Isn't it true that Palestine was empty and inhabited by nomadic people?

Isn't it true that Palestine was empty and inhabited by nomadic people?
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Posted on August 2, 2001

From the early stages of Zionism to the present, Zionists have propagated the myth that Palestinians did not settle Palestine until it was later developed by the Israelis. To facilitate such disinformation, the Zionists adopted the following slogan to entice European Jewry to emigrate to Palestine:

"A land with no people is for a people with no land".

Had the Zionist leadership admitted the existence of an indigenous people, then they would have been obliged to explain how they intended to displace them. To disprove this baseless myth, let's quote Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister) who stated as early as 1918 that "Palestine is not an empty country". According to Shabtai Teveth (one of Ben-Gurion's official biographers), Ben-Gurion stated in an article published in 1918 that:

"Palestine is not an empty country . . . on no account must we injure the rights of the inhabitants."

Ben-Gurion often returned to this point, emphasizing that Palestinian Arabs had "the full right" to an independent economic, cultural, and communal life, but not political. (Shabtai Teveth, p. 37-38)

To destroy this baseless myth, click here to view a page that was scanned from a book which was conceived and edited by Ben-Gurion himself, stating that Jews made up 12% of the total Palestinian population as of 1914. It's not only that the majority of the Jews in Palestine were not Zionists (by Ben-Gurion's own admission), but they were also not even citizens of the country since many had recently fled anti-Semitic Tsarist Russia.

As the Ottoman census records show Palestine was widely inhabited in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially in the rural areas where agriculture was the main profession. According to Justine McCarthy (p. 26), an authority on the Ottoman Turks, Palestine's population in the early 19th century was 350,000, and in 1914 Palestine had a population of 657,000 Muslim Arabs, 81,000 Christian Arabs, and 59,000 Jews (including many European Jews from the first and second Aliyah).

So the Jewish population in Palestine as of 1914 were under 8% of the total population, which was much smaller than the Palestinian Christian Arab population. It should be noted that our source, Justine McCarthy was quoted by many Israeli Jewish scholars like Benny Morris and Tom Segev. In that regard, it's worth quoting one of the most ardent Zionists, Israel Zangwill, who stated as early as 1905, that Palestine was twice as thickly populated as the United States. He stated:

"Palestine proper has already its inhabitants. The pashalik of Jerusalem is already twice as thickly populated as the United States, having fifty-two souls to the square mile, and not 25% of them Jews ..... [We] must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the [Arab] tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us." (Righteous Victims, p. 140 & Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 7-10)

In other words, Palestinians were recognized by the Zionist leadership as "humans" who populated Palestine, however, that was not good enough of a reason to "grant" them the same political rights as Jews, who mostly lived outside of Palestine. Consequently, this ideology was the prelude to the wholesale DISPOSSESSION and ETHNIC CLEANSING of the Palestinian people during the 1948 war.

Soon after the first Zionist Congress in Basel (Switzerland) in 1897, a Zionist delegation was sent to Palestine for a fact finding mission, and to explore the viability of settling Palestine with persecuted European Jews. The delegation replied back from Palestine with a cable that stated:

"The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." (Iron Wall, p. 3)

Despite that many Zionists were aware of this happy marriage as early as 1897, they have deliberately chosen to terminate this relationship since they think that Jewish rights are more important than Palestinian rights. The forcible divorce of Palestine from its indigenous people was eloquently articulated by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Israeli political Right, in 1926 who explained that:

" ... the tragedy lies in the fact the there is a collision here between two truths .... but our justice is greater. The Arab is culturally backward, but his instinctive patriotism is just as pure and noble as our own; it cannot be bought, it can only be curbed ... force majeure." (Righteous Victims, p. 108)

The questions which beg to be asked are these:

Do two wrongs make a right?
Is it just to solve an injustice by perpetrating another injustice?
If at one point, Palestinian injustice becomes greater than Jewish injustice, does that justify perpetrating war crimes to solve their injustice?

What makes many Zionists dangerous over time is that they start believing their own propaganda. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister between 1996-1998, proposed lately that Israel should never relinquish control over the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since he claims that the local population are the descendents of non-indigenous Palestinians. He also alleged that these people came to look for employment that was generated by the influx of new European Jewish capital. Yehoshua Porat, a Hebrew University professor, refuted the late Prime Minister in an article published in Ha'aretz Daily, click here to read his rebuttal. It's worth noting that Professor Porat worked for the campaign to elect Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996, so it might not be a good idea to call him Netanyahu hater. Moreover, it should be noted that all Zionist investments in Palestine required employing Jewish labor as decreed by the Jewish National Fund's racist bylaws (United Nations: The origins of the Palestine problem). In other words, the primary beneficiary of Zionist investment were Jewish immigrants, and not the Palestinian native population.

It's really amusing that while nearly all Israelis and Zionists believe that Hawaii, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Tahiti, and Iraq were all populated by indigenous people prior to WW I, however, they find it extremely difficult to imagine that the "Promised Land" (one of the most strategic areas in the world) had any indigenous people whatsoever. It's as if the "Promised Land" had been waiting for over 2,000 years for Israelis and Zionists to settle it and make it bloom, click here to read our response to this argument.

Finally, it's not only that Palestine enjoyed a strategic commercial location (being the land bridge between Asia and Africa), its lands were also fertile and planted with all sorts of trees a long time before the Zionists came to its shorelines. So to claim that Palestine had no people until the Zionists came to settle it, is an absurd claim. Sadly, many Israelis and Zionists hate the idea of an indigenous Palestinian people to the point that they've created a fictitious world based on illusion. In that respect, the Palestinian people have a simple message: Over 8.5 million Palestinians are not going away. The sooner the Israelis and Zionists understand this simple message, the faster they will wake up from their delusional coma.

Related Links

Quoting Mark Twain out of context on Palestine
British Mandate: Arab and Jewish immigration to Palestine from 1920-1945
Palestine's population during the Ottoman and the British Mandate period By Justine McCarthy
Zionist FAQ: Isn't true that Palestine was a destitute place until Israelis made its desert bloom?
Zionist Quotes: Do Palestinians Exist, or Don't They? That's The Question?
Listen to an interview with the former Israeli Foreign Minister (Shlomo Ben-Ami) admitting that is a concocted myth that Palestine was empty until Jewish development of the country (starting from minute 12:00).
A Land With People, For a People with a Plan By Ludwig Watzal
Coming to terms with the right of return By Tom Pessah

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Posted by Michael Seymour on July 27, 2008 #47255

It is interesting to note that the CIA website lists almost all countries in the world, Israel is clearly listed, Palestine according to the CIA does not exist.

Is there anyone out there who can explain this?

Posted by Anonymous on April 18, 2008 #35209

What do you think of this, as published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia?

Lord Shaftesbury called Israel ؟a land without a people for a people without a land.؟ This highlights the source of the problem that has troubled relations between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East for a hundred years. In the late 1800s, the land in question was indeed a ؟land without a people,؟ in the sense that the people living there did not think of themselves as a ؟nation.؟ But, it was not a land without people. While much of the land was barren, there were a few hundred thousand people living there, most of them Muslim Arabs, who began to be concerned about the influx of Jews. The Arabs living there did not, however, call themselves ؟Palestinians.؟ That is because in the late 1800s, there was no sovereign entity known as Palestine. (In ancient times, it was a Roman province.) The whole region, along with much of the Middle East, belonged to the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and Palestine did not even exist as a specific entity within the empire; nor had there ever been a sovereign entity known as Palestine. The area that today is called ؟historic Palestine؟ was at the time of Ottoman rule subdivided into different districts within the empire, reporting to different governors. If there was no Palestine, then there were no Palestinians. Indeed, if you asked the average person living there at the time to identify themselves, they may have identified themselves as members of a family or clan, as Muslims, possibly as Syrians (since ؟historic Palestine؟ was considered by many to be part of southern Syria, which itself was not an independent entity at the time), or they would have identified as Arabs or as subjects of the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians didn؟t become a self-identifying people until later, perhaps around 1920 (or even much later), and that was largely in response to Zionism. One could say that had there been no Zionism, there likely would have been no ؟Palestinianism.؟ (Research the difference between an Arab, a Kurd, a Berber, and a Persian--all Muslims who live in the Middle East--and find out which states are associated with which of these peoples today, and which ؟nation؟ has no state. Also, define Pan-Arabism, and find out the years in which it appeared to thrive. )

Posted by David B. Gomes on July 16, 2007 #18149

Part 1
If you give credance to the Bible story in Genesis:
1. It was already called the land of Canaan before Abram arrived Gen 11:21, 12:5
2. The people who lived their were Canaanites a sub group of the Phoenician culture which was largely destroyed by the explosion of Santorini.
3. Abram claims that his God appeared to him and promised to give the land of Canaan to his seed.
Gen 12:7, 17:2
4. Who are Abram؟s seed? Eight Sons
By Hagar, first born, Ishmael, who married a Canaanite wife, was blessed by God to be a great nation. Gen 17:20
By Sarah, 2nd born, Isaac who married a Chaldian wife, Rebekah.
By Keturah, Zimran,, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah. Gen 25:1.
5. All these sons lived in the Land of Canaan and took wives from the existing local inhabitants, except for Isaac who sent for a wife from Ur of the Chaldees. (now Iraq).
6. Isaac؟s first son Esau, also lived and married in the land.
7. Jacob went back to Iraq and eventually married 4 Chaldian wives by which he had twelve sons.
8. Jacob returned to Canaan and all of his sons married local women, except Joseph who married an Egyptian woman, the daughter of an Egyptian priest.
9. When Jacob moved to Egypt, the family including servants numbered 70.(Gen 46:27) Therefore, in order to reach the numbers which later left Egypt, most of the Israelites intermarried with the local people in Egypt. 40,000 fighting men which meant that there must have been several hundred thousand including women and children. Josh 4:13 So now when Joshua came storming out of the desert with his hordes 400 years later, who did he murder? His own kin folk. No different than when the Khazarian Zionists, who were not necessarily Israelis, took over Palestine in 1948.

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