By: Dr. Richard Booker

@ 2008. Reprinted with permission from:

The Jerusalem Connection, PO Box 20295, Washington DC 20041. www.tjci.org

THE revival of modern Jewish life in the land began in the 1880’s with the arrival of Russian refugees from the Russian pogroms. A second wave of immi-gration, also from Russia, was in 1905. This was followed by later immigrants resulting in a growing Jewish population in the land.

When the Jews came to the land, they found a malaria infested swamp in the north and an uninhabitable desert in the south. It was as if HASHEM had kept the land hidden away in obscurity until the rightful owners returned to claim it. The rightful owners, whose blood, sweat and tears reclaimed the land, are the Jews.

The Jewish pioneers did not steal the land from the Arabs any more so than the modern “settlers” of Judea and Samaria. They purchased the land at highly inflated prices from absentee landlords living outside the land. As the Jews worked the land, it began to prosper and attract the attention of neighboring migrant farm workers.

While there were Jews and Arabs, as well as Christians, living in the land, there were many poor migrant Arab and non-Arab farm workers in the surrounding countries who needed work. When they heard that the land was prospering under the hand of the Jews, they migrated to Palestine to get work from the Jews.

Furthermore, the British allowed many thousands of Arabs into Palestine illegally while barring the Jews from entering the land. For the most part, the present-day Arab Palestinians are the descendants of these peasant farm workers and illegal immigrants.

The so-called Palestinians have never been a distinct people. Neither have these mythical people ever had a sovereign land called Palestine. Jerusalem has never been the capital of an identifiable group of people called Palestinians. There is no Palestinian language or culture. The truth is there is no such thing as a “Palestinian people.” It is a myth created after the Jews liberated Jerusalem in 1967.

Before the birth of the State of Israel, Arab leaders themselves denied the existence of an Arab country called Palestine. In 1937, Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi said, “There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. ‘Palestine” is alien to us; it is the Zionists who introduced it.”

In 1946, a distinguished Princeton professor and Arab historian said, “There is no such thing as Palestine in Arab history, absolutely not.”

All who lived in the land, Jews, Arabs, and Christians, were called Palestinians. They were called this because they lived in the geographic area that Hadrian renamed Palestine. People who live in Texas are called Texans. People who lived in Palestine were called Palestinians.

Under the disastrous British Mandate, the Palestinian Jews were given a state. But before this state came into existence, Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, in 1922, took away seventy-seven percent of the geographic area promised to the Jews and created Transjordan as a state for the Palestinian Arabs. Israel would be for the Palestinian Jews and Transjordan (now Jordan) would be for the Palestinian Arabs.

When Israel became a state in 1948, Jordan illegally occupied Jerusalem, and  400,000-600,000 Arabs fled at the insistence of Arab leaders. Some stayed to become Israeli citizens. While we certainly sympathize with the plight of the refugees, their problems could be solved if their Arab brothers cared enough to assimilate them.