Palestine: The History of the Word Will Surprise and Liberate You
In 1937, Secretary of the Arab Higher Committee to the British Peel Commission, Awni Abd al-Hadi stated: “There is no such country as Palestine. ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented.” I came across this quote at a Club Z session. We were learning how to confront the deceptive map called “The Shrinking Map of Palestine,” a crafty piece of propaganda used in anti-Israel campaigns.
It has now become commonplace to encounter maps of the Middle East where the modern country of Israel is labeled as “Palestine” in numerous textbooks at schools. It is disturbing that even after seventy-two years since the Jews declared statehood and thousands of years of persecution, Jews today must fight for basic recognition of Israel.
IT IS DISTURBING THAT EVEN AFTER SEVENTY-TWO YEARS SINCE THE JEWS DECLARED STATEHOOD AND THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF PERSECUTION, JEWS TODAY MUST FIGHT FOR BASIC RECOGNITION OF ISRAEL.
We are constantly bombarded by news stories about conflicts in “Palestine,” and often hear slogans such as “Free Palestine” at anti-Israel protests. Knowing this, a central question arises: how is it possible that the word “Palestine,” which today is associated with the Arab’s desire for an Arab state, was called an invention of the Zionists by an Arab leader less than a century ago?
The word Palestine originates from the term “Syria Palaestina,” given by Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135CE, who renamed the land of Israel after crushing the last Jewish rebellion against the Roman occupation and expelling the Jews from their homeland in 136CE. “Palaestina” was named after the Philistine people, a long-standing enemy of the Jewish people. And this was no accident: Roman Emperor Hadrian purposefully renamed the Kingdom of Judea after the Jews’ greatest foe to not only eradicate all evidence of a Jewish presence there, but to humiliate them as well.
ROMAN EMPEROR HADRIAN PURPOSEFULLY RENAMED THE KINGDOM OF JUDEA AFTER THE JEWS’ GREATEST FOE TO NOT ONLY ERADICATE ALL EVIDENCE OF A JEWISH PRESENCE THERE, BUT TO HUMILIATE THEM AS WELL.
Armenian civilians are marched to a nearby prison in Mezireh by armed Ottoman soldiers. Kharpert, Ottoman Empire, April 1915. Photo from Wikipedia
For two millennia, as Jewish people lived throughout the diaspora, the ancient Jewish homeland of Israel fell under the control of foreign empires — the Byzantine empire, the European Crusaders, the Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire. With the dawn of the modern Zionist movement and the increased virulence of pogroms at the turn of the 20th century, many Jews began to immigrate to Israel. In 1917, when Britain acquired the territory of what is now Israel from the Ottoman empire post-World War I, they renamed it the British Mandate of Palestine. To encourage more Jews to make Aliyah (returning to Israel), Zionists created posters titled “Visit Palestine,” as Palestine was the common term for Israel at the time. Despite its Roman origins, Jews adopted Palestine with pride.
And thus, in the beginning of the 20th century, Palestine became closely associated with Zionism— a cause of great fury for Jew-hating Arab leaders. In a desperate attempt to make certain Jews would not be granted a country of their own in response to the 1937 Peel Commission, Anwi Abd al-Hadi tried to deny all Jewish ties to the land of Israel by (accurately) denying the existence of a nation called Palestine.
But as the State of Israel blossomed into reality in 1948, there was no more use for the secular word Palestine to refer to the Jewish homeland. But as Jews forgone the use of “Palestine”, Arab Muslim leaders seized the word to describe an Arab entity that never existed. They rebranded it. Inverted it. Flipped it inside out. The word that spoke of the dreams of the Jewish liberation became repurposed as the narrative of an Arab nation unjustly oppressed by the Jews.
AS JEWS FORGONE THE USE OF “PALESTINE”, ARAB MUSLIM LEADERS SEIZED THE WORD TO DESCRIBE AN ARAB ENTITY THAT NEVER EXISTED.
And when we Americans think of their narrative, of a minority suffering, of being deprived of their right to self-determination, we so desperately want to help them–the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free–that we don’t see the flaws in their narrative. Israel did not even have possession over Judea and Samaria (known today as the West Bank) until 1967; the Arabs had close to twenty years to create their own state, yet did nothing of the sort.
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” This phrase, which is ubiquitous among “Palestinian Rights” activists, sums it all up: the goal of the Palestinian movement is not to form a separate Arab state to coexist alongside Israel, but rather to obliterate the entire Jewish State of Israel from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea.
BDS protesters at Columbia University.
And yet, despite there never being an Arab Palestinian sovereign state, Arabs living in Judea Samaria today identify as Palestinian. It would be unfair and cruel to outright deny their identity. Despite the fact that today’s Arab Palestinians have no historic or ethnic ties to the Philistines who lived during the Roman occupation of Judea, I choose to accept the Arab identity as “Palestinian” and their rights to live in the ancient homeland of Judea and Samaria, with just one small requirement: that they recognize the rights of the indigenous Jews to live and thrive in the land of Israel.
That’s it. Because I firmly stand by the notion that everyone has the right to their identity. But when the very identity of a people is rooted in the rejection of another people’s right to a national homeland, that identity is hypocritical and undermines the very concept of justice.
EVERYONE HAS THE RIGHT TO THEIR IDENTITY. BUT WHEN THE VERY IDENTITY OF A PEOPLE IS ROOTED IN THE REJECTION OF ANOTHER PEOPLE’S RIGHT TO A NATIONAL HOMELAND, THAT IDENTITY IS HYPOCRITICAL AND UNDERMINES THE VERY CONCEPT OF JUSTICE.
We cannot let our Jewish brothers and sisters become caught up in the tempting social-justice sounding fervor of the free Palestine movement when we know it is a fictitious story rooted in the desire to completely and utterly destroy our people.
And so, the next time you hear someone say something about freeing Palestine, tell them Awni Abd al-Hadi’s quote. You never know, you may save someone’s Jewish identity — or maybe even the future of the Jewish people.
As far as Palestine was concerned to those Arab absentee landlords of the early years of the 20th century, living in the fleshpots of Cairo, Damascus and Beirut, the land was worthless: desolate, barren and malarial infested. Then the Jewish pioneers returning in the late 19th century began to purchase the wasted and barren land at exorbitant prices – much higher than fertile land in Iowa and Idaho – drained the swamps and redeem again the ancestral ancient beloved Jewish homeland. Jewish development of the centuries old desolate and neglected land, restored in familial love through blood, swe…See More
The truth – not the fantasy – is that there was never an independent, sovereign Arab state called Palestine. Israel is “the only nation in the world that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago.” Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab polity in all of recorded history. Only one people has ever made Jerusalem its capital and only one people ever established their indigenous ancestral and biblical homeland between East of the River Jordan and West to the Mediterranean Sea: the Jews. Israel was rec…See More
The name 'Palestine' actually goes back much further in time than the Emperor Hadrian. Herodotus usd it centuries earlier, as did other ancient writers. It's even in the Tanach. However, in each case when ancient writers referred to ‘Palestine’, the name was applied to an indefinitely-delineated geographical region, not a distinct polity or governorate. Whereas organised Jewish polities and state institutions existed in the land for more than a millennium until the first century CE, no state or other political entity identifying itself specifically as the polity of the Palestinian people ever existed anywhere at any time in history, until the formation of the Palestinian Authority after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.
Not only Anwi Abd al-Hadi, but the Arab historian Philip Hitti told the Anglo-American Committee, "There is no such thing as Palestine in history". Similarly, in 1956, the Saudi representative to the U.N. affirmed that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria. And that same year, Ahmed Shukairy, who was to become the head of the PLO, informed the UN Security Council (Ironically) "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." Hafez al Assad, president of Syria at that time said, "There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. There is no Palestinian entity. Palestine is an integral part of Syria." And yet, when Golda Meir said the same thing, she was condemned of race hatred.
Good article and good explanation. One small but important correction. The statement: "...Despite the fact that today’s Arab Palestinians have no historic or ethnic ties to the Philistines who lived during the Roman occupation of Judea,..." is incorrect. The Philistines had disappeared long before the Roman occupation of Israel, which began in 63 BCE. It seems that the Philistines (who, unlike the Canaanites, were not indigenous to the land) disappeared around the time of the Assyrian invasion of much of the land approximately more than half a millennia before the Romans arrived.
The Palestinian s are Arabs. They can gave no nationalistic right in the land of Israel. To exert their rights as Arabic, to exert their cultural identity, they can live in any one of 21 Arab countries.. Jews are not allowed to live in peace in any of those 21 countries.
The truth – not the fantasy – is that there was never an
independent, sovereign Arab state called Palestine.
Israel is “the only nation in the world
that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with
the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago.” Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab
polity in all of recorded history. Only one people has ever made Jerusalem its capital and only one people
ever established their indigenous ancestral and biblical homeland between East
of the River Jordan and West to the Mediterranean Sea: the Jews. Israel was reconstituted in 1920 by the
April 1920 San Remo Treaty which was confirmed by the August 1920 Treaty of
Sevres Article 95 and the Treaty of Lausanne, also by the January 1919
Faisal Weitzmann Agreement. The Arabs received at the same time over 6 million
sq. miles (13 million km.) of territory with a wealth of oil reserves and the
Jewish State was to receive 46,300 sq. miles which is Palestine. In the years
before Israel was formally reconstituted and
declared sovereign in 1948, the world referred to its Jewish residents as
Palestinians. Indeed, the Palestinian military units fighting with the British
Army in World War Two were Jewish to the man and woman. Few, if any, Arabs or
Muslims fought against the Axis powers during that war and indeed many Arabs
served in SS units; often willing collaborators with the Germans in murdering
Jewish communities in the Balkans and elsewhere.
Remember, the word Palestine was the name the Romans
renamed Israel and also named Jerusalem Aelia
Capitolina. The Mandate for Palestine over the territory was granted
under international law and treaty by the League of Nations in 1920 to Great Britain as trustee with the express duty
and obligation of re-establishing within it a Jewish homeland as agreed to in
international treaties executed after WWI.
At that time, the Palestine Mandate covered all of what is Israel – including Judea and Samaria, or what is erroneously called the West Bank – and present day Jordan.
What so many in the media forget, if they ever knew, is that after the Ottoman
Empire was dismantled by the victorious Allies, France and Britain, at the end
of World War One, many new Arab states were created on over 6 million square
miles with a wealth of oil reserves and Palestine was reserved exclusively for
a Jewish homeland under international law and treaty.
(Napoleon in 1799 in a
letter to the Jewish community in Israel Promised to give the Jewish people its
land, since it belong to the Jewish people. But Napoleon lost the battle in
Acco and his promise was never came to fruition.).
But Britain violated international treaties, thus, it reneged on its duty and
obligation to the Jews and tore away four fifths of the Mandate territory in
1922 – that is all the land east of the Jordan River – and arbitrarily gave it
away as a new Arab State to the Hashemite Bedouin tribe. Immediately Jews
expelled their assets confiscated and were forbidden to live in what became
Trans-Jordan and eventually the Kingdom of Jordan in 1946: An early example of ethnic
cleansing and Arab apartheid. All Jewish property East of the Jordan River was confiscated and any Jews
expelled.
The borders of the Mandate for Palestine as eventually determined; Jordan East
of the Jordan River as the new Arab state taking away over 77% of Jewish
territory and Israel everything West of the Jordan River including Jerusalem.
Interestingly, Arabs and their leaders had rejected any notion of a separate
Arab Palestinian identity. For them, Palestine was merely a part of Greater Syria
and the Arabs were indistinct from their neighbors. Indeed, the Syrian
dictator, Assad, still plots for the return of Jordan, Israel and the disputed territories.
As far as Palestine was concerned to those Arab absentee landlords of the
early years of the 20th century, living in the fleshpots of Cairo, Damascus and Beirut, the land was worthless: desolate,
barren and malarial infested.
Then the Jewish pioneers returning in the late 19th century began to purchase
the wasted and barren land at exorbitant prices – much higher than fertile land
in Iowa and Idaho – drained the swamps and redeem
again the ancestral ancient beloved Jewish homeland.
Jewish development of the centuries old desolate and neglected land, restored
in familial love through blood, sweat and tears, ironically these brought into
the territory hundreds of thousands of illegal Arab aliens who found
livelihoods that were unavailable in the stagnant and corrupt neighboring Arab
societies.
The British authorities invariably turned a blind eye to the flood of Arab
Illegals seeing in them a stick to beat the Jewish residents. Herein lays the
false genesis of the present day Arab claim to all the land and their
descendant’s stated threat to extirpate any and all Jewish life within its
borders. The British as trustee for the Jewish people gave away without
authority land to the Arabs in Israel.
So many well-meaning people in the West, as well as latent anti-Semites, have
fallen hook, line and sinker for the fabrication, delusion and myth of an Arab
homeland called Palestine. So many people now believe the false and deceptive claim
by the well-funded Arab deceptive propaganda machine that the Jews came and
stole it, which is blatantly false.
But though it sounds affecting and no doubt to the liberal mind particularly
emotional with all the tugging of the heart strings that it implies, it is
still an absolute lie just like the weed that can never be fully uprooted.
For so many people who are either ignorant or hard hearted towards the Jewish
state, they are unaware that the Jews were the aboriginal and remaining
indigenous inhabitants for two millennia before the Muslim religion was created
and Muslim armies swarmed out of Arabia with a Koran in one hand and a sword in
the other to occupy vast territories in the name of Allah, while beheading some
of the males, raping the women and taking them as slaves. The pity is that the
bible as history is there for all to read. Sadly, so many ignore what is
written.
The Arabs have a spread of territory which is over 13 million square kilometres with a wealth of oil reserves in the Middle East and into North Africa (the Maghreb). Israel’s territory is barely 21,000
square kilometres (it was suppose to be 120,000 sq. km. all of Palestine) and may
soon be reduced further in violation of international law and treaties and the
Faisal-Weizmann agreement of January 3, 1919, which agreed that all of
Palestine is allocated to the Jewish people; if the Jewish biblical heartland
of Judea and Samaria is torn from it to create in its midst a terror state
called Arab-Palestine: the 23rd Arab state.
When the world extends to the million Jewish refugees who were terrorized,
persecuted and expelled from Arab lands and all their assets including 120,000
sq. km/ of real property confiscated nearly 70 years ago the same sympathetic
obsession that they extend to the Arabs who needlessly left Israel at the
urging’s of the corrupt Arab League, then there maybe hope for a better
international community than exists at the present time. The need for oil
blinds them to the truth.
Fighting terrorism is not unlike fighting a deadly cancer. It can not be
treated just where it is visible – every diseased cell in the body must be
destroyed completely with no traces left.
When a poison strikes the human body, the only way to address it, is to remove
it and destroy it completely. That is the way the terrorist organizations and
its supporters should be treated.
YJ Draiman
On centenary, San Remo Conference hailed as ‘seminal moment’ in Zionist history
World leaders praise April 1920 summit as first anchor of Jewish state’s legitimacy in international law; Pompeo says it marked world’s embrace of Jews’ unbreakable ties to Israel
Delegates at the San Remo Conference in April 1920 (screenshot YouTube)
Presidents, prime ministers and other senior officials on Sunday celebrated the centenary of the San Remo Conference as a milestone of Zionist history that paved the way to the establishment of a Jewish state.
In late April 1920, the UK, France, Italy, Japan and later the US (as an observer) convened in the northwestern Italian town and decided to divide the Ottoman empire into three parts. One of them later became the British Mandate of Palestine.
Crucially, the so-called San Remo Declaration charged the British mandate with implementing the Balfour Declaration, which three years earlier had endorsed “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
The San Remo Conference, held in the town’s Villa Devachan, is historically significant as the first anchor of Israel’s right to exist in international law, though in contemporary geopolitics it is, for various reasons, not recognized as relevant to today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“There is probably no more understated event in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict than the San Remo Conference of April 1920,” Efraim Karsh, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, wrote in a paper published Friday.
It was remarkable that within less than five years, the Balfour Declaration “had been endorsed by the official representative of the will of the international community: not in the ‘technical’ sense of supporting the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine but in the deeper sense of recognizing the Jews as a nation deserving self-determination in its ancestral homeland,” he wrote.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the San Remo centennial was an opportunity to celebrate a “seminal moment” in the history of Zionism.
“Now in ratifying that historic declaration, San Remo recognized a fundamental truth: The Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in the land of our forefathers. The Land of Israel is our ancestral homeland,” Netanyahu said.
PM Netanyahu at the PMO in Jerusalem, March 18, 2029 (Kobi Gideon/GPO)
Digressing from the 1920 conference, he went on to address US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, which envisions Israel annexing parts of the West Bank. “A couple of months from now, I’m confident that that pledge will be honored, that we will be able to celebrate another historic moment in the history of Zionism,” he said. “A century after San Remo, the promise of Zionism is being realized.”
The organizers of the online conference appeared to distance themselves from Netanyahu’s juxtaposition of San Remo and Trump’s so-called Deal of the Century.
Mike Pompeo said the ‘historic agreement marked the world’s embrace of the unbreakable connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel’
“The statement made by the prime minister was not part of any official agenda by the conference organizers,” Tomas Sandell, the director of the European Coalition for Israel, told The Times of Israel.
“The main objective of the 100th anniversary broadcast was to explain the historical connections between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, as the right of the Jewish people to reconstitute their national home in their ancient land was codified under international law in 1920,” Sandell added.
“In a day and age of historical revisionism and ambivalence, these historical and legal facts need to be retold and taken into consideration.”
The European Coalition for Israel, which is based in Brussels, originally planned to host a celebration for the centenaryof San Remo, but due to the coronavirus pandemic decided to postpone the event. Instead, it produced a one-hour live broadcast, which included interviews with current and former Israeli officials commenting on the importance of the conference.
Many speakers stressed the historical significance of San Remo especially as Israel’s detractors deny the Jewish state has a right to exist. More needs to be done to bring the decisions made there to the attention of today’s diplomats, it was argued.
“It’s important for our future, it’s important for our present,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said in a prerecorded interview.
Alberto Biancheri, the current mayor of San Remo, said his city “is rightly understood as the birthplace of Israel.”
‘The groundwork for the incredible nation that is Israel’
The online conference also featured excerpts from statements about the San Remo conference current and former world leaders submitted for the occasion.
“One of the seeds of the olive tree which was to become the symbol of the modern State of Israel was planted in San Remo,” Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte wrote.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban dedicated his message to the “courageous people whose great sacrifice, work and struggle could create the modern and independent Jewish state.”
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the centenary of the San Remo conference “provides an opportunity to not just reflect on decades of cooperation between our peoples — but also to look forward to an even stronger friendship in the future.”
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab applauds at the Foreign Office in London during the weekly’ Clap for our Carers’ in London, April 23, 2020 (AP Photo/Frank Augstein/pool)
In his message, Raab stressed Britain’s role in establishing a homeland for the Jewish people. San Remo “marked a new chapter in the history of our collaboration – bilateral relations that continue to go from strength to strength in the twenty-first century,” he said.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the “historic agreement marked the world’s embrace of the unbreakable connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.”
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman took to Twitter to mark the occasion:
Recalling today the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Resolution, whereby the world powers recognized the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and the right of the Jewish people to a national home on that land was given the force of International Law.Twitter Ads info and privacy
Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper hailed the “extraordinary statecraft at San Remo that laid the groundwork for the incredible nation that is the modern State of Israel.”
The world leaders who gathered in San Remo unanimously recognized Jewish rights and aspirations, which “contrasts starkly with today’s moral confusion and historical revision,” he added.
“The San Remo centenary reminds us of the enlightenment of the world leaders of that time, and of the perseverance of the Jewish people then and since.”
Tony Blair, a former UK prime minister who has long been involved in Middle East peacemaking efforts, said San Remo “planted the seeds of a modern era for the Middle East… With a secure and thriving Israel taking center-stage in the world today, I believe it is more important than ever to uphold the legacy of San Remo and work arduously toward peace and coexistence between Israel and the Arab world.”
Other dignitaries who sent statements included President Reuven Rivlin, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Czech President Milos Zeman and former Finnish prime minister Juha Sipilä.
Comment:
The truth – not the fantasy – is that there was never an
independent, sovereign Arab state called Palestine. Israel is “the only nation in the world
that is governing itself in the same territory, under the same name, and with
the same religion and same language as it did 3,000 years ago.” Jerusalem was never the capital of any Arab
polity in all of recorded history. Only one people has ever made Jerusalem its capital and only one people
ever established their indigenous ancestral and biblical homeland between East
of the River Jordan and West to the Mediterranean Sea: the Jews. Israel was reconstituted in 1920 by the
April 1920 San Remo Treaty which was confirmed by the August 1920 Treaty of
Sevres Article 95 and the Treaty of Lausanne, also by the January 1919
Faisal Weitzmann Agreement. The Arabs received at the same time over 6 million
sq. miles (13 million km.) of territory with a wealth of oil reserves and the
Jewish State was to receive 46,300 sq. miles which is Palestine. In the years
before Israel was formally reconstituted and
declared sovereign in 1948, the world referred to its Jewish residents as
Palestinians. Indeed, the Palestinian military units fighting with the British
Army in World War Two were Jewish to the man and woman. Few, if any, Arabs or
Muslims fought against the Axis powers during that war and indeed many Arabs
served in SS units; often willing collaborators with the Germans in murdering
Jewish communities in the Balkans and elsewhere.
Remember, the word Palestine was the name the Romans
renamed Israel and also named Jerusalem Aelia
Capitolina. The Mandate for Palestine over the territory was granted
under international law and treaty by the League of Nations in 1920 to Great Britain as trustee with the express duty
and obligation of re-establishing within it a Jewish homeland as agreed to in
international treaties executed after WWI.
At that time, the Palestine Mandate covered all of what is Israel – including Judea and Samaria, or what is erroneously called the West Bank – and present day Jordan.
What so many in the media forget, if they ever knew, is that after the Ottoman
Empire was dismantled by the victorious Allies, France and Britain, at the end
of World War One, many new Arab states were created on over 6 million square
miles with a wealth of oil reserves and Palestine was reserved exclusively for
a Jewish homeland under international law and treaty.
(Napoleon in 1799 in a
letter to the Jewish community in Israel Promised to give the Jewish people its
land, since it belong to the Jewish people. But Napoleon lost the battle in
Acco and his promise was never came to fruition.).
But Britain violated international treaties, thus, it reneged on its duty and
obligation to the Jews and tore away four fifths of the Mandate territory in
1922 – that is all the land east of the Jordan River – and arbitrarily gave it
away as a new Arab State to the Hashemite Bedouin tribe. Immediately Jews
expelled their assets confiscated and were forbidden to live in what became
Trans-Jordan and eventually the Kingdom of Jordan in 1946: An early example of ethnic
cleansing and Arab apartheid. All Jewish property East of the Jordan River was confiscated and any Jews
expelled.
The borders of the Mandate for Palestine as eventually determined; Jordan East
of the Jordan River as the new Arab state taking away over 77% of Jewish
territory and Israel everything West of the Jordan River including Jerusalem.
Interestingly, Arabs and their leaders had rejected any notion of a separate
Arab Palestinian identity. For them, Palestine was merely a part of Greater Syria
and the Arabs were indistinct from their neighbors. Indeed, the Syrian
dictator, Assad, still plots for the return of Jordan, Israel and the disputed territories.
As far as Palestine was concerned to those Arab absentee landlords of the
early years of the 20th century, living in the fleshpots of Cairo, Damascus and Beirut, the land was worthless: desolate,
barren and malarial infested.
Then the Jewish pioneers returning in the late 19th century began to purchase
the wasted and barren land at exorbitant prices – much higher than fertile land
in Iowa and Idaho – drained the swamps and redeem
again the ancestral ancient beloved Jewish homeland.
Jewish development of the centuries old desolate and neglected land, restored
in familial love through blood, sweat and tears, ironically these brought into
the territory hundreds of thousands of illegal Arab aliens who found
livelihoods that were unavailable in the stagnant and corrupt neighboring Arab
societies.
The British authorities invariably turned a blind eye to the flood of Arab
Illegals seeing in them a stick to beat the Jewish residents. Herein lays the
false genesis of the present day Arab claim to all the land and their
descendant’s stated threat to extirpate any and all Jewish life within its
borders. The British as trustee for the Jewish people gave away without
authority land to the Arabs in Israel.
So many well-meaning people in the West, as well as latent anti-Semites, have
fallen hook, line and sinker for the fabrication, delusion and myth of an Arab
homeland called Palestine. So many people now believe the false and deceptive claim
by the well-funded Arab deceptive propaganda machine that the Jews came and
stole it, which is blatantly false.
But though it sounds affecting and no doubt to the liberal mind particularly
emotional with all the tugging of the heart strings that it implies, it is
still an absolute lie just like the weed that can never be fully uprooted.
For so many people who are either ignorant or hard hearted towards the Jewish
state, they are unaware that the Jews were the aboriginal and remaining
indigenous inhabitants for two millennia before the Muslim religion was created
and Muslim armies swarmed out of Arabia with a Koran in one hand and a sword in
the other to occupy vast territories in the name of Allah, while beheading some
of the males, raping the women and taking them as slaves. The pity is that the
bible as history is there for all to read. Sadly, so many ignore what is
written.
The Arabs have a spread of territory which is over 13 million square kilometres with a wealth of oil reserves in the Middle East and into North Africa (the Maghreb). Israel’s territory is barely 21,000
square kilometres (it was suppose to be 120,000 sq. km. all of Palestine) and may
soon be reduced further in violation of international law and treaties and the
Faisal-Weizmann agreement of January 3, 1919, which agreed that all of
Palestine is allocated to the Jewish people; if the Jewish biblical heartland
of Judea and Samaria is torn from it to create in its midst a terror state
called Arab-Palestine: the 23rd Arab state.
When the world extends to the million Jewish refugees who were terrorized,
persecuted and expelled from Arab lands and all their assets including 120,000
sq. km/ of real property confiscated nearly 70 years ago the same sympathetic
obsession that they extend to the Arabs who needlessly left Israel at the
urging’s of the corrupt Arab League, then there maybe hope for a better
international community than exists at the present time. The need for oil
blinds them to the truth.
Fighting terrorism is not unlike fighting a deadly cancer. It can not be
treated just where it is visible – every diseased cell in the body must be
destroyed completely with no traces left.
When a poison strikes the human body, the only way to address it, is to remove
it and destroy it completely. That is the way the terrorist organizations and
its supporters should be treated.
YJ Draiman
