What Palestinians?

John R. Houk

© March 20, 2011

I received an interesting comment of the post “Palestinians Hate Jews.” The comment was posted at my Multiply blog called Right Wing Crusader. The comment was made by Multiply user od127. Od127’s comment was two-fold. The first part was directed toward me and the second part was directed to a commenter attempted to validate the warped concept that Jews including Abraham were a Black skinned race. You can go to the Multiply link I provided to read my response to that person; however I have to say od127 agreed with my response on the subject of Jewish skin tone. The first part of od127’s comment goes as follows:

 Hi rightwingcrusader.

Do the Jews have the right to claim the land as their own, chasing away the palestinians? These people had live their whole life in these lands even their ancestors.

Even before the Muslims conquer Palestina, there already were Arabs and other Semite people in Palestina.

What the Israelis drives is fear, what’s built on fear will not last.

I think your only looking at one side.....it’s not black or white.

The Fogel family was ultra orthodox jews. The same ultra orthodox Jews who are stealing land (literally) of people who are born there and their ancestors, driving away by force and cutting down their precious olive trees, etc.

They are purposely put there by the government to act as a buffer. They are not like normal Jews, they are extremist. These people also believe in the will of God (in their favour)

It’s a tragedy but don't look at one side.

…

Take note that I did a spell check and capitalized some words and changed one word to make better sense. Also note I am not coming down on od127’s grammar or spelling. All of us when commenting on something in haste take little time to think about grammar and spelling.

Below is the response I gave to od127.

What Palestinians? Has there ever existed a Palestine nation? Have there ever existed a people or race or religion called Palestinian?

You nailed it when you said "Arabs". The Arabs are not indigenous to the Biblical land of Israel. I am looking at one side - the Bible side. Islamic revisionism was written after the Bible and most of that when referenced to Biblical people has warped in the Quranic version spoken and written much much later.

By the time of Jewish immigration primarily from Europe to the land that was under the Ottoman Turk administration managed from Damascus, there were not that many Arabs there. Yes the Arabs were the overwhelming majority but there really was not that many. When European Jews immigrated to their ancient homeland they brought European innovation with them. The land that had been largely mismanaged by the Turks until it was difficult to habituate began to be reclaimed and modernized by the Jews. As the Jews made desolate land arable and agriculturally producing, labor was need for work. At this time a large amount of Arabs also began to immigrate to the land that still did not have a political designation of Palestine.

At this time there was a mutual and symbiotic relationship between Jews and Muslim Arabs. Jews provided a better income than Arabs were used to.

At WWI's end the Ottomans lost a large chunk of the empire to largely British and French victors who divided up the Arab Middle East into areas that really did not have the political designations assigned by the Brits & the French.

The British Mandate for Palestine was one of those political designations. At this time all inhabitants of the Mandate for Palestine were called Palestinians. It did not matter if they were Jews or Arabs. In fact the Balfour Declaration and the new League of Nations organized the Mandate for Palestine as a place for Jews to return to their heritage.

Of course there was still a large disparity between employing Jews and employed Arabs; however most of the Arabs living in the Mandate for Palestine were just as new arrivals as the Jews were. EXCEPT for one detail: The land of the Jews was a heritage long before the Arabs lived there in numbers.

Even if looks to inhabitants before God ordained conquest of the Jewish Promised land, the inhabitants were in closer relation to the Jews than they were to the Arabs except for the Philistines.

Israel is deserving. Arabs who forced a refugee problem by not taking in the Arabs they displaced their 1948 invasions is not the fault of the Israelis.

JRH 3/20/11