The Romans corrupted the name to “Palestina,” and the area, under the sovereignty of their city-states, became known as “Philistia.” Six-hundred years later, the Arab invaders called the region “Falastin.”
Throughout subsequent history, the name remained only a vague geographical entity. There was never a nation of “Palestine,” never a people known as the “Palestinians,” nor any notion of “historic Palestine.” The region never enjoyed any sovereign autonomy - remaining instead under successive foreign sovereign domains from the Umayyads and Abbasids to the Fatimids, Ottomans, and British.
Interestingly, the term “Palestinian” was used during the British Mandate period (1922-1948) to identify the Jews of British Mandatory Palestine. The non-Jews of the area were known as “Arabs,” and their own designation of the region was balad esh-Sham (the province of Damascus).
In early 1947, when the United Nations was exploring the possibility of the partition of British Mandatory Palestine into two states, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs, various Arab political and academic spokespersons spoke out vociferously against such a division. They argued, the region was really a part of southern Syria, no such people or nation as “Palestinians” had ever existed, and it would be an injustice to Syria to create a state ex nihilo at the expense of Syrian sovereign territory.
Following the Six-Day-War (1967), there was a strategic change in language among Arabs. The term “Palestinian” was coined to lend legitimacy to claims for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
This ploy was revealed, perhaps inadvertently, in a public interview with Zahir Muhse’in, a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee. In this March 31, 1977 interview, with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw, Zahir Muhse’in 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, 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."Wow! In the absence of sound history, we have come to believe revisionist history – a mythic narrative that teaches that Zionists, with the support of the British, have stolen Palestinian land, exiled the people, and initiated a reign of terror and ethnic cleansing.
The revisionist narrative contends that Israel as a racist, war-mongering, oppressive, apartheid state, illegally occupies Arab land and carries out genocide of an indigenous people that had stronger claim to the land than Israel itself.
That is the argument that fuels the Israel-Palestine conflict. That is the rationale behind the preamble of Hamas’ Charter: ″Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it″.
I am not suggesting that Israel should obliterate Hamas instead. I dislike war. As a Christian, I am encouraged to pursue peace. I am also encouraged to pray for persons in leadership – “that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness” (1 Timothy 2:2).
However, I recognize that governments have a responsibility to protect their people. The apostle Paul, in the context of governmental authority, referred to the barbaric Roman government as “God’s servant” (Romans 13:1-7). Similarly, Israel has a responsibility to protect and pursue peace for her people.
RECOMMENDED
“Why the Jews” and “Jerusalem” (earlier blogs)
The Fight for Jerusalem by Dore Gold
Why the Jews by Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin.
Epicenter by Joel Rosenberg
Video: The Middle East Problem
4 comments:
David,
I must tell you that the revisionist histories on this region are so complete and so diverse that I am not sure as to what is really the truth. I have two friends who seek to enlist support of each of their sides on this issue, and they are so many miles apart, both completely sure that they have the facts on their side. They have not spoken to each other for some time now, one of them adamant that the other is disrespectful of the people he supports. I am really not sure which side is more correct, though as a Christian myself I believe that the pursuit of peace ought to be paramount.
David Pearson
The term "revisionist history" clearly indicates that there is only one original history - and therein lies the truth. I believe David's research was reliable and credible. Out of curiosity, I have also done some reading on the history of Palestine from credible and objective sources, and what I gleaned pretty much agrees with David's findings. I am no expert, but once truth is established, it cannot be obliterated or supplanted. We may choose to believe other than the truth, but that doesn't change truth.
It is unfortunate that it has become commonplace--too commonplace--to use internet, sound-bite journalism to reflect upon so complex a matter as history, and a history so complex and dense as that of the "Palestinian"-Jewish situation. To say the least, to anyone who has any semblance of this history, not much by way of objective presentation of facts and details can be represented via a medium of this kind. What often happens then is the presentation of a one-sided, biased and skewed view of things, as we see in the history presented here. There is no real interaction with contrary views and opinions, followed by careful and nuanced conclusions. This is the sort of things the telling of true history is made up of. My feeling is that this piece is a skewed and tendentious presentation that has a "propagandistic" flair. This seems obvious from the use of such language as "revisionists history." In recent times, this language has become so loaded that few now are willing to recon with the fact that much of what we believe to be history is merely "mythology" and indeed needs to be "revised." I want to make one point clear--none of what I have said here is meant that this article is ill founded--it may or may not. My point is simple--this medium is not suitable for addressing such a complex matter as the one under consideration because it cannot do justice the complexity of the problem. What this use of media does is merely to provoke discussion and stir up passion. By way of bringing balance to this presentation, I would like to recommend three resources: (1) "Whose Land, Whose Promise" by Gary M. Burge; (2) "Jesus and the Land" by Gary M. Burge; (3) "The Politics of Apocalypse" by Dan Cohn-Sherbok.
It would be helpful to list some of your "credible and objective sources" here, since this is the sort of thing that makes research intelligible. Also, while it is true that "once a truth is establish, it cannot be obliterated or supplanted," this surely begs the question. Who establish such a truth? Is this history so simple that we are to think it is once and for all established by some authority? Is history this objective? Most of us think that history is like the "hard" sciences, whereby we can verify data by simply running a test--in this case by simple checking a few textbooks of history. It has not occurred to us that history is typically not dispassionate or free from opinions and interpretations. In fact, it is safe to say that all history is interpretative and tendentious, and that is why to speak of "established truths" of history from a few sources is most certainly biased and lacking in objectivity.
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