Debunking "Palestinian" History That's Bunk: The propaganda war à outrance

"Made in Palestine"

At left is a 2011 Christmas card from one of those anti-Israel NGOs that (as I mentioned in a post last year) push the notion that Jesus was a Palestinian.  The card was pinkish last year; in its current guise it's green, and well it might be, since it's the green who are destined to be taken in.

This offensive characterisation of Jesus the Jew from Judea has caught on in Israel-demonising circles that really should know better, one Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch (composed of women of a certain age and which has concocted a petition calling on David Cameron to apologise for the Balfour Declaration), for example, tweeting unashamedly in November:

 "Think PALESTINE (Christ came from there) for Christmas!"

In the battle for hearts and minds history is a vital tool, as the people formerly content to be known as Arabs know all too well.

As Avi Goldreich has pointed out, the Latin-language book Palestina (1699) by Dutch orientalist Adriaan Relandi (1679-1718), who visited Eretz Yisrael a few years earlier, found that:

'1. Not one settlement in the Land of Israel has a name that is of Arabic origin.... In fact, till today, except to Ramlah, not one Arabic settlement has an original Arabic name. Till today, most of the settlements names are of Hebrew or Greek origin, the names distorted to senseless Arabic names. There is no meaning in Arabic to names such as Acco (Acre), Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza, or Jenin and towns named Ramallah, El Halil and El-Kuds (Jerusalem) lack historical roots or Arabic philology. In 1696, the year Relandi toured the land, Ramallah, for instance, was called Bet'allah (From the Hebrew name Beit El) and Hebron was called Hebron (Hevron) and the Arabs called Mearat HaMachpelah El Chalil, their name for the Forefather Abraham.

 2. Most of the land was empty, desolate, and the inhabitants few in number and mostly concentrate in the towns Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Christians. There were few Muslims, mostly nomad Bedouins. Nablus, known as Shchem, was exceptional, where approximately 120 people, members of the Muslim Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites, lived.

 In the Galilee capital, Nazareth, lived approximately 700 Christians and in Jerusalem approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians.

The interesting part was that Relandi mentioned the Muslims as nomad Bedouins who arrived in the area as construction and agriculture labor reinforcement, seasonal workers.

In Gaza for example, lived approximately 550 people, fifty percent Jews and the rest mostly Christians. The Jews grew and worked in their flourishing vineyards, olive tree orchards and wheat fields (remember Gush Katif?) and the Christians worked in commerce and transportation of produce and goods. Tiberius and Tzfat were mostly Jewish and except of mentioning fishermen fishing in Lake Kinneret -- the Lake of Galilee -- a traditional Tiberius occupation, there is no mention of their occupations. A town like Um el-Phahem was a village where ten families, approximately fifty people in total, all Christian, lived and there was also a small Maronite church in the village (The Shehadah family).

3. The book totally contradicts any post-modern theory claiming a "Palestinian heritage," or Palestinian nation. The book strengthens the connection, relevance, pertinence, kinship of the Land of Israel to the Jews and the absolute lack of belonging to the Arabs, who robbed the Latin name Palestina and took it as their own.... No names of towns, no culture, no art, no history, and no evidence of Arabic rule; only huge robbery, pillaging and looting; stealing the Jews' holiest place, robbing the Jews of their Promised Land. Lately, under the auspices of all kind of post modern Israelis -- also hijacking and robbing us of our Jewish history.'

Yet, as Israel Matsav observes, 'Ironically, outrageously, UNESCO has just supported the “Palestinian” right to bar Jews from placing the Machpelah on Israel's Heritage Site list, the place where our Jewish ancestors are buried.'  (Hat tip: reader Shirlee)

A map of Eretz Yisrael in the Amsterdam Haggadah published in 1695

In his latest article (entitled "Palestine – Time To Tell The Truth") via the antipodean J-Wire service, the Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer also pursues the theme of history – and invented history.

Writes David Singer:  

'Republican front runner for next President of the United States – Newt Gingrich – has done himself and his campaign great credit in branding the Palestinians as an invented nation.Gingrich stirred up a real hornets’ nest when he said in an interview with the Jewish Television Network:

 "Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire.

 I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic."

Gingrich has subsequently refused to back down and has now gone even further in stating:

"The fact is, the Palestinian claim to a right of return is based on a historically false story. Somebody oughta have the courage to go all the way back to the 1921 League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland, point out the context in which Israel came into existence, and Palestinian did not become a common term until after 1977. This is a propaganda war in which our side refuses to engage. And we refuse to tell the truth when the other side lies. And you’re not gonna win the long run if you’re afraid to stand firm and stand for the truth.

This propaganda war has been successfully waged by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)  since its creation by the KGB in 1964."

Ion Mihai Pacepa, former acting chief of Communist Romania’s espionage service in an interview with Front Page Magazine on 1 March 2004 spilt the beans on the PLO and its connection to the Soviet regime when he said:

"The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Then there was the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created by the KGB in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro, which was soon deeply involved in kidnappings, hijackings, bombings and guerrilla warfare. In later years the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks on the 'Palestinian territories' occupied by Israel, and the “Secret Army for Liberation of Armenia,” created by the KGB in 1975, which organized numerous bombing attacks against US airline offices in Western Europe."

In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter—a document that had been drafted in Moscow.

The language used in the 1964 version of the PLO Charter was slick –  designed to establish that “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians”. Who could possibly disagree with that motherhood statement – especially if it was repeated ad nauseum?

Hijacker Leila Khaled

The problem was that the Charter’s definition of "Palestinians" included only the Arab residents of former Palestine and a limited number of Jews.

Article 6. The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian parent after this date whether in Palestine or outside is a Palestinian.

Article 7. Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine.

It didn’t take long for this gratuitous acceptance of some Jews to virtually vanish when the 1968 edition of the Charter declared:

"The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians."

Non-Arab Christians and non-believer residents of former Palestine were totally rejected as being Palestinians. Their descendants as well as the descendants of any of the Jews who had lived in Palestine since the beginning of the Zionist invasion were persona non grata in their homeland of their birth..

If that seems like racism,smells like racism and is still contained in the PLO Charter today – then it is racism.

Article 24 in the 1964 version of the Charter also excluded any claim by the Palestinians to the West Bank and Gaza – and by inference to Jordan – which together had comprised about 80% of former Palestine

This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or the Himmah Area.

This article was subsequently deleted from the Charter following Jordan’s loss of the West Bank and Egypt’s loss of Gaza in the Six Day War in 1967.

The significance of that deletion – and indeed the invention of the Palestinians in 1964 – was underscored when the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Zuhair Mohsen told the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel 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.

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."

Total rejection of international law by the Palestinians was also part and parcel of this invented nation – since the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1946 had already recognized the legitimate right of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in Palestine whilst the United Nations had admitted Israel as a member on 11 May 1949.

Article 17 of the 1964 Charter expressed this view in the following manner:

"The Partitioning of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of Israel are illegal and false regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the wish of the Palestine people and its natural right to its homeland, and in violation of the basic principles embodied in the charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination."

By 1968 Article 17 had been excised and replaced by Article 20 which declared:

"The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong."

Gingrich’s statements are indeed the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The PLO has seen its propaganda campaign succeed to a stage where “Palestine” has been admitted as a member “state” of UNESCO in apparent contravention of the UNESCO Constitution, the Montevideo Convention and customary international law.

The PLO’s stated intention of liberating and replacing both Israel and Jordan in the United Nations as its192nd member still remains unrevoked in the PLO Charter.

Seventeen years of fruitless PLO negotiations with Israel have now been virtually abandoned – with the two-state solution envisaged by the Oslo Accords and advocated by President Bush in his Roadmap now in its death throes.

Gingrich’s message to the PLO is clear – return to the negotiating table and hammer out a deal with Israel or face the consequences if this has not happened and Gingrich becomes America’s next president.

The PLO cannot say it was not warned.'