THE PEACEMAKERS

THE PEACEMAKERS

A "peacemaker" is one who seeks to bring harmony and reconciliation between those who are estranged. Peacemaking seeks to produce right relationships between persons.

Decent people despise those who sow discord and stir up trouble. Yet every community and every local house of worship and many homes have people who thrive on divisions and conflict and unrest.

Holding grudges and evil speaking are common sources of conflict among people. Busybodies and slanderers and disagreeable persons can cause havoc in society.
Peacemakers are needed in our homes. Quarreling and disagreements and unwillingness to respect the order of authority, often lead people to treat the worst those who really love them the most -- intimate family members.
PEACE
We must begin with a proper understanding of what is included in this key word. The Greek word for "peace" ("eirene") is a beautiful word, full of meaning. The word is a picture-word, calling to mind specific mental images when heard. The word means tranquility, and is used to describe a boat sailing on a calm sea. It means harmony and describes a song in which all notes and cords blend in perfect agreement. And it conveys the idea of an absence of strife, calling to mind two people walking hand-in-hand along the road. (Our English word "peace" comes to us from the Latin "pax" from which we derive "pact." A pact is a treaty between two parties/governments).
The Hebrew equivalent is the word "shalom." This word is also rich in meaning and was, for the Jew, the common word of greeting. It means all of what the above Greek word means, yet adds another aspect. Not only does shalom convey the negative -- the absence of strife and evil -- but also the positive, the presence of all good things. To wish shalom on another was in essence to say, "I wish for you not only the absence of all that may harm, but also the presence of everything that makes for a person's good." No hostilities.
From the above definitions we see that the word "peace" has to do with the state of harmony, tranquility, and unity as it exists between two parties.
However ignoring reality is not peace. True peace never evades the issues, but rather deals with them, building the right bridges and moving through the pain until harmony is established.
For still others, peace is sought at the expense of truth. Peace is paramount and it is "peace at any price." Most persons want to avoid needless strife, but there are times when standing for the truth will stir up strife. Sometimes the way to lasting peace includes addressing issues which will be painful to work through. Truth and righteousness are just as important as peace, and these factors cannot be compromised.
Notice at the start that the promise of this article is to the "peacemaker" and not to the "peace lover." Passivity is not the answer; activity is. "Peacemaking" is an action word, implying that the decent human being' is to be busy making peace in this world. There are many who love peace and few who work for it. (It should be noted here that we are not condoning a peace activism which ignores other important human principles).
The call to peacemaking implies the presence of contention. Indeed the world today is full of conflict and strife. What is the cause of this hostility? In order to know how to go about establishing peace, we need first to know something about why individuals are at odds with themselves. (Understanding the problem is half the answer).
People are at war with their neighbors because they are not at peace with themselves. And they are not at peace with themselves because they are at war with their conscience.
We should promote the quest for inner peace and tranquility.

...........

GLORY------PRUDENCE
PROVIDENCE--FAITH
GRACE--BEAUTY
TRANQUILITY--ECSTASY

HONOR-------JUSTICE
LIBERTY------HOPE
FREE WILL---TRUTH
EQUALITY----BLISS

DIGNITY--TEMPERANCE
CIVILITY---CHARITY
MAGNANIMITY-GOODNESS
LOVE--------JOY

INTEGRITY--FORTITUDE
AUSTERITY--DECENCY
EQUANIMITY---WISDOM
PEACE---HARMONY

Demolishing The Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel

Demolishing The Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel
Palestinians Myths See Demolishing The Myths of the Propaganda War Against Israel
 

Ant-Israel Aksa Martyrs Brigades (Fatah) leaflet - distributed today in Gaza: "We affirm our support and backing for the positions of the Iranian president toward the Zionist state which, by God's will, will cease to exist. Recognizing Israel's right to exist means underestimating the Palestinian people, who are making daily sacrifices to liberate Palestine and Jerusalem." gamla.org.il Volume 6 Issue 50. Nov 7, 2005
Non-people "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.
   "For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan." (PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977, interview with the Dutch newspaper Trau.)
Arab activist Musa Alami is quoted by Joan Peters [From Time Immemorial, p. 13] as writing in October 1949, "The people are in great need of a 'myth' to fill their consciousness and imagination," and adding that indoctrinating this nationalistic myth would create "identity" and "self-respect."
Almost 30 years later, PLO Military Department head Zuheir Muhsin said, "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."
Similarly, Yasser Arafat's Fatah terrorist group issued a statement on Dec. 31, 2001, announcing its belief that "a legitimate Palestinian entity forms the most important weapon that Arabs have against Israel, the outpost of the imperialist powers." Arutz Sheva News Service. Feb. 29, 2004  
When I say: "non-existent", of course, the people exist, but there was never an Arab Palestinian entity. The Arabs entered British Mandate Palestine freely (without permits needed by Jews) from all the surrounding Arab countries as the Jews returned to make the desert bloom, creating jobs and good health conditions. The only "Palestinians" were the Jews under the British Mandate from 1917 to 1948 when Israel because a State 54 years ago today. (1) "From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine" by Joan Peters Harper & Rowe NY 1984
"You are the sons of Balaam, the sons of 'bela' (destruction and deceit), the sons of 'bli-am' (no people), the sons of 'bliyaal' (wickedness, worthlessness), and the sons of 'bli eretz' (no land).  You are experts of impurity, cursedness, and evil... Min. Effie Eitam at the funeral of victims of a Palestinian terrorist attack. Arutz-7 News Brief:  Friday, June 21, 2002
If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War? Yashiko Sagamori. Bridges for Peace News Update http://www.bridgesforpeace.com/  February 21, 2003
In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation   Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw: "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." 
http://www.think-israel.org/mandelbaum.html

The Arabs who now claim to be natives of the Holy Land have migrated to Palestine  after 1918, from neighboring Arab countries, predominantly from areas now   known as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. None of   these countries existed as nations prior to 1913. They were nothing but a   disorganized collection of tribes, constantly terrorizing each other, trying   to seize land from their neighbors. Unfortunately, those Arab immigrants,   imported into the Holy Land their age-old culture of terrorizing neighbors   to seize land. Many of them were social outcasts and criminals who could   not find jobs in their own countries so they searched for their luck elsewhere.   Some of them were accepted by the British regime as a source of cheap labor   and were allowed to settle on unoccupied Jewish land in Palestine. Even Yassir   Arafat, the leader of the PLO, is not a native of the Holy Land. He was born   in 1929 in Cairo, Egypt. He served in the Egyptian army, studied in the   University of Cairo, and lived in Cairo until 1956. He then moved to Saudi-Arabia   and founded the Al-Fatah terror organization, the precursor to the PLO, in   Kuwait in 1958, together with his Saudi-Arabian friends.http://www.think-israel.org/mandelbaum.html
The governor of the Syrian district of Hauran, Tewfik Bey El Hurani, admitted   in 1934 that in a single period of only a few months over 30,000 Syrians   from Hauran had moved to Palestine. Even British Prime Minister Winston Churchill   noted the Arab influx. Churchill, a veteran of the early years of the British   mandate in the Holy Land, noted in 1939 that "far from being persecuted,   the Arabs have crowded into the country and multiplied." http://www.think-israel.org/mandelbaum.html
Palestinian nation is a media/leftist Myth


Uzi Dayan, former head of Israel’s National Security Council and general in the IDF reserves said Israel would be “stronger” without Gaza and without Shechem. Withdrawing from those places strengthens “Israel’s national essence, eliminates ruling another nation, and provides an opening for co-existence.” Israel Must Destroy Another 32 Towns. By Scott Shiloh. IsraelNationalNews.com Arutz-7 News: Tuesday, September 20, 2005
PA/PLO For all intents and purposes, the PA is the PLO in new guise, so great is the power and influence of PLO personnel within the PA. Pearl Herman. A precis - http://israelbehindthenews.com/pdf/Precis.pdf
From Clandestine Army to Guardians of Terror: The Palestinian Security Forces and the Second Intifada by Dr. Gal Luft http://israelbehindthenews.com/Archives/Aug-01-03.htm#ploarmy
PA and Peace "Shimon Peres' book The New Middle East is a classic example of the mistake that the west is making. Peres thought that providing the Arabs with designer pants and CDs would make them stop killing Jews." From the Jay Shapiro Hour http://www.israelnationalnews.com/metafiles/asx/shows/shapiro.asx
PA & the State of Israel Does the PA Recognize Israel?
Arafat MK Chaim Landau (Likud - 70s) "Arafat will tell you that he wants peace, like Hitler told Czechoslovakia, and you will then accept him."
Yasser Arafat's disappearance from the scene. Like the Thane of Cawdor in Shakespeare's Macbeth, "Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it." Arafat never grew beyond the man who appeared at the United Nations decades ago with both an olive branch and a gun.
CFR supported the Gaza Pogrom 24 August 2005, http://www.cfr.org/index.html
Father of terror U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Florida), Chairperson of the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, told Foxnews today that Yasser Arafat is in total charge of the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian Authority:
    "If he wanted to, he could dismantle the entire terrorist infrastructure today or this very hour. He has already fired one prime minister, and is about to fire another, and is in charge of everything that goes on there. So for him to say that he condemns today's attack is just ridiculous." Arutz Sheva News Service <http://www.israelnationalnews.com/> Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003
Arafat defines "Peace of the brave" as full Israeli withdrawal and return of refugees.  

Demands renewal of talks as if Barak won elections  -- Arafat's speech in the opening of the sixth session of the Palestinian Legislative Counsil in Gaza today Source: WAFA - the official Palestine News Agency 10 March 2001
Violence (Option for Arabs) Leading Fatah officials believe that despite, or because of, Ariel Sharon's plan to quit Gaza, the terrorist war on Israel - unifying Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah - must continue. In answer to Al-Jazeera's question whether Sharon's declaration can be seen as a "victory for the intifada," Abu Rudeina replied: "The intifada is winning, either with these declarations or without them. The intifada is the only way that might lead to peace." Arutz Sheva News Service <http://www.israelnationalnews.com/> Feb. 4, 2004
"...there is no 'cycle of violence' in the Mideast, only persistent Arab murders of Jewish civilians followed by carefully limited Israeli retaliation." Louis Rene Beres, Professor of International Law at Purdue University.
...the bloody confrontations ...since Sept.28, earned the Palestinians better negotiating terms." JORDAN TIMES 19 Dec.'00:"Abul Ragheb: Time running out for reaching Mideast peace deal" By Saad G. Hattar
The predawn evacuation of the Joseph's Tomb enclave in Nablus was the first time Israel had relinquished territory as a direct result of Palestinian violence. 001007
Death cult Suicide bombings:- Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa) agrees. "If we don't stop the suicide bombings in Israel, they may become an international terrorist way of life. They may become a plague. And they could happen anywhere if they gain currency and if they are permitted to go unchecked." Specter, a strong supporter of Israel, says that explains why he understands Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policies. "When Sharon moves in - in self defense - to rout out these terrorists and to stop the suicide bombers, who can say he's wrong?" (by Wolf Blitzer, CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports)
Understanding the Death Worship of the Palestinian Suicide Bomber  -- It's Aspiration, not Desperation!
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook   http://www.pmw.org.il/
   "I always wanted to be the first woman who sacrifices her life for Allah. My joy will be complete when my body parts fly in all directions."
These are the words of female suicide terrorist Reem Reyashi, videotaped just before she killed four  

Israelis and herself two weeks ago in Gaza. What is surprising about this horrific statement is that she put a positive value on her dismemberment and death, distinct from her goal to kill others. She was driven by her aspiration to achieve what the Palestinians call "shahada," death for Allah. She had two distinct goals: To kill and to be killed. These independent objectives, both positive in her mind, were goals greater than her obligations and emotional ties to her two children. This aspiration to die, which contradicts the basic human instinct for survival, is at the core of the suicide terrorism fervor. Only when this death worship component is recognized as a basic tenet of Palestinian belief will it be possible to understand the challenges Israel and the world face from suicide terror.
"Consider this excerpt from a Palestinian TV talk show with two 11-year-old girls as an illustration of what really drives the Palestinian death cult. 'What is better,' the hosts ask, 'peace and full rights for the Palestinian people or shahada (death for Allah).' 'Shahada,' is the unequivocal answer of one girl. The other explains: 'We don't want this world, we want the Afterlife.'" --"Gaza First," Review & Outlook, Wall St. Journal, February 6, 2004
Intifada "...international seal of approval for the Israeli-American view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not one of a national liberation struggle against colonial occupation but rather another front in the 'war against terrorism'. AL-AHRAM WEEKLY 2-8 October '03:"Crossed Roads" - Palestinians passed the third year of the Intifada this week seeking leadership -- they didn't find it. Graham Usher reports from Jerusalem"
Ziyad Abu Ziyad: Events in the territories are not spontaneous, but part of an overall plan to conduct the struggle against Israel. (Source: IDF Spokesperson - http://www.idf.il/english/news/ziad.stm ) Hamas's radio said the Islam's goal was to return Christians and Jews to their "natural state." This state -- promised by the Koran -- was one of "humiliation and poverty."
Hamas electoral victory Democracy in action The European Union gave another $78 million in aid to the PA Monday, funneling it through the United Nations, which will pass it on to the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority to pay the salaries of its employees, which include numerous terrorists.
British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said that the Palestinian people should not be punished for the way they chose to vote. EU Aids Hamas-Run PA "Arutz-7 Editor" <new@IsraelNationalNews.com> Tue, 21 Mar 2006
Hudna_Ceasefire Hamas Offers Ten-Year Truce in Exchange For  
"Alternatives"
 

Israeli Withdrawal to 1967 Borders. Hamas spokesman and co-founder Abd al-Aziz al-Rantissi told journalists on Sunday that the movement had come to the conclusion it was "difficult to liberate all our land at this stage, so we accept a phased
liberation."  imra@netvision.net.il 26 January 2004

Palestinian Pretense & Israeli Reality

Palestinian Pretense & Israeli Reality What the world knows, but can’t say, to be true. By Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power. March 18,

common theme throughout classical literature is the role of pretext (prophasis) contrasted with the actual cause of complaint (aitia) — the great divide between what aggrieved people say publicly and what they feel privately. Nations, the historian Thucydides reminds us, also adopt such strategic postures. Their spokesmen often voice complaints that are either groundless or — even if partly justified — at least different from the "real" or "true" causes of their discontent. We know the prophasis of the Arab states at the heart of the Middle East question: Israel's occupation of the West Bank. But the aitia — the truest cause of the Palestinian lament — cannot be voiced so easily, either openly or in detail. Why? To do so would involve a systematic cultural, political, and social review of the entire Middle Eastern contemporary world — one that might explain, in terms other than the few thousand acres of the West Bank, why a tiny Jewish state is so prosperous, free, and confident amid dozens whose half-billion inhabitants are not. Do any in Europe and the Middle East really wish to open the Pandora's Box of secular rationalism, religion, capitalism, democracy and a host of other issues that might hurt Middle Eastern feelings, cost real money, and incur danger — when chanting Zionism, colonialism, racism, and other alleged -isms and -ologies do not? The Palestinians publicly allege that once given back 100 percent of the West Bank they will recognize Israel and thus the dispute will at last end with recognition by the entire Arab world of the Jewish State. Fair enough. Palestine will thereupon be democratic and prosperous, and so for the first time in its history live in peace side-by-side with Israel. Most Americans welcome just such a vision. Of course, few in the Islamic world really believe that. Indeed, a number of its more impolitic spokesmen have already written that such a withdrawal would merely be the first step in a renewed struggle to end Israel altogether — as the Arab world was energized at a sign of "weakness," and the citizens of Israel demoralized by concessions made under duress. If one peruses translated newspapers and magazine articles from the Middle East, the rhetoric of destroying Israel is far more ubiquitous than the gospel of mutual coexistence. The Arab League will soon meet to promise acceptance of Israel's right to exist with the return of the West Bank — of course with the caveat that we can hardly expect the crazies like Syria, Iraq, and Libya to sign on publicly to such a "surrender." Mr. Arafat himself to domestic audiences screams "jihad," and "infidels," as he praises suicide bombers as "martyrs" and "heroes," and promises the capture of Jerusalem. Europeans likewise publicly advance this prophasis, but in private conversation admit that within a few years of "peace" the Israeli-Palestinian relationship would return to its pre-1967 status of conflict over the very existence of Israel. Afraid of terrorism, desirous of trade, eager for steady supplies of oil, nervous over large groups of Islamic immigrants, eager to court third-world favor, and playing good cop to our bad, Europe can hardly express publicly what it privately knows to be true. Indeed, if the West Bank were to be returned and a general peace declared, there might well be a decade of peace. But then after the hiatus, the madrassas, the autocrats, the theocrats, and the coffee-house intellectuals would, according to their station and methods, all move on to the next round of recovering "all" of "Palestine" — a task made somewhat easier in their mind by Israel's new nearly indefensible borders. Unlike the Europeans and some others in the West, much of the Arab world does not see distinct and lasting periods of peace and war, but rather interprets the conflict as a continuum — one that will properly and only end eventually with the end of Israel itself. In this view, the Middle East discord is not unlike the first and second Peloponnesian Wars, the three Punic Wars, the First through Fourth Crusade, or perhaps even the interpretation of World War I and II as part of the larger Anglo-German conflict. Such a series of individual "wars" spanning decades ends not with mutual concessions and a brokered peace, but when one side — an Athens, Carthage, Crusader kingdom, or Germany — is militarily defeated and humiliated. Why should we put credence in such a pessimistic appraisal of Arab intentions? History supports it. The first three wars were waged when the West Bank was in Arab hands; so why would the premises for the next war be any different from those of 1947, 1956, or 1967, when the goal, as Egyptian General Saad Ali Amer once put it plainly, was "the realization of our common goal — the elimination of Israel"? The current conflict is surely not over the grievance of dead Muslims — Iraq and Iran make Israelis look like amateurs in that regard. Nor is the lament really over the cruel expulsion of Palestinians en masse — Kuwait garners that prize for expelling a quarter million after the Gulf War. Nor is there much historical precedent of according Palestinians any privileged position based on land lost through war. Compare the current borders of Germany with those of 1914, and then try and make the case for returning soil from France and Poland that was German since antiquity — and the world will answer back with a stern lecture about the wages that a state incurs when it repeatedly attacks its neighbors and loses. Economically, there is no reason to believe that an autonomous Palestinian state will operate any differently from its other Arab neighbors — statist, corrupt, tribal, and unfree, with an intolerable situation of sending workers into a hated Israel to earn what they could not garner in a beloved Palestine. And without the grievance of the West Bank, the stark reality of such economic disarray might be more, not less difficult, for thousands to stomach. Politically, the situation is depressingly similar. Why, if Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq are run by autocrats, will Palestine be any different? Why, if he were granted his entire agenda, would Mr. Arafat suddenly surrender his ironclad control of the media, and thereupon become the first truly democratic leader of the entire Muslim world to welcome discussion of his policies, Islamic religion, and Westernization? The best to be hoped for would be a Palestine more similar to Jordan — a "nice-guy" autocracy without real democracy or freedom that supported Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, and lives in fear of its own Islamic extremists. So we continue with the present Orwellian scene in which loud Middle-Eastern journalists and intellectuals, who have never known true freedom at home, lecture the United States about Mr. Arafat's democratic demands for his own unfree Palestinians. If the world knows the bleak prognosis, why all the idealistic demands for granting "freedom" and "democracy" to the Palestinians? To be crass, I think much of the discussion is simply a matter of anti-Semitism and the power of oil. Those two themes are central in many angry letters that I receive daily from critics — and not all of them are from Middle Easterners or survivalists in the northwest, who nevertheless exhibit a spooky commonality. If the Arab world were without crude oil, there could be an honest assessment of the true nature of Mr. Arafat's regime, and enlightened people could talk of a great faultline between a free democracy and a one-party autocracy. And if this dispute did not involve Jews — that is, if it were seen in the context of hundreds of murderous border disputes over lost lands now going on between Indians and Pakistanis, Chinese and Tibetans, Colombians, Congolese, Irish, Rwandans, Kurds and Turks and other aggrieved, the world would merely sigh. Much of the problem, then, quite simply is also psychological and arises because a Jewish state is right smack in the middle of the Arab world — and by every measure of economic, political, social, and cultural success thriving amid misery. Without oil, without a large population, without friendly countries on its borders, without vast real estate, and without the Suez Canal, it somehow provides its citizenry with a way of life far more humane than what is found in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt. Yet the world listens to the Palestinians' often-duplicitous leadership — despite the corrupt nature and murderous past history of Mr. Arafat's regime — because its sponsors sell a good part of the globe's oil. And to risk their wrath, one would have to support a few million Jews, not hundreds of millions of, say, British, Swedes, or Italians. And so we give not a damn over millions of innocents elsewhere butchered over millions of acres each year worldwide, but instead focus on what the Palestinians lost while attempting to destroy their neighbors. For those who laugh at such reductionism, imagine the world's moral outrage if China were tiny and Jewish, while Tibet was backed by Asian nations with the world's oil reserves. I have not recently heard any European demanding an instant redress for the theft of Tibetan land, the destruction of its cultural heritage, and frequent forced expulsion of its population by a government that is neither democratic nor free. If such a bleak appraisal of prophasis and aitia is accurate, is there any hope for Israel when the entire world knows the truth that it cannot confess without endangering its economic interests or moral pretenses? What then can Israel do as the West watches and wonders whether the supply of suicidal murderers will be exhausted before the weary Israeli public concedes? Such a strange place, the Middle East — where Klansmen-like terrorists in hoods, who blow themselves up in Israeli restaurants, and fire machine guns up into the air at funerals, try to pass themselves off as noble, underpowered freedom fighters because their fiery supporters in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan have learned long ago not to send any more of their own plentiful planes and tanks to destroy Israel. Given pressure from all sides and short of an all-out war, Israel may well have to exist as a fortress next to Mr. Arafat's state, after unilaterally returning what it considers it can afford of the West Bank. It would then brace for a cold war of the type the United States waged against the Soviets and Eastern Europe, holding firm against a Palestinian state behind barbed wire and concrete for decades until (fat chance?) true democracy and secularism might appear among its neighbors. West Germany prospered for a half century behind mines, guard towers, and police dogs; apparently that was better than having Communists crossing the border to kill free German citizens. But there is one final consideration for those smug utopian architects in our state department and Europe that is completely forgotten in all this. There will be no second Holocaust. If almost all of the West Bank is returned, as is likely, and in a few years hostilities nevertheless resume as they did during phases 1-3 of the Middle East wars, as is also likely, the battle will be over Israel itself, not Palestinian land. That will be a war Israel will not lose, and it will be fought outside not inside the Jewish state. And that will be a nightmare compared to the current crisis. Those in Europe and in the United States who now lecture about morality will then prove to be not only amoral, but also answerable for far, far more still.

Two Sentences That Say It All

Two Sentences That Say It All
If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence.
If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel If you believe what you hear on the news and media, you would think there is an entity called a Palestinian people, who lived in a country/state/area called Palestine since Canaanite/Biblical/Mohammadan times. The Israelis occupied Palestine in 1967. The Palestinians want the occupiers out of their land. And of course they are entitled to do whatever it takes to get their land back. No? No.    Here's the facts.
Who are the Palestinians? Palestinians are Arabs. They have no historical, national or cultural identity distinct from other Arabs of the region. Most of them came into Palestine in search of economic opportunities after World War 1 when the British and the Jews began to build up a land that was moribund.
What is Palestine? When the Romans conquered Judea, they renamed it Palestine. Since then, no occupying power ever made it an independent state or established a capital in Jerusalem. Under the Ottoman Empire, it was part of the province of Syria.
After World War I, the area was mandated to Britain to establish a Jewish national home. Instead, in 1922, Britain split off 75% of Palestine to establish the Emirate of Transjordan, as a throne for the Arabian Hashemite family.
The UN decided to split the rest of Palestine between Jews and Arabs. In 1948, Arab armies and volunteers - from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Morocco - attacked the newborn State of Israel. Transjordan annexed the area intended for an Arab state, and renamed itself the Kingdom of Jordan, calling the annexed area the "West Bank". Egypt took over Gaza. No Arab suggested making the West Bank and/or Gaza into yet another Arab state until 1967, when Israel was again attacked by the Arabs and took these areas.
Whether or not she chooses to exercise the right, Israel owns the West Bank by right of conquest. She also has unassailable biblical, historical and residential claims. The Mandate to develop a Jewish state in ALL of Palestine is still in force; and the U.N. -- the legal heir to the League of Nations -- is legally obligated to help the Jews. Before 1967, the last previous legal owner was the Ottoman Empire. And Turkey, heir to the Ottomans, has never asked for it back.

What was the identity of the Arabs of Palestine at the end of the Ottoman Empire?

What was the identity of the Arabs of Palestine at the end of the Ottoman Empire?

• On August 11, 1919 in a memorandum to Lord Curzon, Lord Balfour stated that "whatever be the future of Palestine, it is not now an 'independent nation,' nor is it yet on the way to becoming one". Professor of history Reverend James Parkes wrote in Whose Land that "before 1914, ... the mass of the population [in Palestine] had no real feeling of belonging to any wider unit than their village, clan or possibly confederation of clans". He stressed the point that "up to that time it is not possible to speak of the existence of any general sentiment of nationality". A Palestinian Arab, Professor of history Rashid Khalidi recently confirmed Balfour's and Parkes' statements that the population of Palestine at the beginning of this century did not represent a distinct nation. In his book Palestinian Identity, he wrote that only at the beginning of the twentieth century did the Arabs of Palestine start to see "themselves as part of other communities, both larger and smaller ones. This identification certainly did not include all sectors or classes of the population. But it did constitute a new and powerful category of identity that was simply nonexistent a generation or two before, and was still novel and limited in its diffusion before World War I".
• ...the non-Jewish residents of Palestine tried to don several different identities. First, they attempted to become Ottomans. This attempt failed after the defeat of the Ottoman army and subsequent withdrawal of Ottoman authority from Palestine. As Khalidi wrote, "in a period of a few years, Ottomanism as an ideology went from being one of the primary sources of identification for Palestinians, to having no apparent impact at all". Then came the turn of the Syrian identity that did not last long either. When the French crushed the two-year-old independent Syrian state in 1920, the elite of the Palestinian Arabs decided to change orientation again. Khalidi quotes the nationalist leader Musa Kazim Pasa al-Husayni, who said, "Now, after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine". It is important to note that the nationalist movement among the non-Jewish residents of Palestine did not originate on its soil, but was imported from Egypt, Turkey and France. Parkes wrote that it was "exclusively political in the narrowest sense, and showed little awareness of the day-to-day problems which would arise if its political objective were reached". Illiterate fellahen became the pawns in the game of power-thirsty Arab nationalists who tried to repeat King Abdulla's success in Jordan at a smaller scale in the remaining part of Palestine.

Are the Palestinians a separate and unique people, different from the other Arabs? When did the notion arise - of the Palestinians as a separate Arab people?

• 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 (another recent invention), Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc. Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of 1 percent 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. Greed. Pride. Envy. Covetousness. No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough.
  - Joseph Farah, Arab-American journalist,
  editor and CEO of WorldNetDaily
• The concept of "Palestinians" is one that did not exist until about 1948, when the Arab inhabitants, of what until then was Palestine, wished to differentiate themselves from the Jews. Until then, the Jews were the Palestinians. There was the Palestinian Brigade of Jewish volunteers in the British World War II Army (at a time when the Palestinian Arabs were in Berlin hatching plans with Adolf Hitler for world conquest and how to kill all the Jews); there was the Palestinian Symphony Orchestra (all Jews, of course); there was The Palestine Post; and so much more. The Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" do so in order to persuade a misinformed world that they are a distinct nationality and that "Palestine" is their ancestral homeland. But they are no distinct nationality at all. They are the same - in language, custom, and tribal and family ties - as the Arabs of Syria, Jordan, and beyond. There is no more difference between the "Palestinians" and the other Arabs of those countries than there is between, say, the citizens of Minnesota and those of Wisconsin.
  What's more, many of the "Palestinians", or their immediate ancestors, came to the area attracted by the prosperity created by the Jews, in what previously had been pretty much of a wasteland.
  - New York Times, June 12, 2000 (via CFICEJ's ISRAEL REPORT May/June 2000)
• Meeting in Cairo in 1964, the Arab League resolved to divert the waters of the Jordan River, which are vital for Israel's existence. At that same conference, there was a public declaration of the intention to destroy Israel, and the PLO was founded. - Anita Shapira, The New Republic, 29 November, 1999
• It is mainly in the past few decades that "Palestinian" has been co-opted by the Arabs, as if the name belongs exclusively to them, pretending to have a long history and independent national identity. Until 1967, most of those who now call themselves Palestinians were reasonably happy with their Jordanian citizenship and with calling themselves "Jordanians" Even today, there is strong support among the "Palestinian" majority of Jordan for their Hashemite monarchy, though King Hussein relies on his Bedouin troops when he needs absolute loyalty. The use of a term like "Palestinian" without the suffix "Arab" and the term "Israeli-Occupied Palestine" have served to confuse the public into thinking that there has always been an independent "Palestinian" people which hasn't been given the opportunity for self-determination. In fact, any such failure has been the fault of the government of Jordan, which covers the majority of what was once known as "Palestine" and in which the majority of Palestinian Arabs live.
• "Palestinians" [are an] Arab people no one heard of before 1967 before Israeli governments certified this piece of propaganda... As has been noted many times before, prior to 1948, that is before Jews had begun to call themselves Israelis, the only persons known as "Palestinians" were Jews, with the Arabs much preferrring to identify themselves as part of the great Arab nation. - David Basch
• The actual word "Palestine" came from the Romans, not the Arabs, and there has never been an independent country or state of Palestine, nor a Palestinian rule. Yet we are led to believe that there are Palestinians and then there are Arabs.
• Avi Erlich wrote in his book Ancient Zionism, A Palestinian Arab claim to the Land of Israel cannot rise above a claim to houses, lost from the larger Arab Empire. Neither Moorish homes in Cordoba nor Arab homes in Jerusalem can reasonably constitute lost nations. ...Homeland represents the grafting of a specific place with a specific national idea. No Palestinian idea beyond the claim to land or other lost property has ever been articulated. Borrowed and usurping nationhood does not count.
• Palestine has always constituted a single geographical, political and demographic unit with Greater Syria and Egypt. On its soil the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt intermingled. Palestine also witnessed, as a land bridge linking Asia, Africa, and Europe, several movements and waves of conquerors who dominated it for different periods of time and left behind varying degrees of influence. - By Abdul Jawad Saleh, in Transformation of Palestine, printed in Challenge, February 1995, published on the WWW by the Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society, Bir Zeit University, the West Bank
• Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
  
  "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds."
• "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria." - Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, to the Peel Commission, 1937
• "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria...
  ...politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." - The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted this in a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947
• "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." - Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, to the UN Security Council
• The Romans had changed the name of the Land of Israel to "Palestine." But from A.D. 640 until the 1960s, Arabs referred to this same Land as "Southern Syria." Arabs only started calling the Land "Palestine" in the 1960s. Until about the eighteenth century, the Christian world called this same Land, "The Holy Land." Thereafter, they used two names: "The Holy Land" and "Palestine." When the League of Nations in 1922 gave Great Britain the mandate to prepare Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people, the official name of the Land became "Palestine" and remained so until the rebirth of the Israeli State in 1948. During this very period, the leaders of the Arabs in the Land, however, called themselves Southern Syrians and clamored that the Land become a part of a "Greater Syria." This "Arab Nation" would include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan as well as Palestine. An observation in TIME magazine well articulated how the Palestinian identity was born so belatedly in the 1960s:
  Golda Meir once argued that there was no such thing as a Palestinian; at the time, she wasn't entirely wrong. Before Arafat began his proselytizing, most of the Arabs from the territory of Palestine thought of themselves as members of an all-embracing Arab nation. It was Arafat who made the intellectual leap to a definition of the Palestinians as a distinct people; he articulated the cause, organized for it, fought for it and brought it to the world's attention.
  If there was an Arab Palestinian culture, a normal population increase over the centuries would have been expected. But with the exception of a relatively few families, the Arabs had no attachment to the Land. If Arabs from southern Syria drifted into Palestine for economic reasons, within a generation or so the cultural tug of Syria or other Arab lands would pull them back. This factor is why the Arab population average remained low until the influx of Jewish financial investments and Jewish people in the late 1800s made the Land economically attractive. Then sometime between 1850 and 1918, the Arab population shot up to 560,000. Not to absolve the Jews but to defend British policy, the not overfriendly British secretary of state for the colonies, Malcolm MacDonald, declared in the House of Commons (November 24, 1938), "The Arabs cannot say that the Jews are driving them out of the country. If not a single Jew had come to Palestine after 1918, I believe the Arab population of Palestine would still have been around 600,000. . ."
  Because Arabs until the 1960s spoke of Palestine as Southern Syria or part of Greater Syria, in 1919 the General Syrian Congress stated, "We ask that there should be no separation of the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine." In 1939 George Antonius noted the Arab view of Palestine in 1918:

  Faisal's views about the future of Palestine did not differ from those of his father and were identical with those held then by the great majority of politically-minded Arabs. The representative Arab view was substantially that which King Husain [Grand Sherif of Mecca, the great grandfather of the current King Hussein of Jordan] had expressed to the British Government. . . in January 1918. In the Arab view, Palestine was an Arab territory forming an integral part of Syria.

  Referring to the same Arab view of Palestine in 1939, George Antonius spoke of "the whole of the country of that name [Syria] which is now split up into mandated territories..." His lament was that France's mandate over Syria did not include Palestine which was under Britain's mandate.Syrian President Hafez Assad once told PLO leader Yassir Arafat:

  You do not represent Palestine as much as we do. Never forget this one point: There is no such thing as a Palestinian People, there is no Palestinian entity, there is only Syria. You are an integral part of the Syrian people, Palestine is an integral part of Syria. Therefore it is we, the Syrian authorities, who are the true representatives of the Palestinian people.

  Assad stated on March 8, 1974, "Palestine is a principal part of Southern Syria, and we consider that it is our right and duty to insist that it be a liberated partner of our Arab homeland and of Syria."
  In the words of the late military commander of the PLO as well as member of the PLO Executive Council, Zuhair Muhsin:

  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 our 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.

  The following are significant observations by Christians of the Arabs in Palestine in the 1800s:

  The Arabs themselves, who are its inhabitants, cannot be considered but temporary residents. They pitched their tents in its grazing fields or built their places of refuge in its ruined cities. They created nothing in it. Since they were strangers to the land, they never became its masters. The desert wind that brought them hither could one day carry them away without their leaving behind them any sign of their passage through it.

  Stephen Olin, D.D., L.L.D., called one of the most noted of American theologians after his extensive travels in the Middle East wrote of the Arabs in Palestine "...with slight exceptions they are probably all descendants of the old inhabitants of Syria."
• Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.
• ...the Arab leadership realized how much more effective they could make their efforts to "throw the Jews into the sea" if they became Palestinians rather than Arabs. By then, the Jews of this country (the only people called Palestinians before the War of Independence) were named Israelis. Even The Palestine Post became The Jerusalem Post. By adopting the name 'Palestinians' the Arabs succeeded in converting the Arab-Israeli conflict from a war of annihilation against the Jewish population to a struggle of dispossessed natives against colonialist invaders. It was a spectacularly effective canard, eventually adopted by Israel's own fiction weavers, the 'new historians.' - David Bar-Illan, The Jerusalem Post, 'Eye on the Media', November 5, 1999

What was the initial reaction of the Arabs of Palestine to this new and separate national identity?

• ...after the Six-Day War, when Yasser Arafat and Fatah tried to establish their infrastructures in what they referred to as the West Bank they were rejected by the Arabs themselves. Neil Livingstone and David Halevy wrote in Inside the PLO, "The effort, however, turned out to be one of Fatah's greatest failures, not so much because of Israeli efficiency in ferreting out the secret network as because of Palestinian apathy. At that point many Palestinians living in the West Bank were actually relieved to be out from under the oppressive yoke of Jordanian rule and simply wanted to find some kind of accommodation with the Israelis. Within months Arafat was forced to leave the West Bank on the run". The Arab leaders are well aware of the fragility of the Palestinian identity for the majority of the Palestinian Arabs. This is the main reason why they have not allowed the Palestinian Arabs living in the refugee camps, for almost half a century, to intermingle with Arabs of their countries. Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri confirmed this on February 5, 1998 in an interview with London MBC Television. He said the following; "We do not want to fall into the trap of resettling the Palestinians. This would lead to resettling the Palestinian refugees and their eventual assimilation. The Palestinians themselves have consistently rejected this approach so that their cause and characteristic identity might not be lost".
  When Al-Hariri said, "the Palestinians themselves rejected this approach", he missed one important word - leaders. It is the Palestinian leaders who try to prevent the assimilation of the Arabs among the Arabs. It is the Palestinian leaders who today more and more openly declare the Israeli Arabs to be their "property", to be an unquestionable part of the "Palestinian people". If Israel does not confront this dangerous tendency she arrives at an extremely perilous situation. There is a way to deal with this matter. Edward Said wrote that, "Unlike other peoples who suffered from a colonial experience, the Palestinians do not primarily feel that they have been exploited but that they have been excluded, denied the right to have a history of their own". Israel has an excellent chance to mend this problem. As was stated earlier, the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine tried to take on several different identities; none of them brought relief or happiness, most likely because all of them were artificial.

Who is the real enemy of the Palestinian Arabs?

• "Arafat himself is one of the world's foremost terrorists. He knows it, we know it, and he knows that we know it. So what's he up to? Muddying the waters, that's what.... The [Jerusalem marketplace] massacre was, he said, nothing to do with him. But where's the evidence the Israelis are trying to starve the Palestinians into submission? There isn't any. Where's the evidence the Israelis have a siege mentality against the Palestinians? Again, there isn't any. The truth is ... the Arab world has repeatedly tried to destroy the only democratic nation in the entire Middle East. If Arafat wants he can make a legitimate deal with the Israelis right now and end the so-called 'state terrorism' against his people. Yet instead he prefers to use his own people as pawns in his own cunning, devious game. It is Arafat himself, not the Israeli people, who is the enemy of the Palestinians." - Editorial (Canada's Calgary Sun, Aug 12, 1997)

What will be the function of the new 'secular, democratic' Palestinian state?

• First of all, who really believes that a Palestinian state will be either secular or democratic?
• A secular Islam ...is a contradiction in terms; in the Middle East, the idea of a secular State is merely a weapon recently added to the armoury of the PLO. - Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex"
• "We are slowly and dangerously moving towards a police state where intimidation and threats become the norm instead of the rule of law." - Daoud Kuttab, a prominent Arafat supporter and Palestinian journalist, after he was fired from his job for signing a petition protesting the P.L.O.'s decision to shut down a pro-Jordanian newspaper (Reuters, 6 August 1994)
• "I am not Mr. Chairman. I am His Excellency, the President of Palestine." - Yasser Arafat, Chairman of the P.L.O., in response to a greeting by Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt (Jerusalem Post, 17 December 1993)

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• RELATED SECTIONS: Arabs, Jews, Palestine, Refugees, Terrorism, The Phased Plan, Media Bias, Automorphism, Antisemitism, Jihad, Intifada, Islam, Christians in the Middle East, Land-for-Peace, Lebanon
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• BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
  
  • The Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948, by Arieh L Avneri [VIEW BOOK HERE]
  • Why I Left Jihad: The Root of Terrorism and the Return of Radical Islam, by Walid Shoebat [VIEW BOOK HERE]
  • Israel and Palestine: Assault on the Law of Nations, by Julius Stone [VIEW BOOK HERE]
  • Whose Land?: A History of the Peoples of Palestine, by James Parkes [VIEW BOOK HERE]
  • Palestine at the crossroads, by Ladislas Farago [VIEW BOOK HERE]
  • Israel, The Arabs and the Middle East, by Irving Howe & Carl Gershman [VIEW BOOK HERE]
  • From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine, by Joan Peters [VIEW BOOK HERE]
  • Dangers of a Palestinian State, by Raphael Israeli [VIEW BOOK HERE]
  • GUARDING THE SECRETS: PALASTINIAN TERRORISM AND A FATHER'S MURDER OF HIS TOO-AMERICAN DAUGHTER, by Ellen Harris [VIEW BOOK HERE]