Jabotinsky using "Palestinian"

When Jabotinsky used "Palestinian" (referring to Jews of the Palestine Mandate), as reported in Denver Jewish News, Sept. 3, 1925

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Library of Congress Errs (UPDATED)

If you read the second half of my previous blog post, you will know that I drew attention to the probability that Rashida Tlaib is definitely not the first "Palestinian" to be elected to Congress.

The first was a Jew, John H. Krebs.

Krebs moved to the Mandate of Palestine in 1933, was educated there and even served in the Hagana before emigrating to the United States to go to university.

In order to enter the United States, he would have had need of a passport.  Since he was born in Germany, and being a Jew, his nationality would have been terminated (and had he remained there, he would have been exterminated).

Logic seems to indicate that he was issued a Palestinian passport.

or, perhaps, a Laissez-passer document.

To be sure, I wrote to the Library of Congress.

The reply, however, was strange:

John Hans Krebs was born in Berlin, Germany, although he did live in Israel from 1933 to 1946 before moving to the United States. Krebs served in the House of Representatives from 1975 to 1979. 

It appears that John Sununu was the first Palestinian-American to serve in Congress. John Sununu is of Lebanese-Palestinian ancestry and was first elected to the House in 1997 and the Senate in 2003. h

Also, Rep. Justin Amash has a Palestinian father. Amash was elected to the House in 2011. 

I responded:

Thank you.

To pursue the issue further, Krebs did NOT live in "Israel" between 1933-1946.The territory at that time was a League of Nations Mandate, assigned to Great Britain for the purpose of reconstituting the historic Jewish national home. Israel came into existence in 1948. Palestine, incidentally, never became an independent geo-political entity.

Like Krebs, Sununu was born outside of Palestine proper, in Havana, Cuba. His father's family had already come to the United States from the Middle East at the turn of the twentieth century. His father, John, was born in Boston. Sununu's mother, Victoria Dada, was born in El Salvador. So there is no direct first or second generation connection with Palestine. In fact, he never, unlike Krebs, ever lived in the area.

As for Amash, he is indeed the son of a Palestinian Christian father whose family immigrated to the United States in 1956 from Bethlehem, I think. Congressman Amash, too, was not born in the territory of Palestine but in Grand Rapids and never lived in the Palestine Mandate which ended in 1948. Between 1948-1967, the former Mandate territory of Palestine outside of the boundaries of Israel, was under the occupation/annexation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. As I do not know when Attalah Amash was born, if it was post 1948, it was not in Palestine but Jordan.

And I added

I think you are mixing up "ancestry" with actual diplomatic nationality. If that is your standard, though, dozens of Jews who have served in the House of Representatives and the Senate are, in a sense, "Palestinians" as that is where all Jews originated before being dispersed due to the conquest and occupation of Judea.

BONUS

Thanks to a Twitter ally, I can now display proof of Krebs' Palestinian nationality:

and

________________________

I have received their second reply:

Hello Yisrael Medad
We apologize if we misunderstood your original question. We thought you were attempting to find the first member of Congress with Palestinian ancestry. Since John Krebs wasn't born in the Palestine Mandate and/or present day Israel, we did not understand what you meant by the first "Palestinian" to serve in Congress.

You are correct that Krebs did not live in Israel since Israel did not come into existence until 1948. We inadvertently took the reference to Kreb living Israel from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, which mistakenly states that he "moved to Israel in 1933..." ...

That being said, John Krebs does appear to be the first member of Congress to have been raised in the Palestine Mandate and/or the land that is present-day Israel. We looked through the book "The Jews of Capitol Hill: A Compendium of Jewish Congressional Members" by Kurt F. Stone and did not find any other examples.

________________

Please read this from Abu Yehuda, who I credited in my previous post on this, with inside photos of the passport of Krebs.

And someone edited at Wikipedia (for how long I do not know)

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I Found a Real Palestinian

.

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'Palestinians' Are..."Settlers"

What a break.  "Palestinians" are termed settlers.

A fellow Arab, Nayal Tueni, published on January 2, 2013 on the 'Palestinians", from a Lebanese viewpoint:

The Palestinian burden once more

We in Lebanon understand the moral obligation that hinders the closing of borders in the face of Syrian refugees and we have nothing against Syrians who oppose a regime that occupied and killed our people. We have never turned down Palestinians who sought asylum in Lebanon unless they constitute a direct threat to its sovereignty like what happened before when they assumed that Lebanon could be an alternative homeland together with the Syrian turned the country into a battlefield and a venue for settling scores and operating intelligence agencies.

...Syrian refugees [however] can go back home as soon as the conflict is resolved especially of the new regime offers to compensate them for their losses and also because life in Lebanon is too expensive for them. But this is not the case with Palestinians. Syrians still have the chance to get rid of their burden, but Palestinians do not, especially that the Palestinian cause has not become as pressing as it had once been in the midst of the current development.

...Lebanon is the only country that is unable to take a firm stance on the matter citing humanitarian considerations. The Lebanese government, which contains parties that support the Assad regime, is not expected to make such a daring decision as limiting the number of refugees flocking from Syria, particularly Palestinians because once they create their own security islands inside refugee camps, authorities are never capable of tracking them down. The number of Palestinian refugees will, therefore, increase and we will find ourselves dealing with a new reality, new settlers, and a new burden that will summon up the memory of the Palestinian nightmare of the 1970s. 

...the Lebanese people take precedent and that they should be given priority in benefiting from the country’s already-diminishing resources… 

(Nayla Tueni is a Lebanese journalist and politician. She won the Greek Orthodox seat for Achrafieh in the 2009 Lebanese Elections and and she is one of the few elected female politicians in the country. She can be found on Twitter: @naylatueni.)

*This article was first published in the Lebanon-based Annahar on Dec. 31, 2012. 

(Thanks or k/t [kippa tip] = AH)

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Kessler's Pinocchio Test Fails

Glenn Kessler discusses the remarks of Rick Santorum (which I blogged here in November) at the Washington Post on Rick Santorum’s claim that ‘no Palestinian’ lives in the West Bank and gives him marks in his "Pinocchio Test" which is a measure of truth.

He gives Santorum 4 minuses.

Why?

Here (and my comments italicized in brackets):-

Santorum might argue that he is simply expressing an opinion here — and certainly we take no position on his statements about Israeli settlements. But he appears to be stating this as a fact — there are no “Palestinians” living in the West Bank and this is Israeli land.

But that stance is flatly refuted by the Israeli government, which calls the land “disputed territory” and does not grant Israeli citizenship to the Palestinians living in the West Bank. In fact, the Israeli Foreign Ministry refers to areas of “Palestinian jurisdiction.” [a. the'Israeli land' reference meant that the land the state of Israel now administers is not foreign territory but land that the League of Nations acknowledged as part of the historic Jewish national home and not that it is part of Israel; b. and the 'Palestinian jurisdiction' refers to the Palestinian Authority, not to any recognized national grouping called "Palestinian".]

The Israeli position that the territories are “disputed” is not accepted by much of the world [which doesn't mean anything as far as the question], but it seems that the very least a potential U.S. president could do is accept the definitions used by the Israeli government.

He also notes:

...Israel, which over international protests annexed land around Jerusalem, has not annexed the West Bank but instead has labeled it “disputed territory” subject to negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state.

As Israel’s Foreign Ministry puts it: “The West Bank can best be regarded as disputed territory over which there are competing claims that should be resolved in peace talks. The final status of this disputed territory should be determined through negotiations between the parties.” [well, the final statuys could very well be that there is no "Palestine" and therefore no "Palestinians" but Arabs]

Moreover, because of a series of agreements between Israelis and Palestinians, Palestinians have now acquired self-government over tracts of West Bank territory...Israel makes no claim that the Arabs residing in the West Bank are Israelis and in fact has already given up some governmental control to Palestinian self-rule — with the implication that even more territory will eventually form a Palestinian state [or not].

...According to the CIA World Factbook, about 2.6 million people live in the West Bank, including nearly 300,000 Israeli settlers [er, are they "Palestinians"?]. (Another 200,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians claim as the capital of a future state.) The CIA lists the population of the West Bank as “Palestinian Arab and other 83%, Jewish 17 %.”

So, who has the Pinocchio nose?

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The "Palestinians" Are An Inventive People

Newt Gingrich's statement calling Palestinians

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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So Ignoble; So Highflying

LA Times reports:

William Wyler's 1959 epic, "Ben-Hur,"...is getting the superstar treatment in Warner's 50th-anniversary ultimate collection edition arriving Tuesday in both regular DVD and Blu-ray.

Based on the novel by Lew Wallace, the period drama revolves around Judah Ben-Hur (Heston), a Palestinian nobleman who is enslaved by the Romans, engages in one of the most thrilling chariot races ever captured on screen, and even encounters Jesus Christ.

I left this comment there:

Reminds me of Hanan Ashrawi at the 1991 Madrid Conference referring to Jesus as a "Palestinian". There's no Palestine in the New testament but in Acts 8:1 you'll read the geographical terms of "Judea and Samaria". Yes, Palestine - Prima, Secunda and Tertia - came from the Philistines but Jesus, like Ben-Hur, for all intents and purposes, was a Judean. And Jewish.

But who needs a "Palestinian" when we have an Israeli:-

Ayelet Zurer to soar alongside Superman

Israeli actress wins major role in next Superman sequel - Superman's iconic red cape will be joined by a blue and white one when the superhero takes to the skies for his next movie battle with evil.

As Israeli actors continue to rise in the international movie scene, Ayelet Zurer, 42, is soaring above them all. Zurer has won a major role in the coming Superman movie sequel, which is set to feature Hollywood stars Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner, both Oscar winners. The sequel, “Man of Steel,” has begun production and is being directed by Zack Snyder, of “300” and “Dawn of the Dead” fame.

Zurer is confirmed to be in the cast, although her role is still the subject of speculation. She is rumored to play Superman’s Kryptonian mother, Lara Lor-Van, after the exit of Julia Ormond, who was originally cast in the role.

(k/t=Snapshots)

And Robert Avrech inserted it at Breitbart's Hollywood.

________________

CAMERA informs us that the LATimes has corrected itself.


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Ibish's Idiotic Nonsense

Complete fabricated nonsense:

Neither the Palestinian nor the Israeli national identity is more or less "authentic" or “legitimate” than the other because both are self-defined nationalisms adhered to by millions of people. The extent to which they are based on imaginary constructs—as all modern national ideologies ultimately prove largely to be—is meaningless in practice. Objecting to these mythologies is the political equivalent of complaining about the rain.

Translation: there is no such thing a "Palestinian nationalism". To prove that that really doesn't make a difference, Jewish nationalism doesn't exist either.

Here:

In the decades immediately preceding 1948, the word “Israeli” was totally unknown * and meant nothing, and the word "Palestinian” meant many things, but certainly not what it means today. Both of these national identities—the Jewish Israeli and the Arab Palestinian—are contemporary constructs *  born of recent history...The analytical challenge is to recognize that while not all nationalist claims are necessarily equally valid (they may speak on behalf of very few people, for example, and not really have the constituency they claim), in some important senses they are, however, all equally invalid.

Idiot.

Oh, the author has been tweeting nonsensicals to me this past week as well as to other bloggers and this is the hint:

The pro-Israel voices objecting to these virtually self-evident observations seem unconcerned with defending the Israeli national identity, but obsessed with attacking the invocation of any heritage or tradition on which Palestinian nationalism can draw.

The impulse to negate the other seems overwhelming...These critics assume all aspects of Jewish and biblical Hebrew mythology, traditions and history automatically legitimize the Israeli national project. However, such claims were highly controversial among the Jews of the world for many decades, and are again being subjected to significant interrogation.

If there is any mythology, Islam is its most outlandish proponent.  Jerusalem isn't mentioned in the Koran but El-Aksa is located there and Muhammed reached there, supposedly, how?  Well, it went like this:

During the month of Rajab, the Prophet Muhammad made a night -time trip to the city of Jerusalem (isra’), visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and from there was raised up into heaven (mi’raj). While there, he came face-to-face with previous prophets and received instructions about the number of prayers the Muslim community should observe each day. Muhammad and his followers perceived this as a miraculous journey, and it gave them strength and hope that God was with them despite recent setbacks.

"Miraculous"?

The prophet prayed at the rock, if not to the rock, during what has been rendered as a miraculous night journey he undertook on a white flying horse (l-Buraq El-Sharif) from Mecca to Jerusalem about 10 years after he began receiving "revelations" that disciples later codified as the Koran.

That's not mythology?

And that idiot is Hussein Ibish is a senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and blogs at http://www.ibishblog.com/.

_______________

*  What is Ibish talking about?  Doesn't he know:

One of the most important discoveries that relate to the time of the Exodus is the Merneptah stele which dates to about 1210 BC. Merneptah, the king of Egypt, boasts that he has destroyed his enemies in Canaan. He states: Plundered is the Canaan with every evil; Carried off is Ashkelon; seized upon is Gezer; Yanoam is made as that which does not exist; Israel is laid waste, his seed is not; (ANET 1969, 378).The word "Israel" here is written in Egyptian with the determinative for people rather than land (ANET 1969, 378 note 18). This implies that Israel did not have a king or kingdom at this time. This would be the time of the judges. The text also implies that Israel was as strong as the other cities mentioned, and not just a small tribe.

*  See my Continuum of Presence.


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"Palestinian"? "Jordanian"? "Ottoman"? or "Israeli"?

This snippet is from the Israel Policy Forum, close to Obama, formerly close to Ehud Olmert (his "we are tired" speech was made to them):

The Shepherd Hotel sits in Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood that also contains foreign consulates, such as the British embassy, and Israeli government buildings.

Irving Moskowitz, a Miami-based millionaire who has supported numerous Jewish building projects in East Jerusalem, purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985. From 1987 to 2002, Moskowitz rented the building out to Israel’s border police until Israel granted him permission to construct a housing development.

Moskowitz’s goal is not to construct housing for its own sake, but rather to change the facts on the ground and ensure Israeli control of a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly Palestinian. The Palestinians understand Moskowitz’s intentions and voiced their protest to the United States. Their fear is that they will lose yet another East Jerusalem neighborhood to Israeli settlers.

"Palestinian"?

And during 1948-1967, it was...Jordanian?

And during 1918-1948, it was...Palestinian?

And during 1516-1918, it was...Ottoman?

Or perhaps, just plain Arab?

Because, if not, shouldn't we say that it is "Israeli" between 1967-2009?

Why does it change under other rulers but not when Israel rules the city?