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 A “made up” response to the compelling facts of “Arabian Fables (I)” 
 
Middle Eastern Facts
By 
Eyas B. ALSharaiha
and 
 John G. Mikhael 
 
A while ago, we were presented with an advertisement, written in the form of an article, which waspublished in numerous
newspapers, ranging from the New York Times to MIT’s own “The Tech”. The‘article’ was created by and paid for by “FLAME”, the Facts & Logic About the Middle East organization, a
group that can be described as nothing less than a radical propaganda machine. Recently, an article
referred to as “Arabian Fables (I)” was published,
calling the Palestinians essentially homogeneous withthe rest of the Arab World, confederates of Hitler, and
 –
get this
 –
a
“myth”
as a people.Let us being dissecting claims set forth by their message:
The Existence of the Concept of Palestine
As a name “Palestine” existed in ancient times, a continuation of the land of Canaan, itself mentioned
and referenced by Ancient Egyptians, when Philistines, supposedly from Crete, entered the land
sometime around 1100 BC. Indeed, the name “Palestine” itself was not used commonly by Arabs; theHistorical Land of Palestine was commonly referred to “the holy land” by contemporaries of that time
or, as was the custom at the time, distinct cities will be mentioned as opposed to the collective region. It
is indeed also true that the main revivers of the name “Palestine”
were the British.
So we have established the fact that the name “Palestine” is
historically valid. What can this ever have to do with the Arab-Israeli Conflict of the 20
th
and 21
st
centuries? Nothing, really.In the beginning of the twentieth century, the Land which nowencompasses The West Bank, Gaza Strip, and the State of Israelincluded a population 70,000 Jews, making up a mere 10% of thepopulation. Newer estimation gives local Jews a population of 83,740, giving the Jewish a percentage slightly north of 11%.(Smitha, 1998) (Gilbert, 1998, p. 5) (SeeFigure 1) These Jews were local inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire, andprobably Arabian Caliphates before that. They were Arabs inculture, living in harmony, and they
 –
too
 –
 
were “Palestinians”
under the British Mandate of Palestine. Palestinians, ethnically,had Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
Figure 1
 
After the illegal immigration movement of Jews into Palestine (referring to the land of the BritishMandate of Palestine west of the Jordan River), a Jewish community grew and with the news of thethen-secret Balfour Declaration, social tension between the two fragments of the Palestinian societygrew.To assume that the original inhabitants of the region were Jewish simply because a Symphony Orchestrawas comprised entirely of Jews is like believing all the people of Cambridge are terrible at numbers, just
because Harvard’s there.
 
The name Palestine, indeed, is a name that “stuck” onto Arabs of the Historical region of Pal
estine.Same as we call English people English, as opposed to Anglo Saxons, same as Franks became French, andMesopotamians became Iraqis. Language and terminology evolves, Arabs of Palestine or Arabs of Canaan are called Palestinians, and that does not change who they are.The truth is, Arabian Muslims and Christians lived in this historical land of Palestine for a minimum of anuninterrupted 1300 years as a vast majority.Through such period of time, Arabs of Palestine have developed a distinct culture that revolves aroundthe geography of Palestine and the Holy Places. More importantly, in the 1900s Arabs werepredominantly farmers and herders, who had inherited their lands, crops, and olive trees from theirparents and grandparents.And while it is true Palestinian Arabs share much common identity with other Arabs of neighboringcountries
 –
in the realms of history, religions, culture, and language of course
 –
it is an overstretch tomake the analogy that Palestinian Arabs are to other Arabs as Minnesotans are to Wisconsinites.But even if we assume the analogy is true for the sake of argument, what on earth can convince a localof Wisconsin or a farmer in Wisconsin to give up his land, home, or city and move to Minnesota because
a “national homeland” for
some minority must be set up, effectively making him a non-citizen in his ownland. True, people of Wisconsin have 49 other States to move to, many with similar cultures, but howcan that even begin to justify kicking a local individual from his or her land of birth and work?So even if we consider the culture of Palestine to be similar to that of surrounding Arab states, howwould that justify kicking out locals to neighboring countries because a national homeland must beestablished for neighboring Jews? Because they have 21 other Arab States to go to, you say?
Wisconsinites have 49, yet for them it still doesn’t justify anything.
 
Also, saying “
many of the “Palestinians,” or their immediate ancestors, came to the area attracted by the
 prosperity created by the Jews, in what previously had been pretty much of a wasteland 
” is
only based
on a statement by Theodore Herzl, who referred to Palestine (as he called it) as an “empty wasteland”.
The response to that is a description of the geography of Palestine, which resembles that of FertileCrescent (for instance, Jordan is 70-90% desert). The majority of the Arab population lived in farminglands away from the deserts; they lived densely near each other.
 
Palestine need not be an independent nation historically for it to have a right to exist as an independentArab entity. The land of Palestine was under Muslim and Arab control for some 1,300 years and had amajority-Arab population. That, however, is a reason for it to be an independent Arab nation in thetwentieth and twenty-
first centuries; a nation’s government needs to be representative of its people
and majority. Israel is representative of its majority, but only because the majority of Arabs werepersecuted by illegal gangs such as the Hannah and Stern Gang in the past and by the IDF presentlyexponentially, starting years before 1948 and continuing through 1967 to this day.
The Claim that Arabs Were Confederates of Hitler
To say that Arabs were confederates of Hitler is to say that you have never picked up a WWI textbook inyour life. The Ottoman Empire supported the Axis, and the Arab region in question was under Turkishrule. The Arabs, in fact, supported the Allies, and aided British troops in their victory. This Arab supportto the allies was, indeed, what sparked the
Great Arab Revolt
which
is
what returned power to Arabs.Thus, saying that Arabs supported Hitler is as invalid as saying that Africans supported apartheid; it is astatement assuming that the
oppressor 
is a righteous representative of the oppressed. The truth is:Hitler basically possessed anti- Arab sentiments as much as he possessed anti-Jewish ones. Had therebeen Arabs in Germany,
they probably would’ve been
equally persecuted.
The Concept of the West Bank 
The “West Bank” was never cla
imed to be a historical name related to a Palestinian state, nation, entity,
city, or region. The West Bank, indeed, is a modern name, a direct translation of “
āl diffah al 
gharbiyyeh
”, referring to the western region the River Jordan. Such
a name was especially helpful to use
since the Emirate of Transjordan is actually known in Arabic as “the Emirate of Eastern Jordan”, alsoknown as the “East Bank” at that time. The We
st Bank, similarly, was a complementary term to refer tothe region which Israelis did not occupy in 1967 and thus remained under Arab control.
Jordanian Annexation of the West Bank and Persecution of Jewish Institutions
The Jordanian Annexation of the West Bank was not a military occupation; the Jordanian Army (thenknown as
āl j 
ai 
sh āl `arābi 
meaning the Arab Army) was part of the Arab movement which, in 1948,attempted to revoke Israeli control of the land designated as the British Mandate of Palestine. The resultwas an Arab loss, indeed, not due to a god-like miracle, but due to
the little known fact 
that wars aresometimes lost. Since the Palestinian institutions were lacking, Egypt annexed Gaza and Jordan annexedthe West Bank, neither country attempted to refer to each region as a historically significant region.Indeed, it has alw
ays been clarified by Arabs, that the West Bank is simply “what is left for thePalestinians” after the Israelis irreversibly seized the lands of 1948.
 During the annexation in the West Bank, Palestinians of the West Bank and refugees both within theWest Bank and Jordan were given permanent citizenship that corresponds to that of existing residents.Furthermore, the government of the kingdom was formed of sixty seats, divided equally betweenresidents of the East Bank and the West Bank. Is this occupation?
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