Confusion Reigns When Certainty Becomes the Order of the Day

“The object of Israel’s enemies is neither to dominate nor reach parity with Israel, but to destroy her. No other nation is the target of such a potentially genocidal threat.” [Eli. E. Hertz; April 29, 2019].

In assessing President Donald Trump’s skills in personal selection, one comes to an unchallenged conclusion in that they vary from excellent to dubious. Mike Pence, Nikki Haley , John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo have clearly demonstrated themselves to be outstanding. On the other hand, attempting to understand the limited experience and knowledge of Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman as a choice for their respective roles in dealing with wily oriental gentlemen, is puzzling, to say the least.

According to The Algemeiner of February 25, 2019, “Kushner Says Trump’s Plan Redraws Israel’s Boundaries, Resolves Final Status Issues.” He talks of wanting “to bring peace, not fear” and to formulate realistic solutions—–“which will improve quality of life.” In this, forgotten is the fact that this is precisely what Sharon did in handing over a complete sovereignty in Gaza at no cost, only to see it totally destroyed by Hamas. The pie in the sky of this youngster envisages a “non-corrupt government.”

More recently Daniel Friedman is reported in World Israel News dated June 10, 2019 as stating that “Under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all of the West Bank.” The report is largely drawn from a NY Times interview of Friedman on June 8, 2019 entitled, “US Ambassador Says Israel Has Right to Annex Parts of West Bank ” by David M.Halbfinger.

In the interview, he accused Palestinian politicians of trying to sabotage the Bahrain conference. He also insisted that Palestinian business people would attend the conference were it not for “massive pressure” from Palestinian officials to intimidate them from attending.

Most of the arguments presented by Friedman are not worth printing. In fact, they are ludicrous. Throughout all the years, the burning issue for the Arabs was sovereignty over Jerusalem and not economics. It would seem that to Friedman and his partners, Arab claims are the claims of greedy appetite verses the claims of starvation. To Shmuel Katz, whether a resolution was named the Rogers Plan, Camp David, the Madrid Conference, the Wye Accords, Oslo Peace Initiative, Sharm El Sheik Conference or the Road Map, what has been presented is the “same Yente in different clothing.”

Throughout the years, ever since the Balfour Declaration, the burning issue has been the issue of legitimacy. A most revealing and enlightening article on this subject was penned by Professor William Nichols of the University of British Columbia; it appeared in the December 1997 issue of Midstream. Nichols posits the question, “Who has the most right to the land?” He then unhesitatingly answers that, undoubtedly, those whose identity is bound up with the land own this entitlement because their historical ties to it are the strongest – i.e., history is identity. Who we are is what we have been, and is as much applicable to a nation as it is to an individual. On this basis, one can and indeed should pursue the answer to who has the most right to the biblical Land of Israel.

During the entire period of recorded history “Palestine” was never ruled by the so-called “Palestinians”, the name adopted in the early 1960s by the Moslem residents of the Holy Land, when the PLO was created by the Arab League. The rule of the various Moslem Caliphates, which was a foreign rule , extended for a period of 432 years, whereas Jewish rule of “Palestine” extended over a period of 2000 years.

What comes to mind is the brilliance of Sarah Honig’s column on March 31, 2006, “The diabolical force within.” Here, she draws attention to establishing equivalency between fighters for Jewish sovereignty and those who would destroy it [as] a popular pastime.”The Palestine Authority, though backed by Arab oil wealth and a solicitous international community, is a corrupt despotic quagmire.”

The PA’s claims to democracy are sullied by schools, mosques and media who engage in indoctrinating youngsters in fanatically noxious Jew-hatred and brain washing them to become human bombs. Of course that was then, whereas now the “tolerance” extends to other means of terrorism.

Both Fatah and Hamas envisage a Judenrein state. Gaza is an Islamo-fascist outpost, which no state in Europe or America would suffer next door to its vulnerable population centers.

It is seldom that one would be inclined to differ with Nikki Haley, Trump’s prior UN Ambassador. However, in an exchange with Arutz 7 on 13/06/2019, she offered an opinion based on an established myth. She spoke as if there was an equivalence between an established nation, Israel and a moribund entity, the “Palestinians”.

In an interesting piece on the upcoming Bahrain Conference, by Raphael Ahren which appeared on 12/06/2019 in Times of Israel, he offers a realistic assessment on the1st stage of Trump’s “Deal of the Century”. Titled, “Bahrain conference may succeed, but not at bringing Israeli-Palestinian peace” it offers a worthy judgment of the background.

Ahren notes that the summit is likely to yield no tangible results, neither in the economic realm ———-as the Palestinians won’t be in the room—-nor in the political area, as the Arab world stands united in its rejection of any peace proposal that doesn’t fulfill the Palestinian people’s aspirations for statehood, which the US peace plan is unlikely to satisfy.

In this, the words of the PA’s Saeb Erekat speaks volumes. He “knows “that attendance by most Arab leaders will remain convinced that a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital living side by side with Israel on the 1967 borders. Missing from the agenda and no doubt will be when the 2nd phase dedicated to the political component of the peace plan is entered into, is the lie that Israel stole “Palestinian” land. But that is insufficient.

On the surface, a large Arab attendance for the economic phase in Bahrain maybe useful as a gesture at a normalization of ties between Israel and the Arab world, they are not about to defy traditional Arab positions on Palestinian positions. Consequently, can there be any expectation for the 2nd phase?

The Bahrain summit is almost a de jevue of Madrid summit of 30/10/1991.Prior demand by Israel at the outset was for the PLO not to take part in negotiations, but to be represented by a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation.

In order to make any progress on a political solution, Trump’s trio will need to destroy the longest outstanding myth. In the words of Richard Mather, “Until it is acknowledged by the UN and other bodies that the Jewish people and not the Arabs are the indigenous inhabitants of Eretz Israel, it is going to be difficult to break the impasse of anti-Jewish prejudice that is the real obstacle to peace.”[So-called Palestinians have no history in Israel – except as terrorists/1/07/2017 wordpress.com].

We learn from Mather that in 1714, Hadriani Relandi a Utrecht mapmaker , published a book recording his trip to Eretz Israel in 195-96. He surveyed approximately 2,500 places which were mentioned in Tanakh and Mishna, conducting a census of the people who resided in the given places. Not a single name was of Arabic origin. Instead the names were derived from Hebrew, Roman, and Greek languages. Another interesting discovery, was the conspicuous absence of a sizeable Muslim population.

All the evidence points to the conspicuous absence of Arab culture in late 17 century Palestine; and even in the 18th and 19th centuries the Arab inhabitants were not indigenous , but were latecomers. There was no mention of Palestinian identity – they were Egyptian, Syrian, Moroccan, Iraqi and Ottoman Arabs.

Despite their successful efforts in deceiving the world, many Arab Palestinian leaders know the truth about the origins of their people. Egyptian born Yasser Arafat made this very clear when he said, “The Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.”

Moving from Richard Mather to Daniel Grynglas and his “Debunking the claim that ‘Palestinians’ are the indigenous people of Israel.”[Jerusalem Post 05/12/2015]. Grynglas correctly notes that Jewish claims to their heritage in the Land of Israel are supported by abundant archaeological artifacts and historical records. The Palestinian narrative is one where they view themselves as the ancient indigenous people of Palestine, dispossessed and deserving of Israel’s gains.

On the other hand, Grynglas points out there are no records to support the “Palestinian” narrative. Where can one find any trace of any Muslim existence in history, art and literature? Many individual authors have challenged their claims, and in particular, Joan Peters has thoroughly researched Arab immigration into Palestine. Published in 1984, “From Time Immemorial” documents how the Arab population gradually emerged from its desolate 19th century beginnings.

Stated categorically, Joan Peters has shown that the vast majority of “Palestinians” are not indigenous to Palestine, but rather descendents of the Arab economic migrants who arrived in the late 19 and 20 centuries.

The interesting fact is that between WW1 and the UN partition of Palestine, Britain promises to the Moslems were over-fulfilled, while their promises to the Jews were constantly violated and whittled down. British PM Churchill admitted in 1939, “—-far from being persecuted, the Arabs have crowded into the country.”

Daniel Grynglas concludes, “Given the complete absence of any historical record to the contrary, we can authoritatively say that the ‘Palestinian people’ never existed until they were invented in the 1960’s as a tool for continuing the Arab war against Israel.”

On 20/11/2013, Arutz7 published “The Counterfeit Arabs” by Victor Sharpe. He introduces his essay by unhesitatingly stating that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people; no such thing as a Palestinian history; and no Palestinian language exists.”There has never been any independent sovereign Palestinian state in all of recorded history.”

Sharpe points out that even some Arabs were willing to acknowledge the prevailing myth. “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not”. [Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian, 1946].
Concerning the Holy Land, the chairman of the Syrian Delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919 stated, “The only Arab domination since the Conquest in 635 AD hardly lasted as such 22 years.”
“As I lived in Palestine, everyone I knew could trace their heritage back to the original country their great grandparents came from. “[ Walid Shoebat, after the Six Day War].
” There is no such country as Palestine. ——There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us.” [Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937]

If Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman want to make Trump’s “Deal of the Century” a reality, they need to dispel the myth of fabricated Palestinian History. Since the PLO was the brain child of the Arab League , they should be charged with the responsibility of dealing with the “Palestinians”. Saudi Arabia, for one, constitutes a vast land mass thanks to the British. Security is an uppermost essential for Israel, and having another Hamastan as a neighbor would be a disaster History and international law should be their guide.