an “invented” people
is close to the mark.
I would rather say
an inventive people
But first, let's get back to basics. I am not against a people defining itself, it's identity, it's national aspirations. A group of people can redefine itself and even recreate itself.
But I cannot, in that process - which legitimately is a subject for review, criticism and denial - agree that that group invent for another people a false legacy and heritage to somehow justify its own inauthenticity.
As I pointed out here, my Zionist mentor, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, had written in connection with the Arabs of Eretz-Yisrael that
Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement.
In that article, The Iron Wall, he also wrote
I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority. And secondly, I belong to the group that once drew up the Helsingfors Programme , the programme of national rights for all nationalities living in the same State. In drawing up that programme, we had in mind not only the Jews, but all nations everywhere, and its basis is equality of rights.
And furthermore
Every native population, civilised or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators...They feel at least the same instinctive jealous love of Palestine, as the old Aztecs felt, for ancient Mexico , and their Sioux for their rolling Prairies...Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised...that they will be able to prevent the transformation of "Palestine" into the "Land of Israel."
Despite this, Jabotinsky's goal, because that was what was the just thing, was to convert
"Palestine" [quotation marks in the original] from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.
That it was an "Arab country" was because Arabs resided there and prevented or attempted to prevent Jews from entering the country and freely developing it. It was only the League of Nations Mandate, based on the historical connection of the Jews with the land, that finally allowed the Jews to fulfill their own national aspirations without undue interference or restrictions (in theory, at least, until Great Britain reneged its commitments).
Jabotinsky went further in clarifying the contest the Jews and Arabs faced:
We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine.
But justice is on the side of the Jews:
We hold that Zionism is moral and just. And since it is moral and just, justice must be done, no matter whether Joseph or Simon or Ivan or Achmet agree with it or
not. There is no other morality.
In a follow-up piece, Jabotinsky wrote:
There is not much that we can concede to Arab nationalism, without destroying Zionism. We cannot abandon the effort to achieve a Jewish majority in Palestine.
And continued, and I quote in full his conclusion:
if homeless Jewry demands Palestine for itself it is "immoral" because it does not suit the native population. Such morality may be accepted among cannibals, but not in a civilised world. The soil does not belong to those who possess land in excess but to those who do not possess any.
It is an act of simple justice to alienate part of their land from those nations who are numbered among the great landowners of the world, in order to provide a place of refuge for a homeless, wandering people. And if such a big landowning nation resists which is perfectly natural – it must be made to comply by compulsion. Justice that is enforced does not cease to be justice. This is the only Arab policy that we shall find possible. As for an agreement, we shall have time to discuss that later.
All sorts of catchwords are used against Zionism; people invoke Democracy, majority rule, national self-determination. Which means, that the Arabs being at present the majority in Palestine, have the right of self-determination, and may therefore insist that Palestine must remain an Arab country. Democracy and self-determination are sacred principles, but sacred principles like the Name of the Lord must not be used in vain – to bolster up a swindle, to conceal injustice.
The principle of self-determination does not mean that if someone has seized a stretch of land it must remain in his possession for all time, and that he who was forcibly ejected from his land must always remain homeless. Self-determination means revision – such a revision of the distribution of the earth among the nations that those nations who have too much should have to give up some of it to those nations who have not enough or who have none, so that all should have some place on which to exercise their right of self-determination.
And now when the whole of the civilised world has recognised that Jews have a right to return to Palestine, which means that the Jews are, in principle, also "citizens" and "inhabitants" of Palestine, only they were driven out, and their return must be a lengthy process, it is wrong to contend that meanwhile the local population has the right to refuse to allow them to come back and to that "Democracy”.
And to return to my insistence that the Arabs in the territory of the former Mandate of Palestine are an "inventive people". I have documented declarations and moves to steal the Jewish identity of this country. Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs, Rachel's Tomb, Shiloh, the Temple Mount are all the targets for 'conversion'.
This is wrong and it is immoral.
What is "inventive"?
Abbas to UNESCO: It’s an Emotional, Historical Moment
...He stressed that during the successful process of building the Palestinian state institutions, education was a main priority, as well as all aspects of culture, arts and archeology, with the partnership and sponsorship of UNESCO. He said that cultural, educational and historical marks in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron, will be preserved, renovated and protected
P.S.
From Yoram Ettinger's Who are the Palestinians?:
Contrary to political correctness, Palestinian Arabs have not been in the area west of the Jordan River from time immemorial; no Palestinian state ever existed, no Palestinian People was ever robbed of its land and there is no basis for the Palestinian "claim of return.”^
Most Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the 1845-1947 Muslim migrants from the Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, as well as from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Bosnia, the Caucasus, Turkmenistan, Kurdistan, India, Afghanistan and Balochistan.
Arab migrant workers were imported by the Ottoman Empire and by the British Mandate (which defeated the Ottomans in 1917) for infrastructure projects: The port of Haifa, the Haifa-Qantara, Haifa-Edrei, Haifa-Nablus and Jerusalem-Jaffa railroads, military installations, roads, quarries, reclamation of wetlands, etc. Illegal Arab laborers were also attracted by the relative economic boom, stimulated by Jewish immigration.
...As a result of the substantial 1880-1947 Arab immigration – and despite Arab emigration caused by domestic chaos and intra-Arab violence - the Arab population of Jaffa, Haifa and Ramla grew 17, 12 and 5 times...
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