Eretz Yisrael's Most Persistent Enemies

Nadene Goldfoot                                           

The Philistines were a constant thorn in the side of the Israelites and now for the Israelis as Palestinians have taken up this role. Abraham had to fight them.  King David put a stop to their attacks.

In the beginning, the Philistines came to the Middle East as a Mediterranean people originating from Asia Minor and other Greek localities.  They came to Eretz Yisrael in various waves.  The Philistines were an Aegean people, driven out of Greece and the Aegean islands around about 1300 BCE.  They moved southward along the Asiatic coast and at about 1200 BCE tried to invade Egypt but were turned back.  Then then settled in the maritime plain of southern Palestine where they founded a series of city states.

1. The first group came in the pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in GERAR, coming into conflict with Abraham and Isaac.
                                                                               

Philistines capturing the Ark of the Covenant 

2.. The second group came from the island of Crete after being repulsed from Egypt by Rameses III in 1194 BCE.  They seized the southern coastal area of Eretz Yisrael where they founded 5 cities;  Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath.  Their nature was that of a fighting people.

3. They dominated parts of Judah during the period of the Judges.  The first king, Saul, was defeated by them.  The 2nd king, David, ended the era of Philistine domination and overran Philistia.

4. When the Israelite kingdom dissolved , the Philistines re-established their independence but didn't become a serious factor.                                         

Hadrian -Roman
Emperor 117-138 CE
Judea became his consular
province-Syria-Palaestina.
He put his statue on a horse
on the Holy of Holies

                                                                           

Herodotus was a Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire and lived in the fifth century BCE a contemporary of Thucydides, Socrates, and Euripides

5. In the Persian and Greek periods, foreign settlers, mainly from the Mediterranean islands, overran the Philistine districts.  From Herodotus's day, Greeks called the land "Syria Palaestina.  Under Hadrian the Roman, Judah was called Syria Palaestina, then later Palestine.
                                                                         

Jerusalem 1900s.  

Palestine was never its own country.  It was land others walked through, as a hall from point one to point two.  It was neglected, forgotten and disliked land that turned into weeds, and home for mosquitoes.  Nobody wanted to live there and no one was able to get there easily.  Only the Jews prayed 3 times a day to return and live happily ever after there but they were fewer in number than their host country and though some tried to return, others were forced to turn back many times.                                 
                                                                            In 1880 CE, Jews under Russia's domain were being attacked in pogroms.

  They started returning though the Ottoman Empire would hold the land as their domain for 400 years until the end of World War I in 1917.  At the end of that war, meetings took place promising that the  Jewish Homeland would be given to the Jews once again as the Turks had sided with the Germans in the war and lost the battle to the Allies.  Great Britain held this mandate over what was now called Palestine.  Though the League of Nations all voted to create the Jewish Homeland once again, Britain saw its own opportunity and gave 80% of the land to the Arabs-specifically to the Saudi Arabian prince Abdullah who wanted land for himself, and so he named his 80% of illegal land, TransJordan, and later his heirs called it Jordan.

Now we have Arabs from Syria calling themselves Syrian Palestinians moving south into Palestine to work for the newly returning Russian Jews in several aliyote  who are building cities for themselves.  Word got around and Arabs from all around are streaming in to get jobs with the Jews as there is nothing for them in their own bordering countries. 
                                                                           

Leaders of 2 terrorist groups, Fatah and Hamas of the Palestinians.

We have Joan Peters, a journalist, starting to write an article about the Palestinian Arabs who actually did some real research on the subject instead of writing her own fake news and discovered that they were coming in from all over the Middle East and wrote enough for her to earn two doctorates on the subject, at least.  She wrote, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL-The origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict OVER PALESTINE.  She discovered so much injustice done to the Jews in preference over the Arabs. 

From the beginning Zionism faced not only political watering down of the Mandate but deep-seated antipathy from anti-Semitic British   officials.  The Jews were violently discriminated against--in what was presumably to be their own country.
                 John Gunther, 1939-the beginnings of WWII.  

So the Palestinian Arabs had also been invaders from the Mediterranean lands but not ever natives of the soil like the Jews.  All other ancient peoples had either died out or melded into other lasting people of their period.  There were no more ancient groups except the Jews who remained.  
                                                    

The Palestine Mandate, granted to Britain in 1920 at the San Remo Conference, was approved in 1922 by the League of Nations as the JEWISH NATIONAL HOME.                                            
                                                  

The 80% that was given away to Emir Abdullah in 1921 to 1922 was Transjordan.  Israel was not given any say in the matter.
                                                       A small piece of the Jewish Homeland was ceded by the British to the French Mandate of Syria in 1923 the Golan Heights.  To the Arabs of the world, Palestine was a small notch.  Their lands were so much larger. The Arab leader, Sherif Hussein said in 1918 that the native soil of Palestine could not keep the Arabs from wandering...in every direction.  Usually they wandered on camels.  
                                                             

"It seems that, no matter where you turn in the Old Testament, Israel is fighting the Philistines. While that’s a slight exaggeration—there were fights with other nations, too—it is true that Israel and the Philistines had their share of run-ins. The Philistines were an ancient people, listed in the records of those who descended from Noah’s son Ham after the time of the flood (Genesis 10:14). Abraham and Isaac interacted with the Philistines in Canaan (Genesis 21:33–34). But it was during the time of the Exodus that the Lord promised that the land of Israel would include the territory of the Philistines (Exodus 23:31); this promise meant that some kind of conflict would have to take place for Israel to displace the Philistines."
                                                       

Now the Palestinians are trying to displace the Jews of Israel.  They say so in their charter.  Their constant attacks say so.  Their latest attack of burning fields of Israel with kites says so.  Who tells them to do so?  Not G-d.   Many now live in Jordan and fought with that country with their Black September days.  Jordan has really become Palestine.  
                                                        

Certainly not Allah tells them to fight Jews.  No, it's the Ayatollah of Iran.  It's Hamas that take orders from Iran.  They've been the instigators of unrest among the Arabs.  If it isn't the Philistines, it's the Palestinians.  Neither one were ever natives of Eretz Yisrael.  Palestinians have been fighting Jews since the 1920s CE. When asked, many said they were Syrian Palestinians.   That almost 100 years of fighting and attacking.  The Philistines fought from Abraham's day in the 2nd millennium BCE or about 1948 BCE till the time of King David who died in 970 BCE or 978 years!  That's a long, long time to be spent having to fight one's enemy.  

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia