How Arafat and the KGB invented a nationality to change the debate over Israel. My latest in PJ Media:
(Note: Most of this article is an exclusive excerpt from Robert Spencer’s new book, The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. All quotes are sourced in the book.)
Muslim congressional candidate Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) celebrated her primary victory with several anti-Israel tweets, including one that read: “My roots as a Palestinian American are strong and important.” The truth about those roots, however, could surprise even Tlaib, as before the 1960s, there were no Palestinian people. They were invented as a propaganda weapon against Israel.
In 1948, the nascent state of Israel defeated forces from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen that had been determined to destroy it utterly. The jihad against it continued, but it held firm, defeating Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon again in the Six-Day War in 1967, and Egypt and Syria yet again in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In winning these victories against enormous odds, Israel won the admiration of the free world, leading to the largest-scale and most audacious application in Islamic history of Muhammad’s dictum “War is deceit.”
In order to destroy the impression of the tiny Jewish state facing enormous Muslim Arab foes and prevailing, the Soviet KGB (the Soviet Committee for State Security) developed the fiction of an even smaller people, the “Palestinians,” menaced by a well-oiled and ruthless Israeli war machine.
In AD 134, the Romans had expelled the Jews from Judea after the Bar Kokhba revolt and renamed the region Palestine. The Romans had plucked this name from the Bible; it was the name of the Israelites’ ancient enemies, the Philistines. But never did the term “Palestinian” refer to anything but a region — not to a people or an ethnicity.
In the 1960s, however, the KGB and Hajj Amin al-Husseini’s nephew Yasir Arafat created both these allegedly oppressed people and the instrument of their freedom — the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Ion Mihai Pacepa, who had served as acting chief of Cold War-era Communist Romania’s spy service (Pacepa later authored many articles for PJ Media), later revealed what happened:
The PLO was dreamt up by the KGB, which had a penchant for “liberation” organizations. There was the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB in 1964 with help from Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara … the KGB also created the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out numerous bombing attacks.
…
In 1964 the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Palestinian National Charter — a document that had been drafted in Moscow. The Palestinian National Covenant and the Palestinian Constitution were also born in Moscow, with the help of Ahmed Shuqairy, a KGB influence agent who became the first PLO chairman.
For Arafat to head the PLO, he had to be a Palestinian. Pacepa explained:
[Arafat] was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-operations school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader.
First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat’s birth in Cairo, and replaced them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth.
Arafat may have been a Marxist, at least at first, but he and his Soviet handlers made copious use of Islamic anti-Semitism. KGB chief Yuri Andropov noted:
[T]he Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. … We had only to keep repeating our themes — that the United States and Israel were ‘fascist, imperial-Zionist countries’ bankrolled by rich Jews.
Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidels’ occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the U.S. Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom.
PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein explained the strategy more fully in a 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:
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. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
Once the people had been created, their desire for peace could be easily fabricated as well. Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu tutored Arafat in how to play the West like a fiddle. Pacepa recounted:
In March 1978, I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. “You simply have to keep on pretending that you’ll break with terrorism and that you’ll recognize Israel — over, and over, and over,” Ceausescu told him [Arafat]. … Ceausescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch. …
Ceausescu failed to get his Nobel Peace Prize. But in 1994 Arafat got his — all because he continued to play the role we had given him to perfection. He had transformed his terrorist PLO into a government-in-exile (the Palestinian Authority), always pretending to call a halt to Palestinian terrorism while letting it continue unabated.
Two years after signing the Oslo Accords, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists had risen by 73 percent.
This strategy continued to work beautifully, through U.S.-brokered “peace process” after “peace process,” from the 1978 Camp David Accords into the presidency of Barack Obama and beyond, with no end in sight….
Read the rest here.
gravenimage says
Robert Spencer in PJ Media: The Hoax of the “Palestinians”
…………………..
Yes–the “Fakestinians” did not exist before 1967. Really, they are just the local Muslim Arabs.
Amnon says
Never mind euphemisms, they were still ejected from their rightful homes. You are using a very convenient ploy by attaching euphemism to distract from the real truth of theft and plunder.
StellaSaidSo says
‘Theft and plunder’ – how Islam has sustained itself for 1400 years.
Terry Gain says
Amnon
Never mind euphemism. And lies. The Arabs were not driven out when Israel was formed. They left of their own accord, planning to return when the surrounding Arab nations destroyed Israel. But those plans, as the great Scottish poet wrote, gang aft agley when the Arabs lost that initial war and all the wars since, despite heavy odds against Israel. Apparently Allah no longer intervenes to win wars for those who submit to him.
The Arabs who remained, and their descendants are today 21% of the population of Israel and enjoy all the rights of the citizens of the Middle East’s only democracy. Their birth rate is 3.3.
Learn some history and stop spreading Muslim lies. Arabs were given 78% of the Palestinian Mandate. They have yet to show that they should have been given so much.
StellaSaidSo says
Well said, Terry Gain.
It is also worth noting that the Arab population of Israel enjoys the highest standard of living of any Arab population in the ME.
Tony says
you should really come into the light and breath fresh air,,, the arabs live and are in the Israeli gov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_members_of_the_Knesset
mortimer says
‘Theft and plunder’ is the NORMATIVE PROCEDURE of JIHAD TERRORISM.
A chapter of the Koran is titled “PLUNDER” (booty or spoils of war).
‘AMNON’ is suffering from a BAD CASE of PSYCHOLOGICAL PROJECTION in which the subject accuses other of doing what he is doing himself.
StellaSaidSo says
Pat Condell nails it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1N1zhUm84w
StellaSaidSo says
Oops, try again:..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1N1zhUm84w
J D S says
Palestine and all of the the promised land belongs to the Jews that was decreed by God and that can’t be changed by a stroke of the pen. Where Israel is was decreed by the UN and God surely overrides the UN but one wouldn’t know it at the present time.
Those who occupy Palestinians today are not God’s people, but are a mish mash of Arabs, (left-overs from those whom the Jews should have driven out centuries ago.
If the Jews had driven out those whom he told them to when they took the promised land (obeyed Him) they would not be in the predicament they are in today and most likely there would not have been the holocaust…….ONE MUST OBEY GOD TO RECEIVE HIS PROMISED BLESSINGS…..Hmmmmm! Does that still hold true today?? God does not change. We do……No wonder the world is in such a mess. If the supposedly Christian world would get back to God He would come back to them…HISTORY PROVES THAT!
Elisha says
“from the 1978 Camp David Accords into the presidency of Barack Obama and beyond, with no end in sight….”
The end has already been written:
“I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh, And they will become drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine; And all flesh will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.” – Isaiah 49:26
Then the word of the LORD of hosts came, saying, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘I am EXCEEDINGLY JEALOUS FOR ZION, yes, WITH GREAT WRATH I AM JEALOUS FOR HER.’ “Thus says the LORD, ‘I WILL RETURN TO ZION and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of the LORD of hosts will be called the Holy Mountain.’ – Zechariah 8:1-3
“The Lord will save the tents of Judah first, so that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants of Jerusalem shall not become greater than that of Judah. In that day the Lord will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; the one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David, and the house of David shall be like God, like the Angel of the Lord before them. It shall be in that day that I WILL SEEK TO DESTROY ALL THE NATIONS THAT COME AGAINST JERUSALEM.” – Zechariah 12:7-9
For THE LORD HAS CHOSEN ZION;
He has desired it for His habitation.
“THIS IS MY RESTING PLACE FOREVER;
Here I will dwell, for I have desired it. – Psalm 132:13-14
The LORD ROARS FROM ZION
And utters His voice from Jerusalem,
And the heavens and the earth tremble.
But the Lord is a refuge for His people
And a stronghold to the sons of Israel.
Then you will know that I am the Lord your God,
DWELLING IN ZION, MY HOLY MOUNTAIN.
So Jerusalem will be holy,
And strangers will pass through it no more. – Joel 3:16-17
And one of the elders says to me, “DO NOT WEEP. Behold, THE LION of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, HAS OVERCOME to open the scroll and its seven seals.” – Revelation 5:5
PRAISE THE MIGHTY NAME OF JESUS CHRIST, OUR REDEEMER!
mortimer says
Arab Opinions about the Demographic Unity of ‘Palestine’ and Jordan = They are one!
”Palestine and Transjordan are one, for Palestine is the coastline and Transjordan the hinterland of the same country.” – King Abdullah, at the Meeting of the Arab League, Cairo, 12 April, 1948
”We are the Government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine.” – Prime Minister of Jordan, 23 August, 1959
”Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate.” – Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2 February, 1970
”There is no family on the East Bank of the [Jordan] River that does not have relatives on the West Bank … no family in the west that does not have branches in the east.” – King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2 February, 1972
”We consider it necessary to clarify to one and all, in the Arab world and outside, that the Palestinian people with its nobility and conscience is to be found here on the East Bank [of the Jordan River], the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Its overwhelming majority is here [on the East Bank] and nowhere else.” – King Hussein, quoted in An-Nahar, Beirut, 24 August, 1972
”The Palestinians here constitute not less than one half of the members of the armed forces. They and their brothers, the sons of Transjordan, constitute the members of one family who are equal in everything, in rights and duties.” – King Hussein, on Amman Radio, 3 February, 1973 (quoted by BBC Monitoring Service)
”The new Jordan, which emerged in 1949, was the creation of the Palestinians of the West Bank and their brothers in the East. While Israel was the negation of the Palestinian right of self-determination, unified Jordan was the expression of it.” – Sharif Al-Hamid Sharaf, Representative of Jordan at the UN Security Council, 11 June, 1973
”[Former Tunisian] President Bourguiba considers Jordan an artificial creation presented by Great Britain to King Abdullah. But he accepts Palestine and the Palestinians as an existing and primary fact since the days of the Pharaohs. Israel, too, he considers as a primary entity. However, Arab history makes no distinction between Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians. Most of them hail from the same Arab race, which arrived in the region with the Arab Moslem conquest.” – Editorial Comment in the Jordanian Armed Forces’ weekly Al-Aqsa, Amman, 11 July, 1973
”The Palestinians and the Jordanians have created on this soil since 1948 one family — all of whose children have equal rights and obligations.” – King Hussein, addressing an American delegation, 19 February, 1975
“For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”- PLO representative Zouhair Muhsen in 1977, speaking to a Dutch newspaper
“There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all part of one nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully underline our Palestinian identity. … The existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel.” –Zouhair Muhsen, PLO rep
“There is, in fact, almost nothing un-Palestinian about Jordan except for the royal family. Despite decades of official imposition of a Bedouin image on the country, and even Bedouin accents on state television, the Palestinian identity is still the most dominant … to the point where the Jordanian capital, Amman, is the largest and most populated Palestinian city anywhere. Palestinians view it as a symbol of their economic success and ability to excel. Moreover, empowering a Palestinian statehood for Jordan has a well-founded and legally accepted grounding: The minute the minimum level of democracy is applied to Jordan, the Palestinian majority would, by right, take over the political momentum.” – Mudar Zahran, Palestinian-Jordanian
”Palestine and Jordan were both under British Mandate, but as my grandfather pointed out in his memoirs, they were hardly separate countries. Transjordan being to the east of the River Jordan, it formed in a sense, the interior of Palestine.” – King Hussein, in his memoirs
“The Palestinians and Jordanians do not belong to different nationalities. They hold the same Jordanian passports, are Arabs and have the same Jordanian culture.” – Abdul Hamid Sharif, Prime Minister of Jordan in 1980.
”Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine but, rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations, both day and night. Though we are all Arabs and our point of departure is that we are all members of the same people, the Palestinian-Jordanian nation is one and unique, and different from those of the other Arab states.” – Marwan al Hamoud, member of the Jordanian National Consultative Council and former Minister of Agriculture, quoted by Al-Rai, Amman, 24 September, 1980
“The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.” – King Hussein of Jordan in 1981.
Dr. Martin Sherman, founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, recently wrote that Article 1 of the Palestinian National Covenant proclaims: “The Palestinian Arab people are…part of the Arab nation.” Article 12 baldly admits that a separate Palestinian identity is a ruse to further wider Arab interests. Thus, at an Arab League summit in 1987, convened in Amman, King Hussein conceded that Palestinian identity was merely a response to Jewish national claims, not driven by any authentic endogenic sentiment of uniqueness, stating, “The appearance of the Palestinian national personality comes as an answer to Israel’s claim that Palestine is Jewish.” –King Hussein of Jordan in 1987
Trzęsowski says
Before the 2.world war, jewish settlers in british Palestine formed a football team and participated in championship as Palestinians. No Arabs!
mortimer says
The Jewish settlers PURCHASED every bit of land in Mandatory Palestine from its titular owners.
Arabs flocked to work in new Jewish companies which brought them employment and a higher standard of living. Many Arabs were illegals who sneaked into Mandatory Palestine.
Before Jewish settlement few Arabs lived in the region that is now Israel.
Garfield says
We all need to read and share Mr. Spencer’s book!!!!
Rob says
The myth of an indigenous Palestinian people is seen in their names. Arabs use country of origin as surname and Palestinians are shown as originating in every Arab country from Yemen to Morocco.
The other evidence giving Jews pre eminence in the region are the results of the two censuses in the Mandate period – say 1917 to 1945. The popn of Jerusalem was sixty percent Jewish with twenty percent each Christians and Muslims in both counts.
Read Barry Shaw’s ‘1917’
duh swani says
The Devil (Iblis) is in those details…Most people don’t know details…Spencer is good at taking the mystery out of details, making the sequence of events easier to follow…A book well worth reading…
Leondegrance2 says
Israel should invade the West Bank and Gaza, round everyone up and march them to Jordan at gunpoint. They are either terrorists or condone terrorists and the situation is Israel or them. I would pick Israel. This solution is far “nicer” than the “Palestinians” would be in Israel’s place. Genocide comes to mind immediately.
Jordan is free to try attacking Israel over this move once again. Good luck.
Israel should have done this decades ago.
Baucent says
Let’s not forget the “Jordanian” Arabs came from the same stock as those who today claim to be “Palestinians”.
MEMRI have that very amusing video clip of a few years ago when a Hamas leader on Egyptian TV points out the “Palestinians” came from Egypt, Yemen and other places. “Who are the Palestinians” he cries, “We are Egyptians!”
Laurence Jarvik says
Exactly right. I lived in Moscow and people knew this. So Putin must know it, too. Too bad Americans and especially mainstream American Jewish leaders don’t. Thank you for writing the book!
jewdog says
My gift of “The History of Jihad” was gratefully accepted to be part of the Chabad community center library in Mt. Pleasant SC. I made a pitch for a Chabad course on Jihad; the Rabbi responded that people don’t want to know the truth, to which I replied that that’s why they need courses, and he heartily agreed. Maybe some day…
dumbledoresarmy says
Terrific!!
You could recommend that the Rabbi pay attention to the writings of Bat Yeor (The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam) and of Andrew Bostom “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism”. And that he have a look at what Moshe Ben Maimon had to say about Islam, and about Muslim persecution of Jews, in his “Letter to the Jews of Yemen”. Martin Gilbert’s “In Ishmael’s House” is also a pretty good discussion of what Muslims, historically, did to dhimmi Jews. And point the Rabbi to Australian Christian scholar Mark Durie’s book “The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude and Freedom”. Durie’s book is highly commended by Bat Yeor. Durie absorbed and distilled her pioneering work and did additional research on his own account, unearthing yet more evidence of just how horrible a system of Abuse the Dhimma is.
People need to understand Dhimmitude – the sheer horror of it – as well as Jihad.
jewdog says
Those are good book recommendations. The Rabbi is no fool, so I’m hopeful Chabad can put something together for a course – it’s a big organization, however, and it will take some lobbying.
tony46 says
Palestine always existed???
However, I am still looking for a palestine mail stamp from the 1920’s,…or 30’s….or 40’s. I can’t find any.
Who was the captain of the national soccer team in 1954 (just to give a date)……1960???
Krishna says
If Palestine did not exist why did british government named Palestine mandidate after occupying juraselam
jewdog says
Palestine was a region, not a country, then part of the Ottoman Empire. “Palestinians” at that time commonly meant Jews.
FYI says
“We are all ‘palestinians’ now” shouted the Leftard Cyclists in London recently.
What they meant..
“We are all fradulent participators in a hoax”
Or perhaps,the more extreme Leftard….”We are all Yasser Arafats now”
Meanwhile,the Great Cycle Ride to the fantasy faery land of “palestine” in support of the “palestinians” will no doubt continue in Leftardworld.
James Lincoln says
I am convinced that the Palestinians would not be happy even if they completely destroyed Israel and took over all of the real estate.
After a day or two celebrations, shooting AK-47s into the air, they would just find other Western countries to hate just as much.
This is, of course, hypothetical. Israel with its IDF, backed by the US, would never ever let that happen.
sidney penny says
Next article
The Hoax of the “Rohingya”
Rohingya are Bengalis originally from Bangladesh
TWG says
I learned a lot from this article, Mr. Spencer. You’re very good at articulating such complex issues in layman’s terms.
Thank You, as always.