin and Germanic Europe. The south slope of the Alps is inhabitated by Germas in an autonomous Italian province seized by Italy from Austria called South Tirol. More proof that this fellow simply has no idea what he is talking about.
The Arabs thus have no grounds to complain either about Israel's existence (achieved in '48) or about its expanded sovereignty from the river to the sea (achieved in '67).
As far as the undemocratic Arab governments, they have nothing to complain about, and are fortunate they have not been wiped out. As far as the Arab inhabitants who had nothign to do with the fighting, they have every right to complain about dispossesion.