Ron Cantor wrote this some time ago:
>http://messiahsmandate.org<
15 Facts About Palestine that You Won’t Hear in the Mainstream Media
I wrote this nearly 10 years ago, but after hearing Chris Cotter on Fox New’s Redeye so confidently declare
following words, I thought it was time to edit and resend:
Referring to Helen Thomas’ statement that the Jews should ‘get the hell out of Palestine’ Cotter
said,“[Thomas] remembers [before 1948] when Palestine was a nation.” Somehow, a reporter on the Fox Business
Channel assumed that Israel came into being by taking over an Arab country called Palestine. Hopefully he knows his stocks
better than his history. Sadly no one on the show, including Greg Gutman, the Jewish host, corrected him. So I will…
No Mr. Cotter, Palestine was not a nation in 1947, 46 or 45, not in 1847 or 1047 or 47. In fact, Palestine has never been a
nation. To be fair, so many, not just Cotter, simply assume these things from what they pick up in the media. So let us look
at these 15 facts.
I. Palestine was NOT an Arab nation that the Jews came in and took over after the UN vote in 1947.
A. Great Britain in fact controlled that region of the Middle East until she grew tired of governing the volatile area and
asked the UN to decide what to do with it.
B. Before Great Britain won the land in WWI, the Turks had controlled it since the early 1500s. Turks are not Arabs.
C. In fact, Palestine has never been the name of any country!
II. Where did the name come from?
A. The Romans!
B. In an effort to rid Judea of its Jewishness, the Romans renamed the area Filistia (Palestine) in the mid-130s AD.
They were tired of pesky Jewish uprisings and so decided to deport the Jews and change the name. The name came from
the ancient Philistines (who have no connection to present day Arabs. The Philistines were wiped out in 1200 BC).[i]
C. It was a region not a nation. There has never been a president of Palestine (before Arafat), or a government of
Palestine! It could be compared to New England, which is a region in America and has no government.
III. The UN Vote did not merely give Israel authority to create a state, but granted to the Arabs living on the West
side of the Jordan river to also create an independent country.
A. The Arabs rejected it. They could have had their own nation in 1948, but they said no.
B. The Jews accepted it and on May 14th, 1948 Israel was re-birthed.
C. The Arabs became part of Jordan.
IV. When the PLO was created Jordan controlled the West Bank.
A. The goal of the PLO was to liberate Palestine. However the West Bank was already in Arab hands.
B. They wanted Israel.
C. In other words, if their goal was to create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, they should’ve been
fighting Jordan not Israel!
D. Of course, their goal was Israel’s demise.
V. Before Israel was re-birthed in 1948, any person who lived in that region was considered Palestinian:
Arab or Jew. The Jewish newspaper was called the Palestine Post.
A. QUESTIONS:
1. Why would any Jew name his newspaper after another people group?
2. Why would any Jew name his paper after an Arab country?
VI. Jerusalem was the first capital of Israel under King David. It has never been the capital of any other country
- Including the fictitious Palestine. It has never (until Israel controlled it) been significant to Arabs.
A. In others words you will not find these words in the Koran, but the Hebrew Scriptures:
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof
of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. (Ps. 137: 5-6)
VII. When Israel captured Jerusalem, it was not from Palestinians, but from Jordan.
A. Questions:
1. Why didn’t Palestinians demand Jerusalem, when Jordan controlled it (1948-1967)?
2. Why didn’t the Jordanians create an independent Palestinian state with the West Bank? It was certainly in their
power? The reason is simple. Jordanians made no distinction between Arabs that lived east of the Jordan and those who
lived west of the Jordan. They were all Jordanian.
VIII. Israel had no plans on attacking Jordan during the Six Day War. However, King Hussein believed the false
reports from Egyptian President Nasser of Egypt that they were winning the war. King Hussein, in hopes of getting
more land, attacked Israel and his troops were driven back over the Jordan River in a matter of days. That is how
Israel ended up with Jerusalem in 1967.
IX. There is no language known as Palestinian. They speak Arabic like Jordanians and Syrians and Egyptians.
X. There is no rich Palestinian history. You will not find history books that detail Palestinian culture going back
centuries.
XI. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians (a nation created by Great Britain 1922), Syrians,
Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
XII. Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the
landmass.[ii]
XIII. When the Jewish people began to return to ‘Palestine’ in the late 1800s:
A. The Turks, not the Arabs, controlled it
B. Every bit of Land was paid for by the returning Jews—nothing was stolen!
XIV. Israel was a swamp-infested wasteland that no one, including the Arabs really cared about. Until the Jews
returned the land suffered neglect. It was only after the Jews came back and made the land prosperous and fruitful
again and developed a nation, that the fictitious Palestinian history was developed.
XV. Religious Significance of Jerusalem
A. Jerusalem or Zion appears nearly ONE THOUSAND times in the Old and New Covenants, whereas it appears in
the Koran exactly ZERO times!
The last thing that should be noted is that I wrote this to gets the facts out about Palestine. While the history may be made up,
the Arabs who live among us here in Israel are real people who were made in God’s image. We must pray for their salvation.
[i] At the time of Christ the Jewish state was ruled by puppet kings of the Romans, the Herods. When the Jews revolted in 66
AD, the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem (70 AD). The Bar Kokba revolt between 132 and 135 AD was also
suppressed, Jericho and Bethlehem were destroyed, and the Jews were barred from Jerusalem. 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 left the devastated country (and established Jewish communities
throughout the Middle East) but there was never a complete abandonment of the Land of Israel. That is, there were always
Jews and Jewish communities in Palestine, though the size and conditions of those communities fluctuated greatly. (Palestine
Facts, What was the History of Palestine between Biblical Times and the Modern Era)
[ii] Joseph Farar, Myths of the Middle East
His name is Gutfeld and he was born and raised a Roman Catholic.
He is now purported to be an agnostic.
Thank you for a good summarization of the history regarding the region.
The British governor of the Reagen in 1920, Lord Balfour, was directed to establish the borders of the Palestinian Mandate, as a home land of the Jews. The mandate included all of Jordan and Gaza and parts of Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
Balfour, being a virulent anti-semitic saw this as a solution to what he perceived as the Jewish problem. He viewed the mandate as barren desert incapable of supporting all the worlds Jews so that most would die of starvation. Contrary to Balfour’s and their Arab neighbors expectations, the Jews have thrived even though denied most of the mandates territory.