A bit of background to King Abdullah's essay: note how he always refers to Palestine-cum-Transjordan as "our country". This is not an accident. At this period, King Abdullah was attempting to convince Ben Gurion that Palestine and Transjordan should merge, and the Zionists should accept minority status under the Hashemite monarchy. Ben Gurion said no thanks. As King Abdullah was shot the following year by an Islamist, and succeeded by his schizophrenic son Talal (later declared incompetent), just as well as it turned out.
Just to note a few of the standard Arab whoppers in the piece:
Our case is quite simple: For nearly 2,000 years Palestine has been almost 100 per cent Arab
hoo boy, a doozey. Everybody and his cousin has tromped through Palestine in the last 2000 years: Greeks, Romans, Jews, Idumeans, Arabs, Druze, Circassians, Crusaders, you name it. The Arabs didn't show up in numbers until the 7th century, so 2000 is off by about 600 years. Even then, there were plenty of minority populations: Druze, Jews, Circassians, and others. There have always been Jews in Israel except when they got massacred by the Crusaders.
With very minor exceptions, Jews have lived for many centuries in the Middle East, in complete peace and friendliness with their Arab neighbours.
The Arabs keep repeating this ad nauseam. Every time you hear it, you should think of an old style Southern segregationalist saying, "We never had any trouble with our negroes until them outside agitators arrived."
Jews lived in the Arab lands under Sharia. Under Sharia, Jews have a deliberately degraded status and have to pay the jizra, the dhimmi tax. Under Sharia, Jews cannot testify against Muslims in court. They have no rights in law, and are dependent on the local ruler for protection. Think about what that means.
As for the "complete peace and friendliness" - this was 7 years after the great Nazi-inspired farhood (pogrom) in Baghdad that killed hundreds of Jews. King Abdullah really should have heard about that, don't you think? Esp. as his brother was the King of Iraq.
It is significant that the Philistines—not the Jews—gave their name to the country: "Palestine" is merely the Greek form of "Philistia."
The Romans renamed "Judea" to "Syria Palestina" after they crushed the second Jewish rebellion in 130 CE, and had killed or deported most of the native population. So what is the significance supposed to be? The Philistines haven't given their name to anything since they vanished as a people around 800 BCE.
The fact is that most of the European Jews are Western in culture and outlook, entirely urban in experience and habits. They cannot really have their hearts set on becoming pioneers in the barren, arid, cramped land which is Palestine.
Well guess again. And despite King Abdullah's implications that the Arabs were somehow taking care of the Jewish refugees, of course nothing of the sort was happening. The Jews were taking care of the themselves, and providing jobs to the Arabs as well. During the mandate period, Arab population in Arab-only towns rose about 50%. Arab population near Jewish towns rose fivefold in the same period. This means there had to be a large Arab immigration, both internal and external.
BTW, after the Arabs were done driving out all of their Jews (so much for the "complete peace and friendliness"), the Jewish population of Israel ceased to be majority European in descent. Most Israelis today are Mizrahim, descended from Jews of the Arab lands.
And while we are listening to King Abdullah talking about the indignity of having foreigners come to "his" country, consider where King Abdullah himself came from: the Hijaz, in Saudi Arabia. The Brits gave him Transjordan as a consolation prize when Ibn Saud ran him out of Arabia. If the Zionists were British imports, so was he! |
