“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it , people will eventually come to believe it” – Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Propaganda Minister.
For decades the Palestinians have been promoting a narrative, a false narrative that they are the true indigenous natives of the geographical areas we now call Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. They also promote the claim, the false claim, that the Jews are not indigenous to these areas but are settlers, colonizers and land thieves. Remarkably this narrative, this false narrative, has spread like the propaganda virus it is and millions of people globally, actually believe it and anti-Semites weaponize it to demonize the only Jewish State in the world and by extension the Jewish people. Indeed, so successful has this false narrative been that the general public, Governments, scholars, politicians, Trades Unions, Charities, the United Nations and even some born into Judaism are totally convinced that mythology is fact and truth.
It is remarkable that a political researcher and activist such as myself has to challenge and discredit fairy tales. It is similar to asking a historian to prove Harry Potter is fiction.
In order to effectively challenge the Palestinian fairy tale I believe it appropriate to highlight some historical invasions to the geography now claimed by those identifying as indigenous Palestinians and consider how those Palestinians, if they existed, reacted and behaved at the time. Parallel to the Palestinian behavior we shall compare the behavior of the Jewish population identified by Palestinians and their global support base as foreign ‘settlers’.
The Babylonians, Seleucids and Roman invasions have all been historically documented and should serve as fully acceptable evidence either to validate or disprove Palestinian claims.
King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon besieged Jerusalem, then capital of the Kingdom of Judah, circa 600 BC plundered its temple and deported thousands of Jews, and their king Jeconiah, to Babylon, today’s Iraq. The siege is recorded in the Hebrew Bible, Kings 24;10 -16 and the Babylonian Chronicles. Jerusalem and its temple were totally destroyed in a second siege circa 587 BC.
Archaeological evidence is in abundance verifying these biblical events but there is nothing, absolutely nothing that connects the existence of the Palestinians to the geography nor to the sieges. Surely had there been a Palestinian presence they would have fought the foreign invasion to protect their territory, as did the Jews or maybe welcomed the invasion to be rid of the Jews. Palestinian behavior is left unchronicled and thus and alas, one cannot verify Palestinian indigeneity during this period. Let’s move on four hundred years.
The uprising of the religious, priestly Jews, the Maccabees in the second century BC against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV was successful and resulted in the part reconstruction and re-consecration of the Temple of Jerusalem. The leader of the Jewish revolt was Judah Maccabee and their rule lasted until the Roman conquest. The rebellion against the Seleucid invasion is still celebrated today by the Jewish festival of Hanukkah or dedication. It is the Festival of Lights in remembrance of the Temple’s re-consecration. Judah Maccabees battle strategies were discovered and depicted as the ‘Rules for Holy War’ mimicked from sections of Deuteronomy and latterly scribed in detail in a part of the Dead Sea Scrolls titled The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness.
Given the claims of today’s Palestinians to be the indigenous peoples it is unclear why they did not participate in any rebellion against the Seleucids as the Jews did. There is no historical mention nor evidence of the Palestinians – no leaders, no monuments, structures, cemetery’s, towns, villages or chronicled documentation. One wonders why. Let’s move on another one hundred plus years.
The Romans invaded and controlled the geography in 63 BC when Jerusalem and the entire country was conquered and the Romans put their own Governors in charge to rule. The Roman General Pompey installed Hyrcanus and the Jewish Kingdom was now a client state of Rome. Paradoxically some Jews assisted the Romans in quelling a coup against Hyrcanus by his fellow enemies. In 40 BC a combined Roman and Jewish army, led by Hyrcanus and Herod was defeated by the Parthians and their Jewish allies lead by Antigonus the Hasmonean. Jew fighting against Jew for one colonizer against another. At no stage during this period has history noted, identified or validated the presence of any group, nation, culture, people or race known or identified as Palestinians. Certainly, there is no historical evidence suggesting the Palestinians either fought against the colonizers (as did the Jews once again) in order to protect their territory nor assist the invaders in an attempt to defeat the Jews.
Alas as unpalatable as this may seem to the Palestinians and their supporters, still no evidence of any people with the indigenous Palestinian label.
So, let’s jump a few years to the continuing Jewish – Roman wars. It seems if there were any Palestinians around at this time they were either invisible, totally peace loving, cowards or nonexistent.
The Arch of Titus in Rome commemorates this period in history and ended in the Jewish people lead by Bar Kochba being heavily defeated by the Romans between 132 and 135 CE.
The Jews failed in their attempts to defeat the colonial Romans and regain their land. Were the Jews fighting to regain their homeland or the land acquired from the Palestinians who suggest they are the indigenous people and the Jews the colonizers. Well yet again history makes no mention of any ‘Palestinians’ trying to fight the colonizers in an effort to reclaim their indigenous lands. Why? If this geography was inhabited by a Palestinian ‘people’ why did the Palestinians permit only the Jewish people to defend the territory. Where were the Palestinians during these hundreds of years of colonization by foreign invaders? Why were the Jews expelled and not the Palestinians?
Thus, three historically documented periods identifying the conquering nations and those conquered in the explicit geography never identifies, exposes, validates or verifies the existence of any nation, race, ethnicity, religion, tribe nor culture called Palestinian. Why? Simply because they were not in existence and by process of elimination could not have been indigenous to the area. And yet their claims to the contrary have gained credibility globally. It makes no sense to anyone other than those with the intellectual capacity of a retarded amoeba or the morally indecent.
Even moving forward hundreds of years to the origination of the Quran, the invading Kurds or Crusaders, history repeats itself. A mountain of evidence connecting Judaism and resistance by Jews to the colonizing entities but nothing that ever identifies a Palestinian presence.
The Quran continuously cited by Palestinians as validating religious claims to Jerusalem never mentions in any of the Suras the words Jerusalem or Palestinians. As unpalatable as it may be however to Palestinians and their supporters, in at least twenty Suras (Al Maida, 5;21 and Al Israa 17;104 as just two examples) the whole of the geographical area is bestowed, bequeathed and promised to the Jewish people. Thus, support for any Palestinian claims is to mock the Quran, Allah and Mohammed and is therefore Islamophobic, is it not?
Inspection of the documentary evidence penned by itinerant scribes through the ages exposes a mountain of literature alluding to the presence of the Jewish people but alas not a shred that connects the ‘ Palestinians ‘ to the geography.
I have cited such writers in previous articles on the subject but to rubber stamp my point we shall cite again those who travelled and wrote about the land and its peoples but somehow all managed to miss the ‘indigenous Palestinians’.
| Siebald Rieter | 1426 – 1428 | Maps to Jerusalem |
| Bernard von Breydenbach | 1440 – 1497 | Pilgrimage |
| Felix Fabri | 1451 – 1502 | Pilgrim and Preacher |
| Martin Kabatnik | 1428 – 1503 | From Jerusalem to Cairo |
| Arnold van Harff | 1471 – 1505 | The Pilgrimage |
| Father Michael Naud | Died circa 1604 | The Jerusalem Connection |
| John Bowles | 1701 – 1779 | The Twelve Tribes Map |
| William Thackeray | 1811 – 1863 | From Jaffa to Jerusalem |
| Edward Robinson | 1794 – 1863 | Biblical Researches |
| Sir George Gawler | 1795 – 1869 | Syria And its Near Prospects |
| Alphonse de Lamartine | 1790 – 1869 | From Marseilles to Jerusalem |
| Sir George Adam Smith | 1856 – 1942 | Jerusalem |
The above are just a small example of those who recorded their travels through the geographical area throughout the centuries who all seemed to have missed the existence of the Palestinians. Perhaps they were subject to Zionist or Jewish threats. Other itinerant scribes were Gunnar Edward Webbe, 1590; the British archaeologist Thomas Shaw, 1750; Count Constantine Francois Volney, 18th century French author and historian and the author Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad 1867. The absence of the Palestinians and the presence of Jews is the common theme within all these journals.
Indeed it is only when we read the memoirs and quote the politicians at the time of the League of Nations Mandates which legally created several Middle Eastern countries, Israel (formerly Palestine), Iraq (formerly Mesopotamia), Jordan (formerly Cis and Trans Jordan), Syria and Lebanon, that we come to understand who today’s Palestinians actually are.
Evidence from senior British Diplomats spanning the period 1860 to 1950, such as Finn, Meinerzthagen and of course Churchill and even Arab diplomats who testified before the Peel Commission in 1937 clearly identify that Arab immigration into the area leveraging on the economic benefits brought about by Zionism originated the so called Palestinians.
In 1860 the British Consul, James Finn in his Disturbances in Syria report wrote:
“I learn of the arrival of thousands of the Beni Sukhr Arabs at Tiberias who are very seldom seen this side of the Jordan”.
The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on immigration to the are cites the following:
“There are very large contingents from the Mediterranean countries especially Armenia, Greece and Italy. Turkmen settlers, a fairly large Afghan colony, Motiwala (Pakistan), immigrants from Persia, tribes of Kurds, a Russian colony, Circassian settlements, a large Algerian element, Sudanese”.
Jacob De Haas in his ‘History of Palestine The Last Two Thousand Years’, published 1934, wrote:
“In 1860, entire Algerian tribes immigrated en masse to Safed. The Muslims of Safed are descended from these Moorish settlers and from Kurds that came earlier to the area”.
Tewlik Bey el Houran the Governor of Hauran Province in Southwest Syria stated in an interview with La Syne, a French Syrian publication on August 12th 1934:
“…in the last few months as many as thirty-six thousand Syrians had entered and settled in Palestine”.
The Palestine Royal Commission Report, London 1937 reads:
“This illegal Arab immigration was not only going on from the Sinai but also from Trans Jordan and Syria and it is very difficult to make a case for the misery of the Arabs if at the same time their compatriots from adjoining States could not be kept from going in to share that misery”.
And let’s quote Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, May 23rd 1939:
“So far from being persecuted the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied until their population has increased more than all world Jewry could lift up the Jewish population”.
The Palestinians are just a recent construct who mainly came to the area because of the economic benefits brought by Zionism. There was never and has never been an indigenous people, tribe, race, culture or nation in history as the Palestinians. They were an invention of the Soviet KGB and Arab militants in the 1960’s which is another subject. The Arab leadership fully comprehend the history.
Arab political leader Awni Bey Abdul Hadi in his 1937 testimony to the Peel Commission:
“There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a Zionist term invented by Jews. Palestine is alien to us”.
Zuhair Mushin commander of the PLO and member of the PLO Executive Council in an interview with Dutch magazine De Trouwve, March 1977:
“There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline the Palestinian identity. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian State is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel”.
These historical facts and evidence will still not be enough to persuade the unpersuadable nor change the minds of the biased, bigoted and racially prejudiced. They will still promote the mythology of the ‘indigenous Palestinian’.
Like silicone breast implants, the Palestinians are an invention of the 1960’s. What more proof does one need?
Great history lesson however your recall for antiquated events reeks of privilege and smugness. You offer no relatable contemporary context for layman understanding to what is a complex situation. The everyday secular who may not have a Phd. in history or colonial English geopolitics you label an anti-Semite or easily swayed by nazi propaganda. Spare everyone your pretentious. Not all ignorant people are racists.
You can’t dispute his facts so you dispute his tone. But he didn’t equate ignorance with racism; he simply pointed out that international discourse on Israel is rooted in pervasive racist antisemitic false information, ie propaganda.
When propaganda is spread by trusted figures and organisations, it infects the whole of society, not only the ignorant. Indeed, those who think they already know are even harder to reach than the ignorant, because they actively reject corrective information that is presented to them.
To say that the dominant culture of the western and the Islamic worlds is inherently/systemically antisemitic is a truism. Antisemitism is embedded even in the language, and even those who fight against it and try to expose it hold subconscious prejudices.
But it is incumbent on all of us to examine our entrenched opinions and beliefs, and to seek out knowledge and understanding that can act as a yardstick.
Peter, have you ever done any research on malaria in the area, and the way it damaged and depopulated the area before it was conquered by the Jews of Mandatory Palestine.
Why do people fixate on the modern term “Palestinian” when it has little to do with the origin of a people. Palestinians are Canaanites, Canaanites existed long before a single Hebrew Babylonian even existed.