Palestine is the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean that lies between the Jordan river and the sea, between Egypt and Syria. In the middle is the city of Jerusalem. It is a land divided between Arabs and Jews, a land of endless killing and blood.
The Romans kicked the Jews out of Palestine nearly 2000 years ago. In the 1800s the Jews began returning in large numbers. In 1947, after Hitler had killed six million Jews, they were given Palestine as a country of their own. They named it Israel.
But Israel did not fall from the sky: it was created by pushing Arabs off their land, land they had lived on for over a thousand years. Those Arabs are now called Palestinians. They want their land back.
The Jews say that God had promised them the land. It says so in the Bible.
Because the Arabs are mostly Muslim and the Jews are Western, the dispute is not an ordinary one, but has become important the world over. It is always in the newspapers. So much so that many assume that this has been going on for thousands of years and not just 60.
Most Palestinians went to live in other Arab countries. Many went to live in Jordan, the neighbouring country to the east. Those with education live quite well, but many live in wretched settlements called refugee camps. The tents are long gone, but the people are still there.
In 1967 Israel took over a part of Jordan called the West Bank, and parts of Egypt called the Sinai and the Gaza Strip. Israel gave back the Sinai in 1980 to make peace with Egypt. The West Bank and Gaza are still under the thumb of its military.
Israel sent Jews to settle the West Bank and Gaza. Some hoped that one day they would become part of Israel proper. But in 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza. Both the Israeli army and the Jewish settlers have left, but the army still attacks Gaza from time to time.
In the early 1990s Israel half-promised that the West Bank and Gaza might some day become an independent country. There was some solid movement in that direction and in 2000 peace was almost made between Israel and the Palestinians, but then it all fell apart. There has been an on-and-off low-level war going on ever since, not just between Arabs and Jews, but even among the Arabs themselves.
While Arafat was alive to lead the Palestinians, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), especially the Fatah part of it, was the only political party that mattered, as corrupt as it was. Arafat died in 2004 and the years since has seen the rise of Hamas. Now both parties fight for power, both at elections and in the street.
In January 2006 Hamas won elections in Gaza. In June 2007 they took over Gaza by force. Hamas is backed by Iran, Fatah by the West.
Israel is now building a wall between itself and the Palestinians. Along the way the wall is taking in choice bits of the West Bank. It has yet to reach Jerusalem. The Jews seem to have given up on making peace.
See also:
This is over-simplified, and ignoring many facts, like the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and the fact that “Israel” does not mean Jews. 20% of the Israeli population are Arabs, and there are also Druze, Bedouin, and so on.
The biggest thing that you ignore is that there was never any country called “Palestine” until the British created it, after World War One.
Likewise, there were no “Palestinian” people until 1964, and even Yasser Arafat has made statements about this, claiming to be an Arab like any other, and expressing his views that Palestine should become a part of Jordan or Syria when and if it is ever created, in accordance with Pan-Arabism. So, in effect, any “Palestine” will simply be a 24th Arab State, not a Palestinian one.
“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.”
Zuheir Mohsen, Palestine Liberation Organisation leader in a 1977 interview with Trouw.
Also, your claim that Palestine was created by pushing Arabs off of their land is not backed up by any real evidence. Yes, there were cases of pro-Israel militias slaughtering people, but this was not widespread, and it wasn’t a big contributor to why Arabs left by any stretch of the imagination. These massacres happened in several villages, but when you take into account how many of these villages were actually depopulated in the long run, and how many hundreds of villages there are and were in the region, it made little difference to how Israel was created. The main method of accumulation of land by Zionists was to purchase it, legally and ethically.
On top of that, your claim that the Jews in Israel are Western is simply false. The majority of Jews in Israel today are Mizrahim, whose decendants were massacred and oppressed, before being involuntarily exiled to Israel without passports.
The wall that Israel is building is not a wall between Israel and “the Palestinians”, but a security wall for the Israelis to protect their country. It’s been a success in the West Bank, greatly reducing the amount of suicide bombings against civilians in Israel.
Speaking of suicide bombings, you have not made a single reference to the thousands of civilians murdered by Arab suicide bombers, gunmen and missile squads. Two intifadas, thousands of civilians murdered and maimed, schools shot to pieces and civilians living in constant terror of rocket attacks that have killed scores of people, and destroyed buildings and farmland for years. None of this was even mentioned.
Basically, this article was extremely biased, over-simplified and dishonest.
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Unlike you, I am not a Zionist apologist. You are fooling yourself about the nature of Israel.
The only mistake you pointed out was that I called the Jews Western. That does need to be rephrased. Israel is a Western power and those who run it are Westernized even if all the Jews who live there are not necessarily Western themselves.
The Romans called the very same land Palestine. That is where the British got the name.
That people are going to be violent and fight back if you take their land is not some terrible, immoral thing that needs to be pointed out – unless you are so brainwashed you think they have no right to do that.
When the Jews pushed the Arabs off their land and took it, they created an Arab people whose historical experience and circumstances were markedly different than that of other Arabs. They were still Arabs, yes, but they were no longer “just Arabs” like those in neighbouring countries.
I limit my posts to 500 words – see the top of the page. In that space I present what I think are the most important things to know and what I know to be the truth. I do not clear my material with the PLO.
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As an Christian American I visited Jordan, Israel and Palestine in October 2015. While I don’t negate problems in the Gaza strip, all of the Palestinians I met were wonderful people. Some Israelis were too, but I saw first hand how the Israeli settlers are encroaching upon the Palestinian people, taking their land, controlling their water, taunting the Palestinian children as they walk to school. The roadblocks, gates and check points all aimed at “keeping out Palestinian terrorists” are a sham. Israel is doing that to intimidate people. In the Bible God does promise land to the Jews, but no where in the Bible does it say drive out others who have lived there for centuries. Shame on you Israel and shame on the USA for supporting you.
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Understanding the scale of injustice done to the Palestinians, Nelson Mandela had called it ‘the greatest moral issue of our time’
If only I had understood the situation in israeli- occupied Palestine, I would never have travelled there 19 years ago. I would never have spent a single cent in the israeli- settled state. Even though the (South African) media was heavily propagandized then, I am still ashamed of the fact, and will rarely admit in real life that I had travelled there.
Israel and apartheid South Africa were in bed with each other.
If only John Pilger’s ‘The Last Taboo’ was available before and I had read it, I never would have put my foot there.
Just thinking about the Palestinian plight is very upsetting. It seems like the world has forgotten about them. Or is it that the powerful Jewish lobby in US and the brazen US imperialism with its attendant propaganda is that huge?
The palpable and unexplained hatred that I felt there, was eerily familiar to what I felt during apartheid.
For a very good account of israeli-settled Palestine, read, read, read John Pilger’s ‘The Last Taboo’ in the very best of investigative journalism: ‘Freedom Next Time’ even if it is was first published ten years ago.
It put in horrifying perspective, to many places I visited, notwithstanding Jerusalem, where I had lost the last vestige of any Christian belief.
It explains the debris and shell shocked Ramallah, the remains in Jericho and the horrific stampede in 1967. And Jenin!!
And the Golan heights, where we hopelessly got lost at night landing up in no man’s land on the border with Lebanon.
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(http://johnpilger.com/articles/breaking-the-last-taboo-gaza-and-the-threat-of-world-war)
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The first sentence should have had quotation marks.
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(http://johnpilger.com/videos/palestine-is-still-the-issue)
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(https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/)
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Robert Fisk, had pointed out that in consigning a whole nation, the Palestinians , the Israelis were able to ‘describe their enemies as evil so that that ’no sane individual would dare regard their political aims as serious’:
‘Anyone who expressed sympathy for the Palestinians was evidently anti-Semitic and therefore not just anti-Jewish, but pro- Nazi…. If Israel called the PLO its enemy, then the Middle East dispute involved two hostile parties. But if the world believed that the Palestinians were evil, then the dispute did not exist. The battle was between right and wrong, David and Goliath, Israel and the terrorists.’
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(https://electronicintifada.net/content/month-pictures-march-2016/16216)
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The Palestinians have never played any role whatsoever in the Nazi genocide of the Jews, yet it is they who have been made to pay for it with their land and their lives in the name of German atonement.
The Palestinians are victims of colonialism, foreign occupation,Jewish apartheid,crimes against humanity. Palestinians are the Germans sacrificial lambs. The Palestinians suffering is on their hands, too.
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I AM SO ANGRY!
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Very, very distressing footage of what Palestinians are subjected to on a daily basis in their own land by israeli soldiers. I bet this is not shown in the mainstream media in the USA.
(https://www.facebook.com/Ramalla.Mix/videos/vb.240326222667326/1126156304084309/?type=2&theater)
If you can watch till the end without getting angry or crying.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_BwDCWVd9A)
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvxSVRvsPf)
israeli troops kidnapping two crying 10 years old Palestinian children for supposedly having thrown stones.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bzey6qg2lMA)
Archbishop Tutu calls the illegal israel occupation of Palestine apartheid.
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(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvtC_qzHVM4)
The only USA President to speak out against israeli occupation of Palestine.
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@taotesan
Yes!
Please take time to process that rage. Your informative comments here can be a first step.
Please consider transforming that heat into light. Write some articles for publications or sites with your unique perspective and voice. Share your understanding with others. It makes the anger and the pain easier to bear.
taotesan, thanks for sharing what you learned here.
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Jews originated in the Levant. Even Ashkenazi Jews (the whitest Jewish subgroup) still have 50% Levantine DNA after 2 millennia of exile. Neither the Arabic language nor the gutter religion of Islam is native to the Levant. Both come from Saudi Arabia.
Not sure why someone would want to replace a civilized Western country with a barbarous dump with a backwards culture
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