- In 1948, beginning with the Deir Yassin massacre, Zionists
terrorized 800,000 indigenous Palestinians into fleeing their homes in
Palestine. (See, <http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/israelfoundedonterror.htm>Israel:
Founded on Terror ) Yet, much Zionist propaganda today, responding to evangelical
gullibility, adds insult to horrific injury. It claims that Arab refugees
who inhabit Israeli concentration camps and demand return to their ancestral
lands and property have no claims at all. Why? Because their parents and
grandparents didn't truly occupy Israel.
-
- Such propaganda asserts that Palestine was a wasteland
of desolate sand dunes when Jewish pioneers arrived at the beginning of
the 20th century. A tiny indolent Arab population may have lived there;
but Jews, through vision, enterprise, and hard work (as well as divine
blessing) made the land "blossom as the rose."
- This Zionist mythology says Arab "Palestinians"
only arrived after Jews brought Palestine to life. They were neighboring
Arabs who swarmed in, seeking to benefit from Jewish-created prosperity.
They lied, say Zionists, about owning and occupying Palestine for centuries.
Having no deep and vested loyalty to the land (as did Jews), these imposters
fled in panic in 1948, fearing the crossfire of an Arab-Israeli war. As
a result, Israel says the land claims of these so-called "Palestinians"
need not be honored.
-
- Pastor John Hagee, dependable mouthpiece of Zionist disinformation,
summarizes what tens of millions of evangelicals unquestioningly believe:
-
- The land of Israel never belonged to the Palestiniansthere
has never been a land called Palestine. There is no Palestinian language.
Before 1948, the people now called Palestinians lived in Egypt. They lived
in Syria. They lived in Iraq. They moved into the land of Israel when they
were displaced by the war of 1948, which the Arab nations started, but
Israel is not occupying territory these people now call home. 1
-
- Such claims lead to Israel-absolving conclusions: No
injustice has been done to Palestinians. Israel need not return land and
property it never took.
-
- Encyclopedic Rebuttal
-
- The Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem (EPP) rebuts
these lies with documentation that is truly encyclopedic, as have Israeli
"new historians" such as Benny Morris. 2
-
- Many cultures and nations passed through Palestine since
Jews were banished in the 2nd century A.D. But EPP says its occupants largely
remained descendants of the ancient Philistines, from whom the title "Palestine"
is derived. EPP quotes Abraham Granott, former managing director of the
Jewish National Fund, who admits: "When the kingdom of Byzantium was
subjected by the Arabs, practically the whole land belonged to the big
proprietorswhile the soil was cultivated by the former owners who had remained
on their plots as tenants" Thus, EPP says, "The Palestinian Arabs
arethe descendants of the Philistines and of all Semitic peoples who have
lived in Palestine since the time of the Canaanites" (p. 33). This
included the ancient Samaritans whom God, in the time of Jeremiah, allowed
to occupy Palestine because the Jews would not obey. The same divine invitation
extends to Gentiles today until a remnant out of Israel will at last repent
at Christ's second coming. (See, <http://www.truthtellers.org/alerts/almostanyone
occupypalestine.htm>Almost Anyone Can Occupy Palestine)
-
- Palestine: Mideast Breadbasket
-
- Despite de-forestation and over-grazing of its highlands,
Palestine always lived up to its Biblical reputation as a breadbasket
"a land flowing with milk and honey." EPP says,
-
- "The historical record disproves the Zionist lie
that Palestine was undeveloped before the establishment of Jewish settlements
in Palestine. Muqqadisi, a native of Jerusalem who died in 986 A.D., enumerated
the principal products of Palestine in the 10th century: 'among whose agricultural
produce was particularly copious and prized: fruit of every kind (olives,
figs, grapes, quinces, plums, apples, dates, walnuts, almonds, jujube,
and bananas)," etc.
-
- [A late 10th century description says,] "Palestine
is watered by the rains and dew. Its trees and plowed fields do not need
artificial irrigation. Palestine is the most fertile of the Syrian provinces."
-
- "In 1615, the English traveler George Sandys described
Palestine as 'a land that flows with milk and honey.'"
-
- [A British missionary who visited Palestine in 1859 describes
the southern coastland area as a] "very ocean of wheat."
-
- "The German geographer Alexander Scholch concluded
that between 1856 and 1892, 'Palestine produced a relatively large agricultural
surplus which was marketed in neighboring countries'" [including Europe.]
"Laurence Oliphant, who visited Palestine in 1887, wrote that Palestine's
Valley of Esdraelon was a 'huge green lake of waving wheatand it presents
one of the most striking pictures of luxuriant fertility which it is possible
to conceive.'"
-
- [According to Paul Masson, a French economic historian]
"wheat shipments from the Palestinian port of Acre had helped to save
southern France from famine on numerous occasions in the 17th and 18th
centuries" (p. 33).
-
- So much for the Zionist "barren sand dunes"
claim!
-
- Who Made Israel Blossom?
-
- Contrary to Zionist mythology, Palestinian farmers were
among the most efficient in the world. EPP presents extensive records (largely
from British and UN archives) of Arab agricultural production in the decades
before expulsion by the Zionists in 1948. Agricultural production and efficiency
exploded, especially in the first half of the 20th century. Palestinians
took deep pride in themselves and keenly anticipated statehood.
-
- EPP says after Zionists terrorized most Palestinians
into flight, Israel suddenly possessed vast holdings of citrus, olives,
grapes, tobacco, wheat, etc. Israel since boasted that it planted these
crops on former sand dunes, but EPP reveals the truth: Israeli agriculture
didn't burgeon before 1948 primarily because of Western Jewish subsidies
or the celebrated kibbutzim (socialist, low-incentive collectives later
largely abandoned as inefficient). Instead, "In 1948, the Zionists
seized 90 percent of Arab-owned citrus groves, packaging and storage facilities,
as well as that year's crop, looting the prosperous Arab citrus groves
and making them [the Arab owners] destitute refugees" (p. 41).
-
- EPP also presents extensive statistics proving that the
Palestinians were hardly the ignorant "donkey drivers" of Zionist
propaganda. Their population boasted a disproportionate number of urban
professionals.
-
- These Arab towns and villageswere developed communities,
containing farms, factories, stores and schools, with an infrastructure
of doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, merchants, mechanics, industrialists,
workers and farmers which would be the envy of any developing country today
(p. 34).
-
- How Many Arabs in Palestine?
-
- EPP says that 634,133 Arabs lived in Palestine in 1914.
The first official census in 1922 listed 590,890 Muslim Arabs and at least
50,000 Christians Arabs. By 1948, an estimated 1,440,274 Palestinian Arabs
dwelt in 12 cities or major towns and 830 small towns and villages (p.
25-26).
-
- EPP exhaustively documents all major aspects of Palestinian
life during the 20th century preceding 1948. Such data confirms that Palestinians
were very capable of creating a thriving mid-east democracy as soon as
permitted.
-
- "The indigenous Arab population was recognized by
paragraph 4 of article XXII of the League of Nations Covenant as 'a provisionally
independent nation.' Palestine was placed under a Class A mandate, the
very status of which indicated that the indigenous population was well
advanced toward self-determination" (p. 35). [Under the British in
1947,] "there were 309 high Government Arab officials and 30,178 lower
grade Arab officials" (p. 27-28)
-
- From 1919 to 1948, no fewer than 10 Palestinian political
parties tried to stop more Jews from entering Palestine, prevent further
acquisition of Arab lands by Jews, and form a working Palestinian state.
Bedeviled by disunity, Arab Palestinians could not hold at bay the much
more focused, organized, and implacable ambitions of Zionists to ultimately
displace the Palestinians altogether (p. 36-39).
-
- Yet some early and brutal Zionists were more truthful
than contemporary Israeli mythmakers. Gen. Moshe Dayan said bluntly:
-
- "We came to this country which was already populated
by Arabs and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is, a Jewish state here.
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even
know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because
these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist,
the Arab villages are not there either. There is not one place in this
country that did not have a former Arab population." 3
-
-
- Endnotes:
-
- 1. John Hagee, In Defense of Israel, 2007, FrontLine,
600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, FL 32746, p. 58.
- 2. Nakahleh, Dr. Issa, Encyclopedia of the Palestine
Problem, 1991, Intercontinental Books, P.O. Box 756, Grand Central Station,
NY, NY 10163-0756.
- 3. Ha'aretz, April 4, 1969, quoted in Encyclopedia
of the Palestine Problem, p. 34.
-
-
- Comment
-
- Ken Adachi
-
- John Hagee: Re-writing Palestinian History for a Congregation
of Rubes
-
- [Editor's Note: I sometimes wonder what kind of people
come to the "church" of a madman? We have the popular notion
of a madman as one who talks gibberish and acts in a flamboyant, bizarre
manner, but a madman is more properly defined as a person who has
lost touch with reality and can no longer distinguish between fact
and fancy. If Hagee actually believes the nonsense that he spouts from
that humongous, red-carpeted stage upon which he struts, then he truly
is an insane individual and should be institutionalized to prevent him
from infecting the minds of gullible listeners.
-
- And if he's knowingly engaged in lies and disinformation
on behalf of Zionist sponsors, then he should be exposed and out-ed by
those within his own congregation-either his local congregants or
television viewers-who still possess a mind. Does anyone of voting age
sitting inside John Hagee's church possess a brain? Are they ALL walking
automatons? How can Texas evangelical believers sit still for such egregious
assaults on historical fact and not complain?
-
- If Henry L. Menken were still alive today,
he would have a field day with the congregants of Hagee's mind control
operation (sorry, I can't continue to call it a "church" without
gagging). He was less than polite with the local Bible-belters of the Tennessee
town where the Scopes "Monkey Trial" took place in the 1920s.
Imagine how he would react in prose had he spent even a single Sunday listening
to John Hagee's lunacy?..Ken Adachi]
-
- http://educate-yourself.org/cn/hageerewritespalestinehistory21aug08.shtml
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