ARAB IMPERIALISM: THE TRAGEDY OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Since the formation of the contemporary Middle East in the wake of
World War I, its political life has been bedevilled by the doctrine of
“Arab Nationalism,” which postulates the existence of “a single [Arab]
nation bound by the common ties of language, religion and history…
behind the facade of a multiplicity of sovereign states.” The territorial
expanse of this supposed nation varies according to different exponents
of the ideology, ranging from “merely” the Fertile Crescent to the entire
territory “from the Zagros Mountains in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in
the west, and from the Mediterranean shores and the Anatolian hills in
the north to the Indian Ocean, the sources of the Nile, and the Great
Desert in the south.”1 But the unity of the Arabic-speaking populations
inhabiting these vast territories is never questioned. In the words of the
Palestinian academic Walid Khalidi: “In pan-Arab ideology, this Nation
is actual, not potential. The manifest failure even to approximate unity
does not negate the empirical reality of the Arab Nation. It merely adds
normative and prescriptive dimensions to the ideology of pan-Arabism.
The Arab Nation both is, and should be, one.”

In reality, the term “Arab nationalism” is a misnomer. It does not
represent a genuine national movement or ideal but is rather a
euphemism for raw imperialism. There is not and never has there
been an “Arab nation” and its invocation has been nothing but a
clever ploy to rally popular support behind the quest for dated
imperialist ambitions.

If a nation is a group of people sharing such attributes as common
descent, language, culture, tradition, and history, then nationalism is
the desire of such a group for self-determination in a specific territory
that they consider to be their patrimony. The only common
denominators among the widely diverse Arabic-speaking populations
of the Middle East - the broad sharing of language and religion - are
consequences of the early Islamic imperial epoch. But these common
factors have generated no general sense of Arab solidarity, not to
speak of deeply rooted sentiments of shared history, destiny, or
attachment to an ancestral homeland. Even under universal Islamic
empires from the Umayyad to the Ottoman, the Middle East’s Arabicspeaking
populations did not unify or come to regard themselves as a
single nation: the various kingdoms and empires competed for
regional mastery or developed in parallel with other cultures formally
under the same imperial aegis.

Similarly Arabic, like other imperial languages such as English,
Spanish, and French, has been widely assimilated by former subject
populations who had little else in common. As Lawrence of Arabia,
probably the most influential Western champion of pan-Arabism in
the 20th century, admitted in his later years: “Arab unity is a
madman's notion - for this century or next, probably. Englishspeaking
unity is a fair parallel.”

This dissonance between the reality of state nationalism and the dream
of an empire packaged as a unified “Arab nation” has created a legacy
of violence that has haunted the Middle East into the 21st century.
Incessant interventionism under the pretence of pan-Arab solidarity has
had the effect of transforming the bilateral Palestinian-Israeli dispute
into a multilateral Arab-Israeli conflict, thereby prolonging its duration,
increasing its intensity, and making its resolution far more complex and
tortuous. This interventionism, however, has been less motivated by a
concern for the wellbeing of the Palestinian Arabs, let alone the
protection of their national rights, than by an imperialist worldview
rejecting the idea of Jewish encroachment on what was considered a
part of the pan-Arab imperial patrimony. As Abdel Rahman Azzam,
the first secretary-general of the Arab League, told Jewish officials
who came to him in September 1947 to plead for peace: “We will try to
rout you. I am not sure we will succeed, but we will try. We succeeded
in expelling the Crusaders, but lost Spain and Persia, and may lose
Palestine.”

(more…)

Myths, Hypotheses and Facts - Origin and Identity of the Arabs

In general, the term "Arab" in modern times is applied to a large group of different peoples that share in common the Arabic language, which for the overwhelming majority of them is not their original one but the tongue imposed to their forefathers by the Arabian conquerors. Such a definition is ethnically unsuitable, in the same way as it would be inappropriate to call "Spaniards" to all Spanish-speaking peoples or "English" to all those non-British folks whose primary language is English. It is true that the Arab countries have not only language in common but also most cultural features as well, yet, this is the result of the colonization and subsequent annihilation of the original pre-Arabic culture. Therefore, it is more correct to speak of them as "Arabized" peoples rather than Arabs.

From the ethnic viewpoint, the term "Arab" is roughly equivalent to "Arabian", namely, in reference to the only people considered to be Arab since the beginning and identified as such by themselves and by their neighbours.
It happens frequently that the word Arab is misused on purpose for political strategy: 1) by applying this term as an ethnic definition to the Arabized peoples (mainly North-Africans), in order to increase the number of the Arab population, and 2) in a quite improper way, by calling "Arab" to ancient peoples that existed in the Middle East in order to claim historic rights and legitimate the Arab occupation. So, it is necessary to reach a clear definition in two directions: which peoples are Arabs and which are not. Concerning the origin, the most widespread myth is that Arabs are Ishmaelites, what in the case of all the Arabized peoples is not true at all, and regarding Arabians is only partially true.

The original Arab culture has been lost and the most reliable information we have about it comes from external sources, because Islamic revisionism has produced a legendary account in replacement of the scientific truth, and so one of the most fascinating cultures of the past is now missing.
The Arabian myths have been created in order to legitimate the "pre-existence" of Islam by ascribing fanciful tales allegedly happened in Arabia to Hebrew Patriarchs and Prophets. Through these legends turned into "history", Arabs claim an Avrahamic origin through Yishmael, who was only the forefather of some tribes that intermarried with many other peoples that were already settled in Arabia much earlier than him and within which the Ishmaelite lineage was largely assimilated. Therefore, the equation Arab = Ishmaelite is a myth, because Ishmael was not an Arab, nor the forefather of all Arabs; actually, his descent contributed to the formation of the peoples that came to be known as Arabs some centuries later. Connected with the alleged Ishmaelite identification, the Semitic identity is taken for granted, yet, this is also a half-truth because the Arabian ethnicity and culture arose from an original Kushite stock that was subsequently assimilated by the Semitic tribes that came after them, and even the Ishmaelites were a mixed group with a strong Hamitic component, as we will see in this essay.

More...

The Forgotten Refugees III - Jews, not 'Arab Jews'

"Just like English, the Arabic language spread through conquest and colonialism. And so, today, to call an Iraqi Kurd, or a Chaldaean, or an Assyrian an Arab, or to call an Egyptian Copt an Arab, or to call a Lebanese Maronite or a Druze or a Melkite or a Jew[Hebrew] an Arab (all on account of their wielding of the Arabic language in one form or another), would be tantamount to cultural suppression and historical erasure."

Ecce Libanus

Who is an Arab Jew? - "The term "Arab Jews" is obviously not a good one. I have adopted it for convenience. I simply wish to underline that as natives of those countries called Arab and indigenous to those lands well before the arrival of the Arabs, we shared with them, to a great extent, languages, traditions and cultures. If one were to base oneself on this legitimacy, and not on force and numbers, then we have the same rights to our share in these lands - neither more nor less - than the Arab Moslems. But one should remember, at the same time, that the term "Arab" is not a happy one when applied to such diverse populations, including even those who call and believe themselves to be Arabs."

Jewish and Arab refugees:rhetoric and reality
Expelled Jews hold deeds for five times Israel's size
Frequently Asked Questions
Seven myths about Jews from Arab lands
Arab League Draft Law regarding Jews
Congress adopts first ever Jewish refugees bill
Jewish refugee bill introduced in Knesset
Publicising Jews 'nakba' can lead to 'sulha'
The saviour of Syrian Jewry
Baghdad once as Jewish as NY
Jewish ownership in 'Arab' areas
Exodus of refugees: an overview
Anti-Jewish laws and practices
Dhimmi denial
Decline and fall of Libyan Jewry
Libyan Jew speaks out
Jewish refugee addresses UN
Timeline to disaster for Jews of Iraq
Muslims threw 1951 Baghdad bomb
The exchange of populations
Paradise lost: Iraqi family's story
Jews are also an Arab question
My return to Morocco
Will there be Jews in Palestine?
My right of return - by a Tunisian Jew
The truth about the Jews of Iran
The Arab states' original sin
How complicit were Arabs with Nazism?
Israel’s secret Kabyl allies
In search of righteous Arabs
An Egyptian Jew's story

Giving the lie to the big lie
Arabs without Jews:roots of a tragedy
Oriental Zionism of Arab-born Jews
The illusion of Palestinian return
Babylon...and on

The Lie About the "palestinian people" and "palestinian land" II

When Was the Name Palestinian Applied to the Arabs?
Palestine was under arab-muslim control for only a brief period of time even though after the muslim conquest Arabic became the language of most of the population . Noted scholar David George Hogarth made this point back in 1877: “When we look back at the history of the early caliphate, we find the period of genuine Arab empire extraordinarily short... Arabs governerd Arabs, though Arabs on an imperial scale for much less than a century, just the Umayyad Damascus period and no more”. This becomes evident when we examine the 1,174-year rule of conquerors: Umayyids (112 years), Abbassids (163 years), Egyptians (157 years), Christian Crusaders (103 years) and Turks (743 years). Only the Umayyid Abbassid dynasties can be identified as “Arab”.

What’s more, Hogarth acknowledged that sovereign Arab rule lasted “for much less than a century”. In like manner, the muslim chairman of the syrian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 stated that “the only Arab domination since the conquest in A.d. 635 hardly lasted, as such, 22 years”. Furthermore, throughout the entire period of rule, the terms Palestine and Palestinian were not used for any muslim people, Arab or otherwise, although before the Crusader rule Arabs used the term Filastin for the Roman division of “first Palestine” (which included Judea and Samaria), and distinguished it from Urdnm (“Jordan”). Otherwise, the Arabs generally referred to provincies by the names of their capital cities.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Arabs rejected the term Palestinian because it was thought to refer to the Jews. This was evident when the 1917 Balfour Declaration referred to the land of Palestine as the place for a “national home for the Jewish people”. The Arabs reacted to the document, stating that there was no no such thing as Palestine except in referece to the southern part of Greater Syria. Under the British Mandate, the name Palestine was pratically restricted to the land on the western side of the Jordan River, because the British had established on the eastern side the emirate of Transjordan.

In 1950 this emirate annexed the western Arab inhabited part of the western Palestine and changed its name to the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. However, during the Mandandate period, the Arab political representation, headed be the Mufti of Jerusalem, was not called the “Palestinian Committee” as is it today, but merely “The Arab Higher Committee”. And finally, when the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry convened in Jerusalem in 1946, the dinstinguished Arab historian Professor Philip Hitti testified: “There is no such thing as Palestine in [Arab] history, absolutely not”. He likewise opposed the use of the name Palestine on area maps because it was “associated in the mind of the average American, and perhaps the Englishman too, with the Jews”.

The use of the term Palestinian with application to the western Arab population of Palestine cannot be found in any dictionary, encyclopedia, or history book until after the State of Israel started to become a reality. The use of the term Palestinian for the country’s Arabs began in the early 1960’s as Arab leaders sought to create a unified identity. However, it does not appear that there was any serious nationalistic movement until the Six-Day War of 1967. Even then the primary goal of the Arabs was terrorism aimed at the destruction of Israel rather than the recovery of a homeland, since the territories captured by the Israelis in that conflict were not theirs but those of Egypt (Gaza Strip), Syria (Golan Heights), and Jordan (West Bank).

The term Palestinian(s) does not appear in the fundational documents related to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflicts of the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War (Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338). Such an omission tells us that at that time, the Arabs described in these resolutions were not thought of as Palestinians. The usage of the term became more proeminent in the mid 1970’s when it became politically expedient for the PLO to apply the term Palestinian to hte Arab population in exclusion of the Jews. The PLO leadership realized that it would be much better to describe their effort to destroy Israel as a struggle for freedom rather than as a pan-Arabic effort. Since the formation of the Palestinian Authority in 1993, the Israeli-Arabs, in a show of solidarity, have also changed their identity and adopted the name of Palestinians.
Since that time, the term has been used to refer exclusively to the Arabs residents of the West Bank and has become commonly accepted through its use by the international media.

What Is the Origin of the Modern Palestinians?
The Palestine of modern history began in the late nineteenth century, in the dying years of the Ottoman Empire, wich had ruled the region for some 400 years as part of Greater Syria. The Ottomans had not sought to colonize the country; rather, they had focused their attention only in Jerusalem for bureaucratic purposes, abandoning the rest of the land to desolation. The feudal system that had existed for hundreds of years maintained agricultural farms along the fertile Coastal Plain, employing poor tenant farmers or imported workers.

Starting about 1878, harsh conditions forced many groups to immigrate into Palestine, where work was available. According to historical surveys, these migrant workers, from wich the Palestinians of today are descendend, came form many nationalisties: “Balkans, Greeks, Syrians, Latins, Egyptians, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Kurds, Germans, Afghans, Druzes, Circassians, Bosnians, Sudaneese, Samaritans, Algerians, Motawila, Tartars, Hungarians, Scots, Navarese, Bretons, English, Franks, Ruthenians, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Persian Nestorians, Indians, Copts, Maronites, and many others”. Of the 141,000 mostly Turkish muslims settled in the land in 1882, at least 25% (35,280) were newcomers. This local element (mostly from non-Arab countries) working for the foreign-based landowners constituted the “Palestinian” poplation.

Palestinian nationalism, or the desire for a governement and an independent Palestinians state, was non existent. Even though Palestine had been under islamic rule intermittently for 1,174 years, no feelings or bent toward nationalism had ever been recorded on the part of its Arab population. On the contrary, muslim Arabs felt more united with their co-religionists in other countries than with the Jewish and Christians inhabitants of the land they occupied. The religious centers of Islam lay far to the east in Mecca and Medina , and while early muslims had sought to reduce the formidable influence of Christian culture, no attempt had been made to erase the ancient and national Jewish connections with the Land, and especially with Jerusalem. In fact, Jews were recognized as the ancients inhabitants of the land, in keeping with the accountts of biblical history found in the Qur’an.

This continued to be the case largely throughout the entire period of the muslim domination. But, in the last half of the nineteenth century, with the openings of the Middle East to Western travelers and Christian missionaries as well as Europe’s intellectual and cultural influence among younger Arabs, a minority of these people began to seek educational, economic and national independence. However, this independence was sought not form “zionists occupiers”, but from the Ottoman Turkish Muslim overlords!

This nationalistic ideology raised questions about what constitutes a nation and its boundaries. In the debates that ensued, there is no evidence that this Arabs seeking national independence ever thought of themselves as Palestinians. In fact, Daniel Pipes, a writer for the Middle East Forum, says this:

"Some said the residents of the levant are a nation; others said Eastern Arabic speakers; or all arabic speakers, or all Moslems. But no one suggested “Palestinians”, and for a good reason. Palestine, then a secular way of saying ‘Eretz Yisra’el or Terra Sancta, embodied a purely Jewish and Christian concept, one utterly foreign to Moslems, even repugnant to them... Instead, Moslems west of the Jordan directed their allegiance to Damascus, where the great-great uncle
of Jordan’s King Abdullah II was then rulling; they identified themselves as Southern Syrians."

At the march 1919 Paris Peace Conference an agreement that promoted the development of a Jewish homeland was signed between Zionist leader Chaim Weizman and Arab leader Emir Faisal. The language of this document spoke of “the Arab state and Palestine”, clearly reflecting the understanding that Palestine was part pf the Middle East designated for the Jewish homeland and separate from the part claimed by Arabs. However, a different opinion had been expressed a month earlier in february, before the conference convened in Paris. At the First Congress of the Muslim-Christian Association, which had met in Jerusalem to choose its representatives for the peace conference, the following resolution was adopted: “We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national , religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds”. Nevertheless, both opinions indicate that Arabs did not view Palestine as having an independent Arab status.

This thinking changed the next year when the British began to delineate Palestine and the French overthrew the Hashemite king Amin Husseini, thereby abolishing the notion of a Southern Syria. Isolated by these events, the Muslims of Palestine had to make the best of a bad situation . A proeminent Jerusalemite declared at the time, “after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine”. To what extent this thinking may have been shared by other Arabs is unclear, but when the Peel Commission in 1936 proposed the partition of Palestine, another local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the commission: “There is no such country [as Palestine]! Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Palestine is an alien to us; it is the Zionists who introduced it. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”

Despite such denials , a non-Jewish Palestine did not exist at the time, having been created by the British in 1922 when they separated the land east of the Jordan (which now comprises the present-day country of Jordan). Indeed, a majority of Jordan’s population are Palestinian, and most of the palestinian-Arabs in the West Bank hold Jordanian passports. Even though this “Palestine” has been said to have ceased to exist as an entity when the State of Israel and the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan were established, there had remained among Arabs a recognition that Jordan was the Palestinian state. For example, in interviews with the Arab press in 1981 and 1984, the late King Hussein (grandson of Abdullah) stated: “The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan”. Yasser Arafat has stated the same thing: “What you call Jordan is actually Palestine”. Also, the war between Arafat’s PLO (when resident in Jordan) and the Jordanian government was considered a “civil war”.

Today, however, the Palestinians demand for international recognition as a distinct people who can receive foreign diplomats, fly the palestinian flag, elect Yasser Arafat as president, and claim Jerusalem as its capital – all actions of an independent state – have served to create a “fact” from fiction. This Arab nationalism began only in the early twentieth century, and then only in in reaction to the dominant Turkish rule, not Jewish immigration. It wasn’t until the establishment of the State of Israel ( and increasingly so since the 1967 Six-Day War and the Oslo Agreement of 1993) that palestinian-Arabs have claimed the land as their historic homeland and themselves as people distinct form other Arab peoples. Researcher Roger David Carasso is to the point when he explains the purpose of such palestinian revisionism:

"The Arabs learned their disinformation tactic from the Nazis: if you lie long enough, and loud enough, people will actually believe you. As a result, most people now believe there is something called “palestinian” people, a total fabrication, complete with a phony history and a phony culture. There is only one truth here, that are 1.75 million people, a hodgepodge of Arabs and Turks, intentionally or maybe unwittingly, masquerading as a “people”, and made into “people” by the PLO and many in the world community who relished attacking the Jews in yet another novel way"

The Lie About the "palestinian people" and "palestinian land"

“The Palestinian people does not [sic] exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.”
PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein to a Dutch newspaper in 1977

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."
PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977, interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw.

“From the end of the Jewish State in antiquity to the beginning of the British rule, the area now designated by the name of Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries.”
Bernard Lewis, Professor of History, Princeton University

“The Arabs learned their disinformation tactic from the Nazis: if you lie long enough, and loud enough, people will actually believe you. As a result, most people now believe there is something called “palestinian” people, a total fabrication, complete with a phony history and a phony culture. There is only one truth here, that are 1.75 million people, a hodgepodge of Arabs and Turks, intentionally or maybe unwittingly, masquerading as a “people”, and made into “people” by the PLO and many in the world community who relished attacking the Jews in yet another novel way”
Researcher Roger Carasso and the “palestinian” revisionism

"It should be remembered that in 1918, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France were handed 5,000,000 square miles to divvy up and 99+% was given to the Arabs to create countries that did not exist previously. 1% was given as a Mandate for the re-establishment of a state for the Jews on both banks of the Jordan River. In 1921, to once again appease the Arabs, another three quarters of that 1% was given to a fictitious state called Trans-Jordan."
Jack Berger, May 31, 2004

"The Palestine Mandate was not created on land taken from the Syrians or the Arabs. It was taken from the Turks. It was not taken from the Turks by the Jews, but by the British and the French. They took it because Turkey sided with Germany in the First World War and, of course, lost. The Turkish empire had ruled the entire region including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan for four hundred years before Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were artificially created by the English and the French. Jordan -- a state whose majority is Palestinian -- occupies 80% of the Palestine Mandate. So it is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews."
David Horowitz, Front Page Magazine, December 14, 2006


Who Are the Palestinians?
According to a recent census released by Central Bureau of Statistics, nearly three million palestinians live in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. These palestinians claim to be the descendants of the ancient natives of Palestine. Furthermore, they declare that they and millions more of their palestinian descendants, scattered as refugees throughout the Middle East and living in other countries of the world, are engaged in a national struggle for sovereignty in their historic homeland. In addition, the radical islamic terrorists have championed this same cause and declared that there will be no peace for the West until palestinians achieve their objectives. But what are the facts behind these claims? What is the actual origin of this people who have gained such proeminence that their demand for national recognition and right of returnis said to be at the center of the Middle East conflict and the deciding factor and the war on terrorism?

What Is the Origin of the Name Palestinian?
The term Palestinian is thought to have been derived form the greek and latin words for one of the chief enemies of the Israelites – the Philistines (Greek Palaistine, Latin Palaestina, for Hebrew Plishtim). The Philistine kingdom of Philistia occupied the narrow strip of coastal plain between modern Gaza and Joppa from thirteenth to seventh centuries B.c. Indeed, the word Palestine appears in the King James version of the Bible with reference to this region (Joel 3:4). However, more modern versions use the term Philistia.

David Jacobson, an instructor at the University College of London on Jews and the classical world, believes tat Palestine may have originated as a Greek pun on the translation of “Israel” and “land of the Philistines”. He observes that the Greek and Latin terms frequently appear in ancient literature with reference not to the land of Philistines, but to the land of Israel. For example, Herodotus (circa 450 B.c.), reputed to be the father of history, recorded that the people of Palestine were cincumcised, a distinction of the Israelites, not Philistines (who were uncircumcised). Likewise, Aristotle (fourth centure B.c.) observed in his writings that the Dead Sea was in Palestine (a geographical setting in Israel far to the east of Philistine territory). And Philo of Alexandria (first century A.c) indentified Palaistinei with biblical Canaan and remarked that “palestinian Syria was occupied by the populous nation of the Jews”.

Furthermore, if Palestine was derived from Philistine, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Septuagint (circa 250 B.c.), should have translated the Hebrew word “Plishtim” (Philistine) by the well-known Greek term Palaistinoi (Palestine). However, the translator chose the Greek transliteration Philistieim (revealing by the plural ending IM, a term of Hebrew origin). Jacobson argues that the Greek word Palaistine is quite close to the Greek word Palaistes, wich means “wrestler”, “rival” or “adversary”. This is the very meaning of the Hebrew word Yisra’el (Israel), based on Genesis 32:25-17, in wich Jacob received the name Israel because he “wrestled” (Hebrew sarita) with “God” (Hebrew El).

To the Greeks, who liked to use wordplays, the word Palestine would have sounded both like the people of Israel, who were thought to be the descendants of a hero who wrestled with a god, and the Philistines, who lived in adjacent coast. The first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus , who wrote in Greek, supports this general usage by referring to both the land of the Philistines and the much larger Land of Israel as “Palestine”. However, he also distinguished the Land of Israel by this term when he wrote of “the events that befell us Jews in Egypt, in Syria and in Palestine”.

The use of the term Palestine in identification with the Land of Israel officialy took root when the Roman emperor Hadrian renamed the country Syria Palaestina. It is often thought that Hadrian did this to punish the Jews for their revolt adainst Roman rule (the Bar-Kokhba Revolt of A.d. 132-135), for by removing their name for their country, the historic connection with their homeland would be severed. However, since the first-century Jewish writers Philo and Josephus had already used this term in Greek for Israel, and Roman writers continued this practice. Hadrian may have simply codified the ancient and accepted usage. Nevertheless, the designation Palaestina appears to habve been applied particularly to Judea, at the center of wich was the capital city of Jerusalem.
Hadrian’s attack was clearly leveled against Jerusalem, wich he considered the heart of the rebellion. It was from this city he expelled the Jewish population and renamed it Aelia Capitolina (in honor of his own family name Aelia and the gods on Rome’s Capitol Hill). To obscure the Jewish religion of the city, he plowed under the site of the Temple Mount and erected within it pagan temples and shrines. In this way Hadrian symbolically sought to remove the Jewish past and build a new and revised Roman future.

Even tough Romans attempted to sever a connection between Palestine and the Jewish people, Palestine remaied identified with Israel as a place of promise “so that in later times the words Judea and Palestine were synonymous”. Therefore, in general sense, the name Palestine has moreof a historical link with the land of the people of Israel – the Jews – and in a restricted sense, also with the Philistines. In addiction, the later application to Judea and Jerusalem may well have arisen from an attempt by the Roman enemies of the Jews to revise their historical origins.

Who in Palestine Was Called a Palestinian?
Greek and Roman writers used the terms Palestine and Palestinian to refer to the land of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants. As we have seen, early secular writers such as Herodotus and Aristotle had used these terms in this way, as had first-century Jewish writers such as Philo and Josephus. In the early first century A.D.the Roman poet Ovid decribed Jewish Sabbath observance with the words “the seventh-day feast that the Syrian of Palestine observes”. Other Latin authors, such as the poet Statius and the historian Dio Chrysostom, also spoke of the Jews as Palestinians and the Jewish homeland as Palestine.
Likewise, in Talmudic literature (third century A.D.), Palestine is used as the name of a Roman province adjoining the provinces of Phoenicia and Arabia (i.e, the Land of Israel).
In the fourth century A.D. the three provinces into which the Land of Israel had been divided were referred to as first, second and third Palestine. But the term Plestine seems to have disappeared completely after the Muslim conquest of A.d. 638. In fact, Palestine never appears in the Qur’an, wich refers to the area as simply “the holy land”(Al-Arad Al-Muqaddash). In like manner, Jerusalem is not mentioned in the Qur’an , and Arab historians variously referred to it as Iliya (adapted from the Latin Aelia), Bayt Maqdis (adapted from the the Hebrew Beit Hamiqdash, “the Holy House” or “the Temple”) or finally as Al-Quds (the holy one).

The crusaders renewed the use of the three Palestines, however, after the fall of the Crusader kingdom, the name Palestine was no longer used officially, but was preserved only by Christians cartographers in maps drawn in their native lands. From the establishment of islamic rule over the land until the late nineteenth century, inhabitants of the region between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean appear to have referred to themselves primarily with respect to to their religions (mohammedan, Christians and Jews)

The first modern use of the term Palestinian appears during the time of the British Mandate (1917-1948). To the classicaly trained British mind the Land of Israel had ceased to exist in ancient times; and Palestine had endured in the classical literature as the designations of the Jewish homeland and heritage. This may be seen , for example, in the Jewish Encyclopedia (published in London 1905), which states that Palestine is “the portion of Syria that was formerlythe possession of the Israelites”. Given the British penchant for historical accuracy, the term is applied witrh reference tothe Jewish residents of the country . Therefore, the standard British reference for defining terms, the Oxford English Dictionary, defines the term Palestinian as 1) “the Jews who returned to Israel from Moscow” and 2) “Jews from Israel who voluntereed to he British army to fight Germany”. In fact, Jewish soldiers serving with the Allies during World War II had the word Palestine inscribed in the soulder badges.

In addiction, under the British mandate, the Jewish owned newspaper Jerusalem Post was known as the Palestine Post and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was called Palestine Philharmonica Orchestra, and postage stamps were issued bearing the apellation “Palestine - EI”, the abbreviation EI meaning Erets Israel (Hebrew for “the land of Israel”).
These usages makes clear that even though the term Palestinian could have also been applied to Arabs or many other ethnic groups (such as the Armenians, Greeks, Syrians and Ethiopians pf Jerusalem’s Old City or the German Templars of its New City), under British rule, the term was especially understood to refer to a Jew from Palestine.

The "palestinians"

The Arabs who now claim to be natives of the Holy Land have migrated to Palestine and invaded the land after 1917, from neighboring Arab countries mainly from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

The family names of many Arabs who now occupy the Holy Land reveal their country of origin: Masri (from Egypt ), Iraqi (from Iraq), Tarabulsi (from Tarabulus-Tripoli in Lebanon), Hourani (from Houran in Syria), Husseini (from Jordan), and Saudi (from Saudi Arabia).

Even Yassir Arafat, the leader of the PLO, was not a native of the Holy Land. He called himself a "Palestinian refugee" but spoke an Egyptian dialect. He was born in 1929 in Cairo, Egypt. He served in the Egyptian army, studied in the University of Cairo, and lived in Cairo until 1956...

Obama’s Victimization of Jewish Refugees from Muslim Countries

One of the unreported aspects of Obama’s manufactured insult over an Israeli housing project in Jerusalem is the way in which the administration has targeted Jewish refugees from Muslim countries.

While media reports frequently denounced Interior Minister Eli Yishai, as a “Right Wing Extremist”, for approving one stage of the planned housing project—what they did not report was the larger story. Eli Yishai is the head of the Shas party, one of Israel’s largest political parties, which represents the interests of Sefardi and Mizrahi Jews from Muslim countries. And the housing project would have benefited Jerusalem’s sizable population of Jews from Muslim countries.

In the 20th century a vast exodus took place in which as many as a million Jews from Muslim countries fled or otherwise departed, often leaving behind homes and valuables. Some came to America and Europe. Many more came to Israel instead. Today three million Mizrahi Jews live in Israel, indeed the majority of Israeli Jews are not the “immigrants from Brooklyn” derisively referred to by Israel-bashing pundits, but Jews whose families came to Israel from Muslim countries, or who spent many centuries living in Jerusalem under Muslim dominion.

They came from Yemen, Turkey, Libya, Syria, Morocco, Iran, Egypt, Iraq and Algeria. Some were driven out by enraged Muslim mobs. Others had their children stolen and their property seized by the government. Others remained behind “sand curtains”, unable to leave. The ways in which some of these Jews were smuggled out of the country through a virtual “Underground Railroad” is unknown to most. And this is a story that continues today.

Consider the story of one woman who successfully helped smuggle out thousands of Syrian Jews by bribing Syrian government officials. And though she describes the work in terms of the Holocaust, “How do you negotiate the price of human lives? I was breaking up children from their parents. It was like the 1940s – they were desperate to get their children out”, in fact the last family she saved was in 2001.

They left behind life in Muslim countries where they were Dhimmis, legally treated as second class citizens under Islamic law

This is what a million Jews from Muslim countries escaped to begin their lives again in Israel. They left behind life in Muslim countries where they were Dhimmis, legally treated as second class citizens under Islamic law. They thought that they had turned their backs on a state of affairs where Muslims could dictate that synagogues should be built no taller than mosques, where their lives were worth less than a Muslim’s and were paid for with blood money and forced to live in ghettos. That is until Obama decided to be gravely insulted because they had decided to live in a place that he thought they had no right to live.

Some commentators have speculated that Obama’s goal by manufacturing the “insult” scandal, was to force Shas out of the government coalition, thereby disenfranchising the millions of Jews from Muslim countries living in Israel. Apologists for Obama have cloaked this in the guise of some sort of campaign against the “right wing”, but Shas, which has been part of coalitions with the Labor Party, including Yitzchak Rabin, is hardly right wing. It voted for the Oslo Peace Accords. It has been fairly open to all sorts of concessions. But its political leader Eli Yishai drew the line at turning portions of Jerusalem into a Jewish Ghetto, while reserving the remainder of the city for Arab Muslims.

And let us consider for a moment, Eli Yishai. Like so many other children of Jewish refugees from Muslim countries, Yishai was born in Jerusalem. His father, Zion Yishai, however came from Muslim Tunisia. Jews have lived in Tunisia for over 2,500 years. But where they once numbered in the hundreds of thousands, today there are hardly a thousand Jews left. The majority of Tunisian Jews now live in Israel and Europe.

The introduction of Tunisian Jews to Islam began under Idriss I, a direct descendant of Mohammed himself. Idriss I persecuted and massacred the Jews, demanding that they pay Jizya and deliver a certain number of virgins annually to his harem. And thus Idriss I showed himself to be a true greedy and perverted descendant of Mohammed. Several years later Idriss I was fatally poisoned by his Jewish doctor. But despite this coda, as the centuries passed, the discrimination and persecution of the Jews of Tunisia continued.

In the 15th century a Flemish nobleman wrote as follows; “The Jews, on the other hand, have no freedom. They must all pay a heavy ... tax. They wear special clothes, different from those of the Moors. If they did not do so, they would be stoned, and they therefore put a yellow cloth on their heads or necks; their women dare not even wear shoes.”

Tunisian Jews were forced to live in ghettos called “Haras”, subject to Muslim riots and atrocities. One in 1864 was described as follows, “Muslim fanaticism ... unleashed against our brethren on the island of Djerba… synagogues profaned and defiled. The Scrolls ... torn in pieces and burnt ... men injured and trampled ... all the women and girls raped .... My pen refuses to set down the terrifying ... atrocities ... in all [their] horror.”

In 1869, the rabbis and leaders of the community of Tunis appealed desperately to the government in Paris that “in the face of Muslim ferocity, eighteen Jews have fallen to the knives of the fanatical murderers.

Tunisian independence, celebrated by liberals as the end of colonialism, opened the door to a renewed wave of Muslim anti-Jewish violence. Today of the 105,000 Jews that lived in Tunisia in 1948, barely a thousand remain. This brief recitation of history is important because it is a reminder of what so many of the millions of Mizrahi Jews of Israel and their fathers and grandfathers suffered. And those liberals who cynically condemn Eli Yishai as a “right winger” because his party would like to provide housing for Jews in Jerusalem, rather than returning to the Tunisian ghettos are cynically exploiting the real victims of Islamic colonialism.

Obama and those in the EU who are striving to turn Jerusalem into another ghetto with areas where Jews may live and areas where they may not live, are once again inflicting the horrors of Islamic Occupation on the Jews who fled from it. It is of course understandable that Obama would sympathize with Muslims over non-Muslims due to his own extensive Muslim heritage, a fact he himself emphasized in a speech at Al Azhar Islamic University. But where Obama might have chosen to redeem his ancestors’ religion by showing tolerance to the Jewish refugees whom his family’s co-religionists had persecuted for over a thousand years, he instead chose to perpetuate their legacy of oppression by manufacturing a scandal over the “insult”. The insult being that Jewish refugees and the descendants of Jewish refugees might have actually been able to live in their ancient city in homes built on empty land. And as a result Muslim anti-Jewish riots have broken out in Jerusalem, that bear some resemblance to those in Tunisia.

“I think that the Arabs want to control the whole world. That is obvious; after all, it is written in their Koran. Furthermore, you can’t trust them. For instance, my parents were their neighbors in Yemen. When my parents decided to immigrate to Israel, the Arabs tried to rob them of their possessions.” So speaks Avraham Yitzhaki, one of the original residents of the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood.

The Shas party meanwhile has promised to use Obama’s attacks in their own campaign commercial and their newspaper answered Barack Hussein Obama even more bluntly in its weekly newspaper, describing Obama as “a Palestinian stone throwing youth in East Jerusalem, and not a strategic leader” and his actions as, “a creative solution coming from an Islamic extremist”. The editorial concluded, “Today it is here, but tomorrow it will be in the U.S. and Europe”

Pallywood, el documental completo (en español)

Pallywood es un documental que muestra cómo los territorios palestinos se convierten en auténticos estudios de cine para fabricar la propaganda anti-israelí que vemos cada día en los medios. En primicia en España, dentro de Documentalia, el nuevo espacio de documentales presentado por Fernando Díaz Villanueva en Libertad Digital Televisión.

Israel a favor de Israel

www.heitordepaola.com

Tivesse ele (Demétrio Magnoli) conhecimento de que enquanto fingiam aceitar o acordo em todas as línguas ocidentais, em árabe as 'autoridades palestinas' diziam claramente que o único acordo aceitável para os 'palestinos' é a destruição do que chamam de 'entidade sionista'.

"Existe algo de muito errado com a cabeça de uma pessoa que se preocupa muito mais com um judeu que constrói uma casa em Israel do que com um muçulmano que constrói uma bomba atômica no Irã."
Bert Perlotzky

Perlotzky se referia a Obama, mas em terra brasilis temos algo pior: Lula, 'o que está convencido que nasceu com o vírus da paz' e Demétrio Magnoli, que está convencido que se convenceu em estratego. O vírus do Lula está se espalhando rapidamente! Vírus estranho este, que fala em paz e recebe com honras - e retribuirá - a visita de um candidato a genocida que nega o Holocausto nazista provavelmente porque quer perpetrar ele mesmo o maior dos Holocaustos. Lula se nega a visitar o túmulo do fundador do sionismo, um homem de paz, que jamais matou ou mandou explodir ninguém e, em contrapartida, visita o do Arafat, um terrorista, assassino, ladrão e pervertido que estimulava crianças e adolescentes a se prepararem para explodir o próprio corpo para matar judeus.

Pois agora vem Magnoli dizer (Israel contra Israel, O Globo, 1° de abril de 2010) que o maior problema de Israel é... Israel! Que gênio em estratégia! O maior inimigo de Israel não é Ahmadinedjad, nem são os terroristas palestinos, muito menos os mísseis que caem no Sul do País diariamente, nem mesmo o anti-semitismo que renasce feroz sob a forma de anti-sionismo. Nada disto, é Benjamim Netanyahu! Enquanto os mísseis enviados da Faixa de Gaza caem, o que faz Bibi? Oh, que horror, constrói casas!

Inicialmente o novel estratego diz que a construção de casas é uma sabotagem das negociações de paz e que 'esta estratégia inflexível atinge interesses vitais dos EUA, no chamado Grande Oriente Médio'. Sim, e daí? Por que razão Israel deveria colocar os 'interesses vitais' dos EUA acima dos seus próprios? Talvez porque os EUA sejam os maiores aliados de Israel? Certamente o são, mas é uma aliança bastante atribulada desde o início: com a saída dos britânicos da região o Governo Provisório de Ben Gurion pediu reconhecimento internacional e acenou com a partilha do território. Truman era favorável e garantiu isto a Chaim Weizman, enquanto o Departamento de Estado, contrariando a palavra do Presidente, votava a favor da entrega do território à custódia da ONU. Segundo Richard Holbrooke (Washington's Battle Over Israel's Birth) esta controvérsia não se deu apenas por considerações de interesses estratégicos, mas 'sob a superfície existia um anti-semitismo silencioso por parte de alguns planejadores da política externa americana' como possivelmente George C. Marshall. Desde então a política americana em relação a Israel permaneceu dúbia, ora pendendo para o lobby da comunidade judaica americana, ora para o poderosíssimo lobby saudita.

Mas Demétrio não para por aí. Diz textualmente: 'Hoje, a persistência do governo israelense ameaça destruir os fundamentos políticos sobre os quais repousa o próprio Estado de Israel'. Aparentemente estes fundamentos seriam três, dos quais Israel só pode ter dois: 'Israel não pode ter três coisas simultaneamente: 1) um Estado judeu 2) um Estado democrático 3) um Estado que exerce soberania sobre toda a Palestina histórica. Só é possível ter duas dessas coisas, em qualquer combinação'.

Quanto ao item 2, Demétrio parece defender duas coisas opostas ao mesmo tempo: aparentemente defende um estado democrático, mas simultaneamente diz que as escolhas absolutamente democráticas do povo israelense - no momento o Likud - não devem ser respeitadas, a não ser que escolham quem o Magnoli acredita que seria a escolha certa.

Pois eu afirmo o contrário: Israel pode ter as três! Talvez o mais difícil seja combinar as duas primeiras: um estado Judeu e democrático. E nem estou falando da população árabe com cidadania israelense que cresce exponencialmente, mas dos próprios judeus tão divididos entre religiosos e não religiosos e estes últimos entre ortodoxos e não ortodoxos. Felizmente é assim, diferentemente dos países islâmicos que, seguindo o Corão à risca, não podem admitir a democracia e muito menos a liberdade de pensar e de expressão. Se os judeus forem deixados por sua própria conta certamente saberão dar um jeito disto - ou continuarão brigando pelo resto da eternidade - e isto não é da conta de ninguém mais! Finalmente, um povo tão desunido que permanece unido por fortes tradições há quase 6.000 anos não precisa de conselhos de Lulas, Obamas ou Magnólis para seguirem levando suas vidas.

O problema está no item 3: de que 'palestina histórica' está falando Magnoli? Por que o grande estrategista não se informa primeiro qual seria 'um acordo aceitável para os palestinos'? Melhor: quem são os 'palestinos'? Uma pequena lição de história mostraria que a partilha foi proposta pelo Governo Provisório, mas foram os Estados Árabes que advertiram que, assim que se estabelecesse um Estado Judeu a luta, que já corria solta, irromperia numa guerra em escala total. Nem se falava em 'palestinos' naquela época, povo que foi inventado mais tarde com o nome dado pelos Romanos àquela província da Síria e ressuscitado pelos ingleses quando da derrota do Império Otomano. Os acordos de 'paz', além de outras ignomínias, entregaram toda aquela região ao 'protetorado' franco-britânico - na verdade às empresas petrolíferas ocidentais, inclusive americanas - por puros interesses comerciais no rico 'ouro negro'. Hoje França e Inglaterra defendem hipocritamente o 'nacionalismo árabe'. Em meu artigo Auschwitz conto parte desta história macabra. O grande poder do lobby saudita vem daí e foi reforçado no segundo pós-guerra.

Baseado na falsa existência de uma 'palestina histórica', toda sua argumentação desvia-se completamente da realidade e nem precisaria ser contestada.

Magnoli parece ser favorável à hipótese de 'um estado democrático no território integral da palestina histórica' que redundaria na 'renúncia à natureza judaica de Israel'. 'Neste horizonte extinguir-se-ia historicamente o sionismo, doutrina na qual se condensou o moderno nacionalismo judaico'. Ao defender os Acordos de Oslo já mortos e sepultados, Magnoli atribui a culpa a Israel: 'A paz, proclamada como intenção, converteu-se num amargo eufemismo para a ocupação, a colonização, a humilhação e a despossessão. Sob o impacto do eufemismo desmancha-se a liderança nacionalista palestina comprometida com a meta da partilha'.

Tivesse ele conhecimento de que enquanto fingiam aceitar o acordo em todas as línguas ocidentais, em árabe as 'autoridades palestinas' diziam claramente que o único acordo aceitável para os 'palestinos' é a destruição do que chamam de 'entidade sionista'. Enquanto falam peace, em árabe falam hudna, trégua temporária para se reforçar e atacar com mais ímpeto.

O único objetivo que move as esquerdistas antijudaicas, inclusive dentro de Israel, é o fim do sionismo! E isto é o que Lula deixou claro que é a determinação da diplomacia brasileira ao recusar-se a visitar o túmulo de Theodor Herzl.

Hamas: In Their Own Voices