By Peter Fernandez
Real History, and not revisionist alt-left history taught by anti-West ideologues, merged with the proof of neutral geographical maps illustrates how erroneous and disingenuous anti-Israel narratives are.
Real History 101: To appease the surrounding Arab nations in 1921, Great Britain’s Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill cleaved three-quarters of the original British Mandate of Palestine, and declared this land mass off limits (to this day) to Jewish settlement. To objective researchers, reporters, and political scientists, this is common knowledge, yet this reality is ignored or labeled Zionist propaganda by Arab Street.
Since 1948, Israel has been standing upon roughly one-fourth of historic Palestine. Jordan, home to 2,117,000 Jordanian citizens of Palestinian descent and 634,000 refugees is historically and literally, Palestine ( figures from UNRWA 2014 sources). After the Judean Bar Kochba revolt in 137 ACE (After the Christian Era), the Romans punished the Jews by erasing the conquered nation’s original Jewish identity. Cruel Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Israel (Judea and Samaria) Palestina. 1,000 years before that, King David conquered Jerusalem. But, today, mobs of protesters, professors, and politicians lie about Israel’s historical origins.
Of course, geo-history doesn’t change the horror, death, and destruction of this seemingly Sisyphean conflict, but baseless “liberal and politically correct” pro-Arab variants are routinely repeated by much of the world media.
It is almost as if Israel has become “the Jew among the nations,” and through Islamo-inspired left-wing bigotry, the world squints myopically through a glass darkly. According to Israeli statesperson, and former Knesset member, Dr. Einat Wilf, thirty seconds into most anti-Israel speeches, the Jewish state is predictably accused of genocide, apartheid, and racism.
Genocide? According to WorldDate.info: “From 1990 to 2022 the population of Palestine increased from 1.98 million to to 5.04 million people.” That is a growth of 155.0 percent in 32 years. “The highest increase in Palestine was recorded in 1999.” In real or imagined genocides, the victimized population always decreases, instead of increases.
Apartheid? “Israel has proved that for fifty years its real power is in its democracy,” wrote columnist Dr. Talal Al-Shareef in the Palestinian newspaper, Al Quds, May 27, 1999, “guarding the rights of its citizens, applying laws to the rich and poor, the big and small.” Arabs make up 20% of Israel today and have equal voting and political rights. Since 1949 Arab Israelis have been elected to the Knesset. In 1999 Ahmad Tibi was elected and today is the longest-tenured Arab-Israeli Knesset member. “The Israeli occupation,” according to Tibi, “is the main source of violence in the region.” Yet loud, proud and legitimate voices, such as Tibi’s, really do exist in Israel’s pluralistic society.
Here is a link revealing 100 past to present Arab Knesset members. In 1999, Arab Israeli Rana Raslan became Miss Israel. At present, there are 13 Arab Knesset members, and Khaled Kabub, a Muslim, is a supreme court judge in the Jewish state. Ghassan Alian, an Arab-Druze, is an Aluf or Major General in the IDF. IDF sees record number of Israeli Arab conscripts.
In 2011 Arab Israeli judge George Karras sentenced Moshe Katsav, a former Israeli president, to prison for seven years.
Racism? Of course, it exists in Israel. There was cultural friction between Ashkenazi (North-Central European) and Sephardic (Arabic) Jewish immigrants, and it took time for the Ethiopians to fit into Israeli society, but everyone is represented in this technologically and agriculturally advanced start-up nation. Contrary to Arab sexual identity bias, Israel is “a safe place” for gay and transgender rights.
Racism is a problem in the Palestinian school system, according to Wikipedia, and Belgian, and Israeli newspapers. The Beit Awaa Elementary School, near Hebron, was renamed the Dalal Mughrabi Elementary School. Five other schools are currently named after Mughrabi, who, along with other Palestinian terrorists, hijacked an Israeli bus in 1979, killing 39 people.
Mughrabi and her comrades were exterminated by IDF forces, but since that time, they have been repeatedly hailed as martyrs by the Palestine Authority, and honored with events and facilities.
Winston Churchill, the erudite statesman and kingmaker, wrote in 1920, ‘The conflict between good and evil which proceeds unceasingly in the breast of man nowhere reaches such an intensity as in the Jewish race…It would almost seem…that this mystic and mysterious race has been chosen for the supreme manifestations, both of the divine and the diabolical.”
The author is a children’s book author living in Northfield.
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Categories: Commentary
But this begs the question “What right had Lord Balfour to give to Lord Rothschild in 1917, via the Balfour Declaration, any part of Palestine or Jordan for the purpose of forming an Israeli state?” That land was under the British Mandate as a result of WWI. Before that it was governed by the Ottoman Empire. A wartime-Mandate does not give a state permission to dispose of land as they see fit. Leaving out facts does not strengthen your argument.
Here is the text of the Balfour Declaration: Balfour Declaration 1917
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
What right did Abraham Lincoln have to declare the emancipation of Confederate slaves? They didn’t recognize his government, and it was a wartime declaration as well…
Thank you Peter for truthfully and accurately stating the facts. Unfortunately, we seem to live at a time when truth and facts are ignored and disregarded in favor of an obviously anti-Semitic narrative. Hopefully, enough good people will be courageous enough to prevent another Holocaust by speaking out before it’s too late.
Mary Stowe, Peter Hernandez; The real issue isn’t about land borders. Many Palestinians were driven from their homes, both by Israel and Arabic powers. Immediately after Israel was founded, Russia, then referred to as the Soviet Union, began funding and instigating violent attacks on Israel.
Today, Israel truly is an example of democracy. Muslim Palestinians living in Israel as citizens have more say in their government than they would anywhere else in the Middle East. The relative poverty of Palestinians is long standing, prior to Israel’s founding. Jewish Israelis also find themselves in tight economic straits. This is because of the unrelenting attacks which necessitate an enormous military expenditure.
In terms of human life, Israel is not the “bad actor” in the situation.
So, what’s your point?
Did the Turks have the right to rule Palestina from to 1517 to 1917. What’s the difference? Islamic scimitar cuts Balfour paper. No arguement.
Somebody told me that the Palestinians were there first, and that was that. Oh, really?Before the Romans invented the term “Palestina,” the same land mass was known as Judea and Samaria, and for 2500 years, Jews were the majority in those kingdoms. Islam wasn’t even dreamt about until the 7th century ACE, and you will not find the term Jerusalem mentioned in the Quran.
Why do historians persist at being anything but historians. The planet Earth is estimated to be more than 4 billion years old. There have been five actual mass extinction events. The last being 2.5 million years ago. So, why do people like Peter Fernandez consider ‘history 101’ to include only that time period going back 5000 years to ancient Egypt? What about Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago? What about the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians? Jews are newcomers. Palestinians? They didn’t show up until 1200 BC. Mohamad (‘the prophet’ – in 570 CE) hadn’t even gotten his feet wet in anthropological terms.
Do we give credence to Neandertals from 40,000 years ago? No. They’re extinct. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, migrated out of Africa 500,000 years ago or more. Modern humans have been around for more than 100,000 years.
So, what is it about the last ‘blink of an eye’ (in anthropological terms), that makes Jordan so important?
Humans have been playing musical chairs with land forever. If ever there was a universal truth, it is that possession is 9/10ths of the law. And we humans have been trying to steal the land of others forever too. And we’ve been justifying the thievery in abstract political terms for at least that long. That’s life folks. At least that was so when Plato and Aristotle debated the virtues of private property over the commonwealth.
The point is that the new world order (and I use the term loosely) has been going on for millennia. And this new world order negotiated the redistribution of wealth (funny how that term keeps showing up), when the Ottoman’s got their butts kicked in WWI. It’s not that the Jews or the Palestinians have ancestral rights to these spits of land in the eastern Mediterranean. The World got together an made a deal. And, if anyone is breaking that deal, its people like Hamas.
Is there ‘racism’? Of course. We’re humans after all. 100,000 years of developmental tribal biases don’t disappear overnight. This isn’t a battle over ‘good and evil’ either. It’s two groups of people who disagree with one another and who are willing to fight it out when all else fails.
Mr. Fernandez should stick with children’s books. Clearly, that’s the way he perceives the world today.
@ H J Eshelman
I expected better from you than your juvenile digs at the writer. And I fail to see your point. So gazillions of years ago many of our continents were covered by oceans; does that mean everything we do is now irrelevant? Borders and laws and national identities mean nothing because once that land area didn’t exist? At one time modern humans didn’t exist. Really not sure of the rationale behind your hostility but I guess he must have touched a nerve.
And I don’t understand your failure to see my point, VT Independent. Can you explain why ‘Jordan is Palestine’? What does that mean? And where, for example, did I say, “Borders and laws and national identities mean nothing because once that land area didn’t exist”? Or “… everything we do is now irrelevant.”
Perhaps you should read what I wrote again, instead of making stuff up. And, speaking of touching a nerve, given your ‘dig’ at me, I guess this makes us even.
@ HJ
Jordan IS Palestine is exactly that. All the cries for a 2-state solution but that already exists in the form of Jordan for the Arab state. Much of the ancient homeland of the Jews, which included the areas now Jordan, Gaza, Judea/Samaria, south Syria and Lebanon etc has already been given to the Arabs or seized by them. The Jews were left with a paltry sliver of land the size of New Jersey! And the vast majority of the residents of Jordan are the same as the so called “Palestinians “; they are one and the same. So Jordan, which has room for the rest of them IS the Palestine they are all demanding. But instead they and their supporters are demanding that the Jews give them Israel and cease to exist. That you don’t seem to get this and instead choose to insult the author is frustrating.
Re: “Jordan IS Palestine is exactly that.”
Says who?
This has nothing to do with a so-called ‘two-state solution’ or anyone’s so-called ‘ancient homelands’.
Jordan is Jordan. It’s part of ‘the deal’ that occurred when the Ottoman Empire was defeated in WWI. Just like Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq were part of ‘the deal’. And before the Ottoman Turks, it was the Romans who controlled the land. And before the Romans, it was the Greeks and Phoenicians. Before that it was Alexander the Great and Persia. And before that, myriad tribal societies laid claim, by hook or by crook.
The point is that human geopolitical development is, and always has been, a consolidation of tribes in one way or another. No one had had a ‘right’ to their land until, as I said earlier, Plato and Aristotle raised the issue of private property. They have to earn it and keep it, by treaty or conquest.
Palestine is a League of Nations construct. Hardly ancient. As was the Balfour Declaration establishing ‘a national home for the Jewish people’. It’s been a geopolitical mess from the get-go. Which means that conflict is virtually guaranteed.
But I digress.
My point is that Mr. Fernandez and you consider this circumstance in a 20th century context. And reasonably so. Why anyone or any ethnic group believes that ancestral homelands give them a right to private property, makes no sense.
I’ll leave it there for now. But you’re beginning to touch on the primary governance conundrum of our day. And an understanding of private property and free enterprise is required in order to continue the discussion – which I am happy to do.
Re: “Jordan IS Palestine is exactly that.”
Says who? You neglected King Hussein, for one. Says also the multitudes of historic evidence , called maps by National Geographic, Encyclopedias Brittania, dusty old schoolbooks printed before 1948, etc., most of which would and could be considered neutral.
Says who? “Before the Balfour Promise, when the Ottoman Empire from 1517 -1917 ended, there was nothing called a Palestinian people with a political identity as we know today.” Abd Al-Ghani, an Arab historian said during an official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast, 2016
Mr. Eshelman, National Geographic would love to dig you out of the dust, you old fossil, you.
Ah….Isreal…nothing more than a Rothschild bankers fantasy as Mary’s post above shows. You remove the bankers and US support and the country would cease to exist.
The US gives that country so much money they can provide almost free college to their residents. Hmmm.
Now if only our Government cared as much about our borders as it does Isreals.
Alex
Mary is a Hamas fan girl; I wouldn’t exactly put any stock in what she says as she gets her info and data from Hamas and their propaganda machine.
What right did Abraham Lincoln have to declare the emancipation of Confederate slaves? They didn’t recognize his government, and it was a wartime declaration as well…
Gee, thanks, Alex A., but you mispelled Israel. Did you read that from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the state pen? Couldn’t have been Penn. State, as you should have learned to spell by then. Maybe you should discover the amount of monies that the US gives to Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc., before you become a silly pudding.