C
conamer
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Let’s start at the early days and continue into the Ottoman period:
The historian James Parkes wrote: “During the first century after the Arab conquest [670-740 CE], the caliph and governors of Syria and the Holy Land ruled entirely over Christian and Jewish subjects. Apart from the Bedouin in the earliest days, the only Arabs west of the Jordan were the garrisons.”[3]
In year 985 the Arab writer Muqaddasi complained: “the mosque is empty of worshipers… The Jews constitute the majority of Jerusalem’s population” (The entire city of Jerusalem had only one mosque?). [4]
In 1377, Ibn Khaldun, one of the most creditable Arab historians, wrote: “Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel extended over 1400 years… It was the Jews who implanted the culture and customs of the permanent settlement”.[5]
In 1695-1696, the Dutch scholar and cartographer, Adriaan Reland (Hadriani Relandi) , wrote reports about visits to the Holy Land. (There are those who claim that he did not personally visit the Holy land but collected reports from other visitors.) He was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. He documented visits to many locations. He writes: The names of settlements were mostly Hebrew, some Greek, and some Latin-Roman. No settlement had an original Muslim-Arab name with a historical root in its location. Most of the land was empty, desolate, and the inhabitants few in number and mostly concentrated in Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Christians. There were few Muslims, mostly nomad Bedouins. The Arabs were predominantly Christians with a tiny minority of Muslims. In Jerusalem there were approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians. In Nazareth there were approximately 700 people – all Christians. In Gaza there were approximately 550 people – half of them Jews and half Christians. Um-El-Phachem was a village of 10 families – all Christians. The only exception was Nablus with 120 Muslims from the Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites.[6]
In 1835 Alphonse de Lamartine wrote: “Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living object, heard no living sound. . .a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country.”[7]
In 1844, William Thackeray writes about the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem: “Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride.”[8]
In 1857, the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported: “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.”[9]
In 1866, W.M. Thomson writes: “How melancholy is this utter desolation. Not a house, not a trace of inhabitants, not even shepherds, to relieve the dull monotony … Much of the country through which we have been rambling for a week appears never to have been inhabited, or even cultivated; and there are other parts, you say, still more barren.”[10]
In 1867, Mark Twain – Samuel Clemens, the famous author of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer”, toured the Holy Land. This is how he described the land: “There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent; not for thirty miles in either direction… One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings … Nazareth is forlorn… Jericho lies a mouldering ruin… Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation… untenanted by any living creature… 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 a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”[11]
In 1874, Reverend Samuel Manning wrote: “But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude…. Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter — “the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants.” (Jeremiah, ch.44 v.22)[12]
In 1892, B. W. Johnson writes: “In the portion of the plain between Mount Carmel and Jaffa one sees but rarely a village or other sights of human life… A ride of half an hour more brought us to the ruins of the ancient city of Cæsarea, once a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and the Roman capital of Palestine, but now entirely deserted… I laid upon my couch at night, to listen to the moaning of the waves and to think of the desolation around us.”[13]
In 1913, a British report, by the Palestinian Royal Commission, quotes an account of the conditions on the coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea: “The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the [Jewish] Yabna village. Houses were mud. Schools did not exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.”
The name “Palestina” is a Latin-Roman name based on the Hebrew Biblical name of the ancient “Philistines” — “Plishtim” in Hebrew. The translation of this name to English is: “invaders”. The Philistines arrived from the Mediterranean islands near Greece and invaded the land about 4000 years ago . The Philistines are extinct since approximately 2000 years ago, and have no ancestral or historical relationship to Arabs. Before 1917, during the 400-years rule of the Ottoman empire, the Ottomans did not call the Holy Land “Palestina”. The British decided to renew this ancient name and called the land “Palestine”. The local Arabs never called themselves “Palestinians”, not even during the British mandate. Both Arab and British leaders referred to them only as “Arabs”. For example: The Hope-Simpson report[15] published by the British in 1930, contains the phrase “the number of Palestinian unemployed, whether Arab, Jew or other…”. “Palestinian” was used only as an adjective in reference to the location and also included Jews. The Arab inhabitants were always referred to as “Arabs”. The word “palestinians” does not appear anywhere in this report. “Palestinian Arabs”, “Palestinian Jews”, and “Palestinian Christians” were common terms. But, “Palestinians”, as a noun, before 1948, was not yet invented.
After 30 years of invasion, following the end of the British mandate and the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arabs recognized the fact that they invaded foreign land and invented for themselves a name in English — “Palestinians”. If the British were to call the land “New England”, and the local Arabs were to call themselves “English” would they automatically become English? It is important to emphasize that the concept of a “Palestinian” to describe the local Arab residents was invented by the Arabs AFTER the declaration of the state of Israel. This group of Arabs, who started calling themselves “the Palestinian nation” after 1948, does not have an original name in their native Arabic language.
Is there any nation in the world which does not have a name in its original native language? The Arabs who invaded the Holy Land do not have a name in their native Arabic language because they are not, and have never been, a unified group or a nation. Most of those Arabs cannot even pronounce the word “Palestinian”. They pronounce it “Falestinian”.
Historically, a “Falestinian” people never existed. The fact is that the Arabs, who now try to call themselves by the English name “Palestinians” and mis-pronounce it “Falestinians”, don’t even know what their name is in Arabic. Even Arab leaders and historians have admitted that a “Palestinian” people never existed. For example:
In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission: “There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us.”
In 1946, Princeton’s Arab professor of Middle East history, Philip Hitti, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: “It’s common knowledge, there is no such thing as Palestine in history.“
In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw: “The ‘Palestinian people’ does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel.”
Joseph Farah, an Arab-American journalist, writes: “The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never. Land. Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity.
Think-IsraelGreat, give me the names of those books. While we wait for those titles have you been here: Isn't it true that Palestine was empty and inhabited by nomadic people? - Palestine Remembered
a couple things to notice was agriculture was the main source of living there and it doesn't sound like it was all that sparsely populated. mk
tulc(will now wait for the standard dismissal of any fact that doesn't agree with the propaganda)
Let’s start at the early days and continue into the Ottoman period:
The historian James Parkes wrote: “During the first century after the Arab conquest [670-740 CE], the caliph and governors of Syria and the Holy Land ruled entirely over Christian and Jewish subjects. Apart from the Bedouin in the earliest days, the only Arabs west of the Jordan were the garrisons.”[3]
In year 985 the Arab writer Muqaddasi complained: “the mosque is empty of worshipers… The Jews constitute the majority of Jerusalem’s population” (The entire city of Jerusalem had only one mosque?). [4]
In 1377, Ibn Khaldun, one of the most creditable Arab historians, wrote: “Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel extended over 1400 years… It was the Jews who implanted the culture and customs of the permanent settlement”.[5]
In 1695-1696, the Dutch scholar and cartographer, Adriaan Reland (Hadriani Relandi) , wrote reports about visits to the Holy Land. (There are those who claim that he did not personally visit the Holy land but collected reports from other visitors.) He was fluent in Hebrew and Arabic. He documented visits to many locations. He writes: The names of settlements were mostly Hebrew, some Greek, and some Latin-Roman. No settlement had an original Muslim-Arab name with a historical root in its location. Most of the land was empty, desolate, and the inhabitants few in number and mostly concentrated in Jerusalem, Acco, Tzfat, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants were Jews and the rest Christians. There were few Muslims, mostly nomad Bedouins. The Arabs were predominantly Christians with a tiny minority of Muslims. In Jerusalem there were approximately 5000 people, mostly Jews and some Christians. In Nazareth there were approximately 700 people – all Christians. In Gaza there were approximately 550 people – half of them Jews and half Christians. Um-El-Phachem was a village of 10 families – all Christians. The only exception was Nablus with 120 Muslims from the Natsha family and approximately 70 Shomronites.[6]
In 1835 Alphonse de Lamartine wrote: “Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living object, heard no living sound. . .a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country.”[7]
In 1844, William Thackeray writes about the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem: “Now the district is quite deserted, and you ride among what seem to be so many petrified waterfalls. We saw no animals moving among the stony brakes; scarcely even a dozen little birds in the whole course of the ride.”[8]
In 1857, the British consul in Palestine, James Finn, reported: “The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.”[9]
In 1866, W.M. Thomson writes: “How melancholy is this utter desolation. Not a house, not a trace of inhabitants, not even shepherds, to relieve the dull monotony … Much of the country through which we have been rambling for a week appears never to have been inhabited, or even cultivated; and there are other parts, you say, still more barren.”[10]
In 1867, Mark Twain – Samuel Clemens, the famous author of “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer”, toured the Holy Land. This is how he described the land: “There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent; not for thirty miles in either direction… One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings … Nazareth is forlorn… Jericho lies a mouldering ruin… Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation… untenanted by any living creature… 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 a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”[11]
In 1874, Reverend Samuel Manning wrote: “But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude…. Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter — “the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants.” (Jeremiah, ch.44 v.22)[12]
In 1892, B. W. Johnson writes: “In the portion of the plain between Mount Carmel and Jaffa one sees but rarely a village or other sights of human life… A ride of half an hour more brought us to the ruins of the ancient city of Cæsarea, once a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, and the Roman capital of Palestine, but now entirely deserted… I laid upon my couch at night, to listen to the moaning of the waves and to think of the desolation around us.”[13]
In 1913, a British report, by the Palestinian Royal Commission, quotes an account of the conditions on the coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea: “The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the [Jewish] Yabna village. Houses were mud. Schools did not exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.”
The name “Palestina” is a Latin-Roman name based on the Hebrew Biblical name of the ancient “Philistines” — “Plishtim” in Hebrew. The translation of this name to English is: “invaders”. The Philistines arrived from the Mediterranean islands near Greece and invaded the land about 4000 years ago . The Philistines are extinct since approximately 2000 years ago, and have no ancestral or historical relationship to Arabs. Before 1917, during the 400-years rule of the Ottoman empire, the Ottomans did not call the Holy Land “Palestina”. The British decided to renew this ancient name and called the land “Palestine”. The local Arabs never called themselves “Palestinians”, not even during the British mandate. Both Arab and British leaders referred to them only as “Arabs”. For example: The Hope-Simpson report[15] published by the British in 1930, contains the phrase “the number of Palestinian unemployed, whether Arab, Jew or other…”. “Palestinian” was used only as an adjective in reference to the location and also included Jews. The Arab inhabitants were always referred to as “Arabs”. The word “palestinians” does not appear anywhere in this report. “Palestinian Arabs”, “Palestinian Jews”, and “Palestinian Christians” were common terms. But, “Palestinians”, as a noun, before 1948, was not yet invented.
After 30 years of invasion, following the end of the British mandate and the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arabs recognized the fact that they invaded foreign land and invented for themselves a name in English — “Palestinians”. If the British were to call the land “New England”, and the local Arabs were to call themselves “English” would they automatically become English? It is important to emphasize that the concept of a “Palestinian” to describe the local Arab residents was invented by the Arabs AFTER the declaration of the state of Israel. This group of Arabs, who started calling themselves “the Palestinian nation” after 1948, does not have an original name in their native Arabic language.
Is there any nation in the world which does not have a name in its original native language? The Arabs who invaded the Holy Land do not have a name in their native Arabic language because they are not, and have never been, a unified group or a nation. Most of those Arabs cannot even pronounce the word “Palestinian”. They pronounce it “Falestinian”.
Historically, a “Falestinian” people never existed. The fact is that the Arabs, who now try to call themselves by the English name “Palestinians” and mis-pronounce it “Falestinians”, don’t even know what their name is in Arabic. Even Arab leaders and historians have admitted that a “Palestinian” people never existed. For example:
In 1937, the Arab leader Auni Bey Abdul Hadi told the Peel Commission: “There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. Palestine is alien to us.”
In 1946, Princeton’s Arab professor of Middle East history, Philip Hitti, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: “It’s common knowledge, there is no such thing as Palestine in history.“
In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, an executive member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), said in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw: “The ‘Palestinian people’ does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel.”
Joseph Farah, an Arab-American journalist, writes: “The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never. Land. Palestine has never existed as an autonomous entity.
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