As part of his comments to the General Assembly, Obama referred briefly to the issue of Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, saying, “surely, Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel, but Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land.”
As Col. West has often written, The whole facade about “Palestinians” is nothing more than revisionist history. As I’ve mentioned here many times, the word Palestine has nothing to do with Arabs. The word was introduced after the 132 AD Simon Bar Kokhbar revolt against the Romans. The name of Jerusalem had been changed to Aeolia Capitolina, and as punishment by Emperor Hadrian for the revolt, the region was renamed from Judea to Palaestinia. Hadrian’s goal was to destroy Judaism, as he believed the religious ideology was the nexus of the impertinence of the Jewish people — he actually began the diaspora. However, the root word of Palaestinia is Philistia and folks, the ancient Philistines were not Arabs, they were of Greek heritage — so Gaza has nothing to do with Arabs.Palestinian land?
Even after World War I those inhabiting the region were issued passports titled “Palestine.” So let’s be honest…the real Palestinians are the Jewish people who had their homeland taken away by the Romans.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “While we welcome President Obama’s call for Palestinian Arabs to reject incitement to hatred and murder, we cannot but take issue with his use of the politicized term, ‘Palestinian lands.’
“This term prejudges the issue of sovereignty and borders and is not in accordance with international law. Under binding international agreements including San Remo, the League of Nations Covenant Article 22, the Mandate, and UN Charter Article 80, Judea/Samaria is land designated for the Jewish homeland and Jewish settlement.
Moreover, the President’s use of this term is political in nature, as it automatically and unjustly designates the biblical, religious, and historical heartland of the Jewish people for millennia, before the Arab conquest of the region in the seventh century, as belonging to Palestinian Arabs.
“It is well-known that there are conflicting claims to the land, but it is also important to note that Israel has better claim in law than any other party.
“The Oslo agreements do not prohibit Israeli residence and construction in these territories; to the contrary, the Oslo agreements provide for Israeli and Palestinian building in zones under their respective controls. Oslo also lists this as a final status issue, to be negotiated by the parties themselves, and Israel is entitled to assert its right for its citizens to live and build in these territories until such time as a peace settlement is reached.
“It is not Israel that has rejected direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority (PA) without conditions. It is the PA which has refused, barring two meetings held in one week over six years ago, to negotiate at all with Israel in nearly eight years.
“Moreover, these Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria occupy less than 2% of the territory in question. This is not a case of Jewish communities crowding out Palestinian ones. In any future peace agreement worthy of the name in which a Palestinian state alongside Israel is genuinely peaceful, Jews should be able to live in a Palestinian state just as Palestinian Arabs live in Israel.”
This article was published by Allen B. West and may be found here.