Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich dismissed the existence of a separate Palestinian people in a speech he delivered in Paris on Sunday. This has caused predictable outrage from the Arabs, from the EU’s Josep Borrell, and from the Bidenites, who found his remarks on this matter “unhelpful.” But is his statement false? A preliminary Jihad Watch report is here, and more on Smotrich’s speech can be found here: “Israel’s Smotrich: There is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” by Tovah Lazaroff, Jerusalem Post, March 20, 2023:
“There is no such thing as Palestinians because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” said Smotrich who heads the Religious Zionist Party.
“Who are the [real] Palestinians? I am Palestinian,” he said.
He recalled his family’s 13 generations in the Land of Israel, mentioning his grandmother who had been born in the northern border town of Metula over a hundred years ago before the creation of the state.
His ancestors and his grandmother were “Palestinians,” he said.
Before 1948, the territory that now encompasses the modern state of Israel had been called Palestine. The Romans used that term to refer to that territory after they conquered the ancient state of Israel.
Smotrich might have added that the place name Syria Palaestina, which was then shortened to “Palestine,” was given to the Roman province of Judaea in the early 2nd century AD. The renaming is often presented as having been performed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the wake of the 132-135 AD Bar Kokhba revolt. Scholars suggest it was enacted to “disassociate the Jewish people from their historical homeland.” Certainly “Palestine” helped to efface the Jewish connection to the land that had been made manifest in the toponym “Judea.”
This truth [that there is no such thing as a separate “Palestinian people”] needs to be heard by the Arabs in Israel. This truth needs to be heard by the Jewish people in Israel who have gotten confused. This truth needs to be heard in the Elysee and in the White House. This truth must be heard by the whole world because this is the truth.”
When modern Zionists at the end of the 19th century spoke of a return to their land, they spoke of going to Palestine, a name that appeared on all documents and currency relating to pre-state Israel.
Smotrich is among a number of far-right politicians who do not accept the adoption by regional Arabs of the term Palestinian to describe their ethnicity and national movement as well as their aspirations for self-determination in a state which will be called Palestine.
It is not only “far-right” politicians who disbelieve in the existence of a separate “Palestinian people.” So do all those Arab leaders who before, during, and for decades after, the 1948 war never once referred to the “Palestinian people.” In the run-up to the Six-Day War, for example, Gamal Abdel Nasser made many speeches to Cairene crowds. The recognized leader of the Arabs, Nasser nowhere spoke of the “Palestinian people.”At the UN, between 1949 and June 1967, no Arab ambassador ever mentioned the “Palestinian people.”
It was not until the mid-1960s, and then only on a very few occasions, that the “Palestinian people” started to be mentioned. But after the “naksa” (setback) of the Six-Day War, the phrase was constantly repeated, quite deliberately, so that it quickly become the common currency of the Arabs, and subsequently, the phrase was adopted by most of the rest of the world. Their defeat in that war had made the Arabs rethink their strategy, so that the military option was put off until Israel could be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines. Clearly, the Arabs needed to transform the conflict with Israel so that no longer would it seem like a monstrous Arab gang-up on tiny Israel. Instead, that conflict could be presented as a struggle between the “Palestinian people” and the Jews who had usurped the land on which the “Palestinians” had lived since time immemorial.
After the Six-Day War, no Arab leader could open his mouth without mentioning the “Palestinian people.” According to the Romanian intelligence chief, Ion Pacepa, it was the KGB that first advised the Arabs to use the phrase “Palestinian people.”…
Smotrich compared Jewish history in the region which dates back thousands of years with that of the modern-day Palestinians, whose history, he said was absent.
Jews have lived continuously in the Land of Israel since at least the 10th century B.C. The Muslim Arabs arrived in the land only 1700 years later.
The Palestinian nation has existed for less than one hundred years,”[in fact, the claim of a separate Palestinian people goes back only 55 years, to 1967] noting that they do not meet the international standards for nationhood since they are lacking a unique history, culture, language and currency.
“I ask you who was the first Palestinian King, what [unique] language do they have, was there ever a Palestinian coin. Is there a Palestinian history or culture? There isn’t. There is no such thing as a Palestinian nation.
Smotrich is, of course, right. The “Palestinian people” were invented for propaganda reasons, a fiction that has been a smashing propaganda success. But there is no defining characteristic that distinguishes the “Palestinian people” from the other Arabs in the immediate region. They do indeed lack a “unique history, culture, language, and currency.”
It was Zuheir Mohsen, leader of the Palestinian terror group As Saiqa, who in a moment of candor, explained in a 1970 interview with James Dorsey for the Dutch newspaper Trouw why the “Palestinian people” had been invented:
The Palestinian people do 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. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only 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.
It is too bad that Smotrich did not quote, verbatim, Zuheir Mohsen’s paragraph above. Possibly he’s unaware of it. Providing that damning paragraph could have a devastating effect on Palestinian” propagandists and those they have deceived. Smotrich can still use it, of course, in responding to all those who have been so outraged by his original statement that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
Smotrich might also point to the statements of Golda Meir, whom no one would describe as “far-right,” who in an interview given to the Times of London in 1969 said: “There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist.”
In a 1970 interview with Thames TV, Meir said that: “When were Palestinians born? What was all of this area before the First World War when Britain got the Mandate over Palestine? What was Palestine, then? Palestine was then the area between the Mediterranean and the Iraqian border. East and West Bank was Palestine. I am a Palestinian, from 1921 and 1948, I carried a Palestinian passport. There was no such thing in this area as Jews, and Arabs, and Palestinians, There were Jews and Arabs. […] I don’t say there are no Palestinians, but I say there is no such thing as a distinct Palestinian people.”
The Palestinians, he said, are regional Arabs who arrived in the Land of Israel at the same time as the first major waves of [Jewish] immigration at the end of the 19th century….
Once the Zionist pioneers started to settle in Palestine, beginning around the turn of the 20th century, the resulting increase in economic activity attracted Arabs from elsewhere.
“What happened? They created a fictional nation and then worked for their fictitious rights to the Land of Israel just to battle against the Zionist movement. That is the historical truth and the bBblical truth. That is the truth and there is no alternative,” Smotrich said.
“This truth needs to be heard by the Arabs in Israel. This truth needs to be heard by the Jewish people in Israel who have gotten confused. This truth needs to be heard in the Elysee and in the White House. This truth must be heard by the whole world because this is the truth,” Smotrich stated.
United States National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told Channel 12 that such remarks were “unhelpful.”
Smotrich’s remarks may have been “unhelpful” in the view of the Bidenites, but are they false? Look again at the evidence. Why is it that in none of the speeches of Arab leaders before the 1948 war, or before the 1967 war, are the “Palestinian people” mentioned? Why, in the transcribed records of endless Arab speechifying at the UN, are the “Palestinian people” suddenly to be found only after the Six-Day War? And why is it that beginning in the summer of 1967 the “Palestinian people” are mentioned all over the place, most notably in the Khartoum Resolution of September 1, 1967, where all of the Arab states gave their “three Nos” to Israel: “No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.” which were immediately followed by this: “and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their country.”
The European Union said it “firmly deplores yet another unacceptable comment by Minister Smotrich ”which should not be “tolerated.
Such remarks are “wrong, disrespectful, dangerous and counterproductive in a situation which is already very tense,” the EU said.
“We call on the Israeli government to disavow those comments and to work together with all the parties involved to defuse tensions,” the EU said.
Israel cannot possibly “disavow” Smotrich’s remarks about the non-existent Palestinian people because Israelis, including those who for other reasons oppose Smotrich, know that his statement, just like those of Zuheir Mohsen and Golda Meir, happens to be true.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Smotrich’s words were racist, ahistorical, and fueled anger among the Palestinians and ran counter to efforts by its government to halt a violent outbreak during the month of Ramadan which begins on March 22 and which will overlap with the Passover and Easter.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s office and Prime Minister Mohammed Shytayyeh denounced Smotrich’s remarks as well as the graphic at the podium from which he spoke….
The graphic put up at the podium shows the territory of both Israel and Jordan. This has been taken by the Arabs as a sign that Smotrich wants a “Greater Israel” that would incorporate Jordan into a single state with Israel. That’s not at all what Smotrich meant. He was merely reminding the world that the territory originally assigned to the Mandate for Palestine included territory on both sides of the Jordan River, and that it was the British who in 1921 for reasons of their own — to provide a country for the Hashemite Emir Abdullah — removed all of Palestine that lay east of the Jordan from the terms of the Mandate, and ended Jewish immigration to that area. Smotrich simply was reminding the world of that fact, so often ignored.
Shtayyeh said that Smotrich was repeating the myth that Palestine is “a land without people and a people without land” in contrast to “historical and archeological evidence” proving ancient Palestinian roots in their land.
Where is this historical and archaeological evidence that proves “ancient Palestinian roots in their land”? There are thousands of archeological sites in Israel — 2000 of them in Jerusalem alone. They are full of Jewish artifacts — pottery shards, tools, eating utensils, oil lamps, menorahs, coins, not to mention the examples of writing, such as the spectacular Dead Sea Schools found in eleven caves in Qumran between 1947 and 1956. Where are the “Palestinian” archeological sites, where are the Palestinian artifacts that date back, at the earliest, to the late 7th century? There aren’t any. Instead, the Palestinians claim to be the descendants of various ancient peoples — the Canaanites, the Jebusites, the Philistines — to provide themselves with a fictitious past in the Land of Israel.
There are Palestinian Arabs. There are individual Palestinians. But there never has been a distinct Palestinian people living in the Land of Israel, between the river and the sea.
maria says
Mr Smotrich is quite right. Thanks God for such brilliant person.
I hope that you will be PM after PM Netanyahu.
And even your collega Mr Ben-Gvir is excellent
࿗Infidel࿘ says
+10
James Lincoln says
Seconded!
cornelius says
As much as I respect Hugh for his insightful articles, I’ve always disagreed with him on this issue. Whatever one wants to call the roughly 2 to 3 million Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza, they obviously exist. Pretending they don’t is hardly a recipe for rational policy.
I’m not suggesting they deserve a state of their own….I realize how problematic that could be when they maintain a stated desire to destroy the Jewish state. I’m merely suggesting that we recognize that 2 to 3 million stateless people in the afore mentioned territories exist…..and must be dealt with on some level.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Before 1967, they were simply called ‘Arabs’. While that is true about people from Iraq to Morocco and from Syria to Somalia, in the context of Israel, it they could simply be described as ex-Jordanian Arabs – since Jordan controlled the West Bank before 1967.
brenrod says
Exactly, they had Jordanian citizenship. The West Bank Arabs are the same as the West Bank Jordanians. Since Jews were and are originally banned from the Jordanian portion of the former “British mandate for Palestine” then that is the proper homeland for Arabs who can’t live peacefully with Jews in Israel.
Jordan factually was and is “Palestine”.
brenrod says
West Bank Arabs were Jordanian citizens (after 1948 Jordanian invasion), like their east bank brothers until the foreign Hashemite monarch( whose family was imported to, and given, the area by Britain) decided to unilaterally withdraw citizenship from the West Bank Jordanian citizens and leave them stateless after abandoning all claims to the West Bank and establishing the Jordan river as his western boundary with Israel in their finalized treaty. It was the imported Jordan monarch who left them stateless. There was no reason for him not too allow them to keep their citizenship of Jordan. Jordan was created partly from the original British mandate and therefore those West Bank Arabs who are unable to live in peace with the Israelis have a defacto right of return to the east part of the mandate, similar to when India was partitioned and the Muslims were given Pakistan. Of course now the Muslims who remained in India are similarly trying to destroy the non Muslims.
brenrod says
Interesting that a part of Gaza was the home of the original Phillistine people and that although the modern day Muslim Arabs, who are not descendants of the ancient extinct Phillistines, control it they have not declared a state and invited their Muslim Arab brothers “home”.
It is hilarious that they hijack an identity and abandon their own Arabic lineage to maintain the ruse that they descend from others. It’s called taqiyya.
brenrod says
What happened to the Jews who were evicted from the Arab Muslim nations?
Jedothek says
It is good to be accurate so that we do not sink into the mire of propaganda. The Palestinian people exist, though they were recently invented as a people. The logical form “the Palestinians were recently invented, therefore they do not exist” could also be used to prove that the internet does not exist. No, I am not quibbling.
brenrod says
The people who gave themselves the false identity of the ancient philistines bear no racial, ethnic, cultural or national connection to those ancient s however they are connected to the Arabs of Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. The West Bank Arabs formerly held Jordanian citizenship . Jordan is their Palestine both in former citizenship and former land of mandate. The Balfour declaration assigned all the mandate territory as the Jewish homeland and Jordan represents 80% of the mandate territory and that portion is Jew free.
brenrod says
The name and adjective exists but the designation is intentionally false so as to create a false territorial identity.
They should move to the Jew free potion of the mandate territory now called Jordan and ruled by an imported foreign monarchy.
The istanbulian says
Funny that their spokesman is El-Kurd and their spokes woman is a blonde haired blue eyed lady….
Can’t make this stuff up
Limewood says
If there ever was a palestinian people it is a purposeful construction based upon a lie. If there ever was a palestinian culture it does not exist in its own right. It is a construct aimed, at “the jews” – the kaffirun – the dhimmi sons of apes and pigs according to Muhammed and the koran. The “culture” of the palestinians is based on the one and only purpose: to wage imperialistic jihad and eradicate the jewish state of Israel and return the land to the umma and Dar el Islam.
Moreover a jihad victory over the jews will eradicate the unbearable humiliation of the “nakba” i 1948 – this is the zero-sum mindset of the premodern arab in general.
John Smith says
The so called Palestinians never considered themselves to be Palestinians till after the six day war, Before the six day war they considered themselves to be the nationality of the countries they originally came from. or their parents came from.
They are perpetrating this lie for one reason only, and that is to lay their false claim to the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people which is Israel.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Even aside from since the creation of Israel, there never was a province called ‘Palestine’ post Roman rule. When the Arabs conquered the area in the 7th century, be it from Medina or Damascus, it was considered a part of ‘ash-Sham’, which loosely translates into either the Levant or Syria. Essentially, it was governed from Damascus, not Jerusalem (and during Saladin, from Cairo). Under the Ottomans too, that was the case
That was the point late Syrian strongman Hafez al Assad, no fan of Israel, once told Yasser Arafat before expelling him from Damascus: that there is no Palestine or Israel, it’s all Syria. His usage of the term conflated Syria w/ the Levant
OLD GUY says
No matter what you call them, Arabs or Palestinaians you still have the same problem. What do you do to relieve the tension and cure the problem. Do you take the area and give it to the Arab/Palestinians and kick the Israelis out. or do you do the opposite. No easy answer. The historic claims mean nothing for the millions of people involved on both sides. The muslims will never live at peace with the Jewish State no matter what. Only the destruction of one or the other will stop this.
brenrod says
Jordan is the Arab Muslim Jew free portion of the British mandate territory which was originally designated for returning Jews to settle . Therefore like India and Pakistan the two states forged from the mandate territory, Jordan is where the Muslim Arabs who ban and murder Jews in their controlled part of the mandate belong. It is only the fake imported Hashemite monarchy from Arabia who prevent the sensible solution. If the Arab Muslims had been able to peacefully reside with the Jews there would be no problem. In Jordan and the PA controlled West Bank there are no Jews allowed, and yet much of the ancient Jewish sites are located there, destroyed and desecrated by the Muslims. It’s too late to trust the Muslims when the only intentional relation they have had with Jews involves subservience, desecration and murder.
brenrod says
Lol, Smotrich calls out the “Emperors new clothes”. and the Biden admin and EU want to continue the fraud. The truth exposes the serial liars.