The Right to Have a Jewish State
April 25, 2012
The question is not whether the Palestinians are an “invented people,” but rather why Arabs deny Jewish history and Jewish rights to a state in Israel.
The recent brouhaha about whether the Palestinians are an “invented people” misses the point. The real question we should ask is, “Why do Palestinian Arabs repudiate 3,000 years of Jewish history in Palestine and the rights of Jews to a state in their ancestral homeland?” Can peace really be achieved if the Palestinians teach their people the lie that Jews are newcomers and Palestinians were the original inhabitants of the Holy Land?
What are the facts?
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stood before the United Nations General Assembly in September, 2011 and said, “I come before you from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him).” What’s missing in Abbas’s description of the Holy Land is any mention of its Biblical founders, the Jewish people, or the fact that Jesus was a Jew. So brazen is the Palestinian effort to turn history on its head that Abbas’s predecessor, Yassir Arafat, often claimed that “Jesus was the first Palestinian martyr.”
Indeed, rewriting the history of the land of Israel in order to deny Israel’s right to exist is central to the Palestinian Authority’s PR strategy. This rewriting has two dimensions: First to erase the 3,000-year history of the Jewish nation in the Holy Land; and second to invent ancient Palestinian, Muslim and Arab histories in the region.
The Palestinians deny virtually every fact of Jewish life in Palestine before and after Biblical times. Dr. Jamal Amar, a lecturer at Bir-Zeit University states that in the Holy Land after “60 years of digging . . . they’ve found nothing at all, not a water jug, not a coin, not an earthen vessel . . . absolutely nothing of this [Jewish] myth, because it is a myth and a lie”—this despite the discovery of tens of thousands of Hebrew coins, texts, pots, buildings and seals carrying Biblical references. Likewise, despite definitive archeological findings from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and exhaustive scholarly confirmation of two Jewish Temples, the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) categorically denies the existence of any Temple.
What’s more, the P.A. claims that since the Jews had no history in the Land of Israel, Zionism was a colonialist movement fabricated by Europeans to get rid of Jews. Another professor at Bir Zeit University, Samih Hamouda, asserts that President Abbas’s student research proves “the Zionist movement is not Jewish . . . Rather it is an imperialist colonialist movement which sought to use the Jews . . . to further western colonialist plans.”
To prop up claims that only Arabs have valid rights to the Holy Land, the P.A. and its academics have fabricated histories of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims before Biblical times. Of course this is impossible, since the term Palestine was coined by Rome in 136 C.E.—after the time of Jesus. Islam was established much later in 610 C.E., and Arabs first arrived in Israel with the Muslim invasion of 637 C.E.
We witness more such distortions and outright lies in a 2005 Palestinian Authority video documentary that claims the ancient, vanished Canaanites were Arab, as were the Biblical Hebrews, and that the religion preached by Moses was Islam.
In the face of these fabrications, it’s fair to ask: Are the Palestinians an invented people? The Associated Press headline responding to the question announced, “Palestinians ‘invented people’ is truth.” But this is nothing new. The fact that the Palestinians are a made-up people has been established by all manner of historical research and acclamation, even by Arabs themselves.
We know that never in history was there a Palestinian state. We also know that nearly all the cities in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza have Hebrew names—like Bethlehem, Nazareth and Hebron—and their current Arabic names are translations of these names.
More importantly, back in 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi proclaimed to the Peel Commission, “There is no such country [as Palestine]. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented.” Then in 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a member of the PLO Executive Committee said in an interview that “The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel . . . Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak about the existence of the Palestinian people.”
To say that the Palestinians are a fabricated people, however, is not to say that they don’t deserve their own state. Rather, the problem arises when the P.A. invents not only their peoplehood but also a false history that justifies permanent jihad against the Jewish people and denies their rights to self-determination and a Jewish state in their homeland.
Israel has long accepted the idea of two states for two peoples—the Palestinians and the Jews. But the Palestinian Authority refuses to embrace this solution. As Mahmoud Abbas lashed out just a few months ago, “Don’t order us to recognize a Jewish state. We won’t accept it.” Clearly, until this fundamental issue is resolved, the Palestinians will not achieve their goal of statehood. The fact that this outcome is based on falsehoods makes it a shame and a tragedy.
http://www.factsandlogic.org/ad_131.html
Similar posts
-
Israel Is Held To A Higher Standard Than Any Country
April 25, 2024In the intricate tapestry of global affairs, one nation stands out for enduring scrutiny and condem...
-
Israel Has The Most Moral Military In The World
April 10, 2024In the heart of a region often riddled with conflict, Israel stands out not only for its technologi...
-
The Resilience of the Israeli People
April 2, 2024Visitors from around the world have seen Hamas's October 7th Massacre's destruction in southern Isr...
-
Israel: Small Size, Big Impact
March 21, 2024Nestled along the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, Israel is a land of immense historical sig...
-
Israelis Are Fighting For Their Lives
February 21, 2024By Jonathan S. Tobin The world looks a lot different from Kibbutz Kfar Aza than it does in the U...
-
Over 2 Million Arabs Live In Israel
January 23, 2024In the complex landscape of the Middle East, where diverse cultures and identities intersect, Israe...
-
'Fauda' Star Idan Amedi Injured Fighting in Gaza
January 8, 2024Despite the severity of his injuries, Amedi's father assured Israeli news channels that his life is...
-
Israel Is A Great Country To Live In
December 28, 2023Nestled at the crossroads of the Middle East, Israel stands as a vibrant and dynamic nation, offeri...
Of course they have the right!
There WAS a Palestinian state: it was called “Philistia”. It was a highly technical and innovative trading community on the Mediterranean and was part of the Phoenician commercial orbit. The modern-day Palestinians get their name فلسطين from them. The theocrats of early Israel demolished Philistia and demonized it in Israel’s religious history, which has slandered the Philistines for the Christian world. Naturally a theocratic Turkish pawn such as Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi would have denied that Palestine is a nation – since not only is it a tendency of Muslims to downplay nationalism, but he furthermore had reason to deny its national identity in favor of the Ottoman Caliphate. You may find that there are honest Israeli archeologists who would tell you the same. Unfortunately, the Arabs of the region were thoroughly betrayed by the British, who replaced their Turkish overlords with British overlords; and as a result many followed Hasan al-Banna in supporting Hitler and the German Nazis. Their antisemitism, and that of their spin-off groups, was more of a bi-product of this alliance than a native proclivity. The followers of Ze’ev Jabotinsky don’t have clean hands in this regard, either, as this second-wave Zionism gained support from Mussolini and Hitler. Israel’s “problems” come from the tendency of Likudist elements in Israel to play off Salafists against progressive Arab elements, backed by and backing the U.S. neo-Crusaders. This is leading to a rebirth of antisemitism in Europe and the U.S., which is frightening to those who know that the Jews of Israel and the diaspora are for the most part decent people (this is even recognized by the Iranian clericalist regime, who feature a thriving Jewish community living side by side with the Muslims of Iran). Contrast this with life in Israel’s former ally Egypt, where elderly Jews now fear for their safety as CIA and Mossad agents encourage the terrorism of their Muslim Brotherhood Nazi clients so they can have useful Salafist puppet troops to join the al-Qaeda terrorists in destabilizing Syria (it is well-known that many of these have been told that they’re being sent there to fight “Zionism’s ally” Bashar al-Assad). This is a very dangerous game that is being played by Nazism’s epigones in the Knesset.
Now, a two-state solution would leave an independent Palestinian state at the mercy of this same element. Fortunately, there is a growing movement among Israeli Jews to solve the REAL problem: and that is, how can Jews and Arabs learn to live together in a unified, secular state that will satisfy the aspirations of both? Much of the impasse can be laid at the foot of unreasoning religious and pseudo-religious fanaticism: I would blame equally the Muslims and Jews who use their religion (or in the case of the Likudist Zionists merely feigning religion) as a cover for fascistic Realpolitik. A huge problem, of course, is what to do about Jerusalem/al-Quds: the ravaging Islamic armies of the 7th century didn’t help matters when they built the al-Aqsa Mosque on the ruins of the Second Temple; but Jews can’t simply disregard Muslim investment in the site nor ignore the fact that it has been an Arab city for nearly 1-1/2 millennia. If I had more faith in technology to solve the problem, I would say that a deal could be struck to move the mosque off the Temple Mount and relocate it a few yards away. If Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims were inclined to compromise, I would think that SOME solution could be worked out.
The people at Israel Social TV http://tv.social.org.il/, Arab and Jew, give me a great deal of hope that there are people there who desire such a compromise on that and other troublesome problems. A great deal of honesty from both sides will have to be forthcoming before there can be true peace, and not just pax israelica – which has been put the world on the road to annihilation, not least for world Jewry as for all decent peoples. Not facing the REAL problems and not facing the REAL historical facts, I fear, only prepares the ground for another scapegoating of the world’s Jews down the road, if that should be required by Nazism’s new “NATO” reincarnation to get them out of the hole they’ve dug themselves into. Don’t discount the possibility that those elements promoting Goebbels-like antisemitism on the Internet in the U.S. and Europe (as distinct from anti-Likudist-Zionism, which Hasbara intentionally misconstrues as traditional anti-Jewish antisemitism) might not represent a well thought-out contingency plan to do just this!
I like what you guys are up too. This sort of clever
work and coverage! Keep up the excellent works guys I’ve added you guys to our blogroll.