Palestinian? Pure Fiction. No Such thing, nor people

ARAFART - Revised - Originally Compiled 5-16-2003 - Some REAL LIFE facts compiled in response to a complaint by a student that I had insulted the "great man". Most of the article is addressed to the student but says what needs to be known.

(To student)You asked me what I thought would most likely happen in the near future (May 2003 time frame) and this is probably as close to an initial answer as possible. Though what happens after that is still open ended. Arafart has tried to destabilize every Arab country that had helped him and he's too old to change, so there could be vast conflagration in North African Arab countries and destabilization in Jordan. More later.

Pointing to himself, he quotes the Arabic adage "Hasm Hazm," which loosely translated means "He who has the last word." Another favorite adage of his is: "If it doesn't break us, it makes us stronger," remembering the multitude of times he has been kicked in the butt. No, not by Israelis but by Arab nations after he tried to stab them in the back. He knows about Washington's idea of moving him to Gaza and dismisses it as an "American-Zionist conspiracy" that the Arab nation will smash to bits.

Since his confinement in Ramallah, Arafat has abandoned his most insistent demands; he no longer wants an international force to keep Israelis and Palestinians apart and shrugs off the Saudi peace initiative as a device to mask the secret willingness of Arab rulers to go along with the "American-Zionist conspiracy." (Little wonder after how he behaved toward them and trying to destabilize their countries).

Above all, he wants to remove Egypt and Jordan, but also Saudi Arabia and Syria, from any involvement in Palestinian affairs. (He prefered the French and Europeans who fell for his lies. Arabs who had experienced him as a person knew better). This he hopes to achieve by stirring up increasingly violent popular riots in Arab cities in unison with a fresh wave of suicide and terrorist attacks against Israel, which he is hatching even now. (Watch this happen).

When he refers to himself, it is no longer as Palestinian president, but as the pre-eminent pan-Arab leader. (Watch Ahmadi-Nejad try to follow that example as the pre-eminent pan-Islamic leader).

He dwells at length on the growing manifestation of martyrs and suicides in Arab lands, holding up as an example the Egyptian who was killed Friday when he tried to infiltrate Israel from Sinai and the Egyptian woman caught today in Taba, attempting to smuggle explosive substances into Israel. In Arafat's eyes, both were "martyrs of the Arab nation" – and path-blazers. (Today Ahmadi-Nejad claims 52,000 homiciders ready to go).

Arafat pins his highest hopes on Saddam Hussein, declaring that at the peak of popular unrest in the Arab states and the fresh anti-Israel suicide cycle, Iraq will choose the moment to throw its might against Israel and Jordan.

An American military offensive against Baghdad will make no difference, Arafat believes. He has no doubt that the offensive will fail and the Iraqi armed forces of Saddam Hussein will be free in no time to loose deadly missile attacks against Jordan and Israel.

Did you know that there was never any country called Palestine? Did you know that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people?

You will find Palestine listed as a region as it always has been, but definitely never a country. We can locate the Mojave Desert on the USA map, but we still would never recognize it as our 51st state, let alone a sovereign country. Nor any residents who migrated there, a "Mojavian" people. Even if some have traditionally lived locally for a long time

Only about 120,000 nomadic Arabs resided in an area that covered the claimed, so-called "occupied" territories, the state of Israel and Jordan. When Mark Twain visited the area, he wrote he found nothing but a wasteland.

During the 19 years that these territories - including Jerusalem and Gaza - were occupied by the kingdoms of Jordan and Egypt, no one talked about a Palestinian state nor a Palestinian people. These Arab states recognized no such thing.

These people are generic Arabs like all other Arabs, and they happen to live in a region called Palestine. They are not a separate people. Anymore than Siberians are a separate people in Russia.

Israel did not go to war against a Palestinian state and occupy its land. Rather, Israel was attacked by six Arab countries at once. She defended herself, defeated her attackers, and won the so-called territories, not from the Palestinians, but from Jordan and Egypt. And the Golan Heights from Syria.

Most Arabs living in Palestine today are not indigenous to the region. It was not until after the Jews had changed deserts and swamps into a productive and thriving land that the Arabs started migrating there.

Arafat, the head "Palestinian" was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. Did you know that? What's he got to do with Palestine, other than a hijacker of a cause which lined his pockets and those of his wife? Any more than intruder or invader "ayatollah" Rouhollah Khomeini, with a British father from Bristol, England and an Indian mother from the Kashmir area had anything Persian or Iranian about him.

I'm not Jewish but am amazed how much hatred seems to exist against this race and nation, to the extent of according wide spread legitimacy, specially by the Press and Media, who should know better, to illegitimate claims by their opponents.

Not liking historical truth because it does not serve your purpose or agree with what you or your friends think, is emotionally understandable. But my pointing it out does not mean I'm taking sides. You can do that after reading all this. I present you decide. Don't get angry at me because it appears the Israelis were in the right at that time - thus invalidating the Palestinian excuses or justification for hatred and uncivilized acts.

But look who is biased?? Did you notice you cannot accept a differing point of view from your own? I'm definitely not Jewish, nor specifically pro-Jewish but as someone who knows much more than you about the politics of the world, not just the Middle East and am old enough to have lived some of it, I think your attitude needs to be a bit more flexible to be justifiable. I lived in that area longer than you have been alive, so just because you have Palestinian friends at school, we all probably have Palestinian friends, don't get carried away by surrounding emotions. It's because I do know so much about the politics of the area that I differ with you on what is the truth, though even that is not an absolute. Historically the Jews have the right to that area of land - justification was on their side. Then things unraveled after that, where both have to bear much of the blame for what's going on. No saints here.

It might interest you - and I was there in Iran at the time - that for the first six months or so of the ayatollahs revolution, ALL the firing squads that killed so many Iranians were ONLY manned by the 2,000 or so men Arafat brought with him to Iran when he came.

Using the mullah's ignorance, Arafat plundered the art work, antiques etc. etc from the palaces, private homes and museums and took them out of Iran by convoy of hundreds of trucks going back and forth almost daily. Plunder claimed as his payment for supporting Khomeini and doing the killings by firing squad.

The mullahs didn't understand art nor want these things, not even Iran's historical treasures, so if he wanted them instead of lots of money then goody, goody! Just don't let him take any jewelry. He finally got young Iranians to do the executions by mixing them in with his men and threatening to shoot them if they did not shoot to kill those who had been condemned to die.

And as you may have heard - you are too young to actually know - this included hundreds and hundreds of young girls and totally innocent, non-political people who got shot BY MISTAKE when, blindfolded as they were, they went into the wrong line!! Or had been arrested as part of a family and friends round-up when a single member of that enclave was suspected of something! You weren't old enough to see or even sense all this.

Nothing to do with Jews or Palestinians. Everything to do with the kind of person Arafat is and represents as a so-called Palestinian - and the man you are supporting. He didn't just do nasty things to the Jews, he did horrible things to Iranians, who had nothing to do with Palestine. You really don't know enough about real life and react to glimpses of it. Specially with fervent anti-Jewish friends to incite you.

I don't personally overly care who is getting killed one way or another and don't condone it on either side. But if you go and kick someone and then get your nose bloodied, whose fault is that? Specially after the tenth time you do it?

Arafat was exiled before and there is no country (though Morocco seems to be weighing the possibility) which now wants to have him if he is sent away by the Israelis. In previous times he and his Palestinians tried to overthrow and destabilize the government of every country which gave them shelter.

Even Jordan, which was originally intended as the Palestinian state, threw him and his Palestinians out after he tried to over throw the government.

And just because history does happen to favor the Israeli position - something to which you have had no exposure nor have studied, nor can have a clue - it is something nevertheless you have to accept, even if it removes the justification of the cause you have espoused. I grew up in England so was constantly having to read all about the British Empire and the Middle East was part of it. Including all the original mess and hardships of Israel.

If you could read without getting your blood boiling because it's contrary to what your friends have told you - again you have no first hand knowledge - you may end up with a broader and obviously different point of view.

Then again, what you do or don't do matters little to anyone but yourself. As you grow older you will mature and mellow, so don't despair.

The revolution in Iran happened not because the Shah was so bad but because the Western world wanted a lock on Persian oil and didn't realize how easy it is to inflame people your age who have high ideology, totally untempered by experience or knowledge. Idiot Jimmy Carter added his personal peeve against the Shah with utter disregard to what would happen to the world if he helped the Soviets overthrow the monarchy.

And in Iran, totally uneducated politically or otherwise, though there was a growing percentage of literacy, the insanity fo Marxist-Islam did the damage intended through fomenting an uneducated, young populace. Reading is a tool but knowing how to analyze and understand what to read for deeper knowledge is being educated and experienced. Iran was swiftly moving in that direction but had a long way to go.

As I said, nearly 60% of Iranians were under the age of 25 (!!) when they were fanned into doing something nearly everyone seems to regret - even most of the revolutionary factions. 20+ years later life did not get better as Khomeini's face on the moon promised. Except for a number of mullahs like Rafsanjani, owner of a small pistachio orchard, suddenly building personal $2 Billion projects in Canada. With his own money. A penniless cleric a decade or so ago ?

Your fervor, as a student with easily invoked high ideals is understandable but your commentary was definitely "deeg be deeg goft ruyat siah" or the pot calling the kettle black.

The pictures of Arafat, to which you objected, were about the kindest way I could poke fun at a man who has killed thousands of innocents. In Iran !!! Who cares about what he does in Palestine? He is not a good person and if he ever was, he has not been for at least a quarter of a century.

Palestinians doubt Blair can deliver,” announces the BBC. “Four Palestinians die in West Bank,” reports CNN. “IDF demolishes building used by Palestinian gunmen,” announces Israel’s government run Channel 1 News. The modern media is filled with stories about the Palestinians, their plight, their dilemmas and their struggles. All aspects of their lives seem to have been put under the microscope.

Only one question never seems to be addressed: Who are the Palestinians? Who are these people who claim the Holy Land as their own? What is their history? Where did they come from? How did they arrive in the country they call Palestine?

Now that both US President George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (in direct opposition to the platform he was elected on) have come out in favor of a Palestinian state, it would be prudent to seek answers to these questions. For all we know, Palestine could be as real as Disneyland or less so.

The general impression given in the media is that Palestinians have lived in the Holy Land for hundreds, if not thousands of years. No wonder, then, that a recent poll of French citizens shows that the majority believe (falsely) that prior to the establishment of the State of Israel an independent Arab Palestinian state existed in its place.

Yet curiously, when it comes to giving the history of this “ancient” people most news outlets find it harder to go back more than the early nineteen hundreds.

CNN, an agency which has devoted countless hours of airtime to the “plight” of the Palestinians, has a website which features a special section on the Middle East conflict called “Struggle For Peace”. It includes a promising sounding section entitled “Lands Through The Ages” which assures us it will detail the history of the region using maps. Strangely, it turns out, the maps displayed start no earlier than the "very ancient" date of 1917. Good grief!

The CBS News website has a background section called “A Struggle For Middle East Peace.’’ Its history timeline starts no earlier than 1897. The NBC News background section called ‘’Searching for Peace’’ has a timeline which starts in 1916. BBC’s timeline starts in 1948.

Yet, the clincher must certainly be the Palestinian National Authority’s own website. While it is top heavy on such phrases as “Israeli occupation” and “Israeli human rights violations” the site offers practically nothing on the history of the so-called Palestinian people.

The only article on the site with any historical content is called “Palestinian History - 20th Century Milestones” which seems only to confirm that prior to 1900 there was no such concept as the Palestinian people.

While the modern media maybe short on information about the history of the “Palestinian people” the historical record is not. Books, such as Battleground by Samuel Katz and From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters, long ago detailed the history of the region. Far from being settled by Palestinians for hundreds, if not thousands of years, the Land of Israel, according to dozens of visitors to the land, was, until the beginning of the last century, practically empty.

Alphonse de Lamartine visited the land in 1835. In his book, Recollections of the East, he writes "Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw no living object, heard no living sound…."

None other than the famous American author Mark Twain, who visited the Land of Israel in 1867, confirms this. In his book Innocents Abroad he writes, “A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely…. We never saw a human being on the whole journey.”

Even the British Consul in Palestine reported, in 1857, “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population…”

In fact, according to official Ottoman Turk census figures of 1882, in the entire Land of Israel, there were only 141,000 Muslims, both Arab and non-Arab.

This number was to skyrocket to 650,000 Arabs by 1922, a 450% increase in only 40 years.

By 1938 that number would become over 1 million or an 800% increase in only 56 years. Population growth was especially high in areas where Jews lived.

Where did all these Arabs come from? According to the Arabs the huge increase in their numbers was due to natural childbirth. In 1944, for example, they alleged that the natural increase (births minus deaths) of Arabs in the Land of Israel was the astounding figure of 334 per 1000. That would make it roughly three times the corresponding rate for the same year of Lebanon and Syria and almost four times that of Egypt, considered amongst the highest in the world. Unlikely, to say the least. If the massive increase was not due to natural births, then were did all these Arabs come from? All the evidence points to the neighboring Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

In 1922 the British Governor of the Sinai noted that “illegal immigration" was not only going on from the Sinai, but also from Trans-Jordan and Syria.” In 1930, the British Mandate sponsored Hope-Simpson Report noted that “unemployment lists are being swollen by immigrants from Trans-Jordania” and “illicit immigration" through Syria and across the northern frontier of Palestine is material.”

The Arabs themselves bear witness to this trend. For example, the governor of the Syrian district of Hauran, Tewfik Bey el Hurani, admitted in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians from Hauran had moved to the Land of Israel.

Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British mandate in the Land of Israel, noted in 1939 that “far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied.”

Far from displacing the Arabs, as they claimed, the Jews were the very reason the Arabs chose to settle in the Land of Israel. Jobs provided by newly established Zionist industry and agriculture lured them there, just as Israeli construction and industry provides most Arabs in the Land of Israel with their main source of income today.

Malcolm MacDonald, one of the principal authors of the British White Paper of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel, admitted (conservatively) that were it not for a Jewish presence the Arab population would have been little more than half of what it actually was.

Today, when due to the latest “intifada”, Arabs from the territories under 35 are no longer allowed into pre-1967 Israel to work, unemployment has skyrocketed to over 40% and most rely on European aid packages to survive.

Not only the pre-state Arabs lied about being indigenous. Even today, many prominent so-called Palestinians, it turns out, are foreign born. Edward Said, an Ivy League Professor of Literature and a major Palestinian propagandist, long claimed to have been raised in Jerusalem. However, in an article in the September 1999 issue of Commentary Magazine, Justus Reid Weiner revealed that Said actually grew up in Cairo, Egypt, a fact which Said himself was later forced to admit. But why bother with Said? PLO chief Yasir Arafat himself, self declared “leader of the Palestinian people”, has always claimed to have been born and raised in “Palestine”. In fact, according to his official biographer Richard Hart, as well as the BBC, Arafat was born in Cairo on August 24, 1929 and that’s where he grew up.

To maintain the charade of being an indigenous population, Arab propagandists have had to do more than a little rewriting of history. A major part of this rewriting involves the renaming of geography.

For two thousand years the central mountainous region of Israel was known as Judea and Samaria, as any medieval map of the area testifies. However, the state of Jordan occupied the area in 1948 and renamed it the West Bank. This is a funny name for a region that actually lies in the eastern portion of the land and can only be called “West” in reference to Jordan.

This does not seem to bother the majority of news outlets covering the region, which universally refer to the region by its recent Jordanian name.

The term “Palestinian" is itself a masterful twisting of history. To portray themselves as indigenous, Arab settlers adopted the name of an ancient Canaanite tribe, the Philistines, that died out almost 3000 years ago. The connection between this tribe and modern day Arabs is nil.

Who is to know the difference? Given the absence of any historical record, one can understand why Yasser Arafat claims that Jesus Christ, a Jewish carpenter from the Galilee, was a Palestinian!

Every year, at Christmas time, Arafat (when he was alive) went to Bethlehem and told worshippers that Jesus was in fact “the first Palestinian”. If the Palestinians are indeed a myth, then the real question becomes “Why?” Why invent a fictitious people? The answer is that the myth of the Palestinian people serves as the justification for Arab occupation of the Land of Israel - not the other way round!

While the Arabs already possess 21 sovereign countries of their own (more than any other single people on earth) and control a land mass 800 times the size of the Land of Israel, this is apparently not enough for them. They therefore feel the need to rob the Jews of their one and only country, one of the smallest on the planet. Unfortunately, many people ignorant of the history of the region, including much of the world media, are only too willing to help.

It is interesting to note that the Bible makes reference to a fictitious nation confronting Israel. “They have provoked me too jealously by worshipping a non-god, angered me with their vanities. I will provoke them with a non-nation; anger them with a foolish nation (Deuteronomy 32:21).” On second thought, it may be unfair to compare Palestine to Disneyland. After all, Disneyland really exists. As do true Disneylanders like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Goofy etc. NOTE: the reality of the Israeli and Hez-ebola conflict mirrors the above in many ways. Specially when Iran's President and Hezbollah sponsor, Ahmadi-Nejad, in his Wallace interview, states that the Hezbollah were simply and justifiably defending their homes against Israeli incursion and attack and were trying to eject the Israeli occupiers from their homeland. Matters little or not at all that Israel had been out of Lebanon for at least six years and would have stayed out if their soldiers had not been kidnapped by the Hez-ebolas.

This is interesting. It reminded me of a conversation I had with an interesting civilian I met while serving overseas. Let me share the story. – In a bar I was approached by a woman who was interested in my accent. She asked where I was from. – her accent sounding very much like mine. I said "America, where are you from?" She replied, "no really, where are you from?" I thought it was odd that she would repeat herself and she was forcing me to do the same… Giving her the benefit of doubt I said, "seriously, I’m from America, I’m American". I’d been in that country a long time and had picked up a modicum of the local accent; I was thinking --- maybe she thought I was local but well traveled ---. She said, "No, you’re North American like me. I’m Canadian" and in a snotty sort of way, she said "I’ve never understood why people from the U.S. claim the entire Western hemisphere as their homeland." I quickly overlooked her snotty attitude and we began discussing national identity as well as U.S.-Canada relations. All in all, it was an enjoyable experience. Her snotty intro was trite but forgivable. I’m familiar and even comfortable with such folks. On many occasions I’ve overlooked an individual’s self aggrandizement in order to separate wheat from chaff, if you know what I mean. Some people boost their own confidence by emphasizing their importance while touting the insignificance of others. C’est la vi - Not everyone was born with high self esteem...

Personal shortcomings aside, this work has a problem with its major premise. It’s exactly the same as the problem with my Canadian’s argument. She was right but I’m not going to stop identifying myself as American. Honestly, who the hell cares that she was right? Identity is not so easily forged or dismantled by waving around the truth. Another point to back me up… Steven Colbert pointed out about a week ago that the Constitution clearly says – "We the People of the United States" – suggesting that the citizens of Washington DC (A district not a state) are not Americans. It was absurdly funny, but absurd.

This work has another problem in that the "Holy Land" has a long and turbulent history. Setting that aside - What should be clear to everyone is that position is 9/10th of the law. Who ever has it now, owns it! Done! There are those that can’t deal with that. There are a number of groups and experts that selectively parade their version of the region’s history to feed their agenda. There is no value in that, only more bloodshed.

Israel - PALESTINE BETWEEN THE ROMANS AND MODERN TIMES

As a geographic unit, Palestine extended from the Mediterranean on the west to the Arabian Desert on the east and from the lower Litani River in the north to the Gaza Valley in the south. It was named after the Philistines, who occupied the southern coastal region in the twelfth century B.C. The name Philistia was used in the second century A.D. to designate Syria Palestina, which formed the southern third of the Roman province of Syria.

Emperor Constantine (ca. 280-337) shifted his capital from Rome to Constantinople in 330 and made Christianity the official religion. With Constantine's conversion to Christianity, a new era of prosperity came to Palestine, which attracted a flood of pilgrims from all over the empire. Upon partition of the Roman Empire in 395, Palestine passed under eastern control. The scholarly Jewish communities in Galilee continued with varying fortunes under Byzantine rule and dominant Christian influence until the Arab-Muslim conquest of A.D. 638. The period included, however, strong Jewish support of the briefly successful Persian invasion of 610-14.

The Arab caliph, Umar, designated Jerusalem as the third holiest place in Islam, second only to Mecca and Medina. Under the Umayyads, based in Damascus, the Dome of the Rock was erected in 691 on the site of the Temple of Solomon, which was also the alleged nocturnal resting place of the Prophet Muhammad on his journey to heaven. It is the earliest Muslim monument still extant. Close to the shrine, to the south, the Al Aqsa Mosque was built. The Umayyad caliph, Umar II (717-720), imposed humiliating restrictions on his non-Muslim subjects that led many to convert to Islam. These conversions, in addition to a steady tribal flow from the desert, changed the religious character of the inhabitants of Palestine from Christian to Muslim. Under the Abbasids the process of Islamization gained added momentum as a result of further restrictions imposed on non-Muslims by Harun ar Rashid (786-809) and more particularly by Al Mutawakkil (847-61).

The Abbasids were followed by the Fatimids who faced frequent attacks from Qarmatians, Seljuks, and Byzantines, and periodic beduin opposition. Palestine was reduced to a battlefield. In 1071 the Seljuks captured Jerusalem. The Fatimids recaptured the city in 1098, only to deliver it a year later to a new enemy, the Crusaders of Western Europe. In 1100 the Crusaders established the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, which remained until the famous Muslim general Salah ad Din (Saladin) defeated them at the decisive Battle of Hattin in 1187. The Crusaders were not completely evicted from Palestine, however, until 1291 when they were driven out of Acre. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were a "dark age" for Palestine as a result of Mamluk misrule and the spread of several epidemics. The Mamluks were slave-soldiers who established a dynasty that ruled Egypt and Syria, which included Palestine, from 1250 to 1516.

In 1516 the Ottoman Turks, led by Sultan Selim I, routed the Mamluks, and Palestine began four centuries under Ottoman domination. Under the Ottomans, Palestine continued to be linked administratively to Damascus until 1830, when it was placed under Sidon, then under Acre, then once again under Damascus. In 1887-88 the local governmental units of the Ottoman Empire were finally settled, and Palestine was divided into the administrative divisions (sing., mutasarrifiyah) of Nabulus and Acre, both of which were linked with the vilayet (largest Ottoman administrative division, similar to a province) of Beirut and the autonomous mutasarrifiyah of Jerusalem, which dealt directly with Constantinople.

For the first three centuries of Ottoman rule, Palestine was relatively insulated from outside influences. At the end of the eighteenth century, Napoleon's abortive attempt to establish a Middle East empire led to increased Western involvement in Palestine. The trend toward Western influence accelerated during the nine years (1831-40) that the Egyptian viceroy Muhammad Ali and his son Ibrahim ruled Palestine. The Ottomans returned to power in 1840 with the help of the British, Austrians, and Russians. For the remainder of the nineteenth century, Palestine, despite the growth of Christian missionary schools and the establishment of European consulates, remained a mainly rural, poor but self-sufficient, introverted society. Demographically its population was overwhelmingly Arab, mainly Muslim, but with an important Christian merchant and professional class residing in the cities. The Jewish population of Palestine before 1880 consisted of fewer than 25,000 people, two-thirds of whom lived in Jerusalem where they made up half the population (and from 1890 on more than half the population). These were Orthodox Jews (see Glossary), many of whom had immigrated to Palestine simply to be buried in the Holy Land, and who had no real political interest in establishing a Jewish entity. They were supported by alms given by world Jewry.

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