With this in mind, it’s worth
examining what has been the exceptional prowess we associate with the
Palestinians.
In a brief history, we remind
ourselves that a nation or state called Palestine never existed. The name was
an insult, a curse to obliterate the vanquished nation of Israel two millennia ago
by the Romans. Today, we have come full circle with Arabs using the term
Palestine as an insult and a curse as they attempt to obliterate the modern
State of Israel.
A century ago, those described a
carrying the term “Palestinians” were mainly the Jews who inhabited the
district of Greater Syria, a barren and barely inhabited area of the fading
Ottoman Empire, an empire that died after Turkey foolishly allied itself with
Germany in World War One and was defeated by the British-led Expeditionary army
aided by a volunteer force of Palestinian Jews who fought and died to liberate
the land.
The Arabs, during and after the
Great War, disliked being called Palestinian. In 1937, the Arab leader, Auni
Bey Abdul Hadi, told the United Nations Peel Commission on Palestine that “there
is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented.
Palestine in alien to us. Our land was
for hundreds of years a part of Syria.”
This was confirmed decades later
in 1970 by no less than Yasser Arafat who admitted in an interview with Italian
journalist, Arianna Palazzi, that, “Palestine is nothing but a drop in an
enormous ocean…What you call Jordan is nothing more than Palestine.”
They were right. A century ago the
Arabs much preferred to live under the tutelage of an Arab ruler based in
Damascus. No Arab fought to rid themselves of the Turks west of the River
Jordan, and the Arabs east of the Jordan only fought for the Hashemite sheikhs
in return for gold, weapons, or booty. When this was not forthcoming by the
Britain they drifted back into the desert until money enticed them back to the
battlefield.
In honoring the contribution of the
Jews of Palestine in helping to defeat the Turks the post-war world governing
body, the League of Nations, agreed unanimously, including the Arab vote, to mandate
the establishment in Palestine of the national home of the Jewish people
encouraging them to pursue close settlement by Jews on the land, including
State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.
They did this in recognition of “the
historic connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for
reconstituting their national home in that country.”
It’s worth repeating. The League
of Nations Mandate received the approval of the leading Arab voices who were
satisfied that the local Arabs would not be harmed by this arrangement as
stipulated by the condition that “nothing shall be done which might
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine.”
The Arab leaders agreed to the terms
of the mandate because they were in line to receive their share of lands including
Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.
A significant result of the
Mandate was a further boost to the Zionist enterprise in mandated Palestine.
The Jews in Palestine developed the land, built the infrastructure and the
industries required to sustain a rapidly growing population.
The early pioneering spirit in
Palestine was seen in the construction of the Palestine Electric Company in
1923 by Pinhas Rutenberg, a Palestinian Jew, the introduction of the Palestine
Post in 1932 by another Palestinian Jew, Gershon Agron. This national, later
international, newspaper became the Jerusalem Post in 1950. The Zionist
enterprise needed to be financed and this was established by the
Anglo-Palestine Bank in 1902 which became Bank Leumi after Israel declared its
independence in 1948. Palestinian Jewish farmers and tillers of the land
created the unique collective agricultural settlements known as the kibbutz.
In advance of statehood the Jews
were busy developing the needs of a people deserving of a nation of their own. All
this attracted a mass immigration of Arabs from the region into Palestine for
economic reasons as a result of the Zionist enterprise.
Later, the Arab urge for nationalism
in Palestine grew out of envy, even greed and ambition for conquest, as they
saw the Jewish endeavor flourish. The fundamental loathing in seeing the Jews succeed
went against their core belief.
When five Arab armies failed to
destroy the Jewish state the local Arab gangs continued their looting,
pillaging, and killing against the Jewish settlers and farmers, particularly in
isolated settlements.
Under a man born in Egypt, but
pretending to be a Palestinian, they began to jell into organized terror groups.
Yasser Arafat took to the world stage with a slogan and with shocking violence.
Palestine suddenly became
the nom-de-plume for Arabs living in parts of the Jewish State, namely in Judea
& Samaria - which the international community renamed the West Bank-
and the Gaza Strip. Then, everything began to be called “Palestine” as in the
Palestine Liberation Organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, etc. Perversely, terrorism was portrayed
as a human rights issue, a reclamation of stolen land, a release from
oppression and occupation.
The adoption of the name “Palestine”
was followed by the creation of a legend, a history of a people who had been
robbed of their heritage by those dastardly Jews from Europe. An injustice, a
human rights crime, had been inflicted by the Jews on the “indigenous
population of Palestine.”
As someone once said, if you tell
a lie loud and often enough stupid people eventually believe it to be true and rally
to your cause. And so the legend became an accepted truth and once manufactured
as victimhood and suffering they lobbied and protested for recognition and
legislation, even sanctions, against the perpetrators of their “persecution,” the
Zionists.
So the first contribution the new
Palestinians gave the world was the art of deception. Their version of Dale
Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” became “How to
convince people you are the victim in order to convict your enemy.”
The pinnacle of this deception
was the award of a Nobel Peace Prize to the world’s first arch-terrorist in
contemporary history, Yasser Arafat, he of the Munich Olympic Games massacre,
among his numerous murderous achievements. Here was another Palestinian first.
Using a massacre at an international sporting event to gain global publicity to
a cause.
How else have Palestinians
impacted people globally? Palestinian terrorism created a new norm in air
travel, namely huge inconvenience for travelers and massive security costs and
headaches for airports and airlines which increase the cost of air travel to us
consumers.
They were the pioneers of plane
hijackings and airport terror attacks that gained the attention of the world
media. On 9/11 a bunch of Saudi terrorists combined plane hijacking and suicide missions on a horrendous scale, but it was the Palestinians that led the way in forcing us to arrive at airports three hours before our
flights, to have our baggage and our bodies checked, to be treated like
suspects. Thank the Palestinians for these modern day inconveniences by their earlier plane hijackings and airport attacks.
Israelis had to react to
Palestinian bus bombings, but why confine ourselves to buses? The Palestinians
also blew up planes, hotels, restaurants, markets, shopping malls when they
are not shooting and stabbing Israeli civilians on the street or launching
heavy barrages of missiles and rockets into civilian centers.
The Palestinians are an inventive
people. Not satisfied with attempting to murder people on the land and in the
air they now have units of underwater frogmen who can sneak into Israel by sea
to attack convenient targets close to the coast in surprise terror raids.
They are also the pioneers in
attacking villages and towns via underground terror tunnels in which their
trained killers can emerge kill or capture civilians or soldiers and hold them
for ransom in exchange for their incarcerated killers. This practice is now being exploited by their
fellow terror merchants, Hezbollah in Lebanon.
New inventions in the last year
include flaming kites and bomb balloons to burn and destroy the land they
wrongly claim to be theirs.
I have tried hard to find any valuable
contribution the Palestinians have made to mankind. Sadly, I have to admit that
I failed. If you can think of anything beneficial they have given us, please
let me know. Because, quite frankly, I couldn’t come up with a thing.
The Palestinian Hall of
Contributions to Mankind is as empty as the recently opened Palestine History
Museum in Ramallah, an impressive building lacking in content.
You would think that millions of
people in search of statehood would make their mark in something other than
death and destruction.
But they haven’t, and there is no
sign they will do so any day soon.
Barry Shaw is the Senior
Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic
Studies.
He is the Author of the books ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism’ and ‘BDS for IDIOTS.’
Available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle, and from Steimatzky bookstores in Israel.
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Hamas-BDS-Anti-Semitism-violence-ebook/dp/B00TYT5W8S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1545231613&sr=1-1&keywords=fighting+hamas%2Cbds+and+anti-semitism
https://www.amazon.com/BDS-IDIOTS-BOYCOTT-ISRAEL-honestly/dp/152372157X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1545231645&sr=1-1&keywords=bds+for+idiots
He is the Author of the books ‘Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism’ and ‘BDS for IDIOTS.’
Available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle, and from Steimatzky bookstores in Israel.
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-Hamas-BDS-Anti-Semitism-violence-ebook/dp/B00TYT5W8S/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1545231613&sr=1-1&keywords=fighting+hamas%2Cbds+and+anti-semitism
https://www.amazon.com/BDS-IDIOTS-BOYCOTT-ISRAEL-honestly/dp/152372157X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1545231645&sr=1-1&keywords=bds+for+idiots
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