| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Why is it only Israel that daily makes the news re 'genocide'? | |
| Posted by: | John Hawkes | |
| Date/Time: | 22/08/25 15:44:00 |
| Mr Ainsworth I assume the bulk of this post is not your own work but taken from '"Myths:- Palestinians are Arabs that arrived in the 7th century.' I will investigate your source. There is another side to the interpretation of history in the Middle East. I quite openly acknowledge that what I post below is also as is the case with you, not my own original thought though I agree with its claims and conclusions. And might I suggest that as a matter of reciprocity, and after you have answered the questions I have posed you twice before (if you are not going to bother, please say) you might read - '"Myths and Facts" - a guide to the Arab Israeli conflict' by Mitchell G Bard. ISBN number 9781537152721. It requires more serious effort than just trawling Wikipedia, but I am sure you will find it illuminating and may divert you a little from what appear to some to be your antisemitic tendencies. If your predilection for anti-Israel postings on this Forum does not give you the time to do so, perhaps I can spare you the effort and give some quotes from it. 1) The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegan people who in the twelfth century BCE settled along the Mediterranean coastal plane - now Israel and the Gaza strip. In the second century CE, after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arab word Filasitin is derived from this Latin name. 2) The Hebrews entered the land of Israel about 1300 BCE living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch King Saul. The second king, David, established Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 BCE. David's son Solomon built the Temple soon after and consolidated the military, administrative and religious functions of the kingdom. The nation was divided under Solomon's son with the northern kingdom Isreal lasting until 722 BCE when the Assyrians destroyed it and the southern kingdom Judah surviving until the Babylonian conquest in 586 BCE. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty after until most Jews were driven from their homeland in 135 CE. 3) Thus it can be justifiably said that Jewish independence in the land of Israel lasted for more than 400 hundred years, longer than that Americans have experienced in the United States. In fact if not for foreign conquerors Israel would be more than three thousand years old today But lets look at the case for the existence of the state of Palestine. 4) Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country though Arabic became the language of most of the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No Independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine When the distinguished Arab-American Princeton professor Philip Titti testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946 he said - "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not" 5) 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, they adopted the following resolution - "We consider Palestine as Part of Arab Syria as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic, and geographical bonds". Similarly the King-Crane commission found that Christian and Muslim Arabs opposed any plan to create a country called 'Palestine' because it was viewed as recognition of Zionist claims. 6) In 1937 a local Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine; "There is no such country as Palestine ! 'Palestine' is a term Zionists invented ! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria". 7) The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations echoed this view in a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 which said Palestine was part of the Province of Syria and the Arabs of Palestine did not comprise a separate political entity. 8) A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." 9) Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-WWI phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War. Today the Palestinian people have international recognition and claim the rights to self-determination, independence and territory. 10) "Urgently required is a peaceful process that respects the dignity of both peoples," wrote Allen Hertz a former Canadian Government official, "that effects a reconciliation of the subsequent rights of the newly emerged Palestinian people with the prior rights of the ancient Jewish people". Surely this sums up the desire of all right thinking people. It will not be advanced by those on this Forum, for what they are worth, that do not recognise the right of Israel to exist and yet show implicit sympathy towards Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas that are determined to see it never to come about. |