Lies and Falestine

Regarding Lies:

O ye who believe! If a wicked person comes to you with any news, ascertain the truth, lest ye harm people unwittingly, and afterwards become full of remorse for what ye have done. (Koran, Sura 49:6)

"One of Satan's most deceptive and powerful ways of defeating us is to get us to believe a lie. And the biggest lie is that there are no consequences to our own doing. Satan will give you whatever you ask for if it will lead you where he ultimately wants you." Charles Stanley

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." John F. Kennedy

“The most enduring and destructive legacy of five centuries of European colonialism are borders that were drawn for the sake of political and military expediency but which, given the region’s underlying history, culture, and ethnicity, make no sense today.” Joseph V. Micallef

"The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastine a fictional entity." — Golda Meir quoted by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, 25 November 1995

And now the lie that is "Falestine":

"Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9 percent of the Middle East lands. 
Tiny Israel represents one-tenth of one percent of the landmass. But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about today . . . No matter how many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be enough. — from "Myths of the Middle East", Joseph Farah, Arab-American editor and journalist,WorldNetDaily, 11 October 2000

A while ago I came across a paper written by JeremyR.Hammond entitled“The Myth of the U.N. Creation of Israel”. In his diatribe he begins his bitter prolonged discourse based on the assumption; purveyed by those ever so sad losers of Nachba fame, that there was an entity or a "country", if you may, called "Palestine". So allow me to debunk the false claim of a existence of a country whose sole inhabitants were "unjustly" usurped of "their" land known as “Falestine”.

Here are true historical facts regarding "Palestine".

The name "Palestine" is derived from the biblical name for the Philistines who were called "Plishtim" from the Hebrew term for invaders or (Hebrew: פלשת‎, Pleshet), according to Joshua 13:3 and 1 Samuel 6:17, these "Sea Peoples" arrived on the coastal area of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath, and Gaza around 1525 to 1500 BCE.

The origins of the Philistines are not clear and is the subject of considerable research and speculation in biblical archaeology. Some scholars have connected the Biblical Philistines with the Egyptian "Poleshet" inscriptions of "Sea Peoples" and since 1873 comparisons were drawn between them and to the Aegean "Pelasgians".
Archaeologists who once worked on Philistine sites on the western coastal areas of Israel, and in the past in Gaza, have shown that the Philistines were part of the Minoan-later the Mycenaean civilization, from the island of Thera (also called Santorini) in Greece.

Archaeologists have shown that the word "Philistia" or "Peleshet”was first recorded by the ancient Egyptians strengthens the evidence that they were a member of the invading "Sea Peoples".

The first actual written historical text reference is by Herodotus around.450 BCE in his "The Histories" Book 7 and it clearly states that the Philistines were descendant from invaders from the Mediterranean Sea.

"The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestina, according to their own account, dwelt anciently upon the Erythraean Sea, but crossing thence, fixed themselves on the seacoast of Syria, where they still inhabit. This part of Syria, and the entire region extending from hence to Egypt, is known by the name of "Palestina"."

The term never was used to refer to the whole land of Israel. Therefore it would be generally accurate to say that the southwestern coastal area was called Philistia(the "Way of the Philistines", or "Palestina"), while the central highlands were called the "Land of Canaan".
Both the Canaanites and the Philistines had been assimilated and disappeared as distinct peoples at least by the time of the Babylonian Captivity of Judea (586 B.C.), and they no longer existed.

The word 'Palestinian' itself, is never found in Scripture. The term 'Palestine' is used four times in the King James Version (Exodus 15:14) Philistia (פְּלָשֶׁת);Isaiah 14:29, 31 O Philistia but never as synonymous with either the land of Canaan or the land of Israel.
The Hebrew word is פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Plištim and referred to a small region also known as Philistia (Psalms 60:10, 87:4, 108:10), the land of the Pelishtee, or Philistines. It occurs 286 times in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew bible (of which 152 times in Samuel 1), whereas in the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Bible, the equivalent term phylistiim occurs only 12 times, with the remaining 269 references instead using the term "allophylos" ("of another tribe").

"In the New Testament, the term Palestine is never used. The term Israel is primarily used to refer to the people of Israel, rather than the Land. However, in at least two passages, Israel is used to refer to the Land: (Matt. 2:20-21)

In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:

20: Saying, Arise, and take the young
child and his mother, and go into
the land of Israel: for they are dead
21: which sought the young child's life.
And he arose, and took the young child and
his mother, and came into the land of Israel.

The World English Bible translates the passage as:

20: "Arise and take the young child
and his mother, and go into the
land of Israel, for those who sought
the young child's life are dead."
21: He arose and took the young child and
his mother, and came into the land of Israel.

And in the Aramaic Bible in Plain English (Matt. 10:23)

But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say to you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man shall have come.

"The first passage is when Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned from Egypt to Israel, and the second has reference to the proclamation of the Gospel throughout the Land of Israel. Jesus, Matthew and the angel speaking to Joseph use the term Israel with reference to the Land, even though the term was not then recognized by the Roman authorities.It is clear, then, that the Bible never uses the term Palestine to refer to the Holy Land as a whole, and that Bible maps that refer to Palestine in the Old or New Testament are, at best, inaccurate, and, at worst, are a conscious denial of the biblical name of Israel." Dr. Thomas McCall

When Titus destroyed Jerusalem, in 70 CE, the Roman government struck a coin with the phrase “Judea Capta,” meaning Judea has been conquered. All Roman references used the terms Judea, Shomron and Galilee to refer to the Land of Israel 135CE.
It was not until the Romans crushed the second Jewish revolt under Bar Kochba against Rome in that year 135CE that Emperor Hadrian applied the term "Palestina" to the Land of Israel.

Hadrian, like many dictators since his time, realized the propaganda power of terms and symbols. He replaced the shrines of the Jewish Temple and the Sepulchre of Christ in Jerusalem with temples to pagan deities. He changed the name of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitalina, and changed the names of Judea, Shomron and Israel to "Palestina".

Hadrian’s selection of "Palestina" was purposeful, not accidental. He took the name of the ancient enemies of Israel, the Philistines, Latinized it to "Palestina", and applied it to the Land of Israel. He hoped by this to erase the name Israel from all memory.
Thus, the term "Palestina" as applied to the Land of Israel was invented by the inveterate enemy of the Bible and the Jewish people, the Roman Empire under Emperor Hadrian. It may have pleased Hadrian to utilize this Hellenistic term for the Jewish land since the original Philistines were not Middle Eastern at all like the Romans. 

The Romans had referred to this land as a whole Iudaea (from the Greek Ioudaia). The land was mainly inhabited by Jews and was ruled by Jews. Therefore, Lord Robert Cecil, acting British foreign secretary, was right to use the name Judea for the whole land in his famous remark: "Our wish is that Arabian countries shall be for the Arabs, Armenia for the Armenians, and Judea for the Jews" (December 2, 1917).

The Christian Crusaders had typically called the country the Holy Land (Terra Sancta) and it was still the usual Western name for the country in the nineteenth century, although it alternated with Palestine, Judea, Zion, the Land of Israel, Land of the Bible, etc., and the Land was sometimes seen as part of Syria, the Levant, or other geographic notions. 

The highly respected Enciclopedia Italiana (Vol. 26, "Palestina"; ca. 1930) tells us that the name "Palestine" came "to prevail in modern times" over other names. This change apparently took place out of the "scientific" motive to avoid the religious connotations of Holy Land. 

This area known as the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem was created in 1872 under the Ottoman Empire . It had a special administrative status by the name the Sanjak of Jerusalem. The Ottoman Turkish Empire was basically a Sunni Islamic state founded by Oghuz Turks under Osman I in northwestern Anatolia in 1299.  The sultanate was abolished on 1 November 1922, and the last sultan, Mehmed VI who reigned  from 1918–22, left Turkey on the 17th of  November 1922. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey declared the Republic of Turkey on 29 October 1923 and the caliphate was finally abolished on 3 March 1924.

The Ottoman Empire that had fought on the side of the Central Powers Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I was soundly defeated. Not long after the conclusion of the First World War the allies, specifically Great Britain and France who were represented by the French diplomat François Georges-Picot and Briton Sir Mark Sykes divided up the former Ottoman Turkish Empire into spheres of influence under the Sykes –Picot agreement of 16 May 1916 into the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration.

Sir Mark Sykes had been a Protégé of Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War in World War I. Kitchener placed Sykes on the de Bunsen Committee, which was established on 8 April 1915 by British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, and was headed by Sir Maurice de Bunsen. The committee was established by the British government to determine their policy toward the Ottoman Empire during World War I and to determine it's fate in the aftermath.

Though Sykes never got to really know Kitchener well, he had Kitchener’s confidence as they shared a similar outlook on affairs in the Middle East. It was due to Kitchener’s backing of Sykes that he was soon the dominant person on the de Bunsen Committee, and thereby gained great influence on the outcome of British Middle Eastern policy.

The Arab Bureau as a section of the Cairo Intelligence Department during the First World War that was created upon Sykes's instigation. It was Sykes and his fellows in this group, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence the most famous of them, who revived ancient Greek and Roman names for Middle Eastern regions. We see this in the names in common use today of; "Syria", "Palestine", "Iraq" and "Mesopotamia".

It was Mark Sykes who also designed the "Flag of the Arab Revolt", in an effort to create a feeling of "Arab-ness" in order to fuel the revolt. The horizontal colors stand for the Abbasid (black), Umayyad (white) and Fatimid (green) Caliphates. The red triangle refers to the Hashemite dynasty - who had been allies of the British in the conflict against the Ottoman Empire. After the war ended, the Hashemites achieved or were granted rule in the Hejaz region of Arabia, Jordan, formally known as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, briefly in Greater Syria, and Iraq.

A combination of the colors red, green, black and white are seen today in the flags of nationalities that did not exist before the First World War. These countries are: Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Kuwait, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. 

Walid Shoebat‎ once said that the "Palestinians" are the newest of all the peoples on the face of the Earth, and began to exist in a ‎single day by a kind of supernatural phenomenon that is unique in the whole history of mankind.

“Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”‎ that over night "...all of the sudden we were Palestinians - they removed the star from the Jordanian flag ‎and all at once we had a Palestinian flag”.‎

The OETA was a joint British and French military administration over Levantine and Mesopotamian provinces of the former Ottoman Empire established between 1918 to 1920.The area of formerly Ottoman territory was under occupation  and Field Marshal Edmund Allenby (Dec 1917 – Jun 1918) was appointed a Chief Administrator for OETA South. He divided the country into four districts: Jerusalem, Jaffa, Majdal and Beersheba, each under a military governor.

OETA South, consisted of the Ottoman Sanjaks of Jerusalem or the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, together with the Sanjak of Nablus and Sanjak of Acre, they formed the region that was commonly referred to as "Southern Syria" by the Arabs who did not see this land as a separate country but merely considered the area in question as an undifferentiated part of Bilad ash-Sham (usually translated as Syria or Greater Syria).

"What the British call Palestine was part of the Province of Syria [...] politically, the Arabs of the Mandated Area were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity."(Faris Khoury Representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations in a statement to General Assembly in May 1947.)

Faris al-Khoury was born in Hasbaya in southern Lebanon. He was not only a die-hard Syrian nationalist but what was remarkable about him is that the fact that he was Christian. He served as Prime Minister of Syria twice from October 14, 1944 to October 1, 1945 and from October 1954 to February 13, 1955. Faris Khoury was also the first Syrian statesman to visit the United States and represent his country at the inauguration of the UN in 1945 .

This Arab view that the name "Palestine" was not identified with the Arabs living in the Mandated areas lasted until the end of the British mandate period. As we see from Arab writings and political declarations such as that of  Prof. Philip Hitti, an Arab-American historian, who taught at Princeton University when he testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946: " There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not." 

At the San Remo conference, an international meeting of the post-World War I Allied Supreme Council, held at Villa Devachan in San Remo, Italy, from 19 to 26 April 1920. Attended by the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I who were represented by the prime Ministers of Britain (David Lloyd George), France (Alexandre Millerand) and Italy (Francesco Nitti) and by Japan's Ambassador K. Matsui. Resolutions were passed at this conference that determined the allocation of Class "A" League of Nations mandates for administration of the former Ottoman-ruled lands of the Middle East Resolution adopted on 25 April 1920 that incorporated the Balfour Declaration of ‎‎1917.

"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The Balfour Declaration and Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations were the basic documents ‎upon which the League of Nations "British Mandate for Palestine" was constructed.
The declaration was in contrast to the McMahon-Hussein correspondence, which promised the Arab independence movement control of the Middle East territories "in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Sherif of Mecca" in exchange for revolting against the Ottoman Empire.

By the Balfour ‎Declaration, the British government had undertaken to favour the establishment of a Jewish ‎national home in "Palestine" - without "...prejudice to the civil and religious rights of existing non-‎Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other ‎country." Britain received the mandate for Palestine and Iraq; France gained control of Syria, ‎including present-day Lebanon in complete disregard to other League of Nations representatives who had been opposed to the Sykes-Picot agreement.

When the British received the mandate at the San Remo after the utter defeat and breaking apart of the Ottoman Turkish Empire in 1922 they called the land on both sides of the Jordan River, by the Roman term "Palestine". It was specifically employed to avoid the use of the name "Eretz Yisrael" by members of the British Foreign Office, who despised the Balfour Declaration. According to the Minutes of the Ninth Session of the League of Nations' Permanent Mandate Commission:

Lieutenant Colonel Sir George Stewart Symes (1882–1962)  explained; "... that the country was described as 'Palestine' by Europeans and as 'Falestina' by the Arabs. The Hebrew name for the area was the designation 'Land of Israel', and the British Government grudgingly agreed to meet Jewish wishes by allowing the use of the initials which stood for that designation 'Land of Israel' in Hebrew characters following the word "Palestine" in all official documents and monies.
As a set-off to this, certain Arab politicians suggested that the country should be called "Southern Syria" in order to emphasize its close relation with another Arab State."

During an Advisory Council meeting in 1920 his Excellency the High Commissioner of Palestine Herbert Samuel stated that:

"I was aware that there was no other name in the Hebrew language for this land except 'Eretz-Israel'. At the same time I thought that if 'Eretz-Israel' only were used, it might not be regarded by the outside world as a correct rendering of the word 'Palestine', and in the case of passports or certificates of nationality, it might perhaps give rise to passports or certificates of nationality, it might perhaps give rise to difficulties, so it was decided to print 'Palestine' in Hebrew letters and to add after it the letters 'Aleph' 'Yod', which constitute a recognized abbreviation of the Hebrew name 'Eretz-Israel'."  

Article 22 of the Mandate for Palestine states:

"English, Arabic and Hebrew shall be the official languages of Palestine. Any statement or inscription in Arabic on stamps or money in Palestine shall be repeated in Hebrew and any statement or inscription in Hebrew shall be repeated in Arabic."

As I mentioned previously above, the Arabs who resided in the area of the Mandated territories, wished to be recognized as part of 'Southern Syria'. They wanted to emphasize their close relation with other Arab States and not the word "Palestine," which the Arabs saw as applied almost exclusively to Jews. Institutions founded by new Jewish immigrants in the first half of the 20th century, before independence were all prefixed by the word "Palestine". You can see it in this opening of the famous 1935 movie made during the British mandate period:  "The Land of Promise"

Some other examples include:

• The badges that the members of the Jewish Brigade from WWII are labeled in Hebrew "Palestina" and with it the letters א"י - Aleph Yud - Eretz Yisrael!
• The Jerusalem Post, founded in 1932, was called the Palestine Post until 1948.
• Bank Leumi L’Israel was called the “Anglo-Palestine Bank, a Jewish Company.”
• The Jewish Agency – an arm of the Zionist movement engaged in Jewishsettlement since 1929 – was called the Jewish Agency for Palestine.
• The newspaper for American Zionism in the 1930s was called New Palestine.
• Today’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1936 by German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany, was described as the “Palestine Symphony Orchestra, composed of some 70 Palestinian Jews.”
• The United Jewish Appeal (UJA) was established in 1939 as a merger of the United Palestine Appeal and the fundraising arm of the Joint Distribution Committee.
• And exactly "who" were the footballers in the Australia and Palestine 1939 football game
  

"...The “indigenous people” who resided in the Ottoman Turkish Empire area prior to the Mandate in 1922 where a mixed group of peoples and there was no clamor made by them to be identified as “Falestinians”. Lt. Colonel Sir George Stewart Symes 

In Conclusion

Both sides do agree that God gave the land of Canaan (which became Israel) to Abraham and to his heirs forever and that Ishmael was Abraham's firstborn son, whereas Isaac was the second but the firstborn of Sarah and of the promise.

Noor Dahri - director of Pakistan Israel Alliance (PIA) and Editor in Chief of the Newspaper Pak Israel News (PIN)

It is mandatory upon all Muslims to support Israel and her right to exist in the holy land because the holy book of Islam, the Quran supports Israel. There are many verses in the Quran which support the divine right of Jews on the land of Israel but I want to quote only three to justify the right of the existence of Israel. The first verse of the Holy Quran stipulates:
“And We said thereafter to the Children of Israel, ‘Dwell securely in the Promised Land” (Quran: 17:104)
and the second orders the people of Bane-Israel to enter the Holy-Land:
“O my people (the Jews)! Enter the Holy Land, which God has assigned unto you”, (Quran: 5:21)
in the third verse, Allah Almighty order the children of Israel to scatter and says:
“And we said to the Children of Israel afterwards, ‘scatter and live all over the world… and when the end of the world is near we will gather you again into the Promised Land” (Quran:17:104)
The above-cited Quranic verses are a solid proof that this land was divinely given to the people of Israel and Muslims have no religious or historical claim to possess this land.

The custom in Abraham's day, acknowledged in the Torah, gave the firstborn prior claim to the inheritance. In fact the Torah relays the story that Abraham was satisfied with Ishmael as his child and that he considered him to be the son God had promised. Abraham didn't even want God to give him another son as mentioned in (Gen 17:18) It is by this story the Arab descendants of Ishmael believe of themselves to be the legitimate heirs. And as the Bible tells us God brought Abraham into the 'land of Canaan...and the Canaanite [not the 'Palestinian'] was then in the land' (Gen 12:5-6). God gave that land by an everlasting covenant to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Gen 24:7) - not to Ishmael. In obedience to God, Abraham 'settled in the land of Canaan' (Gen 13:12).Therefore there was no such land as 'Palestine' in Abraham's day and thus no such people as 'Palestinians' from whom any of today's Arabs could claim descent. In actual fact, Ishmael's descendants settled in the Arabian Peninsula hundreds of miles from the land God gave Abraham.

This claim by Semitic Arabs of being descendants of a non-Semitic people who allegedly lived for thousands of years in a land called Palestine is a blatant hoax intended to delegitimize the Israelis and claim the land of Israel for themselves. True the "Land of Israel" was then inhabited by Canaanites, Kenites, Kenizites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaims, Amorites, Girgashites and Jebusites' (Gen 12:6; 13:7; 15:18-21; 23:10; etc.).

If today's 'Palestinian' Arabs are descended from the original inhabitants of the "land of Canaan", which ones of those listed above would it be? In fact, no descendants of the original inhabitants of Canaan have survived to this day. Yet the world continues to accept this fraudulent claim.  In any case, the original “Palestinians” had nothing to do, whatsoever, with any "Falestinian" Arabs.