Special Report: Logic Out of Chaos
Vol: 68 Issue: 21 Monday, May 21, 2007
The Associated Press published a report on the exploding conflict in Lebanon under the headline; “Facts and Figures on Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.”
What caught my attention was the way the AP manipulated those facts and figures to blame Israel for a situation it could only rectify by committing immediate national suicide — and then criticized the Jewish state for stubbornly refusing to do so.
According to the AP, there are nearly “400,000 Palestinian refugees” in Lebanon, — which it re-defines as those “who fled to the country after Israel’s formation in 1948 — and their descendants.”
For the AP to be accurate in its ‘facts’ portion of the column, one needs to shred the dictionary.
What ‘nationality’ are ‘Palestinians’? Historically, until 1948, the phrase was used to describe Diaspora Jews.
Prior to 1917, ‘Palestine’ was part of a larger province of the Ottoman Empire. The Balfour Declaration was issued by the British government on November 2, 1917, and designated ‘Palestine’ as the homeland for the Jewish people. The word ‘Arab’ does not appear in the declaration.
According to the Peel Commission, appointed by the British Government to investigate the cause of the 1936 Arab riots, “the field in which the Jewish National Home was to be established was understood, at the time of the Balfour Declaration, to be the whole of historic Palestine, including Transjordan.”
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, (which ultimately suggested the partition of ‘Palestine’):
“There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said “Palestine was part of the Province of Syria” and that, “politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity.”
A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council:
“It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.” Under international law and convention, from 1917 to 1948, ‘Palestinians’ were those who lived under the British Mandate of ‘Palestine,’ — both Jews and Arabs. There is no uniquely Palestinian language. There is no uniquely Palestinian culture. There is no uniquely Palestinian history. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine.
When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: “There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.”
‘Palestine’ as either a political entity or as an Arab possession is never explicitly mentioned in the Koran. (For that matter, neither is Jerusalem.)
On June 1st, 1967, ‘Palestinians’ living in the West Bank were citizens of Jordan, not ‘Palestine’. East Jerusalem was part of Jordan, not ‘Palestine’. The residents of Gaza were citizens of Egypt.
Now, let’s return to the AP’s version of fact, as outlined in just the first paragraph of its column. “They [the ‘Palestinian refugees’] are crammed into 12 impoverished and often violent camps in Beirut and across Lebanon.”
WHY did the ‘Palestinians’ ‘flee’ in 1948? And, WHO ‘crammed’ them into camps in Lebanon? WHAT is the difference between an ‘Israeli Arab’ and a ‘Palestinian Arab’? These are fair questions seldom asked and almost never answered directly. Let’s answer them in reverse order.
In 1948, as the combined armies of the Arab Legions prepared to invade and crush the fledgling Jewish state, the Arabs living inside the Jewish Mandate were urged by the Arab Legion to temporarily flee the area to get out of the line of fire.
The Arab world promised them that they would be allowed to return after Israel’s destruction, where they would not only reclaim their own property, but also that of the Jews.
The Jews tried to get them to stay and help them build their new state, offering those who refused to flee full citizenship in their new country. Israel kept that promise, and those who stayed were granted full citizenship as Israeli Arabs, including the right to vote and the right to political representation in the Israeli parliament.
The Arabs, having failed to destroy Israel, promptly crammed those who trusted in their promises of Israeli booty into concentration camps, where they’ve remained for almost sixty years.
The AP report accurately describes the plight of the ‘refugees’ in Lebanon, saying, “the Palestinians are still banned from all but menial jobs and mostly live off U.N. agency handouts. They can’t get state health care, are prohibited from owning property and are generally unwelcome outside the camps.”
This isn’t what ISRAEL did to the ‘Palestinians’ — it is what the Arabs did to their own people.
I looked up the definition of “refugee” after reading the column, and this is what I found:
“Under international law, a refugee is a person who is outside his/her country of nationality or habitual residence; has a well-founded fear of persecution because of his/her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion; and is unable or unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country, or to return there, for fear of persecution. They are subgroup of the broader category of displaced persons. . .”
By any possible understanding of the word ‘refugees’ therefore, the ‘Palestinians’ are refugees from Jordan and Egypt interned in concentration camps by Arabs. By any possible reading of history, ‘Palestine’ was a subdivision of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, not a political subdivision of the Arab world.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration is dismissed by the Arabs as meaningless because the British had no authority to issue it.
In 1923, the victorious Allied Powers agreed at the San Remo Conference to subdivide what had been the Ottoman Empire into individual Arab states. They appointed the British government to draw the borders of the modern states of Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the member states of the United Arab Republics. No provision was made for an Arab “Palestinian” state.
(See “Who Really Owns the Land?”)
Israel’s right to exist either predates that of the rest of the Arab world, or there isn’t a valid country in the Middle East.
It is reasonable to believe that the worldwide media, the United Nations, the nations of the European Union, etc., etc, ad nauseum, have historical archives.
would consistently support claims of Palestinian nationality, when it knows it to be a myth? Why would the world consistently deny Israeli claims of sovereignty when by any measure of international law, it is no less firm than those of Jordan or Iraq or Saudi Arabia?
All are British creations younger than the Balfour Declaration that established a Jewish homeland.
Why does the world take the position that a Jewish homeland is racist, whereas a Palestinian Arab state — where Jews would be excluded — is not?
And why in the world would the Western democracies consistently side with the Arab enemies of democratic principles against the only western-style democracy in the region?
If there is anything that defines the ‘Palestinians’ as a people, if there is any common heritage they share, if there is anything the world immediately identifies with the word ‘Palestinian’ — it is terrorism.
Yet the world demands the creation of a Palestinian state as a solution for Palestinian terrorism — and blames Israel for creating the problem by its existence.
Israel is one of the oldest nations in recorded history. It’s history is among the best-known and well-documented of the ancient world. No national history has been studied by more people than that of Israel.
There are few people in the world, either today, or four hundred years ago, who could not name Israel’s King David, who lived 3,000 years ago. Name ONE other king who lived in that period.
But Israel’s prior existence is the most hotly-contested reality in the modern world.
It makes no logical sense. It makes no political sense. It doesn’t even make any economic sense. It is nothing short of surreal.
But it makes PERFECT sense from the perspective of Bible prophecy. It is exactly the scenario forecast by the Bible for the last days. The situation, as it now exists, shouldn’t be. It defies every logical and historical convention.
By any logical analysis, therefore, the state of chaos stands as irrefutable evidence that God is real, the Bible is true, and we can trust its promises.
Including the promise of salvation for all those who believe in Israel’s greatest historical Gift, the Jew named Jesus Christ, Who promised;
“I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father, but by Me.” (John 14:6)
Omegaletter 