Rabbinical quotes of Hillel and RASHI: Simple But Deep

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                       

  Hillel the Elder teaching a man the meaning of the whole Torah while he stands on one foot (detail from the Knesset Menorah, Jerusalem) The
Torah is made up of the first 5 books of the "Old Testament" or Bible.  
Jews Read from it in the Synagogue every week and it is written in Hebrew. 

Hillel was an ancestor of a dynasty of our patriarchs which held office until the 5th century CE.  He was born in Babylon so his own ancestors came from Judah as forced slaves either in 597 or 586 BCE by the Babylonian leader Nebuchadnezzar.  He finally decided to move to Jerusalem and was a laborer there while studying with the famous teachers, Shemaiah and Avtalyon.  He opened his own school, known as the "House of Hillel" and he himself was referred to as Hillel the Elder.  He was appointed president of the Sanhedrin.  Hillel was noted for his humility and tendency to be lenient in decisions.  He taught how to interpret the Torah and Tanakh (bible).   

                                               

Rabbi Hillel, who just went by "Hillel," was born in Babylonia in the 1st century BCE.  Judeans had been rounded up and forced to go with Nebuchadnezzar and his army as captives in 597 BCE to Babylonia and then more were taken in 586 BCE.  When King Josiah of Judah had died in 608 BCE, captives must have been taken then as well.  Jews of Judah were allowed to return to Jerusalem in 538 BCE; 70 years later and encouraged to rebuild their temple by Babylon's King Cyrus.  Not all Jews had returned as many remained in well established Jewish-populated towns.  

About 538 years later within 100 BCE, Hillel had emerged as a Jewish  leader among his people in Babylonia.  Babylonians had produced the Babylonian Talmud.  Hillel then returned to Jerusalem at the time of King Herod ( 73 BCE-4 BCE) .  He must have lived before Jesus was born about 4 BCE to 4 CE, and who had died in 30-36 CE supposedly by Christian writings at age 30-36.  

Once there was a gentile who came before Shammai, and said to him: "Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot. Shammai pushed him aside with the measuring stick he was holding. The same fellow came before Hillel, and Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it."  - Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a

Hillel’s Golden Rule: An Interpretation of Rashi’s View

Hillel famously said "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah." While most understand this to refer to the relationship between man and man, Rashi interpreted it to refer to the relationship between man and G-d.
He's also known for this saying:  
"“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

                             If I am not for others, what am I?

                                     And if not now, when?”

Going along with that story is this one.  

-“Moreover he saw a skull floating on the surface of the water and he said unto it: Because you drowned others they drowned you; and those that drowned you will eventually be drowned.”  In other words, how you treat others will someday come back to you.  Treat others fairly and they in turn might be more fair to you.  

On Time for Study

“Do not say: ‘When I have leisure I shall study,’ perhaps you will never have leisure.”

“Who does not grow, declines.”  This is so true of our minds, and according to my father, his business.    

“In a place where there are no humans, one must strive to be human.”  This one is so deep.  It's telling us not to copy our peer group if they are not acting 

acceptably in a humane way.

Do not harm or hate yourself.  You never know when the world will need you.  

“He who refuses to learn deserves extinction.”

“Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures and drawing them near to the Law.”

“A name made great is a name destroyed. He who does not increase his knowledge decreases it.”

• "Whosoever destroys one soul, it is as though he had destroyed the entire world. And whosoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved the entire world."

• "A name gained is a name lost."

• "Where there are no men, strive to be a man!"

• "My humiliation is my exaltation; my exaltation is my humiliation."
• A person should always be patient like Hillel and not impatient like Shammai. (Shammai was the other teacher with his own school and was impatient.) 
• 
  
• A boor cannot be sin-fearing, an ignoramus cannot be pious, a bashful one cannot learn, a short-tempered person cannot teach, nor does anyone who does much business grow wise.

.    One who increases flesh, increases worms; one who increases possessions, increases worry; one who increases wives, increases witchcraft; one who increases maidservants, increases promiscuity; one who increases man-servants, increases thievery; one who increases Torah, increases life; one who increases study, increases wisdom; one who increases counsel, increases understanding; one who increases charity, increases peace.

"The merciful man does good to his own soul (Proverbs 11:17)," this [refers to] Hillel the Elder, who, at the time that he was departing from his students, would walk with them. They said to him, "Rabbi, where are you walking to?" He said to them, "To fulfill a commandment!" They said to him, "And what commandment is this?" He said to them, "To bathe in the bathhouse." They said to him: "But is this really a commandment?" He said to them: "Yes. Just like regarding the statues (lit. icons) of kings, that are set up in the theaters and the circuses, the one who is appointed over them bathes them and scrubs them, and they give him sustenance, and furthermore, he attains status with the leaders of the kingdom; I, who was created in the [Divine] Image and Form, as it is written, "For in the Image of G-d He made Man (Genesis 9:6)," even more so!...

Hillel stood in the gate of Jerusalem one day and saw the people on their way to work. "How much," he asked, "will you earn today?" One said: "A denarius"; the second: "Two denarii" "What will you do with the money?" he inquired. "We will provide for the necessities of life." Then he said to them: "Would you not rather come and make the Torah your possession, that you may possess both this world and the world to come?"

• The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), Volume 6, p. 399

RASHI

RASHI was a well-respected commentator on Hillel's writings, born in 1040 in France, died 1105, a rabbinical scholar.  We are related to him.  His
name is an abbreviation for: Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki (ben Isaac).  
After studying in the Rhineland, he returned to his native Troyes, France
where he had his own school and it achieved a wide reputation of excellence.
Many people turned to him for advice in the law of Torah.  His commentaries
are found in our prayer books of today.   

He's noted for a few sayings, too, though not as well known.

• “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” ...
• “Receive all with simplicity that happens to you” ...
• “Whoever raises a righteous child, it is as if he did not die.” ...
• “Divided as we may be by religion, we are united by charity.”
• The world exists for the sake of kindness. ...
• Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you. ...
• Naked a man comes into the world and naked he leaves it, after all is said and done he leaves nothing except the good deeds he leaves behind.
• “The flavour of a fish which comes out of the sea at Acre is not similar to the flavour of a fish which comes out of the sea in Spain.”
• “Teachers learn from their students' discussions”
• “God knew where he was, but he asked so as to start a conversation with Adam and avoid startling him too much to reply.”
• “We learn from here the humility of the Holy One, Blessed is He. Since man is in the likeness of the angels, and they would be jealous of him, for this reason, He consulted them.
• ”“Obeying from love is better than to obey from fear.”

  

https://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/2219629/jewish/Hillels-Golden-Rule.htm?gclid=CjwKCAjwsO_4BRBBEiwAyagRTfZPslC5D_otX7a_VCdZ4_Rsd7GJcr4RnACSAWGHLhwoNztqMGXaWBoCBTEQAvD_BwE video, commentary.  
https://humanjourney.us/ideas-that-shaped-our-modern-world-section/historical-jesus/?gclid=CjwKCAjwsO_4BRBBEiwAyagRTfGVsjZ_b_WoUSI30N7H9F4r2tdyq2WJaQG2YOokv0sCnuvenFXXCxoCYocQAvD_BwE 
Leon Simon, "Hillel," The Jewish Literary Annual
 (1908)https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/5450990.Rabbi_Hillel#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIf%20I%20am%20not%20for%20myself%2C%20who%20is%20for%20me,If%20not%20now%2C%20when%3F%E2%80%9D&text=%E2%80%9CWhat%20is%20hateful%20to%20yourself,do%20to%20your%20fellow%20man.
www.The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_the_Elder

Qualifications Not Met For a State of Palestine

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Jewish Israeli Men 

The has never been a state of Palestine.  Such a state has been in the works and has just produced the many terrorists either calling themselves the PA (Palestine Authority-a work over of Yasser Arafat's PLO, and its division of Hamas, the worst of the terrorists who have been given Gaza to live.  Yet, the countries of the world have deemed it proper that regardless of expectations for a new state, they should be given statehood.  
                                                                             

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.

Back in the days of Mark Twain, a group of people including him, took a pleasure  cruise, the trip of a lifetime which included Palestine.  He wrote about it in detail in his book, "The Innocents Abroad."
Innocents perhaps as their expectations might not have been met-in fact he may have come face to face with disappointment.  It was advertised as AN EXCURSION TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT, THE CRIMEA, GREECE, AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS OF INTEREST.  He left from Brooklyn, New York about June 1,  1867.  They traveled by steamer that was able to hold 150 cabin passengers but planned on leaving at 3/4 capacity.  The ship was provided with all necessities including a library and musical instruments with a doctor on board.  

The steamer finally got to Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of Tiberias, Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem and other points of interest in the Holy land where people could leave ship and visit..  Those who wanted a different route could make the journey from Beirut through the country and pass through Damascus, Galilee, Capernaum, Samaria and by the River Jordan and Sea of Tiberias, then rejoin the steamer.  
                                                      

He eagerly awaited seeing an Arab.  In boyhood he longed to be an Arab of the desert and have a beautiful mare and call her Selim or Benjamin or Mohammed  and feed her with his own hands and let her come into the tent, etc, etc.  Then reality set in.  He said that those of his acquaintance have no love for their horses, no sentiment of pity for them, no knowledge of how to treat them or care for them.  The saddle blanket is never removed from their horses, gets full of dirt and hair and becomes soaked with sweat.  It breeds sores.  These Pirates never think of washing a horse's back.  they do not shelter the horses in the tents, either.  His sentimental thinking he felt was wasted upon the Selims of romance.   (p. 202-203 of his book).  

When entering the Galilee, and they visited there because it held the birthplace of their Savior, they saw "the country was infested with fierce Bedouins, whose sole happiness in life was to cut and stab and mangle and murder unoffending Christians.  Allah be with us"!, he wrote.  

He saw unpeopled deserts, rusty mounds of barrenness, the ruins of Capernaum, this stupid village of Tiberias slumbering under its 6 funereal plumes of palms, and so forth with some of his  best and most creative writing not found in TOM SAWYER.  

Palestine in 1867 was a dead and desolate landscape.  The Jews there, kept to themselves out of sight while the land was trodden over by roaming Bedouins, on horse or camel as if it were a hamburger spot on a trip from Oregon to Florida, not a place to live in.  It was desert and swamp with many mosquitoes and weeds.  The land was waiting for the Homies to return, the Jews who would bring it water and fertilizer and make it bloom again.  1880 was the moment of return, a response to too many pogroms in Russia that caused these people who had been praying for 2,000 years to be led back in a return.  Life outside their land had been impossible.                                 

Joan Peters
b: 1938 Chicago, d: January 5, 2015
Married to William A Caro and Stanley Kaplan

Joan Peters, later Caro, was the author of the best-selling, controversial, 1984 book From Time Immemorial, in which she argued that Palestinians are largely not indigenous to modern Israel and therefore do not have a claim to its territory. en.wikipedia.org 
Naysayers about the book's findings were
Noam Chomsky and buddy Norman Finkelstein.  

This is how I still see Americans viewing the Palestinian Arabs, in a romantic way, but not in a real way.  For those that can read, all their history is in Joan Peter's book, FROM TIME IMMEMORIAL where she explains from actual papers showing they came in following the Russian Jewish immigration of the 1st Aliyah in 1880 and onward to Palestine.  There were a few who tried farming and owned land they couldn't do a thing with, so sold out to the immigrant Russian Jews who paid extremely  high prices for it but to whom this ugly land meant something.  Americans have a guilty conscience over their own Native Americans (Indians) and have made a comparison finding them the same, but it's like comparing apples to oranges.  They do not have the same history at all!  
                                                         

King Saul's death
and David is the next king

Who does compare better are the returning Jews who were quite native to this soil, having lived here as a nation since King Saul in the 11th century BCE.   before 1000 BCE.  He was the 1st King of Israel, son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin.  Yes, we were tribal, too, like the Indians.  We also lived in tents.   There were 12 tribes, all from the 12 sons of Jacob.  That's over 3,000 years ago!                                               
                                                        

Yitzak-Meir Levin
b: 1893-d: 1971

He was born in Góra Kalwaria on January 30, 1893 in Góra Kalwaria , Poland . He studies in a yeshiva and becomes Rabbi . In 1924, he became a member of Agoudat Israel , he is the representative of the Warsaw region and in 1929 he is Polish representative for the world. In 1937, he became a member of the presidency of the organization. From 1937 to 1939 he was a member of the Diet of the Republic of Poland .

He moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1940 and helped Polish victims of the Holocaust to immigrate to Palestine.

In 1948, he was among the signatories of the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel .

He was a member of the first David Ben Gurion government in 1948. He left the government in 1952 as a result of the incorporation of women into the army .  This may be Meir Levin, the author's father.  It's typical of what he wrote about, the Jews who came back to Palestine.  

                                                         

Meyer Levin was born in 1905, died in 1981:
US novelist, retold Hasidic legends and wrote stories of Israel;
Lived in Israel: Prolific writer includes Compulsion, The Old Bunch, Citizens, Eva, Gore and Igor and his autobiography, In Search. 

Meyer Levin wrote a historic-based novel, THE SETTLERS, in 1972 about the Jews who first settled in Palestine in 1880 and follows them through history to WWI.  It's one of the best I've ever read.  He writes about the hardships of the first Jewish pioneers and the spasmodic tyranny of the Turkish overlords, etc.  These pioneers had it just as rough as our American pioneers.  

There were Jews in Palestine who had never left.  Their ancestors had remained, hidden more likely, as the Romans had a ban on Jews returning after they had dragged them out as slaves and took them to Rome.  They were to be killed if found.  It was not a safe proposition to try to return throughout the ages.  Many had tried and failed along the way.  


The UN set down conditions for the Palestinian Arabs to follow in order to gain statehood, and they have never been met.  (Any act undertaken to establish a Palestinian state will be insufficient to confer membership in the community of nations, even in the presence of a significant display of support for a state of Palestine. This will largely be due to the Palestinians’ inability to satisfy the Security Council that, once a state, it will abide by the principles of the United Nations Charter.  One of those conditions was to behave peacefully.  Even today, Israel has had to enter their bomb shelters as rockets rained down.  It has started up again after a short pause while they burned their fields and forests with burning kites.  How can they be allowed statehood when they act like the Nazis entering Poland?  The United States has consistently supported a two-state solution and encouraged the establishment of a Palestinian state, but only after negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians sufficiently indicate that Israel’s security would not be jeopardized by a neighboring state of Palestine.

The Knesset of Israel has 120 members.  About 21 of them have taken the brave step of writing our USA Congress to reconsider their position on Palestinian Statehood, which they continue from other Presidents to back.  They feel a legal statehood recognition from the USA is even worse that today's BDS movement, a movement to end Israel economically.  Recognition and all the pluses it includes with statehood would severely damage the national security of both Israel and the United States.  It's been bad enough for Israel that since its inception it has had to defend themselves against the attacks of these Arabs who care less about life like they treated their horses than taking over Israel.  

Like the dog who chases the bone, they wouldn't know what to do with it if, G-d forbid, they ever did TAKE Israel.  It would turn back into the weeds and swamps and desert that Jews found it in.  They haven't managed to take care of their people as the PA or Hamas well at all, spending all their given money on ammunition against Israel, not their people's needs. 
                                                       

Kartoum Conference in 1967 and 3 NOs
No to Peace with Israel

Congress was very clever.  They just passed legislation taking a strong stance against the BDS movement that has been going on for years, now.  But, it also included language re-affirming America's commitment to a 2-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians.  I say, when peace-minded Arabs in Gaza can take over from Hamas and rule, then we can think about it.  When the PA (Palestine Authority) is actually peace-minded and all for making peace with Israel, wiping out the 1967 commitment they made in an African conference in Kartoum  with other Muslim Arabs, then we can think about it.  Until then, our people will pray and prepare to defend themselves.        
                                                  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that if the Arabs put down their weapons today there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel.                                

Golda Meir was an Israeli teacher, kibbutznik, stateswoman, politician and the fourth Prime Minister of Israel

 As Gold Meir stated:  We will only have peace when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us:

There's no such thing as a PALESTINIAN PEOPLE.  It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country.  They didn't exist. 

We Jews have a secret weapon against our struggle with the Arabs.  We have nowhere else to go.  

 We have been forced to choose between what is more dangerous and what is less dangerous for us. At times we have all been tempted to give in to various pressures and to accept proposals that might guarantee us a little quiet for a few months, or maybe even for a few years, but that could only lead us eventually into even greater peril. 

Caesar  used a similar tactic on the Jews by giving them a lot and then expecting them to return the favors by assimilating and changing their religion.  Martin Luther (1483-1546) used the same methods on Jews, turning against them violently when they didn't comply.  First he had spoken favorably of the Jews and said they had been treated badly by the Catholic Church hoping Jews would accept his brand of Christianity.  He turned using  extreme virulence, applauding everything that could be done to persecute and humiliate them.  His anti-Jewish attitude helped to inspire later German anti-Semitism.  Sticking on that tag of a 2-state  solution was such a tag.  It's there to satisfy the American Democrats.  Notice, since the Clinton-Arafat confabs of the Oslo processes, it isn't working.  

We do not rejoice in victories. (Palestinians do).  Killing Jews is time for celebration with them.  They pass out candies to the children on these occasions.    We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown, when strawberries bloom in Israel.  

Resource: The Jewish Press, Friday, August 16, 2019, page 42, MKs to congress: Palestinian statehood far more dangerous then BDS.  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_Levin
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2011/08/31/palestinian-statehood-international-law/
http://arno.uvt.nl/show.cgi?fid=121942  on international statehood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_state

WHAT HAMAS BELIEVES: More on Hamas Covenant: Islamic Resistance Movement and Quotes

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                          

                                                       What Hamas Believes

There is no solution for the Palestine question except through Jihad.  

Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.  Palestine is an Islamic land.

Below is what Hamas Believes and Teaches Others as in Covenant

Hamas spells out what organizations are Zionists:

1. Freemasons

2. Rotary Clubs

3. Lions Clubs

4. Espionage groups and others (???) 

These are all cells of subversion and saboteurs.

Islamic peoples should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these saboteurs.

The vicious enemy (Jews) acts similar to Nazism.  They have deprived people of their homeland.  

1. They took control of the world media.

2. They were behind the French Revolution

3. They were behind the Communist Revolution

4. They were behind World War I-destroyed the Islamic Caliphate, made financial gains, controlled resources

5. They obtained the Balfour Declaration

6. They formed the League of Nations-through which to rule the world

7. They were behind World War II-with  huge financial gains by trading in armaments, paving the way for their state

8. They instigated the replacement of the League of nations with the United Nations and the Security Council in order to rule the world through them

9.  Any war anywhere has their finger in it.  

The Zionist Plan After Palestine

1. Expand from the Nile to the Euphrates

12. Plan embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

                                                                  Yasir  Arafat     

                                        What the Arabs Have Said

"I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers!  Murder the Jew!  Murder them all!"

Haj Amin al Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem, 1948

"Peace for us means the destruction of Israel.  We are preparing for an all-out war, a war which will last for generations.  Since January 1965, when Fatah was born, we have become the most dangerous enemy that Israel has...We shall not rest until the day when we return to our home, and until we destroy Israel..."

PLO chairman Yasir Arafat, El Mundo, Caracas, Venezuela, February 11, 1980

"Machine guns and rifle bullets are the only way to reach an understanding with the Zionist enemy.  Statements, protests and UN resolutions are of no avail.  Only the massive use of bullets...Our people cannot cease its struggle, which is carried out with bullets, machine guns and hand grenades."

Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Head of the military wing, Fatah, Voice of Palestine, Beirut, May 3, 1980

"The Fatah movement...aim is the liberation of Palestine in its entirety, and the extermination of the Zionist entity economically, politically, militarily, culturally and idealistically."

The 4th Fatah Organization Convention, Damascus, Syria, May 31, 1980

"The struggle with the Zionist enemy is not a struggle about Israel's borders, but about Israel's existence."

Bassam Abu Sharif, a top Arafat aide and PLO spokesman, Kuwait News Agency, Mday 31, 1986

"O heroic sons of the Gaza Strip, O proud sons of the West Bank, O heroic sons of the Galilee, O steadfast sons of the Negev;...the fires of revolution against these Zionist invaders will not fade out...until our land---all our land---has been liberated from these usurping invaders."

PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat, PLO Radio, Baghdad, December 10, 1987, after riots in Gaza following a fatal traffic accident sparked the uprising.

"Open fire on the new Jewish immigrants--be they from the Soviet Union, ethiopia or anywhere else...I give you  my instructions to use violence against the immigrants.  I will jail anyone who refuses to do this."

Yasir Arafat, Al-Muharar, April 10, 1990

"We were delighted to see the Arab weapons pounding the strongholds of the Zionist entity in the heart of Tel Aviv."

Hamas, Sawt al-Sha'b, January 23, 1991

"there is no choice for the PLO but to oppose the Allied force, because it's in the alliance with Israel.  Anyone responsible for shedding the blood of Iraqis will be punished."

Yasir Arafat, UPI, February 1, 1991

"We will continue our revolution and our resistance and our uprising until the banner of our revolution flies over holy Jerusalem and the walls of Jerusalem and the minarets of Jerusalem and the churches of Jerusalem.

Yasir Arafat, Algiers Voice of Palestine, May 13, 1991

"The Jews at work!  Damn their fathers!  The Dogs!  Filth and dirt!...And thanks to the rotten Jews with whom I will settle accounts in the future."

Yasir Arafat, January 30, 1992, transcript of tape obtained by CNN

"Whoever is killed by a Jew receives the reward of two martyrs, because the very thing that the Jews did to the prophets was done to him.

"The Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah.

"Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world.

"The Jews kill anyone who believes in Allah. They do not want to see any peace whatsoever on Earth."

Sermon delivered by 'Atallah Abu Al-Subh, former Hamas minister of culture, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV, April 8, 2011, translation by MEMRI

"We have liberated Gaza, but have we recognized Israel? Have we given up our lands occupied in 1948? We demand the liberation of the West Bank, and the establishment of a state in the West Bank and Gaza, with Jerusalem as its capital – but without recognizing [Israel]. This is the key – without recognizing the Israeli enemy on a single inch of land...

"Our plan for this stage is to liberate any inch of Palestinian land, and to establish a state on it. Our ultimate plan is [to have] Palestine in its entirety. I say this loud and clear so that nobody will accuse me of employing political tactics. We will not recognize the Israeli enemy. "

Hamas leader Mahmoud Al-Zahhar, Future News TV, June 15, 2010, Source: MEMRI.org

First came the PLO and out of that grew Fatah.  A splinter group of Fatah is Hamas, so Arafat started it all and he was an Arab born in Cairo,  Egypt.  His father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza, whose mother, Yasser's paternal grandmother, was Egyptian.  Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along with his younger brother Fathi, the only offspring born in Cairo. His mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, was from a Jerusalem-based family. 

                                                                             

When the "Palestinian Arabs decide to change their tune by writing a new charter and accept Israel as a Jewish state; when they love their children more than they hate Jews, then there will be peace among the 2 peoples.    Right now they're only too willing to die and have their rewards of death rather than face life. 

Resource:   Myths and Facts-a concise record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Mitchell G. Bard, Joel Himelfarb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cause_of_Yasser_Arafat's_death

http://www.adl.org/anti-semitism/muslim-arab-world/c/hamas-in-their-own-words.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat
From Time Immemorial, by Joan Peters-tells about where Palestinian Arabs have actually come from