The History and Meaning Of "Palestine" and "Palestinians"

Eretz Yisroel.org ^ | 2001 | Joseph E. Katz

[samtheman]

The History and Meaning Of "Palestine" and "Palestinians"

"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.Com, 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.

Is Jordan Palestine? Here are two Jordanian State Stamps. On the left, one from 1949 with a picture of King Abdullah of the kingdom of Jordan and bears the label of Palestine in English and Arabic. On the right, a 1964 stamp bearing the likeness of King Hussein and pictures Mandated Palestine as an undivided territory including both present day Israel and Jordan.

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 word itself derives from "Peleshet", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". The Philistines were mediterranean people originating from Asia Minor and Greek localities. They reached the southern coast of Israel in several waves. One group arrived in the pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they came into conflict with Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. Another group, coming from Crete after being repulsed from an attempted invasion of Egypt by Rameses III in 1194 BCE, seized the southern coastal area, where they founded five settlements (Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gat). In the Persian and Greek periods, foreign settlers - chiefly from the Mediterranean islands - overran the Philistine districts. From the time of Herodotus, Greeks called the eastern coast of the Mediterranean "Syria Palaestina".

The Philistines were not Arabs nor even Semites, they were most closely related to the Greeks. They did not speak Arabic. 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"; which is derived from the Peleshet, (root Pelesh) which was a general term meaning "dividers", "penetrators" or "invaders". This referred to the Philistine's invasion and conquest of the coast from the sea.

The use of the term "Palestinian" for an Arab ethnic group is a modern political creation which has no basis in fact - and had never had any international or academic credibility before 1967.

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.

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 was forced to convert 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 province 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

Travelers to Palestine 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 ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.

For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee . . .

Nazareth is forlorn . . . Jericho lies a moldering ruin . . . Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature . . .

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

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 prot?g? 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.

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."

-- Delegate of Saudi Arabia to the

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, with a charter that 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.

[Some of the material cited above is drawn from the book From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters.].

Source: This essay is from the 15 February issue of "Time to Speak", except the paragraphs from "Is Jordan Palerstine...1967" was contributed later to EretzYisroel.Org

This page was produced by Joseph E. Katz

Middle Eastern Political and Religious History Analyst

Brooklyn, New York

Portions Copyright © 2001 "Time to Speak" Magazine,

Portions Copyright © 1984 Joan Peters, Portions Copyright © 2001 Joseph Katz

All Rights Reserved

[samtheman]

Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis ...

[Tom Jefferson]

Also read the following: A LETTER FROM ISRAEL

[malamute]

preaching to the converted bump :)

[RightWhale]

Interesting piece. The big point: while the term Palestine may be derived from the same term used to describe the Philistines, this is insignificant considering that the Philistines were not Arab, and came from the north, not out of the Arabian desert. The modern Palestinians are not related to the Philistines.

[onedoug]

Expand the Jewish state into all (soon to be former) Arab countries.

[wardaddy]

Interesting.

[Seti 1]

The modern Palestinians are not related to the Philistines.

I don't see the significance of this statement. Who is to say if the modern Israelis are related to the Israelites in any way but religion (and that has changed considerably). Even if all the myths are taken at face value the nation of Israel existed for only a very few centuries and that was about 3000 years ago.

This article (which gets posted about once a month) is an historical mishmash of bits and pieces taken out of context to prove a point the author wishes were true.

[Shermy]

The national identity "Palestine" was adopted by "Palestinians" because it was seen as, and is a successful counter-argument to the "exchange of populations" argument for Israeli legitimacy. That is, the exchange of about one million arabs and jews from the middle east seems "fair." There were other contemporaneous exchanges too, for example India and Pakistan, or unrequited exchanges, Germans in East Europe.

To counter this, the idea of a Palestinian "nation" works as an argument, ex post facto, to explain that a discrete "nation" was affected, and therefore the fact that Jews left and were kicked out of Egypt, Libya, Jordan, etc. is argued as irrelevant.

The Palestinian Charter and other documents reflect this disturbance in pan-Arabism (now with a religious underpinning). They protest "too much" that there is a Palestinian identity, then go on to say in the future they will merge into a pan-Arab entity of some sort, acknowledging the weakness of the identity argument in itself.

The identity is fed by other things too. A common and long contrary experience with Israel, the denial of citizenship of "Palestinians" in countires like Lebanon, Syria, etc., and the use and management of their plight by various Arab states for redirecting internal dissent and pressures. Creating "Palestinians" is also profitable for UN doles and subsidies from other nations - if they decline the identity, the funds lessen. (Just like if they stop calling cities "refugee camps" funds lessen.) A newer force in propelling the identity is Western media and opinion whom are receptive to European ideas of discrete nations, an idea which has been accepted more and more in the "Arab nation" which absorbs western intellectual ideas and whims more and more - the latest being post-modernism and, interestingly, its obsession with identity.

It's all a goof complicated with numerous interests - the Jordanians know the identity is a goof - but they don't want "Palestine" back.

[gfactor]

But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all.

yes and no. some arabs don't want it all, just the parts they have been kicked out of.

[RightWhale]

Who is to say if the modern Israelis are related to the Israelites

20% of modern Israelis aren't Jewish. Many Israelis are from Russia, America, elsewhere, and perhaps distantly related to the tibe of Judah; its been a long time since Rome. The point is the origin of the term Palestine.

[Seti 1]

The point is the origin of the term Palestine

The point of the article is that the land never belonged to anyone called "Palestinian" and therefore was open to settlement by the Jews.

[dennisw]

The point of the article is that the land never belonged to anyone called "Palestinian" and therefore was open to settlement by the Jews.

____________________

Correct! You are finally beginning to get it!

[David]

The modern Palestinians are not related to the Philistines. "I don't see the significance of this statement."

They are Arab opportunists from adjoing Arab lands--for the most part, they have no equitable, legal or historical claim to any of the land. Their ancestorial claim advanced by Abas is a fraud--the original Palestinians were Greek and are long gone and unreleated to the modern contestants who have appropriated their name.

"Who is to say if the modern Israelis are related to the Israelites in any way but religion (and that has changed considerably)." Modern DNA evidence is sufficient to convince any trier of fact.

"Even if all the myths are taken at face value the nation of Israel existed for only a very few centuries and that was about 3000 years ago." The author here is not up to date on the historical evidence which has advanced significantly over the last several years--at this point, the evidence supports the biblical date of Exodus at 1461 BC. So your knowledge of the history is off a little also--Israel was in the land from 1420 to 176 AD--1600 years; maybe less 70 years of the Babylonian captivity. Certainly if nationhood in the land resolves the issue, the Palestinians have no claim not dwarfed by Israel.

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Let's not get into an exercise of rationalization to justify what can't be justified. The "historic" claim by modern Israeli's to the land called Israel is a stretch at best. In the entire history of the region, Jews (not the Europeans now claiming to be Semitic) have controlled the region for only a few hundred of the 480,000 year history.

There has been continuous human habitation for 480,000 years.(Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and Homo Sapien). There is evidence of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon coexistence.

10,000 BC: first permanent settlements in Israel

7,000 BC: walls of Jericho built

1950 BC: Abraham leaves Ur (Iraq)for Canaan.

1600 BC: Hebrews move to Egypt voluntarily abandoning the Holyland.

1486 BC: Canaanite army defeated at Megiddo by Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose, consolidating Egyptian rule over Canaan

1300 BC: Moses leads the Jews out of Egypt

1200 BC: Philistines arrive by ship and give the name "Palestine" to the area; Jews start to arrive in Land of Israel

990 BC: Jerusalem captured by King David and Israel unified as one nation

950 BC: First Temple built by King Solomon forcing Hebrew unity by controlling the Ark of the Covenant

928 BC: After a fight over taxation, Israel splits into two nations: "Judah" in the south and "Israel" in the north

824 BC: Assyria conquers Palestine

710 BD Assyria conquers Israel

586 BC: Babylon conquers Judah.

597 BC: Babylonians send army to put down a rebellion and take prominent Jews into exile

586 BC: Babylonians arrive to put down another rebellion, destroy the First Temple, and remove more Jews into exile

539 BC: Babylonians defeated by Persians

538 BC: Cyrus the Great of Persia allows the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild temple in return for loyalty oath to Persia

515 BC: Second Temple built

332 BC: Alexander the Great of Macedonia conquers Persia and takes over their empire, including Palestine; Hellenization of Israel begins

170-164 BC: Maccabee revolt against forced Hellenization; Jewish independence

63 BC: Roman legions, under General Pompey, conquer Jerusalem

37 BC: Herod the Great installed by Romans as vassal king

4 BC: Jesus born

AD 30: Jesus crucified

AD 66-70: Jewish revolt, war with Romans, destruction of Jerusalem and Second Temple

AD 73: Masada falls ending control of a terorist organization the Sicarii. Evidence exists that the Sicarii, massacred 25 men women and childred who occupied Masada before they siezed it in AD 71

AD 130-2: Hadrian outlaws circumcision and plans to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city

AD 132-135. Bar Kochba rebellion. Jews crushed by Romans, sold into slavery, and driven into exile (the Diaspora). Jerusalem is rebuilt as Aelia Capitolina.

AD 200-215: Mishnah edited in Israel by Rabbi Ha Nasi „h AD 313: Roman emperor Constantine converts to Christianity, grants freedom of worship to Christians throughout Empire

AD 395: Rome splits into western and eastern (Byzantium) empires

AD 638: Omar defeats the Byzantine army at the Yarmuk River (in Syria); Muslims rule Palestine

AD 1009: Caliph El-Hakim destroys Holy Sepulchre

AD 1071: Seljuk Turks forbid Christians to enter Jerusalem

AD 1095: Pope Urban II launches Crusades

AD 1099: Crusaders take Jerusalem

AD 1187: Saladin retakes Jerusalem

AD 1188-92: Third Crusade under Richard I the Lionheart fails to retake Jerusalem but wins access for pilgrims.

AD 1400: Israel under Mameluke rule from Egypt;

AD 1516: Mamelukes defeated by Ottoman empire

AD 1537: Suleyman the Magnificent orders new walls and gates built around Jerusalem

AD 1896: Theodor Herzl publishes Der Judenstat, which leads to formation of the World Zionist Congress

1917: British General Allenby captures Jerusalem from the Turks.

1923: British split off 70% of Palestine and hand it over to Emir Abdullah as "Jordan"

November 29, 1947: United Nations votes for the partition of the remainder of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem a neutral international city.

May 14, 1948: State of Israel declared.

[Seti 1]

...the evidence supports the biblical date of Exodus at 1461 BC.

Gee, I should have written 3463 instead of "about 3000". You sound like Bishop Usher. It pretty well depends on whose evidence you prefer to believe. I accepted the Exodus story for the sake of argument but if you wish to get into that we'll have to open a new thread. The evidence I read calls the Exodus story a folk memory of the Hyksos expulsion. It is quite clear (in the evidence I prefer to trust) that the Exodus could not have occurred as written many centuries after the facts in the Torah.

[Seti 1]

Modern DNA evidence is sufficient to convince any trier of fact.

Yes, a very interesting study, recently published. I'll wait for some replications.

[Seti 1]

Israel was in the land from 1420 to 176 AD--1600 years; maybe less 70 years of the Babylonian captivity.

I'm not sure what "in the land" is supposed to mean but in all those years except a very few hundred the land was owned by Egypt, Persia, Greece, or Rome with the Hittites and Assyrians coming in for briefer shares. By the way, all this marvelous evidence you mention has yet to turn up any mention of David, Solomon or the early Biblical kings, although there is plenty of evidence for somewhat later kings and contemporary kings of neighboring states. There is almost no evidence for Israel in this early period--just one mention on an Egyptian stele, and that mention does not include the heiroglyph for "state" indicating that Israel at this time was a nomadic tribal group.

Or did I get off the subject?

[pwatson]

This is all fine, but possession is 9/10s of the law. The Jews are there, have several Nukes and have won every war, time for the Arabs to figure this out and go for peace. I am sure as soon as Arabs develop Democracy, Freedom, Liberty, Individual rights and so forth this will happen.

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Are you saying that if the Palestinians can take the land back by coercive force they are entitled to keep it?

[samtheman]

Jews have been living on that land --- in smaller or greater numbers --- since biblical times. This is not a trumped-up attachment on the part of the Jews. After WWII, the European Jews didn't just cast about in search of some nice Mediterranian beach-front property... they decided it was time for all of them to go home. They went home. And that's where they are today. If the rest of the Arab world truly cared for the Palestinians (instead of truly detesting them and exiling them from Jordan, Kuwait and other places) they would have used some of their vast tracts of empty land, emulated the Jews, turned desert into garden, and given the Palestinians a home in the greater pan-Arab world... which is what they really want anyway.

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Sammy,

Unfortunately, your warm and fuzzy justification doesnt match the facts in evidence.

1) Jews have been a minority in that region for most of its history. Also of note is the fact that many of those in the region who are now Muslim are decendants of Jews.

2) Jews have exercised dominion over the region for only a fraction of it's history. Those with equal claim to the region would include Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Khurds, Egyptians, Turks, Greeks, Italians, Arabs, French and English.

3) The ethnic ties of European Jews to the region has never been established.

4) Since there has been continuous human habitation of the region for over 450,000 years the fact that Abraham wandered in from Iraq and claimed the land doesn't negate the claim of the people already living there.

[D. Miles]

Peace is a very good idea, but they don't want peace, their objective is to drive the Jews into the sea(again). also, hi , long time no see, hope all is well with you and yours.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

IF YOUR GOING TO READ THIS YOU BETTER DIG INTO THIS TOO! .....The Prophet Mohammed, a Jewish pseudo-Messiah

BY THE SAME MAN AND ORGANIZATION

[Rowdee]

Interesting reading....

[samtheman]

To count back 450,000 years is beyond ridiculous. What ethnic group or nationality --- save the sub-Sahara Africans --- can trace their identity back that far. Some can go farther than others. For example, Native Americans were surely on the new world previous to 15,000 years ago, but where on the New World, which groups relative to groups today in which locations. Impossible to say. In an area as mixed up as the middle east, we really have to start figuring around 10,000 years ago, when agriculture started. Even then, it's tricky.

But all of that is astronomical speculation. The fact is, Jews have lived in the area since biblical times. Arabs, among others, have wandered in and out. The strongest modern claim to the area is the Ottomans, aka the Turks.

As for the point of the article, I think you're missing it: there is no Palestinian people. There is no Palestine. Both are fictions.

[samtheman]

Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel ... -- Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council, Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977

The Prophet Muhammad said, "War is deception"
-al-Bukhari, al-Jami al Sahih

---Politically motivated mythology of "Palestine"

[samtheman]

As many, including Professor Lewis, have pointed out, "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; it was a group of provincial subdivisions, by no means always the same, within a larger entity.

---Politically motivated mythology of "Palestine"

[Exit148]

I received this e-mail today. Just passing it along-----

From Shuly (Israel Chamber of commerce)

Nationhood and Jerusalem
- Israel became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam. Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

- Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 B.C.E. the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 C.E. lasted no more than 22 years.

- For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem, they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

- Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran.

- King David founded the city of Jerusalem. Mohammed never came to Jerusalem.

- Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem.> > Arab and Jewish Refugees

- In 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

- The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

- Arab refugees were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel, a country no larger than the state of New Jersey.

The Arab - Israeli Conflict
- The Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation.

- The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

- The P.L.O.'s Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them with weapons.

- Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

The U.N. Record on Israel and the Arabs
- Of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel.

- Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel.

- The U.N was silent while 58 Jerusalem Synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

- The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives.

- The U.N. was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

[samtheman]

Thanks.

[samtheman]

Interesting.

[zeaal]

Bookmark Bump

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Sammy,

wrong again!

Every ethnic group in the region has transitory residency. There are NO indigenous people. The Semitic Hebrews have wandered in and out of the region multiple times, as have the other peoples. The majority of the modern Israeli's are not semitic, but European.

The Biblical reference has no signifigance in an historical perspective. Every person alive today had ancestors alive in Biblical times. Extending that arguement we can all trace our ancestory to the region via Noah and Adam & Eve.

[nutmeg]

BUMP for later reading

[samtheman]

Well, you can say "wrong again" all you want, but it doesn't make you right. There is a Jewish connection to Israel, a long historical connection, that you are choosing to ignore. You have a right to your opinion... and your decision to ignore history. As you have a right to address me in the diminutive of my name. Since that seems to make you feel superior, let me add that you have a right to your feelings of superiority.

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Dear Sam,

There is no doubt that there have been Jews in teh Holyland for a long time. The point is that there is no logical claim to their exclusive dominion over the land.

God may have given the land to Abraham, but Christ established a new and everlasting Covenant. "Ownership" of the holyland has passed to "Jew and Gentile" alike.

[samtheman]

The point is that there is no logical claim to their exclusive dominion over the land.

Their "exclusive domination" is over less than 1% of the Arab lands. The "Palestinians" came along later and "discovered" that domination. If the Arab countries really cared about the Palestinian people, they'd have given them homes long ago, instead of giving them the boot, like Jordan booted them, and Kuwait booted them, and the others generally don't tolerate them.

It's all a lie, this support for the "Palestinians", a lie in service to evil dictatorships who need a distraction from the horrid messes in their own back yards.

[Diogenes of Sinope]

Sam,

You miss the point. The dispute is not about the other 99%. Neither side is willing to live in peace. I have spent a great deal of time in Israel. I have lived in Jaffa, Tel Aviv and Caesarea. I have seen the squalor that many Arabs are forced to live in in Israel.

I am no fan of the PLO. Modern Israel is NOT a devine entity. It is a racist nation, biased greatly against any non-jew. The tragedy is that the Israeli's and Palestinians are two sides of the same coin.

[samtheman]

The dispute is not about the other 99% because the Arabs don't want to include that in the equation. The Palestinians live in squalor partly because they are totally unwelcome in 99% of the Arab world. Jobs go begging in rich Arab countries --- and are filled by Asians and other nationalities --- because the other Arabs do not want the Palestinians to live anywhere else but "on the battlefront", a falsely created battlefront, a put-up job, a set-up, a scam, conceived and executed by Arab dictators who don't want their dictatorships questioned and need the ongoing "plight of the Palestinian people" to act as a permanent lightning-rod to any criticism of their own regimes.

Please don't try to pull at our heartstrings about the "Palestinians living in squalor". They were offered a homeland by Barak. The refused it. They choose their squalor... under pressure from their Arab "friends".

[Freetus]

Palestine is here to stay. It is a country. It is a peoples. It represents the legacy of Muslim sovereignity over the greatest archaelogical and religious sites of the Empire of Islam. This reality is not going away. You can pretend that this area has always been some sort of nascent brooding jewish land, but you would be wrong.

[samtheman]

I'm not against a Palestinian state. I cheered Barak's offer when he made it. Talk to Arafatass about that. He's the one who denied the Palestinians their statehood, not me.

[Freetus]

Barak's offer was fair in some ways. But it is hard to have a country that is riddled with armed jewish settlements and checkpoints. Israel does not believe there is a Palestine or ever will be. Barak's offer reflected this. Until settlements are actually destroyed and Israelis are relocated back to their country, there will be no peace.

[samtheman]

I agree that the settlements must go. I believet he Barak plan invisioned the termination of the settlements as a future goal. But the Palis stomped their feet, demanded all-or-nothing, and marched away, without even making a counter-offer.

They don't want peace. They don't want a country. They don't want a normal life. They are breeding their children to be suicide bombers. They live to die. Except for the leaders, of course, who live to lord it over they oppressed masses within their own ranks.

[SunkenCiv]

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[endthematrix]

The Palestinian flag was originally designed by Sharif Hussein for the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1916. In 1917, it was raised as the flag of the Arab National movement. On October 18, 1948, the all-Palestine Government readopted the flag in Gaza and the Arab League subsequently recognized it as the flag of the Palestinian people. It was again officially adopted as the flag of the Palestinian people by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964. On November 15, 1988 the PLO adopted the flag as the flag of the State of Palestine. Today the flag is flown widely by Palestinians and their supporters.