Surprised that Palestine has not been Arab/Moslem from time immemorial? Don't be. - by Yoram Ettinger

Contrary to Palestinian claims and myths, Palestine has not been Arab from time immemorial

Yoram Ettinger..
MiDA..
28 August '20..

Have Arabs been in the area west of the Jordan River from time immemorial?

In 1881, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, a leading British cartographer and Dean of Westminster Abbey, reported that “in Judea it is hardly an exaggeration to say that for miles and miles there was no appearance of life or habitation” (Sinai and Palestine in Connection with Their History, New York 1895, pp. 184-186).

The Egyptian immigration

According to Arieh Avneri, a ground-breaking historian of Arab and Jewish migration to Palestine (The Claim of Dispossession, 1980), during the Egyptian conquest (1831-1840), “there was a limited influx of some thousands of [Egyptian] immigrants, whom Ibrahim Pasha [the ruler of Egypt] brought in to settle the empty stretches of the country. Before them, a goodly number of Egyptians had fled Egypt, seeking to evade the military draft…. They sought sanctuary with the governor of Acre, who granted it readily.”

The French-Egyptian scholar, Muhammad Sabry [The Egyptian Empire under Mohammed Ali and the question of the Orient, 1930], confirmed that “the Governor of Acre encouraged the migration of fellaheen [peasants] from Egypt and gave them shelter…. In 1831, more than 6,000 fellaheen crossed the Egyptian border…. After he conquered Palestine, not only did Mohammed Ali [Ibrahim Pasha’s father] refrain from sending back the draft evaders to Egypt, but he sent new settlers to consolidate his rule…. The Egyptian ruler also brought the Bedouin slave-tribe, Arab ed-Damair….”

Avneri highlights (ibid.) many documents published by the British Palestine Exploration Fund. For instance:

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PA World of Make-Believe: Israel supplies weapons to Palestinians to fight one another and illegal fireworks to cause injuries - by Nan Jacques Zilberdik

What does the civilian say? Journalist Omar Nazzal said that ‘the harming of the other has become a culture that is not limited just to celebrations of success at the matriculation exams, but rather prevails in all the phenomena of harassing the other on the claim that it is only [for] a day or an hour… Many who have an event, whether it is an engagement party, a release from the occupation’s prison, or success in the matriculation exams, hold these celebrations in a manner that disturbs others.’An El-Bireh Municipal Council member… said that: ‘The responsibility is on everyone. We have failed in assimilating a civil culture within us.’”

Nan Jacques Zilberdik..
Palestinian Media Watch..
18 August '20..

As the Palestinian Authority is struggling with increasing internal violence, what better way to deal with it than to blame Israel? As Palestinian Media Watch has documented this is the PA’s modus operandi whenever bad things happen.

Thus, PA Police Spokesman Col. Luay Erziqat blamed Israel for the rise in violence in Palestinian society, claiming Israel “encourage[s] violence and murder in the Palestinian society” and is “supplying” arms to Palestinian weapon dealers:

PA Police Spokesman Col. Luay Erziqat:“There are elements of the occupation (i.e., PA term for Israel) that have begun to raise their voices and have begun to spread crime and to help spread crime… We have found suspicious and funded [internet] pages, we have found ‘mouthpieces’ and elements of the occupation that encourage violence and murder in the Palestinian society. In Area C (i.e., West Bank areas under full Israeli administration according to the Oslo Accords), at the basic level, the Israeli occupation is preventing the [PA] Security Forces from acting there, and is transferring supplies to the weapon dealers. If you look for example at the southern areas like Hebron – there are weapons there, 250, 500 (rifle models –Ed.)… It is clear who is supplying these weapons, and who is transferring the supply to the dealers of these weapons.”
[Official PA TV, Directly With the Police, June 1, 2020]

In the same way, the PA blamed Israel for accidents caused when Palestinians use fireworks for celebratory occasions, for example when they receive the results of the matriculation exams. The PA’s official news agency claimed Israel deliberately supplies fireworks to Palestinians to “destroy the Palestinian society”:

“The main source of the fireworks is the settlements and the occupation, whose goal is to destroy the Palestinian society, and therefore it allows their entry into the Palestinian market, and simultaneously bans their sale in the 1948 territories (i.e., Israel) except through companies that specialize in the field of fireworks… The usage of fireworks in Palestine is one of the serious phenomena… that has contributed to turning parties and joyful occasions into sad events… and this constitutes a danger to the social well-being, and threatens the stability and the social ‘domestic peace.’”
[WAFA, official PA news agency, “Negative Social Phenomena” section, accessed July 16, 2020]

Manager of the PA’s Import Tax Administration Public Relations and Communications, Ibrahim Ayyash, supported this allegation, saying that “most of the explosives and fireworks are smuggled from the settlements… as well as fireworks that are imported from China, and the Israeli authorities turn a blind eye knowing that they are meant for Palestinian markets.” [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 13, 2020]

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Surprise? Another Anti-Israel Lie Pushed by Palestinian Activist - by Dexter Van Zile

The result is that the entire premise of the article — which accuses the United States of denying human rights activists access to satellite images they can use to document alleged Israeli misdeeds against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — is destroyed. They’ve had access to the images since 2012.

Dexter Van Zile..
Algemeiner..
06 August '20..

When people say or write things, they should try to avoid contradicting themselves on a factual or logical basis. This is the essence of the “Liar’s Paradox.”

This lesson was lost on the folks at Foreign Policy (FP), who published a piece by Palestinian activist Zena Agha titled “Israel Can’t Hide Evidence of Its Occupation Anymore.” The piece, which appeared on FP’s website on August 3, 2020, contradicts itself in a pretty obvious way.

The gist of the article is that a US law passed by Congress in 1996 has made it impossible for human rights activists to get high-definition satellite images of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, making them unable to document Israeli actions in those areas.

The article then reports breathlessly that this law was recently amended, giving human rights activists the information they need to document the evil acts against the Palestinians.

But when read closely, the article (a) reveals that the law only applied to US companies, and that (b) high-definition images of Israel and the Gaza Strip and West Bank have been available on the global market for most of the past decade, rendering the law in question meaningless.

The result is that the entire premise of the article — which accuses the United States of denying human rights activists access to satellite images they can use to document alleged Israeli misdeeds against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — is destroyed.

They’ve had access to the images since 2012.

Here’s the background:

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Welcome to the Abbas comedy show and ongoing Palestinian tragedy - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The tragedy of the Palestinians is that they could have had peace and an independent state if their leaders been willing to give up the illusion that Israel could one day be eliminated. Instead, they have chosen corruption, fantasies about the end of Israel and more comedic relief from Abbas. It’s a poor bargain, but until Palestinians decide they want something better from their leaders, it’s all they’ll ever have.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
20 May '20..

If you think you’ve seen this movie before, you’re right.

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has declared that he is abrogating all agreements with Israel so many times it’s a wonder that he could do so again with a straight face. Indeed, he started making these threats as soon as he succeeded PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and has never really stopped during the course of the 15 years of his four-year term as leader of the P.A.

The latest occasion for his usual theatrics is the possibility that Israel might extend sovereignty into parts of the West Bank, as envisioned by the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan. Abbas didn’t merely reject the Trump scheme, as he did several other even more generous Mideast plans in the past. He refused even to negotiate with the Trump administration.

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to take advantage of Trump’s promise that Israel could move on the Jewish settlements there if the Palestinians didn’t join in the talks. So Abbas is attempting to blackmail the world into forcing Israel to back down by threatening to blow up the Middle East—or create enough chaos in the West Bank and elsewhere to make Netanyahu think twice about making good on his campaign promises.

Or at least that’s what he wants the world to believe he’s doing.

Surely, not even the most clueless and credulous observers of the Palestinians—and by that, I refer to the so-called “experts” about the Middle East in the foreign-policy establishment and the mainstream press—could possibly fall for his act.

That’s not just because Abbas has tried this gambit many times before. It’s because even in the same statement in which he made his threat to implode the P.A.—thereby forcing Israel to directly administer the West Bank and to end all security cooperation with the Israelis—he included a caveat basically saying “never mind.”

Even in the same breath that the Palestinians threaten to blow up the region again, Abbas’s mouthpieces conceded that the cooperation would continue. So would the kleptocratic rule of the West Bank on the part of Abbas’s Fatah Party that passes for government in the realm of the P.A.

Why then does he even bother to repeat this tired routine?

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.  

Introducing 'Nakba' – a Twitter tale of 7 million distortions - by David Collier

Massacres that never happened, villages that were no more than a couple of tents, Arab civilians who were actually armed militia, a mighty Zionist force that was in reality a tiny and scared Jewish population and a plan of ethnic cleansing that simply did not exist. Mix all these up together and you can present your very own Nakba tale. A fable that has lasted 72 years and has resulted in European governments enticing and actually funding the welfare of Arabs who seek to kill Jews.

David Collier..
Beyond the Great Divide..
15 May '20..

Today on Twitter is Nakba Day. It is commemorated on 15th May, the day following Israel’s independence. As bad as the distortion and ignorance surrounding the conflict may be on any normal day, the nakba anniversary always takes it to a whole new level of insane.

The true story behind the Nakba is a simple one. The UN partitioned the land between a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Arabs refused to accept it. Civil conflict broke out and this turned into a regional war. The Arab side lost and paid a price for their aggression. Rather than accept this, they have spent the last 72 years making it continually worse for themselves.

On social media – we are presented with a completely different tale. An insidious, antisemitic demonisation of Jews and a total distortion of history. As I am battling away today, I thought I would provide a few examples.

Nakba as a Jewish virus

These online campaigns are organised and sometimes state driven. As early as last night #covid48 started trending:

Covid is of course another name of the current Coronavirus. 1948 is the birthdate of Israel. This Twitter trend is in tune with some of the oldest and most deadly antisemitic tropes. Over the past 24 hours, there have been 100,000s of tweets calling Jews a virus. It is difficult to believe Twitter would accommodate a global racist trend such as this against any other minority group. Antisemitism is and has always been more socially accepted than other forms of hate. ‘Jews as virus’ trending in the UK. How sickening.

Nakba number lies

One of the key reasons I know anti-Zionism is just the latest version of antisemitism, is because of the ignorance behind it all. The tale they weave is not a perspective of an historical fact nor a slight bias in favour of their own side. It is a total fictional narrative. A place where the enemy is so demonised, so over-stated and the story so ridiculous – that they are discussion the devil or the bogey man – not actual historical events.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

UNRWA and Palestinian refugees – it is time to tell the truth - by David Collier

There will be no solving this conflict until this farce is removed from the Middle East. The evidence is everywhere. It is why they are not building homes in Gaza or Ramallah. Why those living in PA areas are also called refugees. It is all nonsensical UNLESS you see this for what it is. The Palestinian refugee was born into a paradigm of no to normalisation – and they cannot exist outside of it. If we are to move forward and find any accommodation between the Jews of Jerusalem and the Arabs of Ramallah, we have to end these lies.

David Collier..
Beyond the Great Divide..
11 May '20..

In May 2016 I spoke at a panel event on the possibility of a two state solution. My talk focused on the key issue of the entire conflict – the reason the ‘Palestinian refugee’ situation can never end. At the time I called for the ridiculous definition of a Palestinian refugee to be thrown into the dustbin of history and for UNRWA to be scrapped alongside it. A newly published book by Adi Shwartz and Einat Wilf called ‘the War of Return‘ lays out the case far better than I ever did. This piece isn’t a review of the book as much as support for the truth that is written inside. I rarely agree with a book as much as I did with the ‘War of Return‘. If you want to see all the evidence that supports these arguments, I really suggest reading it.

The truth is not right wing

Adi Schwartz used to work for Ha’aretz. Einat Wilf was a member of parliament for the Labour Party. The two authors were both long time members of the Israeli left. For many, what occurred between 1993 and 2008 would fundamentally challenge long-held beliefs. Between the Labour Party’s victory in the 1992 election and its 2009 electoral disaster – the entire peace camp of Israel collapsed. Israelis experienced first-hand something that could not be denied – the paradigm of the Oslo peace process was built on falsehoods.

Israelis were forced through this awakening, as the fake doves of Oslo turned into the bombs of the second intifada. Far removed from the blood flowing down Israeli streets, western politicians – and even large community organisations in the Jewish diaspora – still hold on to the Oslo process. It creates a divide that makes it seem as if Israel has shifted to the right. It has not – it has just stopped believing the lies.

Denying Israel’s right to exist

The truth of this conflict is, and has always been, about a denial of Israel’s right to exist. Before 1967, that was an obvious statement to make. Since 1967, a false narrative spread, suggesting that the Palestinians (as a body, not as individuals) are willing to make peace with the Jewish state.

The Right of Return is a call for the end of Jewish self-determination, the destruction of Israel, and the Palestinians openly say that they will *never* give it up. Everything people in the west, including Jews in the diaspora, choose to hear beyond that message is delusional. Adherence to the idea of a negotiated settlement becomes an act of faith built without any supporting evidence.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.  

Own Goal!: — Calling Hebron Occupied and then Showing the 97% that is not. - by Sheri Oz

It is amazing how many errors, um, lies, you can fit into two minutes.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
26 April '20..

News of the impending appropriation of a few meters of land, the few meters required to build an accessiblity elevator to the Cave of the Patriarchs, has resulted in the production of the amusing propaganda video in the Tweet below. Let me show you how many errors there are in this very short piece if you were unable to pick them out yourself but watch it first and see if you can find all of them:

Palestinians has warned against the Israeli efforts to impose full control over the Ibrahimi Mosque under the pretext of the #coronavirus pandemic. pic.twitter.com/quEghkU4Z2

— FilesFrom1948 (@PFiles1948) April 18, 2020

First: Of course we are exploiting the Coronavirus! We have nothing else to worry about regarding the virus than to use it as cover for harming our neighbours. (These two sentences are supposed to be read with a sarcastic tone of voice.) Regarding the closing of the mosque to visitors, all places of worship are closed in Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in order to prevent spread of the disease. And I can assure you that as soon as the danger is passed, worshipers will again be allowed in. But the producers of this film know that as well.

Second: we are taking over the entire Ibrahimi Mosque, er… the Cave of the Patriarchs? Hmm. Appropriating a few meters of land does not constitute “imposing full control” over the site. And that does not constitute turning the mosque into a synagogue.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.  

Surprise? Palestinian Authority rewrites Hans Christian Andersen's "It's Quite True" - the making of a Corona fairy tale - by PMW

PA rewrites Hans Christian Andersen - It’s Quite True - How the PA turned one spit on the ground into a deliberate Israeli plot to infect Palestinians with Coronavirus and “get rid” of all Palestinians

Nan Jacques Zilberdik and Itamar Marcus..
Palestinian Media Watch..
02 April '20..

               The making of a Corona fairy tale

Once upon a time there was an Israeli soldier who spat. He didn’t spit on a door handle. He didn’t spit on a home. He just spat on the ground near a car.

How the PA turned one spit into a grotesque Israeli plan to infect and get rid of Palestinians, is reminiscent of how one feather turned into five hens in Hans Christian Andersen’s It’s Quite True.

In the fairy tale a hen plucks out one of her feathers and jokingly says that the more she plucks the more beautiful she will be. Another hen tells her friend that the first hen plans to pluck out all her feathers to be more beautiful to catch the rooster. The story is retold and exaggerated by hens, owls, and pigeons until the story comes back to the first hen who doesn’t recognize it is about her since the story now is of five hens who plucked themselves naked, and pecked at each other until they all bled to death. The first hen is shocked and condemns the feather plucking hens.

Seeing how the PA turned that one soldier’s spit into a major Israeli conspiracy to infect Palestinians with Coronavirus, one could almost imagine that the PA was inspired by the famous fairy tale.

Here’s PMW’s presentation of the Palestinian version:

Once upon a time, one Israeli soldier on patrol spat on the ground near a car. The Palestinian Authority wanted to alert Palestinians and rushed to let everyone know in their daily paper: “A few days ago, dozens of occupation soldiers spit on cars of [Palestinian] residents and the door handles of the homes.”

The more the writer wrote, the more details just popped into his head: “Soldiers were seen spitting everywhere in a number of Hebron’s neighborhoods.”


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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Who Would've Thought? ‘Palestinian’ Women Resist Israeli ‘Occupation’ in Fake Academia - by Sheri Oz

But what the heck! It looks good to have a source for claims in academic papers and of course nobody expects the reviewers to actually open up the source citations.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
09 March '20..

This is Part I of a three-part series critiquing a single article that uses ‘analysis’ of women’s ‘resistance’ as a vehicle by means of which to vilify Israel.

The article is called Middle Eastern Women between Oppression and Resistance: Case Studies of Iraqi, Palestinian and Kurdish Women of Turkey; it was written by Khodary, Salah and Mohsen of Egypt. and was published in the Journal of International Women’s Studies in February 2020. The one good thing I can say about this is that the journal is ranked in only the third quartile and comes 68th out of 131 journals specializing in gender studies. Still, you can be sure that it will be cited in future studies and therein lies its danger.

The article begins by stating the obvious, that war and hostilities affect women negatively. They claim that in some countries life expectancy has gone down since the Arab Spring. This is not surprising, in fact, because violent uprisings lead to the deaths of many people. They cannot make a similar claim for the Arabs in the Palestinian Authority (PA), however, because life expectancy has been increasing steadily over they years, so they have this to say:

The intersectionality and interplay between gender and other identities also intensified the impact wars and conflict had on particular women groups, such as the female Arab population in Israel and the Kurdish women of Turkey, compared to the rest of the population (Na’amnih et al. 2010). (page 204)

Aside from the fact that Khodary et al‘s article is supposed to be about women in the PA and not in Israel, this may sound profound to some. However, when you turn to the paper cited here as support for this statement, you find that it is about the gap in life expectancy between Arabs and Jews in Israel and nothing else (and certainly no mention of Kurdish women or Turkey). Na’amnih et al do not talk at all about intersectionality, nor about war and conflict. All they say is that the gap between Jewish and Arab life expectancy for both men and women decreased between 1975 and 1998 because of improved infant survival rates but that it increased somewhat between 1998-2004; the difference in 2004 was 3.2 years for men and 4 years for women. This time it was mostly related to health problems in those over 65 years of age and issues of smoking, obesity, medical compliance, genetic predisposition and accessibility to health care; none of these were related to the issues addressed by Khodary and her colleagues. But what the heck! It looks good to have a source for claims in academic papers and of course nobody expects the reviewers to actually open up the source citations.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Hot off the press! Palestinians invented the alphabet! - by Elder of Ziyon

Therefore, when Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Israel, he was being lobbied by Babylonian Jews who were his advisors - just like AIPAC does today!

Elder of Ziyon..
06 March '20..

Palestinian Arabic histories online continue to create fantastic new facts about a people who never existed before the last century.

This article in Al Watan by Ali Oqla Arsan about the history of Jerusalem says that Arabs were in the area from the fourth millennium BC, something that historians would be interested in knowing.

For the purposes of the article, though, everyone in the area had to be Arab because then, if they were between the Mediterranean and the Jordan they could be considered "Palestinians."

As a result, the Jebusites who controlled Jerusalem - who we only know about from the Jewish scriptures - are Palestinians.

In his fantasy retelling of history, the writer says that the native Arabs resisted the invasion of the Jews. Even David wasn't able to wrest control of Jerusalem from the Arabs. During the days of David and Solomon, Jews only had a kind of limited autonomy that was graciously granted by the Arabs of the area.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Now presenting Mahmoud Abbas’s map of lies - by Amb. Danny Danon

That Abbas brought this to the highest level of international diplomacy suggests that he believes that the world is ready to entertain this revisionist history of the Middle East. Sadly, in this regard, he may not be mistaken.

Amb. Danny Danon..
JNS,org..
18 Fenruary '20..

When Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas spoke before the U.N. Security Council last week to denounce U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast peace plan, he brought with him a peculiar prop: a graphic with a series of maps titled “The Palestinians [sic] Historic Compromise,” which purport to show how “Historic Palestine” has “disappeared” over the course of the 20th century.

Though the use of images at the United Nations is neither new nor unique, never has a graphic that so blatantly distorts history been displayed before the highest level of international diplomacy. This episode should raise alarm bells outside of Turtle Bay as it represents a growing trend of rewriting the historical record of the Middle East.

Commonly called the “Map of Lies,” Abbas’s graphic misleadingly suggests how what was so-called “Historic Palestine” in 1917 has shrunk in size through a series of compromises in 1937, 1947 and 1967, until it is barely recognizable in “Trump’s Plan” in 2020. Taken at face value, the map suggests that the sudden creation and growth of one state, Israel, came at the expense of another, Palestine.

The truth, however, is something altogether different.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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A few of the discredited Mideast myths, that ‘Experts’ perpetuate again and again - by Stephen M. Flatow

For more than a century, people have been trying to pay the Palestinian Arabs to make peace with the Jews and pretend that some terrorist gangs were more “moderate” than other ones.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
07 January '20..

No matter how many times the think-tank “experts” are proven wrong in their predictions regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, they keep promoting the same old myths.

They must think that the public has a very short memory.

The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) last week unveiled its recommendations for Israeli policy in 2020. The men and women who make up its roster have impressive credentials in their fields.

Yet remarkably, they keep promoting policy positions that have been discredited again and again and again.

Myth #1: Palestinian Arab Terrorism is caused by poverty.

In 2020, “Palestinian disgruntlement will be mainly channeled into international diplomatic moves against Israel, not to violent unrest—unless the economic situation in the territories worsens,” according to the JISS.

Call it the “Barack Obama Theory of the Causes of Terrorism.” In an interview on CBS-TV’s “This Morning” on Dec. 4, 2015, then-President Obama explained his view of what causes terrorism: Climate change is straining natural resources around the world, and “when people are not able to make a living or take care of their families,” they become “desperate,” and “as human beings are placed under strain, then bad things happen.”

Many of the modern-day Zionist pioneers involved in rebuilding the Land of Israel in the late 1800s and early 1900s likewise believed that the Palestinian Arabs would drop their opposition to the Jews once they saw how much they would benefit from Jewish immigration.

Jobs. Running water. Electricity. Trains. They were followed by refrigerators, telephones, mail service and automobiles. Arabs from Syria, Egypt and across the Jordan River poured into the country and enjoyed better jobs, better homes and better food. But it didn’t stop them from hating Jews. In 1920, 1921, 1929, and continuously from 1936 to 1939, Palestinian Arabs shot, stabbed and bombed Jews throughout the country, even when it undermined their own economic well-being.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Unpacking the Independent's latest tale of ‘Israeli cruelty’ - by Adam Levick

...it’s important to note that Palestinian children never travel for treatment unaccompanied by a parent or (at least) a relative. COGAT informed us that “during the first half of 2019, over 2,700 permits were issued for children’s medical treatment, with a nearly equivalent number issued for accompanying parents”. The image evoked by the language in the op-ed, of children alone in Israeli hospitals without family members, is, as with the broader narrative of the Indy op-ed, pure fiction.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
01 January '20

The latest Indy tale of Israeli cruelty (My friend was banned from travelling to visit his dying mother. This is the personal, intimate price of occupation, Saleh Hizjazi, Dec. 27th) begins in the opening sentences:

On Christmas Eve I received the distressing news that the mother of my friend and colleague, Laith Abu Zeyad, passed away after a short but bitter battle with cancer. She had suffered for three excruciating months between the diagnosis and her laying to rest. She died in the Augusta Victoria hospital in occupied East Jerusalem. Her eldest son, my colleague, was not able to spend the last days with her because of a travel ban Israel has imposed on him after his involvement in human rights work.

However, Hiziazi, the deputy regional director for Amnesty Mid-East and North Africa, who, research by David Collier demonstrates, has a penchant for promoting terrorists on Facebook, fails to note reports that the travel ban imposed on Abu Zeyad had nothing to with his “human rights work”.

An article published last month in Haaretz noting the following:

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Israel is doing a really terrible job of erasing its non-Jewish history - by Elder of Ziyon

Here's the thing: Jews are secure in their own history in the land, which is why they have no problem publicizing the others who have lived there. Arabs, on the other hand, are not nearly as secure in their history, so they are the ones what need to erase the Jewish parts of history.

Elder of Ziyon..
29 December '19..

From JPost:

The Antiquities Authority announced Sunday that a juglet full of rare 1,200-year-old gold coins was discovered in an excavation in Yavne just before the festival.

As revealed by IAA coin expert Robert Kool, the coins date back to the early Abbasid Period, 9th century CE. The period marked the beginning of a golden age for the Muslim empire, with the Abbasid rulers acquiring international status and promoting art, science, commerce and industry. According to Kool, among the coins was a dinar from the reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809 CE), whose court was the setting of many parts of the world-renowned One Thousand and One Nights– also known as Arabian Nights.

“The hoard also includes coins that are rarely found in Israel,” Kool said. “These are gold dinars issued by the Aghlabid dynasty that ruled in North Africa, in the region of modern Tunisia, on behalf of the Abbasid Caliphate centered in Baghdad,” he added.

But I thought Israel was weaponizing archaeology to erase all Muslim history!

It gets "worse" - the Israel Antiquities Authority even admits there was a Persian presence in the fourth century CE!

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Past time to shut down the Palestinian Hanukkah and Christmas scams - by Jonathan S. Tobin

An effort to appropriate the holidays in order to delegitimize Israel denies Jewish history and ignores the truth about the fate of the Christian minority in Arab lands.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
23 December '19..

It used to be confined to an annual piece of theater staged by the Palestinian Authority every Christmas. The festivities in P.A.-governed Bethlehem are primarily aimed at promoting Christian tourism. But statements alleging that Jesus was a Palestinian have always accompanied the activities there, including a parade to the Church of the Nativity.

The efforts by the late terrorist chieftain Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, his successor as head of the P.A., to appropriate Christmas as a prop for their war on Israel have generally been dismissed as holiday nonsense by sensible people. But there’s more to this than just the desire of the Palestinian leadership to exploit the fact that the international press pays attention to events in the otherwise sleepy city in the Judean hills south of Jerusalem once a year.

At the heart of this effort is something far more insidious than what has seemed at times to be more of a P.A. attempt at photo-bombing the Christmas Eve coverage than doing any substantial harm to Israel’s image. Promoting the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian or that the Arab inhabitants of what was called Judea 2,000 years are the real Jews is denying and delegitimizing Jewish history and identity. Though some who either rationalize or wink at these Palestinians claims think this is basically harmless, it’s nothing less than a classic theme of anti-Semitism, whose ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the real Jews.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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What the HBO series ‘Our Boys’ doesn’t want us to know - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The series is, as one ecstatic writer for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz wrote, “an unashamedly liberal show that could have been ripped from the pages of Haaretz,” which is to say that it adopts the tone of hostility to the Jewish state that is the keynote to the vast majority of articles published there (it also sometimes runs opinions columns from me). It embodies the politics of Israel’s liberal Ashkenazi elites and considers the only suitable topic for discussion an examination of Israel’s alleged sins.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
05 September '19..

The brutal murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir by three extremist Jews is a story that deserves to be told. The same can be said for the account of the swift and efficient manner in which his murderers were tracked down by Israel’s security services, and ultimately convicted and given harsh sentences.

The exclusive focus on that bestial crime—the 16-year-old Palestinian Arab resident of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat was kidnapped, beaten unconscious and then burned to death while still alive in June 2014—is the point of the HBO series “Our Boys,” produced by the Keshet Media Group that runs Israel’s Channel 12.

The show has understandably raised the hackles of many Israelis; however, the problem with “Our Boys” isn’t that it airs some of Israel’s dirty laundry. If that were the only substantive criticism to be made of the show, then the furor over it—it was denounced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “anti-Semitic”—wouldn’t be justified.

Documenting the transgressions of a few Jews, as well as the diligent efforts of their compatriots to catch and punish them, is no insult to the Jewish people. Viewed merely as an entry in the “true crime” genre or as a police procedural, it could be judged favorably as a well-acted and meticulously produced document of the incident, even if the glacial pace of the miniseries is problematic. And, indeed, that is the frame of reference for most of the critical reception from American TV critics of the show that debuted last month and, as of this writing, is halfway through its 10-episode run on the cable-television network.

Others will see it as yet another example of Israel’s flourishing television industry that has produced Netflix hits like “Fauda” and “Shtisel,” as well as providing the inspiration for shows like “Homeland.” But many of those who usually take special pride in seeing Israeli TV shows get such wide exposure aren’t cheering “Our Boys.”

The anger that the show has generated isn’t so much rooted in the fact that it depicts Jewish murderers or that their victim was a Palestinian Arab. It is the context out of which this one deplorable incident was pulled, and the painfully obvious political motivations of its producers and writers that is at question. And on that score, the artistic merit of “Our Boys”—and its avowed goal of examining the sources of hate crimes—cannot justify the manipulative agenda that it serves.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Actually, all narratives are not equal. Some are just antisemitic lies. - by Elder of Ziyon

To those on the Palestinian side, the narrative has nothing to do with truth. The narrative itself is meant to delegitimize the undeniable Jewish connection to the land. This is why their "narrative" includes the Khazar theory, the idea that the Jewish kingdoms only existed for a short time, that the Temples were not in Jerusalem if they ever existed at all, that archaelogy has not supported the existence of a Jewish people on the land, that history really begins in 1917 and Zionists are European colonialists. No, it is not competing narratives. It is the truth versus antisemitic lies.

Elder of Ziyon..
14 August '19..

Palestinian Authority prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh met with members of Congress yesterday, and told them, "Israel is waging the war of the narrative, and are pushing the Jewish narrative to control Jerusalem and Palestine, denying the Islamic and Christian narrative, but we are proud of our narrative. The conflict is not a religious conflict, but a political conflict."

There are narratives - and there are lies. The last sentence proves that the Palestinian narrative is the lie, because the only reason he brought up the idea of it not being a religious conflict is because he wants to deny the Jewish religious and historical connection to Israel.

Palestinians make this into a religious conflict every day, by invoking the Al Aqsa Mosque as being under attack, for example. But they know that to a largely Christian audience, the Bible supports the Jewish view, so they want to downplay their own hijacking of Islam to inflate the importance of Al Aqsa and Jerusalem, which were roundly ignored by the Muslim world before Zionism.

There was an interesting article in Gulf newspaper Al Khaleej by Hafez Barghouti where he attacks the ideas that Palestine is not written in the Quran or Bible and that Mohammed's night journey to the "farthest mosque" - "Al-Aqsa" - was not a miraculous flight on a winged steed to Jerusalem but an ordinary journey to a mosque in Arabia, to Taif or the Al-Ja'aranah Mosque near Mecca.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Who would've thought? Mahmoud Abbas’s time-machine politics dooms peace (again) - by Jonathan S. Tobin

...In theory, those who still hold to that belief might be right. But Israelis and Palestinians don’t live in a theoretical world in which dividing adjacent land into states coexisting peacefully is the obvious answer to their problems. They live in the real world, where the only Palestinian leaders are the Islamists of Hamas, who still seek the deaths of Jews, and the “moderates” of Fatah led by Abbas, who is selling his people a fairy tale about Canaanites who will somehow use a historical time machine to expel the descendants of Joshua.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
13 August '19..

It turns out that the events of 1967 in which Israel took possession of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and reunited Jerusalem isn’t the only historical event that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas wishes to erase from the pages of history. Nor is the reversal of the verdict of 1948, when the Jews regained sovereignty over part of their ancient homeland, or 1917, when the Balfour Declaration set the Jews on a path towards statehood, the only other items on his counter-factual wish list. It turns out that Abbas wants to go back a lot further than that in making his demands.

His real problem is with the biblical book of Joshua.

That’s right. Rather than simply go back to the 19th century, his latest speech revealed that the new starting point for the Palestinian quest for “justice” is some time in the 13th century BCE. That’s the approximate date historians give to when the tribes of Israel began the conquest of the land of Canaan they had been promised when they left Egypt a generation beforehand.

That is the clear implication of a speech Abbas gave this week while visiting a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, during which he declared that the Jewish interlopers in the country would eventually be expelled, and that not a brick of their “settlements” would eventually be left standing.

“They will be in the dustbins of history, and they will remember that this land is for its people, its residents and the Canaanites who were here 5,000 years ago. We are the Canaanites,” he declared.

The breathtaking scope of his boasts will be dismissed by those who view faith in the ultimate success of the peace process with the Palestinians as a kind of religion that is impervious to all contrary proof.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Surprise! J Streeters duped on alternative tour of Israel - by Steve Frank

Hebron’s Shuhada Street was a highlight of J Street’s Israel tour, and the group fell for the myth, hook line and sinker.

That which is kept out of sight,
remains out of narrative

Steve Frank..
JNS.org..
04 August '19..

Nonprofit advocacy group J Street has recently been campaigning against Birthright Israel, an educational program that sponsors free 10-day heritage trips to Israel for young Jewish adults. Over 600,000 young adults have participated in the program since its founding in 1999.

J Street charges that Birthright trips lack Palestinians voices, fail to incorporate the Palestinian narrative and neglect to visit Palestinian sites in the West Bank. As an alternative to the traditional Birthright tour, J Street recently sponsored a trip to Israel for 28 participants who visited Palestinian sites in the West Bank and heard from spokesmen for the Palestinian cause.

According to The New York Times, “In the West Bank settlement of Har Gilo,” the J Streeters “received a harsh history lesson from a veteran opponent of the occupation. Then they toured an impoverished, water-starved Palestinian village that Israeli settlers want to demolish, and visited the city of Hebron, where repeated outbreaks of violence have turned an entire Palestinian business district into a ghost town.”

The J Street trip and the Times article about it were highly criticized in a pointed piece in Commentary magazine. The Commentary review noted that there was not a word in either the trip or the Times article “on the murderous Palestinian anti-Semitic violence that necessitates Israel’s policing of such places [as Hebron] to begin with,” “no mention of the kleptocratic Palestinian leadership that’s consigned generations of Palestinians to certain ruin” and “no mention of the fact that the Palestinians have, again and again—and again—refused to make peace with Israel when it was offered.”

However, there was one particular failing of the J Street trip that has not received the attention it deserves.

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Steve Frank is an attorney, retired after a 30-year career as an appellate lawyer with the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. His writings on Israel, the law and architecture have appeared in publications including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel and Moment magazine.

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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