http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131460

There was nothing unusual in way the Israelites treated the peoples of Canaan according to ancient norms.

I repeat emphatically that the Canaanites have no relation to today’s Arabs. They had a very different culture, religion, language and identity than today’s Arabs and probably have little genetic relation.

Jews paid astronomical prices for land in Israel. They bought the most barren, deserted, swamp-infested land because that was the only one that the Arabs were willing to sell. hen John Hope Simpson arrived in Palestine in May 1930, he observed: “They [Jews] paid high prices for the land, and in addition they paid to certain of the occupants of those lands a considerable amount of money which they were not legally bound to pay.” The Peel Commission’s report found that Arab complaints about Jewish land acquisition were baseless. It pointed out that “much of the land now carrying orange groves was sand dunes or swamp and uncultivated when it was purchased….there was at the time of the earlier sales little evidence that the owners possessed either the resources or training needed to develop the land.”24 Moreover, the Commission found the shortage was “due less to the amount of land acquired by Jews than to the increase in the Arab population.” The report concluded that the presence of Jews in Palestine, along with the work of the British Administration, had resulted in higher wages, an improved standard of living and ample employment opportunities.

Dina:
“In every civilization with some sort of law, an owner, even a very rightful one, loses property after 30 years.” And yet you claim that Arabs should be allowed to return back to their homes 61 years after the establishment of the State of Israel. Jewish rights to the land are based on their antiquity and their preceding the Arabs there, and by the fact that today they are the majority and possess the land. Make up your mind: either the Land belongs to whoever was there first (in which case the Jews precede the Arabs) or it belongs to its current owners (in which case Israel is on the map and “Palestine is not).

The fact is that the Arabs living in the geographic entity known as Palestine did at no time consider themselves part of a distinct “Palestinian people”. This entity is completely artificial and only came about following the Six Day War.
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Jews have always had a large presence in Israel. Since 1867, Jews have been a clear majority in Jerusalem. Jews have been actively returning and rebuilding their country since the 1800s. Arabs have 22 states- Jews have one. Leave us alone and may G-d bless you in your own 22 countries.

Bar Kochba, are you realizing how unvoluntarily comical you are?
They have been there for “only 1000 years” – LOL! In every civilization with some sort of law, an owner, even a very rightful one, loses property after 30 years. Maybe you could extend it to encompass all global legal traditions – 3 generations, 90 years, surely is not unrealistic.

The gap between 90 years and ONE THOUSAND years is pretty large! For the slow at mind: This would mean under ANY thinkable legal regime, the owner would have lost any claim to the land. 1000 years is too long to uphold any claim. Where this rule of 30 years comes from? From an interest in PEACE and legal certainty. 30 years an owner has not managed to get his property back – a new generation has taken over the property already, then there is society’s interest in avoiding an endless feud. Property of the initial owner is no more. Not just, but reasonable and well founded. After all, the young new owner generation has contributed to the maintenance of the property in the meantime, without being burdened with the crime of theft of the first new owner.

And you should know the national states, as opposed to regional empires, developed in Europe only in the 18th century. So it does not do your depiction of intelligence any favor to demand the existence of a sovereign Palestinian state before the 20th century. Then there should be no Turks, no Iraqis, no Syrians, no Lebanese.. This does not harm the fact that within the Ottoman empire, there was regional adminstration, and rulers set in place for specific territories (which WERE ethnic, if not national entities). Just like the Europeans, for example the Austro-Hungarian empire, managed their rule. With regional governors speaking the local language and reporting to the central authority.
If you know Jewish history, this might sound familiar to you: The Roman empire was organised in this way too.

So following your reasoning, the Jewish identity and state was extinct the moment Judäa was integrated into the Roman Empire. No sovereign power, a foreign domination – so I guess following your logic that was the end of the Jewish state, not the diaspora?
You might want to clear out your inconsistencies of thought, and refrain from getting “education” from racist propaganda only.

Palestinians didn’t sell their land. There were a few traitors, but the “absentee” were made like that because they were kicked out of their lands by Jewish gangs. Which committed terrorist acts against innocent Palestinians, AND the British. In fact the ver first terrorist acts were done BY THE JEWS in Palestine.
So what do you expect from a bunch of terrorists who stole the land? Other than trying to falsify history as well?

http://www.aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/jewish_genes.asp

There are Arab Jews in the sense of European Jews or Asian Jews ie. Jews exiled in Arab or European lands. Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia, said the Palestinians’ ancestors had only been in the area for 1,000 years. Even the Palestinians themselves have acknowledged their association with the region came long after the Jews. In testimony before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, for example, they claimed a connection to Palestine of more than 1,000 years, dating back no further than the conquest of Muhammad’s followers in the 7th century. And that claim is also dubious. Over the last 2,000 years, there have been massive invasions that killed off most of the local people (e.g., the Crusades), migrations, the plague, and other manmade or natural disasters. The entire local population was replaced many times over. During the British mandate alone, more than 100,000 Arabs emigrated from neighboring countries and are today considered Palestinians.

?…[the Palestinian Arabs'] basic sense of corporate historic identity was, at different levels, Muslim or Arab or – for some – Syrian; it is significant that even by the end of the Mandate in 1948, after thirty years of separate Palestinian political existence, there were virtually no books in Arabic on the history of Palestine..?
— Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice, (New York: Norton, 1999), p. 186.

In short, even after the Roman exile, Jews have always lived in the Land of Israel. Starting the 1800s, Jews began actively to return home. Jews bought land legally from Syrian effendi absentee land-owners, built settlements and cultivated the land. “Palestinian” nationalism only became a movement after the Six Day War.

I am not a history player: just a thought.

Great writing and effort.

Bar Kochba.. ahh.. as Mark Twain has said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Go live your life basing it on stats and dates. We live our life based on our hearts, souls, and attachment to something that is in our bloods and roots that we will never part with. Israelis can never kill every single Palestinian on earth. As long as we exist, you live in fear. No matter where we are in this world.

Also, one last thought. Back in 2006. When Lebanon and Israel was at war, why were the Israelis rushing to the Canadian and other foreign embassies trying to get out of Israel? The moment an Israeli senses fear and death near their doors they run away or fight back with the most advanced weapons known to man. But it is that Palestinian/Lebanese will power that drives Israeli’s crazy!! Why the fear from us? Do you guys live in so much fear that you have to protect your self that much or run away when you can’t do it anymore?

There is so much to say regarding this topic, but we will end up in a never ending debate. The only way to solve this problem is find a way to live in peace. Give everyone similar rights, and stop this racism. Just a curious thought since religion is always stuck in this middle of this argument, but isn’t racism a sin for Jews?

It’s conceivable that Palestinians who were kicked out were original Jews who converted to Christianity, then to Islam. Not everyone who lived in Palestine came from somewhere else. With the exception of ALL the Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews who are known to have lived elsewhere. Some of the Mizrahi (probably 1%) did live in Palestine and are ARAB JEWS. Just like Bani Quraida, Bani Nadir and Bani Qainuqa 1400 years ago. They were ARAB Jews

I’m happy to talk also. Your post deals with rewriting the history of the Holy Land. Yet, historical revisionism plays a key role in the “Palestinian” national identity. The Muslim wakf on the Temple Mount has been steadily destroying Jewish artifacts and dumping them in the Kidron Valley. The Arabs deny that the Jews have a right to the Land. And I am saying that we were there first, and we will be there long afterwards.

Most of the people who call themselves “Palestinian” moved to the region from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and the Maghreb, in the 19th century, because of the improved living conditions caused by Jewish return.

Palestine, actually does exist- in Jordan. 2/3 of the population is “Palestinian”, and it was originally meant to be part of the Jewish National Home but the British instead gave it to the Arabs. You already have a state. Israel is mine. Leave it alone!

Ahmad Hamdan: Indeed buddy.

Bar Kochba: OK , even if that was the case, you are saying that the presence of Arabs and Muslims over that land for almost 1400 years up to current days does not give them any right to live there ??!!!

The Philistines were an Aegean people who are now extinct. They have no connection to the Arabs who now occupy Israel. Since biblical times, there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel. There have only been 3 independent states in Israel, all Jewish: The Davidic Kingdom, the Hasmonean Dynasty and the modern State of Israel. There was never a Palestine or a Palestinian people. The Romans gave the land the name “Palestine” to try and erase the Jewish connection to the Land.

Despite the exile, Jews always maintained a presence in the Land. The Arabs may have invaded and occupied the Land but that does not give them any right to colonize it. Israel is Jewish and will always be.

The Land of Israel, for the Nation of Israel, according to the Torah of Israel!

@Za3tar
Excellent article, and blessed effort. It’s seriously amazing and very refreshing to see bloggers from all over the world join in on this tragic anniversary. Hopefully, Blog About Palestine day will make a difference in the lives of many

And they never will.

And it’s true: Only when Israelis started producing oranges in the size of a man’s head, that is when Arabs decided to come to the land and claim it its own.

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese.” — PLO Executive Committee member Zuhayr Muhsin, March 31, 1977, interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw.”

I had one guy on my blog come and say that “Only when Israelis started producing oranges in the size of a man’s head, that is when Palestinians decided to come to the land and claim it its own” … .. some people are just idiots

It is also weird to see how some of these people can deny the existence of Palestinians even though the story of young King David fighting the Philistines (Goliath was a Philistine) is right there in their bible.

People should read your article, and maybe start learning that we are here. We existed for 100′s of years like everyone else. I don’t understand how people till now think that Palestine was a land with hardly any people. Where did the 700,000 people that were forced to leave Palestine in 1948 come from? Is that not enough of a number to tell the world, well yah, the land had SOME people.

Ignorance sometimes makes me want to vomit from disgust!