In Their Own Words: An Invented Palestinian Nation

As Published in The American Spectator

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will begin issuing “State of Palestine” passports this year. The made-up “Palestinians” now have a made-up people and a made-up state, fly a made-up flag, and carry passports confirming the ruse.

To promote the fiction of a uniquely Palestinian indigenous population, Abbas pursues a simple strategy begun by Yasser Arafat. Disregarding Biblical, archeological and other well-substantiated facts, the Arabs have rewritten the past to deny the 3,000-year-old connection of Jews to the Land of Israel, supplanting it with a fabricated “Palestinian” narrative. They learned the Nazi lesson well — if you tell big lies and repeat them often enough, people start to believe you. You steal Jewish history and then inherit their homeland.

To promote its goal of eliminating Israel, the PA portrays modern Israelis as lacking any connections to the ancient Hebrews.

“Zionism is the invention of robbers who stole Palestine from its inhabitants… whose lies are not supported by any archeological remnants…. Israel has no right to exist…. The stories of Jewish prophets are a sick invention,” reported the PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, recently. In that same official PA newspaper, columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul remarked, “Religious, historical, and even biblical facts deny any connection between the Jews and Jerusalem” or to “historic Palestine.” Fatah Commissioner Nabil Shaath stated in January, Israel is “a ‎colonialist project on our land.”

The widely accepted Jewish connection to Palestine is substantiated by the Old and New Testaments, the Quran, academic scholarship, archeological evidence, historical records and genetic genealogical research. Jews have a distinct ancient language, culture, and religion that are inextricably linked to the area. There have always been Jews in Jerusalem, a place mentioned in the Bible more than 400 times. The Quran makes no reference either to “Palestinians” or to Jerusalem.

The fabricated “Palestinian” narrative makes claims of Canaanite descent. There is neither genealogical nor genetic evidence connecting Arabs to these peoples, who ceased to exist 2,800 years ago.

There are no ancient Palestinian archaeological sites, monuments, literature, heroes, or coins and no Palestinian language. Most of the newly minted “Palestinians” are descended from Arabs migrating to the area in the early 20th century for economic reasons. Their ethnicity is common with their origins: Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Saudi. As Hamas Minister Fathi Hammad recently admitted, “Brothers, half of the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis.”

In January, PA’s Islamic-Christian Council director Hanna Issa stated that Jesus “is the first Palestinian martyr,” and PA Chairman Abbas in 2014 called Jesus “a Palestinian messenger of love.” In this absurd fairytale, Jesus was a Palestinian preaching Islam 550 years before Muhammad was born, rather than a Jew preaching in ancient Judea.

Palestine was a term used by the League of Nations for a portion of the Ottoman Empire called Greater Syria. The League established the British Mandate for Palestine using a version of the Roman Empire’s name for Judea — Syria Palaestina. From 1922 until the establishment of Israel in 1948, the term “Palestinians” was used to describe Jews living in this area.

Between 1948 and 1967, when the “West Bank,” Gaza and Jerusalem were under Jordanian and Egyptian control, there was neither an effort to create a “Palestinian” people nor a “Palestinian” state. Arab leaders referred to the Palestinians as “refugees,” and Arabs of the area called themselves “Palestine Arabs.” United Nations Resolution 242, passed at the end of the 1967 war, makes no mention of “Palestinian.” Only after the 1967 war, once Israel controlled this area, did the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) promote the idea of a Palestinian national identity.

In 1977, Zuheir Mohsen, PLO Executive Council member, articulated the goals of the new “peoplehood” strategy saying, “The Palestinian people does not exist…. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel…. It is only for political and tactical reasons that we speak today about…the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”

Why has the international community championed the false narrative of the so-called Palestinians at the expense of the Jews? The “Palestinian people” have become the poster child of victimhood, absolved of any moral responsibility for their decisions or behavior. The world ignores its ultimate goal — the destruction of “the Zionist entity.” The West’s guilt over its colonial past and its commitment to multiculturalism, coupled with Soviet-style anti-Semitism which depicts Zionism as racism, Israel as a terrorist regime of Nazi-like oppression, and Jews as the age-old evil-doers, have resulted in Israel being stigmatized as a neo-colonialist project rather than respected as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

Do you recall another time when a visceral desire to eliminate a group of people was enabled by the world? Does this sound familiar to you?