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Monday, September 27, 2021

The Truth About Palestine and Palestinians

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

Palestine came about through the Romans who had been first occupying and taking over the lives of the Judeans in 63 BCE by the Roman General PompeyPompey the Great, Latin in full Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, (born September 29, 106 bce, Picenum, Italy—died September 28, 48 bce, Pelusium, Egypt), one of the great statesmen and generals of the late Roman Republic, a triumvir (61–54 bce) who was an associate and later an opponent of Julius Caesar.  Romans burned down the 2nd Solomon's Temple in 70 CE after being at war from 66 CE with the Judeans who were trying to regain their freedom.  By 132, the Judean General Bar Kokhba had rallied an army and took back Jerusalem, holding it for 3 years against the world's strongest army, the Romans.  In 135 he was killed.  The Romans were so angry at his strength against them, lasting against their army for 3 long years, that they in turn renamed the land after the strongest enemy of the Israelites, the Philistines.  The name was Palestine. 

                                           

Thereafter, all people living there, Arab and Judean, were called Palestinians.  During the 1st century, Jews were the majority population, having 2,500 people.  This would include those left after 70 and 135, major population disasters.  Jews maintained their majority population throughout the 4th century.  

From the 5th to the 11th century, the Christians were the majority population.  

Islam became the majority religion in Palestine for the Arabs by the 12th century, with acculturation of the locals into Arab identity and when Arabic became the lingua franca.  Muhammad had died in Medina in Arabia in 632, but Islam took its time reaching  Palestine. Many Jews had settled in Arabia.  

Before the Arab conquest, in fact, some rulers of Arabia "had indeed embraced Judaism," as Muslim historians attest (Joan Peters).                                               

In 132 CE, Bar Kokhba led a rebellion against Hadrian, a revolt connected with the renaming of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina. After four years of devastating warfare, the uprising was suppressed, and Jews were forbidden access to Jerusalem.

The Bar Kokhba revolt resulted in the extensive depopulation of Judean communities, more so than during the First Jewish–Roman War of 70 CE. According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews perished in the war and many more died of hunger and disease, 50 fortresses and 985 villages were destroyed. In addition, many Judean war captives were sold into slavery. Some modern historians assert that Dio's numbers were somewhat exaggerated, but other researchers support Dio's claim of massive depopulation. The Jewish communities of Judea were devastated to an extent which some scholars describe as genocide. However, the Jewish population remained strong in other parts of Palestine, thriving in Galilee, Golan, Bet Shean Valley, and the eastern, southern, and western edges of Judea. 

Palestinian Jews and Arabs lived together throughout history,  ruled by numerous groups  including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Fatimids, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians and Mamelukes. From about 1517 to 1917, the Ottoman Empire ruled much of the region.                             

Jews in diaspora.  In Germany, forced to wear ridiculous clothing, "the better to spot you by, my dear."  This truly was in the "dark ages."  

                                             

Arch of Titus in Rome depicts Jewish slaves marched from Jerusalem to Rome with gold and silver loot from Temple before burning.  

Jews were forced out of their native land of Judea by the Romans under penalty of death in 70 CE, yet managed to return later.  The Jewish diaspora at the time of the Temple's destruction, according to Josephus, was in Parthia (Persia), Babylonia (Iraq), Arabia, as well as some Jews beyond the Euphrates and in Adiabene (Kurdistan). In Josephus' own words, he had informed "the remotest Arabians" about the destruction. Jewish communities also existed in southern Europe, Anatolia, Syria, and North Africa. Jewish pilgrims from the diaspora, undeterred by the rebellion, had actually come to Jerusalem for Passover prior to the arrival of the Roman army, and many became trapped in the city and died during the siege. According to Josephus, about 97,000 Jewish captives from Judea were sold into slavery by the Romans during the revolt. Many other Jews fled from Judea to other areas around the Mediterranean. Josephus wrote that 30,000 Jews were deported from Judea to Carthage by the Romans.

                                               

Cossacks riding to invade Jewish shtetl, destroy and many kill some Jews

Jews were living in Russia and other parts of eastern Europe, and it is here that pogroms against Jews took place far too often.  By the 1880s, the 1st group of Jews returned to Palestine even though the Ottoman Empire held the land.  They were able to meet their criteria and settle.  In all, about 5 Aliote took place with Jews returning to Palestine from then on.                                      

This is all recorded in the book, "FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL" by Joan Peters. "The massive research Ms. Peters did...would have daunted Hercules.  In the course of it she turned up a great deal of interesting material from Ottoman records, the reports of Western consular officers and observant travelers and other sources.--New York Times Book Review.  It seems that there were not enough jobs for Arabs living in their own countries, and so migrated to Palestine when they heard of the Jews' return and rebuilding, hoping to get jobs in doing this.  Many came from Syria, as they actually were called the Syrian Palestinians.  Others came from near and far as Joan shows in her book.  

There has never been a country or empire called Palestine.  It's the Roman renaming of the ancient empire of Israel, a renaming that took place out of spite and fury by the Romans in their anger against Judea. 

Up until May 14, 1948, everyone living in "Palestine" was a Palestinian.  Then the  Jews could call themselves Israelis as the land of Israel was born again.                                 

The genetic profile of Palestinians has, for the first time, been studied by using human leukocyte antigen (HLA) gene variability and haplotypes. The comparison with other Mediterranean populations by using neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analyses reveal that Palestinians are genetically very close to Jews and other Middle East populations, including Turks (Anatolians), Lebanese, Egyptians, Armenians, and Iranians. Archaeologic and genetic data support that both Jews and Palestinians came from the ancient Canaanites, who extensively mixed with Egyptians, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian peoples in ancient times. Thus, Palestinian-Jewish rivalry is based in cultural and religious, but not in genetic, differences. The relatively close relatedness of both Jews and Palestinians to western Mediterranean populations reflects the continuous circum-Mediterranean cultural and gene flow that have occurred in prehistoric and historic times. This flow overtly contradicts the demic diffusion model of western Mediterranean populations substitution by agriculturalists coming from the Middle East in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition.

As fighting continues in the Middle East, a new genetic study shows that many Arabs and Jews are closely related. More than 70% of Jewish men and half of the Arab men whose DNA was studied inherited their Y chromosomes from the same paternal ancestors who lived in the region within the last few thousand years.  These are new findings.  There ae many Jews and Palestinian men bearing J1 haplogroup.  

The results match historical accounts that some Moslem Arabs are descended from Christians and Jews who lived in the southern Levant, a region that includes Israel and the Sinai. They were descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times. And in a recent study of 1371 men from around the world, geneticist Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona in Tucson found that the Y chromosome in Middle Eastern Arabs was almost indistinguishable from that of Jews.                          

                         Hebrew University in Jerusalem

Intrigued by the genetic similarities between the two populations, geneticist Ariella Oppenheim of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who collaborated on the earlier study, focused on Arab and Jewish men. Her team examined the Y chromosomes of 119 Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews and 143 Israeli and Palestinian Arabs. Many of the Jewish subjects were descended from ancestors who presumably originated in the Levant but dispersed throughout the world before returning to Israel in the past few generations; most of the Arab subjects could trace their ancestry to men who had lived in the region for centuries or longer. The Y chromosomes of many of the men had key segments of DNA that were so similar that they clustered into just three of many groups known as haplogroups. Other short segments of DNA called microsatellites were similar enough to reveal that the men must have had common ancestors within the past several thousand years. The study, reported here at a Human Origins and Disease conference, will appear in an upcoming issue of Human Genetics.    

Hammer praises the new study for "focusing in detail on the Jewish and Palestinian populations." Oppenheim's team found, for example, that Jews have mixed more with European populations, which makes sense because some of them lived in Europe during the last millennium.                                             

Abraham was the father of Ishmael by Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian maid, and Isaac by Sarah, his wife and niece.  Ishmael is considered to be the father of the Arab peoples.  His daughter married Esau.  Isaac was the father of twins, Jacob and Esau.

When the Jews returned to their homeland, they had plans to include the Arabs who were living there as well.  It was an Arab, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had been made the Sherif of Jerusalem by the Jewish British man in charge, who turned on the Jewish settlers because he was afraid of losing his status and position.  Husseini was a big fish in a little pond.  He caused the deathly riots in 1929 against Jews.  During the week of riots, from 23 to 29 August, 133 Jews were killed by Arabs, and 339 Jews were injured, most of whom were unarmed. There were 116 Arabs killed and at least 232 wounded, mostly by the Mandate police suppressing the riots. Around 20 Arabs were killed by Jewish attackers and indiscriminate British gunfire. 

After the riots, 174 Arabs and 109 Jews were charged with murder or attempted murder; around 40% of Arabs and 3% of Jews were subsequently convicted. During the riots, 17 Jewish communities were evacuated.  Why charge the Jews with murder when they were defending themselves against the attackers?  

    Paris Peace Conference 1919-1920 of the victorious Allies after the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers. Dominated by the leaders of Britain, France, the United States and Italy, it resulted in five controversial treaties that rearranged the map of Europe and parts of Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands and imposed financial penalties. Germany and the other losing nations had no voice which gave rise to political resentments that lasted for decades.  There were 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. The total number of deaths includes 9.7 million military personnel and about 10 million civilians. The Entente Powers (also known as the Allies) lost about 5.7 million soldiers while the Central Powers lost about 4 million.
                                            

Arab countries seemed to react in shock to the Jews' return to their land.  The World War I (1914-1918) wiped out the Ottoman Empire's 400 year rule in the area and changed land and people.  The Ottomans had backed the Axis of Germany in the war.   Jewish leaders were speaking with the Allies and planning on their return legitimately and rebirth of Israel.   Meetings with Emir Feisal who became king of Iraq and king of Syria were conducted with Jews and the British who were given a 30 year mandate over Palestine.  Feisal was all for the Jewish return and hoped to see his Arab charges become more educated because of it.  Husseini, who had no powerful ancestors like Feisal, would have none of this and thwarted all the good that the Jews planned for.  

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diasporattps://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11543891/ DNA abstract

https://www.science.org/news/2000/10/jews-and-arabs-share-recent-ancestry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots


 


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