The Palestinian delusion
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The Palestinian Delusion documents how jihadists and their allies have weaponized an invented Palestinian identity

by Andrew Harrod, January 22, 2020

ā€œFrom beginning to end, the conflict with Israel is all about Islam,ā€ writes world-renowned jihad watcherĀ Robert SpencerĀ in his latest superlativeĀ book,Ā The Palestinian Delusion:Ā  The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. He documents in detail how jihadists and their allies worldwide have skillfully weaponized an invented Palestinian Arab identity against the Zionist struggle for a Jewish state.

Spencer dissects a decades-old ā€œpropaganda success that Josef Goebbels and the editors ofĀ PravdaĀ would have envied,ā€ namely the global myth that Palestinians are an ā€œindigenous population.ā€ So declare institutions such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while Palestinian leaders fantasize about a ā€œlink between the ancient Canaanites or Jebusites and the modern-day Palestinians.ā€ In reality, Roman occupiers in 134 first derived the nameĀ PalestineĀ after the ā€œIsraelitesā€™ ancient enemies, the Philistines,ā€ in order to eradicate the identity of defeated Jewish rebels. The self-named ā€œPalestiniansā€ descend from the Arabs who invaded in the 7th century.

In subsequent centuries most Jews entered diaspora exile, leaving their ancestral homeland to decay under largely disinterested imperialists such as various Muslim powers following seventh-century Arab conquest.Ā Mark Twainā€˜s 1869 travelogueĀ The Innocents AbroadĀ thus states that ā€œPalestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.ā€ HistorianĀ William B. ZiffĀ wrote in 1938 that at the 20th centuryā€™s beginning Palestineā€™sĀ 40,000 Jews ā€œand about 140,000 others of all complexionsā€¦had no other feeling for this pauperized, diseased-ridden country than a fervent desire to get away.ā€

This wasteland transformed when Zionist Jews, beginning in the 1880s, sought to reestablish a Jewish state. Their regional development investment ironically increased the Arab population which came seeking employment. Particularly the League of NationsĀ Palestine MandateĀ entrusted to Britain in 1922 as a ā€œJewish national homeā€ on territory lost by the collapsing Ottoman Empire in World War I led toĀ significant Arab immigration.

Egyptian, North African, Syria, and even Ethiopian names among Arabs evince immigration waves into what the British andĀ Zionist institutionsĀ (e.g. theĀ Palestine PostĀ newspaper, now Israelā€™sĀ Jerusalem Post) then called Palestine. ā€œMost ā€˜indigenousā€™ people of Palestine, like Los Angelenos, seem to have come from somewhere else,ā€ Spencer writes. Contrastingly, during this ā€œperiod, the Arabs of Palestine generally considered themselves to be Syrians, and Palestine to be Southern Syriaā€ and rejected any foreign Palestine designation.

After Israel, at a great price in Jewish lives, defeated Arab aggressors following its 1948 War of Independence, the Soviet Union promoted a Palestinian identity during the 1960s through groups like the 1964-founded Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO ā€œcounter[ed] the image of the tiny Jewish state standing virtually alone against the massive Muslim Arab nations,ā€ Spencer writes. The PLO peddled the fiction of ā€œPalestinians as a tiny indigenous people whose land had been stolen by rapacious, well-heeled, and oppressive foreigners.ā€ Accordingly, today ā€œit is commonplace to see traditional Arab dress, food, and customs described as ā€˜Palestinian,ā€™ā€ even though ā€œthey are just as Syrian, and Lebanese, and Jordanian as they are Palestinian.ā€

In contrasting reality, Spencer copiously cites Islamic canons that make Israelā€™s destruction a ā€œreligious imperative, even an act of worship.ā€ ā€œIslamā€™s doctrines of jihad, its deeply rooted anti-Semitism, and its supremacist political ideologyā€ make it ā€œimpossible for the Palestinians to accept any peace agreementā€ with Israel. An ā€œinformed and committed believer will look at the Jews, and in particular at Zionism,ā€ and see an ā€œeschatological struggle against the great spiritual enemies of the Muslims.ā€

When not deluding innumerable ā€œwillfully ignorant and historically uninformedā€ policymakers globally, ā€œPalestinian spokesmen have again and again made it clearā€ their obedience to Islamic doctrines, as Spencer demonstrates. ā€œRule of Muslims by infidelsā€ such as Jews, for example, ā€œis unacceptable under any circumstancesā€ and ā€œany land that has been ruled by the Muslims at any time belongs to the Muslims forever.ā€ Particularly notable, the ā€œPalestinian claim to Jerusalem is based not on political or even historical claims, but on an Islamic fableā€ of a seventh-century miraculousĀ night journeyĀ by Islamā€™s prophet Muhammad. Already during newborn Israelā€™s 1948 fight for survival, Arab Muslim leaders ā€œframed the conflict in exclusively Islamic termsā€ while jihadists journeyed from as far as Pakistan to destroy Israel.

Jihad ideology has ā€œmade certain that a Palestinian Arab state would be only a new jihad base,ā€ as when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, according to Spencer. During the phony peace process that followed theĀ 1993 Oslo Accords, PLO leaders like Egyptian-bornĀ Yasser ArafatĀ repeatedly incited jihad despite contrary peace proclamations. Likewise exemplifying Muhammadā€™s canonical ā€œWar is deceitā€ dictum, ā€œPalestinian leaders have refined lying during war into a fine artā€ in ā€œwildly successfulā€ worldwide propaganda offensives.

As Palestinian Arab society is unlikely to abandon jihad indoctrination, the ā€œreality is that there is no solutionā€ foreseeable for Israelā€™s conflicts according to Spencerā€™s ā€œdistasteful conclusion.ā€Ā ā€œAmericans in particular like problems with solutionsā€ and embrace the ā€œprevailing assumption that if we just sit down and talk with one another, we will ultimately be able to find common ground.ā€ Therefore numerous American presidents wanted ā€œto win a Nobel by being the man who finally brought peace to the Middle East,ā€ while an ā€œarmy of the professional diplomats and foreign service ā€˜expertsā€™ā€¦have expended massive amounts of time.ā€ These policymakers should simply spare themselves the effort and humbly read Spencerā€™s sobering book.

Andrew Harrod holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a law degree from the George Washington University School of Law. He writes for Jihad Watch and has had more than 500 articles in American Spectator, American Thinker, the Blaze, Breitbart, Capital Research Center, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, FrontPage Magazine and others. This article was cross-posted fromĀ Israel National News.

Originally posted:
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/01/the-palestinian-delusion-documents-how-jihadists-and-their-allies-have-weaponized-an-invented-palestinian-identity

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