[{"published":true,"date":{"type":"firestore/timestamp/1.0","seconds":1308614400,"nanoseconds":0},"contentType":"Article","authorId":[47],"tagIds":["190","193","254","1035","1036","1039","1045","1264"],"content":"

Not Stealing Palestine but Purchasing Israel

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by Daniel Pipes
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Zionists stole Palestinian land: that's the mantra both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas teach their children and propagate in their media. This claim has vast importance, as Palestinian Media Watch explains: "Presenting the creation of the [Israeli] state as an act of theft and its continued existence as a historical injustice serves as the basis for the PA's non-recognition of Israel's right to exist." The accusation of theft also undermines Israel's position internationally.
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Palestinian imagery: A Star-of-David-shark devours Palestine.

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But is this accusation true?
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\nNo, it is not. Ironically, the building of Israel represents about the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history. To understand why requires seeing Zionism in context. Simply put, conquest is the historic norm; governments everywhere were established through invasion, nearly all states came into being at someone else's expense. No one is permanently in charge, everyone's roots trace back to somewhere else.
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\nGermanic tribes, Central Asian hordes, Russian tsars, and Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors remade the map. Modern Greeks have only a tenuous connection to the Greeks of antiquity. Who can count the number of times Belgium was overrun? The United States came into existence by defeating Native Americans. Kings marauded in Africa, Aryans invaded India. In Japan, Yamato-speakers eliminated all but tiny groups such as the Ainu.
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\nThe Middle East, due to its centrality and geography, has experienced more than its share of invasions, including the Greek, Roman, Arabian, Crusader, Seljuk, Timurid, Mongolian, and modern European. Within the region, dynastic froth caused the same territory – Egypt for example – to be conquered and re-conquered.
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Many wars over Jerusalem: Emperor Titus celebrated his victory over the Jews in 70 A.D. with an arch showing Roman soldiers carrying off a menorah from the Temple Mount.

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The land that now makes up Israel was no exception. In Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel, Eric H. Cline writes of Jerusalem: "No other city has been more bitterly fought over throughout its history." He backs up that claim, counting "at least 118 separate conflicts in and for Jerusalem during the past four millennia." He calculates Jerusalem to have been destroyed completely at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The PA fantasizes that today's Palestinians are descended from a tribe of ancient Canaan, the Jebusites; in fact, but they are overwhelmingly the off-spring of invaders andimmigrants seeking economic opportunities.
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\nAgainst this tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, as mercantile rather than military. Two great empires, the Ottomans and the British, ruled Eretz Yisrael; in contrast, Zionists lacked military power. They could not possibly achieve statehood through conquest.
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\nInstead, they purchased land. Acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house, lay at the heart of the Zionist enterprise until 1948. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine "to assist in the foundation of a new community of free Jews engaged in active and peaceable industry," was the key institution – and not the Haganah, the clandestine defense organization founded in 1920.
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\nZionists also focused on the rehabilitation of what was barren and considered unusable. They not only made the desert bloom but drained swamps, cleared water channels, reclaimed wasteland, forested bare hills, cleared rocks, and removed salt from the soil. Jewish reclamation and sanitation work precipitously reduced the number of disease-related deaths.
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\nOnly when the British mandatory power gave up on Palestine in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush and expel the Zionists, did the latter take up the sword in self defense and go on to win land through military conquest. Even then, as the historian Efraim Karsh demonstrates in Palestine Betrayed, most Arabs fled their lands; exceedingly few were forced off.
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\nThis history contradicts the Palestinian account that "Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people" which led to a catastrophe "unprecedented in history" (according to a PA 12th-grade textbook) or that Zionists "plundered the Palestinian land and national interests, and established their state upon the ruins of the Palestinian Arab people" (writes a columnist in the PA's daily). International organizations, newspaper editorials, and faculty petitions reiterate this falsehood worldwide.
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\nIsraelis should hold their heads high and point out that the building of their country was based on the least violent and most civilized movement of any people in history. Gangs did not steal Palestine; merchants purchased Israel.

\n","lang":"en","title":"PMW cited in article denouncing Palestinian narrative on the establishment of Israel","author":[{"about":"","id":47,"citeName":{"en":"Pipes, D.","he":""},"name":{"en":"daniel pipes","he":""}}],"tags":[],"indexId":"index12","imageUrl":"/STORAGE/Cartoons/Animals/Israeli_Shark_Devours_Palestine_HJ_ 23-5-10.jpg","id":2848,"news":false,"description":"\"Zionists stole Palestinian land: that's the mantra both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas teach their children and propagate in their media. This claim has vast importance, as Palestinian Media Watch explains: 'Presenting the creation of the [Israeli] state as an act of theft and its continued...\"","thumbnail":"/STORAGE/Cartoons/Animals/Israeli_Shark_Devours_Palestine_HJ_ 23-5-10.jpg"},{"indexId":"index7","tagIds":["190","193","1035","1036","1039","1045","1187"],"description":"Along comes Palestinian Media Watch to make our point in spades, publishing today an eye-opening compendium of tributes by the PA to a long list of murderers. Titled \"From Terrorists to Role Models: The Palestinian Authority's Institutionalization of Incitement,\" its summary explains that \"The PA's...\"","authorId":[47],"news":false,"tags":[],"title":"The Palestinian Authority Celebrates Terrorists Who Killed Israelis","id":1740,"lang":"en","published":true,"imageUrl":"","contentType":"Article","author":[{"id":47,"about":"","citeName":{"en":"Pipes, D.","he":""},"name":{"en":"daniel pipes","he":""}}],"content":"While the U.S. government has a faith in Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority that borders on the mystical, some of us see them merely as the "good terrorists" (good because willing to talk to Israel) as opposed to the "bad terrorists" of Hamas (bad because unwilling to talk).
\nAlong comes Palestinian Media Watch to make our point in spades, publishing today an eye-opening compendium of tributes by the PA to a long list of murderers. Titled "From Terrorists to Role Models: The Palestinian Authority's Institutionalization of Incitement," its summary explains that "The PA's policy of naming schools, summer camps, sporting events, streets and ceremonies after terrorists fundamentally undermines the chance for peace." Written by Itamar Marcus, Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Barbara Crook and the PMW staff, it establishes in painstaking detail PA glorification of some of the most evil individuals in recent years.
\nTake the example of Dalal Mughrabi, the 19-year-old woman who led the "Coastal Road massacre" in March 1978 that killed 37 civilians in a bus hijacking that killed more Israelis than any other Palestinian terror attack. Her abominable name has been immortalized through the designation of
\nTwo elementary schools, a kindergarten, a computer center, summer camps, football tournaments, a community center, a sports team, a public square, a street, an election course, an adult education course, a university club, a dance troupe, a military unit, a dormitory in a youth center, TV series, a TV quiz team and a graduation ceremony.
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\nPMW's report includes 100 examples named after 46 terrorists, 26 of which were reported in the Palestinian media in the first four months of 2010 alone. The report makes vivid the impact of these namings by imagining a Palestinian child who
\ncan walk to school along a street named after the terrorist Abu Jihad, who planned a bus hijacking that killed 37, spend the day learning in a school named after Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin, in the afternoon play football in a tournament named after suicide terrorist Abdel Baset Odeh who killed 31, and end his day at a youth center named after terrorist Abu Iyad, responsible for the killing of the 11 Olympic athletes in Munich.
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\nNor is the PA's glorification of violence limited to Palestinian murderers: "Iraqi insurgent Ali Al-Naamani committed the first suicide bombing attack in Iraq, killing four American soldiers. The Palestinians named a square in the center of Jenin after him. Likewise, Saddam Hussein has a Palestinian school and a road named after him."
\nWhen confronted with criticism for exalting terrorists, the PA leadership shows no contrition. "Of course we want to name a square after her," says Abbas about Mughrabi.
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\nComments:
\n(1) Kudos to PMW for its extensive research.
\n(2) What will it take to convince American policymakers of both parties that good terrorists are just as malign – and perhaps more effective – than bad terrorists?
\n(3) The admiration for terrorists inculcated into children at a tender age in Palestinian society ultimately does more damage to Palestinians than to Israelis, brutalizing and dehumanizing them. Thank you, Yasir Arafat. (May 3, 2010)
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\nhttp://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/05/the-palestinian-authority-celebrates-terrorists
","date":{"type":"firestore/timestamp/1.0","seconds":1272844800,"nanoseconds":0},"thumbnail":""},{"lang":"en","description":"\"Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch has collected many Palestinian statements drawing this conclusion. The military branch of Fatah 'emphasized the necessity to follow in the footsteps of the act of Hizbullah, so that all prisoners and detainees will be released.'\"","content":"When asked in 1787, as the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia came to an end, whether it had created a monarchy or a republic, Benjamin Franklin replied. “A republic, if you can keep it.”
\nHis pessimism comes to mind whenever a republic makes a terrible mistake, from the French policy of appeasement toward Germany in the 1930s to the US policy of incrementalism in Vietnam to the South Korean “sunshine policy” now underway.
\nFranklin’s worry felt newly relevant on Thursday last week, as Israel effected a most extraordinary swap with Hizbullah, one of the world’s leading terrorist groups.
\nIn exchange for one rogue Israeli civilian, captured while possibly engaging in dubious transactions, plus the remains of three soldiers, Israel released 429 living terrorists and criminals, including 400 Palestinians, 23 Lebanese, five other Arabs, and one German, as well as 59 corpses.
\nIt comes as little surprise to learn, in the description of The New York Times, that this exchange prompted “a day of national celebration” in Lebanon and a “somber” mood in Israel. Nor is it astonishing to hear the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, describe the present as “not a time of happiness.”
\nSharon went on to explain his motives in carrying out the exchange by referring to the relatives of the dead Israeli soldiers: “three dear families, whose souls knew no rest for the past 40 months, will now be able to unite with their sorrow over a modest grave, and [with] composure as a promise was kept, and a right and moral decision was made despite its heavy price.”
\nIn other words, a major decision of state was taken for the sake of bringing small solace to three families. But what are the strategic consequences for Israel of this act of seeming morality?
\nSome or many of those 429 will again engage in terrorism against Israel, perhaps sparking a whole new campaign of violence. That is what happened once before: in 1985, Reuters explains, the Israeli government “swapped more than 1,100 Palestinians for three missing soldiers. Seven hundred Arabs were allowed to stay in the occupied territories and many later became leaders of the Palestinian uprising that erupted in 1987.”
\nThe lopsided deal signals Israel’s enemies that they can extract huge benefits by taking even just one civilian Israeli hostage. Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch has collected many Palestinian statements drawing this conclusion. The military branch of Fatah “emphasized the necessity to follow in the footsteps of the act of Hizbullah, so that all prisoners and detainees will be released.”
\nA Hamas leader saw in this deal confirmation that terrorism “is capable of achievements to liberate the land and people.” A newspaper hails Hizbullah for opening “a new door of hope for the families of the prisoners, after it was closed during the political solutions between the [Palestinian Authority] and Israel, which did not lead to any practical results.”
\nISRAEL’S reputation and standing undergo severe damage from this signal of demoralization and vulnerability. Listen to Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, on the exchange, seeing in it another proof “that the evil Zionist regime is defeatable by the strong wills and concrete faiths of the Mujahedeen of Islam.” The Sharon government also failed its allies in the global war on terror.
\nHostage-taking looks like a more effective tactic than it did a week earlier. If it can win a signal victory for Islamists in Lebanon against Israel, their ideological counterparts are more likely to use it in Iraq against the US government, in Moscow against the Russian government, and in Kashmir against the Indian government. Each terrorist success, however local, has the potential to reverberate internationally.
\nThe moral opprobrium of dealing with terrorists is eroded. If releasing hundreds of terrorists is acceptable for Israel, why not other countries too?
\nThese many negative consequences raise questions about the morality of this Israeli government action.
\nIn its early decades, Israel’s strategic prowess was legendary, transforming a weak country into a regional powerhouse. The past decade has seen the opposite process, whereby that powerhouse reduces itself to a tempting target. That this change is entirely self-induced and achieved through the democratic process makes Benjamin Franklin’s prophetic concern all too real.
\nWhen will the descent stop? By then, how much damage will have been done?
\nThe writer is director of the Middle East Forum.","id":359,"imageUrl":"","tagIds":["190","193","1035","1036","1037","1045","1543"],"date":{"type":"firestore/timestamp/1.0","seconds":1075766400,"nanoseconds":0},"title":"Hizbullah's victory, Israel's decline","indexId":"index1","news":false,"author":[{"id":47,"name":{"en":"daniel pipes","he":""},"about":"","citeName":{"en":"Pipes, D.","he":""}}],"contentType":"Article","tags":[],"published":true,"authorId":[47],"thumbnail":""}]