Until now, I haven't even bothered to say, "See, I told you so." But I can't resist any longer. I feel compelled to remind you of the column I wrote just a couple weeks before the latest uprising. Yeah, folks, I predicted it. That's OK. Hold your applause.
After all, I wish I had been wrong. More than 80 people have been killed since the current fighting in and around Jerusalem began. And for what?
If you believe what you read in most news sources, Palestinians want a homeland and Muslims want control over sites they consider holy. Simple, right?
Well, as an Arab-American journalist who has spent some time in the Middle East dodging more than my share of rocks and mortar shells, I've got to tell you that these are just phony excuses for the rioting, trouble-making and land-grabbing.
Isn't it interesting that prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, there was no serious movement for a Palestinian homeland?
On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I have given this land, From the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenite and the Kenizzite and the Kadmonite and the Hittite and the Perizzite and the Rephaim and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Girgashite and the Jebusite (Genesis 15:18-21)
If we take Scripture literally; then we must come to the conclusion that the nation of Israel is one country and that Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, is part of Israel-deeded by God to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Israel first became a nation in 1312 B.C.E., two thousand years before the rise of Islam! Seven hundred and twenty-six years later in 586 B.C.E. these first ancient Jews in the Land of Israel [Judea] were overrun and Israel's First Jewish Temple (on Jerusalem's Old City Temple Mount) was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of ancient Babylon. Many of the Jews were killed or expelled; however many were allowed to remain. These Jews along with their progeny and other Jews who would resettle over the next 500 years, rebuilt the Nation of Israel and also a Second Temple in Jerusalem upon the Temple Mount. Thus the claim that Jews suddenly appeared fifty years ago right after the Holocaust and drove out the Arabs is preposterous! Then in 70 C.E.(nearly 2000 years ago), it was the Roman Empire's turn to march through ancient Israel and destroy the SECOND Jewish Temple, slaughtering or driving out much of its Jewish population. Many Jews left on their own because conditions for life were made unbearable in many respects... yet thousands upon thousands stayed and rebelled on for centuries in order to once again rebuild a Jewish Nation in this Holy Land.
Over 3250 years, various Peoples, Religions and Empires marched through Jerusalem, Israel's ancient capital. The region was successively ruled by the Hebrews [Jews], Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Maccabeans, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Egyptians, the Crusaders, Mamelukes, the Turks (who indifferently governed the backward, neglected territory from the 16th century until the British drove them out during World War I) and then once again by the Jews in 1948. None bothered, nor were they in the least bit inclined, to build a Nation of their own... EXCEPT the Jewsih people!
Palestinians are the newest of all the peoples on the face of the Earth, and began to exist in a single day by a kind of supernatural phenomenon that is unique in the whole history of mankind, as it is witnessed by Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist that acknowledged the lie he was fighting for and the truth he was fighting against:
“Why is it that on June 4th 1967 I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”
“We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then all of the sudden we were Palestinians - they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all at once we had a Palestinian flag ”.
“ When I finally realized the lies and myths I was taught, it is my duty as a righteous person to speak out ”.
This declaration by a true "Palestinian" should have some significance for a sincerely neutral observer. Indeed, there is no such a thing like a Palestinian people, or a Palestinian culture, or a Palestinian language, or a Palestinian history. There has never been any Palestinian state, neither any Palestinian archaeological find nor coinage. The present-day "Palestinians" are an Arab people, with Arab culture, Arabic language and Arab history. They have their own Arab states from where they came into the Land of Israel about one century ago to contrast the Jewish immigration. That is the historical truth. They were Jordanians (another recent British invention, as there has never been any people known as "Jordanians"), and after the Six-Day War in which Israel utterly defeated the coalition of nine Arab states and took legitimate possession of Judea and Samaria, the Arab dwellers in those regions underwent a kind of anthropological miracle and discovered that they were Palestinians - something they did not know the day before. Of course, these people having a new identity had to build themselves a history, namely, had to steal some others' history, and the only way that the victims of the theft would not complain is if those victims do no longer exist. Therefore, the Palestinian leaders claimed two contradictory lineages from ancient peoples that inhabited in the Land of Israel: the Canaanites and the Philistines. Let us consider both of them before going on with the Palestinian issue.
I knew that the Hebrew word hamas meant violence before all the recent anti-Israel terrorism. What I did not know was how many times the word hamas appears in the Hebrew Bible, and what the Bible says about the fate of those who carry out hamas/violence against the people of Israel. I recently read through The Twelve Prophets (Hosea through Malachi) in Hebrew, and I was surprised how often I kept running across the word hamas. This piqued my curiosity enough to do a study to find out more about hamas in the Scriptures. I looked at every passage where the word hamas appears (68 times, if my count is accurate). In view of what the Bible says about hamas, I would not want to be in the shoes of a Hamas terrorist.
Before I share some of the things the Bible says about hamas, let me first state that I am not anti-Arab. I am strongly opposed to the use of terrorism by any group, Arabic or non-Arabic, but I have no prejudice against Arabic people as an ethnic group. The fact that they are physical descendants of our Father Abraham also made it easier for me to relate to them. I also felt a kinship because their culture has preserved some of the ancient Mid-East customs that were practiced in Biblical times, and I could relate to those customs.
Amin al-Husseini studied religious law at al-Azhar University, Cairo, and attended the Istanbul School of Administration. In 1913 he went to Mecca on a pilgrimage, earning the honorary title of "Haj". He voluntarily joined the Ottoman Turkish army in World War I but returned to Jerusalem in 1917 and expediently switched sides to aid the victorious British. He acquired the reputation as a violent, fanatical anti-Zionist zealot and was jailed by the British for instigating a 1920 Arab attack against Jews who were praying at the Western Wall.
The first Palestine High Commissioner. Sir Herbert Samuel arrived in Palestine on July 1, 1920. He was a weak administrator who was too ready to compromise and appease the extremist, nationalistic Arab minority led by Haj Amin al-Husseini. When the existing Arab Mufti of Jerusalem (religious leader) died in 1921, Samuels was influenced by anti-Zionist British officials on his staff. He pardoned al-Husseini and, in January 1922, appointed him as the new Mufti, and even invented a new title of Grand Mufti. He was simultaneously made President of a newly created Supreme Muslim Council. Al-Husseini thereby became the religious and political leader of the Arabs.
The appointment of the young al-Husseini as Mufti was a seminal event. Prior to his rise to power, there were active Arab factions supporting cooperative development of Palestine involving Arabs and Jews. But al-Husseini would have none of that; he was devoted to driving Jews out of Palestine, without compromise...
Eight months after his trial opened in Jerusalem, Eichmann was found guilty of crimes against humanity and the Jewish people and was sentenced to death. He was executed on May 31, 1962; his remains were cremated and the ashes scattered over the Mediterranean Sea -- outside Israeli waters. This is the only case in which the death penalty has been carried out in Israel.
Eichmann's record is notorious. He was the head of the Department for Jewish Affairs in the Gestapo from 1941 to 1945 and was chief of operations in sending three million Jews to the extermination camps. After the war, he became one of the most sought-out Nazi fugitives.
The international community condemned Israel's kidnapping of Eichmann, but it was nonetheless able to see the justice in, and legitimacy of, Israel's action. The trial itself, marked by strict adherence to legal procedure, elicited worldwide admiration, and the Nazi's execution was seen everywhere as a crucial vindication in the post-Holocaust era.
Everywhere, that is, but in the Arab world. There, Eichmann's capture, trial and execution were condemned, and Eichmann was venerated as a ''martyr.'' The Jordanian daily A-Ra' ai praised him for exterminating ''members of the race of dogs and monkeys.'' The Saudi periodical Al-Bilar saluted him for his courage. The Lebanese newspaper Al-Anwar published a cartoon lamenting the fact that the Nazi officer had not killed more Jews....