Questioning Mahmoud Abbas’ Historical Revisionism - by Pesach Benson

I’m sure that there are plenty more questions that I haven’t thought of. So — are any journalists out there looking for a story?

Pesach Benson..
Algemeiner.com..
21 January '18..

One of the more overlooked issues raised by Mahmoud Abbas’ recent speech was a claim that the Palestinians are Canaanites, whose presence in the Holy Land predates the arrival of Abraham:

We shall stay here regardless of the occupation and the settlements. We shall not leave this country. This is our country. This has been our land since the days of the Canaanites. By the way, our Canaanite forefathers. … The Torah says … and I do not want to go into history or geography… from the days of the Canaanites and to this day, [our forefathers] have not left this land. They were here before our patriarch Abraham. We were. Since before our patriarch Abraham.

Abbas reiterated this claim on Wednesday. The forum was Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, which is regarded as Sunni Islam’s foremost institution of higher learning.

Religion plays a major part in the Israeli and Palestinian narratives, but it’s rare to see the foreign press take a deeper look at these beliefs and their impact on the conflict.

So how do Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims and Christians feel about claims that:

• The Palestinians are descendants of Abraham.
• The Palestinians are descendants of Canaanites (and Natufians).
• The Palestinians predated the Canaanites.
• Jesus was a Palestinian.
• A Jewish temple never existed on the Temple Mount.

Are Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders willing to explain the theological and political impact of these assertions? And — on a different level — if one’s religious belief can’t be reconciled with a national narrative, what does that say about individual identity? I don’t have any answers.

But there are plenty of questions.

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