Palestine? | seebothsides

"Palestine" is the name that the Romans gave to the land of Israel when they conquered this land 2000 years ago.

There was never in the history of the world a "Palestinian" nation
There was never in the history of the world a "Palestinian" state
There was never in the history of the world a "Palestinian" kingdom
There were never in the history of the world "Palestinian" kings
There was never in the history of the world a "Palestinian" capital
There was never in the history of the world a "Palestinian" essence
There was never in the history of the world a "Palestinian" heritage
There was never in the history of the world a "Palestinian" culture

The “Palestinians" are Arabs who were brought to the region by the Ottoman Empire as part of the Muslim occupation in the region. They are definitely not the tribes from Crete who settled down in the 5 cities of Gaza strip after the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. These tribes were called Philistines and they weren't Arabs at all and nowadays “Palestinians" are definitely not their descendants. The Philistines don't exist as a nation nowadays.

There's no "Palestinian “nation but an ARAB one which went out of the Arabian Peninsula and occupied dozens of lands, including the land of Israel.

The Arabs who were living in the land of Israel started to call themselves “Palestinians" only after the establishment of Israel in 1948and prior to it they called themselves just 'Arabs' and this is how they called their organizations ('Arab Higher Committee') and their struggles ('The Great Arab Revolt') and nick named the land of Israel in different names such as 'Southern Syria'.
There was an Israeli state in the land of Israel 2000 years before the prophet of Islam allegedly flew on a "magical horse" from Mecca to Jerusalem.

There was an Israeli nation in the land of Israel
There was an Israeli kingdom in the land of Israel
There were Israeli kings in the Israeli kingdom of Israel
There was an Israeli capital in the kingdom of Israel
There was and there is an Israeli essence
There was and there is an Israeli heritage
There was and there is an Israeli culture

Israel isn't just a name of a state. It's first and for all a name of a nation(Am Yisrael). Israel is the name of the father of the nation(Jacob)and Israelis are his descendants. The real meaning of the word ‘Israeli' is someone who belongs to the nation of Israel and not only"a citizen of a state called Israel".

The word 'Jews' was invented by gentiles. When the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans occupied the land of Israel they called all the Israelis in the name 'Jews' because at those days the tribe of Judah was the biggest and the dominant tribe which survived the exile of Assyria in which 10 tribes of Israel were exiled. The tribe of Judah lived in the Judean desert thus the gentiles who occupied the land of Israel called the members of this tribe (and also the ones of Benjamin and Levi who joined it) in the name 'Jews'.

When Israelis (Jews) who live abroad go to synagogue they don't read about Jews in the prayer books nor in the Torah but about 'The Nation of Israel', 'The Children of Israel', 'The House of Israel','Shema Yisrael' etc. They are Israelis because they belong to the nation of Israel even if they aren't citizens of a state called Israel. Both the words 'Jews' and 'Israelis' refer to nationality, to ethnic identity and not to religion. Jews are members of the tribe of Judah and not "people who believe in Judaism". And the nation isn't called Judah but Israel, and so does the land and in the future the 10 tribes will return to this nation.

A mere few facts about Israel that the haters of Israel don't like:

Israel became a state in 1312 B.C.E., two millennia before Islam.
Arab refugees from Israel began calling themselves "Palestinians" in 1967, two decades after (modern) Israeli statehood in 1948.
After conquering the land in 1272 B.C.E., Jews ruled it for a thousand years and maintained a continuous presence there for 3,300years.
The only Arab rule following conquest in 633 B.C.E. lasted just 22 years.
For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem was the Jewish capital. It was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even under Jordanian rule, (East) Jerusalem was not made the capital, and no Arab leader came to visit it.
Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the oly bible, but not once is it mentioned in the holy Qur'an.
King David founded Jerusalem; Mohammed never set foot in it.
Jews pray facing Jerusalem; Muslims face Mecca. If they are between the two cities, Muslims pray facing Mecca, with their backs to Jerusalem.
In 1948, Arab leaders urged their people to leave, promising to cleanse the land of Jewish presence. 68% of them fled without ever setting eyes on an Israeli soldier.
Virtually the entire Jewish population of Muslim countries had to flee as the result of violence and pogroms.
Some 630,000 Arabs left Israel in 1948, while close to a million Jews were forced to leave Muslim countries.
In spite of the vast territories at their disposal, Arab refugees were deliberately prevented from assimilating into their host countries. Of 100 million refugees following World War 2, they are the only group to have never integrated with their co-religionists. Most of the Jewish refugees from Europe and Arab lands were settled in Israel, a country no larger than New Jersey, USA.
There are 22 Muslim countries, not counting Palestine. There is only one Jewish state.
The written and printed Fatah and Hamas constitutions still call for the destruction of Israel.
Israel ceded most of the west bank and all of Gaza to the Palestinian authority, and even provided it with arms.
During the Jordanian occupation, Jewish holy sites were vandalized and were off limits to Jews. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian holy sites are accessible to all faiths.
Out of 175 United Nations Security Council resolutions up to1990, 97 were against Israel; out of 690 general assembly resolutions, 429 were against Israel.
The U.N. was silent when the Jordanians destroyed 58 synagogues in the old city of Jerusalem. It remained silent while Jordan systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and it remained silent when Jordan enforced apartheid laws preventing Jews from accessing the temple mount and western wall.
Arabs started all five wars against Israel, and lost every one of them.
And the UK parliament voted for a Palestinian state because it's their right? Their right to what exactly?

The issue of Settlements. Some links and Analysis

The only international law applicable to the so-called settlements arises out of the San Remo Conference of 1920 and the Churchill White Paper of 1922 which created the British Mandate of Palestine, governing Western Palestine, which is now Israel, but not Eastern Palestine, which is now Jordan. Jews may live in the whole of Western Palestine, including Judea and Samaria. Jordan's annexation of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem was illegal. Only Britain and Pakistan recognized that occupation.

To say that Jews cannot live in Judea and Samaria or any parts of Jerusalem is racism. After all, Jews may live in England and Germany. Arabs may live in Tel Aviv, which in the spirit of the White Paper, which was a Zionist document: Palestine as a Jewish homeland with the rights of Arabs and Christians protected. That's what it said in the Balfour Declaration. Remember, the Churchill White Paper/British Mandate was recognized by the League of Nations. That is the only imternational law which is applicable. When the British decided to partition Palestine in 1937, then passed the Chamberlain White Paper of 1939, these actions were not in the spirit of international law. Did they receive the consent of the League of Nations for this rejection of the terms of the Churchill White Paper and the Balfour Declaration? No. When Britain passed the matter over to the United Nations in 1947, the Zionists accepted the partition plan but the Arabs rejected it.

Why do Arab states have to be Jew-free but Israel allows Arabs to live there? The rejection of the right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria is pure Arab racism at its worst? And pure European and American antisemitism at its worst.

Judea and Samaria are "disputed territories" under the Oslo Records. Unlike Jordan in 1949, Israel has not annexed these territories since 1967. Perhaps they should have. After all, the United States annexed California, New Mexico and Texas after winning these territoies in the 1840s after a victorious war against Mexico. What's the difference? Or is there one rule for America and Turkey's annexation of territories in Cyprus, but other rules for Israel? Should they give East Prussia back to Germany?

If Jews can't live in Judea and Samaria, why can Arabs live in Tel Aviv? Courtesy of David Carlton

"My understanding is this. Under the Palestine mandate, Jewish settlement was encouraged right across the mandate. Since the Palestinians have never set up a state, the mandate rules still apply everywhere. Only Transjordan, under a separate Transjordan Memorandum, was exclusive to Arabs. Arab rights were not to be compromised, and today's Arab population of Israel reflects that.

"UN resolution 242 makes it clear that Israel does not have to retreat from all the territory of the West Bank, stipuylating that the Arabs have to agree to defensible borders for Israel. There will be Jewish settlements in a future Palestinian state, and it is not illegal for some of them to be there already. It may also be worth pointing out that the settlers are not illegal according to the Geneva Convention IV because they were not forced into the WB by the state of Israel but went there voluntarily and in accordance with the UN resolution

If the San Remo agreements and the mandates are no longer considered valid, then Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan are all subject to abolition (as would be some African states too). What's sauce for the goose.... Denying the validity of Iraqi sovereignty based on the mandate under the UK or Syria undser the French mandate would come at a time when both states are breaking up anyway, and no-one considers such a dismantling to be legal or desirable. If the integrity of states manufactured by the League of Nations and its mandate system is to be disputed by, say, ISIS or the Jabhat al-Nusra, it would mean a breakdown of international law.

"Likewise, denial of Israel's legal status by denial of the right of the League of Nations to form states following the collapse of empires, involves a demand to undermine much of the basis for current national sovereignty. And it's worth saying that, although the Arab and other Muslim states voted against the UN partition plan in 1947, they were all members of the UN and were obliged to accept its resolutions. The illegality was theiur launchingt of a civil war and an international war. When the Arab states joined the League of Nations after independence, it was an admission of the right of the League to act in such matters and the legality of the establishment of a Jewish homeland."

Courtesy of Dennis MacEoin whom, it must be mentioned, is neither Israeli nor Jewish

Another superbly-crafted and accurate-content letter courtesy of Dennis MacEoin to a deeply offensive Norwegian film festival:

Dear Mr. Magnussen

I have just read of your decision to ban the performance of an Israeli film about disabled children in Israel. You have, I understand, indicated that you would not accept a film unless the film was about the “illegal occupation” or the Israeli blockade of Gaza or discrimination against Palestinians".

That is one of the most bigoted, fanatical, and discriminatory statements I have ever read. It is also, frankly, totally inaccurate.

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank (previously occupied by Jordan after an war of aggression in 1948) is entirely legal under international law. You need to read some international law agreements, notably the 1967 UN Resolution 242, which permits Israeli occupation until the Palestinians agree to secure borders, stop terrorism against Israel, and make a peace treaty. To date, the Palestinians have done none of these things. Look also at the Oslo Accords, which have been breached time and again by the Palestinian Authority. Would you be willing to accept a documentary on the Israeli pullout from Gaza in 2005 and the subsequent take-over of the strip by a fanatical terrorist organization, Hamas, whose 19898 Charter calls for the total destruction of Israel, declares peace talks, conferences etc. ‘a waste of time’, and states that ‘the solution to the Palestinian question is only through jihad’ (la hall li’l-qadiyya al-filatasiniyya il bi’l-jihad).

Have you read the Charter? Do you read Arabic? Do you approve of Hamas’ intransigence and utter rejection of international law, or their abominable treatment of Gazan civilians?

You talk of a ‘blockade’ of Gaza. That is total nonsense and you know it. Israel sends in about 1000 truckloads of supplies to Gaza every day, providing everything the Gazans need but ruling out weapons and materials that can be used to make explosives, build terror tunnels, or build rockets. Egypt currently has closed the Rafah crossing into Gaza, but you don’t take the Egyptian government to task for this.

Israel’s naval blockade is 100% legal under maritime law, and I don’t imagine you are anything of an expert in that field. What do you mean by ‘discrimination against Palestinians’? There is, no doubt, discrimination of this kind, including discrimination against Israeli Arabs.

But there is discrimination in Norway, here in the UK, across Europe, in the United States, and in all Muslim countries, where all non-Muslims suffer real hardship (think of the persecuted Baha’i minority in Iran). And Israel stands head and shoulders above that sort of discrimination. Palestinians are treated in large numbers in Israeli hospitals, Palestinian children are recipients of heart transplants by Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli organization, Palestinians in the West Bank working for Israeli companies receive at least three times the salary they would working for PA businesses. That strikes me as positive discrimination that benefits and does not harm. In Israel, Arabs serve in parliament, as Supreme Court and regional court judges, as academics, as successful businessmen and women, star in entertainment, and have more than once won the title of Miss Israel.

I grew up in Northern Ireland, and I can assure you nothing like that ever happened to Catholics in those days. In ways you can never hope to understand, Israel is one of the most open, fair-minded and unprejudiced of countries. Nowhere else in the Middle East are gay men and women given total legality and able to run Gay Pride marches, nowhere else in the Middle East are the Baha’is free to practise their religion: in Israel they have their two holiest shrines, all their international headquarters, and gardens that are UNESCO World Heritage Sites (all their holy places in Iran have been demolished).

If you approve of the persecution of Baha’is and other religious minorities (Christians are being slaughtered and expelled across the Middle East, the Israeli Christian community is the only one to have increased in numbers since 1948), if you think gays should be thrown off high buildings, if you think women should be veiled and kept in their place, if you think Jews deserve to be made second-class citizens or killed off, if you think Palestinian terror attacks that have killed thousands of Israelis are justified and that Israel has no right to stop them or fight back, then you clearly have more in common with Fatah, Hamas, and their allies across the region.

That you can’t bear a moments praise for lone of the world’s most successful, vibrant, and progressive countries but prefer to cheer for a people who have for 67 years closed their eyes to peace, compromise, and dialogue, then you expose yourself as a mean-spirited and ignorant bigot. I expect more from a Norwegian, brought up in a progressive and liberal land. If you aren’t willing to do some reading, re-think your attitudes, and see good in a people, the Jews, who have had to fight for their survival over centuries and are still threatened in their homeland by heavily-armed terrorists with no concern for human life, then you are far outside the limits of what I consider human decency, open-mindedness, and fair play. Blind prejudice is no substitute for hard information and a refusal to be goaded by one side of an argument.

If you are willing to reply, I am willing to take you one by one through these and many other things you appear to be poorly or not at all informed about.

Some links

Dr Allan Gerson

Stand With Us resources

Are settlements really illegal?

Eugene Kontorovich; "Israel's Borders in International Law"

Israeli settlemens are not illegal