Dr. Khadim al Masih                                

For almost two centuries the Middle East has been in chaos.  Almost every nation has tried to come up with suggestions to end the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. The most interesting thing is not the war but the philosophy of the war. It has proven to be a perpetual war that will not end, the League of Nations tried to solve the conflict but failed and now the United Nations has tried without success for the last sixty years. But what is the problem? This is the question that has to be answered if this conflict is to be resolved and it must be answered correctly. The Arabs claim that the Jews have taken their land and they should conceded all the land they have taken. There are several facts that must be seen to gain clarity to this predicament.

First, what is meant by the term the “land of Palestine?” A geographic area called “Palestine” has never existed as a distinct region with boundaries being demarcated.

Second, no politically autonomous entity of the “nation of Palestine” has ever existed.

Third, there is no language known as Palestinian.

Fourth, there is no distinct Palestinian culture.

Fifth, there has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians.

Sixth, Palestinians are Arabs who cannot be distinguished from Jordanians (even Jordan is actually a recent invention–created in 1946), Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen, etc.; all these Arab ‘countries’ were created in a European map room at the end of the colonial period.

Origins in Ancient History?

Are the Palestinians related to the Ancient Philistines?  The Philistines were not Arabs, they were not Semites.  They had no  connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name “falastin” that Arabs use for Palestine is not an Arab name.  It is the Arab  pronunciation of the Greco-Roman word “Palastina” derived from the peleshet.”1

Then how did Israel come to be known as Palestine? 

And who named it so?

In the 2nd century the last attempt of the Jews to achieve independence from the Roman Empire ended with the well known  event of Masada, which is historically documented and universally recognized as the fact that determined the Jewish diaspora in a definitive way. The land where these things happened was the province known as Judea, and there is no mention of any place called Palestine before that time. The Roman Emperor  Hadrian was utterly upset with the Jewish nation and wanted to erase the name of Israel and Judah from the face of the earth, so that there would be no memory of the country that belonged to that rebel people. He decided to replace the name of that Roman province and resorted to ancient history in order to find a name that might appear appropriate. He used the name of an extinct people who were unknown in Roman times called the Philistines; who once dwelt only along the coast of Israel, and who were enemies of the Israelites. Therefore according to Latin spelling he invented the new name: “Palestina” – a name that would be despised by the Jews as it reminded them of their old foes. He did so with the explicit purpose of effacing any trace of Jewish history.  Ancient Romans and modern Palestinians have fulfilled the Hebrew Scripture’s prophecy that declares:   “they lay plans against your people….they say: come let us wipe them as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more.”     Psalms 83:3-4. 2

So, when did the so called “Palestinians” start claiming the land of Israel and why?

The Arabs who lived in “Palestine” came to think of themselves as “Palestinians” only after the  War of 1967.  Before that Judea and Samaria together with Jerusalem  were occupied by Jordan and Gaza was occupied by Egypt. But not a single Arab thought of himself as a “Palestinian.” More over, to call an Arab a “Palestinian” in those days would only insult him because until the late 60’s the word Palestinian was commonly and unanimously associated in all the world with the Jews and all the world knew: Palestine is another name for Israel.

Arabs who lived in Israel identified themselves as Arabs, and they used to call themselves Arabs.  Arabs knew the term “Palestinian” was the synonym of a Jew. This is why they felt offended. But after the 1967 War the Arabs suddenly began referring to the Arabs living in the land of Israel as:   “palestinians.”

Furthermore, this idea belonged to the propaganda experts of the Soviet KGB.  Their propaganda campaign and the ideological basis were brilliantly prepared and elaborated in the Soviet Institute of Oriental Studies whose director Evgeniy Primakov was a professional intelligence officer who spoke very well in Arabic and had been working for many years in different Arabic speaking countries under the “cover”  of a journalist of the official Communist Party newspaper “Pravda.”  All the media of the Soviet satellite countries immediately started to weep over the poor “Palestinians.” This propaganda was immediately supported by leftist media in the West.

After 3 years of this massive PR campaign which included:

1. the media crying about the “poor Palestinians”

2. the Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat giving passionate speeches in European Universities, at United Nations Assemblies and at political meetings about how he a “native Palestinian” was robbed and humiliated by the Khazar Jews. The world began to accept the false idea of a “palestinian people” This propaganda had become firmly rooted in the brains of the people of Western Europe. The speed at which this falsehood  spread was due to the fact of anti-Semitism.

Now the world believes these  Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” have a “just cause,” a “right to exist,” and weep over how “Jews stole their land” in Judea.  They manufacture idiotic tales of how “Israelis robbed their land” in Israel. 3  Believers in the Bible see clearly how Satan is the schemer of this big lie. He desires to destroy and annihilate God’s people. The Arabs will never put down their weapons as long as Jews exist.  The truth is:

“If the Arabs and Muslims put down their weapons today there would be no more violence. But, if the Israelis put down their weapons there would be no more Israel.”–Benjamin Netiyahu

Keep in mind the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel only represents one tenth of one percent of the land mass. But that’s too much for the Arabs. They want it all!  And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today. Greed, pride, envy, covetousness, etc. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make it will never be enough.

So who are the rightful owners of the land of Israel?

“The Land of Israel is the very embodiment of the Jewish people’s continuity. It is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3000 years ago. You dig the soil and you find pottery from Davidic times, coins from Bar Kokhba, and two thousand year old scrolls written in a script remarkably like the one that today advertises ice cream at the corner candy store. Israel became a nation about 1300BC. That is two thousand years before Islam. People of modern day Israel share the same language and culture shaped by the Jewish heritage and religion passed through generations starting with their founding father Abraham. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC the Jews have had dominion over the land  for one thousand years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3300 years. After the Romans conquered Jerusalem about 2000 years ago Jewish people were expelled and dispersed to the diaspora and the land of Israel was ruled by various conquerers such as: Rome, Islamic oppressors, Christian crusaders, the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire. But there is no time in history when the land of Israel had no Jewish presence.

Furthermore, the Quran does NOT mention Palestine NOR does Muhammad mention Jerusalem. Muhammad never visited Jerusalem. For over 3,300 years Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. In the Bible, Jerusalem is mentioned over 669 times. 5

The only logical conclusion is:  to claim that the so called Palestinians are the original people of the land of Israel is against secular history, Biblical history, extra-Biblical history, archeological evidence, against Islamic history, against common sense and against truth.

Bibliography:

1. Joseph Farah,Arab -American editor and journalist. World Net Daily 11th October 2000.

2  Palestine: History 135-337: Syria Palastina and the Tetracycline the Online Encyclopedia of Roman Provinces.

3 Yahoo Canada 2013.

4 Canada’s Calgary, Aug 12,1997