History vs. Wassim?

Submitted by Gary L (United States), Jan 22, 2007 at 19:11

Yes, your flaws are showing again! I am not trying to condense or rewrite history or offer my own personal slant. I am merely stating the facts which you clearly failed to address.

I am not against Arabs or Islam. There are many good Arabs just as there are bad Jews. I am against extremist Islamic thinking which endangers the entire world. Additionally, I would be against any extremist view from the Israeli side which endangered the world. However the right of Israel to protect herself is a no-brainer. Would you agree that freedom is a good thing? whether you are Arab or Jew? or do you subscibe to the Totalitarian view of the world as many Arab countries do?

Yes Wassim, our ideals regarding freedom of religion, freedom of the Press, freedom of Expression, freedom to assemble, are rights we have come to know in the West. Did you know when Jews did live in some Arab countries they were taxed for practicing their religious beliefs? Certainly its better than being killed, only were talking about the right to practice your religion without persecution. The "Arabs" you are referring to did not "invade" Jerusalem, it had already been under the control of either the Romans/Byzantines or the Persians for over 600 years by then. Of course it was invaded many times!

So how does this deminish what I said? It is the Palestinian argument the land is theirs, as you unknowingly admit it depends on how far back in time one wants to go...You don't deny it was founded by King David, a Jew... Arab refugees began identifying themselves as Palestinian two decades later. Your point being what? Before then they were just refugees which really means the same thing, they left their home under duress and during a war and should be allowed back once it is over. Look up what refugee means first, it will be interesting to see what you have to say.

It was always a Pan-Arab issue not Palestinian! there has never existed in the history of the world a sovereign state or country called Palestine with a Palestinian government controlled by Palestinians. Additionally, no mention of them in the Bible, Koran, etc: Of course feel free to write them into your take on history.

An Arab attack on Yom Kippur, (sure there would be an outcry,) This already took place Wassim, apparently you never heard of the Yom Kippur war! There was no outcry! You apparently missed the point!

Tell me Wassim, how many States, countries, borders has Zionism conquered? You really give Zionism far too much credit when it comes to the business of conquering other countries

How many Arab countries in North Africa did Islam conquer? How about Islam's Black Slaves? Were they not conquered before they became Muslim? What about Sudan? What about Syria's occupation of Lebanon?

But I digress, back to your misinformed and ideologically slanted view of history. I suppose Jerusalem was "occupied" so to speak by Jordan, but the very fact that you are taking states and nationhood for granted in a region where these things mean very little is a sign that you are not only completely outside the debates of the people of the region, but you have never really spoken to anybody who is Palestinian and who was living in Jerusalem at the time of the Israeli attacks in 1967. Defiling of tombstones or holy places? I seem to recall that Muslims actually hold Abraham and Moses in high esteem and the fact that you won't be able to reference your claim except from polemics and demagogic sources rather than any serious academic or historic work will demonstrate that.

Occupied so to speak? what are you guessing? Wassim, how old are you? where were you in 1967? Do you know what borders are? Do you agree borders existed in 67' ? I didn't ask your opinion on having borders? nor do I care! Even small mammals mark their territories with urine and feces. The so called Israeli attacks in 67' was in direct response to Arab aggression. You are clearly attemping to rewrite history like most Palestinian sympathizers.

"Our basic goal is the destruction of the State of Israel"

Nasser June 1967

Tell me Wassim? Where do the monies given to the PLO go? You surely have spoken to many PA authorities on the subject. We already know It doesn't go towards rebuilding Gaza City or affordable housing for the Palestinian people. Instead they have more corruption. For example: The PLO if they wanted to could put down all the extremists but they choose not to! They are more than 40,000 strong, the militants are at best 5,000 strong. It doesnt take a genius to see how lucrative a business they have keeping the conflict alive and accepting the billions they have received through the years. Look at all the monies Arafat stole from the very cause he pretended to champion. Prior to Hamas, they received 10 million a month from the EU. The US and other countries also have given millions to them. The monies clearly go toward the buying of weapons and explosives. Remember the Karine A?

Defiling of tombstones or holy places: What does the fact Abraham and Moses being held in high esteem by Muslims have to do with Palestinian Arabs Defiling Jewish tombstones or holy places? You are evading the fact this already did take place. Oh, I see, what you really mean is that Abraham and Moses is revered by Islam and therefore Palestinian Arabs can desecrate Jewish holy places and attack on them on their religous holiday. There were no protection by Jordan to prevent this! They infact allowed it! What kind of high esteem is that? You speak with forked tongue!~ By the way Wassim anytime you want to present me with any serious academic or historic work you be sure and send me something. Until then, I am truly amazed at your ability to evade the facts with a half witted rewritten version of history.

Israel is a constructed concept of something called a state. I don't advocate throwing Jews in the sea, they were always there. I want all Palestinians to be allowed back home and recompensed, all Jewish refugees to be allowed back to their homes throughout the Arab world and finally for Western European Jews infected with the idea of Zionism who want to stay there, they must learn what it means to be Middle Eastern and "Levantine" and coexist with those who were there before them. If you want to live in Europe, go live there, don't come to us and destroy our way of life.

You see Wassim you left out the Jews being recompensed.

I think you're becoming

animated by an Islamic belief in the equality of all men,

Keep watching those cartoons!

Here is some reading for your enlightenment...

Start of Story!

Analysis
How Strong Is the Arab Claim to Palestine?
Lawrence Auster
(Aug 30, 2004)

There is a myth hanging over all discussion of the Palestinian problem: the myth that this land was "Arab" land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews. Whatever may be the correct solution to the problems of the Middle East, let's get a few things straight:

§ As a strictly legal matter, the Jews didn't take Palestine from the Arabs; they took it from the British, who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. And the British don't want it back.

§ If you consider the British illegitimate usurpers, fine. In that case, this territory is not Arab land but Turkish land, a province of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years until the British wrested it from them during the Great War in 1917. And the Turks don't want it back.

§ If you look back earlier in history than the Ottoman Turks, who took over Palestine over in 1517, you find it under the sovereignty of the yet another empire not indigenous to Palestine: the Mamluks, who were Turkish and Circassian slave-soldiers headquartered in Egypt. And the Mamluks don't even exist any more, so they can't want it back.

So, going back 800 years, there's no particularly clear chain of title that makes Israel's title to the land inferior to that of any of the previous owners. Who were, continuing backward:

§ The Mamluks, already mentioned, who in 1250 took Palestine over from:

§ The Ayyubi dynasty, the descendants of Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim leader who in 1187 took Jerusalem and most of Palestine from:

§ The European Christian Crusaders, who in 1099 conquered Palestine from:

§ The Seljuk Turks, who ruled Palestine in the name of:

§ The Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, which in 750 took over the sovereignty of the entire Near East from:

§ The Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, which in 661 inherited control of the Islamic lands from

§ The Arabs of Arabia, who in the first flush of Islamic expansion conquered Palestine in 638 from:

§ The Byzantines, who (nice people—perhaps it should go to them?) didn't conquer the Levant, but, upon the division of the Roman Empire in 395, inherited Palestine from:

§ The Romans, who in 63 B.C. took it over from:

§ The last Jewish kingdom, which during the Maccabean rebellion from 168 to 140 B.C. won control of the land from:

§ The Hellenistic Greeks, who under Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. conquered the Near East from:

§ The Persian empire, which under Cyrus the Great in 639 B.C. freed Jerusalem and Judah from:

§ The Babylonian empire, which under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. took Jerusalem and Judah from:

§ The Jews, meaning the people of the Kingdom of Judah, who, in their earlier incarnation as the Israelites, seized the land in the 12th and 13th centuries B.C. from:

§ The Canaanites, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years before they were dispossessed by the Israelites.

As the foregoing suggests, any Arab claim to sovereignty based on inherited historical control will not stand up. Arabs are not native to Palestine, but are native to Arabia, which is called Arab-ia for the breathtakingly simple reason that it is the historic home of the Arabs. The terroritories comprising all other "Arab" states outside the Arabian peninsula—including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as the entity now formally under the Palestinian Authority—were originally non-Arab nations that were conquered by the Muslim Arabs when they spread out from the Arabian peninsula in the first great wave of jihad in the 7th century, defeating, mass-murdering, enslaving, dispossessing, converting, or reducing to the lowly status of dhimmitude millions of Christians and Jews and destroying their ancient and flourishing civilizations. Prior to being Christian, of course, these lands had even more ancient histories. Pharaonic Egypt, for example, was not an Arab country through its 3,000 year history.

The recent assertion by the Palestinian Arabs that they are descended from the ancient Canaanites whom the ancient Hebrews displaced is absurd in light of the archeological evidence. There is no record of the Canaanites surviving their destruction in ancient times. History records literally hundreds of ancient peoples that no longer exist. The Arab claim to be descended from Canaanites is an invention that came after the 1964 founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the same crew who today deny that there was ever a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Prior to 1964 there was no "Palestinian" people and no "Palestinian" claim to Palestine; the Arab nations who sought to overrun and destroy Israel in 1948 planned to divide up the territory amongst themselves. Let us also remember that prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the name "Palestinian" referred to the Jews of Palestine.

In any case, today's "Palestine," meaning the West Bank and Gaza, is, like most of the world, inhabited by people who are not descendants of the first human society to inhabit that territory. This is true not only of recently settled countries like the United States and Argentina, where European settlers took the land from the indigenous inhabitants several hundred years ago, but also of ancient nations like Japan, whose current Mongoloid inhabitants displaced a primitive people, the Ainu, aeons ago. Major "native" tribes of South Africa, like the Zulu, are actually invaders from the north who arrived in the 17th century. India's caste system reflects waves of fair-skinned Aryan invaders who arrived in that country in the second millennium B.C. One could go on and on.

The only nations that have perfect continuity between their earliest known human inhabitants and their populations of the present day are Iceland, parts of China, and a few Pacific islands. The Chinese case is complicated by the fact that the great antiquity of Chinese civilization has largely erased the traces of whatever societies preceded it, making it difficult to reconstruct to what extent the expanding proto-Chinese displaced (or absorbed) the prehistoric peoples of that region. History is very sketchy in regard to the genealogies of ancient peoples. The upshot is that "aboriginalism"—the proposition that the closest descendants of the original inhabitants of a territory are the rightful owners—is not tenable in the real world. It is not clear that it would be a desirable idea even if it were tenable. Would human civilization really be better off if there had been no China, no Japan, no Greece, no Rome, no France, no England, no Ireland, no United States?

Back to the Arabs
I have no problem recognizing the legitimacy of the Arabs' tenure in Palestine when they had it, from 638 to 1099, a period of 461 years out of a history lasting 5,000 years. They took Palestine by military conquest, and they lost it by conquest, to the Christian Crusaders in 1099. Of course, military occupation by itself does not determine which party rightly has sovereignty in a given territory. Can it not be said that the Arabs have sovereign rights, if not to all of Israel, then at least to the West Bank, by virtue of their majority residency in that region from the early Middle Ages to the present?

To answer that question, let's look again at the historical record. Prior to 1947, as we've discussed, Palestine was administered by the British under the Palestine Mandate, the ultimate purpose of which, according to the Balfour Declaration, was the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In 1924 the British divided the Palestine Mandate into an Arabs-only territory east of the Jordan, which became the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan, and a greatly reduced Palestine Mandate territory west of the Jordan, which was inhabited by both Arabs and Jews.

Given the fact that the Jews and Arabs were unable to coexist in one state, there had to be two states. At the same time, there were no natural borders separating the two peoples, in the way that, for example, the Brenner Pass has historically marked the division between Latin and Germanic Europe. Since the Jewish population was concentrated near the coast, the Jewish state had to start at the coast and go some distance inland. Exactly where it should have stopped, and where the Arab state should have begun, was a practical question that could have been settled in any number of peaceful ways, almost all of which the Jews would have accepted. The Jews' willingness to compromise on territory was demonstrated not only by their acquiescence in the UN's 1947 partition plan, which gave them a state with squiggly, indefensible borders, but even by their earlier acceptance of the 1937 Peel Commission partition plan, which gave them nothing more than a part of the Galilee and a tiny strip along the coast. Yet the Arab nations, refusing to accept any Jewish sovereignty in Palestine even if it was the size of a postage stamp, unanimously rejected the 1937 Peel plan, and nine years later they violently rejected the UN's partition plan as well. When the Arabs resorted to arms in order to wipe out the Jews and destroy the Jewish state, they accepted the verdict of arms. They lost that verdict in 1948, and they lost it again in 1967, when Jordan, which had annexed the West Bank in 1948 (without any objections from Palestinian Arabs that their sovereign nationhood was being violated), attacked Israel from the West Bank during the Six Day War despite Israel's urgent pleas that it stay out of the conflict. Israel in self-defense then captured the West Bank. The Arabs thus have no grounds to complain either about Israel's existence (achieved in '48) or about its expanded sovereignty from the river to the sea (achieved in '67).

The Arabs have roiled the world for decades with their furious protest that their land has been "stolen" from them. One might take seriously such a statement if it came from a pacifist people such as the Tibetans, who had quietly inhabited their land for ages before it was seized by the Communist Chinese in 1950. The claim is laughable coming from the Arabs, who in the early Middle Ages conquered and reduced to slavery and penury ancient peoples and civilizations stretching from the borders of Persia to the Atlantic; who in 1947 rejected an Arab state in Palestine alongside a Jewish state and sought to obliterate the nascent Jewish state; who never called for a distinct Palestinian Arab state until the creation of the terrorist PLO in 1964—sixteen years after the founding of the state of Israel; and who to this moment continue to seek Israel's destruction, an object that would be enormously advanced by the creation of the Arab state they demand. The Arab claim to sovereign rights west of the Jordan is only humored today because of a fatal combination of world need for Arab oil, leftist Political Correctness that has cast the Israelis as "oppressors," and, of course, good old Jew-hatred.

Lawrence Auster is the author of Erasing America: The Politics of the Borderless Nation. He offers his traditionalist conservative perspective at View from the Right.

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