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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

The Palestinian Delusion documents how jihadists and their allies have weaponized an invented Palestinian identity

Jan 22, 2020 6:00 pm By Andrew Harrod

“From beginning to end, the conflict with Israel is all about Islam,” writes world-renowned jihad watcher Robert Spencer in his latest superlative book, The Palestinian Delusion:  The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process. He documents in detail how jihadists and their allies worldwide have skillfully weaponized an invented Palestinian Arab identity against the Zionist struggle for a Jewish state.

Spencer dissects a decades-old “propaganda success that Josef Goebbels and the editors of Pravda would have envied,” namely the global myth that Palestinians are an “indigenous population.” So declare institutions such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while Palestinian leaders fantasize about a “link between the ancient Canaanites or Jebusites and the modern-day Palestinians.” In reality, Roman occupiers in 134 first derived the name Palestine after the “Israelites’ ancient enemies, the Philistines,” in order to eradicate the identity of defeated Jewish rebels. The self-named “Palestinians” descend from the Arabs who invaded in the 7th century.

In subsequent centuries most Jews entered diaspora exile, leaving their ancestral homeland to decay under largely disinterested imperialists such as various Muslim powers following seventh-century Arab conquest. Mark Twain‘s 1869 travelogue The Innocents Abroad thus states that “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.” Historian William B. Ziff wrote in 1938 that at the 20th century’s beginning Palestine’s 40,000 Jews “and about 140,000 others of all complexions…had no other feeling for this pauperized, diseased-ridden country than a fervent desire to get away.”

This wasteland transformed when Zionist Jews, beginning in the 1880s, sought to reestablish a Jewish state. Their regional development investment ironically increased the Arab population which came seeking employment. Particularly the League of Nations Palestine Mandate entrusted to Britain in 1922 as a “Jewish national home” on territory lost by the collapsing Ottoman Empire in World War I led to significant Arab immigration.

Egyptian, North African, Syria, and even Ethiopian names among Arabs evince immigration waves into what the British and Zionist institutions (e.g. the Palestine Post newspaper, now Israel’s Jerusalem Post) then called Palestine. “Most ‘indigenous’ people of Palestine, like Los Angelenos, seem to have come from somewhere else,” Spencer writes. Contrastingly, during this “period, the Arabs of Palestine generally considered themselves to be Syrians, and Palestine to be Southern Syria” and rejected any foreign Palestine designation.

After Israel, at a great price in Jewish lives, defeated Arab aggressors following its 1948 War of Independence, the Soviet Union promoted a Palestinian identity during the 1960s through groups like the 1964-founded Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO “counter[ed] the image of the tiny Jewish state standing virtually alone against the massive Muslim Arab nations,” Spencer writes. The PLO peddled the fiction of “Palestinians as a tiny indigenous people whose land had been stolen by rapacious, well-heeled, and oppressive foreigners.” Accordingly, today “it is commonplace to see traditional Arab dress, food, and customs described as ‘Palestinian,’” even though “they are just as Syrian, and Lebanese, and Jordanian as they are Palestinian.”

In contrasting reality, Spencer copiously cites Islamic canons that make Israel’s destruction a “religious imperative, even an act of worship.” “Islam’s doctrines of jihad, its deeply rooted anti-Semitism, and its supremacist political ideology” make it “impossible for the Palestinians to accept any peace agreement” with Israel. An “informed and committed believer will look at the Jews, and in particular at Zionism,” and see an “eschatological struggle against the great spiritual enemies of the Muslims.”

When not deluding innumerable “willfully ignorant and historically uninformed” policymakers globally, “Palestinian spokesmen have again and again made it clear” their obedience to Islamic doctrines, as Spencer demonstrates. “Rule of Muslims by infidels” such as Jews, for example, “is unacceptable under any circumstances” and “any land that has been ruled by the Muslims at any time belongs to the Muslims forever.” Particularly notable, the “Palestinian claim to Jerusalem is based not on political or even historical claims, but on an Islamic fable” of a seventh-century miraculous night journey by Islam’s prophet Muhammad. Already during newborn Israel’s 1948 fight for survival, Arab Muslim leaders “framed the conflict in exclusively Islamic terms” while jihadists journeyed from as far as Pakistan to destroy Israel.

Jihad ideology has “made certain that a Palestinian Arab state would be only a new jihad base,” as when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, according to Spencer. During the phony peace process that followed the 1993 Oslo Accords, PLO leaders like Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat repeatedly incited jihad despite contrary peace proclamations. Likewise exemplifying Muhammad’s canonical “War is deceit” dictum, “Palestinian leaders have refined lying during war into a fine art” in “wildly successful” worldwide propaganda offensives.

As Palestinian Arab society is unlikely to abandon jihad indoctrination, the “reality is that there is no solution” foreseeable for Israel’s conflicts according to Spencer’s “distasteful conclusion.” “Americans in particular like problems with solutions” and embrace the “prevailing assumption that if we just sit down and talk with one another, we will ultimately be able to find common ground.” Therefore numerous American presidents wanted “to win a Nobel by being the man who finally brought peace to the Middle East,” while an “army of the professional diplomats and foreign service ‘experts’…have expended massive amounts of time.” These policymakers should simply spare themselves the effort and humbly read Spencer’s sobering book.

Andrew Harrod holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a law degree from the George Washington University School of Law. He writes for Jihad Watch and has had more than 500 articles in American Spectator, American Thinker, the Blaze, Breitbart, Capital Research Center, Daily Caller, Daily Wire, FrontPage Magazine and others. This article was cross-posted from Israel National News.

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Filed Under: Featured, Israel, Palestinian jihad, Robert Spencer Tagged With: The Palestinian Delusion


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Comments

  1. mortimer says

    Jan 22, 2020 at 10:29 pm

    Indeed, the KGB “weaponized an invented Palestinian identity”.

    Zuheir Mohsen, a top PLO member responsible for Damur massacre, said :

    “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 DIFFERNCE 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.”

    • gravenimage says

      Jan 23, 2020 at 5:11 pm

      Good post, Mortimer.

  2. R Russell says

    Jan 23, 2020 at 5:41 pm

    I have ordered this book on the Amazon UK site. every few days they put back the delivery date. The latest date for delivery, given on 23 Jan is between February 11 2020 – March 05 2020. Does anyone know where I can buy the book (preferably with no postage) to arrive before these dates?
    Amazon UK keeps changing the date. Amazon.com wants an arm and leg to deliver to UK.

  3. JamesC says

    Jan 24, 2020 at 12:09 am

    In other news, Muslims have visited Auschwitz: https://www.timesofisrael.com/islamic-faith-leaders-make-groundbreaking-visit-to-auschwitz/?fbclid=IwAR1gPNwTh3Csi_bH0KoabK3WyMcWykr8azwfkNQy9DcW1ZCJXX2WxlwPsac

    I don’t think they should have been allowed anywhere near the place. What is said about Saudi Arabia is especially interesting.

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