Tsafrir Renon
The following article was written by a friend of mine, Tsafrir Ronen, who has been working tirelessly to bring the truth about the Jewish claim to the Land of Israel to both Israeli and international audiences. The information contained in this article is critical for an understanding of the Arab claims against Israel and their ultimate goal in creating the fiction of Palestinian nationalism.
Sondra Baras
Director, Israel Office
CFOIC Heartland
Summary
Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman Emperor Hadrian cursed the Jewish People and decreed that Judea should be henceforth called “Palestine” after the Philistines, an ancient enemy of Israel that had disappeared from the world’s stage more than 600 years earlier. It was his final twist of the knife and legacy after wars, massacres, persecutions, and exiles that had largely extinguished the Jewish presence from Judea. Today, the modern enemies of a resurrected Jewish Nation have dusted off Hadrian’s curse and are attempting to pull off a monumental theft: the Arab world have reincarnated “Palestine” to steal Israel’s heritage and the Land of the Jewish People. “Hadrian’s Curse” will expose the BIG lie of the “Palestinian cause” in a full-length 120-minute documentary.
The film will document that there never was a “Palestinian” people, The world has become so accustomed to the “truth” of the “Palestinian” perversion of history and work backwards, exposing recent claims and acts whose absurdity and villainy shock uninformed observers. When Arafat declared: “Our nation is the Arabic nation that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond it”, it turns out that Arafat’s nation already stretches over an area larger than all of Europe.
This is the twisted story of one of the biggest, most remarkable fraud in history. It is such a successful fabrication that many otherwise informed people have been duped and mislead. This propaganda has become a powerful weapon used Israel’s enemies, the Arabs, to try to conquer Eretz Yisrael without firing a shot, without an army, tanks or jets.
The Jewish People eventually bested Hadrian. They returned to their land and reestablished sovereignty over it. They rebuilt Jerusalem as their capital, and resettled desolate Judea. They did all this only to now confront the reincarnated curse of Hadrian in the guise of Arabs renaming themselves “Palestinians” and claiming all the ancient Land as their own. As explained in the Film, many Israelis and lovers of Zion have accepted this misnaming and misidentification. Hadrian’s ancient curse now threatens Israel’s very existence.
Israel’s success and endurance and the world’s hope for peace in the 21st century, demands that the deceit and danger of a Palestinian state must be exposed and avoided. It is our fervent hope that “Hadrian’s Curse” will expose the historical truth.
Part I – The Secret All the Arabs Know
At the Annapolis Conference, George Bush spoke about his vision regarding the virtues of two nations for two peoples.
One of those peoples has a clear identity – the Jewish People. Yet it would be interesting to know the identity of that second people: Already in 1977, one of the central spokesman of that “second people”, a member of P.L.O. leadership, Zahir Muhsein, the leader of the al-Sa’iqa Organization, revealed the truth in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw:
“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa. While as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”
Are you in shock? If the Palestinian People does not exist, what does exist? Arabs who live in Eretz Yisrael and who have disguised themselves as “Palestinians” for fraudulent purposes. “Only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel,” in Muhsein’s words. A fraud so successful that even George Bush can be found seeking a state for that fraud!
Do you think Zahir Muhsein is alone? This transparent fraud about the so-called existence of Palestine is revealed to us by all the Arabs’ leaders:
In 1974, the late Syrian President, Hafez al-Assad, declared: “It would be fitting for us to mention to the responsible Israeli authorities that we view Palestine not just as an inseparable part of the Arab nation, but as a part of Southern Syria.” In 1987, he reiterated himself at a conference in Amman, “A country named ‘Palestine’ has never existed.” Jordanian King Hussein responded, “The appearance of the national Palestinian persona serves as a response to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.”
Yet the prize goes to Arafat who in 1970, with candid simplicity, told the reporter Arianna Palazzi: “The question of borders doesn’t interest us…From the Arab standpoint, we mustn’t talk about borders. Palestine is nothing but a drop in an enormous ocean. Our nation is the Arabic nation that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea and beyond it…..The P.L.O. is fighting Israel in the name of Pan-Arabism. What you call “Jordan” is nothing more than Palestine.”
Such revelations are an eye-opener for anyone who has not understood until today the masked-ball being run by the Arabs: The true meaning of Arafat’s words, that “Palestine is Jordan,” is that for the Arabic people, living under the “Pan-Arab” umbrella, in addition to over twenty Arabic countries, there is already a country called Jordan that was established by the British for the Arabs on 77% of the Land of Israel, promised to the Jewish People by the League of Nations in 1922.
Anywhere else on earth, could an additional country would be established for a people that already has twenty-one countries?
All the same, there is nothing like the testimony of the founder of the P.L.O. himself, Ahmed Shukari. Already in 1956 he proclaimed from the podium of the U.N., as the Arab League’s ambassador there, that “such a creature as Palestine does not exist at all. This land is nothing but the southern portion of Greater Syria…”
And if Ahmed Shukari says that Palestine does not exist at all, the logical inference is that “Palestinians” do not exist at all either. That same Shukari was born of a Turkish mother in Lebanon, was himself a Jordanian lawyer, served as the ambassador of Syria to the U.N., the ambassador of the Arab League to the U.N., and the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the U.N. In 1964, after this talented actor who changed loyalties like a chameleon was fired by the Saudis, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser hired him to found the “Palestine Liberation Organization”, the P.L.O., an organization dedicated to the liberation of a country that in his own words did not exist at all.
All the prominent spokesman of that poor, homeless “people” say openly: The Arabs who live in Eretz Yisrael are precisely the same Arabs who live in Syria, Jordan or Lebanon. They are not a separate country, but a fragment of the enormous Arab nation divided amongst many Arab countries. In their identity they are Arabs and the invention of Palestine is just a transparent bluff: “a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity”.
Can any testimony be better than that of the Arabs themselves, exposing the lies and deception involved in Palestine’s creation?
Yet the most compelling argument for the idea that the “Palestinian People” is a fraudulent invention, and that the Arabs are all one people, was expounded by none other than Mr. Husseini, head of the Supreme Arab Committee, to the U.N. special committee that was deliberating on Eretz Yisrael in 1947:
“An additional consideration of great importance for the Arab world is racial uniformity. The Arabs lived in a broad expanse stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean. They spoke one language, and shared a common history, tradition and aspirations. Their unity was the solid foundation for peace in one of the most central and sensitive regions in the world. For that reason, it does not make sense that the United Nations should facilitate the establishment of a foreign entity within that well-rooted unity.”
Indeed, Mr. Husseini is correct. His declaration before the investigative committee of the United Nations exposes the simple fact that there is no “Palestinian” language and no unique “Palestinian” culture. The Palestinians are Arabs, and they cannot be set apart from the Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Remove from the argument the lies and untruths and you reveal that the conflict is taking place between the Arabic, Muslim empire of twenty-one states and the Jewish People, claiming their right to their one and only historic homeland, consisting of less than one fifth of a percent of the lands under Arab control.
This is the twisted story of the biggest, most unprecedented fraud in history. It involves such a successful bluff that many people have no doubt about its veracity. This propaganda has become a powerful weapon by which means Israel’s enemies, the Arabs, are trying to conquer Eretz Yisrael without firing a shot, without an army, tanks or jets.
Part II – The Arabs’ Ultimate Goal
Following the Six Day War, the Arab countries, defeated by a small county determined to survive, understood that Israel would be impossible to beat militarily. They understood that the Israeli Samson would be possible to beat only by way of the cunning of the Philistine Delilah. And that’s what happened…. No longer would there be cries firing up the masses to genocide, but rather, sophistication… A melody carefully aimed at the delicate western ear. The Arabs discovered that from a propaganda standpoint, it was easier to convince world public opinion of the rights of the poor, small, deprived “Palestinian People” to its own state, than to justify the demand of the enormous Arab empire for an addition of territory from a tiny country fighting for its life.
By such means did their false propaganda gain such a strong foothold in the media and the bastions of liberalism that no one has paid any attention to the simple truths spoken openly by Zahir Muhsein, Assad, Shukari, King Hussein or Arafat.
By means of brainwashing, fabrications, lies, falsification, and taking advantage of the world’s ignorance and the international media’s superficiality, a process has been taking place in broad daylight, for several dozen years already, of counterfeiting and blotting out history. And just as Goebbels and Hitler, the arch propagandists of the 20th century said derisively, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe in it.
Fulfilling the demands of the Palestinian lie, will put an end to the identity of Eretz Yisrael. Following the loss of the Land’s identity, will come the loss of our right to the land. For, if there are “Palestinians”, that implies that there is also a land called Palestine, and if there is a Palestine… then there is no Eretz Yisrael.
The most terrible part is that large sectors of Israel, itself, have already fallen into the Arab propaganda trap. It is they who are opening the door to the Trojan horse that will destroy the identity of Eretz Yisrael. This is a war that is not being waged by means of weapons and armies, or over physical territory. It is being waged on the battlefields of awareness of the Land’s identity. The Roman name “Philistia” was a fiction invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian after the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 C.E., a fiction of Hadrian then, and a fiction of the Arabs today, to the same degree.
It is a fabrication that represents no people, not then and not today. It is a sophisticated fiction invented for one purpose and one purpose alone, to wipe out a land’s identity. If the land is called Palestine, then the Jewish people are occupiers. If the land is called Eretz Yisrael, then the Arabs are occupiers.
This is the essence of the Arab propaganda war, which is intended to steal the identity of Eretz Yisrael and to transform it into Palestine, and by such means to turn the Jewish people into occupiers of Eretz Yisrael. That’s the whole story.
Now it’s already clear. The Palestinian identity is tactical, artificial and temporary. It is just a tool in the pan-Arab struggle against Israel. The amazing thing is that it’s all out in the open. Section 12 of the Palestinian charter summarizes the idea of this temporary identity, by stating that:
“The Palestinian people believes in Arab unification. It believes that in order to fulfill its task towards achieving this goal, it must, at this stage of its national struggle, preserve all the components of its Palestinian personality, and it must increase awareness of its existence, and reject all plans liable to weaken it or make it disappear.”
Is there another people in the world that writes in its charter of self-definition the expression “at this stage”? And what will be in the next stage? Obviously, after conquering Israel, the territory will be divided up between Arab countries, and those Arab countries themselves will throw Palestine into the wastebasket of history.
As Arafat said, the Palestinian people are a fiction. The same is true regarding the Jordanian people, and all the other Arabic speaking peoples in the Middle East. These are not peoples with separate identities, but part of the great Arab nation. Only that has a true identity. By their self-definition, they cannot be divided up into a number of peoples with individual identities. Rather, they constitute one nation consisting of many states, as Arafat himself said to Arianna Palazzi in an incautious moment.
For the sophisticated Saudis, with their Saudi Peace Plan, it is clear that its purpose is not to actualize the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, for no such people exists. They conceal the truth that the great Arab nation has already actualized its right to self-determination by establishing a large number of countries, one of which extends over about 78% of the area of mandatory Eretz Yisrael. For the Arabs, exploding with laughter over the foolishness of the West, it is clear that if an additional Arab state arises in the western portion of Eretz Yisrael, that will not serve the right of self-determination, but the demand of imperial conquest of all Eretz Yisrael by the Arab nation. Is George Bush dragging Israel to its destruction?
The Palestinian fabrication is exposed precisely when we listen to authentic Arab voices. The prominent Arab historian, Dr. Philip Hitti, who expressed himself at the Anglo-American commission of inquiry in the State Department building in 1947, said as follows:
“Sir, Palestine never existed throughout history. Absolutely not!”
Moreover, Professor Juhan Hazam, in his testimony before that same commission, added:
“Before 1917, when Balfour made his declaration, there had never been a Palestinian question, and there was no Palestine as a political or geographic unit.”
Also a local Arab leader, Abd al-Mahdi, testified before the Peal Commission in 1937 as follows:
“There is no such land. Palestine is a term invented by the Zionists. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our land was for hundreds of years a part of Syria.”
Indeed, this is a picture of the real situation in 1918 and at the start of the British conquest of Eretz Yisrael…
Were there any trace of truth to the claim regarding the historicity of a Palestinian People, we should certainly have expected to find mention of it in the history books and encyclopedias, as well as in archaeological research.
Part III- Will Israel finish Hadrian’s Work?
Thus, the way to Palestinian Hell was paved with the good intentions of Christian Zionists like Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary. In the Balfour declaration, and by the decree of the Mandate, they decided, based on historic rights, to grant Eretz Yisrael to the Jewish people. Yet they called it Hadrian’s Roman name, Palestine, which had originally had the precise intention of blotting it off the map.
From that moment on, the way was prepared for the birth of the Palestinian fiction.
The name Palestine, by which the British accidentally called the land, bore the seeds of destruction of the Palestinian bluff, as if the entire Land was the stolen property of the Palestinian people, an ancient, rooted people, thousands of years old. This was such an incredible but successful fabrication that large portions of Israeli society fell into its snare. In the report presented in 1938 to the League of Nations, the British made it very clear: “The name ‘Palestine’ is not a country but a geographic region.’”
No one could have imagined in 1917, at the time of the Balfour declaration during WWI, that anyone would use the name Palestine to create a monstrous, hostile, false identity, for propaganda purposes, and would engrave on their flag the destruction of Israel.
The reporter and writer Joan Peters, in her book From Time Immemorial, writes, “The one and only identity never adopted [by the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael] before 1967 was that of ‘Palestinian Arab’.”
The Palestinian lie was not hatched by any land or any people, but by a map, a map drawn by two European colonial ministers, an Englishman, Herman Sykes, and a Frenchman, George Picot, and on the map was written… “Palestine”. It was clear to the British that Palestine as a sovereign political unit had never existed. No nation had ever borne its name. No people had ever prayed for its welfare. It was a name that hadn’t existed at all for 1300 years, ironically, precisely when Muslim empires were dominant. “Palestine” was a Roman political fabrication that had faded and disappeared together with the empire that had created it.
The Land regained independence only when the name “Eretz Yisrael” [the Land of Israel], the name in the hearts of the first Zionists, was restored to it. Had not this identity been preserved by the Jewish People, and had it not been preserved in the hearts of the Christian Bible-loving nations who made up the League of Nations, the national rebirth of the Jewish People might never have taken place.
This is the substance of the war being waged on millions of television screens throughout the world. It is being waged over the identity of Eretz Yisrael. It is being waged by means of all the media, and it seems as though the Arabs have the upper hand, while Israel leaves an impression of impotence, of not yet having even identified the battlefield on which its fate will be sealed.
While Israel prepares jets and tanks for a military struggle, Israel’s enemies are preparing their weapons for the final battle, for sticking the last dagger into the back of a State of Israel that does not understand and is not even ready for this battle. Unless Israel prepares for this battle, comes to an understanding of its complexity and frees itself from the false terminologies and constant brainwashing, Israel will be defeated and its land will be irrevocably taken from it.
Will Israel, which valiantly vanquished all the Arab armies when they attacked it also know how to face this propaganda attack that is threatening to destroy it?
It would seem as though the battle is already decided. The Arab propaganda has already penetrated the nervous system and destroyed the immune system that defended the Jewish People for 2000 years, with even the Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister saying that “Israel’s interest is to establish a Palestinian state”…
In other words, what they want is for the Bible to be rewritten and for King David’s land of the Bible to become the land of Goliath the Philistine.
Could anything be more insane? Is there another nation on earth that behaves this way?
Is it possible that Israel will be beaten without a single shot being fired, simply handing over their land to a wretched fabrication, a coarse, primitive, charlatan canard, a deception that conceals the destruction that the Arabs are preparing for Israel? Could Israel’s leaders be too blind to see the danger looming of the Land’s Jewish identity being lost? Will precisely the vision of the prophets, fulfilled with the establishment of the State of Israel, bring with it the destruction of the identity of the Jewish People’s land, and lead to its exchange for the false identity of Hadrian – Palestine?
When lies are repeated many times, they become true. Such a lie is the fabrication regarding the existence of a historic Palestinian identity. That false identity, which began with Hadrian’s curse and that was revived by Lord Balfour, has become a first rate propaganda tool. It became that the moment the Arabs understood the potential of destroying the identity of Eretz Yisrael, and with it the identity of the People of Israel, whose name bears the stamp of ownership of the Land.
The struggle against Israel was the glue that bound the Arab world, otherwise sunken in endless internal quarrels. The Arabs’ aim in fabricating Palestine was not to build a nation but to annihilate a nation. Yet to conceal that plan, they invented the plan of “phases”. The first phase is the invention of a “Palestinian People.” The second phase is the liquidation of Israel, weakened and wearied after Oslo.
By such means did the Arabs conceal their genocidal intent with a “new tool”, in the words of Zahir Muhsein, for conquering Eretz Yisrael without firing a shot.
All of these lies and falsehoods, this whole “costume ball” is being marketed by the media, which is turning out to be an obsessive collaborator with the biggest lie on earth.
Precisely this Hadrian understood. That’s why he chose the name Palestine.
Precisely this is understood as well by Hadrian’s heirs – the Arab propagandists who through their use of this false name sever the historic tie between the People and the Land of Israel. Without doing that, it would be impossible to use the word “conquest” – could a people be considered the conqueror of its own land? The question Israel faces is this: Will the Jews forego the name and the identity of their Biblical land? Will the Christian world agree to concede on the identity of the cradle of western civilization, the holy land, Eretz Yisrael?
It’s the twist of fate that for all this to happen, the Jews had to vanquish Hadrian completely, return to their land, establish sovereignty, resurrect the Hebrew language, establish a mighty army, industry, the best agriculture on earth, hi-tech, culture, song, dance, reestablish a nation, rebuild Jerusalem as their capital and settle every town and village that Hadrian destroyed. Could we have possibly come full circle? Will Hadrian’s curse, which didn’t succeed for 1800 year, precisely when Israel was in exile from their land, succeed just now, with Israel’s return? Will it be precisely the Israeli government that will resurrect Hadrian’s curse, previously lost in the depths of forgetfulness?
Today, 1800 years later, an Israeli Prime Minister is calling for fulfilling what Hadrian failed to do – the erasure of Eretz Yisrael and the establishment of Palestine.
The Emperor Hadrian is smiling from the grave.
The writer, a Former member of the secular Kibbutz “Ein Charod” is a media personality, serves in an elite army unit [Sayeret Matkal] and was one of the founders of the “Nahalal Forum on Behalf of the Entire Eretz Yisrael”. He is presently preparing a documentary film on the Arab Palestine myth called : Hadrian’s Curse