PLO Rep Joins Arafat And Others Inventing Contradictory Histories Of Palestinians

Contradictions abound; Palestinian leaders claim to be descended from the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jebusites and the first Christians. They also “hijacked” Jesus and ignored his Jewishness, at the same time claiming the Jews never were a people and never built the Holy Temples in Jerusalem.
Eli Hertz, Mandate for Palestine: The Legal Aspects of Jewish Rights

In "Mandate for Palestine: The Legal Aspects of Jewish Rights," Eli Hertz gives an overview of the various contradictory histories claimed by Arab leaders for Palestinians:

Encouraged by their success at historical revisionism and brainwashing the world with the "Big Lie" of a Palestinian people, Palestinian Arabs have more recently begun to claim they are the descendants of the Philistines and even the Stone Age Canaanites. Based on that myth, they can claim to have been "victimized" twice by the Jews: in the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites and again by the Israelis in modern times – a total fabrication. Archeologists explain that the Philistines were a Mediterranean people who settled along the coast of Canaan in 1100 BCE. They have no connection to the Arab nation, a desert people who emerged from the Arabian Peninsula.

As if that myth were not enough, former PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat also claimed, "Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the Jebusites," who were displaced when King David conquered Jerusalem.

Arafat also argued that "Abraham was an Iraqi." One Christmas Eve, Arafat declared that "Jesus was a Palestinian," a preposterous claim that echoes the words of Hanan Ashrawi, a Christian Arab who, in an interview during the 1991 Madrid Conference, said: "Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land," and claimed that she was "the descendant of the first Christians," disciples who spread the gospel around Bethlehem some 600 years before the Arab conquest. If her claims were true, it would be tantamount to confessing that she is a Jew!

Now, Maen Rashid Areikat--the chief PLO representative to the US--steps into the fray with an editorial in the Washington Post claiming to present Palestine, a history rich and deep:

"There Are No Palestinians"

According to Arutz Sheva reports that phrase is forbidden--
when you provide feedback to articles on the Haaretz web site, along with racist remarks, foul-language, and incitement to violence.

This kind of approach smacks of censorship. Arutz Sheva comments:

Documents and quotes which support the claim that there never was a Palestinian people are often cited in legitimate debates and speeches by respectable commentators and Zionists (see examples in letter below). The quotes are used to counter the claim of Arab historic rights to the Land of Israel.

To allow for fair-minded formulation of opinions and policy, it is important that access to such documents and quotes remain uncensored. Moreover, limiting such statements colors the dialogue in favor of one political spectrum.

The letter referred to is the one Arutz Sheva sent to Haaretz questioning their policy and providing quotes about the myth of the Palestinians:

To: Editorial Board
Haaretz Newspaper
English Edition
Fax: 03-6810012
Email: contact@haaretz.co.il

Dear Sirs,

I found of great interest your list of guidelines for publishing talkback comments which appear at the end of the article: "I Voted for a War Criminal."

I commend you for guarding "openness of dialogue" and stating that "Political orientation will have absolutely no bearing on whether a comment is posted or rejected."

However, your last criteria for deletion of a comment was puzzling: "Use of the phrase: 'There are no Palestinians' or derivatives thereof." Such statements are beyond the pale of openness of dialogue, according to your editorial policy.

This historical truth of no distinct Palestinian people was articulated by none other than former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir who said:

"There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people, and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."
Sunday Times, 15 June, 1969; The Washington Post (June 16, 1969)

But your readers won't be allowed to consider Golda's remarks since her political orientation on the issue of Palestinian peoplehood is not considered legitimate at Haaretz.

But, it's not just Golda who made the point. Many Arabs admitted that the campaign to utterly destroy the Jewish State unites Palestinians and not aspiration for statehood.

Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said just that on March 31, 1977 in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:

"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."

Would Zahir Muhsein's comment be deleted from your talkback?

Lebanese American Sharon Nader Sloan, Esq. noted in her article "The Big Lie" from 2001:

"…Did you know that for 19 years Jordan occupied and ruled the whole West Bank, including Jerusalem? ...All this time, …did we hear anything about a Palestinian state? No, we did not. Why not?
Because their never existed a Palestinian state. And in the entire history of nations, Jerusalem was never the capital of any country other than that of ancient Israel and modern Israel. So how can there be a claim on Jerusalem as the capital of a state that never existed?

[Palestine] is the name of a region -- just like Siberia is a region, not a country. There is no Siberian country, nor is there a Siberian people…

Some may argue that Golda's statement from 1977 is irrelevant today, as she would most probably recognize "new political realities." Now, wouldn't that question be fertile ground for legitimate argument in a talkback between political rivals on Israel's left and right?

But your current policy has disqualified historical truths that would otherwise be voiced by those of a certain political orientation. This, despite your assertion that "Political orientation will have absolutely no bearing on whether a comment is posted or rejected."

Your rule of deleting derivatives of the statement 'There are no Palestinians' does not coexist with your "guiding principle of openness of dialogue." One of them must go.

I urge you to retain your openness, and allow the political right to freely express historical truths which support its agenda.

I await your reply.

Respectfully,

Baruch Gordon
Director of English Media
Arutz Sheva, IsraelNationalNews.com

The last thing Israel needs is the kind of CAIR-style censorship and limiting of debate that is encroaching on freedom of speech in the US.

Technorati Tag: Palestine and Palestinians.

Take The Palestine Quiz

Who Are the Palestinians?
by Yashiko Sagamori
November 25, 2002

A rebuttal:

If you are so sure that “Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history”, I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of "Palestine":

1. When was it founded and by whom?

2. What were its borders?

3. What was its capital?

4. What were its major cities?

5. What constituted the basis of its economy?

6. What was its form of government?

7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?

8. Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?

9. What was the language of the country of Palestine?

10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?

11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and try and find the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, British pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.

12. Have the Palestinians left any artifacts behind?

13. Do you know of a library where one could find a work of Palestinian literature produced before 1967?

14. And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?

If you are lamenting the “low sinking” of “once proud” nation, then please tell me, when exactly was that “nation” proud and what was it so proud of?

And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call “Palestinians” are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over - or thrown out of - the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat by Israel in the 1967Six Day War?

I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day “Palestinians” to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.

The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal through military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it “the Palestinian people” and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the “West Bank” and Gaza, respectively, in the aftermath of the 1967 war?

The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less of a claim to nationhood than the American Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called “Palestinians” have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel. In my book that is not sufficient to consider them a “nation” -- or anything else -- except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.

In fact, there is only one way to achieve piece in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side, should pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited upon it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and acceptance of Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.

That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yashiko Sagamori is a New York-based Information Technology consultant.

Technorati Tag: Palestine.

Myth of Palestinian Demographic Timebomb Affects More Than Just Israel

The issue of demographics in Israel used to be a vague, abstract, gnawing issue. In 2002, Ben Wattenberg wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal that Israel needn't worry about a population implosion. But the demographics problem continued to be discussed--until it became an issue for 2 concrete calls for action in 2 different countries.

On the one hand, the demographic time bomb of the growing Palestinian Arab population was one of the reasons given to justify the need for the Disengagement. On the other hand the findings of American Researchers Bennett Zimmerman, Roberta Seid, and Michael Wise--which seem to indicate that the numbers for the Arab population in Gaza and the West Bank have been highly inflated, while Jewish births and immigration forecasts are underestimated--found their way to the US Congress.

These findings, supported in part by the Palestinian Arabs themselves,were presented in March to the Middle East Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, chaired by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican Congresswoman of Florida--who in January proposed legislation, which would cut American funding to both the PA and the UN, designate the PA a "terrorist sanctuary," and close down some of the PA offices in the US, in order to reduce Palestinian-American diplomatic ties.

But the issue of Palestinian demographics was relevant to the committee for a different reason. The importance of the Zimmerman report for the US, as noted by World Net Daily, is that

almost $3 billion in United States taxpayer funds may have been provided as aid to the Palestinians in part based on fraudulent data.

"American tax dollars and other international humanitarian aid have been based on inflated population numbers which have been accepted without question by governments and aid agencies. Our researchers pointed out that money has been spent to help Palestinians who were double-counted, never born or not present in the West Bank and Gaza," Bennet Zimmerman, head of the new study, titled "Arab Population in the West Bank and Gaza," told WND.

Of course, one could assume that Europe might be interested in the possibility that the Palestinians may have swindled them as well.

In an article in the Summer 5766/2006 issue of Azure entitle Voodoo Demographics, Zimmerman, Seid and Weiss lay out all the ways the Palestinian Arab population was miscounted:

In sum: By double-counting the Jerusalem Arabs and counting Arabs living abroad, the Palestinians inflated their base data for 1997 by 648,000. By predicting unrealistically high rates of natural population growth, the number was inflated by an additional 276,000; and by falsely predicting massive immigration to Gaza and the West Bank, and ignoring the significant net emigration of Palestinians from the territories, the PCBS[Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics] further inflated the numbers by another 415,000. If we add these figures together, by 2004 the PCBS figures had managed to inflate the population in the West Bank and Gaza by some 1.34 million people-more than 50 percent. When the pcbs’ numerous errors are corrected, the Palestinian Arab population for Gaza and the West Bank drops to 2.49 million people, with 1.42 million in the West Bank and 1.07 million in Gaza in mid-2004.

Now, in answer to criticism that their results were given in the form of a presentation instead of actual published research, in February the group published an academic research paper through Bar-Ilan's Begin-Sadat Center Center for Strategic Research--allowing the findings to be properly analyzed. It can be downloaded as a PDF from the Bar Ilan University website.

One possible weakness of the report is that for their prediction for 2025, the group has left their research data for Gaza out of their calculations because, as they note elsewhere in their article Gaza "is no longer under any kind of Israeli rule, and therefore is of questionable relevance when speaking of a demographic threat" Thus, according to their prediction, as Haaretz puts it:

7.5 million Jews will be living in Israel and the West Bank then, constituting 63 percent of the population, as compared to 4.45 million Arabs (of these, 2.25 million in the West Bank), or 37 percent of the population. In other words, for every Arab, there will be two Jews. The population in Israel proper will be 77 percent Jews and 23 percent Arabs - not much different from today.

But the bottom line question remains whether Israel is free and clear of the demographic time bomb that was calculated into the considerations for Sharon's Disengagement and for Olmert's Convergence Plan. In their article, they address this point:

Do the Jews of Israel face a demographic threat? The answer is still a qualified yes-but the threat has been greatly exaggerated. As the real numbers make clear, Arab population growth is not an overwhelming force that is destined, sooner or later, to relegate the Jews to minority status. On the contrary: With a greater understanding of demography and the specific forces that drive it, Israeli policymakers can develop a range of choices to affect the long-term demographic trends in the region-from the encouragement of Jewish immigration to the fostering of economic and social equality between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens. More important, Israel must realize that it has time, demographically speaking, to evaluate these choices, and to make the right decisions.

If Zimmerman and his group is right, this is one of the very rare issues where time is actual on Israel's side. It would also be an opportunity for the US and Europe to think through the implications of the report for their policy of support for the Palestinian Arabs and the PA. The question remains whether Zimmerman's report--and implications--will be accepted.

Haaretz concludes, "Now the findings can be discussed, challenged or rejected - but to ignore them would be folly."

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Palestinians and Demographics and US and Ros-Lehtinen .