Arab.net Palestine History Misrepresentation
The above site is an example of seemingly objective information for influencing the moderate and
fair-minded Arab world and others, but which is actually
a misrepresentation and an attempt to delegitmize the Jewish claim.
These two examples should demonstrate:
(1) Under Overview "Palestine is the ancient name ..." implying there was a Palestinian people.
The Romans, after destroying the Jewish rebellion around the 2nd century CE,
renamed their province of Judea to Palestine to humiliate the Jews.
Prior to that the name was never Palestine and their were no Palestinians.
After that time, the word Palestinian was used to refer to Jews not Arabs.
Some ancient names were Judea, Samaria, Israel and from the hebrew bible Canaan.
(2) Under history, in the first six sections
"Israelites" is mentioned only once and secondarily in "Philistines & Israelites".
"Jews" is not mentioned at all.
The implication is that a variety of people lived on the land
from Canaanites through Romans.
For the 1,400 year period from about 1,200 BCE to about
the 2nd century, the land was Jewish.
Though there were a variety of conquering and ruling powers,
including the Assyrians, Babylonians and Romans,
the people that lived there were Jews, just like
the people that lived in Greece were Greeks.
Since that time, Israel was mostly a wasteland sparcely populated with Jews,
Arabs, Bedouins, Christians and other peoples.
There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel,
in spite of persecution, massacres and prevention of immigration,
by various overlords including Romans, Arabs, Mongols, Crusaders,
Marmelukes, Ottomans and British.
Over the centuries Jews made various attempts to re-establish a homeland in Israel.
In the 1800s, due to favorable political conditions Jews started
repopulating an essentially barren land (see Mark Twain's eyewitness account).
The Jewish motto was "a people without a land, a land without a people".
Arabs attracted by Jewish prosperity moved into the region.
Religious Jews pray 3 times a day for return to Israel.
There is no place on earth more associated with a people
than Jews with Israel and Jerusalem.
Just look at the hebrew bible, which has been in its
present form for at least 2,200 years.
The original and most ancient part of the Jewish homeland was Judea and Samaria.
They are now known as the West Bank.
Jews have lived for 3,000 years continuously in Hebron in the West Bank,
which is the location of The Tomb of the Patriarchs.
This is the cave mentioned in the bible that Abraham purchased around 1,500 or 1,600 BCE.
Joseph's Tomb, now desecrated, was also in the West Bank.
All this information is easily verifiable.
The validity of all information on the Arab.net site is in question.
|
