April 29, 2014
Global Anti-Semitism Continues to Surge
Global Anti-Semitism Continues to Surge: p“Anti-Semitism is on the rise,” declares the latest annual survey of global anti-Semitic incidents and expressions from Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute. True, that much we know already, but the Institute’s report for 2013, the latest in a series stretching back more than twenty years, offers some compelling insights as to how this has […]/p
April 28, 2014
A tour and census of Palestine year 1695: No sign of Arabian names or Palestinians : Jihad Watch
A tour and census of Palestine year 1695: No sign of Arabian names or Palestinians : Jihad Watch
There was no Palestinian nationality before the 1960s, when it was invented in order to reposition what was then universally known as the Arab/Israeli conflict. Up to the invention of “Palestinians,” the Israelis were the tiny, besieged people amidst a huge number of hostile Arabs; after that invention, the “Palestinians” themselves became the tiny, besieged people against the big, bad Israelis. PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said this in 1977:
A tour and census of Palestine year 1695: No sign of Arabian names or Palestinians
There was no Palestinian nationality before the 1960s, when it was invented in order to reposition what was then universally known as the Arab/Israeli conflict. Up to the invention of “Palestinians,” the Israelis were the tiny, besieged people amidst a huge number of hostile Arabs; after that invention, the “Palestinians” themselves became the tiny, besieged people against the big, bad Israelis. PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said this in 1977: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 for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
The Israelis were mistaken ever to play along with this charade.
“A Tour and Census of Palestine Year 1695: No sign of Arabian names or Palestinians,” by Avi Goldreich (translated from the Hebrew by Nurit Greenger), The Palestine-Israel Conflict, April 27, 2014 (thanks to Inexion):
The time machine is a sensation that nests in me when I am visiting Mr. Hobber old books store in Budapest, Hungary. Hobber learned to know my quirks and after the initial greeting and the glass of mineral water (Mr. Hobber is a vegan) he leads me down the stairs to the huge basement, to the Jewish “section.”The Jewish section is a room full of antiquity books on subjects that Mr. Hobber sees to be Jewish. Among the books there are some that are not even worthy their leather binding. However, sometime, one can find there real culture treasure. Many of the books are Holy Books that may have been stolen from synagogues’ archives: Talmud, Bible, Mishnah, old Ashkenazi style Siddur, and others. Customarily, I open them to see who the proprietor is; who was the Bar Mitzvah boy who received the book two hundred years ago and to whom did he pass the book at the end of his days. It is simply curiosity.Many of the books are written in the German language. They are books of Jewish rumination written by Christians or assimilating Jews. Sometime one can find a hand written Talmud volume that is very expensive; thousands of Euros, set in the specially aired cabinet. Hobber knows their value. Sometime one can find a bargain such as the book Palestina by Hadriani Relandi — its original professional namePalaestina, ex monumentis veteribus illustrata, published by Trajecti Batavorum: Ex Libraria G. Brodelet, 1714. One can find such original books in only few places in the world, also in Haifa University.[Origina link for places where the book could be found and details about the author, etc.. Now down]:
http://libri-antichi.posizionamento-web.it/ palaestina-ex-monumentis-veteribus-illustrata.htmlThe author Relandi[1], a real scholar, geographer, cartographer and well known philologist, spoke perfect Hebrew, Arabic and ancient Greek, as well as the European languages. The book was written in Latin. In 1695 he was sent on a sightseeing tour to Israel, at that time known as Palestina. In his travels he surveyed approximately 2500 places where people lived that were mentioned in the bible or Mishnah. His research method was interesting.He first mapped the Land of Israel.Secondly, Relandi identifies each of the places mentioned in the Mishnah or Talmud along with their original source. If the source was Jewish, he listed it together with the appropriate sentence in the Holy Scriptures. If the source was Roman or Greek he presented the connection in Greek or Latin.Thirdly, he also arranged a population survey and census of each community.His most prominent conclusions
1. Not one settlement in the Land of Israel has a name that is of Arabic origin.
Most of the settlement names originate in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Roman languages. In fact, till today, except to Ramlah, not one Arabic settlement has an original Arabic name. Till today, most of the settlements names are of Hebrew or Greek origin, the names distorted to senseless Arabic names. There is no meaning in Arabic to names such as Acco (Acre), Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza, or Jenin and towns named Ramallah, El Halil and El-Kuds (Jerusalem) lack historical roots or Arabic philology. In 1696, the year Relandi toured the land, Ramallah, for instance, was called Bet’allah (From the Hebrew name Beit El) and Hebron was called Hebron (Hevron) and the Arabs called Mearat HaMachpelah El Chalil, their name for the Forefather Abraham.2. Most of the land was empty, desolate.
Most of the land was empty, desolate, and the inhabitants few in number and mostly concentrate in the towns Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Christians. There were few Muslims, mostly nomad Bedouins. Nablus, known as Shchem, was exceptional, where approximately 120 people, members of the Muslim Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites, lived.In the Galilee capital, Nazareth, lived approximately 700 Christians and in Jerusalem approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians.The interesting part was that Relandi mentioned the Muslims as nomad Bedouins who arrived in the area as construction and agriculture labor reinforcement, seasonal workers.In Gaza for example, lived approximately 550 people, fifty percent Jews and the rest mostly Christians. The Jews grew and worked in their flourishing vineyards, olive tree orchards and wheat fields (remember Gush Katif?) and the Christians worked in commerce and transportation of produce and goods. Tiberius and Tzfat were mostly Jewish and except of mentioning fishermen fishing in Lake Kinneret — the Lake of Galilee — a traditional Tiberius occupation, there is no mention of their occupations. A town like Um el-Phahem was a village where ten families, approximately fifty people in total, all Christian, lived and there was also a small Maronite church in the village (The Shehadah family).3. No Palestinian heritage or Palestinian nation.
The book totally contradicts any post-modern theory claiming a “Palestinian heritage,” or Palestinian nation. The book strengthens the connection, relevance, pertinence, kinship of the Land of Israel to the Jews and the absolute lack of belonging to the Arabs, who robbed the Latin name Palestina and took it as their own.In Granada, Spain, for example, one can see Arabic heritage and architecture. In large cities such as Granada and the land of AndalucÃa, mountains and rivers like Guadalajara, one can see genuine Arabic cultural heritage: literature, monumental creations, engineering, medicine, etc. Seven hundred years of Arabic reign left in Spain an Arabic heritage that one cannot ignore, hide or camouflage. But here, in Israel there is nothing like that! Nada, as the Spanish say! No names of towns, no culture, no art, no history, and no evidence of Arabic rule; only huge robbery, pillaging and looting; stealing the Jews’ holiest place, robbing the Jews of their Promised Land. Lately, under the auspices of all kind of post modern Israelis — also hijacking and robbing us of our Jewish history.Footnote[1] From http://www.answers.com: “Adrian Reland (1676-1718), Dutch Orientalist, was born at Ryp, studied at Utrecht and Leiden, and was professor of Oriental languages successively at Harderwijk (1699) and Utrecht (1701). His most important works were Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata(Utrecht, 1714), and Antiquitates sacrae veterum Hebraeorum.”
April 26, 2014
April 25, 2014
Israel Hayom | The Nazi parallel
Israel Hayom | The Nazi parallel
The Nazi parallel
The Nazi parallel
In November 1969, Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban gave an interview to the German magazine Der Spiegel, and there made a statement that has gone down in history. Reduced to a sexy sound bite, however, his actual words have long been forgotten.
According to friend and foe alike, Eban ostensibly referred to the 1967 borders (from which Israel was forced to fight for its survival in the Six-Day War) as the "Auschwitz borders."
The Right regularly refers to this phrase to illustrate that even someone as dovish as Eban understood the importance of maintaining control over the territory acquired by Israel in its victory in the war to annihilate the Jewish state.
The Left accuses the Right of enlisting Eban for a cynical purpose: to bolster its political opposition to territorial withdrawals.
And the Arabs claim that the intention of Israelis who invoke Eban is to call the Palestinians Nazis.
In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Sunday evening, let us review what Eban actually told his German interviewer nearly 45 years ago:
"We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as on June 4, 1967," he said. "For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz. We shudder when we think of what would have awaited us in the circumstances of June 1967 if we had been defeated; with Syrians on the mountain and we in the valley, with the Jordanian army in sight of the sea, with the Egyptians who hold our throat in their hands in Gaza. This is a situation which will never be repeated in history."
Eban was not equating Israel's Arab enemies with the Nazis (though the historic bond between them would have warranted it). Rather, he was stressing the genuine peril that would have befallen Israel in the event of victory on the part of those whose express goal was to "push the Jews into the sea."
Decades later, this objective is still the same. The only difference now is that terrorism against civilians -- coupled with a concerted campaign to enlist fellow travelers and useful idiots in the West to delegitimize the entire Zionist enterprise -- has replaced the conventional battlefield. And a key sponsor of this activity is a nuclearizing Islamic Republic of Iran.
This situation has had a dire effect on the world. It has muddied the distinction between victory and defeat; it has obscured the line between truth and deceit; and it has dimmed the division between good and evil.
It has also blurred the vision of many seemingly sighted people.
These are the fantasists who have been persuaded that the establishment of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders is both the path to peace and the only way to guarantee Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state.
There is little doubt that if Eban were alive today, he would be among these dreamers. His nephew, Labor party and Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog, certainly is.
On Thursday, when Israel's Diplomatic-Security Cabinet voted to suspend negotiations with the Palestinian Authority due to its impending unity agreement with Hamas, Herzog responded, "Today I ask the prime minister: Do you think your decisions help to strengthen Israel's security? Because if we close the book on a peace agreement, you have to present an alternative for how to prevent a binational state."
It is not clear which "book" Herzog thinks Israel is closing, since no peace deal, other than possibly between the PA and Hamas, is on the table. But there are two documents he would do well to read before drifting off to la-la land and dragging any additional patsies with him. One is the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement, the charter forged and followed by Hamas. The other is the Palestinian National Covenant, the charter adhered to by the PA, which -- commitments and claims to the contrary -- was never amended.
Here is a taste of the former:
"Israel will exist … until Islam will obliterate it" (preamble).
"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him'" (Article 7).
"So-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement" (Article 13).
The latter, too, has choice morsels:
"It is a national duty to bring up individual Palestinians in an Arab revolutionary manner. All means of information and education must be adopted in order to acquaint the Palestinian with his country. … He must be prepared for the armed struggle and ready to sacrifice his wealth and his life in order to win back his homeland and bring about its liberation" (Article 7).
"Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine" (Article 9).
"Commando action constitutes the nucleus of the Palestinian popular liberation war. This requires its escalation, comprehensiveness, and the mobilization of all the Palestinian popular and educational efforts and their organization and involvement in the armed Palestinian revolution" (Article 10).
"Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine are two complementary objectives" (Article 13).
"Since the liberation of Palestine will destroy the Zionist and imperialist presence ... the Palestinian people look for the support of all the progressive and peaceful forces and urge them … to offer the Palestinian people all aid and support in their just struggle for the liberation of their homeland" (Article 22).
"The demand of security and peace, as well as the demand of right and justice, require all states to consider Zionism an illegitimate movement [and] to outlaw its existence" (Article 23).
Herein is the root of the Holocaust parallels. In a declared war against the Jewish state, the imperative is killing Jews, not living peacefully alongside them. For Israel to survive the current assault, it must stop participating in the myth of a border dispute. One need not misquote Abba Eban for this purpose. The Palestinians articulate their aims quite incontrovertibly.
Ruthie Blum is the author of "To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the 'Arab Spring.'"
April 23, 2014
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