The laundromat of history

The laundromat of history

Dr. Reuven Berko

Back in the days of the British Mandate, Jewish community elders used to say in jest that the Palestinians were "a bastard child, born from a Zionist womb and British father." According to broadcasts now coming from the Voice of Palestine radio station, however, the land of Israel never had a Jewish mother.

According to the archaeologists on the Voice of Palestine, the land belongs to the Palestinians because they are the descendants of nations who inhabited it before its invasion by "bandits and murderers" who came here arbitrarily with Moses and went by the name of "Habiru" or "Apiru." These people were documented as ephemeral nomads and thieves, and records of them even appear in the Amarna Letters written during the New Kingdom-era in Egypt.

In Israel, the Palestinians are not denounced. There are those who point to the Jewish origins of rural Palestinians who converted to Islam. Some people posit that there is a genetic link between Jews and Palestinians. Others highlight the influx of laborers from across the Arab world who came here seeking to capitalize on the Zionists' prospering economy. Historians of the Middle East point to the Arab conquest in the seventh century, while European visitors described the land as barren and disease-ridden.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, fundamentally reject us. The Voice of Palestine radio station works at inventing history for a Palestinian people that are never mentioned in any historical document, not even in the Quran.

The problem is that adopting the false Palestinian narrative is dependent on simultaneously rejecting the Jews' historical rights to the land of Israel, which is presented as a fleeting episode, even though these rights are anchored in Islamic prophecies, Christian historiography, and of course in the book of books, the Bible.

Yasser Arafat renewed the Palestinian "start-up" as the greatest historical thief of all. At the height of peace negotiations he denied all ties between the Jews to the land of Israel and Jerusalem, and he is the one who created Palestinian birth certificates stating they are the descendants of the Jebusites, the Canaanite tribe which inhabited Jerusalem prior to its conquest by King David.

Arafat's successors propagate a version of history in which Jesus of Nazareth, born to his Jewish mother Miriam, is the "Arab-Palestinian messiah."

The Al-Jazeera documentary series "Our History in Their Archive: Zionist Terrorism" portrays Israel as a fictitious entity built on a false collection of documentation and murderous acts, in contrast to the Palestinians' undeniable historical right.

In Israel, meanwhile, several crafty journalists have appointed themselves heads of political parties. Their publicists describe the "primitive and fervent" right-wing as the brutal denier of the "definite" Palestinian desire for peace. They believe that only the Left can lead and that only it has been endowed with the attributes of universal justice, human rights and social equality, pluralism and socialism. They denounce many portions of the nation, who correctly see the reality of the situation and prefer their own "plebeian" intuitions over the heavenly aspirations of the intellect.

The naïve voter could confuse the issue: Is the Left only fooling itself, or the public as well? Has it managed to "sneak in" another peace agreement with the Palestinians that even they are unaware of and won't sign?

As opposed to the Jewish operational code — which seeks immediate gratification and peace now and believes that a little demagoguery will lead the Palestinians to cede all of Palestine — the Palestinian operational code of ulterior motives, formulated in Arabic, stipulates that "patience is the key to victory" and that the Jews must be treated according to the Arafat legacy: "Take and then demand more."

In the Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria and the Palestinian diaspora, the right of return and the destruction of Israel haven't been abandoned. Anyone who listens to the Voice of Palestine understands that the Palestinians are continuing to speak to the world in the language of peace, but in Arabic they sing and chant their inciting desire to "return to Palestine" through the power of the rifle, including to Haifa, Acre, Jaffa and Safed.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3275