The Two Big Myths about the Middle East: 1. Palestine doesn’t exist, and 2. Palestinians don’t exist

Propagation of myths has consequences. Let us examine a couple and see where they have led.

Myth 1. The State of Palestine

This so-called state is like Brigadoon, with two exceptions:

a. It never appeared.

b. It refuses to go away.

Neither a country nor a state of Palestine has ever existed.

The Kingdom of Judah is named after Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and Leah. The Kingdom of Judah was formed after the death of King Solomon, when the ten northern tribes of Israel rebelled against Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. The two southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin, remained loyal to Rehoboam, and they formed the Kingdom of Judah.

Etymologically, “Jew,” Judah,” and “Judea” are related.

late 12c., Giw, Jeu, “a Jew” (ancient or modern), one of the Jewish race or religion,” from Anglo-French iuw, Old French giu (Modern French Juif), from Latin Iudaeum (nominative Iudaeus), from Greek Ioudaios, from Aramaic (Semitic) jehudhai (Hebrew y’hudi) “a Jew,” from Y’hudah ”Judah,” literally “celebrated,” name of Jacob’s fourth son and of the tribe descended from him.

We are dealing here with the land of the Jews.

The Kingdom of Judah lasted for about 350 years, until it was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. The Babylonians destroyed the city of Jerusalem and exiled the Jewish people to Babylon. However, the Jewish people eventually returned to their homeland, and they rebuilt their community in Judea.

Following their return, the Jews of Judea were variously ruled by themselves, the Persians, the Greeks, and themselves again.

Enter the Romans.

In 63 B.C., Judea was conquered by the Roman Republic. Judea was initially ruled as a client kingdom, but it was later made a Roman province. Roman rule in Judea was often marked by tension and conflict between the Jewish people

To Summarize:

There never was a Palestinian state or country.
There never was rule by anything called a Palestinian.
The land of Mandatory Palestine was to be the Jewish national homeland in an area occupied continuously by Jews for millennia.
Jewish rule and occupancy antedated the advent of the newcomer religion Islam by millennia.
Mandatory Palestine, set aside for the National Homeland of the Jews, had its territory diminished by around seven eighths, in contravention of their mandatory obligations by the British to create Transjordan (now commonly known as Jordan).

Take it from the mouth of a bona fide Palestinian terrorist.

Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the Palestinian terror group As Saiqa, explained in a 1970 interview with James Dorsey for the Dutch newspaper Trouw why the “Palestinian people” had been invented:

The Palestinian people do 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.
Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only 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.

There are many more myths — e.g., “land for peace,” “the West Bank,” “it is a territorial conflict,” etc.

But we can stop here and get on to the ultimate point of this article.

As I recall the British administered a territory that includes present day Israel until 1948 it had the name “Palestine” attached to it.

The British authorities and everyone else called it Palestine.

The “Jerusalem Post” published as the “Palestine Post” in its early days in the 1930’s and 40’s.

Of course I don’t want a place called “Palestine” in Judea and Samaria where Jews should live.

But if they want such a place in Jordan and Saudi Arabia I would not object but I know that’s a tall order.

In 1800, 1 in 40 residents of Palestine were Jews.

In 1890, during the first wave of Zionist immigration, 1 in 13.

In 1931, 1 in 8.

In 1947, nearly 1 in 3.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

During the British Mandate, the Palestinian Arabs protested continuously to the British authorities, demanding that Jewish immigration be curtailed.

I don’t know what premium the Jewish Agency paid Arabs for land, but it had funds from Jews abroad that local Arabs could not match. To prevent unrest, the British banned land transfer from Arab to Jew in many sectors.

The Palestinian Arabs were slowly displaced, over a period of 70 years, and they objected to it throughout, through civil means and through violence. They were ruled by overlords for a thousand years, but they had a land, a local culture, villages and cities, fields and groves, mosques and churches. They had all that without the name of state.

The Cherokee did not have a state, nor the Iroquois, nor any other American tribe. Should they have no complaints?

RE: The Palestinian Arabs were slowly displaced, over a period of 70 years,

OK, HOW were they displaced? Were they forcibly told to leave their homes under threat? Or were their lands purchased legally?

If the former ( e.g. forced to leave under threat ), then yes, there is basis for grievance ( but that does not justify what Hamas is doing ). if the latter ( their homes and land were purchased ), how is this called a displacement?

RE: They were ruled by overlords for a thousand years, but they had a land, a local culture, villages and cities, fields and groves, mosques and churches. They had all that without the name of state

The above sentence could also be applied to Jews who lived there with synagogues replacing the words, mosques and churches. The point is the place called “palestine” was inhabited by BOTH Jews and Arabs under the authority of different empires.

Here’s a third big myth:

3. “The Jews forced the ‘palestinians’ from their homes in 1948.

It is clear that the arab countries that were going to mop up on the new state of Israel advised all arab inhabitants of the land in question to evacuate while the arabs took care of business, i.e., killed the Jewish state a-borning.

They refused to return upon Israel’s invitaion (they refused to be governed by Jews).

muslims in neighboring regions set up refugee camps for them, thus giving them their ‘palestinian’ identity: the displaced, the downtrodden, the victims of the Jews.

Displacement need not be violent to occur. It need not be illegal. It can still be relentless.

Many of the displaced were tenants or landless farmers. If the new owner won’t hire you or rent to you, where do you go?

Some of the Jewish immigration was illegal.

How do the Anglo-Scots-Canadians feel, displaced from Vancouver by the wealth of two countries with a billion people? Plenty of room for Anglo-Scot-Canadians to just shift over a bit, eh?

How do we Americans feel, with millions of immigrants changing this land? The state admits them legally, or connives at their illegal entry. And yet this is not what most of us want. We the people are something more than the state, and that is forgotten.

RE: Many of the displaced were tenants or landless farmers. If the new owner won’t hire you or rent to you, where do you go?

WHO owned the land in the first place and why did they sell?

And how prevalent were this refusal to hire the tenants and landless farmers? Out of 100 Jewish purchasers, how many percent of these kicked out the original tenants and landless farmers?

BTW, if these people were tenants and landless, in what sense were the land purchased considered theirs?

What Israel owes these people is compassion and an attempt to rectify what percentage the Jewish purchsers in the past did to these tenants. In the first instance, there has to be a historical search as to which present families were descended from these tenants and landless farmers.

But it certainly does not justify their terrorist attacks on present people unrelated to what happened in the past.

RE: How do the Anglo-Scots-Canadians feel, displaced from Vancouver by the wealth of two countries with a billion people? Plenty of room for Anglo-Scot-Canadians to just shift over a bit, eh?

Therefore what follows? The displaced Anglo-Scots-Canadians are now justified in forming a terrorist group to attack these wealthy people’s communities? Aren’t these Anglo-Scot-Canadians allowed to purchase other properties of their own in Canada?

RE: How do we Americans feel, with millions of immigrants changing this land? The state admits them legally, or connives at their illegal entry. And yet this is not what most of us want. We the people are something more than the state, and that is forgotten.

1. Did these illegal immigrants come here to take over American property? Or did they have money to buy land and Americans voluntarily selling to them?

2. Does this then justify us forming militias to drive them out of our land by terrorizing their kids? Does this justify us shooting rockets and bombing Mexico?

RE: The Jewsin Palestine were a tiny minority after the diaspora, with their numbers only growing mid 19th century

The region was severely underpopulated which meant the Jews were able to avoid buying land in areas where Arabs might be displaced, which they did.

They sought land that was LARGELY UNCULTIVATED, swampy, sandy, and most importantly, without tenants, like much of the Jezreel Valley.

In 1920, David Ben-Gurion expressed his concern about the Arab fellaheen (peasants), whom he viewed as “the most important asset of the native population” he said “under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them”. He advocated helping liberate them from their oppressors.

“Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement,” Ben-Gurion added, “should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.”

SEE: Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War, (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 32.

Israel never offered a right of return to the Arabs who fled.

The initiative was not all on the Arab side either, just getting out of the way of an Arab invasion,

The Irgun and Lehi, paramilitary and terrorist breakaway factions of Haganah, attacked Arab crowds and villages. See Irgun bomb attack on Haifa refinery, Deir Yassin massacre.

The attacks provoked either return violence and greater hostilities, or flight.

A deniable but useful left hand, Irgun, that Israelis could cover up or defend or regret or feel ashamed or proud, but not at all fringe. One of its leaders was Menachem Begin.

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