Shattering Palestinian Political Myths

Truth versus Palestinian Propaganda

Four major political myths govern most Palestinian propaganda justifying Jihad against Israel and the Jews.

Jihad is Arabic for “struggle” and in Islamic theology primarily means Holy War against all unbelievers to establish the supremacy of Muslims, Islam, and Islamic Law over them. Jihad is a major Islamic doctrine and accounts for over 31 percent of the text of the three most holy and revered foundational documents of Islam: the Quran, Hadith, and Sira. The Hadith are the collections of Muhammad’s sayings , and the Sira is the collection of Muhammad’s actions and biography.  Sharia (Islamic Law) derives from these three. Winston Churchill often referred to Islam as Mohammedanism, because the Quran allegedly came from Allah through the Angel Gabriel to Muhammad, and the Hadith and Sira (together called the Sunna) are the traditions and teachings of Muhammad. Muhammad is therefore the supreme prophetic source of Islam and knowledge of Allah. Jihad is obligatory duty for all who are able to participate.

The first myth is that the Palestinians are a historical nation and people who have indisputable rights to all of Palestine. The second myth is that the Jews stole Palestine beginning with the British Government’s Balfour Declaration during World War I in 1917, announcing its support for a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine and progressing through British Mandate rule of Palestine in 1922, and the Jewish Declaration of independence and nationhood in May 1948. The third myth is that Palestinian Muslim hatred of the Jews is based on Israel’s displacement of Muslims from their homeland. No, the answer is in the Quran. The forth myth is that Israel has been consistent and deliberate in brutality, abuse, and genocidal intent in its treatment of Palestinian Muslims. This we shall see is largely the result of vicious Palestinian and Muslim Brotherhood deception and propaganda.

It will be clarifying here to repeat some key history in regard to the history of Palestine.

In about 2085 BC, God led Abraham from the Chaldean city of Ur, the ruins of which are in southern Iraq into Canaan, which approximates in later times to Judea, Samaria, Idumea, and Galilee. In modern terms, it approximates Israel Including Gaza and the Israeli occupied West Bank of the Jordan River.  Here is Genesis 12: 1-6 for the story:

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.  And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan,  Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land.”

In 70 AD, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. During three civil wars against Rome, lasting 70 years from 66 AD to 135 AD, hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as 1.4 million Jews died. The higher figure is from Jewish historian and Roman general, Josephus. This was the beginning of a major Jewish diaspora, but many of the survivors remained, especially in Galilee. Later statistics prove a continuous Jewish minority population even during eras of hostile Muslim dominance.

Jews remained the majority in Palestine until the Roman Emperor in Constantinople (now Istanbul) converted to Christianity in 312 AD.  By 400 AD Palestine was a thriving region with a Christian majority and significant Jewish minority.

Muslim armies conquered Jerusalem and Palestine in November 637 AD. Under Islamic Law, those who had not fled were given the choice of becoming Muslims, submitting to a humiliating lower-class status with no rights, or death. Eventually all who remained were forced into Islam or fled to remote areas.  Quran 9:29 allowed Jews and Christians to practice their religion privately but subject to acknowledging Islamic superiority, paying a capricious punitive tax, and submitting to severe restrictions in order that they show and “feel themselves subdued.” They lived in continuous humiliation and uncertainty.

Palestine became part of the Turkish Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1300, which lasted until Ottoman Turkish defeat during World War I.  Great Britian effectively ruled it from 1922 to 1948 under a League of Nations Mandate.

In his 2021 book, The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace process; Robert Spencer cites 14 significant accounts of substantial Jewish populations in Palestine from 1500 to 1869. Perhaps the most detailed was by Mark Twain, who published Innocents Abroad  in 1869 on his Holy Land travels. He described many of the famous sites of Bible events as being desolate and thinly populated. That seemed to be a general consensus of accounts during Ottoman rule, which was extremely hostile to both Christians and Jews.

One very revealing and detailed 1847 report by U.S. Navy Commander William F. Lynch estimated the ethnic origins of the population of Jaffa. There were about  13,000 Turks, who were the ruling class, 8,000 Greeks, 2,000 Armenians, 700 Maronite Catholics, and about 300 Jews. We must carefully note here that he counted NO Arabs.

According to Rev. G. H. Hollingsworth, writing in 1853, it was the Turks who claimed identity with the land, and the Arabs seemed to have no affection for it. Hollingsworth also mentioned that “No Christian is secure against insult, robbery, and ruin,”  and that “the Turks  made life extremely difficult for the Jews.” He described the Ottoman government as “weak, violent, capricious, uncertain in its justice, and tyrannical.” Furthermore, the Turks levied  uncertain and oppressive taxes. Hollingsworth also noted the land’s steady depopulation.  

In 1838, British Christian Zionists with strong political connections began to take an interest in the depopulated Palestine as a suitable refuge for the Jews. By 1840, then British Foreign Secretary H. J. Temple Palmerston had approached the Ottoman government on the idea, but the Ottomans considered Jewish migration a threat and acted immediately to block it. However, the Jews began to come anyway.  Immigration of European Jews from Russia became heavy starting with Russian pogroms against Jews in 1882.  By 1900, there were 40,000 Jews and 140,000 other people of various ethnic groups living in Palestine. Arabs were still a strong majority. In 1917, during the War, Ottoman officials rounded up 7,000 Jews in Jaffa and sent them on a forced march out of Palestine. The Ottomans had already begun the genocide of 1.5 million Armenian Christians in 1915, often using such forced marches. From 1918 to 1922, they were doing the same to Greek and Assyrian Christians.  According to Dr. Rudolph Rummel,  from 1900 to 1923, Ottoman Muslim Turks with the help of the Kurds perpetrated genocides killing 3.5 to 4.3 million Christians.

Several studies suggest that the proportion of indigenous Palestinian Arabs does not match the current Palestinian Muslim Arab political claim that they alone are the indigenous population being subverted by Jewish immigration. Eli Hertz, president of Myths and Facts, asserts that Palestinians are predominantly non-indigenous. He notes that many Palestinian families have surnames that indicate their origin is Egyptian, Syrian, North African, and even Ethiopian. In 1830, the French conquered Algeria. This resulted in a substantial flow of North African immigrants to Palestine. Even during the Crusades, the great Sultan Saladin, beginning about 1174 brought 150,000 Persians into Palestine to fight the Crusaders. These were given land grants for their service. Moreover, the Crusaders found thousands of Jews in Jerusalem, when they captured it in 1099. Unfortunately, many were killed in the final Crusader assault.   

Although there was some resistance to the Balfour plan in Britian, Jewish immigration to Palestine, nevertheless, began to grow following the Balfour statement in 1917 and rapidly after the British were in full control of their Palestinian Mandate in 1922.

Stolen Land?

Contrary to popular Palestinian propaganda, the new Jewish immigrants to Palestine did not push Palestinian Arabs off their land and property. The Jews PURCHASED their land and properties in Palestine, and according to the British Foreign Service paid more than they should have for it. It was not “stolen” from the “indigenous” people of Palestine. This has even been acknowledged by Al Jazeera in an article by Zena Tahhan dated November 21, 2017.  

What is behind Muslim hatred for Jews? Here is just one of many examples quoted in Robert Spencer’s book on the Palestinian Delusion. Two Muslim clerics on an Egyptian TV station on January 17, 2009, explained what the war against Israel was really about. “The Jews,” said Sheik Said Al-Afani, are the accursed people who incurred the wrath of Allah. They are the offspring of snakes and vipers, the slayers of our Prophet Muhammad, poisoned by a Jewish woman.”

“Our hatred of them is purely on religious grounds, and not because of the pure, sacred land, which was blessed by Allah, or because of Gaza…We hate them first and foremost, because of their enmity towards Allah, an because they slayed our prophets.”

Then Muhammad Abd Al-Salam added:

“Let me clarify that it is our duty to hate them, as part of our faith… Some think of this as a national or territorial issue…but the issue is much broader—it is a matter of faith. We are obligated to hate them because they are a murderous people, and the enemies of all that is good in Islam.”

On March 30, 2007, Hamas spokesman Dr. Ismail Radwan quoted the so-called Genocidal Hadith, Bukhari 52:177, also Sahih Muslim 6985.

Muhammad said: “The hour [of Judgement] will not be established until you fight with the Jews and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, ‘O Muslim, There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”

Quran 2:191 is also important in the enmity of Palestinian Muslims against the Jews and Israel.  “Slay them wherever you find them.  Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is more grievous than bloodshed.”  

An essential part of Jihad and Islamic political warfare is deception, deceit, and dissimulation. This was established by the doctrine of Taqiya justified in the Quran and many of Muhammad’s sayings in the Hadith. Taqiya allows Muslims to deceive unbelievers to advance or defend Islam, including extricating Muslim individuals from discovery in subversion and infiltration, This has the status of strategy. Hence great and often highly sophisticated efforts are made to demonize Jews, Israel, Christians and any opposition to Islam. Shaming and outlawing  “Islamophobia” is a powerful sub-strategy of Taqiya doctrine. There are 57 Muslim nations in the United Nations that have huge leverage in defaming Israel. In 2018 alone, the UN condemned Israel 21 times, but never criticized Hamas once. False accusations, false flag operations, fabricated massacres, and projection of Hamas atrocities on Israel are typical Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas propaganda, which is quickly distributed by naïve, irresponsible, or highly-biased international media. In 2018, numerous Hamas distortions and outright fabrications about Gaza border incidents were accepted uncritically by international media and spread around the world.

It is important to also note that Jihad doctrines governing negotiation, truces, and treaties regard them only as delaying tactics to recover and gain strength for renewed and more effective Jihad in the pursuit of ultimate Islamic victory and complete supremacy.

The trouble with the two-state solution is Jihad. The trouble with a one-state solution is more Muslim migration, which is a part of Jihad strategy, and then aggressive Jihad. Islam is not a religion of peace and tolerance as is naively believed by secular humanist Western leaders, who prefer false but intrenched humanist ideology to reality.  

According to the November 14 ARWAD Survey, 75 percent of Palestinians support the October 7 Hamas rampage of killing and rape, and only 13 percent clearly oppose it. West Bank support was highest with 83 percent approval and only 7 percent clearly opposing. Gaza support was less with 64 percent support and 21 percent clearly opposing.

Israel is in an extraordinarily dangerous situation with strong Muslim nations surrounding her. Is it an impossible situation? Nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37), and it is the Lord God to whom we must humbly appeal.  For a dramatic example of earnest prayer and God’s sovereignty, see 2 Kings 19: 35-37.