Show me a Palestinian and within a few generations of genealogical scrutiny, I will show you a Syrian, Jordanian, Saudi, or Turk... Within the realm of times past, the historicity of Palestine, or of a Palestinian people directly linked with those who identify themselves as such contemporaneously is untenable. It is strictly a political nomenclature.
Truth be told, ontologically speaking, there was never such a thing as a Palestinian! Palestine and Palestinians were made up out of whole cloth by the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Hadrian hated the Jews. He could not abide a people who refused to denounce their God and worship him and the Roman state.
Hadrian saw Judaism as a constant source of rebellion and as such, sought to erase all evidence of the faith and all those who practiced it from Judea proper and indeed the whole world.
Hadrian built a temple to worship Jupiter on the site of the second Jewish Temple, and outlawed the Jewish tradition of circumcision mandated by God. These and many other affronts sparked a bloody Jewish uprising, which lasted three years. Despite enormous Roman loses, the rebellion was finally put down following the decisive battle of the fortress at Betar.
To emphasize Hadrian’s hatred for the seed of Abraham and the God they served. Hadrian renamed Israel Palestine after the Philistines, Israel’s ancient and most bitter enemy. The Philistines were themselves never native to Canaan, which later became Israel.
The name Philistine literally means “invader!” The people who were called Philistines by the inhabitants of Canaan were not Arab, but primarily from the Isle of Crete. Thusly, Philistines were Greeks who conquered parts of Canaan. The Philistine people and their culture was eventually destroyed by the Assyrians.
There is no Arabic meaning for the name Philistine like we would expect to find in the Qur’an if the name had any intrinsic historical connection to Arabs, Islam or Muslims prior to 1948.
Before 1948, it was the Jews themselves who were most often referred to as Palestinians, not the Arabs who existed in small bands of nomadic Bedouins. The Holy Lands were desolate before the Jewish migration back to the land of their fathers began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Under Jewish stewardship, the land began once more to bloom.
Mark Twain in "The Innocents Abroad", 1867 described Palestine in rather bleak terms during his travels through the Holy Land:
There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent (valley of Jezreel, Galilea); not for thirty miles in either direction... One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings. For the sort of solitude to make one dreary, come to Galilee... Nazareth is forlorn... Jericho lies a mouldering ruin... Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and humiliation... untenanted by any living creature... A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds... a silent, mournful expanse... a desolation... We never saw a human being on the whole route... Hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil had almost deserted the country... Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes... desolate and unlovely.
This was the case because the land belongs to the Seed of Abraham and no others!
The term Palestinian as it pertains to Islamic peoples is nothing more than a political construct employed by the enemies of God and Israel in the tradition of Hadrian!
Walid Shoebat, a former leader in the PLO and terrorist put it best:
As I lived in Palestine, everyone I knew could trace their heritage back to the original country their great grandparents came from. Everyone knew their origin was not from the Canaanites, but ironically, this is the kind of stuff our education in the Middle East included. The fact is that today's Palestinians are immigrants from the surrounding nations! I grew up well knowing the history and origins of today's Palestinians as being from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Christians from Greece, muslim Sherkas from Russia, muslims from Bosnia, and the Jordanians next door. My grandfather, who was a dignitary in Bethlehem, almost lost his life by Abdul Qader Al-Husseni (the leader of the Palestinian revolution) after being accused of selling land to Jews. He used to tell us that his village Beit Sahur (The Shepherds Fields) in Bethlehem County was empty before his father settled in the area with six other families. The town has now grown to 30,000 inhabitants.
Modern day Hadrians are not limited to Gaza or the Sinai Peninsula. They can just as easily be found here in the United States in places like the liberal enclave of San Francisco, with its modern day push to ban circumcision. This action seems poised to make the City by the Bay a most unwelcome place for those who keep covenant with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!
Movements like banning circumcision now slated to appear on San Francisco ballots, confirm that latter day Hadrians are still obsessed with compelling people to reject God’s covenants and show fealty to man’s wisdom while worshiping the state!
When President Obama urged Israel to move it’s borders back to the pre-Six Day War boundaries of 1967, as he did in his latest speech on the Middle East situation, he added his name to the ledger below the likes of Hadrian. This is nothing short of open defiance and a spit in the eye of the God who gave all the land to Israel – the same God who granted the courage and power to David to defy the Philistines and dispatch Goliath their champion.
It is the same as it ever was in the Holy Land. Goliath is now the collective strength of the scion of the Arab states, they may not be natural descendants, but they are spiritually modern day Philistines, standing united against the solitary Israel. The Arab states all arrayed outside Israel’s borders, taunting them just as the Philistines of old did, shouting: “I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.”
By forwarding the idea that Israel should give away precious bargaining chips before the diplomatic battle is even joined! President Obama, in his thoughtless hubris, fortifies Goliath’s armor against the very army of God.
By telling Israel they should concede their land to godless invaders, President Obama is also by extension defying that “tender shoot which sprang up from the stump of Jesse,” The Lord Jesus Christ!
The same God who made a covenant with Abraham and delivered his descendants from bitter bondage in Egypt and into the land of Canaan--Is the same God who will return again and rule from the very ground the President would see in the hands of God’s enemies.
There is more to standing with Israel than merely sending money and military aid. We have historically stood with Israel because, as a nation, in our hearts we believed God – Not a generic god, but the true Covenant-making God of the Holy Bible! The One who said:
“And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” Genesis 12:3
Our nation’s most prosperous times, the times that made us the envy of the world came arguably during our post World War II days - days directly following our aiding in the prophetic rebirth of the land of Israel.
I fear our days will grow darker and darker as we pull away full moral support from Israel. I pray President Obama gets wisdom and that he get it soon!
And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding: Daniel 2:21
I know that God sets up rulers to work His sovereign will and sometimes those rulers are fools. I stand firm in the knowledge that even through a man like Obama leads our nation, by and by, God will be glorified.
Digital Publius
