Monday, January 10, 2011

"Palestinian" Identity As Propaganda Device

A prime example of propaganda masquerading as fact can be found in the modern assertion by "Palestinian" Arab and other revisionist historians that, even before the dawn of Christianity, an ancient nation-state known as "Palestine", inhabited by "Palestinians", was in existence, and that it continued to exist, even under the yoke of successive conquering empires, until the creation of modern Israel brutally usurped it in 1948 -- the implication being that Today's "Palestinian" Arabs are the descendants of those ancient "Palestinians".

Prior to the dawn of the Christian era, as a result of the successful Jewish revolt against the Hellenic-Syrian Seleucid Empire in the second century BCE (Before the Common Era) -- commemorated as the Jewish holiday of Chanukah -- the geographic area identified by these revisionist historians as "Palestine" instead hosted the independent nation-state known as Judea, successor entity to the northern biblical kingdom of Israel and to the southern biblical kingdom of Judah; and it was inhabited, not by Arabs, but by Jews.

Several hundred years later, in 135 CE (Common Era), after having long-become a province of the Roman Empire, Judea’s third and final revolt against Rome was crushed by Emperor Hadrian; but Rome's army also suffered devastating losses, including the complete annihilation of its illustrious XXII Legion. In furtherance of Rome's costly victory, Hadrian -- in a blatant propaganda effort to delegitimize further national Jewish claims to the Land -- renamed the province Palestine after the Philistines, a long-extinct Aegean people who had disappeared from History more than 700 years earlier after being extirpated by the Babylonian Empire.

However, although the province had been converted from Judea, the Latin-language word for which was Iudaea, meaning Land of the Jews, to Palestine, the Latin-language word for which was Palestina, meaning Land of the Philistines, and although a vengeful Rome massacred and expelled much of the Land's Jewish inhabitants, it nonetheless continued to be populated by Jews, together with substantial populations of other ethnic groups, but hardly any Arabs, at least until the great Islamic Arab invasion of 638.

However, even under the rule of the Arab and all subsequently superseding empires, the Jewish people nevertheless maintained a continuous national presence in the non-sovereign territory of "Palestine" -- right up until the resurrection therein of the Jewish nation-state of Israel in 1948.

In contrast, the ersatz people identified nowadays as the "Palestinians" are a collection of diverse Arab clans plus a smattering of other ethnic groups (such as Serbs -- these are the so-called Bosnian Muslims who were Serbian Orthodox Christians before their forced conversion to Islam -- as well as Circassians and Chechens, all imported by the Ottoman Empire from their lands of origin to the Middle East, including the Land of Israel, several centuries ago), which, for reasons virtually identical to those of the Roman Empire, have, since Israel's Six Day War of 1967, publicly declared themselves to be a distinct ethnic nation named after those very same defunct Philistines -- this despite the fact that the ancient Philistines were not even Arabs.

Moreover, in light of “Palestinian” claims to aboriginal status, it is ironic and noteworthy that the English-language cognate words “Palestine” and “Philistine”, as well as the Arabic-language word “Falastin”, are all derived (via Latin and, before that, Greek) from the biblical Hebrew-language word “Pelishtim”, meaning literally: “Invaders”.

It is indeed telling that the “Palestinians” have created for themselves a faux ethnic identity whose very name originates, not from their own Arabic language, but rather from the Hebrew language.

That the "Palestinian" Arabs constitute a fictitious people is hardly surprising due to the fact that, by 1948, a substantial portion of the "Palestinian" Arab population resident in British-administered Mandatory Palestine originated, not from that territory, but rather from the surrounding Arab lands which now comprise the modern states of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.

Jordan & Palestine's Flags - Find The Difference:

1 comment:

  1. Excellent article! I am familiar with most of the information, but you did teach me more useful data.

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