No such thing!

Submitted by Irredentist Palestinians (United States), Mar 17, 2010 at 20:44

First of all, it is a huge mistake to adopt the jingoism of the Arab propaganda narrative. "Palestinians" is a word that ought to be stricken from every honest person's vocabulary. Anyone who wants the words that come out of their mouths to reflect thoughts that are connected to the reality in which we live must address the Arabs who live in Israel, including the unfortunate but deserving subjects of the P.A. simply as Arabs. The Arabs of Israel are no different religiously, linguistically, ethnically, culturally or with regard to their rejection of Israel's right to exist from their Arab brethren across the Arab world.

The Palestinian national identity is a novel invention of the latter part of the last century, popularized by the father of modern terrorism, Yasir Arafat y"shu. A century ago, Arabs prided themselves on their unbounded universality, a notion that persisted beyond the post-WWII establishment of borders delineating the Arab world into more than 20 distinct dictatorships, and through the the 1950's pan-Arabism was the flag waved across the Arab world under the banner of Egypt's Nassir.

In those days, among Arabs, Palestinian was a dirty word. It was an insult. It meant Jew.

Later, monsters like Arafat concocted the separate Palestnian nationality, conjuring a completely false national history for the progeny of expansionists from the Arabian peninsula and superimposing on them the expropriated moniker and paternity claim of the Phoenicians, a Mediteranean sea people of antiquity, an early Greek subculture that at one time settled on the Israeli coast before disappearing from the pages of history...until twentieth century Arabs coopted their identity. But in no way do these Arabs, who've adapted Phoenician as "Palestinian", derive any heritage from Greek sea peoples of the west; their ancestors were from the Arabian peninsula on the east, and that's why they speak Arabic rather than Greek.

As for the expression "irredentist", it simply doesn't apply in the case of Arabs seeking to confiscate the historic land of the Jews. In the 7th century, Arab colonialists illegally conquered Israel, and those foreign Muslim occupiers not only usurped the Jews' holy places and olive groves that had been in Jewish families since time immemorial, but the Arabs also expelled, forcibly converted and otherwise oppressed the local Israelis and, perhaps worst of all, violated their dignity. Consequently, the Zionist movement that gathered steam in Europe more than 100 years ago constitute the real irredentists fighting for freedom and justice.

But how the tables have turned. No longer can the Arabs' might make right. The Palestinians (the epithet Arabs used as recently as the middle of the last century for Jews) have returned to their rightful roost. It's important that we always use the vocabulary of truth to describe the events, peoples and relationships in the Mideast, even though that seemingly simple task can be complicated by the prolonged, reiterated efforts of the anti-Israel Arab propaganda machine to comandeer the language as a strategy in their broader, sustained bid to wrest the land of Israel from it's rightful owners yet again. Let us not contribute to their cause of confusion. The enemies of Israel are neither irredentist nor Palestinian.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".