The Conflict — Part 7

The PLO leadership, together with many other Arab leaders, maintain that the Jews were newcomers to Palestine who displaced “millions” of Palestinian Arabs by forcing them from the land they had farmed for thousands of years. Yasser Arafat stood before the plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly in November 1974 and told the world that “Palestine was a verdant land,” inhabited by an Arab people in the course of building its life and “dynamically enriching its indigenous culture.” Arafat said that Palestine’s Arab people were engaged in farming and building, spreading culture throughout the land for thousands of years, setting an example in the practice of freedom of worship, acting as faithful guardians of the holy places of all nations.” Speaking specifically of the Arabs of Palestine, Arafat said, “We vociferously condemned the massacres of Jews under Nazi rule.”

Seven outrageous, bald-faced lies in only three sentences! The absolute outlandishness of the lie in Arafat’s final statement that Arabs in Palestine “vociferously condemned the massacres of Jews under Nazi rule” can only be appreciated by knowing the fact that Haj al-Husseini, the former Muslim Mufti of Jerusalem, was a confidant of Adolf Hitler and who helped formulate the Nazis’ “Final Solution” — the extermination of all European Jews. Arafat was a distant relation of Haj al-Husseini.

Arabs were “faithful guardians of the holy places of all nations?” This would be laughable if it were not so tragic. Arabs did guard the holy sites of Muslim nations, but treated Jewish and Christian holy sites with utter contempt — those that the Arabs did not make into mosques. The Arabs even denied that the last remains of the western wall of the Jewish temple, the most holiest of all Jewish places, was part of the temple and refused to allow the Jews to pray there. And after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, when the Old City of Jerusalem was lost to Arab forces, the Arabs completely destroyed 58 Jewish synagogues ¯ including the magnificent Hurva synagogue ¯ by blowing them up. All Jewish cemeteries were destroyed, and the tombstones were used to cobble streets or for building urinals for Jordanian soldiers. Please note: Everything stated in this series is fully documented in this writer’s book Philistine: The Great Deception, but to include all the book’s 1,503 references and quotations would make this series too burdensome for the average reader.

The Arabs were truly “an example in the practice of freedom of worship” in Palestine, too. The Arabs, who also claim to have always “treated the Jews kindly and graciously,” robbed, raped and murdered the Jews who had “less value than a dog.” Christians as well as Jews were dhimmi ¯ subjugated inferiors ¯ in Palestine, and a pilgrim to the land wrote: “Christians and Jews go about in Jerusalem in clothes considered fit only for wandering beggars.”

The Arab conquest of Palestine took place in the 7th century AD, and since that time they claim to have been busy “spreading culture throughout the land for thousands of years.” A single quotation from Philip Hitti, the leading Arab historian, whom this writer quoted in the last post will suffice: “…the invaders from the desert brought with them no tradition of learning, no heritage of culture, to the lands they conquered.” This writer will deal with the lie of Palestine being a “verdant” land in a later post.

The Arab claim of having lived and farmed in Palestine for thousands of years is the foundation upon which they have based their mythical Palestinian identity. And it has been one of the most potent weapons used against Israel during the Arabs’ propaganda war. Even those who believe in the Bible, and those who are conversant with Israel’s ancient history, cannot help but feel sorry for a people deprived of their lands after so long a time. However, the claim is not only as false as other Arab pretensions, it is also utterly impossible by reason of the fact that Arabs never came into the area in other than dribs and drabs until the 7th century Muslim conquest. Subtracting 638 — the year of the Islamic victory over the Byzantine Christians — from 1948 — the year the Arabs launched their first attack against the Jews — does not result in “thousands of years,” but 1,310 years.

Had the Arabs remained in possession of the land from the time of the Muslim conquest, they would now have a solid, legitimate claim to the land. The Arabs, however, did not remain in control for very long. A succession of conquerors came ¯ Christian, Muslim and Mongol ¯ and the land saw such massacres that it was said, “if blood were indelible, Jerusalem would be red, all red.” Christian Crusaders defeated the Arab Muslims, and they in turn were defeated by Kurdish Muslims. Arabs would have everyone believe that the great Muslim warrior, Saladin, was an Arab, but in fact he was a Kurd, and Kurds are not Arabs, neither is their language Arabic.

After an interval of time, the Kurds were attacked by more Crusaders. But the Crusaders were unable to defeat the Muslims, and Jerusalem ended up being divided between the Christian and Muslim forces.

The 13th century saw the Mongol conquest of Palestine, and within the space of 50 years, the Mongols were themselves conquered by Muslim Mamluks. Like the Kurds before them, the Mamluks destroyed many Palestinian towns out of fear that other Crusaders might use them in a campaign against the Muslims. Early in the 16th century, Muslim Turks conquered the land, and they remained in control until Palestine was captured by the British during World War I.

Far from Palestine being an Arab land for “thousands of years,” the Arabs actually had an extremely short tenure in the land. Western historians are agreed that the Arab empire “lasted less than a century.” David George Hogarth, described by eminent Arab writers as “one of the greatest authorities of his time on Arabian history,” wrote that sovereign Arab rule lasted “for much less than a century.” And a Muslim leader even attested in 1919 that: “The only Arab domination since the Conquest in 635 AD hardly lasted, as such, 22 years.”

The Arabs that came with the 7th century Islamic invasion were, according to Joan Peters in From Time Immemorial, “small in number” and were “wiped out by disease.” Another reliable source confirms that Arab numbers “were small” and were “decimated by epidemics within two years after the capture of Jerusalem.” Thus the voice of history indicates that the actual Arab conquerors were wiped out by disease by mid-640 AD. Other Muslims were brought in to replenish the decimated Arab ranks, but they, too, suffered the same fate.

Cruel and harsh was the climate of Palestine ¯ what disease did not claim, other catastrophes did. The population was continually ravished by the “endemic massacres, disease, famine and wars.” The constant decline of the population caused one Muslim ruler to bring in “Turks and Negroes.” Another had “Berbers, Slavs, Greeks and Dailamites.”

The Kurdish conqueror “Saladin introduced more Turks, and some Kurds.” The Arabs and their recruits, the Kurds and their recruits, the Turks and others with theirs, made Palestine a melting pot of ethnological chaos. The Arabs are claiming as “pure Arab stock” such imports as “Balkans, Greeks, Syrians, Latins, Egyptians, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Kurds, Germans, Afghans, Circassians, Bosnians, Sudanese, Samaritans, Algerians, Motawila and Tartars.” Another source, John of Wurzburg, adds the following to the above list: Hungarians, Scots, Navarese, Bretons, English, Franks, Ruthenians, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Armenians, Indians, Norsemen, Danes, Frisians, Russians and Nubians. And the Encyclopædia Britannica 1911 edition (before the British encouraged a more chauvinist Arab history) records that early in the 20th century the divergence of nationalities in Palestine brought an equally diverse list of tongues ⎯ “no less than fifty languages.” The claim that pure Arab peoples have inhabited Palestine for “thousands of years,” is yet another myth ⎯ “a romanticized notion discredited by serious scholars.”

To be continued

If you have enjoyed reading these postings by Ramon Bennett and would like to read more of his writings, consider purchasing his books or subscribing to Arm of Salvation’s “Update,” which is a regular newsletter written by Ramon and which covers events around the world affecting the nation of Israel. To subscribe, click on the tab marked “Newsletter” on this site. It is available in either digital or printed form. To purchase a book, click onto the “BOOKS” tab and choose from out of the selection.

Arm of Salvation welcomes readers’ comments to the posts on this blog and would also welcome donations to its ministry in and for Israel and the Jewish people. Donations toward covering the costs of maintaining this Shekinah website would also be appreciated as would those given in appreciation of the time and effort Ramon invests in producing these postings.