Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Palestinian Media Watch notes that Israel's peace partners have been up to their old tricks, revising history for convenience' sake. These guys tell absolute whoppers because it plays well at home, and no one in the foreign press ever calls them on it: PATV: Jews have no history in Land of Israel
A Palestinian historian and a senior PLO official have denied that the Jewish nation has any historical connection to the Land of Israel, thus continuing the Palestinian Authority's ongoing historical revision.
In an interview on official PA television, historian Nabil Alqam first denied thousands of years of documented Jewish history in Israel, then replaced it with "4,000 to 5,000 years" of fictitious Palestinian history.
Israel has publicized many archeological finds in recent years, including coins with Hebrew writing and even stamps [bullas] with names of biblical figures. It is possible that Alqam was responding to these numerous finds when he went on to accuse Israel of creating "artificial Israeli symbols."...
There's more, including video, at the link. What's more, here's Jeremy Sharon at The Guardian (! -- don't get excited, this is tokenism): Writing Jews out of Jerusalem's history - "The whipping up of unrest around the Temple Mount is part of an insidious campaign to cast Jewish people as modern interlopers..."
You don't have to care about religion to care about this issue. The issue actually involves freedom of belief, respect for others, politics, and the fact that Arab Islam, where it becomes strong, is simply not one that shows respect for non-Muslim belief.
Very nice article.
Scroll down to the comments section, however, and you'll see some stuff that's really disheartening.
The comments are mainly of the "what do you expect when the Israelis are stealing their land" variety. Some of them sound really off the wall.
I guess that was predictable, given that it's CiF.
It seems such a stupid enterprise. How is this Palestinian narrative supposed to fly in the Christian West, where the story of Jesus is repeated every Christmas and Easter, with Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem as the background? It's one thing to make up whoppers about a small faith community of 12 million, but 2.1 billion Christians aren't going to be so easily brushed aside.
It's very simple, Diane.
Most people wouldn't define a population as indigenous if that population--as a whole--hadn't who lived in that region for 2,000 years. Rather, they would look at who's lived there over the many centuries since.
The idea that the Arabs "only" arrived as late as the seventh century, and so therefore are not really the original populace would be considered laughable by most people.
Of course, I know that the situation is more complex than that. The Jews always remained a significant presence in the land and considered it their own. But that nuance is often lost.
You say that two billion Christians cannot be pushed aside? Unfortunately, most of them don't have to be pushed. Many Christians might object to the Jews' calling the land their own because as one (none-religious) Christian friend told me, "all three religions have their roots there."
Then there is the notion of supersessionism, or replacement theology, which holds that the Jews lost their Covenant when they didn't accept Jesus as their Messiah, and so lost any special connection to the Holy Land.
It's true that, in the early 20th century, there were Christians in Britain and the US who liked the idea of returning the Jews to their ancestral land. That was because they were believing Christians who didn't adhere to the supersessionist view. But that point of view is long gone, except among many fundamentalist US Christians.
Also, many Europeans today are "post-Christian," meaning that they are Christians by culture and tradition but do not take the theology seriously. For them, saying that the Jews belong in the ME because of the fact that Jesus was a Jew living among Jews in that area would be totally incomprehensible to them.
Most people, including the more then two billion Christians, see the area in terms of more recent history, and in terms of politics, not religion.
The sad fact is that the Palestinian narrative is an easier one to simplify and convincingly communicate. Just put it within the boilerplate framework of European "colons" oppressing an indigenous population. Then add stories--some true, some false--about the occupation. Presto, bingo, you have a winning argument everywhere in the world.