ISRAEL VERSUS THE OCCUPIERS: The History And Meaning Of "Palestine" And "Palestinian." Posted by YJ Draiman
By Michael Bussio Jul-Aug 2006 Issue of Think-Israel
"From the end of the
Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule as trustee, the area
now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers,
only administrative boundaries..." -- Professor Bernard Lewis, Princeton
University
"There is no such thing
as Palestine in history, absolutely not." -- Professor Philip
Hatti, 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.
"Keep in mind that the
Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands
which is over 12 million sq. km. with a wealth of oil reserves. 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." -- Joseph Farah,
Arab-American editor and journalist, author of "Myths of the Middle East "
There has never been a
Palestinian state in the history of the region. Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity. There is
no language known as Arab-Palestinian. There is no distinct Arab-Palestinian
culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Arab-Palestinians. The
"so-called" Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians
(another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, etc. Even the name Palestine came from the Roman Emperor Hadrian around 135 A.D.
after Rome put down yet another Jewish revolt. The Emperor was
increasingly angry over the rebellious nature of Judah , Judea and Samaria that he was determined to break the back of the stiff
neck Jews once and for all. When asked, who were the Jews most ardent enemies
of the distant past, the Emperor was told the Philistines; thus the name
Palestina, which would later be morphed into the word Palestine.
Nearly eighteen hundred years
later, Great
Britain
took over as trustee that part of the Middle East as a
mandate from the League of
Nations . The British chose
to call the land Palestine instead of The Land of Israel. It wasn't long before
the various Arab tribes, native Egyptians, Syrians, and Turks living in the
area adopted the word Palestine as if it were some ancient name passed down from
their forefathers. Strange, the Arabs couldn't even pronounce it correctly, and
used the fictional entity, Falastine.
THE WORD -- "PALESTINE "
The word Palestine has never been used as a name of a nation or state,
but rather as a geographical term, used to designate the region at those times
in history.
The word Palestine comes from the name Pelesheth. Pelesheth appears
frequently in the Bible and entered into English as "Philistine". It
dates to the thirteenth century B.C. These people were thought to be the
dangerous "Sea Peoples" that so threaten the Aegean ,
Egypt , Syria , and present day Israel , Turkey , and Lebanon . Historians and archaeologist believe these "Sea
Peoples" originated from Greece and many of the Greek Islands . From there they would raid the region for plunder
and general destruction. Eventually they would establish five independent
city-states (including Gaza ) on a narrow strip of land that came to be known as
"Philistia ". The Greeks and Romans would call it Palestina.
At no time were the Philistines of old ever considered to be Arabs. They were
not even Semites. 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 "Palestina" derived from Pelesheth. Back to Beliefs
HOW DID THE LAND OF ISRAEL BECOME
"PALESTINE "?
In the First Century after
the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the Romans crushed the independent kingdom of Judea .
Though the Jews had successfully created a nation state for the second time in
their history (the first being that of King David and King Solomon), it was
eventually smashed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. In the Emperor's haste to wipe
out the identity of Israel-Judah-Judea-Samaria, (those areas that make up much
of Israel today), Hadrian not only defeated the Israelite
armies and sent many Jews into exile, but he took the name Palestina and
imposed it on all the Land of Israel . At the same time, he changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina.
Though the Romans killed many
Jews and sold many more into slavery, there was never a complete abandonment of
the Land of its people. There was never a time when there were not Jews and
Jewish communities living on the land.
A SHORT HISTORY OF PALESTINE aka The Land of Israel
Before the Greeks, before the
Romans, before the land was known by its invented Roman name of "Palestina",
more than a millennium ago, the region had been called the land of "Canaan ".
The people known as Canaanites, Jebusites, Hittites, etc. had the unique
ability of creating small vibrant city-states, though none ever reached the
grandeur, and efficiency of the Greek city-states of antiquity. At times these
small states were independent, but for much of their history, the Canaanite
city-states were vassals of an Egyptian or Hittite king. In their entire
history the Canaanites never united into a single nation.
After the Hebrew’s were
granted their freedom in the Exodus from Egypt nearly 3,300 years ago, they wandered the desert for
the next 40 years before settling in the lands of Canaan .
There they would form the first Jewish government; the first Jewish nation out
of the kingdoms of Israel , Judah , and later that of Judea
and Samaria .
Israel-Judah-Judea and parts
of Samaria united into one nation, thus forming the
"only" independent, sovereign nation-state that has ever existed in
the entire history of "Palestine "
west of the Jordan River and a substantial part east of the Jordan River which was the land of 3 Jewish tribes. (In Biblical
times, Ammon, Moab, and Edom as well as Israel had land further east of the
Jordan River, but they disappeared in antiquity and no other nation took their
place until the British invented Trans-Jordan in the 1920's.)
The Roman Empire would
eventually extend its borders to the Middle East with the
conquest of Judea , Judah , Israel and Samaria . This region would become a province of the pagan Roman Empire with about 12 million Jews and then of the Christian
Byzantine Empire, and very briefly of the Zoroastrian Persian Empire. After the
death of Mohammad in the 600's A.D. the Arab-Muslim Caliph conquered Palastina
from the Byzantines, and made it apart of their Arab-Muslim Empire. Since the
Arabs had no name of their own for the area they opted for adopting the name
the Romans gave the region -- Palastina, which the Arabs pronounced Falastine.
During this time in history,
much of the mixed population of Palastina was converted to Islam and eventually
was pressured to adopt the Arabic language. Whether they liked it or not the
people of the region were subject to the whims of a distant dictator, the
Caliph. The area of Palastina at not time ever became an Arabic nation, or ever
became an independent Arabic state of any kind, or ever developed a distinct
Arabic culture and or society.
The year 1099 A.D. marked the
first year of the First Crusade. It also was the year the Christian Crusaders
conquered Palastina-Falastin. After 1099, it was never again under Arab rule.
Though the Christian Crusader kingdom was politically independent, it never
developed a national identity. For all intense and purposes it remained only a
military outpost of Christian Europe, and lasted less than one century.
Thereafter, Palastina-Falastin would be ruled as a subject province by Syria,
then by the Egyptian dominated, ethnically mixed slave-warriors known as
Mameluks, and finally by the Ottoman Turks.
Near the end of World War I,
the British led by the likes of General Allenby and Lawrence of Arabia took
control of Palestine from the Ottomans. Thus with the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war, it’s once subject provinces
came under the influence of the European powers. Palestine aka The Land of Israel was one of those subject
provinces, and it came under the control of Great Britain who would now govern the territory as trustee on a
temporary mandate from the League
of Nations carrying out the
1920 San Remo Agreements and the Feisal Weitzman Agreement of January 3, 1919 .
THE HISTORICAL HOME OF THE JEWS
Over the centuries many from the West traveled
through the region. They gave an excellent account of what they saw there. And
what they saw was depressing to say the least. All mentioned the land as
being empty, neglected, abandoned, and desolate. "Everything had
fallen into disrepair and ruins," one visitor said. An English pilgrim
stated in 1590, "There is 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". The British consul
to the region stated in 1857, "The country is in considerable degree,
empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is of a body of population."
It was not unusual to hear from travelers returning home from this area of the Middle East to assert that, "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." It was reported in Europe
and the United States that, "For the sort of solitude to make one dreary,
come to the Galilee ... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lies a moldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany , in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by
any living creature..." One visitor declared that the "country was
desolate 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..." Even Mark Twain was taken by the devastation of the region,
stating in his 1867 trip to the Palestine territory, "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes... desolate and
unlovely..."
The land would not maintain
its "desolate and unlovely" image for long. With the coming of Jewish
pioneers in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century who would join with the
many Jews who already lived in the region from time immemorial, the land began
to turn green. Their hard work and diligence in bringing the land back to life with
Jewish financial support from Western countries attracted many others in the Middle East who sought employment opportunities and a better life style. Thus many
Arab migrants were drawn to the area in hopes of better conditions for their
families. Back to Beliefs
"His Majesty's'
government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home, and will use their best
endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object..." This was
the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It was incorporated into the 1920 San Remo
Agreement and implemented and validated by the League of Nations Mandate, and
thereby legally committed the British Government to the principle that there
would be a Jewish state in that portion of the Middle East. It also specified
that those Jews living in the region be preserved and protected.
The area in question that
Britain had legally committed itself to, Mandated Palestine the entire
territory, originally included all of what is now Jordan, as well as all of
what is now Israel, Judea, Samaria and the Gaza strip. This would change when Britain 's wartime ally (World War I), Emir Abdullah was
forced out of his Hashemite domain in Arabia by the Saudi
family. In order to preserve their alliance however, Great Britain violated the
Agreement and opted for making the former king ruler of a great portion over
three quarters of Mandated Palestine and lands 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 in 1946 just Jordan.
With the British violating
their own declaration under the mandate, the proposed ancestral and National
Home for the Jews was cut by more than 77 percent. From this point on, no Jew
has ever been permitted to reside in Trans-Jordan/Jordan. In addition, the
British progressively illegally restricted Jews from building, farming,
purchasing land, and living where they wanted within the region.
Nonetheless, following the
1967 Six-Day War, Israel finally entered and liberated those Jewish lands long illegally forbidden
to them by the British and later by Jordan . Though one British government after another went
about denouncing Jewish settlement as "illegal", the reality of the
situation was that it was Great Britain who was acting in an illegal manner by
prohibiting Jews from these parts of the ancestral Jewish National Home
originally promised to them and agreed to by international agreements, just
like the Arabs who received over 12 million sq. km. with a wealth of oil
reserves. Back to Beliefs
JUST WHO IS A PALESTINIAN?
While Britain mandated over the region as trustee, it was the Jews,
not any Arab tribe that was known as a Palestinian, including those Jews that
served in the British Army during the Second World War, while various Arab
groups aligned themselves with Nazi Germany.
More often than not it was
British policy brought on by fits of anti-Semitism, and Arab oil that
continually and illegally restricted Jewish immigration. It was the 1939 White
Paper that all but put to an end the admission of Jews to Palestine . When Jews needed a helping hand the most, it was
this White Paper that became the death nil for Jews fleeing to the Promised
Land, from the threat of annihilation at the hands of Hitler's executioners.
Jews who might have lived, (it is estimated that the British caused the deaths
of millions of Jews), developed the nearly empty lands of Palestine aka The Land of Israel , and prospered, were instead murdered in the death
camps that stretched out over Nazi occupied Europe .
While the British together
with their Arab helpers were closing the door to those Jews attempting to
escape certain death in Europe , they were more than willingly to permit massive
illegal Arab immigration from Jordan , Syria , Egypt , and North
Africa (which is estimated
at about 300,000) into the ancestral lands of the Jews.
A famous Arab myth states
that the various Arab tribes have long established themselves in Palestine aka The Land of Israel . Then the Jews came and drove them out. This is of
course patently false, as any historian will tell us. History enlightens us to
the fact that it was the assortment of Arab tribes that entered the region
through illegal immigration and it was they who, with violence,
"displaced" the Jews. In fact this Arab violence was used against the
Jews in areas where they (the Jews) had long been established. For example, the
Jewish presence in the city of Hebron goes back to Abraham about 3800 years ago, and there
has been an Israelite/Jewish community there since Joshua, long before it was
King David's capital.
In 1929, Arab rioters, with
the passive consent of the British, killed, butchered and drove out virtually
the entire Jewish population. The world community stood by and did nothing. The
U.N. itself, no friend to Israel and certainly not friend to any Jew, declared that
the massive increase in Arab population was very recent; that any Arab who had
lived in Palestine for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a
"Palestinian refugee."
Nearly twenty years later,
following the 1929 riots, the British illegally created the state of
Trans-Jordan, which eventually seized much of Judea
and Samaria (i.e., the West Bank ) East Jerusalem , and the old city. They killed or drove out every
Jew. And the world community stood by and did nothing.
As far as the British and the
Arabs were concerned all lands where the Jews had been driven from, making the
land Judenrein would remain so for ever. And the world once again stood by and
did nothing. It is interesting to note and by contrast, Israel, eventually
allotted only 17 percent of Mandated Palestine had to absorb a large and
growing population of Arab citizens plus over a million Jewish families that
were expelled from Arab countries.
FROM PALESTINE BACK TO ISRAEL ... AGAIN
By the time of the
"third" Jewish nation -- Israel , the Arab tribes of the region had still not yet
discovered their ancient nation of Falastin. The U.N. without authority (the
U.N. resolutions are non-binding with no legal standing) offered them (the Arab
tribes) half of Palestine in 1947 -- half! And what did the Arabs do with this
offer to a non-people? They violently rejected it. Soon, all too soon, six Arab
nations swept down upon the only fledging Jewish state in the region with the
intent of driving every last Jew into the sea. The Arab goal was the complete
eradication of Jewry in that portion of the Middle East . And the stated goal of the Arab tribes in the area was the creation
of the 22nd Arab state known as Falastin and incorporate it into Syria .
The Arabs failed in their
attempt to massacre the Jewish population of Israel . Now the Arab tribes of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria ) even forfeited any right to a nation of their own
when their brethren in Trans-Jordan invaded the West Bank and East Jerusalem , occupied these territories, and killed and drove out
all the Jews who had lived there since time immemorial. The Jews were banned
for life from traveling and praying before Jewish holy places in the region. In
the meantime another Arab nation, Egypt succeeded in taking the Gaza Strip. Both Egypt and Jordan held onto conquered lands until 1967. In that same
year the Arab nations that surrounded Israel initiated another war of genocide. The end result
however, was much like the first -- the Arabs lost again in their bid to
destroy the Jewish nation, and in consequence lost lands they had taken and
occupied since 1948.
In a nineteen-year span from
1948-1967, Jordan and Egypt never once, not once, offered to hand over Judea ,
Samaria , and the Gaza Strip to make up an independent state
of Falastin. Once more, the so-called Arab "Palestinians" never
sought it. And not one nation in the entire world ever suggested it, much less
demanded it.
Since the end of the First
World War, the Arabs of the Middle
East and North Africa have been given independent states in 99.5 percent of
the land they claimed which is over 12 million sq. km. with a wealth of oil
reserves. They are determined that the remaining .5 percent be developed into
yet another Arab nation at the expense of the lone Jewish state. To that end,
the Arab Palestine Liberation Movement was set up in 1964 with the express
purpose of destroying the State of Israel and driving out of the region all the
Jews. Just like they did in all the Arab countries
The sad truth today is that
history has been thrown aside. Many nations, including the United States have engineered media and public opinion to accept
without question; without any serious analysis the new myth of an Arab nation
of Falastin whose territory is claimed to be unlawfully occupied by the Jews.
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