A Little History Lesson on Palestine

[deacon blues]

Since our friend Antipas seems to have slept through his World History class, here's a transcript from a 2003 speech given by Joseph Farah, an Arab Christian, to a symposium on Islam in Washington DC. The transcript is entitled, "An Unconventional Arab Viewpoint".

I've been really bugged, especially since Sept. 11, 2001, by all the self-proclaimed Arab-American and Muslim-American spokesmen I see on the talking-head shows.

What bugs me is the way they show no appreciation for just how tolerant and open-minded and non-judgmental the American people really are toward them and the Arab and Muslim world. Americans are so good, so fair and so understanding. They are anything but quick to generalize and stereotype – even when doing so would clearly be in their best interest.

Over a two-day period this week, I had to take nine different airline flights and go through nine different airport security checkpoints.

Not once during that two-day period did I ever get a second glance from any security person. Not once was I subject to any extra checks.

Now, I am an Arab-American. I have an Arab face and an Arab name. But I didn't get a second look. Meanwhile, I saw young mothers with little babies struggling to make it through extra security. I saw little old grandmothers facing the indignities of extra checks.

And all the while, the Muslim-American lobbies and the Arab-American anti-discrimination groups are denouncing this country for being racist and for profiling.

It's just not true.

Worse yet, there is every common-sense reason for it to be so.

The threat of terrorism in the United States does come largely, if not exclusively, from Arabs and from Muslims. We ignore that fact at our own peril.

When I fly to the Middle East, I often fly El Al. In fact, it is my preferred carrier. Why? Because it has great security. I know, because of my name and my Arabic ancestry, I'm going to have my bags searched more scrupulously than the average American.

Do I mind?

Absolutely not. In fact, I am grateful. Because I know these security people are not only protecting the other passengers, they are protecting me.

It only makes sense to do this kind of profiling – especially when we are in a war where our very way of life is at stake.

For those of you who have not read my writings on the Middle East and the Islamic-West conflicts, I don't think these battles are over misunderstandings.

I don't believe they are the result of a failure to communicate.

I don't believe they are caused by an inability to compromise.

I believe they are caused by evil people doing evil things, pure and simple.

I come at this issue of the Middle East a little bit differently than just about anyone else. I'm an Arab-American Christian journalist. I've arrived at my conclusions largely through first-hand experience covering the Mideast on the ground.

Throughout my 25-year career as a daily newspaperman, I've had two principal beats – Hollywood and the Middle East. You might wonder what these two beats have in common.

The common denominator is that they both deal in the realm of unreality. They both rely on myths. In fact, the imagination of the Arabs in crafting fables, reinventing history and fictionalizing facts would make Oliver Stone blush. And it is those myths of the Middle East that I want to address today in the short time we have.

What is this debate all about? What are the real roots of this conflict?

If you believe what you read in most news sources, Palestinians want a homeland and Muslims want control over sites they consider holy. Simple, right?

Wrong. In fact, these two demands are nothing more than strategic deceptions – propaganda ploys. They are nothing more than phony excuses and rationalizations for the terrorism and the murdering of Jews. The real goal of those making these demands is the destruction of the state of Israel.

The proof of the pudding is that prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, there was no serious movement for a Palestinian homeland. Why?

In 1967, during the Six-Day War, the Israelis captured Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. But they didn't capture these territories from Yasser Arafat. They captured them from Jordan's King Hussein. Why did the so-called Palestinians suddenly discover their national identity after Israel won the war. Why wasn't there a demand for a Palestinian homeland before?

The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never Land. The first time the name was used was after 70 A.D. when the Romans committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple and declared the land of Israel would be no more. From then on, the Romans promised, it would be known as Palestine. The name was derived, we think, from the Philistines, a people conquered by the Jews centuries earlier.

Contrary to what Yasser Arafat will tell you, the Philistines were extinct by that time. Arafat likes to pretend his people are the descendants of the Philistines. Actually, the name was simply a way for the Romans to add insult to injury to the Jews – not only were they annihilated, but their land was renamed after people they had conquered.

Palestine has never existed – before or since – as a nation state. It was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their homeland. Who rejected that idea? The Arabs. The Jews could have no place in the Mideast. None. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Now, at least to Western audiences, Arafat and some other so-called "moderate" Arab leaders will tell you that it's OK for the Jews to have their homeland, too – side-by-side with the Arabs. Why wasn't it OK in 1948?

There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of 1percent of the landmass.

But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough.

Arafat himself explained the ploy of negotiations with Israel in a 1994 speech in South Africa – in English. He's explained it in Arabic dozens of times.

First we create our own state, then we use that state to liberate all of Palestine. That's the goal. It's always been the goal.

Arafat and his supporters will tell you the reason a Palestinian Arab state is needed is because Arabs were forcibly removed from their property in the 1948 war. But listen to what the Arabs were saying about the refugee issue after that war.

"The fact that there are these refugees is the direct consequence of the act of the Arab states in opposing partition and the Jewish state. The Arab states agree upon this policy unanimously and they must share in the solution of the problem."
– Emile Ghoury, secretary of the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee, in an interview with the Beirut Telegraph Sept. 6, 1948.

"The Arab state which had encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, have failed to keep their promise to help these refugees."– The Jordanian daily newspaper Falastin, Feb. 19, 1949.

"Who brought the Palestinians to Lebanon as refugees, suffering now from the malign attitude of newspapers and communal leaders, who have neither honor nor conscience? Who brought them over in dire straits and penniless, after they lost their honor? The Arab states, and Lebanon amongst them, did it."– The Beirut Muslim weekly Kul-Shay, Aug. 19, 1951.

"The 15th May, 1948, arrived ... On that day the mufti of Jerusalem appealed to the Arabs of Palestine to leave the country, because the Arab armies were about to enter and fight in their stead."
– The Cairo daily Akhbar el Yom, Oct. 12, 1963.

"For the flight and fall of the other villages it is our leaders who are responsible because of their dissemination of rumors exaggerating Jewish crimes and describing them as atrocities in order to inflame the Arabs ... By spreading rumors of Jewish atrocities, killings of women and children etc., they instilled fear and terror in the hearts of the Arabs in Palestine, until they fled leaving their homes and properties to the enemy."
– The Jordanian daily newspaper Al Urdun, April 9, 1953.