They are the
Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
They are
indistinguishable from those Arabs who live in the surrounding artificial states
such as Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or the other entities throughout the Middle
East created by the colonial powers, France and Britain. Both powers were
victorious after the Ottoman Turkish Empire lay defeated at the end of World War
1.
Both of these
European powers carved artificial borders across the corpse of what had been
Turkey’s empire in the Middle East, and both France and Britain have left a
resulting legacy of war and violence ever since. One such territory, previously
occupied by Ottoman Turkey for 400 years, was the geographical entity known
sometimes as Palestine.
But there is no
such thing as a Palestinian people; no such thing as a Palestinian history; and
no Palestinian language exists. There has never been any independent, sovereign
Palestinian state in all of recorded history – let alone an Arab independent
state of Palestine.
You will search
in vain for Palestinian Arab coinage or Palestinian Arab archaeological
artifacts specifically related to any Palestinian Arab king or ancient leader.
But what you will find are coins, pottery, ancient scrolls, all providing
conclusive, empirical and millennial evidence of Jewish civilization dotting the
land known correctly as Israel – not Palestine.
The present-day
so-called “Palestinians” are an Arab people sharing an overwhelmingly Muslim
Arab culture, ethnicity and language identical to their fellow Arabs in the
Middle East and North Africa, with few if any
distinctions.
Yasser Arafat,
the arch-terrorist, who imposed himself undemocratically upon the Arabs who call
themselves Palestinians, was fond of creating the absurd myth that Palestinian
Arabs were descended from the Canaanites and the Philistines. As we know, the
bigger the lie the bigger the number of people will believe it. And so Arafat
twisted history in order to disinherit the indigenous native people of the land:
the Jews.
Canaanites,
without doubt, were the first known inhabitants of the Land of Israel before the
first Hebrews, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives, settled there, and before
Moses brought their descendants back to the Promised Land during the Exodus from
Egypt.
The Canaanites
lived both along the coastal plain and in the mountain regions, which run like a
spine down the biblical territory of Samaria and Judea. Their language was
similar to Hebrew and their territory stretched north into present day Lebanon
and included the present day Golan Heights.
The Canaanites
were finally subdued during the reign of King David. Most Canaanites were
gradually assimilated into the Jewish people and were no longer a
distinguishable people.
After the 8th
century BC, the Canaanites no longer existed and the only people, therefore, who
can trace back an historic link to ancient Canaan are the Jews, not the
Palestinian Arabs. So much for Arafat’s nonsense and for the on-going attempts
by today’s Palestinian Arabs, financed by vast Arab oil wealth, to hoodwink the
world.
The term
“Philistines” provides the source from which the term “Palestinians” is derived.
Like the Arabs who gave themselves the concocted name “Palestinian,” the
Philistines were alien peoples who entered the land from other lands, mostly
from the Mediterranean island of Crete. That is why they were also known as the
Sea People.
The modern
“Palestinian Arabs” are primarily the descendants of those itinerant Arabs who
illegally flooded British Mandatory Palestine from Arab territories as far away
as Sudan, Egypt, Syria and what was Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). They were
attracted during the early decades of the 20th century by new employment
opportunities provided by the Jewish pioneers, whose heroic efforts were turning
the desert green again and restoring centuries of neglect that the land had
endured under a succession of alien occupiers.
Britain, during
its Mandate over the territory, turned a blind eye to the flood of illegal Arab
aliens entering, while at the same time often arbitrarily limiting Jewish
immigration into their ancient, biblical and ancestral homeland. This was a
betrayal of the Mandate given to Britain to facilitate a Jewish Homeland in the
geographical territory known as Palestine.
The Philistines
were non-Semitic peoples who had entered the land from their homes throughout
the Aegean Islands in general and from Crete in particular. These ancient
Cretans arrived in Southern Canaan and along the Egyptian coastline and were
known as “Pelestim and Keretim” by the Hebrew tribes. It appears that their
first settlement may have been Gaza. Later they settled in Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gat
and Ekron: the Pentapolis.
Their territory
was primarily along the coastal Mediterranean; interestingly, a territory not
dissimilar to the present day Gaza Strip. They attempted at different times to
invade Judah but were turned back by the various Jewish biblical heroes and
finally defeated by King David. From that time onwards they were diminished as a
threat and as a separate people, finally disappearing from history and any
“Palestinian” Arab attempt to claim a lineage with them is as absurd as that of
links with the early Canaanites.
Moving fast
forward to 73 AD, the first attempt of the Jews to reclaim their independence
from the repressive yoke of Roman occupation ended when Jewish warriors and
their families fled to the fortress of Masada from Jerusalem. The Romans had
destroyed the Jewish capital city along with the Second Jewish
Temple.
Historically
documented and universally recognized, Masada, which rises to great height
overlooking the Dead Sea, is where the heroic last stand took place and where
the surviving warriors and their families took their own lives rather than be
sent as slaves throughout the mighty Roman Empire. The Land where these stirring
and epochal events took place was in the province known as Judæa. There is
absolutely no mention of any place called “Palestine” before that
time.
After the
suppression of the Second Jewish Revolt in 135 AD against the Roman occupation,
the Emperor Hadrian replaced the name of Judea (Yehuda in Hebrew from where the
name Yehudim, Jews, originates) to Syria-Palæstina after the “Philistines” who
were the ancient enemies of the Israelites. Hadrian did so with the explicit
purpose of effacing any trace of Jewish history.
Ancient Romans,
as well as so-called Palestinian Arabs, have fulfilled the Hebrew Scriptural
prophecy that declares: “They lay crafty plans against Your People… they say:
‘come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no
more’.” – Tehilim 83:3-4 (Psalm 83:3-4). They failed, as Israel is reconstituted
as a modern Jewish state in its ancestral and biblical
homeland.
No such name as
Palestine occurs in any ancient document. It is not written in the Bible,
neither in the Hebrew Scriptures nor in the Christian Testament, not even in
Assyrian, Persian, Macedonian, Ptolemaic, Seleucian or other Greek sources.
There is no “Palestinian” people ever mentioned, not even by the Romans that
invented the term.
If
“Palestinians” allegedly are the historic inhabitants of the Holy Land, why did
they not fight for independence from Roman occupation as Jews did? How is it
possible that not a single “Palestinian” leader revolted against the Roman
invaders or is mentioned in any historic record?
Why is there no
Palestinian rebel group mentioned, as for example the Jewish Zealots? Why does
every historic document mention the Jews as the native and aboriginal
inhabitants, and the Greeks, Romans and others as foreigners dwelling in Judea;
but no “Palestinian” people, neither as native or as foreigner? What is more,
there is no reference to any “Palestinian” people in the Koran, although Muslims
claim that their prophet was once in al-Aksa (meaning the farthest place) which
Muslims, for political purposes, chose to be Jerusalem – an event not even
mentioned in the Koran.
Saladin, a Kurd,
knew the Jews and invited them to resettle in Jerusalem. He had no trouble in
recognizing Jerusalem as their eternal capital city and the territory as their
rightful Homeland. But he did not know any so-called Palestinians and to claim
otherwise that Palestinians are the original people of Eretz Yisrael, the Land
of Israel, is not only counter to secular history but also is opposed to
Islamic history.
The so-called
“Palestinians” who claim Jerusalem want it so that they can take it away from
the Jews for whom Jerusalem, known also as Zion, is the eternal, 3,000 year old
Jewish capital.
Perhaps what
links the modern day Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” with the ancient
Philistines is that both are invaders. The Philistines wanted to take from the
Israelites the Holy Ark of the Covenant, while today’s so-called “Palestinian
Arabs” want to take from the Jewish people the Holy City of the Covenant –
Jerusalem.
A wealth of
information about this and related subjects may be found at the following
website. I encourage all to read it:
So let me close,
beginning with the words of a Christian Arab, Joseph Farah, who has made his
home here in America and who knows of what he writes:
“There has never
been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs,
indistinguishable from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians, Iraqis,
etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 per cent of the Middle East lands.
Israel represents one-tenth of one per cent 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.”
Joseph Farah,
“Myths of the Middle East”
Let us hear what
other Arabs have said:
“There is no
such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented. There is
no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.
‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced
it”.
Auni Bey
Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937
“There is no
such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not”.
Professor Philip
Hitti, Arab historian, 1946
“It is common
knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria”.
Representative
of Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, 1956
Concerning the
Holy Land, the chairman of the Syrian Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference
in February 1919 stated:
“The only Arab
domination since the Conquest in 635 AD hardly lasted, as such, 22
years.”
The preceding
declarations by Arab politicians were issued before 1967 as they had not the
slightest knowledge of the existence of any Palestinian
people.
How and when did
they change their mind and decide that such people
existed?
When the State
of Israel was reborn in 1948 the Arabs had still not discovered that “ancient”
people. They were too busy attempting to annihilate the reconstituted sovereign
State of Israel, and did not intend to create any Palestinian entity, but only
to distribute the seized Jewish lands among the already existing Arab
states.
The Arab armies
were miraculously defeated by a tiny handful of Jewish defenders. The Arabs
attempted again to destroy Israel in 1967, and were humiliated in only six days,
in which they lost the lands that they had previously stolen and usurped in
1948. Those lands included Judea and Samaria, which comprise the biblical and
ancestral Jewish heartland, tracing its history back some 4,000
years.
Now the world
forgets such empirical history and prefers to name the ancestral Jewish
territory, the West Bank, which was illegally occupied by the Jordanian Arabs
for 19 years from 1948 until its liberation in 1967.
In all those
years, when Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip,
neither of them created a “Palestinian” state, since the still non-existing
Palestinians would have never claimed their alleged right to have their own
state.
Paradoxically,
during the British Mandate, which lasted from 1920 to 1948, it was not any Arab
group but the Jews that were known as Palestinians!
But read what
other Arabs declared after the Six-Day War:
“There are no
differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all
part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline
our Palestinian identity… 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”.
Zuhair Muhsin,
military commander of the PLO and member of the PLO Executive
Council
“Never forget
this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, there is no
Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian
people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian
authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian
people”.
Syrian dictator
Hafez Assad to the PLO leader Yasser Arafat
“As I lived in
Palestine, everyone I knew could trace their heritage back to the original
country their great grandparents came from. Everyone knew their origin was not
from the Canaanites, but ironically, this is the kind of stuff our education in
the Middle East included. The fact is that today’s Palestinians are immigrants
from the surrounding nations! I grew up well knowing the history and origins of
today’s Palestinians as being from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Christians from
Greece, Muslim Sherkas from Russia, Muslims from Bosnia, and the Jordanians next
door. My grandfather, who was a dignitary in Bethlehem, almost lost his life by
Abdul Qader Al-Husseni (the leader of the Palestinian revolution) after being
accused of selling land to Jews. He used to tell us that his village Beit Sahur
(The Shepherds Fields) in Bethlehem County was empty before his father settled
in the area with six other families. The town has now grown to 30,000
inhabitants”.
Walid
Shoebat
During the long
years of alien occupation of the Land of Israel, though Jews were always living
in the Land in whatever numbers they could sustain, visitors were always struck
at how the land had become a barren waste with malarial swamps and a remarkably
sparse population. The following reports from travellers to the desolate
landscape that had become a mournful waste are quite
telling:
“There is not a
solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilee); not
for thirty 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 mouldering 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
One wonders,
therefore, where were the “Palestinians” hiding so that Mark Twain could not see
them? Where was that so-called “ancient” people in the mid nineteenth century?
Of course, Arab politicians now attempt to discredit Mark Twain, retreating into
that realm of all scoundrels by calling him a racist.
“In 1590 a
‘simple English visitor’ to Jerusalem wrote: ‘Nothing there is to be seen but a
little of the old walls, which is yet remaining and all the rest is grass, moss
and weeds much like to a piece of rank or moist ground’.”.
Gunner Edward
Webbe, Palestine Exploration Fund
“The land in
Palestine is lacking in people to till its fertile soil”.
British
archaeologist Thomas Shaw, mid-1700s
“Palestine is a
ruined and desolate land”.
Count
Constantine François Volney, XVIII century French author and
historian
“The Arabs
themselves cannot be considered but temporary residents. They pitched their
tents in its grazing fields or built their places of refuge in its ruined
cities. They created nothing in it. Since they were strangers to the land, they
never became its masters. The desert wind that brought them hither could one day
carry them away without their leaving behind them any sign of their passage
through it”.
Comments by
Christians concerning the Arabs in Palestine in the 1800s
“The country is
in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is
of a body of population”.
James Finn,
British Consul in 1857
“The area was
under populated and remained economically stagnant until the arrival of the
first Zionist pioneers in the 1880′s, who came to rebuild the Jewish land. The
country had remained “The Holy Land” in the religious and historic consciousness
of mankind, which associated it with the Bible and the history of the Jewish
people. Jewish development of the country also attracted large numbers of other
immigrants – both Jewish and Arab. The road leading from Gaza to the north was
only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts… Houses were all
of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen… The plows used were of wood… The
yields were very poor… Schools did not exist… The rate of infant mortality was
very high… The western part, toward the sea, was almost a desert… Many ruins
were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many
villages were deserted by their inhabitants”.
The report of
the British Royal Commission, 1913
Far too many
otherwise decent people have come to accept Arab oil financed falsehoods
masquerading as history about the origins of the so-called Palestinian Arabs.
These lies now permeate the mainstream media, schools, colleges, and
universities and are perpetrated by the tenured leftist professors and the
colleges who all too eagerly accept Saudi blood money.
The historical
facts given above may be of help to those who have otherwise fallen hook, line
and sinker for duplicitous Arab propaganda and what constitutes one of the
biggest scams ever perpetrated upon the world.
Victor Sharpe is
a freelance writer and author of several books including a collection of short
stories called The Blue Hour and Volumes One, Two and Three of Politicide: The
attempted murder of the Jewish state.
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