Jerusalem – It has been well documented that the so-called Palestinian people and their presumed soon-to-be-official nation are in fact mythical entities that have been fabricated to suit various political agendas.
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This lie assumes that there is a legitimate struggle for statehood by a people that has a historic national identity. Obviously, the recognition of such a claim is a great threat to our own nationhood, which is truly historic and legitimate, and thus it behooves us to expose the Palestinian myth for what it is. This seems to be something our community subscribes to in unison.
I am therefore puzzled and distressed by a parallel phenomenon that is most striking. The same individuals and publications that have repeatedly exposed this widespread fiction have simultaneously perpetuated it. There is hardly an issue of a Jewish news periodical that is not littered with the term “Palestinian” as referring to Arabs who occupy or wish to occupy Israel. Oftentimes the same publication will feature yet another article documenting how the “Palestinians” are really a fabrication. I can almost see Eliyahu Hanavi wringing his hands in frustration at this bizarre self-contradiction.
My proposal to the editors, writers and readers of our publications is straightforward and logical: if you really believe that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people, then don’t grant the idea any legitimacy by even using the term. Why is it acceptable for our enemies to refer to Israel as a “Zionist entity” and contort themselves out of shape to avoid implying in any way that we have a legitimate claim to our land, yet we feel the need to indulge and accommodate those who perpetuate a truly destructive myth?
I believe that our collective unwillingness to act according to our convictions, as opposed to merely arguing them, is a powerful indication of our continued slave mentality. We content ourselves with scholarly discourse, proving that the game has been fixed against us, yet we go on playing it lest we annoy those who wish to keep playing on those terms. And we lose every time.
We are willing to perpetuate a destructive lie — a lie that is intended to help destroy us — because we are afraid of standing out from everyone we read and hear who takes this lie for granted. We are hard-pressed to find one columnist or newscaster who doesn’t glibly refer to these Arabs as Palestinians, so we feel compelled to follow suit. But why exactly? For what?
Some would say it doesn’t matter if we use the term so long as we know the truth, and that it’s not a battle worth fighting. For one thing, our enemies certainly appreciate the power of language and know that repeating their beliefs as if they are accepted facts only helps their cause. They know that the rest of the world has a long history of taking the path of greatest immediate convenience, and would rather not bother contending the point. It is a lesson our people has largely yet to learn.
But even if we are unable to convince the rest of the world of the lie of Palestinian nationhood — and I believe that to be the case — we only do ourselves harm by using the terminology. Every time we refer to an Arab as a “Palestinian,” we are subtly eroding our own conviction and confidence. By catering to the lie in any small way, we surrender the right, obligation and strength to deny it, and compromise our own identity in the process.
This is the message of Rashi’s first comment on the Torah, where he emphasizes that our right to the land of Israel needs no greater argument than our own history and the fact that G-d gave it to us. This argument will surely sway no one in the United Nations, nor will the Persians (a.k.a. Iranians) be moved to sympathy if a prime minister of Israel ever dared state it. I’m sure Rashi knew this as well.
The point is for us to deeply internalize this message, that Israel belongs to us because G-d gave it to us, even if no one else accepts it. If we cannot influence the actions of our enemies by driving home the truth, we can certainly influence our own.
I have written before about the destructive influence of labels in our community, with a largely ambivalent response. I propose that our community uniformly accept to dispose of at least one label permanently and unequivocally. There is no Palestinian people and there will never be a Palestinian nation. At the very most, we can refer to the occupiers of Eretz Yisrael as “Palestinians” or so-called Palestinians.
Let those who communicate with us get used to it.
Rabbi Chananya Weissman is the founder of EndTheMadness (www.endthemadness.org). His collection of original divrei Torah, “Sefer Keser Chananya,” can be obtained by contacting him at [email protected]
israel is a nation that was created in 1948. until that time there was a jewish nation which included anyone halachikly defind as jewish. after the creation of the state of israel many non jews are considered israelies.
why shouldn’t the palistinians be granted the same right i.e. to create their new nationality just like the israelies.
Let’s call them Arab Occupiers of Jewish Land.
Well said Rabbi Weissman.
You are absolutely factually correct. However, the reality on the ground is that since we as a people are about clueless on PR and propaganda, we have been consistently out maneuvered on this issue. The political reality is the existence of the Palestinian People with a right to a homeland. We did this to ourselves and there is no reasonable way to undo it until Moshiach changes the facts on the ground.
I seems that we have almost learned this lesson as the communications from the Government since the beginning of Cast Lead has been fairly effective.
Even without the issue of Jewish right to the land, this is true. But what to call them? Arabs just isnt clear, “Former Jordanians” doesnt work well either. Ex-Ottomans?
Rev Weismann applies contorted talmudic illogic to assume away the problem…its not going away nor will the issue of less legitimacy if we simply change the nomenclature…yidden in eretz yisroel need to find a way to live peacefully with the arab residents of yerushalem…its not going to be easy and many will die before hashem provide the pathway forward but calling hundreds of thousands of people by another name won’t change anything. I wish such great talmedei chachamim would spend a fraction of their time working for practical solutions rather than such nareshkeit…
The so-called Palestinians are a creation of the Soviet Union and KGB which had created other “liberation movements” throughout the world to overtthrow western governments. They invented the PLO (palestinian Liberation Organization) in the 1960’s and made the inventor of modern-day terrorism, one Yasser Arafat, it’s “chairman”. He graduated from Patrick Lumumba University in Moscow, along with other tyrannical luminaries like Noriega, Che Guevera and their ilk. Before that no one had ever of a “Palestinian” nation, language, religion, king, president or otherwise. To my mind, the most unfortunate event in the history of the last 100 years was the dissolution of the Turkish empire (for which we can thank the English) and creation out of thin air of unnecessary and tyrannical Arab “nations” . This unleashed the uncivilised Arab hordes which had been holed up in the bottle created by the Turkish Empire. If only we could put them back where they belong, the world will be a far better place.
Weissman you talk like a neturei karta, however know you should even if we know from the tora that israel was promised to Avraham avinu and his kids, the time to own it publicly is not ripe now. Only wen Moshiach will come will Hashem prove the nations that it’s our land.
Apart from semantics, a similar question has been bothering me throughout the current campaign. Who, exactly, are these Palestinian “civilians” whose lives we must be careful of, and for whose sake we must rush in medical aid, and for whom we must answer to the world at large? Are they one and the same as the terrorists we are after? Or if they are not the actual rocket launchers themselves, but a part of the support structure for Hamas? Or are they really innocent bystanders who want nothing more than to live peacefully next to Israel but have been intimidated by Hamas? Who are we really talking about here? I can’t help wondering with all of the pressure on Israel to make sure these “civilians” get to hospitals where they can be treated; well, how do we know these aren’t the very same terrorists we are targeting?
Public television some time ago showed a program about an all Jewish brigade of volunteer soldiers during WW II fighting I believe under the British flag… and these men who were tough and smart fighters were also refered to as Palestinians. The Jewish people living in what is now Israel are the true Palestinians….most of the Arabs claiming to be Palestinians are nothing more than those that were thrown out by the Jordanians and other countries bordering Israel. The leaders of those countries knew when to get rid of their garbage…just a shame they didn’t thrown them further away.
Unfortunately, we have already lost that battle. It is true that the idea of Palestinian nationhood is a faction. In fact most “Palestinians” only came to Palestine after the Jewish-based economy picked up steam in the 100 years or so prior to 1948. Nevertheless, we have no hope of convincing the world of this, as they do not want to hear it.
Of course, we don’t have to always overly concern ourselves with vos yenem zogt.
Bottom line, we must daven every day for sholom al Yisroel.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe was right when he said not to meet with the PLO in Madrid in 1991. He told then Prime Minister Shamir that by going to meet with them “you legitimize their fiction. You have nothing to offer them.”
I do not understand the author’s point about Palestinians. The Zionists always called them Palestinians, even in pre-1948. The difference was that in the pre-state days they were called Palestinian Arabs, as opposed to Palestinian Jews. The early Zionists legitimized the name “Palestinian.”
We also need to stop calling those arabs “Druze”. Many foreigners confuse who Israel belongs to. Is it the Jews or the Druze? “Sounds the same to me” they say.
We can simply call them by their biblical name: Yishmaelim.
thank u soo much! BLESS U VINNEWS! for putting this article up to help clarify peoples understanding of us jews in eretz yisroel
the truth is when true leadership in eretz yisroel stops looking at them that way things will get better when we view ourselves internationally as the owners of the land and them as nomads which boruch hashem keil elyon ber zeit university of ramallah and of nablus both said 60% of these “palestiniens“ want to emigrate to dubai and canada soo this is our fault we need leadership that will stand up and say this is jewish land and not for arabs we are the citizens and they are the guests here
thank comment #7 Paul about the KGB interesting
hatzlacha VINNEWS!!
Great article!
ThereI is an existing palestinian state Its called Jordan That was carved out of “Palestine” a few years before the UN partition plan. DO YOU PEOPLE EXPECT 2 PALESTINIAN STATES? b) For all you history buffs, Palestine was created immediately after the Bar Kochba rebellion. There was no Palestine only Judea. After the rebellion about 135 ce it was renamed Palestine after the Phillistines. There were no Arabs then nor were there any Arab cities. Only Jews and Romans. The Jews were still the majority thus we are the original Palestinians. The earliest arab town was Ramallah in 650 ce when the Arabs conquered Judea or Palestine by force and some time later expropiated all the land. This is all confirmed by historians (B Lewis ,Parkes ,Hitti, etc) and archeology as no old remains of Arab settlement exist only Jewish and Cannanite(The Arabs are NOT Canaanites as they try to claim ; they are from Shem and Canaaanites are from Ham).
The term “Palestinian” refers to the descendants of individuals who were living in Palestine in the 1800s. In those days “Palestine” was controlled by the Turkish Empire, thus there was no Palestinian state per se. But the land was called Palestine ever since the Romans gave it that name following the Bar Kochva revolt in the 2nd century AD. It makes sense therefore that people who lived in that land ought to be called Palestinians
More importantly, Chananya Weissman takes the unfortunate route of making the “God gave us the land” argument. Saying stuff like that makes us look bad. Its one thing to believe it, and its another thing entirely to state this publicly in print. Firstly, as #5 notes, this has nothing to do with the issue of what the Palestinians ought to be called. Secondly, the Arabs too believe that God gave them the land, and since there is no way to prove either claim it should simply not be used in public discourse. Thirdly, when religious people say things like that non religious people write them of as crazy. Such claims make us look as irrational and backwards as them.
So-called “Palestinians” (I believe that is the best way of describing them while clearly letting everyone know that we DO NOT believe in their legitimacy as a separate “nation” are really Arabs — racially, linguistically, culturally and religiously (i.e., almost all Muslim with a relative handful of Christians thrown in). Use of the term “Palestinian” without the scare quotes, which is the way most of the rest of the world and unfortunately, many in Israel describe them, is designed to hide the fact that they are a part of the same people who already own some two dozen countries stretching from the Atlantic across all of the Northern third of Africa, the whole of what used to be known as the Levant except for Israel, and the entire Arabian Peninsula and beyond — land about twice the size of the USA and having two-thirds of the world’s known oil reserves and the billions of dollars that comes with that (the entire Muslim world, including non-Arab states like Iran, Indonesia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, etc., along with the Arab world, is about three or four times the size of the USA and has three-quarters of the world’s oil and its accompanying billions) and lets the “Palestinians” gain sympathy as a supposedly small, helpless, homeless isolated “David” fighting a supposed Israeli “Goliath” — even though Israel (about the size of New Jersey and Delaware, with no oil and none of those oil billions at its disposal) is really the “David” fighting the Arab “Goliath”
BTW, the longtime leader of the so-called “Palestinians”, Arafat, Yimach Shmo, was an EGYPTIAN, born in Cairo, not in so-called “Palestine.” And so was the late Professor Edward Said of Columbia University — one of the most virulent lying “Palestinian” propagandists here in the US, telling the lie that he was supposedly “dispossessed” from his “homeland” when in fact he too was Egyptian-born.