What Do You Get The Palestinian Arab Who Has Everything?

The answer, of course, is a necklace.

But no, not just any necklace -- you can get them this necklace, available on Palestine-Shirts.com:

Obviously, this is a very special necklace, as the site itself points out:

One Palestinian mil, made on the year 1927, 1937, 1939, 1940, 1942 depends on what we have in the stock.
Now You can show your friends and tell them that we had a Palestinian currency for the state of Palestine, before the Israeli occupation 1948 to Palestine. Palestinian currency in your hands. Palestine 1-Mil Necklace.

Palestinian currency?
Palestinian state?

Take a closer look:

Below the name "Palestine" in Arabic and in English, there is the word Palestine in...Hebrew, followed by the abbreviation in Hebrew for Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

The fact of the matter is, the name "Palestine" before 1948 had no association with Palestinian Arabs, let alone with any kind of Arab state.

So when Time Magazine had an article in 1937 about The Palestine Symphony Orchestra -- its members were Jews:

As a full Palestine moon rode one evening last week over Tel Aviv, exclusively Jewish city, the Hebrew Sabbath ended and thousands of Jews began to move toward the Levant Fair Grounds. There they packed the Italian Pavilion to capacity to hear great Arturo Toscanini lead Palestine's first civic orchestra through its first performance. Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope, the British High Commissioner, brought with him a party of notables. Open-shirted German immigrants gathered in rowboats on the adjacent Yarkon River. A few Arab fishermen paddled quietly toward shore, listened respectfully outside the pavilion walls which are still pitted by Arab bullets.

...Huberman, a Polish Jew, was impressed by the attendance and enthusiasm of natives & exiles who came to hear his violin concerts. He determined to build for them an orchestra at Tel Aviv, their brave new cultural capital, and resigned his Vienna teaching post to do so. Already in Palestine, or easily available all over Europe, were scores of refugee Jewish musicians.

...The Palestine Symphony Orchestra now numbers 72. Germans make up about half the number, the rest are Poles and Russians. Six are natives of Palestine which has several competent music schools but welcomes the new orchestra as its only permanent symphony. So many first-desk musicians are playing in it that critics expect the Palestine Symphony to rank soon among the first four orchestras in the world. [emphasis added]

Another example of the Jewish side of Palestine before 1948 is the soccer team they had -- a team that today's Palestinian Football Association still tries to take credit for as being Arab:

British Mandate of Palestine Official Games 1934-1948

Until the establishment of the state of Israel, on 14/5/1948, its national team played 5 international games under the name of British Mandate of Palestine. These games are recognized by IFA and FIFA as official games.
Note that also the (current) Palestinian FA recognizes these games as their 5 first internationals. However the national anthem that was played before the games was the Jewish one (later Israel national anthem) and all the players of British Mandate of Palestine in these games were Jewish, so this decision of the Palestinian FA looks little strange...

Elder of Ziyon has a post that includes Jewish-Palestinian stamps, tourist posters, trade fairs and a Jewish-Palestine exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair in New York.

So what this necklace handily illustrates is that there was no Palestinian currency and no Palestinian state before 1948. Throughout history, the closest the Palestinian Arabs have ever gotten to either of these is today, with the control of the "West Bank" by the Palestinian Authority.


Hat tip: Seth Frantzman on Twitter
Hat tip: Elder of Ziyon

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