The Big Lie

THE BIG LIE

Sharon Nader Sloan, Esq., Lebanese-American 16 Dec 2001

“The West Bank is occupied Palestinian land.” This phrase is repeated, as a given, by all the governments of the world and by the entire news media, etc., etc.

This idea that the West Bank is occupied Palestinian land has been accepted by almost everyone. Yet, it is, in fact, the greatest lie ever perpetrated on the whole of humanity.

If you think this is an outlandish statement please read on and decide for yourself.

Palestinians claim that Palestine is their land, and that Jerusalem is their capital, and that Israel is occupying their land. To resist occupation they have the right to send suicide bombers into crowded bus stations, pizza parlors, etc., and kill innocent men, women, and children. And all Arab and Muslin countries support them in their claims and actions against Israel.

Because of this occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, because of this crime committed against their Palestinian brothers, all Arabs hate Israel and want to destroy it.

To anyone who is familiar with the facts, and has an objective eye, all this must be fascinating. Because never before has a complete lie, on such a large scale, been so successful.

First, if Arab animosity toward Israel is based on their love and support for their Palestinian brothers, and in wanting their Palestinian brothers to have their own state, where was that love and support before the Jewish state existed? Where were they when the Kingdom of Jordan ruled Palestine? Why were they not accusing Jordan of occupying Palestinian land? Why did not the Arab world and the United Nations call on Jordan to stop occupying Palestinian land? Second, where were the Palestinians themselves, with all their grievances and claims, when Jordan occupied the whole West Bank, including Jerusalem?

Did you know that? Did you know that for 19 years Jordan occupied and ruled the whole West Bank, including Jerusalem? Why didn’t they clamor for a Palestinian state then?

All this time, did we hear a word about Palestine being occupied by the Kingdom of Jordan? Did we hear anything about a Palestinian state? Or about Jerusalem being the capital of Palestine? No, we did not. Why not?

Because there never existed a Palestinian state.

And in the entire history of nations, Jerusalem was never the capital of any country other than that of ancient Israel and modern Israel. So how can there be a claim on Jerusalem as the capital of a state that never existed?

One of the problems here is that so few people know the history of the world. Hence, lies and more lies, repeated often enough, are assumed to be facts.

I have heard many scholars, including an Arab journalist, question the very notion of a Palestinian people. What, they ask, makes a people? Well, there are four elements that define a people: language, religion, culture, and cuisine. For example, the Chinese and Japanese are both Oriental. Still, they are two different peoples, because they each have a different language, a different religion, a different culture, and a different cuisine.

The Palestinians speak the same language, follow the same religion, manifest the same culture, and eat the same cuisine as all the other Arabs. They are really Arabs who happen to live in a region called Palestine.

Palestine is not, and never was, the name of a country, or the name of a people.

It is the name of a region – just like Siberia is a region, not a country. There is no Siberian country, nor is there a Siberian people. It is a region. Just like the Sahara is a region, not a country. There is no Saharan country, nor is there a Saharan people. The Arabs living in that region are Libyans, Moroccans, etc., etc. It is a region.

Because Palestine is a region, not a country, England was able to carve out half of it and give it to the Arabs living on the other side of the Jordan River and call it the Kingdom of Jordan. Because Palestine is a region the United Nations was able to divide the rest of it between the Jews and the Arabs living there. Had the Arabs accepted the United Nations resolution there would have been a newly created Arab state called Palestine. Instead they rejected the United Nations compromise and went to war to destroy Israel. They lost the war. Hence, no Palestinian state.

Here are some cold facts.

King David built the city of Jerusalem, and King Solomon, David’s son, built the holy temple. This commonwealth of Israel lasted for a thousand years. There was only one break, when, 400 years after King David, the Babylonian invaders occupied the land for 70 years. Then, with the help of Cyrus the Great of Persia - yes, Persia - Israel came back to the land, rebuilt the temple, and ruled for another 600 years.

Then the Romans came and ruled the land, then the Crusaders ruled the land, then the Ottoman Empire ruled the land, then the British Empire ruled the land, then Israel returned to its homeland and built a modern Jewish state. It was never - repeat, never - a Palestinian state. So what is all this talk about occupied Palestinian land?

They certainly have a right to live there freely and happily. Nobody wants to move them away from their land. But from where comes the right for a Palestinian state? Is it because they live there?

Imagine, if the Mexican-American community in California, whose numbers are greater than the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, decides tomorrow to claim that the United States is occupying their land, because they live there and they want their own Mexican state. Imagine, if when the U.S. government says, “No, you can live here but you cannot have sovereignty, you cannot have your own state,” they start sending suicide bombers, shooters, mortars, etc., etc. into the rest of the country, what do you think would happen?

This is precisely why there was never any suggestion of a Palestinian state; not under the Romans, not under the Crusaders, not under the Turks, not under the English, and not under the Arab Kingdom of Jordan, not until after Israel was again established in its homeland.

I believe it is the big lie of our generation and we are all buying into it.

Whatever you believe, don’t you think these facts deserve to be raised when discussing Middle East policies?

Thank you for reading this paper.

Sharon Nader Sloan, Esq., Lebanese-American

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JORDAN: TRUE LAND OF THE "PALESTINIANS" (not the "West Bank")

Concerning Palestine East Of The River Jordan
On August 23,1959, the Prime Minister of Jordan stated, "We are the Government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine."
Each day brings me closer to the realization that Palestine, as it wants to exist within the boundary of Israel, and impose this view on the world community, is a farce... an imaginative place with imaginative people. History proves over and over again that JORDAN IS INDEED PALESTINE.
Here are several quotes from "officials" in the so-called Palestinian community. LET THEM SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES!!!!
"Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country."

- King Abdullah, at the Meeting of the Arab League, Cairo, 12th April 1948

"Let us not forget the East Bank of the (River) Jordan, where seventy per cent of the inhabitants belong to the Palestinian nation."

- George Habash, leader of the PFLP section of the PLO, writing in the PLO publication Sha-un Falastinia, February 1970

"Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate."

- Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2nd February 1970

"There is no family on the East Bank of the river (Jordan) that does not have relatives on the West Bank ... no family in the west that does not have branches in the east."

- King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2nd February 1972

"We consider it necessary to clarify to one and all, in the Arab world and outside, that the PALESTINIAN PEOPLE with its nobility and conscience is to be found HERE on the EAST Bank (of the Jordan River), The WEST Bank and the Gaza Strip. Its overwhelming majority is HERE and nowhere else."

- King Hussein, quoted in An-Hahar, Beirut, 24th August 1972

"The Palestinians here constitute not less than one half of the members of the armed forces. They and their brothers, the sons of Transjordan, constitute the members of one family who are equal in everything, in rights and duties." (Quoted by BBC Monitoring Service)

- King Hussein, on Amman Radio, 3rd February 1973

"There are, as well, links of geography and history, and a wide range of interests between the two Banks (of the River Jordan) which have grown stronger over the past twenty years. Let us not forget that el-Salt and Nablus were within the same district - el-Balka - during the Ottoman period, and that family and commercial ties bound the two cities together."

- Hamdi Ken'an, former Mayor of Nablus, writing in the newspaper Al-Quds, 14^th March 1973

"The new Jordan, which emerged in 1949, was the creation of the Palestinians of the West Bank and their brothers in the East. While Israel was the negation of the Palestinian right of self-determination, unified Jordan was the expression of it."

- Sherif Al-Hamid Sharaf, Representative of Jordan at the UN Security Council, 11th June 1973

Past "President Bourguiba (of Tunisia) considers Jordan an artificial creation presented by Great Britain to King Abdullah. But he accepts Palestine and the Palestinians as an existing and primary fact since the days of the Pharaohs. Israel, too, he considers as a primary entity. However, Arab history makes no distinction between Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians. Most of them hail from the same Arab race, which arrived in the region with the Arab Moslem conquest."

- Editorial Comment in the Jordanian Armed Forces' weekly, Al-Aqsa, Amman, 11^th July 1973

"With all respect to King Hussein, I suggest that the Emirate of Transjordan was created from oil cloth by Great Britain, which for this purpose cut up ancient Palestine. To this desert territory to the bast of the Jordan (River)., it gave the name Transjordan. But there is nothing in history which carries this name. While since our earliest time there was Palestine and Palestinians. I maintain that the matter of Transjordan is an artificial one, and that Palestine is the basic problem. King Hussein should submit to the wishes of the people, in accordance with the principles of democracy and self-determination, so as-to avoid the fate of his grandfather, Abdullah, or of his cousin, Feisal, both of whom were assassinated."

- Past President Bourguiba of Tunisia, in a public statement, July 1973

"The Palestinians and the Jordanians have created on this soil since 1948 one family - all of whose children have equal rights and obligations."

- King Hussein, addressing an American Delegation, 19th February 1975

"How much better off Hussein would be if he had been induced to abandon his pose as a benevolent 'host' to 'refugees' and to affirm the fact that Jordan is the Palestinian Arab nation-state, just as Israel is the Palestinian Jewish nation-state."

- Editorial Comment in the publication The Economist of 19th July 1975

"Palestine and Jordan were both (by then) under British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs, they were hardly separate countries. Transjordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine."

- King Hussein, writing in his Memoirs

"...those fishing in troubled waters will not succeed in dividing our people, which extends to both sides of the (River) Jordan, in spite of the artificial boundaries established by the Colonial Office and Winston Churchill half a century ago."

- Yassir Arafat, in a statement to Eric Roleau

"Palestinian Arabs hold seventy-five per cent of all government jobs in Jordan."

- The Sunday newspaper The Observer of 2nd March 1976

"Palestinian Arabs control over seventy per cent of Jordan's economy."

- The Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram of 5th March 1976

"There should be a kind of linkage because Jordanians and Palestinians are considered by the PLO as one people."

- Farouk Kadoumi, head of the PLO Political Department, quoted in Newsweek, 14^th March 1977

"Along these lines, the West German Der Spiegel magazine this month cited Dr George Habash, leader of one of the Palestinian organizations, as saying that 70 per cent of Jordan's population are Palestinians and that the power in Jordan should be seized." (Translated by BBC Monitoring Service)

- From a commentary which was broadcast by Radio Amman, 30th June 1980

"Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine but, rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations, both day and night. Though we are all Arabs and our point of departure is that we are all members of the same people, the Palestinian-Jordanian nation is one and unique, and different from those of the other Arab states."

- Marwan al Hamoud, member of the Jordanian National Consultative Council and former Minister of Agriculture, quoted by Al Rai, Amman, 24th September 1980

"The potential weak spot in Jordan is that most of the population are not, strictly speaking, Jordanian at all, but Palestinian. An estimated 60 per cent of the country's 2,500,000 people are Palestinians ... Most of these hold Jordanian passports, and many are integrated into Jordanian society."

- Richard Owen, in an article published in The Times, 14th November 1980

"There is no moral justification for a second Palestine."
- The Freeman Center (September 3, 1993)

- Above Quotes researched by HMAVERIK.

Folks, if the Palestinians had been there for 3 months, if they are actually Eskimos, or Tutsi Tribesmen, or nomads, or Jordanians, THEY were the residents(tenants, freeholders, serfs, vassals, Bedouin, whatever) of the area the Zionists took over and occupied. At the time, there were only a few hundred thousand, if that many, in the whole country.

NO BIG DEAL!
Happens all the time. Italians take over Tyrol, Slovenians take over Pola and Dalmatia, Russians take Eastern Poland. Poles take Eastern Germany. Czechs and Slovaks break up. Latvians take back Latvia.

But taking over territorry, or even retaking territory that was once yours (Irrendentism), gives you a limited number of options on dealing with the people that are presently in residence, no matter how unfashionbable they might be, i.e., unlike you:

Choice No. 1: Genocide: Kill them off, root and branch. Been done. Not acceptable in the 21st Century. Whether it's Muslims killing Christians in Timor, Israelis rocketing Palestinians, Turks wiping out Armenians, Albanians bumping off Serbs; it's just not done by nice people nowadays.

Choice No. 2: You can recognize the present residents' property and legal rights according to Western codes of law amd live peacably with them. Ain't gonna happen. The 'Palestinians' are breeding faster than a jar full of fruit flies, and even within Israel itself, will soon outnumber Jewish Israelis. Somehow, I don't think they'll be voting to maintain a Zionist state.Besides, like in East Germany, who the hell could ever figure out who owns what now?

Choice No. 3: You can buy them off if they play nice: Like the Italians do the Austrians in the Tyrol and the English do to the Ulstermen: give them lower taxes and sweetheart deals on everything from rent to gasoline. Ain't gonna happen in Israel.

Choice No. 4: You can REALLY buy them off. Give every Palestinian head of household $150,000 (or more) and the deed to his new ranch elsewhere in the Islamic world which you have thoughtfully bought for him. Move him and his 18 rock-throwing, suicide-bombing kids out of the refugee camp, put them on the bus, fill their pockets with money. Just get them the hell out of Dodge. Once they are relocated, subsidize the hell out of them so they can't fail. Perfect job for the Saudis.

Need a model? Look how the French resettled the French colonists of Algeria. Bought them part of Corsica, and are subsidizing them to this day. By the way, it served the purpose of developing a pretty rough and unproductive part of France.

Here's the way I see it: First, wouldn't it be helpful to purge the Biblical and Armageddon-type rhetoric from the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and just solve the goddam problem?(Pun intended)

The "God" argument is a phony in this dispute. In the first place, Israelis are notorious among the more Orthodox for being 'secular.' In the second place, the Palestinians were regularly chastized by the rest of the Islamic world for the same thing.

There is a private movement underway in Israel right now to buy out Palestinian families, giving them fair market value for their properties and expediting their move (!) to the US. This highlights what in my humble opinion, went wrong from the beginning of Israel: i.e., there never was an official, coherent plan to compensate the Palestinians and/or resettle them. The blame for this can be shared between Israelis and the Arab world in any proportion. The fact is, it was never done properly. In point of historical fact, both Arabs and Israelis encouraged the Palestinians to flee.

I proposed that each Palestinian Head of Household be paid a substantial sum as compensation, and be given title to a homestead in another Islamic region. I propose Northwestern Iraq, which is not only very underpopulated,but has great mineral and agricultural potential, including developable water resources.

Instead of putting them on disjointed "Reservation" territories which will never support them, the Palestinians simply ought to be paid off and given another country. Iraq was founded as a geographical convenience by the British. No reason why we cannot re-arrange its arbitrary borders. No reason why the New Palestine could not be an autonomous province of Iraq. There are no end of 'thinking- out-of-the-box' solutions.

These two peoples can never share a country. For example, what do the Israelis reallyintend to do when the Palestinians inside a democratic Israel outnumber them?

Here's an analogy based on the real estate business: (which this dispute is, once you boil off the religiosity that infects, and is the weakest argument, of both sides,) One buys a slum apartment property. It is inhabited by very unfashionable, low-rent tenants. Before one rehabilitates the property, buyer and seller must agree on a plan to compensate and relocate those inconvenient tenants. Happens everyday in LA, NYC, Detroit. It's the law. Once the slum dwellers are paid off and gone, one is free to beautify, yuppify, and charge higher rents. The relocation part of a real estate deal is never easy, it's never pretty, but it's a necessity.

To do this on a vast scale in Israel, with the Palestinians breeding as they do, might cost $30 Billion. But it might be way to BUY peace. Put enough money on the table, and many things thought impossible become attractive.

Let's build another coalition. We pay, the Israelis pay, Arafat pays (he's worth $10 Billion in London Real Estate!)The Saudi's pay, the EC pays, and friends of Israel the world over chip in symbolic amounts. Afterwards, just like in any fair deal, there's never a question about who owns what. It's bought and paid for.

Here's the way I see it: First, wouldn't it be helpful to purge the Biblical and Armageddon-type rhetoric from the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and just solve the goddam problem?(Pun intended)

These two peoples can never share a country. For example, what do the Israelis reallyintend to do when the Palestinians inside a democratic Israel outnumber them?

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