PALESTINIAN CLAIMS TO ISRAELI LAND “A VERY THIN STRETCH INDEED”
by paraleaglenm, blogging at paraleaglenm
(Dec. 12, 2011) — In 167 B.C., the Jews revolted under the leadership of the Maccabeans and restored Jewish control of Israel and the Temple’s ransacked interior, lighting the oil lamp called the ‘shamash’ in the sanctuary. This is the origin of the Jewish holiday of Hannukah; a restoration of Israel and its capital city, Jerusalem.
The Plains of Philistia were historically the hills of Gaza, the namesake of Israel’s ancient enemies, the Philistines. Hadrian called the post-70 AD Israel Palaestina as an insult to the routed Jewish population.
The region came under Muslim domination seven centuries later and under the Turkish Ottoman Empire fell during WWI. It was then that Great Britain formulated the 1922 Palestine Mandate, reformulating some Arab land to historic Israeli borders and giving the rest of the region to Jordan.
From 1922 to 1947, the national borders of what is now Israel were defined under British Mandate and called Palestine . . . about 64% of the population were Arabs. In 1948, the region’s government was organized as a Jewish state, Israel . . . not Palestine under any kind of Arab Palestinian autonomy or whatever Muslim empire was in control at the time.
Arabs out-populated the Jews 2:1 in 1947 so the Arabs were offered their own state (the first two-state solution), plus the right for a large number to live in Israel. The Arabs refused to make any concessions and attacked the hodge-podge Israeli lands in 1948. That war, and 1967′s, helped Israel create contiguous and defensible borders.
Twenty-five years . . . that is as long as Palestine existed as a national entity under British rule, not Palestinian rule. After thousands of years of Jewish heritage, going back to 1500-years before the Birth of Christ, Israel was restored to a largely homeless people who suffered millions of lives brutally lost in the European holocaust.
Recall also that the Arabs sided with Nazi Germany and was part of the losing side in WWII. Indeed, Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ is still a best-seller in the region.
A so-called ‘Palestinian’ claim to conquered lands is a very thin stretch indeed.
In a Dutch newspaper interview, PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said: “The Palestinian people does 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.” ‘Trau’ (March 31, 1977)
The ‘balkanization’ by Palestinians of Israel is a military tactic using an oppressed and violent population to undermine a sovereign nation. From 1.2 million Arabs in 1947, the Arab-Palestinian population has matched Israel’s Jewish population, now each at about 5 million.
The Arabs are intent on destroying Israel, but the little nation is holding on . . . something to remember with Hanukkah in two weeks and Newt Gingrich’s comments last week. Barack Hussein Obama may have ceremonially lit a traditional Temple Menorah in anticipation of Hanukkah, but the ‘shamash’ of Israel’s very existence is struggling, by miracle, to stay lit.
The critics got it wrong, lambasting Obama for lighting a temple Menorah . . . the lighting of that symbolic temple artifact on Hannukah from the ‘shamash’ candle relives the struggle of 1948, and the fight that continues to preserve Israel. It doesn’t matter Obama did not formally participate on the correct day.