On Monday, The American Thinker posted an article about two myths that are fueling the current war in the Middle East.
The first myth–The State of Palestine
The article notes:
The name Judea was changed to Syria Palaestina by the Roman emperor Hadrian in 135, following the Bar Kokhba revolt. The revolt was a Jewish uprising against Roman rule, and Hadrian crushed it. It resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews. In an effort to suppress Jewish identity, Hadrian renamed the province. The name “Palaestina” was derived from the Philistines, a people who had lived in the region centuries earlier. The addition of the name “Syria” was intended to emphasize the province’s status as a Roman province.
Renaming was an attempt to render extinct the Jewish nature and history of the land and to humiliate the restive Jews. It was a reminder of the Roman Empire’s power. The name Syria Palaestina remained in use until the 7th century, when the region was conquered by the Arabs.
The Arabs ruled until the Crusaders took land back, then lost it to Arabs, who lost it to the Ottomans (a Turkic people) in 1517.
As a consequence of their loss in WWI, the Turks gave control of the region known as Palestine to the British n 1917.
Between 1917 and 1920, Palestine was under the control of the British military after their conquest of the region.
Before moving on:
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- There never was a Palestinian state or country.
- There never was rule by anything called a Palestinian.
- The land of Mandatory Palestine was to be the Jewish national homeland in an area occupied continuously by Jews for millennia.
- Jewish rule and occupancy antedated the advent of the newcomer religion Islam by millennia.
- Mandatory Palestine, set aside for the National Homeland of the Jews, had its territory diminished by around seven eighths, in contravention of their mandatory obligations by the British to create Transjordan (now commonly known as Jordan).
The second myth:
No state, no nation, no people. Palestine never existed, hence Palestinians never existed, do not exist. Full stop.
…Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the Palestinian terror group As Saiqa, explained in a 1970 interview with James Dorsey for the Dutch newspaper Trouw why the “Palestinian people” had been invented:
The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.
Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
Not knowing correct history has consequences.
