... on Origin of Palestinians, Specially Christian Such

1) Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere ... on Origin of Palestinians, Specially Christian Such, 2) New blog on the kid Perfidy of Hamas ... does not totally justify Tsahal.

WHAT IS PALESTINE? WHO ARE THE PALESTINIANS?
Changeling9au
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ReF4UUa4E

1:10 The Philistines had centuries earlier ceased to exist as a separate entity.

They were mostly assimilated as Jews or Benjaminites, less into the Ten Tribes. A traditional Samarian accusation against Jews was Jews were Philistines or King David was a Philistine robber. He was indeed sometimes living among Philistines while taking refuge from King Saul.

1:20 "They had conquered Kingdom of Judah and called it Judaea."

Rather, they called the South part Judaea, the Mid part Samaria and the North part Galilaea. Idumaea was partly South of Judaea, into Sinai Peninsula, partly East of it in what is now South Jordan. It means the land of Edom, Esau, and of his descendants.

2:15 The Roman Empire is supposed to have attacked The Law because it could, supposedly, encourage revolt among oppressed.

It is not even true that the Hebrews in Egypt were revolting slaves. They were not revolting, they were getting liberated because God fought for their freedom. The Ten Plagues of Egypt ended with Hebrews taking riches from Egyptians, but that was after God had imposed the ten plagues and Pharao had granted that despoliation to avoid an eleventh one.

No where in the Law of Moses are revolts per se encouraged. The Book of Judges was hardly known to Romans.

2:42 After an act described as Genocide Hadrian forbade Jews to enter the area and got Greeks settled there.

Was his ban effective?

Was his ban just against the Jews who had taken up arms - or also against the Christian Church which during First Jewish War had fled from Jerusalem to Pella and which had come back?

What was the net effect between Greeks and Hebrews (remaining Jews/returning Christians) by the time of Constantine?

3:13 (The minute and seconds correspond to the year of Constantine's victory)

ALL the Christian history between Hadrian and Turks is simply glossed over as of no importance to the story of who the Palestinians are.

But it is on the contrary all important.

When Chosroës II entered Palestine as an invader, Derwas Chitty describes one of the effects as Palestinians Christians "returning" to ancestral Judaism. These were then leaving when Chosroës got beaten and are ancestors of Persian Jewry. I dispute his terminology, since OT religion of Moses' Law is NOT Judaism, and they did NOT return to the Temple that was there before the first Jewish War. BUt I do not dispute the fact. The Christian population in Palestine, when Chosroës invadeed it, had clearly a consciousness of its ancestors having waited for the Messiah and of having used the shekel and of having had Herod as a bad and cruel king. Otherwise those Judaising among them would hardly have thought they were returning to the religion of their ancestors.

When Omar came, one Beduin tribe went to the monastery they had been used to worship at, and told them they had been forced to become Muslims, but were still friends of the monastery.

Obviously it is idiotic to presume the Christian population of Palestine during the Christian Roman period was mainly descending from Greeks implanted by Hadrian. Greeks do not identify with Jewish Antiquities as ancestral to them. And Greeks do not like Persians. And Greeks are not Beduins.

As for the idea of these guys having arrived with Omar, how did they know the monastery?

There is a notorious fact there is a Christian Palestinian population. It cannot have arrived with Omar, since those arriving with Omar were Muslims and a Muslim population cannot have been allowed to become Christians in large numbers - except where there were Christians to protect them.

The Christian Roman population of Palestine was HEBREW. If not exclusively, at least in notable proportions.

A man who ignores the information available in Derwas Chitty's book The Desert a City (mainly on Egyptian monasticism, but I am citing the information from chapter on Palestinian monasticism) should not be talking for a minute on the subject of Palestinian origins. But even without it, the origin of Christian Palestinians should make the man pause. So far it hasn't.

3:18 From the 16th Century, in the Ottoman Empire, there was no administrative or political entity called Palestine.

Jerusalem did not cease to be Jerusalem when it was called Aelia Capitolina.

The argument offered is a true, but an irrelevant fact.

3:29 Brits revived the name Palestine. 3:39 1920 and 1922 the borders are very different. OK.

So?

Palestine 1922 definition still means the land Judaea, Samaria, Galilaea. And there is still no evidence that its population did not descend from those living there in the Days of Jesus, Our Lord.

3:56 Philip Hitti claims there is no such thing as Palestine in History.

"Hitti was educated at an American Presbyterian mission school at Suq al-Gharb and then at the American University of Beirut."

Presbyterians were hardly teaching him the real facts.

Besides, if he admitted that Palestine corresponded to Biblical Hebrews, he would logically have had to admit Lebanon (his country) corresponded to Canaaneans North of Galilee.

Next the video cites Zahir Muhsein:

"Making Zuheir Mohsen uniquely both a PLO leader and an official in the ideologically Pan-Arabist Syrian Ba'ath party at the same time. As such, he stated that there were "no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese", though Palestinian identity would be emphasised for political reasons."

He was a Pan-Arabist. And a Secularist. Why would he admit the Hebrew and Christian roots of the Palestinian population?

His words were of course also cited in the wiki, from same interview in Trouw.

But if Palestinians had ceased to be different from Jordanians and Lebanese and Syrians, this does not mean there were no distinct origins.

By the way, the cessation of differences was a three way affair:

• Mutually among Christians (already in pre-Islamic times, earlist probably with present day Jordan, i e Edom, Moab and Ammon, which may be the reason rabbinic literature calls Christians "Esau" but the process continued under Islamic Domination hardening to Tyranny, under Crusaders, after return of Islamic Tyranny)
• Mutually among Muslims (with some addition of families from Arabic Peninsula)
• From Christian to Muslim (and, under Crusaders, a little in reverse direction).

This does not mean there is no longer any continuity between Hebrews of Pre-Christian, Roman, and today's Christian Palestinians of the area.

8:56 despoliation of landscape under Ottomans - confirmed.

Chesterton wrote the English were before the Balfour plan very popular with the Palestinian Arabs of both Christian and Muslim confessions - because they brought water there. When they made a man of Jewish origin administator and opened the area for Jewish immigration, there were Protest Rallies.

9:12 Majority Muslims (70% I think, as in Jordan), i e Minority Christians (30%), of the Palestinian population.

With 10% Jews that makes 63% Muslims and 27% Christians in the area.

Muslim identities were opposed. Christian identities were at least divided into Catholic and Orthodox.

The basic identity of a man was a religious one. During a century or more since, it has been secularised a bit.

But those who lived there have hardly become as secularised as Jews arriving from Europe, USSR, USA.

1859 "The Muslims of Jerusalem do not exceed a fourth of the entire population"

OK, that quotations does not automatically make Jews it majority back then. I mean Jerusalem can have had a Christian majority or relative majority, or Christians and Jews can ex pari have been more numerous than the Muslims.

1878 - resettlement policy with Circassian and Algerian Muslims.

OK, does NOT say Christian Palestinians come from this resettlement policy.

14:00 Effendis selling lands.

The problem is in part when mere tenants were villages but their land owner sold the land anyway.

I had heard from a Swedish Jew on a forum they were often landowners in Beirut or Cairo. To me that means, they would hardly care if the village was forced to leave due to their land having been sold.

In cases of villages having been there since 1880, it may matter less but it matters some. In cases of villages having been there since hundreds of years, it matters more.

I do not think a land owner renting his land to a village can morally sell it to anyone except if the new owners agree to let the village of tenants stay. Evicting a village to sell one's land is a crime. Evicting a village for having bought land is a crime.

Of course a buyer might ask villagers to huddle, telling them they want a corner for some new settlers. But hardly to leave.

I had not heard the story of Effendis playing the double game of threatening small landowners, buying up their land cheap, selling it dearly to Jews.

Perhaps it is true. But perhaps it is also true that usury had put undue pressure on owners to sell lands. If they were indebted. Of course, Husseini's answers to Peel, as quoted, do not specify if it was through debts and usury the landowners were forced to sell or through conjectures.