<Please educate us, if you so please, on the history of the Arab country of Palestine>
First, there is a difference between a Nation, and a State.
Nation:
A Nation is any group of people who define themselves as one. The defining parameters can be a common language, religion, race, and/or culture, or anything else. Anything at all. The permission of Others is not required. America shares these characteristics, with many other nations. Yet Americans define themselves as a nation, and define what it means to be American, and who is American. Any American would angrily reject any attempt by any non-American to make those choices for them. All nationalities are self-defining. We are a nation, because we say we are. And we have a State for our Nation, because enough of us were willing to die to create and defend it.
People who share a common language, race, or culture, can subdivide themselves into several distinct nationalities. There are numerous examples of this. Egyptians share a language, race, and culture with people from Morocco to Iraq, yet they are a separate nationality. Canadians and British and Australians also share all those nation-defining characteristics, yet clearly they are separate nationalities.
The attempt by people of one Nation, to define the nationality of Others, is almost always an attempt to destroy the Other nation (by expulsion or assimilation). So, for instance, the Russian Empire tried to create a Pan-Slavic nationality, in order to destroy the idea of Ukrainian and Polish nations (Ukraine was called "Little Russia", and the Ukrainian language was called a dialect of Russian). Tito tried to create a Yugoslav nationality, and dissolve the idea of Serb, Croat, Slovene nations. Stalin deported and dispersed numerous nationalities (like the Chechens), to try and destroy them, and create a Soviet nationality. Jews won't assimilate Others (in fact, they make it extremely difficult to convert to the Jewish religion, or become an Israeli national). So that leaves expulsion, as the only means of destroying the Palestinian nation. Denying their self-proclaimed nationality, is part of the justification for the ongoing expulsion of the Palestinians from their land.
State:
A State is the formal structure, by which a Nation defends itself. The Palestinians have never had a State. Before 1948, the Jews hadn't had a State, either, for ages. The Jews were not the first Nation, or the first State, in the land between the Jordan and the sea. Others had occupied the land, and prayed to Other Gods, for thousands of years, before the Jews got there. The Old Testament and archeology provide ample proof of this.
In addition to not being there first, the Jews never held it for very long. How long did the Jewish State, created by Solomon and David, and successor States, last? An eye-blink, in the long span of recorded history. Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Greeks (from Alexander to the Byzantines), Crusaders from France, each of these also held that land, some of them for centuries. By far the longest historical ownership, belongs to the various Muslim and Arab States.
Not only were they not there first, and not there for very long, but, even at the height of their power, the Jewishness of their State was heavily diluted. If, today, someone were to build a temple to Asherah or Baal on a hilltop in Samaria or Jerusalem, the laws of Israel, and the religious authorities who define Jewishness, would say that person was not a Jew. Yet that is exactly what Solomon did, at the behest of his foreign wives. From every historical period, all through the era of the original Jewish States, large numbers of statues of non-Jewish Gods have been found, in every part of the land. It can be argued, with a lot of biblical and archeological evidence to back it up, that the undiluted monotheistic worship of Yahweh has never been done by a majority of the population of the land of Israel/Palestine.
So, Palestine is a Nation, because they say they are. The Palestinian-Denial by Zionists, can't change that reality. And the Jewish historical claim is no better than that of a dozen other nationalities.
<I happen to study real history...>
Do you study history to find Affirmation, or Truth? |
