Posted on 09/09/2001 12:32:24 PM PDT by america76
The following is an excerpt from Arafat's Bag Of Tricks dealing with the issue of who is the traditional owner of the land now called Israel.
The Palestinian claim that the land for centuries sustained a thrivingpalestinian culture is not authorized by the facts of history. Yet the world community has given this claim a receptive hearing. PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat in his speach before the U.N. in 1974 falsely declared,
"The Jewish invasion began in 1881... Palestine was then a verdant area, inhabited by mainly an Arab people in the course of building it's life and dynamically enriching it's indigenous culture"
What happens when the claim is compared to the personal observations of the following recognized authorities? In 1738 Thomas Shaw observed a land of "barrenness... from want of inhabitants." In 1785 Constantine Francois de Volney recorded the population of the three main cities. Jerusalem had a population of 12,000 to 14,000. Bethelehem had about 600 able-bodied men. Hebron had 800 to 90 men. In 1835 Alphonse de Lamartine wrote "Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living object, heard no living sound...a complete and eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country... The tomb of a whole people."
In 1857, the Brittish consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported "The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therfore it's greatest need is a body of population." This historic observation is a remarkable confirmation of the Biblical prediction, that during Israel's peroid of punishment and dispersion, the Lord would cause the land to become desolate of man or beast(Jherimiah 33:10,11 No wonder by 1857 the land was just waiting for "a body of population!" In the Lord's providence this needed body of population-the Jewish people- began to arrive after the end of the period of God's disfavour.
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