African Slavery in Palestine : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

African Slavery in Palestine

Posted by Ami Isseroff on Thursday, March 20th at 9:38 AM

African Slavery in Palestine - Gone With the Wind
http://zionism-israel.com/ezine/Palestine_racist_slavery.htm
As we are told, "Zionism is racism" and "Israel is an Apartheid State." Indeed, the proponents of multicultural pluralism should take careful note. The Zionists have been stamping out many Arab Palestinian customs that no doubt contribute to the rainbow of human culture. For example, one of the customs eliminated by Zionist domination of 'Palestine' was slavery.
The practice of enslaving Africans was made illegal in most of the Western world in the 19th century. In the Middle East, however, under the Muslim Ottoman Empire, it persisted. In the area later to be called Palestine, there was an apartheid society of slave owners. When the colonialist imperialist British, supported by the evil Zionists, entered the land and carved up the former Ottoman Turkish Empire, they discouraged and tried to stop slavery. But the real end to slavery did not, apparently, come, until after the 'Nakba,' the catastrophe of Jewish restoration in 1948, which ended so many delightful customs of the Palestinian Arabs.
In Saudi Arabia, this quaint and picturesque custom, which gave so much romance to the world, was only abolished in 1961, under pressure from the American imperialists. No doubt, the conscience of every humanitarian must be appalled by this blatant interference in the society of another people.
The demise of this elegant society is still mourned by those who decry the British mandate for Palestine and the Zionist settlement in the Land of Israel. The British had outlawed slavery only recently, but Jewish opposition to slavery begins in the biblical story of Passover (Pesach), which celebrates the emancipation of the Jewish slaves in ancient Egypt.
The Africans were called "Abed" - which literally means slave. White and black slaves were separated, and there were degrees of inferiority among African slaves as well. The descendants of these slaves are still Bedouin in the Negev and "Palestinians" in Gaza. They still, as a rule, cannot intermarry with their "white" former masters.
Here is a description of African slavery and African Palestinians in the land of Israel:
Although Africans have been in Palestine for centuries, most people know little about this migration. For centuries, under the Ottoman Empire and before, slaves were brought from Africa. Some older people today remember stories told by their parents or grandparents of how they came to be in Palestine. Therefore it is possible to discover something of the later history of slavery. Several people mentioned that they had heard that there was a big slave market in Egypt and one 'white' Bedouin told me that his grandfather had been a slave trader who travelled regularly to Egypt. Most people with any idea of where their ancestors came from mention Sudan or Ethiopia. Sometimes they know the name of the town. Indeed, it is probable that many Africans came from these countries as they are near to Palestine. However, one woman I spoke to pointed out that 'we just say Sudan because we do not know and because the name means 'place of black people. It could just as easily have been Congo!' According to history books, slave traders and owners used to make a distinction between Ethiopians (Habash) and other Africans such as the Zanj from the East African Coast. In their racist way of thinking, they considered the Ethiopians to be superior to the other Africans.
In Gaza I spoke to people of Bedouin origin who had been living in the Nagab prior to 1948. In the Nagab I spoke with Bedouin of African descent who had stayed in the area after 1948. In Gaza, I also encountered black people of the Al Rubayn ashira who were settled Bedouin living around the area of Jaffa, before being driven from their villages as refugees in 1948. They said that they were unconnected to the Nagab Bedouin. Their name derived from Nabi Rubooyn who thousands of years ago used a well near their home area.
These people of Bedouin origin currently resident in Gaza and the Nagab recall being told by their elders how children were kidnapped or bought in slave markets and brought, sometimes carried in the camel saddle-bags, to live with important Bedouin families. This occurred in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The children were often the only Africans living with the family. They looked after animals, grew wheat and barley and performed household tasks. People told me that the Bedouin did not use the girls as concubines, although in the West Bank they did 'marry' female slaves. Only big wealthy families owned and traded in slaves. Black people were scattered throughout Palestine living with white families who 'owned' them. However, some families needed slaves to help in self- defense when they were weak in number. It is possible that within the twentieth century adults were also brought from Africa and sold as slaves. One elderly man reported that in his youth he had come across African men who were strong, bore tribal scars on their faces and spoke little Arabic.
One 'white' Bedouin man told me that slaves used to be branded like animals, but that there were no papers concerning ownership or origins. In the family unit, there were sometimes also other slaves who were white, or low status dependants, such as hamran. But one man told me that a white slave would never have answered to a black slave.
Some African children were educated along with the other, free, children of the family. Once the children grew up their masters arranged for them to be married. They never married white people, even if they were also slaves. As there were not many Africans around, marriage often meant that girls moved away from the master's family. People also reported that, upon becoming adults, slaves could choose to take their chances with freedom or to remain attached to a family who would arrange marriage. This probably only occurred towards the end of the institution of slavery, during the British period, when it had already begun to fade away.
In the Nagab the Bedouin had a three tier social and political system. Sheikhs were drawn from the Samran, the original Bedouin. Attached to them as clients were the Hamran, families who were originally felaheen, but required protection and/or land from Samran families. The Abed, the slaves, were on the bottom tier and did not have the same rights or status as free people.
Slaves did not count in blood feuds between families. Several people told me that if a black man killed a white man, the death of that black man would not count. Payment (sulha) could be made in money or by the giving of a slave of a certain height. If a black man kills a white, the family of the deceased may kill the 'owners' of the black man. Recently, in Rahat in the Nagab, a black boy eloped with a white girl. They were discovered and the girl killed by her family. However, the boy survived and subsequently married a black girl.
Under the old system slaves could not sit in the shig at the same level as their masters. In some places this is still observed, with the role of the black people being to serve tea and coffee to the white people. One man told me that there were some shig that he would not go to because they would ask him who he 'belonged to'. But in other shig this no longer happens and black and whites sit happily together. In one shig in Gaza, the black sheikh presides, while white people take responsibility for serving tea and coffee.
...
In some areas slavery as a way of life appears to have continued into the 1950s. One black (sumr) man who came to Palestine as a migrant worker from Egypt and was caught up in the war of 1948 recalls life for black people attached to the Al Huzail. He had been working in the orchards near Rishon with black people of the Abu Barakat. When war broke out they fled back to their home area of the Al Huzail where Rahat has now been constructed. When the Egyptian man arrived there he found black people growing wheat for Al Huzail. They were given food and, if they requested it for a special purpose, money. Slaves and masters lived separately in black tents. There was no intermarriage and no concubinage. The Egyptian man slept in the Sheikh's shig and worked as a shepherd, but received no wages. The Sheikh arranged his marriage to a white girl from Gaza. However, after 1952 under the Israelis, when the census was taken, slavery as an institution faded away.
Isn't it a pity that the Zionists banished slavery from Palestine, along with trachoma, malaria and typhus? Ah for the good old days! Alas! They are no more!
"There was a land of Cavaliers and Olive Trees called Palestine. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Effendis and their Harems Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind."
Those who mourn the loss of this custom, who insist that "Zionism is racism" and "Israel is an apartheid state," can comfort themselves with the thought that polygamy and honor killings have not yet been eliminated by the Zionists. No doubt, when the 'Nakba' of 1948 is reversed, and the Arabs of Palestine get their rights, the noble customs of old will be restored.
Ami Isseroff
Copyright
Original text is copyright by the author, © 2008. This article is published at http://zionism-israel.com/ezine/Palestine_racist_slavery.htm

The palestinians were slave owners? Not read about that in the mainstream media

Again with the ubbermensch / superior beings rant.

Somehow, because Zionists are such better people, they are alleged to have a birthright of murderous theft of palestinian lands.

No one is talking about the "Zionists" they are talking about the palestinians

Murderous thieving Zionists ended slavery in the Palestinian's homeland. It is right there in the moronic propagada. Didn't you bother to actualy read it???

Isn't it a pity that the Zionists banished slavery from Palestine, along with trachoma, malaria and typhus?

Israel ended the institution of slavery in 1952. Good for them.

Yeah, we are read it. Miss your African slaves? Is that what you are whining about?

Slavery is an Arab right! Those who were pagans and were then taken slave, thus becoming believing Moslems, benefited from becoming slaves. The great Arab poet Antar was the son of an African slave girl and a Sheikh.

"Is that what you are whining about?"

Sure, like it couldn't possibly be the Zionist's bloodsoaked theft of Palestinian farms and orchards and graizing lands, hotels, etc that the Palestinians would be whining about.

Sure, just keep pushing the ubbermensch / superior beings gives Zionists a birthright of murderous theft rant. It obviously isn't as vile to some people as it is to those who do their own thinking.

Usually , changing topics means that they can't respond to the topic.

What topic? that the ZIonist murderous theft of Palestinian lands is made somehow less of an offense because Palestinians (those with cash, a tiny tiny minority at that) could own slaves.

Well then, to the totaly braindead, Alabama and Mississippi and many other US states were legitimate tartgets of Zionist invasion as short as 150 years ago. Even when the vast majority of people on those states never owned slaves.

Wow, tell us all about your ubermensch / superior beings delusions. they are a constant source of amusment to us with a morbid sence of humor.

Keep focused dude
by Palestinains as slave owners Thursday, Mar. 27, 2008 at 10:41 AM

Why are you changing the topic? Are you embarrassed that the palestinians were slave owners or do you think it is their right?

I feel sorry for anyone who feels a need to rationalize treating their Palestinian neighbors as they would NOT have the Palestinians treating them. that includes the murderous thiweving Zionist crusaders and the Zionist crusader's evil supporters.

Self determination, certainly IS the palestinian's right. Even if the murderous thieving ZIonist crusaders AND their enalbers take actions that deny the Palestinian's their right to self determination.

If Palestinians want slavery to be legal, there are other ways that people who are opposed to slavery can respond WITHOUT destroying Palestinian lives and lifes by appeasing or enableing the MURDEROUS THIEVING Zionist crusaders. Try boycotts, try anything that doesn't get palestinian blood on your hands.

Just don't try to pull the Nazi's old ubbermensch/untermensch tirade. You will gets punked out.

You've missed the point. The "Palestinian" movement seeks to restore the rule fo the old Efffendi class, and its social mores, including slavery. In addition, many of todays "Palestinians" rather than being "indigeneous" as they like to pretend, are the decsendants of these same Black African slave taken by their Arab overlords. The Turks established one whole district of Jaffa just as the quarter for freed slaves.

And should Palestine be liberated from the MURDEROUS THIEVING Zionist crusaders, who but Palestinian's have any business deciding Palestinian laws? You???

Like I pointed out, there are ways to push Palestinians to not allow slavery without supporting the MURDEROUS THIEVING Zionist crusaders and getting the blood of Palestinians all over your hands. Boycotts, embargos, are examples of negative reinforcments. There are also positive reinforcments.

Yes, palestinians who are descended form slaves are a part of palestinian society now. And black Americans who are descended from slaves, would you say they have NO basic human right not to be destroyed by MURDEROUS THIEVING Zionist crusaders?

You missed the point AGAIN. Lets try a new idea. Since all this time, you have attempted to assert that "Palestinians" are descended from Canaanites, and now you seen that at least some "Palestinians" are the descendants of Black Africans taken slaves by Arabs, and other "Palestinians" are descended from Bosnians, etc,etc, are you ready to drop the "Palestinians are descended from Canaanites" nonsense?

Certainly NOT!

Bosnians and Africans (no such tribe called African) joining up with Palestinian society does NOT denioghrate the heritage of the Palestinians . It adds to the heritage of Palestinians.

Like Cubans moving to the USA doesn'ty change my various family histories. I am still mostly white, part Creek and part Iroquois. And even if I were to marry a Cuban girl and have half cuban babies, my history and my 1/2 cuban baby's history woyuld STILL include Creek history, Iroquois history, Dutch history (up till 1885), French history (at least up to Jacques Cartier, then Accadian, then Cajun history), Scottish history (including Longshanks evil rule), etc.

You would have braindead MORONS believe that because Bosnians and Africans have ADDED to the history of palestiians, that Palestinians are not locals with a history in the land at least 3000 years old. You are stupid IF you believe people are as stupid as you would like them to be.

But thanks for being SO full of dung. YOU make trashing YOUR rat so easy.

You've got it wrong AGAIN. As we look into each aspect of the origins of todays self-identified "Palestinians" we find a different foriegn origin ranging from Egyptian, Bosnian, Black African, Yemen (as in the city of Ramle) etc. We fnd centuries where the coastal plans were de-populated by disease,mis-mangament and Bedoiun raiders. The one thing thats NEVER proven is that "Palestinians" are descended from the indigeneous people of the land. Thats because those people are modern day Jews!

Next, we'll look into he 30,000 Syrian dock workers brought in by England during the Mandate. Are their descendants "Palestinians" too? The Egpytians fleeing Pasha Mohamed Ali's military draft? The 1911 Britanicca says that there were over 50 languages spoken in Jerusalem, are all their heirs Caananites too?

Yep, Zionists have a history of saying Palestine is a land without a people for a people wthout a land. Funny thing that, it compleatly trashes the Zionist who say Jews were in the land continuously at least since Judaism was created (3000 +) years. Well, if YOU say the land was desolate and devod of people (which would include Canaaites, like Jesus' boy Simon and his descendants as well as Judeans/"Jews", not to be confused with Ashkinazim who didn't convert to judaism until 850 AD)

If Palestinians want to accept Syrians (Syrians? odd thing that, Syria including what? Todays "Syria" is not what has historicly been ruled from Damascus) into palestinian society, then that is still the Palestinian's right. Unlike Zionist crusaders who chose to become murderous thieves of Palestinian lands, people from MANY lands moved to Palestine without ((( WITHOUT!!! ))) becoming murderous thieves of other palestinian lands to create their own state (state of occupation = state of war) .

We ALL have 2 parents (wether they are who you think they are or not...mother's baby, father's maybe), 4 grand parents, 8 great grands, 16, 32, 64....

In just 20 generations, just 500 years (unless you believe your maternals were older than 13 when they got married off), and you are talking about over a million people adding to your DNA. 40 generations, over a trillion. Obviously some cross overs would be in a number so large, and that isn't but 1000 years (ONE thousand).

Here fishy fishy fish...i got some bait for you.

You are stuck on a phrase that you don't uderstand,"land without a people". That doesn't mean that there weren't any people there, just very few and they weren't "a people." The coastal plans werethe Jews began to settle had almost no population and the people referred to as inhabiting the landwere mostly in the hill areas, away from Bedouin marauders.

For example;
"The inhabitants of Palestine are composed of a large number of elements, differing widely in ethnological affinities, language and religion. It may be interesting to mention, as an illustration of their heterogeneousness, that early in the 20th century a list of no less than fifty languages, spoken in Jerusalem as vernaculars, was there drawn up by a party of men whose various official positions enabled them to possess accurate information on the subject. It is therefore no easy task to write concisely and at the same time with sufficient fullness on the ethnology of Palestine." -- Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911

Ever go into a movie or a store and say "Its empty. There is no one here?' Thats doesn't mean No one, not a single live person. Nada. its means emptier than anticipated.
The saying didn't mean there wasn't a single solitary soul in the whole area. That would be ridiculous. But history and literature bears out how barren and desolate the land was

Dio Cassius, writing at the time, described the ruin of the land beginning with the destruction of Judah:

Of their forts the fifty strongest were razed to the ground. Nine hundred and eighty-five of their best-known villages were destroyed....
Thus the whole of Judea became desert, as indeed had been foretold to the Jews before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, whom these folk celebrate in their sacred rites, fell of its own accord into fragments, and wolves and hyenas, many in number, roamed howling through their cities.1

One historian after another has reported the same findings.
In the twelve and a half centuries between the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the beginnings of the Jewish return in the 1880's, Palestine was laid waste. Its ancient canal and irrigation systems were destroyed and the wondrous fertility of which the Bible spoke vanished into desert and desolation... Under the Ottoman empire of the Turks, the policy of disfoliation continued; the hillsides were denuded of trees and the valleys robbed of their topsoil.2
In 1590 a "simple English visitor" to Jerusalem wrote, "Nothing there is to bescene but a little of the old walls, which is yet Remayning and all the rest is grasse, mosse and Weedes much like to a piece of Rank or moist Grounde."3
"While Tiberias was being resettled by Jews from Papal states, whose migration was approved by a papal Bull, Nazareth was continuing its decline." A Franciscan pilgrim translated a Latin Manuscript that reported that " 'A house of robbers, murderers, the inhabitants are Saracens.... It is a lamentable thing to see thus such a town. We saw nothing more stony, full of thorns and desert.'"4 A hundred years afterward, Nazareth was, in 1697, "an inconsiderable village.... Acre a few poor cottages ... nothing here but a vast and spacious ruin." Nablus consisted of two streets with many people, and Jericho was a "poor nasty village."5

In the mid-1700s, British archaeologist Thomas Shaw wrote that the land in Palestine was "lacking in people to till its fertile soil."6 An eighteenth-century French author and historian, Count Constantine Frangois Volney, wrote of Palestine as the "ruined" and "desolate" land.

In "Greater Syria," which included Palestine,

Many parts ... lost almost all their peasantry. In others.... the recession was great but not so total.7
Count Volney reported that, "In consequence of such wretched government, the greater part of the Pachilics [Provinces] in the empire are impoverished and laid waste." Using one province as an example, Volney reported that
... upwards of three thousand two hundred villages were reckoned; but, at present, the collector can scarcely find four hundred. Such of our merchants as have resided there twenty years have themselves seen the greater part of the environs ... become depopulated. The traveller meets with nothing but houses in ruins, cisterns rendered useless, and fields abandoned. Those who cultivated them have fled... 8
... And can we hope long to carry on an advantageous commerce with a country which is precipitately hastening to ruin? 9

Another writer, describing "Syria" (and Palestine) some sixty years later in 1843, stated that, in Volney's day, "the land had not fully reached its last prophetic degree of desolation and depopulation." 10
From place to place the reporters varied, but not the reports: J. S. Buckingham described his visit of 1816 to Jaffa, which "has all the appearances of a poor village, and every part of it that we saw was of corresponding meanness."11 Buckingham described Ramle, "where, as throughout the greater part of Palestine, the ruined portion seemed more extensive than that which was inhabited."12

After a visit in 1817-1818, travelers reported that there was not "a single boat of any description on the lake [Tiberias]."13 In a German encyclopedia published in 1827, Palestine was depicted as "desolate and roamed through by Arab bands of robbers."14

Throughout the nineteenth century the abandonment and dismal state of the terrain was lamented. In 1840 an observer, who was traveling through, wrote of his admiration for the Syrian "fine spirited race of men" whose "population is on the decline."15 While scorning the idea of Jewish colonization, the writer observed that the once populous area between Hebron and Bethlehem was "now abandoned and desolate" with "dilapidated towns."16 Jerusalem consisted of "a large number of houses ... in a dilapidated and ruinous state," and "the masses really seem to be without any regular employment." The "masses" of Jerusalem were estimated at less than 15,000 inhabitants, of whom more than half the population were Jews.17

The British Consul in Palestine reported in 1857 that

The country is in a considerable degree empty of inhabitants and therefore its greatest need is that of a body of population.... 18
In the 1860s, it was reported that "depopulation is even now advancing."19 At the same time, H. B. Tristram noted in his journal that
The north and south [of the Sharon plain] land is going out of cultivation and whole villages are rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth. Since the year 1838, no less than 20 villages there have been thus erased from the map [by the Bedouin] and the stationary population extirpated. 20
Mark Twain, in his inimitable fashion, expressed scom for what he called the "romantic" and "prejudiced" accounts of Palestine after he visited the Holy Land in 1867.21 In one location after another, Twain registered gloom at his findings.
Stirring scenes ... occur in the valley [Jezreel] no more. There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent-not for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. 22
In fact, according to Twain, even the Bedouin raiders who attacked "so fiercely" had been imported: "provided for the occasion ... shipped from Jerusalem," by the Arabs who guarded each group of pilgrims.
They met together in full view of the pilgrims, after the battle, and took lunch, divided the baksheesh extorted in the season of danger and then accompanied the cavalcade home to the city! The nuisance of an Arab guard is one which is created by the sheikhs and the Bedouins together, for mutual profit... 23
To find ". . . the sort of solitude to make one dreary," one must, Twain wrote dramatically,
Come to Galilee for that... these unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum: this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms.... We reached Tabor safely .... We never saw a human being on the whole route. 24
Nazareth is forlorn .... Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago: Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Savior's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang, "Peace on earth, good will to men," is untenanted by any living creature... Bethsaida and Chorzin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them, where thousands of men once listened to the Savior's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.25

"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.... desolate and unlovely.. . Twain wrote with remone. it is dreamland." 26
Jaffa, a French traveler wrote late in the nineteenth century, was still a ruin27. Haifa, to the north, had 6,000 souls and "nothing remarkable about it," another Frenchman, the author of France's foremost late-nineteenth-century Holy Land guidebook, commented. Haifa "can be crossed in five minutes" on the way to the city of Acre, he judged; that magnificent port was commercially idle. 28

Many writers, such as the Reverend Samuel Manning, mourned the atrophy of the coastal plain, the Sharon Plain, "the exquisite fertility and beauty of which made it to the Hebrew mind a symbol of prosperity."

But where were the inhabitants? This fertile plain, which might support an immense population, is almost a solitude.... Day by day we were to learn afresh the lesson now forced upon us, that the denunciations of ancient prophecy have been fulfilled to the very letter -- "the land is left void and desolate and without inhabitants." 29
Report followed depressing report, as the economist-historian Professor Fred Gottheil pointed out: "a desolate country"; 30 "wretched desolation and neglect";31 "almost abandoned now"32 "unoccupied";33 "uninhabited";34 "thinly populated."35

In a book called Heth and Moab, Colonel C. R. Conder pronounced the Palestine of the 1880s "a ruined land." According to Conder,

so far as the Arab race is concerned, it appears to be decreasing rather than otherwise.36
Conder had also visited Palestine earlier, in 1872, and he commented on the continuing population decline within the nine or ten-year interim between his visits:
The Peasantry who are the backbone of the population, have diminished most sadly in numbers and wealth.37
Pierre Loti, the noted French writer, wrote in 1895 of his visit to the land: "I traveled through sad Galilee in the spring, and I found it silent. . . ." In the vicinity of the Biblical Mount Gilboa, "As elsewhere, as everywhere in Palestine, city and palaces have returned to the dust; This melancholy of abandonment, weighs on all the Holy Land." 38
David Landes summarized the causes of the shriveling number of inhabitants:

As a result of centuries of Turkish neglect and misrule, following on the earlier ravages of successive conquerors, the land had been given over to sand, marsh, the anopheles mosquito, clan feuds, and Bedouin marauders. A population of several millions had shrunk to less than one tenth that number-perhaps a quarter of a million around 1800, and 300,000 at mid-century.39
Palestine had indeed become "sackcloth and ashes."

1. Dio Cassius, History of the Romans, lxix, 12-14, cited by de Haas, History, pp. 55-56. De Haas adds: "In the third of the Schweich Lectures of 1922 the late Israel Abrahams ('Campains in Palestine from Alexander the Great' London, 1927) belittles Dio, Cassius' record of this war, and repeats the suggestion that the Jews were influenced by Hadrian 'consent to the rebuilding of the Temple.' This rebuilding myth, depending upon the alleged visit of Hadrian to Palestine on the death of Trajan, has been fully dealt with by Henderson in his biography of Hadrian. All the dimensions of the war, its gravity, and its duration, are fully attested by the inscriptions relating to the legions and by the honors distributed at the end of the campaign. The archeological records, carefully analyzed, support Dio Cassius and not his would-be corrector.
2. Carl Hermann Voss, "The Palestine Problem Today, Israel and Its Neighbors" (Boston, 1953), p. 13.

3. Gunner Edward Webbe, Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement, p. 86, cited in de Haas, History, p. 338.

4. De Haas, History, p. 337, citing Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement, 1925, p. 197, translation of Latin manuscnpt by a Franciscan pilgrim.

5. Henry Maundrell, The Journal of Henry Maundrellfrom Aleppo to Jerusalem, 1697, Bohn's edition (London, 1848), respectively pp. 477, 428, 450.

6. Thomas Shaw, Travels and Observations Relating to Several Parts of Barbary and the Levant (London, 1767), p. 331ff. De Haas notes: "Hasselquist, the Swedish botanist, munching some roasted ears of' green wheat which a shepherd generously shared with him, in the plain of Acre, reflected that the white bread of his northern homeland and the roasted wheat ears symbolized the difference between the two civilizations' Had he known that Mukaddasi boasted in the tenth century of the excellence Of Palestine's white bread he might have been still more impressed by the low estate to which the country had fallen in seven hundred years.... Hasselquist joined a party of four thousand pilgrims who went to Jericho under an escort of three hundred soldiers. He estimated that four thousand Christians, mostly of the eastern rites, entered Jaffa each year, and as many Jews. The Armenian Convent in Jerusalem alone could accommodate a thousand persons. The botanist viewed the pilgrim tolls as the best resource of an uncultivated and uninhabited country. . ~ . Ramleh was a ruin." (Emphasis added.) De Haas, History, pp. 349, 358, 360, citing Frederich Hasselquist, Reise nach Palastina, etc., 1749-1752, pp. 139, 145-146, 190.

7. Norman Lewis, "The Frontier of Settlement in Syria, 1800-19 50," in Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of the Middle East (Chicago, 1966), p. 260.

8. Count Constantine F. Volney, Travels Through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, 1785 (London, 1788), Vol. 2, p. 147. According to Volney, ". . . we with difficulty recognize Jerusalem.... remote from every road, it seems neither to have been calculated for a considerable mart of commerce, nor the centre of a great consumption.... [the population] is supposed to amount to twelve to fourteen thousand.... The second place deserving notice, is Bait-el-labm, or Bethlehem, ... The soil is the best in all these districts ... but as is the case everywhere else, cultivation is wanting. They reckon about six hundred men in this village capable Of bearing arms.... The third and last place of note is Habroun, or Hebron, the most powerful village in all this quarter, and able to arm eight or nine hundred men . . ." (pp. 303-325).

9. Volney, Travels, Vol. 2, p. 431.

10. A. Keith, The Land of Israel (Edinburgh, 1843), p. 465. "The population (viz., of the whole of Syria), rated by Volney at two million and a half, is now estimated at half that amount."

11. J.S. Buckingham, Travels in Palestine (London, 1821), p. 146.

12. Ibid., p. 162.

13. James Mangles and the Honorable C.L. Irby, Travels in Egypt and Nubia (London, 1823), p. 295.

14. Brockhaus, Alig. deutsch Real-Encyklopaedie, 7th ed. (Leipzig, 1827), Vol. VIII, p. 206.

15. S. Olin, Travels in Egypt, Arabia Petraea and the Holy Land (New York, 1843), Vol. 2, pp. 438-439.

16. Ibid., pp. 77-78.

17. No. 238, "Report of the Commerce of Jerusalem During the Year 1863," F.O. 195/808, May 1864. ". . . The population of the City of Jerusalem is computed at 15,000, of whom about 4,500 Moslem, 8,000 Jews, and the rest Christians of various denominations. . ." >From A.H. Hyamson, ed., The British Consulate in Jerusalem, 2 vols. (London, 1939-1941), Vol. 2, p. 331.

18. James Finn to the Earl of Clarendon, Jerusalem, September 15, 1857, F.O. 78/1294 (Pol. No. 36). Finn wrote further that "The result of my observations is, that we have here Jews, who have been to the United States, but have returned to their Holy Land -Jews of Jerusalem do go to Australia and instead of remaining there, do return hither, even without the allurements of agriculture and its concomitants." Ibid., 1, pp. 249-52.

19. J.B. Forsyth, A Few Months in the East (Quebec, 1861), p. 188.

20. H.B. Tristram, The Land of1sraek A Journal of Travels in Palestine (London, 1865), p. 490.

21. Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, pp. 349, 366, 367.

22. Ibid., p. 349.

23. Ibid., p. 429.

24. Ibid., p. 366, 375.

25. Ibid., pp. 441-442.

26. Ibid.

27. Jules Hoche, Les Pays des croisades (Paris, n.d.), p. 10, cited by David Landes, "Palestine Before the Zionists," Commentary, Feb., 1976, p. 49.

28. Brother Lievin de Hamme, Guide indicateur, Vol. Ill, pp. 163, 190.

29. The Reverend Samuel Manning, Those Holy Fields (London, 1874), pp. 14-17. W.M. Thomson reiterated the Reverend Manning's observations: "How melancholy is this utter desolation! Not a house, not a trace of inhabitants, not even shepherds, seen everywhere else, appear to relieve the dull monotony.... Isaiah says that Sharon shall be wilderness, and the prediction has become a sad and impressive reality." Thomson, The Land and the Book (London: T. Nelsons & Sons, 1866), p. 506ff.

30. W.C. Prime, Tent Life in the Holy Land (New York, 1857), p. 240, cited by Fred Gottheil, "The Population of Palestine, Circa 1875," Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 15, no. 3, October 1979.

31. S.C. Bartlett, >From Egypt to Palestine (New York, 1879), p. 409, cited in ibid.

32. Ibid., p. 410.

33. W. Allen, The Dead Sea: A New Route to India (London, 1855), p. 113, cited in ibid. 62), p. 466,

34. W.M. Thomson, The Land and the Book (New York: Harper Bros., 18 cited in ibid.

35. E.L. Wilson, In Scripture Lands (New York, n.d.), p. 316, cited in ibid.

36. Colonel C.R. Conder, Heth and Moab (London, 1883), pp. 380, 376.

37. ibid., p. 366.

38. Pierre Loti, La Galilee (Paris, 1895), pp. 37-41, 69, 85-86, 69, cited by David Landes, "Palestine Before the Zionists," Commentary, February 1976, pp. 48-49.

39. Landes, "Palestine," p. 49.

three quarters of a million Arabs were driven from their homes. The Zionist hypocrites claim they have a right to own these homes because some of their own ancestors may have once lived nearby, but the innocent Arab families their brutal ethnic cleansing displaced have no right to return.

Ottoman census records show the population of Palestine in a decline for the first part of the Turk's 400 year rule. The decline bottomed out in 1785 when the Palestine population hit 350000 people wich is a population density greater (GREATER) than ALL the newly created US states.

Turkish records also show that the proportion of Palestinian Christians and Muslims BOTH then increased at a steady rate under Turkish rule.

But we are expected to ignore actual history, and instead let the opinions of individuals shape our understanding. And like I said already, Zionists got lots of individuals willing to denigrate the palestinian's presence in an atempt to marginalize the palestinian people's basic human right NOT to be destroyed by Zionist crusaders.

Bow down to their idolotry or they will call you anti-Semetic.

Run down areas of AL Quds? Ever driven around the parts of Cleveland that are run down?

Yep, the hardships of Ottoman occupation and brutal rule saw a decline in the Palestinian's population when Turkey was very powerfull. Not quite on par with the decline Armenians suffered under Ottoman rule, but still a decline.
Then durring Turkey's long decline as a regional power, the Population of palestine started to rise from its low of 350,000. And how would that denigrate the Palestinian's basic human right NOT to be destroyed by Zionist crusaders? As it is, Armenia being depoplated by Turks doesn't give Zionists any birthright of murderous theft of Armenian lands.

The Department of State in 2007 documented (not rumors, but confirmations) over 800,000 cases of human trafficking as they call it - slave trading. Where? 99% in Moslem countries.

that NOT what happened in 1948 at all. You ommitted the invasion of the armies of 5 Arab nations (including Jordan's army, lead by British officers) promising to anhiliate the Jews.

Tell your whiny tall tales somewhere else

5 arabic armies tried and failed to liberate Palestinian lands from the Zionist invadors.

And in 1939, 2 European states declairing war against Germany didn't make the Nazi invasion of Poland any less of an offense.

PrionParty, that one was just drivel. One post , your'e whining about the defensless "Palestinians" and when its pointed out that they were supported by 5 regular armies as well, your'e unable to respond. If you don't know about the situation, don't comment on it.

And Poles had the "aid" of 2 of the greatest powers on the planet. Doesn't change the fact that Nazis were murderous thieves of polish lands.

We are ALL aware that the palestinian's arabic speeking neighbors tried and failed to liberate Palestinian lands of the murderous thieving Zionist crusaders. We also ALL know that those Aranic speeking neighbors of the Palestinians trying and failing to liberate Palestinian lands from the MURDEROUS THIEVING Zionist crusaders doesn't make the Zionist's chosen war of conquest ANY less of an offense. It doesn't make the palestinians anything other than the VICTIMS we ALL know them to be.

So, who started world war 2? Did England and France start world war 2 when they declaired war on Germany? OR did the Nazis start world war 2 when they invaded Poland?

Same with palestine. Did the ZIonist crusaders start THAT conflict when they stole Palestinian lands and murdered the Palestinians who dared to resist the ZIonist's theft of Palestinian lands? OR did the Lebanese and Syrian etc start THAT conflict when they tried and failed to drive the MURDEROUS THIEVING Zionist crusaders out of the Palestinian's homeland?

We ALL know what dink thinks/feels. But how do the people who do their own thinking see the "conflict"/ZIonist crusade.

So the main claim that the "Palestinians" can make to Eretz Yisroal is the Pan-Arab type claim that they are the same religion as the invading imperialist Moslem armies that once conquered Eretz Yisroal and that they share the same religion as the Arab slavers even though they themselves are the descendants of migrants in recent times? Land through military conquest? Well the original owners are back to reclaim their aborigianal homeland and holy sites from the Arab invaders!

Palestinians are still not "Arabs".

After the Arab Muslims kicked the East Roman empire out of Palestinian lands, the Arab Muslims left. We know that because the Arab Muslims then drove the East Roman empire out of Lebanon, Syria, etc.

Arab Muslims left some of their people in palestine to rule. But it still took the Palestinian locals 200 years to adopt Arabic. And since the only Arabs who need to learn how to speek Arabic are babies, it remains moronic for anyone to suggest the palestinians are Arabs.

When Arab Muslims conquered a land, they offered slaves in that land a choice: convert to Islam or remain a slave. After a a milliseconds thought on that offer, the slaves converted en-mass. And since Arabic is the language of the Koran, the local peoples slowly started to adopt Arabic in their daily life. Eventualy, they stuck with just Arabic, forgeting their former languages.

Except for the Zionists invading Palestinian lands under Brittish guns (Britts slaughtered thousands of Palestinians who DARED to defend THEIR homeland by resisting the Zionist invasion.) like the Nazi's hungarian allies invaded Slovakian lands under Nazi guns, few people from Arab lands emigrated to Palestine.

Palestinian Jews numbered about 4 1/2 % of the Palestinian society. By 1948, 45% of the people in palestine were Jews. SO in 1948, better than 40% of the people in Palestine were Zionist invadors. Now, since the numbers of Zionist invadors is KNOWN. It is not at all hard to determine how many Muslim (AND CHRISTIAN since the proportion of Palestinian Christians and Muslims remian constant) emigrants Palestinians have accepted into palestinian society. Not to many.

But as for Palestine being a Jewish land, that is just a LIE. Hebrews were just one of many foreign invadors to occupy the land. Slaughtering and enslaving the Canaanite tribes will never (NEVER!) make Palestine a Jewish homeland. but you go ahead and defile the 3rd temple by accepting LIES into your heart.

PrionParty’s nonsense lie by lie

1. Palestinians are still not "Arabs".

They are in fact the descendants of economic migrants in recent times from various parts of the Ottoman empire including the Arab areas that bordered pre-state Israel. Of course, their background is very mixed as the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica states that there were over 50 languages spoken in Jerusalem alone. So although”Palestinians” tend to be Arabic speakers, they aren’t as Arab as say someone from Saudi Arabia, but neither are “Palestinians” a separate, identifiable people either. The real meaning of “Palestinian” is defined in their opposition to Israel. Were there no Israel, there would be no “Palestinians.”

2. After the Arab Muslims kicked the East Roman empire out of Palestinian lands, the Arab Muslims left. We know that because the Arab Muslims then drove the East Roman empire out of Lebanon, Syria, etc.

The Arab armies continued on, later followed by Arab colonists.

3. Arab Muslims left some of their people in palestine to rule. But it still took the Palestinian locals 200 years to adopt Arabic. And since the only Arabs who need to learn how to speek Arabic are babies, it remains moronic for anyone to suggest the palestinians are Arabs.

The language of the era and area was Greek. However, there have been a FEW replacements of the population since that time.

4. When Arab Muslims conquered a land, they offered slaves in that land a choice: convert to Islam or remain a slave. After a a milliseconds thought on that offer, the slaves converted en-mass. And since Arabic is the language of the Koran, the local peoples slowly started to adopt Arabic in their daily life. Eventualy, they stuck with just Arabic, forgeting their former languages.

That’s a wild one! When Moslem armies conquered an area they offered EVERYONE a choice of convert, die or pay an outrageous tax (jizya) to be a second class monotheist.

5. Prion Party omits over 1,000 years of history here!

The Arabs invaded and conquered the Persians
Seljuks conquered the Persians
the Fatimids conquered the Seljuks
European Crusaders conquest
Mamelukes conquered the Europeans
The Ottomans (Turks) conquered the Mamelukes
and ruled for the next 400 years
The Turks lost to the British in WWI and Britain took over

In addition, the Black Plague went through twice as did the Mongols. The Turks pulled the population back from the coastal plains. Arab raiders drove the remaining peasants from the coastal areas into the hilly areas such that the European tourists saw a de-populated land.

When early Zionists started modern agriculture on a larger scale, Arabs immigrated into pre-state Israel. That’s why many of today’s “Palestinians” have last names like “Al-Masri” or “Egyptian” etc.

6. Except for the Zionists invading Palestinian lands under Brittish guns (Britts slaughtered thousands of Palestinians who DARED to defend THEIR homeland by resisting the Zionist invasion.) like the Nazi's hungarian allies invaded Slovakian lands under Nazi guns, few people from Arab lands emigrated to Palestine.

The British Navy blockaded Jewish immigration to pre-state Israel even during the Holocaust. Arabs of the era wouldn’t use the phrase “Palestinian” because they identified solely as “Arabs and part of the greater Arab Nation.” The British carved off 75% of the Mandate of Palestine to create a national homeland for the Arab people, today called “Jordan” which was then barred to Jews. Jordan still bars Jews from citizenship and land ownership

7. Palestinian Jews numbered about 4 1/2 % of the Palestinian society. By 1948, 45% of the people in palestine were Jews. SO in 1948, better than 40% of the people in Palestine were Zionist invadors. Now, since the numbers of Zionist invadors is KNOWN. It is not at all hard to determine how many Muslim (AND CHRISTIAN since the proportion of Palestinian Christians and Muslims remian constant) emigrants Palestinians have accepted into palestinian society. Not to many.

These figures are questionable on many levels. Many of the Moslems were migratory Bedouin, whose travels included a few countries. Others of the Moslems were recent immigrants themselves, hence the UNRWA definition of “refugee” as only requiring two years of residency. Many Jews were illegal immigrants as a result of the British capitulating to Arab demands and so chose not to be counted.

8. But as for Palestine being a Jewish land, that is just a LIE. Hebrews were just one of many foreign invadors to occupy the land. Slaughtering and enslaving the Canaanite tribes will never (NEVER!) make Palestine a Jewish homeland. but you go ahead and defile the 3rd temple by accepting LIES into your heart.

The only record of the Bronze Age Canaanites of 3500 years ago, beyond archeology, is the Torah. The only Cananite language still spoken is Hebrew. But other than the long gone Canaanites, its been the Jewish homeland ever since, despite what ever tall tales “Palestinians” might chose to tell.

Wow, that shit is back. Who could have guessed that the shit I have flushed so many times keeps returning.

At least when you go to the monkey house at the zoo, you expect shit to be tossed at you. Hell, what else do they got to toss at the gawkers?

Well, fuck you if you ain't got it by now. I really don't care about people who defile the temple of God by accepting lies into their hearts. This world is ALL about separating the thorns from the harvest. Good job world!

PrionParty caught lying and unable to respond! Now quit spamming your trash

caught lying or accused of lying? Not exacly the same thing.

unable to respond or had chose not to? Since I have already flushed your crap propaganda, it is odd that you assume unable to respond.

So lets get started

1. palestinians are still not arabs.

You wrote my line as if you were going to adress what I wrote, but then ran away ran away. Instead you wrote about how some of the people in Palestine are recent imigrants and 50 languages were spoken in Al Quds.

Guess what, ALL 50 of those languages AND at least a hundred more are spoken in New York City. Does that change the history of the people who were living in the US? Did relativly recent Cuban emigrats moving to Florida make me a Cuban? Hardly. Emigrants do not subtract from the history of Americans, it adds to the history of Americans. If I were to have babies with a Cuban American, those babies would have MY history as well as the mother's Cuban history.

If Palestinians want to accept 49 of those various peoples into palestinian society, then that is the Palestinian's busniess. And noone else's. If the palestinians want to reject the people who spoke Yiddish from Palestinian society because those Zionists were openly calling for Zionists to carve a country out of Palestinian lands, that is ALSO the Palestinian's business and noone else's.

But that bit about Palestinians not being a "separate identifiable people is just a SICK attempt to marginalize the palestinian's basic human right NOT to be destroyed by murderous thieving Zionist crusaders. Do you even know what country Cleveland is in??? We are hardly a nation state either. That doesn't give Zionists a birthright of murderous theft of US lands.

palestine is defined (by WHOM? Zionists?) in its opostion to the Zionist's bloodsoaked occupation of Palestinian lands. I don't know what point you are trying to make here, if any. SO I can't really adress whatever you had intended to say

2. Arab armies move on. Allegedly followed by Arab collonists.

First of all, if you are going to call someone a liar, it might help your rant if you were actualy disagree with what I wrote.

As for Arab collonists moving in, there might have been a few. But Arabs were few. Much to few to replace ANY of the people in ANY of the lands they occupied. If they had swamped the place, the Arabic language would have taken hold much quicker that 200 years. But no, there is no record of Arabs replacing ANY nation's homeland.

3. 200 years to adopt Arabic

then you wrote about how the East Roman empire and the local occupied people and slaves spoke Greek. Did I miss something? Like, where you disagree with what I wrote AGAIN.

And before Greek, they spoke Roman, and before that, they spoke Aramaic. Yep, Jesus and the Judans and the Canaanites spoke Aramaic. Just how does any of that change the fact that the locals took 200 years to adopt Arabic as their own language? fact is, it doesn't.

then you alleged that the locals were replaced several times since, which is just a lie. There is no evidence to support your supposition.

4. slaves offer freedom to convert to Islam.

Again, when you go around calling people liars, it can only help your rant if you actualy disagreed with those you call a liar.

But that isn't even half of it, then you admitted that not only slaves seeking freedom (positive reinforcment) converted, but that non-slave Christians and Jews were pushed to convert with to Islam through negative reinforcments.

Ummm, how should I put this...? OR should I let you try to think about that one on your own for a few seconds??? I know I am going to take a break to laugh my ass off.

5.PPyy omits 1000 years of history

Sorry, I do not omit the fact that many foreign invadors have ruled the locals for at least 3000 years. What, is there anyone stupid enough to believe that Brittish flags flying over palestinian lands made the Palestinian's Brittish??? Well, turkish flags couldn't get the locals to adopt Turkish as their language either. What flag flys over Palestine does not define who the Palestinans are.

Black plauge? Yep, it killed quite a few. Mongols, yep, they killed some Muslims everywhere they went. Baghdad was totaly destroyed, but folks from the country side repopulated their (THEIR) capital city.

Turks pulled the locals from the coastal plains. So what? they moved back, didn't they? Katrina drove people out of New Orleans. Even with all the problems still plauging the town, many have already moved back.

zionist modern agriculture drew imigrants. Nope, Zionists were hardly prosperous. When Winston Churchill went to Palestine to see if Brittish support of Zionist invasion should be continued, the Zionists had to borrow money to through him parties. they even rented (RENTED) horses from Palestinians to give him a false view of how well Zionists were doing. It wasn't until afer Zionists beca,e murderous thieves of palestinian farms orchards and graizing lands that Zionists started making any cash.

6. Brittish slaughtered Palestinians trying to resist the Zionist invadors.

Again, where do you disagree with the one you call a liar??? I don't see it.

Instead you write about Britts restricted Zionist invadors access to the palestinian's homeland. And that is crap. The number of jews in Palestine went from 4 1/2 % Palestinian Jews to 45% including the Zionist invadors. Ohhh, that is really standing in the Zionist way, especialy with so many Syrians etc allegedly moving in.

And you wrote about how England gave 75% of palestinian's homeland to the Britt's heshmite allies. yes, britts helped heshemites invade and occupy eastern palestine. And your point was what? That Britts giving Palestinian lands to Arab Heshmites gives Britts a right to give the western portions of palestine to the Britt's ZIonist allies??? Well, that would be a pretty stupid supposition. I can't even imagine someone being prejudiced enough to buy into that load of shit.

7. only 4 1/2 % is not questionable.

ottoman census records for taxation and conscription go back hundreds of years, and the proportions of Palestinian jews Christians and Muslims remain constant until the Zionist's started their invasion. Then, only the percentage of jews in the land increased until the Zionist's murderous theft of palestinian lands gave Palestinian Christians a reason to leave in large numbers, which they did.

Bedouin were a part of Turkish census records, paid taxes to the ottomans and were conscripted into the turkish military. What, you think the turkish rulers chose NOT to tax the Bedouin??? Is anyone that stupid? you say they went from country to country. WHAT country? It was the ottoman EMPIRE, and the ottomans knew who they were and how many there were. No permanant adress? Well, the Turks fund a way around that with several tactics, tatoo IDs followed by the bedouin needing papers. Caught without your papers, and you are not going anywhere untill your identity was determined.

Zionists were illegals hiding from Britts. And what could that have to do with the Palestinian Jews being only 4 1/2 %??? Wow.

8. Only record of Canaanites is in archeology and the Torah

Sorry, but Jesus' boy Simon was a Canaanite. And that is the new testiment.

Second cronicles is not the Torah. 2nd cronicles chapter 2 put the number of Canaanite slaves at 153,600.

Only Canaanite language left is Hebrew. you push the vacant idea that no longer speeking any of the canaanite tribe's languages means the Canaanite's descendents don't exist. With that kind of thinking, judeans speeking Aramaic 2000 years ago means judeans did not exist 2000 years ago. It is a pretty lame notion. But, I am sure there are many people like you who are prejudiced enough to make such statements.

I am sure I left something out, but will not try to figute it out just now.

1. Silly response

Guess what, ALL 50 of those languages AND at least a hundred more are spoken in New York City. Does that change the history of the people who were living in the US? Did relativly recent Cuban emigrats moving to Florida make me a Cuban? Hardly. Emigrants do not subtract from the history of Americans, it adds to the history of Americans. If I were to have babies with a Cuban American, those babies would have MY history as well as the mother's Cuban history.

If Palestinians want to accept 49 of those various peoples into palestinian society, then that is the Palestinian's busniess. And noone else's. If the palestinians want to reject the people who spoke Yiddish from Palestinian society because those Zionists were openly calling for Zionists to carve a country out of Palestinian lands, that is ALSO the Palestinian's business and noone else's.

But that bit about Palestinians not being a "separate identifiable people is just a SICK attempt to marginalize the palestinian's basic human right NOT to be destroyed by murderous thieving Zionist crusaders. Do you even know what country Cleveland is in??? We are hardly a nation state either. That doesn't give Zionists a birthright of murderous theft of US lands.

palestine is defined (by WHOM? Zionists?) in its opostion to the Zionist's bloodsoaked occupation of Palestinian lands. I don't know what point you are trying to make here, if any. SO I can't really adress whatever you had intended to say

WHY RESPONSE WAS SILLY

There was no “Palestinian society” to integrate into. That’s why there were over 50 languages spoken there. “Palestinian” meant “Jew” until 1964. In 1964 the phrase was made up by Nasser along with the PLO and then, that ethnic identity was artificially assigned to a previously not separate or identifiable people. “Palestine” was an out dated term, revived by the British to avoid using the phrase “Holy Land” or “Judea.”

Silly Response 2
2. Arab armies move on. Allegedly followed by Arab collonists.

First of all, if you are going to call someone a liar, it might help your rant if you were actualy disagree with what I wrote.

As for Arab collonists moving in, there might have been a few. But Arabs were few. Much to few to replace ANY of the people in ANY of the lands they occupied. If they had swamped the place, the Arabic language would have taken hold much quicker that 200 years. But no, there is no record of Arabs replacing ANY nation's homeland.

. 200 years to adopt Arabic

then you wrote about how the East Roman empire and the local occupied people and slaves spoke Greek. Did I miss something? Like, where you disagree with what I wrote AGAIN.

And before Greek, they spoke Roman, and before that, they spoke Aramaic. Yep, Jesus and the Judans and the Canaanites spoke Aramaic. Just how does any of that change the fact that the locals took 200 years to adopt Arabic as their own language? fact is, it doesn't.

then you alleged that the locals were replaced several times since, which is just a lie. There is no evidence to support your supposition.

WHY RESPONSE WAS SILLY

At the time of the Arab conquests, the land of Israel had suffered the loss of most but not all of its Jewish population, invasions by Persia, and then re-conquest by Byzantium. Most of the non-Jewish population at that time was Greek speaking. The reason that people continued to speak Greek is that was the international trade language of that area. During each of the many conquests, population was lost, peasants slaughtered etc. After the Crusades, the Mongols band the Black plague, the Turks pulled the population away from the coastal plains and into the hills. By the 19th century, the Turks were importing peoples from other parts of their empire i.e. Circassians from the Caucusus , Bosnians etc. Simply, the population was turned over and replaced several times. It is silly to assert that a place at the cross roads of the world was untouched by history.

Silly Response
4. slaves offer freedom to convert to Islam.

Again, when you go around calling people liars, it can only help your rant if you actualy disagreed with those you call a liar.

But that isn't even half of it, then you admitted that not only slaves seeking freedom (positive reinforcment) converted, but that non-slave Christians and Jews were pushed to convert with to Islam through negative reinforcments.

Ummm, how should I put this...? OR should I let you try to think about that one on your own for a few seconds??? I know I am going to take a break to laugh my ass off.

WHY RESPONSE WAS SILLY

Its easy, Greek speaking Xians converted, Jews tended not to u rather emigrated.

Silly Reponse
5.PPyy omits 1000 years of history

Sorry, I do not omit the fact that many foreign invadors have ruled the locals for at least 3000 years. What, is there anyone stupid enough to believe that Brittish flags flying over palestinian lands made the Palestinian's Brittish??? Well, turkish flags couldn't get the locals to adopt Turkish as their language either. What flag flys over Palestine does not define who the Palestinans are.

Black plauge? Yep, it killed quite a few. Mongols, yep, they killed some Muslims everywhere they went. Baghdad was totaly destroyed, but folks from the country side repopulated their (THEIR) capital city.

Turks pulled the locals from the coastal plains. So what? they moved back, didn't they? Katrina drove people out of New Orleans. Even with all the problems still plauging the town, many have already moved back.

zionist modern agriculture drew imigrants. Nope, Zionists were hardly prosperous. When Winston Churchill went to Palestine to see if Brittish support of Zionist invasion should be continued, the Zionists had to borrow money to through him parties. they even rented (RENTED) horses from Palestinians to give him a false view of how well Zionists were doing. It wasn't until afer Zionists beca,e murderous thieves of palestinian farms orchards and graizing lands that Zionists started making any cash.

WHY RESPONSE WAS SILLY

Please show me where “they moved back.” That’s nonsense. By the 15th century Jaffa was a pile of rubble. Like Baghdad wad destroyed, nver to regain its former glory, so was “Palestine’. Baghdad came to be populated by people from elsewhere, so did “Palestine.” Take a look at the Hula and Jezreel valleys before and after Zionism and then talk to me about agriculture.

Silly Response
6. Brittish slaughtered Palestinians trying to resist the Zionist invadors.

Again, where do you disagree with the one you call a liar??? I don't see it.

Instead you write about Britts restricted Zionist invadors access to the palestinian's homeland. And that is crap. The number of jews in Palestine went from 4 1/2 % Palestinian Jews to 45% including the Zionist invadors. Ohhh, that is really standing in the Zionist way, especialy with so many Syrians etc allegedly moving in.

And you wrote about how England gave 75% of palestinian's homeland to the Britt's heshmite allies. yes, britts helped heshemites invade and occupy eastern palestine. And your point was what? That Britts giving Palestinian lands to Arab Heshmites gives Britts a right to give the western portions of palestine to the Britt's ZIonist allies??? Well, that would be a pretty stupid supposition. I can't even imagine someone being prejudiced enough to buy into that load of shit.

WHY RESPONSE WAS SILLY
The British gave away 80% of the British Mandate of Palestine to the Hashemite king. He was no more and no less “Palestinian”than anyone else because the phrase hadn’t been made up yet. When the duplicitous British pulled out they left their police forts in Arab hands, a British officer in charge of the Arab legion (John Glubb) and instructions on how to ru the governmental bureaucracies in Arabic and English but not Hebrew, obviously anticipating an Arab slaughter of Jews. Once oil was discovered in the ‘30s the British openly favored the Arabs.

Silly Response
7. only 4 1/2 % is not questionable.

ottoman census records for taxation and conscription go back hundreds of years, and the proportions of Palestinian jews Christians and Muslims remain constant until the Zionist's started their invasion. Then, only the percentage of jews in the land increased until the Zionist's murderous theft of palestinian lands gave Palestinian Christians a reason to leave in large numbers, which they did.

Bedouin were a part of Turkish census records, paid taxes to the ottomans and were conscripted into the turkish military. What, you think the turkish rulers chose NOT to tax the Bedouin??? Is anyone that stupid? you say they went from country to country. WHAT country? It was the ottoman EMPIRE, and the ottomans knew who they were and how many there were. No permanant adress? Well, the Turks fund a way around that with several tactics, tatoo IDs followed by the bedouin needing papers. Caught without your papers, and you are not going anywhere untill your identity was determined.

Zionists were illegals hiding from Britts. And what could that have to do with the Palestinian Jews being only 4 1/2 %??? Wow.

WHY RESPONSE WAS SILLY

Very silly! Bedouins don’t register with census! And they don’t pay taxes either today if they can avoid it. “Palestinian” Xians began to leave in large numbers only after Oslo when the Moslems pushed them out.

8. Only record of Canaanites is in archeology and the Torah

Sorry, but Jesus' boy Simon was a Canaanite. And that is the new testiment.

Second cronicles is not the Torah. 2nd cronicles chapter 2 put the number of Canaanite slaves at 153,600.

Only Canaanite language left is Hebrew. you push the vacant idea that no longer speeking any of the canaanite tribe's languages means the Canaanite's descendents don't exist. With that kind of thinking, judeans speeking Aramaic 2000 years ago means judeans did not exist 2000 years ago. It is a pretty lame notion. But, I am sure there are many people like you who are prejudiced enough to make such statements.

I am sure I left something out, but will not try to figute it out just now.

WHY RESPONSE WAS SILLY

“Simon” is a distinctively Jewish name and “Canaanite” might have been a nick name or a later insertion, as is common with Xian texts, as there were no existing “Canaanites by then. The last of Canaanites, the Edomites had been converted generations before (Herod the Idumean“). Oh, and its not uncommon to speak more than one language i.e. Aramaic and Hebrew

"First of all let me say that when people make claims that the majority of today's Palestinians originate from 1000 years ago Arabs are depending on an absolute lie fabricated by Arab propaganda. History in Palestine did not begin and end with the brief Arab conquest in the seventh century which was to rule briefly Christians and Jews who occupied the area already. In fact these invasions were by non-Arab hired mercenaries who remained on the land as soldiers enticed by the promises of booty. These different races were an interesting blend and mix of nations and peoples; "Balkans, Greeks, Syrians, Latins, Egyptians, Turks, Armenians, Italians, Persians, Kurds, Germans, Afghans, Circassians, Bosnians, Sudaneese, Samaritans, Algerians, Motawila, Tartars, Hungarians, Scots, Navarese, Bretons, English, Franks, Ruthenians, Bohemians, Bulgarians, Georgians, Syrians, Persian Nestorians, Indians, Copts, Maronites, and many other" (DeHass, History p. 258. John of Wuzburg list from Reinhold Rohricht edition, pp. 41, 69)

Besides small spots of population by the above groups, Palestine was mostly empty. One historian after the other agrees to a major fact which Bible already predicted long ago that the land of Israel would be a desolation:

Dio Cassius describing Israel when it was destroyed by the Romans: "Of their forts the 50 strongets were razed to the ground, 985 of their best known villages were destroyed..... Thus the whole of Judea became desert, as indeed had been foretold to the Jews before the war. For the Tomb of Solomon, whom these folks celebrate in their sacred rights, fell into it's own accord into fragments, and wolves and hyenas, many in number roamed howling through their cities" (History of the Romans, lxix, 12-14 cited by DeHass, History, pp 55-56).

De Hass: "The real source of the interest in the problem was the condition of Palestine; empty, silent, waste, ruin between 1840 and 1880" (De Haas, History, p. 407).

Carl Herman Voss: "In the twelve and a half centuries between the Arab conquest in the seventh centuries and the beginning of the Jewish return in the 1880's, Palestine was laid waste. It's ancient canal and irrigation system were destroyed and the wondrous fertility of which the Bible spoke vanished into desert and desolation... Under the Ottoman Empire of the Turks, the policy of disfoilation continued; the hillsides were denuded of trees and the valleys robbed of their topsoil" (The Palestine Problem Today, Israel and It's Neighbors, Boston, 1953, p. 13).

There were no Cannanites or Jebusites, only parasites.

Ernst Frankenstine: "It was in 1878, Harsh conditions forced many groups to immigrate into Palestine; Circassian, Algerians, Egyptians, Druses, Turks, Kurds, Bosnians, and others. 141,000 settled Muslims living in all of Palestine (all areas) in 1882, at least 25% of those 141,000 were new comers who arrived after 1831 from the Egyptian conquest." (Ernst Frankenstine, Justice for my people, London, Nicholson and Watson, 1943 p. 127).

Mark Twain: "Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.... desolate and unlovely... it is a dreamland" (Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, pp. 349)

Jerusalem Commerce reports: "1840, Jerusalem's population of 15,000 of whom 8,000 Jews, 4,500 Muslims, and the rest Christians" (No. 238, report of Commerce of Jerusalem during the year 1863, F.O. 195/808, May 1864). Please note, that the population of Jerusalem was always majority Jews.

Most Palestine was desolate for 2000 years as The Bible predicted. In my city I remember everyone able to give his/her origin, a family with the last name Bolous knows that he is originally from Greece, Khresto (Greek), Roza (Latino), Mughrabi (Maghreb), Bannurah (Egyptian), Tio (Latino), Qumsieh (Greek), Hourani (Syria), Hilal (Turkey), Batarseh (Greek), Shoebat (Jordan). This example is typical of all the Palestinian Arabs. All these people came no less than 150 years ago and even the Arab immigrant families like Al-Nashasheebi, Al-Khalidi, and Al-Husseini settled in Palestine in the same period and were given the status of "Efendi" which made them an upper class taking over the lands while the rest of the lower class "Falaheen" were exploited, so I do not understand were you get your statement that Palestinians do not know there origin. The city I lived in was desolate until my great grand father with 6 other families settled in our village which is now inhabited by 40,000 people. My grand father was a good friend of Haj Al-Ameen Al-Husseni the leader of the Palestinian revolution against Israel and a staunch friend of Hitler who coordinated with Hitler the "final solution" to the Jewish Problem and was with Hitler at the eve of the "Final Solution" November 21, 1941. I have pictures, and letters as well if you would you like to see? What a shame. My grand father owned a big portion the city, he was the Mukhtar (leader) of our clan. "

Ohhh, there are some palestinians who didn't join the palestinian's society until so and so year. And there are many AMERICANS from Cuba who didn't join AMERICAN society until Castro took controle.

Big differance: they joined the local's society, while Zionist are murderous thieves of Palestinian lands

"Palestinian" was a made up identity, created by Nasser, and the Arab League in 1964. There was no "Palestinian society" to join. There were various peoples, moving in and out of a devastated land, many of them, "Arabs and part of the Greater Arab Nation."

"American" = made up identity

Yep, George washington was a "Virginian" (also a made up identity) until the day he died.

Robert E. Lee was oposed to cesesion, but when his state left the union, he gave up his commision in the union army, returned to his state, and became the commander of the confederate army.

You argue lables to denigrate the Palestinian's society and basic human right NOT to be destroyed by the murderous thieving Zionist crusaders as if you had a valid point. You are full of shit.

The intent of the made up identity of "Palestinian" was solely in opposition to the existance of the state of Israel by the nations ofthe Arab league. The Arab League cynically determined to use these people, purposely kept in refugee camps as a future source of human cannon fodder against Israel. But for Israel, we would never have heard of anything like "Palestinian" and certainly no "Palestinian State." Any such nationalism would be severely punished by which ever Arab despot was in charge.

And what is the intent of the made up entity known as "Jordan"? Jordan is just eastern palestinian lands that Brittish occupiers gave to heshemite occupiers.

What Palestinians call themselves is their own business. palestinians could call themselves Butt Nuggets and call their homeland the ASS, and ZIonists still would have no birthright of murderous theft of even 1 single rock in Palestine.

But obviously your real intent is to marginalize the Palestinians into some subhuman untermensch status to rationalize the Zionist's bloodsoaked crusade. Lets us know when you got something that isn't vacant hate speech.

Let me get your point right, you acknowledge that today's "Palestinians" are the descendants of a variety of peoples that immigrated into pre-state Israel but that in your mind, this gives them greater rights to the land of Israel than the descendants of the aborignal inhabitants, the Jews?

Now thats prejudice!

So you are saying that even though the Jews were born there and lived there for thousands of years- they have no "right" to live in Israel?

What "right" do the "Palestinians" have?

Here is another made up identity for you: Brittish.

I often write of the Britts. And thanks to Brittish offenses around the world, it is usualy derogotory.

BUT there is no such nation of people. Brittania is just a word Roman invadors gave to what we today know as Brittan. The people are descended from many foreign invadors. Angles, (where the word England comes from) Saxons, Jutes (from Jutland alled Denmark today) , Romans, Celts (who are also from mainland Europe, and folks before them.

Is it OK to you (as if your aproval is even warented) if the mixed peoples call themselves Brittish and defend their basic human right not to be destroyed by foreign invadors, including Saxons or Danes???

Hebrews were just one of many foreign invadors of the land. hebrews slaughtering and enslaving the Canaanite nations does NOT make Palestine a Jewish homeland, no matter how twisted your brain is.

A person who is not brainwashed would see that palestinians, who are more of a mixed society than "England", would have at least as much of a right NOT to be destroyed by foriegn invadors as the so called Brittish people would have AND that Hebrews slaughtering and enslaving the Canaanite tribes is a PISS POOR pretext for ZIonists to be murderous thieves of the lands TOO.

It is Zionists and their enablers who push the uidea that Hebrews slaughtering and enslaving the Canaanite tribes gives them a birthright of murderous theft of palestinian lands. That is comparable to the NAZIs who tried to push the idea that because German invadors once ruled Bohemia and Moravia in the Holy Roman Empire and that ethnic Germans still lived in the land (Sudaten Mountains) that the NAZIs invasion of Czechoslovakia was their birthright. All that Zionists and their enablers are doing when they push the same BS rationalizations that NAZIs used to invade Czechoslovakia is showcasing to the world that Zionists and their enablers share the moral ethics of NAZIs.

That was gibberish and i do't think that you know antything abot Canaanites or the Moabite Stela. And of course, events of 3500 years ago have nothing to do with "Palestinians" being cobbled together by Nasser in 1964 ce.

"cobbled together by Nasser" ?

And who were the Brittish slaughtering by the thousands in the 1920s and 1930s? Not people "cobbled together" by some Egyptian in the 1960s.

Let us know if you got something of substance. Argueing lables like you do is just pathetic and void of rational thought. It might be good enough for the tools brainwashed by the media. But not to the folks on the internet who are learning how to do their own thinking for themselves

1948, Israel, and the Palestinians - The True Story

by Efraim KARSH • Thursday, May. 08, 2008 at 9:42 AM

http://www.commenta rymagazine. com/viewarticle. cfm/1948- -israel-- a nd-the-palestinians -br--the- true-story- 11355

http://tinyurl. com/4apu47

Sixty years after its establishment by an internationally
recognized act of self-determination, Israel remains the
only state in the world that is subjected to a constant
outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and
blood libels; whose policies and actions are obsessively
condemned by the international community; and whose right to
exist is constantly debated and challenged not only by its
Arab enemies but by segments of advanced opinion in the
West.

During the past decade or so, the actual elimination of the
Jewish state has become a cause célèbre among many of
these
educated Westerners. The "one-state solution," as
it is
called, is a euphemistic formula proposing the replacement
of Israel by a state, theoretically comprising the whole of
historic Palestine, in which Jews will be reduced to the
status of a permanent minority. Only this, it is said, can
expiate the "original sin" of Israel´s
founding, an act
built (in the words of one critic) "on the ruins of Arab
Palestine" and achieved through the deliberate and
aggressive dispossession of its native population.

This claim of premeditated dispossession and the consequent
creation of the longstanding Palestinian "refugee
problem"
forms, indeed, the central plank in the bill of particulars
pressed by Israel´s alleged victims and their Western
supporters. It is a charge that has hardly gone undisputed.
As early as the mid-1950´s, the eminent American historian
J.C. Hurewitz undertook a systematic refutation, and his
findings were abundantly confirmed by later generations of
scholars and writers. Even Benny Morris, the most
influential of Israel´s revisionist "new
historians," and
one who went out of his way to establish the case for
Israel´s "original sin," grudgingly
stipulated that there
was no "design" to displace the Palestinian Arabs.

The recent declassification of millions of documents from
the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) and Israel´s
early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of
writers and ignored or distorted by the "new
historians,"
paint a much more definitive picture of the historical
record. They reveal that the claim of dispossession is not
only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. What
follows is based on fresh research into these documents,
which contain many facts and data hitherto unreported.

Far from being the hapless objects of a predatory Zionist
assault, it was Palestinian Arab leaders who from the early
1920´s onward, and very much against the wishes of their
own
constituents, launched a relentless campaign to obliterate
the Jewish national revival. This campaign culminated in the
violent attempt to abort the UN resolution of November 29,
1947, which called for the establishment of two states in
Palestine. Had these leaders, and their counterparts in the
neighboring Arab states, accepted the UN resolution, there
would have been no war and no dislocation in the first
place.

The simple fact is that the Zionist movement had always been
amenable to the existence in the future Jewish state of a
substantial Arab minority that would participate on an equal
footing "throughout all sectors of the country´s
public
life." The words are those of Ze´ev Jabotinsky, the
founding
father of the branch of Zionism that was the forebear of
today´s Likud party. In a famous 1923 article, Jabotinsky
voiced his readiness "to take an oath binding ourselves
and
our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to
the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try
to eject anyone."

Eleven years later, Jabotinsky presided over the drafting of
a constitution for Jewish Palestine. According to its
provisions, Arabs and Jews were to share both the
prerogatives and the duties of statehood, including most
notably military and civil service. Hebrew and Arabic were
to enjoy the same legal standing, and "in every cabinet
where the prime minister is a Jew, the vice-premiership
shall be offered to an Arab and vice-versa."

If this was the position of the more "militant"
faction of
the Jewish national movement, mainstream Zionism not only
took for granted the full equality of the Arab minority in
the future Jewish state but went out of its way to foster
Arab-Jewish coexistence. In January 1919, Chaim Weizmann,
then the upcoming leader of the Zionist movement, reached a
peace-and-cooperati on agreement with the Hashemite emir
Faisal ibn Hussein, the effective leader of the nascent
pan-Arab movement. From then until the proclamation of the
state of Israel on May 14, 1948, Zionist spokesmen held
hundreds of meetings with Arab leaders at all levels. These
included Abdullah ibn Hussein, Faisal´s elder brother and
founder of the emirate of Transjordan (later the kingdom of
Jordan), incumbent and former prime ministers in Syria,
Lebanon, Egypt, and Iraq, senior advisers of King Abdul Aziz
ibn Saud (founder of Saudi Arabia), and Palestinian Arab
elites of all hues.

As late as September 15, 1947, two months before the passing
of the UN partition resolution, two senior Zionist envoys
were still seeking to convince Abdel Rahman Azzam, the Arab
League´s secretary-general, that the Palestine conflict
"was
uselessly absorbing the best energies of the Arab League,"
and that both Arabs and Jews would greatly benefit "from
active policies of cooperation and development." Behind
this
proposition lay an age-old Zionist hope: that the material
progress resulting from Jewish settlement of Palestine would
ease the path for the local Arab populace to become
permanently reconciled, if not positively well disposed, to
the project of Jewish national self-determination. As David
Ben-Gurion, soon to become Israel´s first prime minister,
argued in December 1947:
If the Arab citizen will feel at home in our state, ...
if the state will help him in a truthful and dedicated way
to reach the economic, social, and cultural level of the
Jewish community, then Arab distrust will accordingly
subside and a bridge will be built to a Semitic, Jewish-Arab
alliance.

On the face of it, Ben-Gurion´s hope rested on reasonable
grounds. An inflow of Jewish immigrants and capital after
World War I had revived Palestine´s hitherto static
condition and raised the standard of living of its Arab
inhabitants well above that in the neighboring Arab states.
The expansion of Arab industry and agriculture, especially
in the field of citrus growing, was largely financed by the
capital thus obtained, and Jewish know-how did much to
improve Arab cultivation. In the two decades between the
world wars, Arab-owned citrus plantations grew sixfold, as
did vegetable-growing lands, while the number of olive
groves quadrupled.

No less remarkable were the advances in social welfare.
Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the Muslim
population dropped sharply and life expectancy rose from
37.5 years in 1926-27 to 50 in 1942-44 (compared with 33 in
Egypt). The rate of natural increase leapt upward by a
third.

That nothing remotely akin to this was taking place in the
neighboring British-ruled Arab countries, not to mention
India, can be explained only by the decisive Jewish
contribution to Mandate Palestine´s socioeconomic
well-being. The British authorities acknowledged as much in
a 1937 report by a commission of inquiry headed by Lord
Peel:
The general beneficent effect of Jewish immigration on
Arab welfare is illustrated by the fact that the increase in
the Arab population is most marked in urban areas affected
by Jewish development. A comparison of the census returns in
1922 and 1931 shows that, six years ago, the increase
percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while
in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only
7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent.

Had the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs been left to
their own devices, they would most probably have been
content to take advantage of the opportunities afforded
them. This is evidenced by the fact that, throughout the
Mandate era, periods of peaceful coexistence far exceeded
those of violent eruptions, and the latter were the work of
only a small fraction of Palestinian Arabs. Unfortunately
for both Arabs and Jews, however, the hopes and wishes of
ordinary people were not taken into account, as they rarely
are in authoritarian communities hostile to the notions of
civil society or liberal democracy. In the modern world,
moreover, it has not been the poor and the oppressed who
have led the great revolutions or carried out the worst
deeds of violence, but rather militant vanguards from among
the better educated and more moneyed classes of society.

So it was with the Palestinians. In the words of the Peel
report:
We have found that, though the Arabs have benefited by
the development of the country owing to Jewish immigration,
this has had no conciliatory effect. On the contrary . . .
with almost mathematical precision the betterment of the
economic situation in Palestine [has] meant the
deterioration of the political situation.

In Palestine, ordinary Arabs were persecuted and murdered by
their alleged betters for the crime of "selling
Palestine"
to the Jews. Meanwhile, these same betters were enriching
themselves with impunity. The staunch pan-Arabist Awni Abdel
Hadi, who vowed to fight "until Palestine is either placed
under a free Arab government or becomes a graveyard for all
the Jews in the country," facilitated the transfer of
7,500
acres to the Zionist movement, and some of his relatives,
all respected political and religious figures, went a step
further by selling actual plots of land. So did numerous
members of the Husseini family, the foremost Palestinian
Arab clan during the Mandate period, including Muhammad
Tahir, father of Hajj Amin Husseini, the notorious mufti of
Jerusalem.

It was the mufti´s concern with solidifying his political
position that largely underlay the 1929 carnage in which 133
Jews were massacred and hundreds more were wounded-just as
it was the struggle for political preeminence that triggered
the most protracted outbreak of Palestinian Arab violence in
1936-39. This was widely portrayed as a nationalist revolt
against both the ruling British and the Jewish refugees then
streaming into Palestine to escape Nazi persecution. In
fact, it was a massive exercise in violence that saw far
more Arabs than Jews or Englishmen murdered by Arab gangs,
that repressed and abused the general Arab population, and
that impelled thousands of Arabs to flee the country in a
foretaste of the 1947-48 exodus.

Some Palestinian Arabs, in fact, preferred to fight back
against their inciters, often in collaboration with the
British authorities and the Hagana, the largest Jewish
underground defense organization. Still others sought
shelter in Jewish neighborhoods. For despite the paralytic
atmosphere of terror and a ruthlessly enforced economic
boycott, Arab-Jewish coexistence continued on many practical
levels even during such periods of turmoil, and was largely
restored after their subsidence.

Against this backdrop, it is hardly to be wondered at that
most Palestinians wanted nothing to do with the violent
attempt ten years later by the mufti-led Arab Higher
Committee (AHC), the effective "government" of the
Palestinian Arabs, to subvert the 1947 UN partition
resolution. With the memories of 1936-39 still fresh in
their minds, many opted to stay out of the fight. In no
time, numerous Arab villages (and some urban areas) were
negotiating peace agreements with their Jewish neighbors;
other localities throughout the country acted similarly
without the benefit of a formal agreement.

Nor did ordinary Palestinians shrink from quietly defying
their supreme leadership. In his numerous tours around the
region, Abdel Qader Husseini, district commander of
Jerusalem and the mufti´s close relative, found the
populace
indifferent, if not hostile, to his repeated call to arms.
In Hebron, he failed to recruit a single volunteer for the
salaried force he sought to form in that city; his efforts
in the cities of Nablus, Tulkarm, and Qalqiliya were hardly
more successful. Arab villagers, for their part, proved even
less receptive to his demands. In one locale, Beit Safafa,
Abdel Qader suffered the ultimate indignity, being driven
out by angry residents protesting their village´s
transformation into a hub of anti-Jewish attacks. Even the
few who answered his call did so, by and large, in order to
obtain free weapons for their personal protection and then
return home.

There was an economic aspect to this peaceableness. The
outbreak of hostilities orchestrated by the AHC led to a
sharp drop in trade and an accompanying spike in the cost of
basic commodities. Many villages, dependent for their
livelihood on the Jewish or mixed-population cities, saw no
point in supporting the AHC´s explicit goal of starving
the
Jews into submission. Such was the general lack of appetite
for war that in early February 1948, more than two months
after the AHC initiated its campaign of violence, Ben-Gurion
maintained that "the villages, in most part, have remained
on the sidelines."

Ben-Gurion´s analysis was echoed by the Iraqi general
Ismail
Safwat, commander-in- chief of the Arab Liberation Army
(ALA), the volunteer Arab force that did much of the
fighting in Palestine in the months preceding Israel´s
proclamation of independence. Safwat lamented that only 800
of the 5,000 volunteers trained by the ALA had come from
Palestine itself, and that most of these had deserted either
before completing their training or immediately afterward.
Fawzi Qawuqji, the local commander of ALA forces, was no
less scathing, having found the Palestinians "unreliable,
excitable, and difficult to control, and in organized
warfare virtually unemployable."

This view summed up most contemporary perceptions during the
fateful six months of fighting after the passing of the
partition resolution. Even as these months saw the all but
complete disintegration of Palestinian Arab society, nowhere
was this described as a systematic dispossession of Arabs by
Jews. To the contrary: with the partition resolution widely
viewed by Arab leaders as &q

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