http://bigpeace.com/kdavies/2011/03/03/charlie-sheen-isnt-the-only-one-who-is-delusional/#more-88764
Charlie Sheen Isn’t the Only One Who Is Delusional
Posted by Keith Davies Mar 3rd 2011 at 6:17 am
As Charlie Sheen melts down with delusional tirades, he exhibits what can only be described as a mental disorder; the US media gladly reports every syllable of his insanity. On the other side of the Atlantic, more dangerous and delusional rants are going on by the million; they are virtually ignored by the world and the Western media. The rants are the manifestation of the insanity of anti-Semitic fervor by the masses on the streets of Cairo, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen and the rest of the Muslim world. In a recent rally in Tahir Square, Cairo to support the return of the Spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood – Sheik Yousef Qaradawi – the crowd estimated to be over two million chanted in Arabic “To Jerusalem we go, martyrs by the million.” To celebrate their freedom from Mubarak, the crowd wanted to show their joy by going on a Jew killing spree and not a peep by the liberal media. Apparently Nazism and Jew killing are only reportable by the liberal media if the Germans are the Nazis.
The old guard secular dictators of the Middle East have all of a sudden become Jews according to the revolutionary mob and the Arab media. Being Jewish in an Arab society is like being black at a Ku Klux Klan party. You might never know that by reading all the news fit to print in the New York Times.
Our government does not want to say anything about the Jew hatred because the world’s oil supply might come under greater risk. Unfortunately, the people of the United States are blind and apathetic to the insanity because either they have no interest in what is going on in the world or they put their faith in the mainstream media which is like asking a blind man to be your cab driver.
Our churches and church leaders, for the most part, are busy entertaining Imams at interfaith dialogue meetings. As our great Congressman Allen West perfectly described, this exercise is akin to “blowing smoke up my Donkey,” New King James version. Islamic leaders representing the major Islamic organizations in America are fronts for terror groups who deceive, lie and obfuscate the true nature of what the agenda of Islam is and pastors like Rick Warren and his allies are too willing to be suckered by this deception.
It should also be noticed that the church leaders who support Interfaith dialogue with Islam hold a position that is always adversarial towards Israel or at best “pro peace” with a strong bias towards “the plight of the Palestinians.” If you support a Palestinian state, “the plight of the Palestinians,” is code for “I hate Jews.” It is just a more palatable way of getting people to listen to smoke going up your donkey.
The other Church leaders who quietly say they support Israel or ignore the entire issue are well aware of the Islamic threat but never mention it from the pulpit because they never bring “politics” into the church. Well let me explain some simple scripture to you Pastors who might read this little column. “When the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their seed promised them the land of Israel by G-d himself, G-d Himself entered politics and if G-d entered politics so should you. If you do not offend a few people by speaking the truth from your pulpit then as Pastor you are not doing your job. The Bible is a very offensive document, so get with the program.”
We the people need to get our act together and learn what is going on around us because our freedoms are evaporating. The threat of fundamentalist Islam is on the march and is about to strangle the entire Muslim world; we are next on the menu. Just as the Tea party movement arose because of our over intrusive government, those that know about this real threat need to educate their friends, family, and persist in your willingness to spread the word. Organize events and get key people invited as speakers in local communities with as much controversy as possible. Controversy is good, as it tends to wake people up better than an “educational” event. Pester your pastor, your rabbi, your teacher, and your school superintendent, not just the local or national politicians. We are in a war for our survival, we have our troops on the battlefield but here on our own soil we are losing because too few are speaking the truth.
It appears that we the people are the last line of defense to deal with this problem, as our media, political and church leaders have failed us.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
The 5 Best Arguments Against Sharia in the United States
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Last month, 70% of the voters in Oklahoma approved State Question 755, which bans Sharia law (and international law) from being used in the state’s legal system. Almost immediately afterward, CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) sued to have the vote overturned, based on the bizarre claim that the measure is “unconstitutional.” U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange then sided with CAIR and issued an injunction preventing the measure from taking effect until all lawsuits against it are resolved. Since the suits will likely take years to play out, the new measure (and the will of the voters) will be stymied for the foreseeable future.
Those who oppose Sharia in the United States often argue their point by highlighting how misogynistic, backward, cruel and discriminatory Islamic law can be under most interpretations. And while all that may be true, it is the wrong argument to make. I get so frustrated watching pundits, politicians and bloggers making the weakest argument in what should be a slam-dunk debate that I’ve decided to write this brief outline of what I think should be the prioritized hierarchy of arguments against the use of Sharia in the United States.
In order, these are the arguments that Sharia’s opponents should be using, not just in Oklahoma but anywhere else in the country where the same issue crops up:
1. U.S. law is the “supreme law of the land,” no exceptions.
The specifics of what’s in Sharia law are irrelevant. It doesn’t matter whether Sharia is the most wonderful, mild and reasonable set of humanitarian recommendations ever devised, or if it’s an oppressive medieval framework for a nightmarish theocracy — or something in between. All of that is off-topic. Why? Because in the United States of America, only U.S. law governs. Period. You can’t violate a U.S. law and then offer up as a legal excuse, “Well, in Mongolia what I did is perfectly legal!” You’d be convicted, while the jury laughed.
To get specific, Article VI of the Constitution, better known as the Supremacy Clause, states:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any state to the Contrary notwithstanding.
“Supreme law of the land” nails it down pretty well. I don’t see anything in there about exceptions made for religious law — do you?
Even the lead plaintiff in the case concedes this point; quoted in the top link above, Muneer Awad, executive director of the Oklahoma chapter of CAIR, said “the measure is unnecessary ‘because even first-year law students know’ that another type of law cannot supersede the U.S. Constitution.”
And…? What’s his point here? It may be true that State Question 755 merely reaffirms already-established legal principles, but just because a measure is “unnecessary” doesn’t mean that it’s unconstitutional. In fact, as many legal experts know, there is plenty of duplication and overlap in the Constitution itself, and much more in state law. Hate-crime laws are a clear recent example of “unnecessary” duplicative legislation: It’salready illegal to assault someone, but the courts have allowed additional laws against assault motivated by malice, even though they’re theoretically “unnecessary.” The same allowance for “unnecessary” reaffirmation of Constitutional ideals applies to the new Oklahoma law as well.
2. Sharia, as “divine revelation,” is inherently undemocratic.
One of the fundamental principles of United States law is that it is subject to the will of the governed, and can be updated and revised over time. This can be done at the federal level by Constitutional amendments in which the people of each state (through their elected representatives) vote on whether or not to alter the nationwide legal framework; or by electing (or booting out) representatives who enact laws according to the will of the voters; or by electing presidents and governors who appoint judges of this or that political slant; or by similar mechanisms at state or local levels. This process is so self-evident that it hardly needs to be described.
But Sharia operates in a completely different way. The Qur’an (from which Sharia is ultimately derived) is deemed by Islam to be “revealed,” in that it was supposedly handed down from on high by Allah himself, and as such is perfect, unchangeable, uninterpretable, and thus beyond the reach of man’s attempt to alter it. In other words, Sharia is undemocratic. In practice, various Islamic experts and jurists — imams, ayatollahs, mullahs, and so forth — do indeed “interpret” the medieval Arabic of the Qur’an and apply it to modern settings, since only scholars can even read the Qur’an in the original. (Even direct translations of the Qur’an are regarded by true believers as corruptions; only the original is the true “word of God.”) But these jurists themselves are not elected. So neither the text nor the implementation of the text are subject to the will of the populace.
Needless to say, any such legal system fundamentally contradicts the basis of the American legal system. You can’t have an immutable, eternal set of fixed religious laws (i.e. Sharia) incorporated as a subset of a malleable legal system (such as U.S. law).
(Now, if three-fourths of U.S. states voted to amend the federal Constitution to jettison all existing law and replace it with Sharia, then yes, we could have Sharia in America. But that doesn’t seem likely. And until such an amendment is passed, then Sharia is in fundamental disagreement with the existing Constitution.)
Sharia’s advocates think that by citing Sharia’s “perfection,” divinity and immutability, they are making a good argument for why it should be adopted; but it is for that very reason that it is completely unacceptable in the United States, a land whose government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Note that last word: people. Not God, not Allah. Us.
3. Many aspects of Sharia are flagrantly unconstitutional.
Any number of specific Sharia laws directly contradict or violate basic principles of the U.S. Constitution:
- Under Sharia’s rules of evidence, “Testimony from women is given only half the weight of men.” This violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, guaranteeing for all persons complete equality under the law.
- The punishment for theft under Sharia is “amputation of hands or feet, depending on the number of times it is committed.” This is a gross violation of the Eighth Amendment, which bans “cruel and unusual punishments” under U.S. law.
- In Sharia courts, “testimony from non-Muslims may be excluded altogether (if against a Muslim).”Furthermore, “Muslim women may only enter into marriage with Muslim men.” Such Sharia laws, as well as many others which elevate Muslims over non-Muslims, are in direct violation of the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and possibly Article VI of the Constitution.
- Sharia’s penalty for apostasy (rejecting Islam) is death, according to the vast majority of Islamic scholars and judges. Since apostasy could not, under the First Amendment, even be considered a crime under U.S. law, much less a capital crime, enforcing the death penalty for a “crime of conscience” violates the very spirit of the Constitution, not to mention the First, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Fourteenth amendments.
The list could go on and on. Sharia has very specific rules and extremely harsh punishments against extra-marital sex, for ignoring various religious rituals, drinking alcohol, engaging in freedom of speech, and so on; all of these rules and punishments violate various aspects of the United States Constitution. Several other components of Sharia also clearly discriminate against non-Muslims in favor of Muslims, which also is unconstitutional.
Because it is not allowed under Islamic law to pick and choose certain parts of Sharia while ignoring or dismissing other parts which you may find inconvenient, and since some aspects of Sharia are self-evidently unconstitutional, then Sharia must be thrown out in toto as a viable legal system in the United States — exactly as the citizens of Oklahoma voted. What’s the problem here?
4. Sharia is fundamentally religious law, and should be inapplicable to U.S. criminal or civil law.
At its core, Sharia is religious law — the guidelines under which Muslims must live in order to follow Islam. As such, it is not comparable to nor could it be a replacement for the completely secular criminal and civil code of the United States.
I have no beef with religions having internal laws governing the recommended behavior of adherents, or stipulating the rules for excommunication, and so forth. But Sharia goes way beyond that. First of all, the punishments meted out for religious misdeeds under Sharia often overlap with American criminal law. For example, as noted above, the punishment for apostasy is usually the death penalty — a little more serious than just excommunication. And on the flip side, under Sharia there is no punishment for certain actions (such as wife-beating) which under US law are serious crimes. But religious law cannot trump criminal law in the United States — you don’t get carte blanche to do illegal actions (such as killing someone or beating your wife) simply because your religion tells you it’s OK. Once we open that Pandora’s Box, there’s no turning back.
We learned recently in a very vivid example that we cannot trust religious law to replace or undermine U.S. law. When the Catholic Church discovered in decades past that some of its priests had committed statutory rape and child molestation against underage children in the Church, in many cases the internal “punishment” meted out was simply a slap on the wrist, often nothing more than a transfer to a different parish. Under U.S. law, these priests had committed a serious crime; but the Catholic Church decided in most instances to notnotify the secular authorities and instead to adjudicate the cases internally, and doled out “sentences” which were in direct violation of U.S. and state criminal codes. Most Americans found this outrageous and unacceptable when they found out about it; but if we were to allow Sharia to obtain in the U.S., then the exact same clash between religious law and secular law is certain to happen all over again. And the clash will almost certainly be much more severe, since the Catholic Church hid the crimes surreptitiously, and did so in violation of its own stated principles; but under Sharia the differences between Islamic and secular moral codes are clearly and openly spelled out, so the clashes between U.S. law and Sharia law will be innumerable and unapologetic.
Of course, as many have pointed out, Sharia is not merely religious law. Under Islam, there is no distinction between religious government and civil government. They are one and the same — or are at least supposed to be one and the same, which is why modern Islamic fundamentalists find the secular governments of Middle Eastern countries so intolerable. So how do we regard Sharia — as a replacement for U.S. civil and criminal law, or simply as internal religious guidelines for Muslims?
Either way, Sharia is unacceptable to be considered part of official U.S. law. If we regard Sharia as a secular legal system, then see point 3 above — it’s unconstitutional. Alternately, if we regard Sharia as purely internal religious law, then once again it is unconstitutional if followed to the exclusion of U.S. law, as shown here in point 4. So once again, it seems that the voters of Oklahoma got it right.
To address one final question which may arise: What if two people voluntarily enter into a contract based on non-US law, or voluntarily agree to have their civil dispute adjudicated by a Sharia court? That would be fine —if we can be assured that the agreement is voluntary. But the discriminatory and oppressive nature of Sharia means that one or more of the parties in any dispute may have been compelled by threats or social pressure to consent to Sharia jurisdiction under duress.
Say, in one example, that several U.S. Muslim businessmen agree to pool funds for an investment portfolio, on the mutual agreement that the investment be Sharia-compliant — i.e. not used to profit from any industry (like alcohol or gambling) which violated Islamic law. And then the manager in charge of the fund invests in various casino and liquor companies. Ooops. Would the other investors then have the right to withdraw from the fund with no penalties? Yes. In this type of case, “Sharia” could indeed play a role in a U.S. lawsuit, if it were to end up in court, because the Sharia-aspect of the agreement was purely internal, did not violate any U.S. laws, and was entered into voluntarily.
But consider our second example. In the CNN article linked above, the CAIR spokesman responsible for getting the Oklahoma law quashed gave this quote:
“What this amendment is going to do is officially disfavor and condemn the Muslim community as being a threat to Oklahoma,” Muneer Awad, executive director of CAIR’s Oklahoma chapter and the lead plaintiff in the suit, said earlier this month. In addition, he said, the amendment would invalidate private documents, such as wills, that are written in compliance with Muslim law.
This is an absurd, obviously untrue claim. In your will, you can leave your assets to anyone, for any reason. You can cite Muslim law, or your personal conscience, or a dream you once had, or baseless paranoia, or no reason whatsoever to leave all your assets to your children, or your cat, or the Flat Earth Society, or even leave instructions to have it all buried with you in your casket. If the will is determined to be a valid will, no ban on Sharia will be able to challenge it.
If, however, you die intestate (without a will), then the ban on Sharia could indeed come into play — as well it should. Sharia openly discriminates against females in inheritance law: “The rules of inheritance under Sharia law are intricate, and a female’s portion is generally half the amount a male would receive under the same circumstances.” So envision an example in which a wealthy Muslim man dies intestate, and the family ends up in an Oklahoma court in a dispute over his inheritance. Now imagine that the new Oklahoma law is not in effect, and lawyers petition the state court to have the case instead heard in a Sharia court. The judge may likely consent, provided all the disputants agree to the venue change. Now imagine that there are three overbearing sons who want Dad’s money, and one cowering daughter who has been threatened by them. When asked by the judge if she consents to Sharia justice in this case, will she have the bravado to stand up in court and say “No!”? Not likely. She’ll meekly assent, as have countless Muslim women for centuries. And she’ll wind up in Sharia court, where the Muslim jurist will naturally and correctly rule against her, not out of personal animosity, but because bias against women is built into Islamic law.
So, to use the CAIR plaintiff’s argument against him: Inheritance cases are exactly the kind of injustices that Oklahoma is trying to prevent by banning Sharia.
5. Subjectively, Sharia is a discriminatory and cruel legal system.
Finally, we get to the argument that most pundits and bloggers make: Sharia should be rejected because it’s just plain awful. While this may resonate with people personally and emotionally, it’s rather weak as a legal argument.
Sharia’s defenders complain that their opponents endlessly focus on the negative aspect of Sharia, and ignore the other parts which are reasonable, mild and non-controversial. I call this “The Trains Run on Time” fallacy. According to the old joke, when Italians during Mussolini’s rule were asked what it’s like to live in a fascist police state, they’d respond, “It’s not so bad: at least the trains run on time!” In other words, one could always find some good aspect to an unpleasant situation. So naturally Sharia’s defenders in the West will focus on the positive and try to sweep the negative under the rug. But such PR tactics in no way alter the fundamental fact that Sharia contains a significant number of laws and rules and punishments that are unacceptable and repellant to the average American.
CAIR and its allies are constantly talking out both sides of their mouths. On one hand, they say that Sharia’s never been used in Oklahoma and there’s no risk of it ever being used, so there’s nothing to worry about and we should toss out this new law as unnecessary; and simultaneously, if you flick the remote control over to the next channel, you’ll see a different CAIR spokesperson arguing for how reasonable and humanitarian Sharia is, and really we shouldn’t fear its introduction, because we’ll all benefit. Hmmmm. Double-talk is a dead giveaway for ill-intent.
CAIR’s main argument against State Question 755 is that it “singles out” Muslims for discrimination. Though this argument is so absurd it barely merits rebuttal, I should briefly address it since it seems to be CAIR’s primary legal claim. First of all, SQ 755 doesn’t ban Sharia in Oklahoma; it merely bans judges from considering Sharia when making decisions. And since we’ve seen above that this recommendation is already in accord with Constitutional principles, then there’s no basis on which to challenge the law. CAIR is sure to reply: Yes, butwhy us? Why single out Sharia and Muslims? To which I reply: Do you really want to go there? The answer is obvious: No other religion currently seeks to supplant the United States Constitution with is own religious commandments. Why not pass a law banning Buddhist laws from the Oklahoma courts? Because there aren’t a billion Buddhists worldwide calling for the involuntary global implementation of Buddhist law. Sharia is perceived as a threat precisely because it is more than just religious law — it is an overarching form of theocratic government antithetical to the United States of America — and because it is has an extremely large number of adherents and advocates.
This article goes into greater depth about possible legal objections to the new measure, quoting left-leaning Harvard law professor Noah Feldman as saying, “It’s a violation of the free exercise of Muslims in Oklahoma and it’s a violation of the separation between church and state.” But this is a false claim: nothing about SQ 755 prevents Muslims from following Sharia themselves in their own personal or religious lives (provided by so doing they don’t break U.S. law); it merely prevents the courts from incorporating Sharia law into its decision-making. Here’s the text of State Question 755, which “makes courts rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law.” Tell me: In what way does this interfere with Muslims freely exercising their religion in Oklahoma? It doesn’t — unless the free exercise of your religion involves violating or undermining the U.S. Constitution. In which case, yeah, the courts should discriminate against your religious practice.
America only frowns on baseless discrimination; but official discrimination against any individuals, groups or religious ideology seeking to undermine or destroy the United States itself is not just acceptable, it is mandatory.
While this fifth and final argument is not as legally or logically weighty, it can be much more emotionally compelling because it allows one to present anecdotes about Sharia in contemporary real-world contexts. What does U.S. District Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange have to say about the following martyrs to Sharia?
• Palestinian atheist jailed for insulting Islam, forced to apologize
A Palestinian atheist jailed for more than a month for sharing his anti-Islam views on the Internet has apologized for offending Muslims, and a Palestinian military spokesman said he expected “positive” developments in the case.Rights groups have criticized his arrest as a demonstration of the limits on free speech under the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, which has trawled Internet sites like Facebook as part of a crackdown on dissent and unpopular views.The 26-year-old blogger, Walid Husayin — who had called the Muslim God a “primitive Bedouin” and Islam a religion of “irrationality and ignorance” — apologized in a letter to his family and to all Palestinians and sought forgiveness for what he called his “stupidity.”“I apologize for the offense I have caused against the monotheistic faiths, particularly Islam,” the letter read.
Palestinian military police arrested Husayin on Oct. 31 after he posted comments deemed offensive to Islam on his Facebook page and blog. Defaming Islam is a crime in the West Bank.A friend said Husayin posted the apology on his blog on Nov. 29, most likely with the hope that it would lead to his release. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.He posted the apology from a Palestinian military lockup in the northern West Bank town of Qalqilya, his hometown.
…
Husayin’s writing appeared aimed at provoking Muslims. He made Facebook profiles claiming he was God, called the Prophet Muhammad a philanderer and penned spoof verses of the Muslim holy book, the Quran.Days after his arrest, shocked residents called for him to be killed as a warning to others.
Amazingly, Husayin’s English-language atheist blog is still online, and for the curious has several rather amusing atheist proclamations. Especially worth reading is his essay on Why I Left Islam. It should be noted that there are literally millions of similarly aggressive atheist blogs in the U.S., and those American atheist bloggers suffer no legal ramifications whatsoever for their writings, as guaranteed by the Constitution. But under Sharia, American atheists (not to mention Jews, pagans, Christians, etc.) could be treated the same way as Walid Husayin. Judge Miles-LaGrange, are you listening?
• Pakistan doctor arrested on suspicion of blasphemy
Pakistani authorities have arrested a doctor on suspicion of violating the country’s contentious blasphemy law by throwing away a business card of a man who shared the name of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, police said Sunday.The blasphemy law has been widely criticized by human rights groups following the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman sentenced to death last month for insulting Islam. Critics say the law should be amended or repealed because it is often used to settle grudges, persecute minorities and fan religious extremism.Naushad Valiyani, a Muslim doctor in the southern city of Hyderabad, was arrested Friday after a complaint was lodged with police alleging his actions had insulted the Prophet Muhammad, said regional police chief Mushtaq Shah.The case began Friday when Muhammad Faizan, a pharmaceutical company representative, visited Valiyani’s clinic and handed out his business card. He said when the doctor threw the card away, Faizan went to police and filed a complaint that noted his name was the same as the prophet’s.Shah said police were investigating whether Valiyani should be charged with blasphemy.
Kafka-esque enough for you?
• Woman Stoned to Death for Going on a Date
Turbaned men in Pakistan gather around a woman with a black hood over her head, pick up large rocks and repeatedly throw them at her until she lies motionless, stretched along the ground, a video purports.A Dubai-based television station which released the footage said the stoning was carried out in northwest Pakistan, apparently by Taliban militants, incensed because she was seen out with a man.The footage is a stark reminder that despite a series of military offensives the army said had weakened insurgents, militants still control areas of the northwest and impose their harsh version of Islam at will.Dubai’s Al Aan television, which focuses on women’s issues in the Arab world, said it got the tape from its sources and that it took place in Orakzai agency in northwest Pakistan. It said it had other footage of a man who was executed by shooting, possibly the one the woman was seen with.It was not possible to verify its authenticity or when it was filmed.Such videos aren’t unique. Last year Pakistanis were outraged after footage widely aired on television showed militants in the northwest Swat Valley publicly flogging a teenage girl accused of having an affair.
Is this the kind of legal system we want influencing our courts in the United States of America?
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The True Identity of the So-Called Palestinians
Myths, Hypotheses and Facts
"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 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".Let us hear what other Arabs have said:
- Joseph Farah, "Myths of the Middle East" -
"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".Concerning the Holy Land, the chairman of the Syrian Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919 stated:
- 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".
- Representant of Saudi Arabia at the United Nations, 1956 -
"The only Arab domination since the Conquest in 635 c.e. hardly lasted, as such, 22 years".The preceding declarations by Arab politicians have been done 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 decided that such people existed? When the State of Israel was reborn in 1948 c.e., the "Palestinians" did not exist yet, the Arabs had still not discovered that "ancient" people. They were too busy with the purpose of annihilating the new Sovereign State and did not intend to create any Palestinian entity, but only to distribute the land among the already existing Arab states. They were defeated. They attempted again to destroy Israel in 1967, and were humiliated in only six days, in which they lost the lands that they had usurped in 1948. In those 19 years of Arab occupation of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, neither Jordan nor Egypt suggested to create 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, it was not any Arab group but the Jews that were known as "Palestinians"!
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 -
"You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. 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 Yassir 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, an "ex-Palestinian" Arab -
How long do "Palestinians" live in "Palestine"?
According to the United Nations weird standards, any person that spent TWO YEARS (!!!) in "Palestine" before 1948, with or without proof, is a "Palestinian", as well as all the descendants of that person. Indeed, the PLO leaders eagerly demand the "right" of all Palestinians to come back to the land that they occupied before June 1967 c.e., but utterly reject to return back to the land where they lived only 50 years before, namely, in 1917 c.e. Why? Because if they agree to do so, they have to settle back in Iraq, Syria, Arabia, Libya, Egypt... and only a handful Arabs would remain in Israel (by Israel is intended the whole Land between the Yarden River and the Mediterranean Sea, plus the Golan region). It is thoroughly documented that the first inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael after some centuries were the Jewish pioneers, and not the Arabs so-called Palestinians. Some eyewitnesses have written their memories about the Land before the Jewish immigration: "There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilea); 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...".Where had the Palestinians been hidden that Mark Twain did not see them? Where was that "ancient" people in the mid XIX century c.e.? Of course, modern biased Arab politicians try to discredit Mark Twain and insult and blame him of racism. Yet, it seems that there were other people that did not achieve in recognizing a single Palestinian in those times and earlier:
- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad", 1867 -
"In 1590 a 'simple English visitor' to Jerusalem wrote: 'Nothing there is to bescene but a little of the old walls, which is yet remayning and all the rest is grasse, mosse and weedes much like to a piece of rank or moist grounde'.".The list of travellers and pilgrims throughout the XVI to the XIX centuries c.e. that give a similar description of the Holy Land is quite longer, including Alphonse de Lamartine, Sir George Gawler, Sir George Adam Smith, Siebald Rieter, priest Michael Nuad, Martin Kabatnik, Arnold Van Harff, Johann Tucker, Felix Fabri, Edward Robinson and others. All of them found the land almost empty, except for Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Shechem, Hevron, Haifa, Safed, Irsuf, Cæsarea, Gaza, Ramleh, Acre, Sidon, Tzur, El Arish, and some towns in Galilee: Ein Zeitim, Pekiin, Biria, Kfar Alma, Kfar Hanania, Kfar Kana and Kfar Yassif. Even Napoleon I Bonaparte, having seen the need that the Holy Land would be populated, had in mind to enable a mass return of Jews from Europe to settle in the country that he recognized as theirs' - evidently, he did not see any "Palestinian" claiming historical rights over the Holy Land, whose few inhabitants were mainly Jews.
- Gunner Edward Webbe, Palestine Exploration Fund,
Quarterly Statement, p. 86; de Haas, History, p. 338 -
"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 -
"Then we entered the hill district, and our path lay through the clattering bed of an ancient stream, whose brawling waters have rolled away into the past, along with the fierce and turbulent race who once inhabited these savage hills. There may have been cultivation here two thousand years ago. The mountains, or huge stony mounds environing this rough path, have level ridges all the way up to their summits; on these parallel ledges there is still some verdure and soil: when water flowed here, and the country was thronged with that extraordinary population, which, according to the Sacred Histories, was crowded into the region, these mountain steps may have been gardens and vineyards, such as we see now thriving along the hills of the Rhine. Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride".
- William Thackeray in "From Jaffa To Jerusalem", 1844 -
"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 -
"There are many proofs, such as ancient ruins, broken aqueducts, and remains of old roads, which show that it has not always been so desolate as it seems now. In the portion of the plain between Mount Carmel and Jaffa one sees but rarely a village or other sights of human life. There are some rude mills here which are turned by the stream. A ride of half an hour more brought us to the ruins of the ancient city of Cæsarea, once a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and the Roman capital of Palestine, but now entirely deserted. As the sun was setting we gazed upon the desolate harbor, once filled with ships, and looked over the sea in vain for a single sail. In this once crowded mart, filled with the din of traffic, there was the silence of the desert. After our dinner we gathered in our tent as usual to talk over the incidents of the day, or the history of the locality. Yet it was sad, as I laid upon my couch at night, to listen to the moaning of the waves and to think of the desolation around us".
- B. W. Johnson, in "Young Folks in Bible Lands": Chapter IV, 1892 -
"The area was underpopulated 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... The sanitary conditions in the village [Yabna] were horrible... Schools did not exist... The rate of infant mortality was very high... The western part, toward the sea, was almost a desert... The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages 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 -
Besides them, many Arab sources confirm the fact that the Holy Land was still Jewish by population and culture in spite of the Diaspora:
-In 985 c.e. the Arab writer Muqaddasi complained that in Jerusalem the large majority of the population were Jewish, and said that "the mosque is empty of worshippers..." .
-Ibn Khaldun, one of the most creditable Arab historians, in 1377 c.e. wrote:
"Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel extended over 1400 years... It was the Jews who implanted the culture and customs of the permanent settlement".
After 300 years of Arab rule in the Holy Land, Ibn Khaldun attested that Jewish culture and traditions were still dominant. By that time there was still no evidence of "Palestinian" roots or culture .
-The historian James Parker wrote: "During the first century after the Arab conquest [670-740 c.e.], the caliph and governors of Syria and the [Holy] Land ruled entirely over Christian and Jewish subjects. Apart from the Bedouin in the earliest days, the only Arabs west of the Jordan were the garrisons".
Even though the Arabs ruled the Land from 640 c.e. to 1099 c.e., they never became the majority of the population. Most of the inhabitants were Christians (Assyrian and Armenian) and Jews.
If the historic documents, comments written by eyewitnesses and declarations by the most authoritative Arab scholars are still not enough, let us quote the most important source for muslim Arabs: th century b.c.e., the Teymanim or Yemenite Jews were settled in the Sabean Kingdoms long before Roman times. Arabs have expelled them from the lands where those Jews were living for many centuries!
The number of Arab so-called refugees that left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000, while the Jewish refugees that were forced out from Arab lands is estimated to be some more than that... Nevertheless, the UN has never demanded from Arab states to receive the Jews that were settled there for many generations and to restore their property and to provide them employment. Meanwhile, the so-called Palestinian "refugees" were intentionally not absorbed or integrated into the Arab countries to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory (Israel's extension is less than 1% of the territory of all Arab lands). Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, the so-called Palestinians are the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples' lands. On the contrary, Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel.
The truth is that the Arab League keeps the Palestinian refugees issue as a political weapon against Israel, with which they continue to fool the United Nations and propagate their perfidious policy. The proofs of such intention are given by Arab sources themselves: At a refugee conference in Homs, Syria, the Arab leaders declared that «any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not based on ensuring the refugees' right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason». In 1958, former director of UNRWA Ralph Galloway declared angrily while in Jordan that «the Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die». King Hussein, the sole Arab leader that directed integration of the Arabs, in 1960 stated: «Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestine problem in an irresponsible manner.... They have used the Palestine people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and, I could say, even criminal».
Between 1948 and 1967, the Arab flow into the Israeli territories occupied by them (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) was intensified. The UNRWA reported in 1951-52 that «200,000 Arab "refugees" were languishing in Gaza, along with 80,000 original residents who barely made a living before the refugees arrived», notwithstanding, a project to accommodate 10,000 families in the Sinai area (then under Egyptian control) was suspended. How is that the Gaza Strip, having around 80,000 allegedly native residents and twice and half that number of immigrants is only fifty years later overpopulated, with about one and half million of "native people dwelling there since ancestral times"?
The Arab states are acting a downright discrimination policy against Palestinians, preventing them with all means to achieve any sort of integration in the Arab countries (the same ones from where the Palestinians' grandparents emigrated to the Holy Land). Iraq and Syria were the most appropriate lands for resettlement of the so-called Palestinian refugees. Between 1948 and 1951, more than 120,000 Jews left Iraq to settle in Israel, leaving all of their goods and homes behind them. Most of them were businessmen and artisans, and many were wealthy. Their departure created a large gap in Iraq's economy; in some fields, such as transport, banking and wholesale trades, it reached serious proportions, and there was also a dearth of white collar workers and professional men. Salah Jabr, former dictator of Iraq recognized that «the emigration of 120,000 Jews from Iraq to Israel is beneficial to Iraq and to the Palestinian Arabs because it makes possible the entry into Iraq of a similar number of Arab refugees and their occupation of the Jewish houses there». Nevertheless, Palestinians in Iraq have been "allowed to live in the country but not to assume Iraqi nationality", despite the fact that the country needs manpower and "is encouraging Arab nationals to work and live there by granting them citizenship, with the exception of Palestinians".
Syria was also almost a desert in the early fifties and a very suitable land to give home to the "refugees", not only those already dwelling in Syria but also those in Lebanon and Jordan. In 1949 a newspaper editorial from Damascus stated that «Syria needs not only 100,000 refugees, but five million to work the lands and make them fruitful». Indeed, two years later the Syrian government officially requested that half a million Egyptian agricultural workers be permitted to emigrate to Syria in order to help develop Syrian land which would be transferred to them as their property. The responsible Egyptian authorities have rejected this request on the grounds that Egyptian agriculture is in need of labour as well. Syria was offering land rent free to anyone willing to settle there. It even announced a committee to study would-be settlers' applications. In fact, Syrian authorities began the experiment by moving 25,000 of the refugees in Syria into areas of potential development in the northern parts of the country, but the rigid Arab League position against permanent resettlement prevailed. Palestinians in Syria are still regarded as "refugees" and discriminated as such. The situation in all the remaining Arab states is the same: even though the great majority of the so-called Palestinian refugees has now left the camps for a better life as immigrant workers, they are being denied citizenship in the Arab countries to which they had moved. Regardless of their good behaviour and the many years they are living there, they are still discriminated and denied full integration in society. They must be kept as "refugees" forever, until they may occupy the Land of Israel once that Jews have been expelled or annihilated, that is the ultimate aim of the Arab League policy. Of curse, they would never achieve in doing so, as every time that the Arabs attacked Israel, the Arabs have undergone a shameful defeat.
"And thereafter We [Allah] said to the Children of Israel: 'Dwell securely in the Promised Land. And when the last warning will come to pass, we will gather you together in a mingled crowd'.".Any sincere muslim must recognize the Land they call "Palestine" as the Jewish Homeland, according to the book considered by muslims to be the most sacred word and Allah's ultimate revelation.
- Qur'an 17:104 -
Whenever the issue concerning the Jewish population in Israel is discussed, the idea that Jews are "returning back" to their Homeland after almost two millennia of exile is taken for granted. It is true that such is the case for the largest number of Jews, but not for all of them. It is not correct to say that the whole Jewish nation has been in exile. The long exile, known as Diaspora, is a documented fact that proves the legitimacy of the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel, and was the consequence of the Jewish Wars of independence from the Roman Empire. 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 heading for a revolt against the Roman invaders is mentioned in any historic record? Why there is not any Palestinian rebel group mentioned, as for example the Jewish Zealots? Why every historic document mentions the Jews as the native inhabitants, and the Greeks, Romans and others as foreigners dwelling in Judea, but not any Palestinian people, neither as native nor as foreigner? After the last Jewish War in the 2nd century c.e., the Roman emperor Hadrian sacked Jerusalem in 135 c.e. and changed her name into Ælia Capitolina, and the name of Judæa into Palæstina, in order to erase the Jewish identity from the face of the Earth. Most of the Jews were expelled from their own land by the Romans, a fact that determined the beginning of the great Diaspora. Nevertheless, small groups of Jews remained in the province then renamed "Palestine", and their descendants dwelled in their own country continuously throughout generations until the Zionist pioneers started on the mass return in the XIX century. Therefore, the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel is justified not only by an old Biblical Promise, but also by a permanent presence of Jews as the only autochthonous ethnic community existing in the Holy Land. Along the centuries and under different dominations, the "Palestinian" Jews did never submit to assimilation but conserved their spiritual and cultural identity, as well as their links with other Jewish communities in the Middle East. The continuous flow of Mizrachim (Oriental) and Sephardim (Mediterranean) Jews to the Holy Land contributed to support the existence of the Jewish population in the area. This enduring Jewish presence in the so-called Palestine preceded many centuries the arrival of the first Arab conqueror.Permanent Jewish presence in the Holy Land
Even though Jerusalem has been off-limits to Jews in different periods (since Romans banned all Jews to enter the City), many of them settled in the immediate proximities and in other towns and villages of the Holy Land. A Jewish community was established at Mount Zion. The Roman and subsequent Byzantine rule were oppressive; Jews were prevented from praying at the Kotel, where the Holy Temple once existed. The Sassanid Persians took control over Jerusalem in 614 c.e. allied with the local Jews, but five years later the City fell again under Byzantine control, although it was an ephemeral rule because in 638 c.e. Jerusalem was captured by the caliph Omar. That was the first time that an Arab leader set foot in the Holy City, inhabited by non-Arab peoples (Jews, Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks and other Christian communities). After centuries of Roman-Byzantine oppression, the Jews welcomed the Arab conquerors with the hope that their conditions would improve. The Arabs found a strong Jewish identity in Jerusalem and the surrounding land; Jews were living in every district of the country and on both sides of the Jordan. Indeed, the "Palestinians" that were historically dwelling in the Holy Land were no other than the Jews! Towns like Ramallah, Yericho and Gaza were almost purely Jewish by that time. The Arabs, not having a name of their own for this region, adopted the Latin name "Palæstina", that they translated into Arabic as "Falastin".
The first Arab immigrants that settled in the so-called Palestine - or, according to the modern UN conception, the first "Palestinian refugees" - were actually Jewish Arabs, namely Nabateans that adopted Judaism. Before the rise of Islam, flourishing centres like Khaybar and Yathrib (renamed Madinah) were mainly Jewish Nabatean cities. Whenever there was a famine in the land, people would go to Khaybar; the Jews always had fruit, and their springs yielded a plentiful supply of water. Once the muslim hordes conquered the Arabian peninsula, all that richness was ruined; the muslims perpetrated massacres against the Jews and replaced them with masses of ignorant fellahin submitted to the new religion. The survivors had to escape and took refuge in the Holy Land, mainly in Yericho and Dera'a, on both shores of the Jordan.
The Arab caliphs (Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid) controlled the Holy Land until 1071 c.e., when Jerusalem was captured by the Seldjuq Turks, and after that time, it was never again under Arab rule. During all that period, Arabs hardly established any permanent social structure of their own, but rather governed over the native non-Arab Christian and Jewish population. Any honest observer would notice that the Arabs ruled over the Holy Land three centuries less than they did over Spain!
In 1099 c.e., the European Crusaders conquered the so-called Palestine and established a kingdom that was politically independent, but never developed a national identity; it was just a military outpost of Christian Europe. The Crusaders were ruthless and tried by all means to remove any expression of Jewish culture, but all their efforts ended without success. In 1187 c.e., Jews actively participated with Salah-ud-Din Al'Ayyub (Saladin) against the Crusaders in the conquest of Jerusalem. Saladin, who was the greatest muslim conqueror, was not an Arab but a Kurd. The Crusaders took Jerusalem back from 1229 to 1244 c.e., when the City was captured by the Khwarezmians. A period of chaos and Mongol invasions followed until 1291c.e., when the Mameluks completed the conquest of almost the whole Middle East and settled their capital in Cairo, Egypt. The Mameluks were originally Central Asian and Caucasian mercenaries employed by the Arab caliphs; a medley of peoples whose main contingent was composed by Kumans, a Turkic tribe also known as Kipchak, related to the Seldjuqs, Kimaks and other groups. They were characterized by their ambiguous behaviour, as Kuman mercenaries were often contemporarily serving two enemy armies. The Mameluk soldiers did not miss the right moment to seize power for themselves, and even after their rule was overthrown, they were still employed as warriors by the Ottoman sultans and at last by Napoleon Bonaparte.
In 1517 c.e., Jerusalem and the whole Holy Land were conquered by the Ottoman Turks and remained under their rule during four centuries, until 1917 c.e., when the British captured Jerusalem and established the "Mandate of Palestine". It was the end of the Ottoman Empire, that owned all the present-day Arab countries until then. Indeed, since the fall of the Abbasid caliphate in 945 c.e., no Arab political entity existed in the Middle East for almost a millennium!
By the beginning of the XX century c.e., the population of Judea and Samaria - the improperly called "West Bank" - was less than 100,000 inhabitants, of which the majority were Jews. Gaza had no more than 80,000 "native" inhabitants in 1951, at the end of Israel's Independence War against the whole Arab world. Gaza was occupied by Arabs: How is it possible that in only 50 years it has increased from 80,000 to more than one million people? Are all those Arabs of Gaza so skilful as to procreate children in a supernatural way? Mass immigration is the ONLY plausible explanation for such a demographic increase. The Arab occupation between 1948 and 1967 was an advantageous opportunity for Arab leaders to promote mass immigration of so-called "Palestinians" (a mishmash of Arab immigrants) into Judea, Samaria and Gaza from every Arab country, mainly Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. In fact, since 1950 until the Six-Day War, under Jordanian rule, more than 250 Arab settlements have been founded in Judea and Samaria. The recent construction of the Arab houses is quite evident by the materials used for building: concrete and cinderblock. The Israeli government admits to have allowed over 240,000 workers to enter Judea and Samaria through the border with Jordan since the Oslo Conference - only to have them stay in those territories as Arab settlers. The actual numbers are probably higher. If hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern migrant workers are flooding into the Judea, Samaria and Gaza, why should Israel be required to provide them jobs? In fact the reverse, by supporting their economy while these people refuse to accept Israeli or Jordanian citizenship, Israel is only attracting more migrant workers. Saudi Arabia in a single year expelled over 1,000,000 stateless migrant workers. Lest anyone think that these are all "Palestinians", taking account of the definition of "Palestinian" according to the United Nations: all those Arabs that spent TWO YEARS in "Palestine" before 1948, and their descendants - with or without proof or documentation -. This definition was specifically designed to include immigrant Arab settlers (not Jewish settlers!).
The British perfidy
The restoration of the desolate and deserted Land began in the latter half of the XIX century with the arrival of the first Jewish pioneers. Their labours created newer and better conditions and opportunities, which in turn attracted migrants from many parts of the Middle East, mainly Arabs but also Circassians, Kurds and others. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, confirmed by the League of Nations, committed the British government (that took control of the Holy Land after having defeated the Ottoman Turks) 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 endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object". It was specified both that this area be open to "Jewish settlement" and that the rights of all inhabitants already in the country be preserved and protected. The "Mandate of Palestine" ‒as it was called the British-occupied land‒ originally included all of present-day Jordan, as well as the whole of Israel, and the so-called "territories" between them (?) ‒actually, the Jordan river and the Dead Sea are the only "territory" between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom‒. However, the political and economic interests of Great Britain in Arabia turned soon into a blatant anti-Jewish policy. The British rule progressively limited Jewish immigration. In 1939 the admission of Jews to enter the Holy Land was put to an end. In the moment in which Jews from Europe had the greatest need of refuge, the British denied them to reach the Land that was their only hope of deliverance from the atrocious Shoah. Yes, the British government is not less guilty than Nazi Germany for the Shoah! At the same time, the British allowed and even encouraged massive illegal immigration into the lands west of the Jordan river from Arab countries. Then, all the lands of the Mandate of Palestine east of the Jordan river were given to the Arabs and the puppet-kingdom of "Trans-Jordan" was created, name that was then changed into "Jordan" after the Arabs occupied the western side in 1948. There was no traditional or historic Arab name for this land, so it was called after the river that marked its western border (which was later included, until June 1967). By this political act, that violated the conditions of the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate, the British stole more than 75 % out of the Jewish National Home. No Jew has ever been permitted to reside in the east of the Jordan river. Less than 25 % then remained of Mandate of Palestine, and even in this remnant, the British violated the Balfour and Mandate requirements for a "Jewish National Home" and for "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 banned by the British. Successive British governments regularly condemned Jewish settlement as "illegal". Actually, it was the British who had acted illegally in banning Jews from these parts of the Jewish National Home! To conclude in shame, when the it was held the UN voting to approve the creation of the State of Israel in November 29, 1947, the United Kingdom ABSTAINED. Israel was recognized by the USSR, the Communist Countries, the USA and Philippines. When the British had to leave the Holy Land, they left their weapons in Arab hands ‒ while Jews were prohibited to have any kind of weapon and had to keep them in secret in order to defend themselves from the imminent attack by the Arabs, in which the British would appear as "disengaged" and free from any responsibility...
"Palestinian «Refugees»"?
Another of the big lies that are being passed off as truth by politics and mass media is the "Palestinian refugees" issue: the allegedly "native" population that were "evicted" by the Israelis. Actually, in 1948 the Arab so-called refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders, who promised to purge the Land of Jews. Almost 70 % of them left without having ever seen a single Israeli soldier.On the other side, nothing is said about the Jewish refugees that were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms. As soon as the State of Israel was founded, hundreds of thousands of Jews were expelled from every Arab country, mainly Yemen, Iraq and Egypt. The Mizrachim, also known as Babylonian Jews, were living in present-day Iraq since the Babylonian exile in the 6
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 the Land of Israel 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 the Holy Land for two years and then left in 1948 qualifies as a "Palestinian refugee".
In this essay I would like to present the true origin and identity of the Arab people commonly known as "Palestinians", and the widespread myths surrounding them. This research is intended to be completely neutral and objective, based on historic and archaeological evidences as well as other documents, including Arab sources, and quoting statements by authoritative Islamic personalities.Concerning the Origin of Peoples
There are some modern myths -or more exactly, lies- that we can hear everyday through the mass-media as if they were true, of course, hiding the actual truth. For example, whenever the Temple Mount or Jerusalem are mentioned, it is usually remarked that is "the third holy place for muslims", but why it is never said that is the FIRST Holy Place for Jews? It sounds like an utterly biased information!
I - Origin and identity of the so-called Palestinians
Palestinians are the newest of all the peoples on the face of the Earth, and began to exist in a single day by a kind of supernatural phenomenon that is unique in the whole history of mankind, as it is witnessed by Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist that acknowledged the lie he was fighting for and the truth he was fighting against: “Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”This declaration by a true "Palestinian" should have some significance for a sincerely neutral observer. Indeed, there is no such a thing like a Palestinian people, or a Palestinian culture, or a Palestinian language, or a Palestinian history. There has never been any Palestinian state, neither any Palestinian archaeological find nor coinage. The present-day "Palestinians" are an Arab people, with Arab culture, Arabic language and Arab history. They have their own Arab states from where they came into the Land of Israel about one century ago to contrast the Jewish immigration. That is the historical truth. They were Jordanians (another recent British invention, as there has never been any people known as "Jordanians"), and after the Six-Day War in which Israel utterly defeated the coalition of nine Arab states and took legitimate possession of Judea and Samaria, the Arab dwellers in those regions underwent a kind of anthropological miracle and discovered that they were Palestinians - something they did not know the day before. Of course, these people having a new identity had to build themselves a history, namely, had to steal some others' history, and the only way that the victims of the theft would not complain is if those victims do no longer exist.
“We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians - they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag”.
“When I finally realized the lies and myths I was taught, it is my duty as a righteous person to speak out”.
Therefore, the Palestinian leaders claimed two contradictory lineages from ancient peoples that inhabited in the Land of Israel: the Canaanites and the Philistines. Let us consider both of them before going on with the Palestinian issue.
The Canaanites:
The Canaanites are historically acknowledged as the first inhabitants of the Land of Israel, before the Hebrews settled there. Indeed, the correct geographic name of the Land of Israel is Canaan, not "Palestine" (a Roman invention, as we will see later). They were composed by different tribes, that may be distinguished in two main groups: the Northern or Coastland Canaanites and the Southern or Mountain Canaanites.
The Northern Canaanites settled along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea from the southeastern side of the Gulf of Iskenderun to the proximities of the Gulf of Hayfa. Their main cities were Tzur, Tzidon, Gebal (Byblos), Arvad, Ugarit, and are better known in history by their Greek name Phoenicians, but they called themselves "Kana'ana" or "Kinachnu". They did not found any unified kingdom but were organized in self-ruled cities, and were not a warlike people but rather skilful traders, seafarers and builders. Their language was adopted from their Semitic neighbours, the Arameans, and was closely related to Hebrew (not to Arabic!). Phoenicians and Israelites did not need interpreters to understand each other. They followed the same destiny of ancient Israel and fell under Assyrian rule, then Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, Seleucian and Roman. Throughout their history the Phoenicians intermarried with different peoples that dwelled in their land, mainly Greeks and Armenians. During the Islamic expansion they were Arabized, yet, never completely assimilated, and their present-day state is Lebanon, erroneously regarded as an "Arab" country, a label that the Lebanese people reject. Unlike the Arab states, Lebanon has a western democratic-style official name, "Lebanese Republic", without the essential adjective "Arab" that is required in the denominations of every Arab state. The only mention of the term Arabic in the Lebanese constitution refers to the official language of the state, which does not mean that the Lebanese people are Arabs in the same way as the official language of the United States is English but this does not qualify the Americans as British.
The so-called Palestinians are not Lebanese (although some of them came from Syrian-occupied Lebanon), therefore they are not Phoenicians (Northern Canaanites). Actually, in Lebanon they are "refugees" and are not identified with the local people.
The Southern Canaanites dwelled in the mountain region from the Golan southwards, on both sides of the Yarden and along the Mediterranean coast from the Gulf of Hayfa to Yafo, that is the Biblical Canaan. They were composed by various tribes of different stocks: besides the proper Canaanites (Phoenicians), there were Amorites, Hittites and Hurrian peoples like the Yevusites, Hivvites and Horites, all of them assimilated into the Aramean-Canaanite context. They never constituted an unified, organized state but kept within the tribal alliance system.
When the first Hebrews arrived in Canaan they shared the land but did not intermarry, as it was an interdiction for Avraham's family to marry the Canaanites. Nevertheless, eleven of the twelve sons of Yakov married Canaanite women (the other son married an Egyptian), and since then, the Tribes of Israel began to mix with the local inhabitants. After the Exodus, when the Israelites conquered the Land, there were some wars between them and the Canaanites throughout the period of the Sofetim (Judges), and were definitively subdued by King David. By that time, most Canaanites were married to Israelites, others voluntarily accepted Torah becoming Israelites, others joined up in the Israelite or Judahite army. Actually, the Canaanites are seldom mentioned during the Kings' period, usually in reference to their heathen customs introduced among the Israelites, but no longer as a distinguishable people, because they were indeed assimilated into the Israelite nation. When the Assyrians overran the Kingdom of Israel, they did not leave any Canaanite aside, as they had all become Israelites by that time. The same happened when the Babylonians overthrew the Kingdom of Judah.
Therefore, the only people that can trace back a lineage to the ancient Canaanites are the Jews, not the Palestinians, as Canaanites did not exist any longer after the 8th century b.c.e. and they were not annihilated but assimilated into the Jewish people.
Conclusion: the Palestinians cannot claim any descent from the ancient Canaanites - if so, why not to pretend also the Syrian "occupied territories", namely, Lebanon? Why do they not speak the language of the ancient Canaanites, that was Hebrew? Because they are NOT Canaanites at all!
The Philistines:
It is from the term "Philistines" that the name "Palestinians" has been taken. Actually, the ancient Philistines and modern Palestinians have something in common: both are invaders from other lands! That is precisely the meaning of their name, that is not an ethnic denomination but an adjective applied to them: Peleshet, from the verb "pelesh", "dividers", "penetrators" or "invaders". The Philistines were a confederation of non-Semitic peoples coming from Crete, the Aegean Islands and Asia Minor, also known as "Sea Peoples". The main tribes were Tzekelesh, Shardana, Akhaiusha, Danauna, Tzakara, Masa or Meshwesh, Lukki, Dardana, Tursha, Keshesh or Karkisha, Labu and Irven. The original homeland of the group that ruled the Philistine federation, namely the "Pelesati", was the island of Crete. When the Minoic civilization collapsed, also the Minoic culture disappeared from Crete, as invaders from Greece took control of the island. These ancient Cretans arrived in Southern Canaan and were known as "Pelestim and Keretim" by Hebrews and Canaanites (that became allied to fight the invaders). Their first settlement seem to have been Gaza, whose original name was "Minoah", a clear reference to the fallen Minoic kingdom. They also invaded Egypt and were defeated by Pharaoh Ramose III in the 12th century b.c.e. The Philistines were organized in city-states, being the most important the Pentapolis: Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron, and their territory was close to the Mediterranean coast, a little longer and broader than the present-day "Gaza Strip" - not the whole Judah, they never reached Hevron, Jerusalem or Yericho!
Those Sea Peoples that invaded Egypt were expelled towards other Mediterranean lands and did not evolve into any Arab people, but disappeared as distinguishable groups in Roman times. Those dwelling in Canaan were defeated by King David and reduced to insignificance, the best warriors among them were chosen as David's bodyguard. The remaining Philistines still dwelling in Gaza were subdued by Sargon II of Assyria and after that time, they disappeared definitively from history. They are no longer mentioned since the return of the Jewish exiles from Babylon.
Conclusion: there is not one single person in the world who may be able to prove Philistine lineage, yet, if Palestinians insist, they have to recognize themselves as invaders in Israel, and then they must ask Greece to return them back the Isle of Crete! The Philistines are extinct and claims to alleged links with them are utterly false as they are historically impossible to establish. In any case, claiming a Philistine heritage is idle because it cannot legitimate any land in which they were foreign occupants and not native dwellers. Philistines were not Arabs, and the only feature in common between both peoples is that in Israel they should be regarded as invaders, Philistines from the sea and Arabs from the wilderness. They do not want Jerusalem because it is their city, which is not and never has been, they simply want to take her from the Jews, to whom she has belonged for three thousand years. The Philistines wanted to take from Israelites the Holy Ark of the Covenant, modern so-called Palestinians want to take from them the Holy City of the Covenant.
The Palestinians: No, they are not any ancient people, but claim to be. They were born in a single day, after a war that lasted six days in 1967 c.e. If they were true Canaanites, they would speak Hebrew and demand from Syria to give them back their occupied homeland in Lebanon, but they are not. If they were Philistines, they would claim back the Isle of Crete from Greece and would recognize that they have nothing to do with the Land of Israel, and would ask excuses to Israel for having stolen the Ark of the Covenant.
The land called "Palestine"
In the 2nd century c.e., the last attempt of the Jews to achieve independence from the Roman Empire ended with the well-known event of Masada, that is historically documented and universally recognized as the fact that determined the Jewish Diaspora in a definitive way. The Land where these things happened was until then the province known as Judæa , and there is no mention of any place called "Palestine" before that time. The Roman emperor Hadrian was utterly upset with the Jewish Nation and wanted to erase the name of Israel and Judah from the face of the Earth, so that there would be no memory of the country that belonged to that rebel people. He decided to replace the denomination of that Roman province and resorted to ancient history in order to find a name that might appear appropriate, and found that an extinct people that was unknown in Roman times, called "Philistines", was once dwelling in that area and were enemies of the Israelites. Therefore, according to Latin spelling, he invented the new name: "Palæstina", a name that would be also hateful for the Jews as it reminded them their old foes. He did so with the explicit purpose of effacing any trace of Jewish history. Ancient Romans, as well as modern Palestinians, have fulfilled the Hebrew Scriptures 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 still alive. Any honest person would recognize that there is no mention of the name Palestina in history before the Romans renamed the province of Judea, that such name does not occur in any ancient document, 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, and that not any "Palestinian" people has ever been 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 heading for a revolt against the Roman invaders is mentioned in any historic record? Why there is not any Palestinian rebel group mentioned, as for example the Jewish Zealots? Why every historic document mentions the Jews as the native inhabitants, and the Greeks, Romans and others as foreigners dwelling in Judea, but not any Palestinian people, neither as native nor as foreigner? What is more, there is no reference to any Palestinian people in the qur'an (koran), although muslims claim that their prophet was once in Jerusalem (an event that is not mentioned in the koran either). It appears evident that he did not meet any Palestinian in his whole life, nor his successors did either. Caliph Salahuddin al-Ayyub (Saladin), knew the Jews and kindly invited them to settle in Jerusalem, that he recognized as their Homeland, but he did not know any Palestinian... To claim that Palestinians are the original people of Eretz Yisrael is not only against secular history but also against Islamic history!
The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name, but adopted and adapted from the Latin Palæstina . How can an Arab people have a western name instead of one in their own language? Because the use of the term "Palestinian" for an Arab group is only a modern political creation without any historic or ethnic grounds, and did not indicate any people before 1967. An Arab writer and journalist declared:
·1) Myths and facts concerning the origin and identity of the so-called Palestinians;
·2) Myths and facts regarding Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.
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