Watching a news coverage on the ongoing Israeli-Palestine skirmish in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank confirms to me that nowhere else in my experience is the truth about Israel as willfully subverted, and the myth about Palestine as gleefully perpetuated, as in the liberal media. Here are the historical facts: the modern State of Israel is directly connected to biblical Israel, the land which God covenanted to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (the father of the Jews, later re-named Israel).
In AD 135, after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans (under the Roman Empire) evicted the Jews from the holy land and applied to it the name 'Palaestina' to minimise Jewish identification with the land. The name was derived from the word Philistia, so chosen to insult the Jews whose ancient enemies were the Philistines.History attests to the reality that there has never been a land known as 'Palestine' governed by Palestinians, nor has there ever been a people called Palestinians. 'Palestinians' are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc. As a matter of fact many of today's 'Palestinians' are related to Jordanians (of ancient Edom) who are descendants of Esau, the twin brother of Jacob, to whom his birthright was sold for stew. We shall see this later.
During the Turkish rule (Ottoman Empire, 1516-1917), 'Palestine' was sparsely populated, mostly by nomadic peoples. In the 1880s, in what was known as the first wave of Aliyah (Jewish immigration), Jewish leaders, moved by Theodore Herzl, formally organized the Zionist movement and called for the restoration of the Jewish National Home in 'Palestine' where Jews could have sanctuary, self-determination and the renascence of their ancient civilisation and culture.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted for Israel to be a state and, on May 14, 1948, the new flag of Israel was raised. During the Second Aliyah in the early 1900s, as the Jewish immigrants, and those expelled from Arab territories, began to develop the region, Arabs from many parts of the indigent and decaying Ottoman Empire rushed into 'Palestine' to get jobs created by the returning Jews. As mentioned above, many of these Arabs are descendants of Esau, and are therefore brothers of the Arabs who today occupy the state of Jordan.Beginning in 1914, the Middle East became embroiled in the first World War. In 1916, before Britain and France had conquered the Ottoman Empire, they set up an Anglo-French commission to submit an agreement for the post-war partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. This agreement, known as the Tripartite, effectively drew the borders of the new states of the Middle East. Most of the modern Arab states of the Middle East owe their borders to this agreement, as does Israel. Not surprisingly, no such border was drawn for a people called Palestinians.
So, the next time you watch a news report about the plight of the so-called 'Palestinians' being disenfranchised, ask yourself on what basis have they, as descendants of Arabs from the Ottoman Empire, to lay claim to a Palestinian state? Not to trivialise the suffering of the children and civilians caught in the Israeli-Hamas crossfire, but bear in mind also that historically the Arabs have always been the aggressor in the Middle East conflict.
More facts and myths about Israel here.
