#there_was_no_palestine

[angrybell]

This is Professor Benny Morris on the Lex Friedman podcast. Basically, he is telling us something historians/history majors know: history keeps repeating itself. Especially when it comes to the “Palestinians”.

For those who don’t know, Professor Morris’ career has been about doing some uncomfortable research into the refounding of the State of Israel.

His books are very good. If you want to learn more about what happened, they’re a good place to start.

[angrybell]

Are you kidding me?

Seriously? Do you actually believe that becasue William Shakespeare used the word “Palestine” that there was something called “Palestine” in 1604?

Newsflash, there wasn’t. You can go to actual history books instead of using a Shakespeare hack - because if this is the level of her research then she can’t be anything more than a hack I don’t care how credentialed she may be - as a reference point for the existence of anything much less the mythical land of “Palestine”.

Let’s be clear: “Palestine” is not an Arabic word. Hell, Arabs don’t even have the right sounds in their alphabet to say the word as it was meant to be said. “Palestine” was not the term that was used by the people who lived in the region that is today Israel and the illegally occupied territories of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. In 1604 was that same territory was part of the Damascus Eyalet. The Eyalet was made up of the Sanjaks of Safad (modern day territory from Zahrani River to Mouth Carmel near present day Haifa in the south and from Mediterranean to the Sea of Galilee), Lajjun (the Jezreel Valley, part of Northern Samaria, and the territory to the coast of the Mediterranean and encompassed Haifa, Jenin, and Baysan) Ajlun (land east of the Jordan river), Nablus, Jerusalem, Gaza, and Karak (territory east of the Dead Sea in modern day Jordan). While the Damascus Eyalet covered most of Modern Israel, portions of it were part of the Sidon Eyalet (mostly in the north in what is today Lebanon).

The inhabitants there certainly did not call themselves “Palestinians”. Why? Because thats not what that colonial group called themselves. Generally, the term the Arab Muslims would use to describe their group was Syrian.

So when she says Shakespeare used the word “Palestine” he used the the classical antiquity term used for the region. Who gave the region that name? So glad you asked. It was Emperor Hadrian (may his bones be crushed) who changed the name of the region from Judea, or as the locals might have also called it Eretz Yisrael, because he was expelling the Jews who had the temerity to not want to be dominated by the Roman Empire.

There are plenty of other classical antiquity references made by Shakespeare in his works. But note who uses the word. Its not Othello, who is a Moor (probably a sub-Saharan African). Its not Desdemona, who is Venetian and therefore probably Catholic before she elopes and marries the general. its used by Emilia, another Venetian, who is the wife of Iago. None of the people involved are actually Jewish

Now where did Hadrian get the word? It certainly was not from the locals. At the time, they would have been primarily Jews, Arabs would arrive in the region in great numbers until 7th century.

Generally, the word is agreed to have come the Greeks. The question becomes where did the Greeks get the word. One theory is that it is an evolution of the name of the Jews most implacable enemy during the early years of the the unified Kingdom of Israel (the territory that would eventually become the the Roman province of Judea), the Phillistines. That theory used to make sense to me.

The theory about the origin of the word Palestine that makes sense to me is that it actually starts from a Hebrew word. The modern word Palestine is a “gift” to us from the Roman Empire. When they had finally subdued the Jews in what was then called Provincial Iudea (Province of Judea), the Romans decided that they were going to try and erase the Jews from existence. So they picked the name of the greatest enemy in Jewish history. Who was this enemy? They are now, in English, called Phillistines. So where did the Romans get this word? Well, probably from the Greeks, since the Romans did that quite a lot. The earliest usage of the word “Palestine” in Greek is found in the writings of Herodotus.

The Greeks used the word. But they did not always use it to mean the same thing. Sometimes, they meant it to refer to a region. Sometimes they meant it to refer to a people. Often times, the two did not correspond. In fact there is evidence that the use of the name “Palestine” by Herodotus and other Greeks was not meant to denote the land of the Philistines. They also used it as a pun. He was using it to refer to what Jews call Eretz Yisrael.

How do we know this? Well Herodotus, who apparently travelled to the region, recounts how the men there were circumcised. Guess which people in that region practice circumcision? The Jews. Guess which people did not practice circumcision? Pretty much everyone else who was not Jewish or Egyptian.

Herodotus writes in The History

“The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine acknowledge that they learned the custom from the Egyptians, and the Syrians of the valleys of the Thermodon and the Parthenius, as well as their neighbors the Macrones, say that they learned it lately from the Colchians. These are the only nations that circumcise, and it is seen that they do just as the Egyptians”

Who are the Syrians of Palestine? Well, they’re not Philistines. They’re not Falastines. They’re Jews, who around this time would have been known as Judahites because they were part of the Province of Judah in the Persian Empire which had conquered the region.. How do we know this? Well, the last time the Phillistines were mentioned prior to this was when

What other evidence do we have that Herodotus meant Palaistine to mean Eretz Yisrael? Well, he never calls it the Land of the Philistines for one. For another, we need to look at the meaning of the Yisrael or we would say it in English in modern times, Israel. Israel means “wrestling with G-d” or “wrestler with G-d”. What was the word Herodotus would have used for wrestling? The word is “palaistês”. Wow, that’s really close to the what Herodotus named the region in his writing, Palaistinê.

So is it more likely that Herodotus translated the name for the region for the people who lost in the conflict between the Jews and the Philistines. Or is it more probable that he named the region in his works after the hero who wrestled a god (i.e. Jacob) and spawned the people who still inhabited the land?

If we look at other texts left to us by the Greeks, we find that other writers were using the same word, Palaistinê, to describe the region, not the nation. Aristotle wrote about the Dead Sea and places it in Palaistinê. A few centuries later, Josephus, who chronicled the First Roman Jewish War, also uses the word Palaistinê to describe the region where the Province of Judea was. There were clearly no “Philistines” there then, only the Jews and other groups that existed. None of them were Phillistines. Also, Josephus was not writing in Latin and he wasn’t writing his history in Hebrew. He wrote it in Greek. So he would use the Greek term for his homeland.

So the book Josephus wrote for his new masters, the Romans, would have been in Greek using Greek terms. We know that Josephus’ work was given to Titus and Vespasian. Since copies survive the Roman Empire, its not a stretch to imagine that Hadrian, who had to deal with the Bar Kochba revolt that nearly expelled Roman force and for a time had control of the land enough to mint coins and build fortresses, would have had access to these histories. So when Hadrian went to rename the territory, to punish those who survived his suppression fo the rebellion, he would have used the word that was used by the Greek writing historians who chronicled the Jewish revolts against Rome.

Now, it is more likely that Shakespeare, who used all sorts of Roman and Greek allusions in his work, would have had a non-Jewish character call the land by the name given to it by the Roman Empire when it brought it back under control as a colony of Rome? Or would he have been using the word to name a region where no one thought of themslves as “Palestinian” until the start of the 20th Century when the Jews, begrudgingly, called themselves “Palestinians” while under the yoke of the British who held the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine? So, like the Greeks, Hadrian was calling the land, unwittingly, Syria Palaestina... Syria The Land of Wrestler with G-d.... Syria Israel.

"I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip"

- William Shakespeare

[globalvoices]

A number of Twitter users are challenging the common Israeli discourse that Palestine never existed through the hashtag: #there_was_no_Palestine.

‘There Was No Palestine'?

[angrybell]

Posted @withregram • @judeanfirst2.0 Arabs came to the region over time due to the better living conditions, opportunity and quality of life vs the poor and dangerous living conditions in the countries they came from. Some to take advantage of empty Jewish homes after Jews were ethnically cleansed, massacred and exiled from their homeland. The Majority of Arabs came to the land between WW1 and WW2. Waves of Arab migration are never mentioned by the pro Palestine activists, they solely focus on Jewish migration leaving out the facts of why. Leaving out the 800,000 Jews who were exiled from across the Middle East. Arabs only began to identify as “Palestinians” during the 1960’s under Yasser Arafat and the KGB. Before then they use to rally in the streets saying they did not want to be called Palestinian because it mainly referred to Jews although the Jewish people never adapted this as part of their identity. Jews are from Judea and Arabs are from the Arabian Peninsula, here to help you learn who you really are and maybe, just maybe you won’t want to carry on a bs identity created with intentions of terrorizing and destroying civilizations.

[angrybell]

(Borrowed from @yairlevimusic on IG the speaker is Yoseph Haddad, an Israeli Arab)

Do you even know what you are fighting for? @yosephhaddad

[angrybell]

Thank you.

Changing borders of Israel / Palestine, 1888-2023.

[angrybell]

Posted @withregram • @hagit_sagi #israel #palestine #uk #hebron

—-(end original caption)—-

A common argument of the pro-terror/Hamas lobby is that there was a peaceful coexistence going between the Jews, Muslims, and Arabs prior to 1948. That it was all ruined by the Jews wanting their own state.

The massacre she is describing did happen. All the Jews from Hebron were expelled by Arab gangs. Hebron was not a settlement. It had been the homes of Jews since Abraham bought some land there to bury his wife.

The British did not do anything to compel the Arabs to return the homes and property to the Jewish owners. They simply allowed it to occur because it was easier than doing the right thing.

Now, what did the Jews do to provoke the riot? They held a rally where people shouted “The Wall Is Ours” followed by singing Hatikvah. There was no violence. They didn’t call for the death of anyone. They didn’t call for the destruction of the Muslim mosques or Al Aqsa.

The Grand Mufti, and future Hitler bestie, Haj Amin Al-Husseini then gave a sermon in response where Muslims burned Jewish prayer books. The Arab press then began spreading inflammatory reports that misrepresented what the Jews had done and said the “Honor of Islam” had been violated.

The next day, stabbings began when an Arab stabbed a Jew from Mea Shearim (a neighborhood in Jerusalem) when he went to retrieve a soccer ball that gone out of bounds and rolled near an Arab girl.

And it went downhill from there as the British police failed to make arrests or protect the Jews. Within a week, Arabs had come from all over and the riots began.

[angrybell]

Posted @withregram • @adielofisrael LAND BACK✊🏽 unless you’re Jewish…

Another example of a Western “progressive” falling for an antisemitic, genocidal, anti-Indigenous ideology masquerading as a woke human rights movement.

This is ridiculous as it is dangerous.

Responding to @birdy.blossom

#israel #palestine #jewish #indigenous #landback

[angrybell]

Posted @withregram • @miatalias I wish someone was as obsessed with me as pro palestinians are obsessed with this one singular coin #freepalestine #palestinecoin

Also - please drop a follow to @_j0sh_a_ to find way more than a singular coin, to show jewish peoples history in this land, dating back to thousands of years ago, if you love history- hes your guy.

—(end original)—-

This might be the best explanation. Someone needs to buy her some coffee.

[angrybell]

Simply because people die in war does not make the people/state that killed them guilty of war crimes.

Hamas started a war. They started it by deliberately targeting civilians. Israel responded by going after Hamas and trying to save the hostages taken by Hamas from Israel into Gaza.

Hamas, because they are cowards, chose to established their fight facilities in the midst of non-combatants. Why? Because they knew it would make Israel hesitate to go after them.

So Israel has done what it can to minimize casualties to non-combatants. It has dropped leaflets. It has called and texted every phone in a potential target area, talking with the people asking them to leave.

Hamas has done everything it can to maximize casualties. They have ordered people not to leave. They have blocked people from leaving. They have shot people trying to escape through humanitarian corridors.

Why?

Because they know people like you will blame Israel for all the deaths. They know that weak minded Western liberals are looming for an excuse to castigate the Jewish nation because it won’t kowtow to intersectional dogma and commit suicide by allowing Hamas to escape to launch another attack at some time in the future.

Something that they have promised to do until they have completed their goal of genocide against the Jewish people both in Israel, in particular, and in the world at large.

Hamas knows that no matter what atrocity they commit, you simpering cowards in the West will forgive them. Why? Because dead Jews have been determined by people like you to not count. Dead Jews are viewed as price of resistance because those Jews had the audacity to not be stateless victims liek their ancestors had been.

Hamas knows that as long as the dominant progressive orthodoxy reigns, they can commit any crime and it will be supported by Western progressives. Not only will it be supported, but it will be emulated and celebrated.

And they will continue to sacrifice their people like Ba’al cultists. Because they know that I’m doing so, you will continue to support them.

In effect, @biokitty, it is because of your support for “Palestine” that more “Palestinians” will die. Because Hamas and Fatah and PIJ will continue to arrange situations where their people will die.

A fundamental responsibility of any government is the protection of its citizens. A government that cannot protect its citizens loses its legitimacy. There is no higher obligation.

Israel strives to meet this obligation. It has spent millions of dollars building shelters for its people. It has spent billions of dollars developing defense systems that will protect their people from rocket, mortar, nuclear missile attacks.

Before you say “but why didn’t it spend billions for peace”, let me remind you that the Arabs illegally occupying Gaza, Judea, and Samaria,have no interest in peace. Hamas, until cynically altered its governing document after 10/7/23, for example specifically stated it would never enter into negotiated settlement but would continue their fight until a Muslim Arab dominated state replaced Israel. Fatah took more than a decade to even amend their charter and their membership actually contends that they didn’t do it in what passes legally for that terrorist organization.

Then I’ll remind you that Israel offered peace

2008 Olmert Peace plan - rejected

1999 Batak Peace Plan - rejected

1974 to 1987 Israel wanted to negotiate peace - rejected

1968 - 1973 Israel offered to land for peace - Egypt and Syria attacked

1968 Allon plan - rejected

1949 Israel sought a peace treaty with its Arab neighbors to end the War of Independence, they refused.

And before Israel became a state, the Arabs were offered peace plans including

1947 UN Partition Plan - rejected by Arabs, accepted by Jewish Yishuv

1938 Woodhead Plan - rejected by Arabs, accepted with conditions by Jewish Yishuv

1937 Peel Commission partition - rejected by Arabs, accepted by Jewish Yishuv.

1919 Faisal-Weizmann agreement - nominally accepted but later abandoned per Faisal’s addendum.

Arab peace plans put forward? Hamas has never put forward one. Syria has never put forward one. Nor has Lebanon. Fatah has never put forward a plan. The only plan I am aware of that was ever actually offered to Israel, was by a third party, The Arab League, in 2002.

Now, Fatah accepted it, Hamas rejected it, and Israel said they would use it as a basis for negotiations, but that a precondition for a final agreement was that there had to be a cease fire in the Second Intifada. The response of the Arabs was the Passover Massacre in Netanya.

When the intifada did end, Israel tried to enter into negotiations based on the plan. The Arabs refused to negotiate at all. Saeb Erkat, chief negotiator for Fatah, took the position that the proposal represented a minimum and they would not consider any counter proposals that did not accept every point in the Arab League proposal.

Israel, the Jews, have been willing to compromise for more than a century at this point. And the West keeps rewarding them with money, with excuses, with a growing acceptance of antisemitism.

And suggesting Mein Kampf was planted by the Israelis shows a profound ignorance for the popularity of the book in the Arab Muslim world. The books has been translated and sold in the Arab world since 1934, originally being serialized in Arab newspapers.

It has been published in Arabic in book form with translations in 1937, 1963, and 1995. It is a perennially best seller in Arab countries as well as Turkey. As recently as the Cairo Book Fair in 2023, multiple publishing houses (at least 10 I. Egypt and Syria) were marketing Arab translations of Mein Kampf, along side The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a creation of Imperial Russia’s Okhrana), and The International Jew by Henry Ford (a noted antisemite).

Israel is the only country so special that it’s right to retaliate and defend itself is denied before it’s fired it’s first shot. As Israel was collecting the bodies of its dead, finding parents and children burned alive in their homes, finding bodies of women and children with evidence of rape, people like you were already in the streets demanding Israel agree to a cease fire.

A cease fire?

Really?

We’re the Ukrainians told to hold back when the Russians invaded? Why must the Jews be denied a basic right denied to everyone else.

Oh that’s right, because according to progressive orthodoxy, all of the crimes committed on behalf of the Arabs (whom you call “Palestinians”) are forgiven and forgotten because Israel successfully defended herself in 1949-49, 1968, 1973, and all the little incidents that don’t merit being called a war. The Arabs are forgiven from their attempts at genocide that started in 1920, or any of the other earlier massacres and attacks on Jewish communities in Eretz Yisrael.

All is always forgiven of the Arabs. They are excused because either through a Western paternalism that views then as immature or a western antisemitism that despises Jews for not dying. Nothing, real or imagined, is ever forgotten or forgiven when it comes Israel and the Jews. People still believe the lies, like the massacre that never happened in Jenin, or more recently, the attack on the hospital that never happened.

Enjoy your perceived moral superiority as you consign more “Palestinian” children to their death. It’s made possible because of your willingness to be Hamas’ accomplices.

This was yesterday.

They literally stole the dude’s idea though.

[angrybell]

Resources re Demographics British Mandate of Palestine

Fred Gottheil, The Smoking Gun: Arab Immigration Into Palestine, 1922 - 1931, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2003, at 53 -64

Fred Gottheil, Arab Immigration into Pre-State Israel: 1922-1931, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Oct., 1973), pp. 315-324

Aryeh Aveneri, The Claim of Dispossession, Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs 1878 - 1948 (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books 1984).

Moshe Auman, “Land Ownership in Palestine 1880-1948,” in Michael Curtis, et al., The Palestinians, (NJ: Transaction Books, 1975).

I’m pulling this together mostly for me. It’s so I can stop having to refind all my resources. I’ll update as I find them again.

[angrybell]

There have been Jews living continuously in Eretz Yisrael since before Islam existed. There is archaeological proof found in the current State of Israel that verifies this. There are writings from other lands that confirm the existence of a Jewish nation in the land that is now the State of Israel.

You do realize that the Jewish people get their name from the land they were from: Judea. What is Judea known to the most of the world as because of a colonial name? Along the with Samaria, it is know as The West Bank thanks to the Jordanian King’s decree at the end of the 1948-49 War of Independence.

Had it not been for Hadrian, most of the world would never have met a Jew. It was only because of Hadrian’s response to the Jews seeks self-determination and an end to Roman domination that forced the majority of Jews into the diaspora.

Let’s remember something: just because the Jews were expelled by a foreign, colonizing invader, it does not mean that they lost status as indigenous to the region.

So what about the Arab claim that they are “Palestinians”?

You assert that the Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” are indigenous. Well, when we look at the historical records, if you go back to 1882, you would find that there were 141,000 or so Arab Muslims living in the region. However, 75% of those people were Egyptians who had moved to the region during the Egyptian invasion of 1831. Now, demographers have looked at this. If you take this 141,000 or so people, and increase them at the standard population growth rate of 1.1%, that means by 2015, there would be about 435,000 Arab Muslims directly descended from that group of 141,000.

But there are 10.5 million who claim refugee status as “Palestinians” and 5 million or so living in Gaza and the PA occupied territories of Judea and Samaria. So where did the other couple of million Arabs come from that make up the population of the two Arab controlled territories?

So glad you asked.

In 1905, 39% of the Arabs living the Ottoman vilayets of Syria and Lebanon, and the Mustariffe of Jerusalem (because there was no territory called “Palestine” during the centuries of Ottoman rule) were recent arrivals from Africa. Meaning, there was a significant chunk of the Arab population in Eretz Yisrael (as divided by the Ottomans) that had only recently arrived.

When the British Mandate opened for business, there were about 750,000 people living there. So, despite the fact that the region was horribly mismanaged by the Ottomans during the First World War, the population had doubled in 40 years. If you go by the 1.1% population increase, the population should have been about 627,000.

There was some migration, legal and illegal by both Arab and Jews. In 1931, the census found that there was about 1,035,000 people in the same region. Of that, most of the increase in population was due to natural and legal migration. However, Arab immigration into the Mandate territory was largely illegal. Between 1929 and 1931 alone, it’s reported that there were 70,000 illegal immigrants from Syria, Trans-Jordan, Egypt and other Muslim countries entering and staying. In 1934, another 25,000 left Syria for Mandate territory, entering illegally.

Now, let’s take a look at the clans that claim to be “Palestinians”.

those with the last name Erekat/Uraiqat/Areikat (They originated in Howeitat region of Arabia. Their family tree, if translated from Arabic confirms this.When they are honest about it, per the google translation, they admit they are from Jordan and are Bedouins. )

those belonging the Huessni family (including the Shawishes) came to Jerusalem in the 12th Century. (They trace their lineage back to the first Caliph, meaning again, they originate from Arabia.)

 those belonging to  Nashashibis. The name is Turkish, Kurdish, or Arabic in origin. It first pops up in the region when  Naser al-Din al-Nashashibi came to the region and became guardian of the  holy sites of Al Aqusa Mosque and the Cave of the Patriarchs. This was in 15th Century. 

Abu Ghoshes clan. They arrived in the region during the Crusades. While the historians disagree on their origin, they agree that they did not originate in the region. They either came from Eastern Europe, probably with Richard the Lionheart during the Third Crusade, or from Arabia during the same time. 

Barghoutis. They arrived after the Crusades.

Al Khalil family originates in Mecca. Arabs from Arabia. (Noticing a common theme here?)

Khazen family is from Lebanon, probably by way of what is now Iraq. So they’re the closest you’ve gotten so far on your contention that the Arabs are idegenous. 

The Nusaybah clan, which claims the title of oldest Arabic clan in Jerusalem, can only trace their lineage back to 637 A.D. That’s when two brothers who founded the current clan arrived in Jerusalem. Oh, and they arrived as part of the Prophet’s conquering army. Before that, they were of the Khazraj near Medina.

The Qudwa clan (which includes the Arafat family) did not arrive in what is now Israel until the end of the 17th Century. They were from Aleppo where they called themselves the al-Nabhani clan. That clan still exists in Aleppo. 

The Ridwan clan (one of my favorites). They arrived in the 16th Century and served as Ottoman governors for the region. They are of Bosnian origin. 

The Salibas family. They’re from Lebanon, but they aren’t your Armaic or Syrians in origin. They are from Greece, from the area where Sparta was. They were mostly around Antioch until the 12th Century when some of the family got swept up in the Crusades and ended up in Jerusalem. 

The Tuqan clan. They’re from Arabia before settling in Nablus. However, there is a part of the family that is supposed to be from Syria. So there you go, finally some Syriac. 

The Hammoudas family. They are from east of the Jordan (now Kingdom of Jordan). Depending on what era of Eretz Yisrael, they might be the closest to being indigenous to the region. But by the borders of today, they are clearly not.

The Zeitawis family. They originated around Mecca. Again, Arab.

The Ghassans. They are from Arabia, as is pretty well documented because they are known as the Ghassanids. 

The Tamimis are also from Arabia.

The Tarabins are also from Arabia where they were part of Alozd tribe in what is today Oman.

The Jabari clan comes from Northern Syria. Their history claims that they originated from people living in Qal’at Ja’bar fortress which is on the Euphrates and very close to being in Anatolia.

The Matars are from Kuwait. They arrived in the region in the 19th Century.

The Nammari family, another favorite, comes from Spain. They arrived sometime after 1492.

The Aswan’s originate in Hijaz. They’re Arabs from Arabia.

The Dajani clan is like the Nammari: theyre from Spain and were expelled in 1492.

The Murads emigrated to the region Albania.

The Al Hafi clan is descended from Bisho Al Hafi, who was from Baghdad.

Finally there are Marashada, Khair, Bannoura, Awwad, and BAdra families. They’re all from Egypt. They all arrived in the 17th Century.

Ok, those are the big clans of the “Palestinian”. Not exactly a bunch of indigenous people. More like they are colonizers brought in to region by various Empires. When it gets down to it, only about 4.3% of the people who claim to be “Palestinians” can trace their roots to the land before 1831.

Now you say that the majority of Israel’s population was born or emigrated after 1983. That does not change their status. Because if we use that logic, then why not use the same logic against the Arabs. 57.9% of them were born after 1999. What does that mean? For the Jews, it means that they started having babies and people returned from the Disaspora. For the Arabs, its that they had babies.

Your final paragraph is either funny because you are ignorant or sad because you aren’t and are trying to obfuscate the truth.

Let’s start with the original 1988 Hamas Covenant, since Hamas is the one that set this round off with their invasion of Israel. It states,

Article Eleven:

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day? 

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement. 

It happened like this: When the leaders of the Islamic armies conquered Syria and Iraq, they sent to the Caliph of the Moslems, Umar bin-el-Khatab, asking for his advice concerning the conquered land - whether they should divide it among the soldiers, or leave it for its owners, or what? After consultations and discussions between the Caliph of the Moslems, Omar bin-el-Khatab and companions of the Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, it was decided that the land should be left with its owners who could benefit by its fruit. As for the real ownership of the land and the land itself, it should be consecrated for Moslem generations till Judgement Day. Those who are on the land, are there only to benefit from its fruit. This Waqf remains as long as earth and heaven remain. Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void. 

"Verily, this is a certain truth. Wherefore praise the name of thy Lord, the great Allah." (The Inevitable - verse 95).

Hamas continues laying out its program by stating

Article Thirteen:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know." 

Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers? 

"But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah." (The Cow - verse 120).

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with. As in said in the honourable Hadith: 

"The people of Syria are Allah's lash in His land. He wreaks His vengeance through them against whomsoever He wishes among His slaves It is unthinkable that those who are double-faced among them should prosper over the faithful. They will certainly die out of grief and desperation."

So what does this mean? The short version is they don’t view the territory that Israel exists on as divisible. They also will not accept any compromise by negotiation. They are committed solely to resolution of the problem through violence.

But let’s see what the updated 2017 Hamas Covenant says. Unlike the 1988 document, the new covenant now explicitly delineates the boundaries of “Palestine”. They write

The Land of Palestine

2. Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras al-Naqurah in the north to Umm al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people form their land and the establishment of the Zionist Entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity.

Ras al-Nagurah is the Arabic name for Tyre in Lebanon.

Umm al-Rashrash is the Arabic name for Eilat.

Hamas has made it clear that they do not want any of Israel to survive them.

Now, how about the PLO… the so-called moderates. The issued PLO Charter in 1968 (https.iris.org.il/plochart.html) and there is some dispute as to whether its actually be fully amended. But this is what it says

Article 2:

Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit,.

Article 3:

The Palestinian Arab people possess the legal right to their homeland and have the right to determine their destiny after achieving the liberation of their country, in accordance with their wishes and entirety of their own accord and will.

Article 5:

The Palestinians are those Arab nationals who until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or have stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father - whether inside Palestine or outside it - is also a Palestinian.

Article 6:

The Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinians.

Article 15:

The liberation of Palestine, from an Arb viewpoint, is a national (qawmi) dirty and its attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine. Absolute responsibility for this falls upon the Arb nation - people and governments - with the Arab people of Palestine in the vanguard. Accordingly, the Arab nation must mobilize…and make available to them the means and opportunities that will enable them to continue to carry out their leading role in the armed revolution, until they liberate their homeland.

Ok. So they define “Palestine” as the lands in the Mandate. But they only call for the liberation of the lands that are not under Arab control. So that means….they want to eliminate Israel and replace it with a single, Arabic Muslim state. Article 15 makes it pretty clear: they want to eliminate Zionism in the region. To them, that means all Jews who arrived after the start of the Jewish return to Eretz Yisrael, in the 19th century.

So no, the Arabs are unwilling to compromise. Any settlement is only a means to improving the “Palestinian” position for the next round of violence.

You don’t get to read how your western sensibilities hope its meant to be taken. You must read it as they intend it to be read. Otherwise, you’re just delusional and unserious.

Posted @withregram • @adielofisrael “From the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea, Palestine will be free (of Jews)”.

This is how you should read it because this is what it means. It is just sugarcoated call for genocide of the Jewish people and ethnic cleansing of Jews from our indigenous homeland. It is not de-colonial, it is the epitome of Arab colonialism and a remnant of the Palestinian Arab collaboration with Nazi Germany under the leadership of Hajj Amin Al Husseini, who coined this phrase.

#israel #palestine #gaza #indigenous

[angrybell: but given what we have seen from the “Free Palestine” crowd, I don’t think that they care the Jewish people will be killed off to make way for their Arab utopia. Its not a bug for them, its a feature.]

[angrybell]

Where does the word “Palestine” come from? I know you didn’t ask...

But I feel compelled to do this because apparently I have nothing better to do. Don’t tell Mrs. Angrybell, she will find something. 

So it starts with @halalbarbiee and @baconcourse supporting the following statements (screen shot only, they seem to have locked this one or deleted or whatever because Tumblr won’t let me reblog it):

The origin of the word Palestine is actually a Hebrew word. The modern word Palestine is a gift to us from the Roman Empire. When they had finally subdued the Jews in what was then called Provincial Iudea (Province of Judea), the Romans decided that they were going to try and erase the Jews from existence. So they picked the name of the greatest enemy in Jewish history. Who was this enemy? They are now, in English, called Phillistines. So where did the Romans get this word? Well, probably from the Greeks, since the Romans did that quite a lot. But where did Herodotus, the Greek writer where we find the earliest mention get the word?

Well that’s where it gets interesting. Who were these Philistines greatest enemy? That would be the Jews. What did they call them? They called them the Pelésheth. The Hebrew writing for the word is:

As an aside, the words Palestine, Palestina, Palastia, and Palash all have something in common. They all have the sound of “p” to start them off. Hebrew has that sound. Arabic does not. If the Arabs were actually from “Palestine”, they would have retained it. There is a modern movement to create a “p” sound in the Arabic language, but it is a recent event as the New York Times recounts. The claim that “Falasteen” is the proper pronunciation flies in the face of all evidence. Falasteen is the word that the Arabs use because they had no other way of saying. Interestingly, the Israelis tend to use that pronunciation themselves these days because they are dealing with an Arabic speaking people.

So is the Hebrew word Pelésheth a transliteration of what the “Philistines” called themselves? Most likely, no. Why? Because the word Pelésheth has a Hebrew root. That root word is Pelésh. The word in Hebrew is here:

After all this, we get to to the question of what does Pelésh translate to? The word palash, means “rolling” or “migratory”.  And this fits with what we know about these people.

We have earlier writings which identify the people living in the strip that you are claiming was Philistia. The Egyptians identified them as one of the Sea Peoples who invaded the Levant. They called the the “Prst”. Why do I call them part of the Sea Peoples? Because archaeological discoveries have pretty much established that whether you call them Phillistines or Prst, they did not originate from the region and were, in fact, invaders who had come from the region we now call Greece. The archaeological record is pretty substantial at this point that the people there were clearly Mycenaean. Based on this, they arrived in the region sometime around the 13th Century BCE (late Bronze Age).

Now, this enemy of the Jewish people had not existed in centuries. The latest that these people, existed is sometime in the 7th Century BCE, almost two centuries before Herodotus starts using the word to describe the region. What happened then? Well, that is when Nebuchadnezzar came in with the Babylonian army and destroyed the First Temple. Wanting to make sure that he had uncontested control over the region, he also went through and destroyed the Land of the Philistines.

How do we know that?

Well, in recent years, there have been new archaeological finds that have helped increase our knowledge about the region you are referring to as Philistia/Palestine. Here is a link to a PDF of an article written on the subject. ).

One of the things you should realize is that this region was not a united region. In fact, when Nebuchadnezzar came to put down the challenge to his authority, he was not dealing with a unified state. He was dealing with several entities that I will call city-states (that term may be scholarly inaccurate). He was not putting down a rebellion by the king of the Philistines. He was putting down a rebellion by the king of Ashkelon.

That means that there was no unified “Philistia”. The most the archeology supports for the extent of Ashkelon’s reach was the city itself and two small villages near the walls. Ahskelon, in a quick review of the literature, seems to be the most studied of the five city-states identified as Philistines.

An interesting thing though, there is no evidence as to what they themselves called themselves. The name comes from the culture and the people who survived: the Jews.  

Now remember how I mentioned that the Romans got the word from the Greeks? The Greeks used the word. But they did not always use it to mean the same thing. Sometimes, they meant it to refer to a region. Sometimes they meant it to refer to a people. Often times, the two did not correspond. In fact there is evidence that the use of the name “Palestine” by Herodotus and other Greeks was not meant to denote the land of the Philistines. They also used it as a pun. He was using it to refer to what Jews call Eretz Yisrael.

How do we know this? Well Herodotus, who apparently travelled to the region, recounts how the men there were circumcised. Guess which people in that region practice circumcision? The Jews. Guess which people did not practice circumcision? Pretty much everyone else who was not Jewish or Egyptian.

Herodotus writes in The History

“The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine acknowledge that they learned the custom from the Egyptians, and the Syrians of the valleys of the Thermodon and the Parthenius, as well as their neighbors the Macrones, say that they learned it lately from the Colchians. These are the only nations that circumcise, and it is seen that they do just as the Egyptians”

Who are the Syrians of Palestine? Well, they’re not Philistines. They’re not Falastines. They’re Jews, who around this time would have been known as Judahites because they were part of the Province of Judah in the Persian Empire which had conquered the region.. How do we know this? Well, the last time the Phillistines were mentioned prior to this was when

What other evidence do we have that Herodotus meant Palaistine to mean Eretz Yisrael? Well, he never calls it the Land of the Philistines for one.  For another, we need to look at the meaning of the Yisrael or we would say it in English in modern times, Israel. Israel means “wrestling with G-d” or “wrestler with G-d”. What was the word Herodotus would have used for wrestling? The word is “palaistês”.  Wow, that’s really close to the what Herodotus named the region in his writing, Palaistinê.

So is it more likely that Herodotus translated the name for the region for the people who lost in the conflict between the Jews and the Philistines. Or is it more probable that he named the region in his works after the hero who wrestled a god (i.e. Jacob) and spawned the people who still inhabited the land?

If we look at other texts left to us by the Greeks, we find that other writers were using the same word, Palaistinê, to describe the region, not the nation. Aristotle wrote about the Dead Sea and places it in Palaistinê. A few centuries later, Josephus, who chronicled the First Roman Jewish War, also uses the word Palaistinê to describe the region where the Province of Judea was. There were clearly no “Philistines” there then, only the Jews and other groups that existed. None of them were Phillistines.

So lets see, are you going to believe that a Jewish man captured and enslaved by the Romans is going to call his home country by the name of his people’s enemy? Or is it more likely that he chose to use the Greek word because it meant Israel.

Basically, the rest of your argument that there was a mythical kingdom/country/state of Palestine is bogus. Effectively, the term “Palestine” until the 1960s, was akin to when Americans refer to a collection of states as “The South” or “The Midwest”, or when British speak of “The Midlands”. Both refer to regions of territory where there may be political districts, but which do not identify either a sovereign state, a national grouping, or an ethnicity.

Now, when you give a timeline for your fictitious nation of “Palestine”, you are doing violence to history because you are substituting a modern fantasy for historical evidence.  

If you want to try and argue that “Philistines” were native cannanites, you’re going to be sorely mistaken. As noted earlier, the evidence shows that they were probably from the Sea Peoples. Again, how do we know this? Well, we know from the pottery that they left behind. The pottery is generally described as being Myceanean. The alaphabet used by these Sea Peoples have been identified as Myceanean Greek, Linear B.  

Then lets consider what the Bible tells us. Even though the Bible has problems as a resource, it is one of the few contemporary texts to a) survive the era and b) have a description of the Philistines. Take the description of Goliath. In 1 Samuel 17, the Bible states

So that would mean Goliath looked like his armor would be similiar to 

In case you didn’t know, that’s a Greek hoplite. Warriors from the region of Eretz Yisrael did not wear the type of armor Goliath is reported to have worn. Arabs certainly never did. 

What happened to the Philistines? They disappeared. Their society and culture did not survive the destruction of Nebuchadnezzar’s campaign. Some scholars believe that some of the surviving Philisitines were taken to Babylon when Nebuchadnezzar went home, along with the Jews he took with him. The Jewish people survived Babylonian captivity and reclaimed their land. The Philistines did not. 

Their region ceased to exist. New people came in to fill the void left by the Babylonians. Ashkelon was never a part of the Hasmonean or Herodian Jewish kingdoms of Israel. However, under the Romans and Greeks, it was made part of Syria. 

Going back to where this started, when Emperor Hadrian (May G-d grind his bones) attempted to destroy the Jewish link to Eretz Yisrael, he inadvertently renamed Judah, Syria Palaestina... Syria The Land of Wrestler with G-d.... Syria Israel. 

TL/DR version: Palestine means Israel. 

[angrybell]

You say that Palestine was not a country. You use notes, maps and quotes from your family to back your statement. But Palestine IS a country for many. It is real in the hearts of people who call themselves Palestinian. What good is all your meticulous research if all it does is justify hatred towards other human beings? What is the point of theorizing if the end result is to humiliate an entire population of people? Your work is no different than propaganda.

@revolutionary-rants,

Your “country” and “nationalism” seems to revolve around one single thing: death. You celebrate people who beat children’s brains out with Kalashnikovs. You honor monsters who deliberately target civilians with bombs. “Palestine” indoctrinates children with a hatred as deep and as ugly as anything produced by the Nazis, the KKK, or any other racial supremacy movements, that they believe that acting as a suicide bomber is preferably to creating a working society.

The fundamental basis of “Palestine” and “Palestinians” has not changed from the “No’s” of the Khartoum conference. No peace, No negotiations, and No recognition. Even today, those principles continue to guide the Arabs. Doubt me? Look at the actions of the leaders of so-called “Palestine”. Their sole focus, their sole goal, is the destruction of Israel and the Jews. 

The only thing that the Arabs in the name of “Palestine” have ever offered up is hatred, racism, and violence. “Palestine” is simply the ugly form of pan-Arab nationalism, a racial supremacist grouping devoted to ethnic and religious purity, continuing in the modern day. “Palestine” is a death cult masquerading as a national movement.

The fact that a group of people have chosen to call themselves a nation does create an actual national grouping. if that were the case, there would be national group for the supporters of Manchester United. Without football, there would be no group of Man U supporters.

Consider this, without Israel, there would be no “Palestinian” or “Palestine”. There is nothing more to your myth than a hatred of people who are different from yourself, whom your forebears could not stand to living nearby them. Without Jews, Israelis, or Israel, your movement would disappear. Other than the fetish for killing innocents and those deemed “collaborators”, there is nothing to distinguish those under the control of the PA from those who live in any other Arab country.

You can call what I wrote what you like. It does not change the fact that there was never an independent Arab nation called “Palestine”. At most there has been a deluded group of Arabs, whom individually may be as decent as the day is long, who have decided to subscribe to a doctrine of racial supremacy and religious hatred dressed up so that Western liberals will support them in order to avoid having to take responsibility for their collective actions.