Who are the Palestinians by Ettinger

Who are the Palestinians?
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought”
"Israel Hayom” Newsletter, December 14, 2011
http://bit.ly/up8bJm
Contrary to political correctness, Palestinian Arabs have not been in the area west of the Jordan River from time immemorial; no Palestinian state ever existed, no Palestinian People was ever robbed of its land and there is no basis for the Palestinian "claim of return.”
Most Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the 1845-1947 Muslim migrants from the Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, as well as from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Bosnia, the Caucasus, Turkmenistan, Kurdistan, India, Afghanistan and Balochistan.
Arab migrant workers were imported by the Ottoman Empire and by the British Mandate (which defeated the Ottomans in 1917) for infrastructure projects: The port of Haifa, the Haifa-Qantara, Haifa-Edrei, Haifa-Nablus and Jerusalem-Jaffa railroads, military installations, roads, quarries, reclamation of wetlands, etc. Illegal Arab laborers were also attracted by the relative economic boom, stimulated by Jewish immigration.
According to a 1937 report by the British Peel Commission (Palestine Betrayed, Prof. Efraim Karsh, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 12), "The increase in the Arab population is most marked in urban areas, affected by Jewish development. A comparison of the census returns in 1922 and 1931 shows that, six years ago, the increase percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while in purely Arab towns such as Nab lus and Hebron it was only 7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent.”
As a result of the substantial 1880-1947Arab immigration – and despite Arab emigration caused by domestic chaos and intra-Arab violence - the Arab population of Jaffa, Haifa and Ramla grew 17, 12 and 5 times.
The (1831-1840) conquest, by Egypt's Mohammed Ali, was solidified by a flow of Egyptian migrants settling empty spaces between Gaza and Tul-Karem up to the Hula Valley. They followed in the footsteps of thousands of Egyptian draft dodgers, who fled Egypt before 1831 and settled in Acre. The British traveler, H.B. Tristram, identified, in his 1865 The Land of Israel: a journal of travels in Palestine (p. 495), Egypti an migrants in the Beit-Shean Valley, Acre, Hadera, Netanya and Jaffa.
The British Palestine Exploration Fund documented that Egyptian neighborhoods proliferated in the Jaffa area: Saknet el-Mussariya, Abu Kebir, Abu Derwish, Sumeil, Sheikh Muwanis, Salame', Fejja, etc. In 1917, the Arabs of Jaffa represented at least 25 nationalities, including Persians, Afghanis, Hindus and Balochis. Hundreds of Egyptian families settled in Ara' Arara', Kafer Qassem, Taiyiba and Qalansawa.
Many of the Arabs who fled in 1948, reunited with their families in Egypt and other neighboring countries.
"30,000-36,000 Syrian migrants (Huranis) entered Palestine during the last few months alone" reported "La Syrie" daily on August 12, 1934. Az-ed-Din el-Qassam, the role-model of Hamas terrorism, which terrorized Jews in British Mandate Palestine, was Syrian, as were Said el-A'az, a leader of the 1936-38 anti-Jewish pogroms and Kaukji, the commander-in-chief of the Arab mercenaries terrorizing Jews in the 1930s and 1940s.
Libyan migrants settled in Gedera, south of Tel Aviv. Algerian refugees (Mugrabis) escaped the French conquest of 1830 and settled in Safed (alongside Syrians and Jordanian Bedouins), Tiberias and other parts of the Galilee. Circassian refugees, fleeing Russian oppression (1878) and Moslems from Bosnia, Turkmenistan, and Yemen (1908) diversified the Arab demography west of the Jordan River.
Mark Twain wrote in Innocents Abroad (American Publishing Company, 1969): "Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, Palestine must be the prince…. Palestine is desolate and unlovely.” Analyzing Mark Twain's book, John Haynes Holmes, the pacifist Unitarian priest, the co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and the author of Palestine Today and Tomorrow – a Gentile's Survey of Zionis m (McMillan, 1929) wrote: "This is the country to which the Jews have come to rebuild their ancient homeland…. On all the surface of this earth there is no home for the Jew save in the mountains and the well-springs of his ancient kingdom…. Everywhere else the Jews is in exile…. But, Palestine is his…. Scratch Palestine anywhere and you'll find Israel…. There is not a spot which is not stamped with the footprint of some ancient [Jewish] tribesman…. Not a road, a spring, a mountain, a village, which does not awaken the name of some great [Jewish] king, or echo with the voice of some great [Jewish] prophet…. [The Jew] has a higher, nobler motive in Palestine than the economic…. This mission is to restore Zion; and Zion is Palestine.”
The Arab attempt to gain the moral high ground and to delegitimize the Jewish State - by employing the immoral reinvention of history and recreation of identity - was exposed by Arieh Avneri's The Claim of Dispossession (Herzl Press, 1982) and Joan Peters' From Time Immemorial (Harper & Row, 1986), which provide the aforementioned – and much more – data.

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, "Second Thought: US-Israel Initiative"
www.TheEttingerReport.com

Tom Friedman on Israel. National Post Dec 5 A15

Tom Friedman of the New York Times still doesn't admit that the problem
is not Israel but the Palestinians. They are a violent, misogynous, gay-hating, anti-Semitic group who would rather die a martyr's death than compromise with Israel or see it continue to exist. They cheer on their suicide bombers and gloat at the death
of Israelis and U.S. personnel. Prime Minister Salam Fayyard of the Palestinian Authority may want to see the Palestinians better off financially but he has done nothing to
change the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel culture, and he has not taken out
of their constitution the desire and obligation to destroy Israel. Furthermore he
is only one man who will undoubtedly be ignored if there is an amalgamation with Hamas.

Friedman and the New York Times is wrong. Israel cannot afford to support such a
radical group. It must annex Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and change
the death-wish culture themselves, That is the only way
for there to be any hope of long term peace.

Refuting Benny Morris

Benny Morris clearly sets out the position of the Palestinian propaganda relating to
the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) but fails completely to understand the Israeli position and the nature of the Palestinians themselves. First, the term "West Bank" refers to the west bank of the Jordan, not to ancient Israel, and so immediately begins to delegitimize Israels' rights to the area of Judea and Samaria. Next he refers to the "occupation". Many books, including "The Jewish People's Rights to the Land of Israel" by Torontonian Salomon BenZimra clearly show that under international law the land belongs to Israel and not to the Palestinians. Morris is of course correct in saying that there is an attempt by Arab countries and Europe to delegitimize Israel, but it is not the "occupation" that is responsible, but it is simply another Arab plan to destroy Israel since brute force did not work. Lastly it is pure anti-semitism that is really hindering a two-state solution. There is no reason other than anti-semitism to exclude Jews and Jewish towns and cities from a new Palestinian state. In ignoring the Arab's desire for all Islamic states to be Jew-free Morris is giving his consent to the exclusion of Jews from states and therefore to state-sponsored anti-semitism. Benny and many other post-Zionists assume that since the Palestinian Arabs are doing poorly it must be someone else's fault. But he is wrong. The reason for the Palestinians' poor situation is that they would rather produce anti-semitic propaganda than have co-operation with Israel. They would rather
have an intifada than 90% of the territory they desire. And lastly, they would rather have perpetual conflict and poverty
than renounce their anti-semitism and admit the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

"occupiers"

Are they really "occupiers"?

Originally the word to occupy meant that a foreign power, through war took command over a foreign land. Within Canada the word "occupy" has come to have an interesting meaning. For Native Canadians it means to claim land that you believe you have a legal claim to and to do so by illegal means including the use of illegal force and intimidation. For protesters of our economic system it means to illegally stay in a park, preventing it from being used for normal use by other citizens. For Palestinians it refers to Israelis livin or having villages in an area in which the Palestinians have some rights, but legally, probably no political rights (see The Jewish People's Rights to the Land of Israel, Amazon on Kindle, for the argument that legally the West Bank is Samaria and belongs to Israel). So to occupy now means either to illegally live on land, or illegally stay on land, or to live on land when others don't want you to be there. I suggest your readers' question what the Canadian occupiers really meant to imply when they chose to define themselves as occupiers of a park.

Big Lie exposure

Congratulations to the National Post for exposing the biggest middle-eastern lies all in one edition.

Tarek Farah exposed that the Koran, but not the Hadith, is not anti-semitic but supports the Jewish state of Israel, Salomon Benzimra has exposed the fact that the illegal occupied Palestinian territories, legally belong to Israel under International Law, and are therefore not Palestinian and therefore are not occupied.

Surely, if this knowledge was integrated into the peace process, a basis for peaceful co-existence could be found.