– Alone in a World of Enemies

Surrounded by Enemies
PN News

Israel now consists of less than 1% of the total Arab territories and is but a sliver of land just ten miles wide (at one point), and 6 million Jews surrounded by over a hundred and fifty million Arabs
 

The entire Middle East was divided and nation-states invented by the French and the British. Borders were decided by them. There was no Syria, no Algeria, no Tunisia. There was no Palestine. There was no Iraq. And the exotic names for these places were given to the world by conquerors, not the local people who lived there. Eminent historian Bernard Lewis *, who is fluent in Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish and several other Middle Eastern languages, tells us there are no words for many places in the Middle East, like Algeria and Tunisia because the Arab sense of place was different than our identification of a place as a nation and places like Libya, Palestine, Syria, etc., are actually names from the Roman Empire to identify Roman geography. There is also no word in Arabic for Arabia. These words were invented by Europeans. Palestine (Syria Palestina) was a word invented by the Romans.

*(Bernard Lewis is Professor Emeritus of Princeton University and Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and a former member of the faculty of the University of London. He has written dozens of books about the Middle East)

Bernard Lewis says about the Arabic language:

"....it is "a remarkably rich and subtle language. But they just didn't think that way in terms of ethnic, territorial identity. You have to say the land of the Arabs or something like that." Tony Snow, "Interview with Bernard Lewis" (04-18-2003)

"From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries; it was a group of provincial subdivisions, by no means always the same, within a larger entity." Bernard Lewis, "The Palestinians and the PLO. a Historical Approach," - Commentary Mag, January 1975 - pg 32-48

Journalist/author Joan Peters elaborates on the misconceptions surrounding the issue of a separate Palestinian/Arab national entity.

There was No Palestinian/Arab National Entity
(John Peters wrote From Time Immemorial which was criticized especially on the left for sloppy research and using some resources which were unavailable to her in English or were not first person sources. Much of that has been repaired and there is better sourcing in the revisions in her second edition, yet the criticisms persist, obviously without critics again looking at those sources and detractors continuing to quote those critics as-if they could be correct about all revisions also, which they are not - however, the damage is done and many do not consider her work credible now because of the damage done to her reputation by those who hate the truth.)

"....it appears that Palestine never was an independent nation and the Arabs never named the land to which they now claim rights. Most Arabs do admit so candidly that `Palestinian identity' is a maneuver.... But the Arab world, until recently, itself frequently negated the validity of any claim of an "age-old Palestinian Arab" identity." Joan Peters, "From Time Immemorial" (Revised-2001), page 139

In Yoshua Porath, "Social Aspects of the Emergence of the Palestinian National Movement (73), and quoted by Peters, the "Palestinians"; that is, Arabs in and out of the area which was originally called Judea and renamed Palestina by the Romans, considered "Judah-cum-Palestine" part of the "pan-Arab nation" and any claims of Palestinian nationality were simply tactical ploys of "Southern Syrians".

"The beginning article of a 1919 Arab Covenant proposed by the Arab Congress in Jerusalem stated that `The Arab lands are a complete and indivisible whole, and the divisions of whatever nature to which they have been subjected are not approved nor recognized by the Arab nation.' In the same year, the General Syrian Congress had the opposite view; it expressed eagerness to stress an exclusively Syrian identity: `We ask that there should be no separation of the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine....' The Arab historian George Antonius delineated Palestine in 1939 as part of `the whole of the country of that name (Syria), which is now split up into mandated territories...' As late as the 1950s, there was still a schizoid pattern to the Arab views...." (Peters - pg 139)

And, pan-Arabism from the 1951 Constitution of the Arab Ba'ath Party,

"The Arabs form one nation. This nation has the natural right to live in a single state and to be free to direct its own destiny...to gather all the Arabs in a single independent Arab state."

Israel now consists of less than 1% of the total Arab territories and is but a sliver of land just ten miles wide (at one point), and 6 million Jews surrounded by over a hundred and fifty million Arabs with armies totaling tens of times Israel's strength in numbers with more tanks and planes (but not more nukes). Israel remains strong because of the constant talk of conquest and because of the history of attacks and terrorism against Israelis and Jews.

And these are the facts.

Hank Roth