I AM A JEW (PART VI - The Palestinians)

As the title shows this is the sixth part (actually the seventh, if you count the Special Bulletin) of the series. If you haven’t read the other parts I urge you to do so. They are, after all, a continuum. Easy access to the others can be obtained by clicking on the titles: "I AM A JEW (Part I)," "I AM A JEW (Part II)," "I AM A JEW (Part III)," "I AM A JEW (Special Bulletin)," "I AM A JEW (Part IV - The Torah & The Talmud)" and "I AM A JEW (Part V - Gaza Is A Huge Prison)."

After I published my commentary I AM A JEW (Part III) one of my subscribers wrote:

I have been reading your I AM A JEW commentaries with interest.  I agree with a lot of what you say, but not all. I think that from the end of WWI to 1948, there were fundamental errors on both sides. The Zionist error is encapsulated in the slogan “A land without people for a people without land.”  The land was not without people, and had the early settlers made a proper effort they might have avoided some of the hostility, which came later.  On the Arab side, I think that the anti-Jewish riots early on were unjustified, and the source of a lot of what came later, but the basic failure on the Arab or Palestinian side was to total failure to create any kind of civil society during the mandate period, which continued after 1948.  The Jews were not smart enough to realize that they had to get along with the Arabs; the Arabs were not smart enough to realize that the Jews were building a structure, which could become a state, while they were building nothing which could become a state on their side.

 In any case, on the land annexation, which your latest piece is about, it is so clear that this is intended to prevent the PLO from regaining any control in Gaza, engineered by Israeli who want to have a terrorist organization, and not a government, as the enemy.

 Anyway, I know that you like to know that your stuff is being read.  It is.  However, my comments are not for attribution.

This fascinated me. I had never heard the slogan: “A land without people for a people without land.” And so as is my wont I researched it. It appears that it has a long history and those who are interested can read it here.

Suffice it to say it did not originate with Jewish Zionists and according to the Middle East Quarterly:

The earliest published use of the phrase appears to have been by Church of Scotland clergyman Alexander Keith in his 1843 book The Land of Israel According to the Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

The article goes on to say:

Nineteenth-century Westerners associated peoples or nations with territory, and so to be a land without a people did not imply that the land was without people, only that it was without a national political character.

And so we come to its modern reincarnation as set forth by one of my subscribers, Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia, who in reviewing the book, “The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood” on amazon.com wrote that the author omitted the fact that:

Palestinians had no identity in 1948 distinct from the Arabs living to the north and the east.

This sounds a lot like a re-incarnation, in slightly different form, from the old canard, “A land without people for a people without land.” But, of course Nekimken did not invent even the modern concept. In 1969 Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir asserted: 

[T]he Arabs of Palestine have no language, religion or general culture that distinguishes them significantly from the Arabs of Jordan, Syria (where some factions still claim Palestine as part of "Greater Syria") or other neighboring Arab states.

Aside from the fact that this is no longer true – no Arab state any longer makes any claim on the West Bank of Palestine or the Gaza strip – it is totally irrelevant.

The fact is that that the land we call Palestine has been occupied by Muslims since at least 640 CE when the land fell to invading Muslim forces. See here, or to set forth more recent history, I quote from Wikipedia:

Historically known as the site of the ancient Jewish Kingdom of Israel and successor Jewish nations for 1,200 years between approximately 1100 BC–100 AD, the region now had a large Arab population also from the 7th century. When the Ottomans departed, the Arabs proclaimed an independent state in Damascus, but were too weak, militarily and economically, to resist the European powers for long, and Britain and France soon established control and re-arranged the Middle East to suit themselves.[11]

Syria became a French protectorate thinly disguised as a League of Nations mandate. The Christian coastal areas were split off to become Lebanon, another French protectorate. Iraq and Palestine became British mandated territories. Iraq became the "Kingdom of Iraq" and one of Sharif Hussein's sons, Faisal, was installed as the King of Iraq. Iraq incorporated large populations of Kurds, Assyrians and Turkmens, many of whom had been promised independent states of their own.

Palestine became the "British Mandate of Palestine" and was split in half. The eastern half of Palestine became the "Emirate of Transjordan" to provide a throne for another of Husayn's sons, Abdullah. The western half of Palestine was placed under direct British administration. The Jewish population of Palestine which numbered less than 8 percent in 1918 was given free rein to immigrate, buy land from absentee landlords, set up a shadow government in waiting and establish the nucleus of a state under the protection of the British Army which suppressed a Palestinian revolt in 1936.[12] Most of the Arabian peninsula fell to another British ally, Ibn Saud. Saud created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

During the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, Syria and Egypt made moves towards independence. In 1919, Saad Zaghloul orchestrated mass demonstrations in Egypt known as the First Revolution. While Zaghloul would later become Prime Minister, the British repression of the anticolonial riots led to the death of some 800 people. In 1920, Syrian forces were defeated by the French in the Battle of Maysalun and Iraqi forces were defeated by the British when they revolted. In 1922, the (nominally) independent Kingdom of Egypt was created following the British government's issuance of the Unilateral Declaration of Egyptian Independence.

We cannot make people disappear by whether or not they have a national identity. None of the people who inhabited the American colonies had a national identity, aside from being British subjects. This was true throughout the world. In Africa, the native population was, and to a large extent still is, tribal. The national boundaries were drawn by the colonial powers. That does not make them disappear, or gives them any less right to aspire to their own national identity, or to be entitled to it. People who live in Palestine are Palestinians, and no amount of sophistry can change that.

Slogans can sometimes be useful. More often than not they are totally misleading.

As I have set forth, the Arabs of Palestine have lived there since at least 640 CE, whereas Jews have not lived in Palestine until 1882 when the concept of “Aliyah” came into vogue.

The claim to the lands of Palestine on the basis of ancient Israel that existed before 9th century BCE is an absurdity. We might as well argue for a return of the Holy Roman Empire. The legitimate claims of the Jewish people to a homeland do not arise from ancient history. They arise from the modern need for a homeland for a persecuted people, who have lived in the diaspora for centuries, and whose suffering has made the need for a national home, where they would always be welcome, a pressing and just cause.

That it had to come at the expense of other people is one of the unfortunate realities of life. But this should not be compounded by turning those dispossessed into pariahs without rights, and whose own aspirations to a homeland have an equal claim on the justice of the world.

The Jewish diaspora, has been displaced by the Palestinian diaspora, where Palestinians now live in refugee camps for generations having been displaced, expropriated, and denied citizenship in the lands of their birth, and even in the lands where they now reside.

It is easy for those who have displaced them to say that their Arab hosts should give them new homes, new rights of citizenship, and the opportunity to make new lives for themselves. But the responsibility for these people lies first and foremost upon those who have displaced them.

It is not possible for these displaced people and their descendants to return to their homes in Israel without destroying the very purpose for the creation of the State of Israel, i.e. as a Jewish homeland where Jews would always be welcome, but it is possible, and justice demands it, that they be allowed to return to any of the occupied territories of their choice, as full citizens of their own national sovereign state, and that those who cannot have their property rights restored, because their ancient homes lie in what is now Israel, be fully compensated.

Their rights are no less than the rights of Jews whose property was expropriated by the Nazis, and who have rightly demanded a return of that property or appropriate compensation.

I welcome comments, but will not publish any until this series is complete.