THE WORLD BELIEVES THE LIE
Why is it that so much of the world believes the Palestinian Lie? Even after the massacre of October 7, when Hamas launched a heinous slaughter of Jewish civilians, the world at large has come to embrace the Palestinian cause. “From the River to the Sea,” they chant. It is a saying that denies the very existence of a Jewish Homeland. It labels Israel’s presence there as patently illegal. It is based on a lie constructed for that purpose.
The case put forward by the Palestinian apologists basically goes like this. ‘We Palestinians have been here for centuries. The Jews just showed up beginning in the late 1800s and kicked us off of our land. Now we want it back.’ The problem with that case is …IT IS ENTIRELY FALSE! Here are the facts the world refuses to see.
There has been a Jewish presence in the land for 3,500 years, dating back to the days of Joshua, who succeeded Moses as Israel’s God-appointed leader upon Moses’ death. For the first 2,000 of those years, their presence was chronicled in the Bible. They stayed on the land even when conquered. Even the Babylonian Captivity did not remove the entire Jewish presence. There was always a remnant. As Benyamin Netanyahu put it in an interview with Jordan Peterson: They were not really exiled, “contrary to what people think.”
All of that changed in the 7th century AD. The Jews lost their land as a result of the Muslim / Arab conquest at that time. “The Arabs burst out of Arabia.” They started taking over the land of the Jews. Neither the Romans nor the Greeks nor the Byzantines nor Alexander had ever done that. They pushed out the Jewish farmers. Military colonists arrived and displaced many of the Jews. The Muslims set up military colonies. After a couple of hundred years, the Jews became a minority in their own land. It was the Arabs that took the homeland of the Jews. The Arabs were the colonizers and the Jews were the displaced natives. The Jews relocated all across the globe. Without a homeland, there was persecution. Netanyahu might not say it, but it was a fulfillment of prophecy. In Leviticus 26 God warned Israel. “But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments, if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul loathes My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, but rather to break My covenant, I, in turn, will do this to you” (Leviticus 26:14-16) (NASB) God goes on to detail His judgements. In verses 32 &33 we read, “I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle in it will be appalled at it. You, however, I will scatter among the nations, and I will draw out a sword after you, as your land becomes desolate and your cities become ruins.” But through it all, Israel maintained their national identity. They were displaced, but did not disappear. Every generation kept alive that hope of a return to the Land. A return to Jerusalem. As the saying went: “Next year in Jerusalem.” Over all those centuries, from the 700s to the late 1800s, the Arabs left the land barren. “They never made it their own.”
It was during the latter part of the 19th century that this idea of a return to the Land became possible. This new reality existed – in part – because of the support of Christian Zionists. As the Jews returned, they developed the land. Farms were planted and factories built. Suddenly, there were employment opportunities. Arabs from the surrounding countries began to emigrate to the Land. They started calling themselves Palestinians. Netanyahu: “They reconstructed history.” They claimed to have been there for centuries. But they hadn’t. Despite claims, there was no national consciousness among the Arabs in that land. The Jews allowed the Arab presence, assuming they could live on the land together. But they maintained the right to control the land. The State of Israel was established in May of 1948. While the Jews welcomed Arabs into their newly re-founded nation, the Arabs denied the right of the Jews to be there. They claimed it was their land. So, in effect, the ‘Palestinians,’ represent the Arab conquest. And they are denying Israel’s right to have a Jewish state. Israel understood this was their national homeland, established by God Himself, in the Bible.
So, how did this lie of Jewish colonialism gain credibility in the West? It seems that it lives through sheer ignorance. Many protestors on college campuses were asked about the slogan they were chanting, “From the River to the Sea.” They could not explain its’ meaning. And the Palestinian leadership constructed and continue to feed world the lie. They claim there were no Jews in this land in ancient times. But even Netanyahu uses the presence of Jesus, the Jewish rabbi – in Jerusalem – as evidence of its’ innate Jewishness.
Yasser Arafat, was a founding leader of the Palestinian movement. He fabricated the story that the Jewish invasion of the Land occurred in 1881. It is easily proven false. In 1873 Mark Twain traveled there. He famously described the Holy Land as a “vast wasteland….We traveled for a whole day and didn’t seen one single human being…..Jerusalem sits in sackcloth and ashes.” In 1881, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley , an Anglican churchman of Queen Victoria’s Court, visited Palestine. He wrote, “I looked south, I looked north and I saw nothing but a barren expanse.” And Twain and Stanley both wondered “when would the Jews come back and bring this land to life.” It turns out, that was exactly the time that the Jews began to return to the Land. They brought a rise in living standards that attracted Arabs to come there too. Their descendants are now considered to be the Palestinians.
Rabbi Dovid Vigler put the cherry on the Sunday. From 1948 to 1967 Palestinian rights were never brought up. That’s when Egypt controlled Gaza, Syria held the Golan Heights and Jordan ruled over Judea and Samaria which we now call the West Bank.[i] [ii] There never has been a Palestinian nation.
And then we have the testimony of Scripture – the words of God Himself. “I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:8) (NASB)
[i] Israel’s Right to Exist? | PM Benjamin Netanyahu (Interview with Jordan Peterson, December 6, 2022
[ii] Rabbi Dovid Vigler, Netanyahu Makes Peterson Go QUIET, YOUTUBE, December 27, 2024
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