Stolen History: How the Palestinians and Their Allies Attack Israel's Right to Exist by Erasing Its Past (4 page)

The concepts of "historic Palestine,""Palestinian homeland," and the "Palestinian people" were all invented to suit the political needs of Arab forces committed to the destruction of Israel.
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These concepts were born in a propaganda war — products of the Soviet Union's exploitation of post-1948 Arab anti-Israel rejectionism — to create a faux-history that changed the appearance of the conflict from a genocidal Arab war against the Jewish State, motivated almost exclusively by traditional Muslim Jew-hatred,
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into a struggle by the "oppressed indigenous Palestinian people" for their national self-realization, political self-determination and freedom from occupation. By rebranding terrorism as a "struggle for freedom," the Soviets, and a compliant UN, could make a genocidal war against Israel could appear as a legitimate and even heroic struggle for nationhood by "freedom fighters."
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But in order for this revisionist history to work, there needed to be a "Palestinian homeland" where the "Palestinian people" had lived from "time immemorial." Because these elements did not exist in reality, the Arab leadership needed to invent them. And the need to invent "Palestine" brought with it an equally deformed Siamese twin: the need to deconstruct Israel, to disconnect Jews and Judaism, Israel and Israelites, from their own traditional homeland and from their history.

And perhaps the greatest irony of all is that Palestinian leaders are open and frank about their desire to erase Jewish history and fabricate their own. Among the "Palestinian papers" released to the world via wikileaks, there is one called "Talking Points on Recogntion [sic] of Jewish State."
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In this paper a Palestinian Authority spokesperson details the reasons for not accepting Israel as a Jewish state. Among them:

"Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination ... Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people's claim to all of Historic Palestine."
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They seek to steal Jewish history from the Jews because if the Jews are allowed to possess their history then their claim to "historic Palestine" is indisputable. So precisely because the Jews do have that history, and hence that claim, the PA leadership must find some way to take it from them.

And since this leadership wants the entire Land of Israel, what they call "historic Palestine," to be the site of a future Palestinian state, a Judenrein state, they must not only steal Israel's history from the Jews, they must also appropriate it to themselves by foisting upon an all too credulous world the transparent lies of an ancient "Palestinian" presence — a paradise lost to the machinations of by nefarious Jews.

The entire endeavor to steal Israel's history and replace it with the fiction of a Palestinian nation of high antiquity in "historic Palestine" is war by other means. And as in all wars, the first casualty is the truth.

¹
http://www.yale.edu/ycsd/press/palazzi.html, Yale University, Sheikh Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi, the Secretary General of the Italian Muslim Association, spoke on the topic of "Islam and Democracy -- Political Theory in the Qur'an and Islamic Tradition," March 4, 2003.

²
Besser, James, "Obama administration hits Palestinian Authority for Temple Mount 'Study',
The Jewish Week
, Nov. 30, 2010, http:// www.thejewishweek.com/blogs/political_insider/obama_administration_hits_palestinian_authority_temple_mount_study; and cf. also Ami-El, Mark, "The Destruction of the Temple Mount Antiquities," Jerusalem Viewpoints, 1 August, 2003, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp483.htm.

³
Routledge, London, 1996, Keith W. Whitelam, chair, Biblical Studies Department, Sheffield University (UK).

⁴
For demographic studies substantiating this assertion, cf. Justin McCarthy, Population of Palestine; and Joan Peters,
From Time Immemorial
.

^{5 McCarthy, op. cit supra, note #5.6}
Syrkin, Marie, "Palestinian Nationalism: Its Development and Goal," in Curtis, Michael, Neyer, Joseph, Waxman, Chaim, and Pollack, Allen,
The Palestinians: People, History, Politics
(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1975), p. 200 ff.

^{7 Ibid, supra note 7, p. 201.8}
Dorsey, James, Wij zijn alleen Palestijn om politieke reden, Trouw,

31 March 1977; not available on line but referenced frequently on line at, inter alia:

http://www.think-israel.org/hertz.ersatzpeople.html; http://www.youtube.com/user/blessings18;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuheir_Mohsen; http://acapella.harmony-central.com/showthread.php?1297324-PLO-executive-committee-member-Zahir-Muhseinquot-The-Palestinian-people-does-not-exist-quot and http://www.danielpipes.org/comments/18157 .

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such as, but not limited to, the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, the
Jewish Encyclopedia, the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East
, and other major encyclopedias from the early 20th century on. There are other non-Israelite peoples mentioned very briefly in the Jewish Scriptures, but these nine are the ones best documented and most thoroughly researched by scholars since the mid-19th century.

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http://www.jstor.org/ (and cf. also http://about.jstor.org/). JSTOR is a not — for — profit on-line service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of scholarly content in a trusted digital archive of over one thousand academic journals and other scholarly sources. It enables access to and preservation of scholarly books and articles in collaboration with the academic community. Each non-Israelite nation mentioned above has been the beneficiary of hundreds, and in some cases thousands, or scholarly articles, monographs, and in some cases entire books. These scholarly works can be accessed via the urls below, but may require registration with JSTOR for a fee.

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=canaanites&gw=jtx&prq=philistines&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on;

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=philistines&acc=off&wc=on;

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=edomites&g w=jtx&prq=edomites&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on; http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=ammonites+in+a ncient+near+east&gw=jtx&prq=ancient+ammonites+in+canaan&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on;

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=amorites&gw=jt x&prq=arameans&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on;

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=arameans&gw=j tx&prq=ammonites+in+ancient+near+east&Search=Search&hp=25 &wc=on;

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicResults?hp=25&la=&wc=on&ac c=off&gw=jtx&jcpsi=1&artsi=1&Query=amalekites&sbq=amalekit es&prq=amorites&si=26&jtxsi=26;

http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=jebusites&gw=jt x&prq=amalekites&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on.

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These too can be sources of hundreds of articles on the history, language and culture of these non-Israelite peoples. Go to http://www.hds.harvard.edu/ faculty-research/research-publications/harvard-theological-review and http:// www.asor.org/pubs/basor/basor.html for more details.

¹²
Among the more highly regarded of full-sized texts on these peoples, see:

For Canaanites: Redford, Donald B. (1993),
Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times,
(Princeton University Press); and Tubb, Jonathan N.,
Canaanites
, (Oklahoma) 1998.

For Philistines: Dothan, Trude Krakauer (1982),
The Philistines and Their Material Culture
. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press; Idem & Dothan, Moshe (1992), P
eople of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines
, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company; Idem & Gitin, Seymour, Mazar, Amihai, Stern, Ephraim (1998),
Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BC. Jerusalem, Israel: Israel Exploration Society;
Ehrlich, Carl S. (1996),
The Philistines in Transition: A History from ca. 1000-730 BC
. Leiden,
The Netherlands
: E. J. Brill; Finkelstein,
Israel
(December 2002), "The Philistines in the Bible: A Late-Monarchic Perspective".
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
27 (2): 131 — 167; http://www.jstor.org/action/doBasicSearch?Query=moabites&gw=jt x&prq=moabites&Search=Search&hp=25&wc=on;

Killebrew, Ann E. (2005), Biblical Peoples and Ethnicity: An Archaeological Study of Egyptians, Canaanites, Philistines, and Early Israel, 1300-1100 B.C.E.. Atlanta, Georgia: Society of Biblical Literature; and Oren, Eliezer D. (2000), The Sea Peoples and Their World: A Reassessment (University Museum Monograph 108). Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The University Museum, University of Pennsylvania and Yasur-Landau, Assaf (2010), The Philistines and Aegean Migration at the End of the Late Bronze Age. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

For Moabites: Routledge, Bruce. 'Moab in the Iron Age: Hegemony, Polity, Archaeology,' 2004; Bienkowski, Piotr (ed.) Early Edom and Moab: The Beginning of the Iron Age in Southern Jordan (1992); and Dearman, Andrew (ed.) Studies in the Mesha inscription and Moab (1989).

For Edomites: Piotr Bienkowski, "New Evidence on Edom in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods", in John Andrew Dearman, Matt Patrick Graham, (eds.), The land that I will show you: essays on the history and archaeology of the Ancient Near East in honour of J. Maxwell Miller, (Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 198ff. For Amorites: Giorgio Bucellati, "Ebla and the Amorites", Eblaitica 3 (1992):83-104; and Alfred Haldar, Who Were the Amorites (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971).

For Ammonites: Cohen, D., (ed.) (1988). "Les Langues Chamitosemitiques". Les langues dans le monde ancien et modern, part 3. Paris: CNRS. Aufrecht, WE (1989), A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions; Lehmann, Ulrich and Lettau, Janine, The Ammonites: Their life and their world (1981); and MacDonald, Burton & Younker, Ran- dall W., (1999), Ancient Ammon. BRILL, Netherlands.

For Midianites: Clines, David and Sawyer, John, eds. "Midian, Moab and Edom: The History and Archaeology of Late Bronze and Iron Age Jordan and North-West Arabia".
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series,
No. 24. Sheffield Academic Press, 1983.

For Arameans: Beyer, Klaus (1986). "The Aramaic language: its distribution and subdivisions," (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht); Lipiński, Edward (2000). The Aramaeans: their ancient history, culture, religion, Peeters Publishers, Netherlands; Moscati, S., 'The Aramaean Ahlamû', FSS, IV (1959); and the Tel Halaf excavation series: M. Freiherr Von Oppenheim, Der Tell Halaf, Leipzig, 1931 pp. 71 — 198; M. Freiherr Von Oppenheim, Tell Halaf, III, Die Bauwerke, Berlin, 1950; A. Moortgat, Tell Halaf IV, Die Bildwerke, Berlin, 1955; B. Hrouda, Tell Halaf IV, Die Kleinfunde aus historischer Zeit, Berlin, 1962.

For Amalekites: Tanner, Hans Andreas, "Amalek: Der Fiend Israels und der Fiend Jahwes," in Dietrich, Walter, Biblische Enzyklopaedie, "The Early Monarchy in Israel: The Tenth Century," Zurich, 2007.

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Unless otherwise noted, the references below can be found in Pritchard, James B., & Fleming, Daniel E., The Ancient Near East: an Anthology of Texts and Pictures, 2010.

¹⁴
Yellin, Avi, Arutz Sheva News, "King David Era Pottery Shard Supports Biblical Narrative," 1/8/2010, website@israelnationalnews. com

¹⁵
Aharoni, Yohanan, The Arad Inscriptions, 1981, University of Virginia: Israel Exploration Society.

¹⁶
cf. Rocker, Simon, "What the Koran says about the Land of Israel," The Jewish Chronicle on Line, March 19, 2009, http://www. thejc.com/judaism/judaism-features/what-koran-says-about-landisrael for a full discussion of this issue with reference to medieval Muslim commentators.

¹⁷
cf.http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=4&x_ article=1843.

¹⁸
Author's addendum: For a fully detailed and annotated critique of Abu el-Haj's attempt to discredit Israeli archaeology, see this writer's lengthy article, "Facts on the Ground — Nadia Abu el-Haj's New Salvo in the Arab Propaganda War against Israel," http://www. campus-watch.org/article/id/3890, Middle East studies in the News; and see also ibid in Solomonia Blog, August 15, 2007, http://www. solomonia.com/blog/archive/2007/08/david-meirlevy-facts-on-theground-nadia/http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/3890. Abu el-Haj's seemingly endless errors of fact and apparently intentional fictionalization of Israeli archaeology's acquisition and interpretation of evidence are far too numerous to recount here.

¹⁹
Cf.http://www.klinebooks.com/cgi-bin/kline/24816 for extant copies, and http://www.bibleplaces.com/guide.pdf for the on-line original text.

²⁰
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, August 12, 2000, Translation: MEMRI; and http://israndjer.blogspot.com/2007/11/issues-in-peace-process.html for a reference to his 2002 flippant suggestion that perhaps the Temple was in Yemen.

²¹
Ross, Dennis, The Missing Peace: the Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, August, 2004; and Gold, Dore,
The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City
. Regnery Publishing, 2002

²²
Kay, Jonathan, National Post (Canada), July 19, 2011, "Once again, the Jewish Question,"http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Onc e+again+Jewish+question/5122436/story.html .

²³
Davila, James R., "Temple Mount Watch: The BBC is taking Jewish-Temple denial in Palestinian circles rather more seriously than it deserves," Paleojudaica.com, June 2, 2009.

²⁴
Kul Al-Arab (Israel), August 25, 2000; Translation: MEMRI: quoted in CAMERA, http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_ issue=4&x_article=1843.