Palestinian Jews – and Other Historical Facts You’ve Never Heard About

When people hit the streets to chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” we like to respond along the lines of, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of your opinion.”

Free from who? Free to do what? Please describe a time in which Palestine was free so we know what we’re aiming for. Below are just 15 of many small facts about Israel and our region. Because we believe if people put as much passion into studying the topic they protest, they may actually find themselves on the right side of the fence.

① PALESTINE WAS NOT AN ARAB NATION IN 1948 WHEN ISRAEL WAS CREATED. THE JEWISH PEOPLE DID NOT TAKE OVER SOMEONE ELSE’S COUNTRY.

• Great Britain, in fact, controlled that region of the Middle East until she grew tired of governing the volatile area and asked the United Nations to decide what to do with it.
• Before Great Britain was tasked with administering the region after WWI, the Turks had controlled it since the early 1500s. Turks are not Arabs.
• In fact, Palestine has never been the name of any country!

② WHERE DID THE NAME “PALESTINE” COME FROM?

• The Romans!
• In an effort to rid Judea of its Jewishness, the Romans renamed the area Filistia (Palestine) in the mid-130s CE. They were tired of pesky Jewish uprisings (70 CE, 132 CE) and so decided to deport the Jews and change the name. The name came from the ancient Philistines, who have no connection to present-day Arabs. The Philistines were wiped out in 600 BCE by the Babylonians.
• It was a region and never a nation. There has never been a president of the State of Palestine or a government. It could be compared to New England, which is a region in America and has no government.
• Furthermore, the region of Palestine never had any connection with an Arab ethnicity.

19th century map, engraved and printed in England in 1845, depicting ancient Palestine. Credit: eldadcarin/Getty

③ THE UN PARTITION VOTE (NOV. 29, 1947) DID NOT MERELY GIVE ISRAEL AUTHORITY TO CREATE A STATE, BUT GRANTED ARABS LIVING ON THE WEST SIDE OF THE JORDAN RIVER ALSO TO CREATE AN INDEPENDENT ARAB COUNTRY NEXT TO ISRAEL.

• Arabs rejected “Partition.” They could have had their own nation in 1948, but they said no.
• Jews accepted “Partition,” and on May 14, 1948, Israel was re-birthed.
• Arabs in the West Bank became part of Jordan, and in Gaza, they became part of Egypt.
• Arabs declared war on Israel the day after the UN vote. Five Arab nations, plus the local population, attacked the new Jewish state and lost.
• Again, they could have had peace and their own Arab nation but chose war.

④ WHEN THE PLO WAS CREATED, JORDAN CONTROLLED THE WEST BANK.

• The goal of the Palestine Liberation Organization was to liberate Palestine. However, the West Bank was already in Arab hands. Jordan controlled it. And Egypt controlled Gaza.
• The “Palestine” they wanted to liberate was Israel proper.
• In other words, if their goal was to create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, then they would’ve been fighting Jordan and Egypt, not Israel!
• Of course, their goal was Israel’s complete demise. Its original charter called for the liberation of all Palestine. Their maps make no mention of Israel.
• NOTE: That does not mean that they are bad people. Each one of them was made in the image of God. We’re not talking here about their value, which is great before God, but history.

⑤ BEFORE ISRAEL WAS RE-BIRTHED IN 1948, ANY PERSON WHO LIVED IN THAT REGION WAS CONSIDERED PALESTINIAN: ARAB OR JEW. THE JEWISH-OWNED NEWSPAPER WAS CALLED THE PALESTINE POST.

Questions:

1. Why would any Jew name his newspaper after another people group?
2. Why would any Jew name his paper after an Arab country?

Of course, he would not. The word “Palestinian” never referred to an Arab ethnic group; remember, it came from the Romans. It was an invented narrative. That is why former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich referred to the Palestinians as an “invented people.”

⑥ JERUSALEM WAS THE CAPITAL OF ISRAEL UNDER KING DAVID. IT HAS NEVER BEEN THE CAPITAL OF ANY OTHER COUNTRY—INCLUDING PALESTINE. IT HAS NEVER (UNTIL ISRAEL CONTROLLED IT) BEEN SIGNIFICANT TO ARABS.

• In other words, you will not find these words in the Quran but in the Hebrew Bible: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. (Ps. 137: 5-6)
• The Ottoman Empire ruled over Jerusalem for 400 years. It meant nothing to them, even though they were Muslims.
• It only became important to the Arab and Islamic world, after the Jewish people began to return and redeem the land.
• It should be noted that the Jews purchased the land and did not steal it. How could they? They were under Turkish rule. They started the Jewish National Fund and lawfully purchased land in Palestine.
• When Mark Twain visited Palestine under Turkish rule he wrote that it was a “desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds...a silent mournful expanse...We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
• In 1919, there were approximately 500,000 Arabs in what is now called Israel. That number mushroomed to about 1.3 million by the time Israel declared its independence. In other words, over those 30 years (1919-1948) well over half of the Arabs in Palestine were not born in Palestine. They came as immigrants from all over the Middle East because of the economic opportunities that the Jewish pioneers were creating as they were clearing the land and establishing farms. This proves that there is no long history of Palestinian culture and that they are just after the city.

⑦ WHEN ISRAEL CAPTURED JERUSALEM IN 1967, IT WAS NOT FROM PALESTINIANS BUT FROM JORDAN. 

Questions:

• Why didn’t Palestinians demand Jerusalem when Jordan controlled it (1948-1967)?
• Why didn’t the Jordanians create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank in 1948? It was certainly within its power.
• The reason is simple. Jordanians made no distinction between Arabs who lived east of the Jordan and those who lived west of the Jordan.

⑧ ISRAEL HAD NO PLANS TO ATTACK JORDAN DURING THE SIX-DAY WAR.

Jordan’s King Hussein believed the false reports from Egyptian President Nasser of Egypt that they were winning the war against Israel. King Hussein, in hopes of getting more land, attacked Israel, and his troops were driven back over the Jordan River in a matter of days. That is how Israel ended up with Jerusalem in 1967. Taking Jerusalem was not one of the military objectives of the Six-Day War. It was a gift from Jordan.

Israel sent word to the king of Jordan through the United Nations that Israel would not attack their forces if they did not enter the war. Had they heeded that advice, Jerusalem would still be part of Jordan.

May 17, 1968–Israel celebrated its first year of a united Jerusalem and 20 years of Independence with a big military parade through the streets of Jerusalem. Keystone Press/Alamy Stock Photo

⑨ THERE IS NO LANGUAGE KNOWN AS PALESTINIAN.

Palestinian Arabs speak Arabic, just like Jordanians, Syrians and Egyptians.

⑩ THERE IS NO RICH PALESTINIAN HISTORY.

While Arab history in the Middle East is vast, you will not find history books that detail Palestinian culture going back centuries.

⑪ MOST OF THE ARAB COUNTRIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST ARE RELATIVELY NEW.

• Jordan was created in 1922 by Great Britain. They took 80% of ancient Palestine and created Transjordan. It achieved independence in 1946.
• The Syrians were under French control until 1946 when it became a nation.
• Lebanon achieved independence from France in 1943.
• Iraq became an independent nation in 1958.

These were nations created after World War I from within the Turkish Ottoman Empire. None of them existed before the San Remo Conference in 1920. The purpose of this conference was to decide which Allied nations would take responsibility for the different regions of the now-defeated Ottoman Empire.

⑫ THE TOTAL LAND MASS OF ARAB STATES (NOT EVEN INCLUDING NON-ARAB STATES IN THE MIDDLE EAST LIKE IRAN AND TURKEY) IS 98.4% COMPARED TO ISRAEL’S 1.6%.

⑬ WHEN THE JEWISH PEOPLE BEGAN THEIR RETURN TO ‘PALESTINE’ IN THE LATE 1800s:

• The Turks, not the Arabs, controlled it.
• Every bit of land was paid for by the returning Jews—nothing was stolen!
• Even in 1948, when Israel declared independence, Arabs were invited to join the new state. Many did, becoming the most liberated Arabs in the Middle East, enjoying freedoms never known in Syria, Egypt or Saudi Arabia. (I regularly see Arab women taking driving lessons!) Israeli Arabs are the only Middle Eastern Arabs with full civil liberties, like freedom of speech and religion.
• However, roughly 800,000 Arabs fled Israel, assuming that the five Arab nations would crush the new Jewish state. The gamble didn’t pay off, and they became refugees.
• The Arab nations did nothing to help integrate the refugees into their society but kept them in refugee camps until today.

Jewish National Fund campaign founded in 1901 for purchasing land during Ottoman and later British rule. Credit: Wikipedia

⑭ ISRAEL WAS A SWAMP-INFESTED WASTELAND THAT NO ONE, INCLUDING THE ARABS, REALLY CARED ABOUT.

Until the Jews returned, the land suffered neglect for centuries. It was only after Jews came back and made the land prosperous and fruitful again that Arab interest in the area increased and the Palestinian narrative was invented.

⑮ RELIGIOUS SIGNIFICANCE OF JERUSALEM

The word Jerusalem or Zion (the mountain on which Jerusalem was built) appears nearly 1,000 times in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, whereas it never appears in the Quran.

This is a historical point, not an argument for superiority or racism against Arabs. God loves Arabs and made them to love Him. In the same way, He also loves the Jewish people and will not ignore the covenant he made with Abraham and confirmed with Isaac and Jacob.

Article by Ron Cantor reprinted by permission.

Ron Cantor is President and CEO of Shelanu TV.

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