The Palestinian Delusion documents how jihadists and their allies have weaponized an invented Palestinian identity
by Andrew Harrod, January 22, 2020
āFrom 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 āpropaganda success that Josef Goebbels and the editors ofĀ PravdaĀ would have envied,ā namely the global myth that Palestinians are an āindigenous population.ā So declare institutions such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while Palestinian leaders fantasize about a ālink 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 āIsraelitesā ancient enemies, the Philistines,ā in order to eradicate the identity of defeated Jewish rebels. The self-named āPalestiniansā 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 Twainās 1869 travelogueĀ The Innocents AbroadĀ thus states that āPalestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.ā HistorianĀ William B. ZiffĀ wrote in 1938 that at the 20th centuryās beginning PalestineāsĀ 40,000 Jews āand 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 āJewish 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 IsraelāsĀ Jerusalem Post) then called Palestine. āMost āindigenousā people of Palestine, like Los Angelenos, seem to have come from somewhere else,ā Spencer writes. Contrastingly, during this āperiod, 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 ācounter[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 āPalestinians as a tiny indigenous people whose land had been stolen by rapacious, well-heeled, and oppressive foreigners.ā Accordingly, today āit is commonplace to see traditional Arab dress, food, and customs described as āPalestinian,āā even though āthey are just as Syrian, and Lebanese, and Jordanian as they are Palestinian.ā
In contrasting reality, Spencer copiously cites Islamic canons that make Israelās destruction a āreligious imperative, even an act of worship.ā āIslamās doctrines of jihad, its deeply rooted anti-Semitism, and its supremacist political ideologyā make it āimpossible for the Palestinians to accept any peace agreementā with Israel. An āinformed and committed believer will look at the Jews, and in particular at Zionism,ā and see an āeschatological struggle against the great spiritual enemies of the Muslims.ā
When not deluding innumerable āwillfully ignorant and historically uninformedā policymakers globally, āPalestinian spokesmen have again and again made it clearā their obedience to Islamic doctrines, as Spencer demonstrates. āRule of Muslims by infidelsā such as Jews, for example, āis unacceptable under any circumstancesā and āany land that has been ruled by the Muslims at any time belongs to the Muslims forever.ā Particularly notable, the āPalestinian 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 Islamās prophet Muhammad. Already during newborn Israelās 1948 fight for survival, Arab Muslim leaders āframed the conflict in exclusively Islamic termsā while jihadists journeyed from as far as Pakistan to destroy Israel.
Jihad ideology has āmade 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 Muhammadās canonical āWar is deceitā dictum, āPalestinian leaders have refined lying during war into a fine artā in āwildly successfulā worldwide propaganda offensives.
As Palestinian Arab society is unlikely to abandon jihad indoctrination, the āreality is that there is no solutionā foreseeable for Israelās conflicts according to Spencerās ādistasteful conclusion.āĀ āAmericans in particular like problems with solutionsā and embrace the āprevailing 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 āto win a Nobel by being the man who finally brought peace to the Middle East,ā while an āarmy of the professional diplomats and foreign service āexpertsāā¦have expended massive amounts of time.ā These policymakers should simply spare themselves the effort and humbly read Spencerās 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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