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Many of us are familiar with the name “Mark Twain” the author of classic novels such as “Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer”.
Mark Twain took a tour of "Palestine" in 1867 and this is how he described the country:
“A desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is wholly given over to weeds. A silent, mournful expanse. We never saw a human being on the whole route. There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
Where was this great Palestinian nation? It did not exist. It was not there. Palestinians were not there. Palestine was a region named by the Romans but in 1867 it was under the control of Turkey, and there was no large mass of people there because the land would not support them.
This is the report that the Palestine Royal Commission, created by the British, made. It quotes an account on the coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea in 1913. This is what the Palestine Royal Commission said: “The road leading from Gaza to the North was only a summer track, suitable for transport by camels or carts. No orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached the Yavnev village. Houses were mud. Schools did not exist. The western part toward the sea was almost a desert. The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.” That was 1913.
In short under the Turks the land had suffered from neglect and low population. This is an historic fact. The nation became populated by both Jews and Arabs because the land came to prosper when the Jews came back to reclaim it. Even to this day the Jewish people are regarded as the best arid land farmers in the world.
While all the surrounding Arab/Muslim nations claim Israel has no right to exist they would be well reminded that most of them have no longstanding claim to the country either.
Saudi Arabia was not created until 1913, Lebanon until 1920. Iraq did not exist as a nation until 1932, Syria until 1941; the borders were established in 1946 and Kuwait in 1961. Any of these nations that would say Israel is only a recent arrival would have to deny their own rights as recent arrivals as well. They did not exist as countries. They were all under the control of the Turks.
Adolf Hitler once said that “the greater a lie is, the more are people likely to believe it.”
By far the greatest lie created by the Muslim world is that of the Palestinian refugees being created when the Jews forced and exodus of millions of Arabs from their plots of land they had inhabited from time immemorial.
When Israel’s independence was declared in 1948, the vastly superior Arab forces combined to crush it. Arabic radio broadcasts called upon the Arab people to flee from their homes in Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa as the combined Arab armies were coming in to crush Israel and they didn’t want fellow Arabs in the way.
Some Arabs in another crucial strategic area who were “opening fire on the Israeli’s shortly after surrendering” were “forced” to leave by the defending Jewish army to prevent what former Israeli Premier Itzhak Rabin described as a “hostile and armed populace” from remaining “in our rear when it would endanger the supply route.”
After the combined Arab armies were defeated by the tiny fledgling nation of Israel in the 1948 war, their position became confused: some Arab leaders demanded the “return” of the “expelled” refugees to their homes despite the evidence that Arab leaders had called upon Arabs to flee. At the same time, Emile Ghoury, Secretary of the Arab Higher Command, called for the prevention of the refugees from “return.” He stated in the Beirut Telegraph on August 6, 1948: “It is inconceivable that the refugees should be sent back to their homes while they are occupied by the Jews…it would serve as a first step toward Arab recognition of the state of Israel and Partition.”
According to a research report by the Arab-sponsored Institute for Palestine Studies in Beirut, “the majority” of the Arab refugees in 1948 were not expelled and 68% “left without seeing an Israeli soldier.
Khaled Al-Azm who was Syria’s Prime Minister after the 1948 war deplored the Arab tactics and the subsequent exploitation of the refugees, in his 1972 memoirs:
“Since 1948 it is we who demanded the return of the refugees…while it was we who made them leave...we brought disaster upon…Arab refugees by inviting them and bringing pressure to bear upon them to leave…We have rendered them dispossessed…we have accustomed them to begging….we have participated in lowering their moral and social level…then we exploited them in executing crimes of murder, arson and throwing of bombs upon…men women and children –all this in the service of political purpose…
In 1958, former director of the United Nations Relief Work Agency Ralph Galloway declared angrily while in Jordan “The Arab states do not want to solve the refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront to the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel. Arab leaders do not give a damn whether Arab refugees live or die.”
And King Hussein, the sole Arab leader who, for reasons that later became clearer, directed integration of the Arabs, in 1960 stated, “Since 1948 Arab leaders have approached the Palestinian problem in an irresponsible manner…They have used the Palestinian people for selfish political purposes. This is ridiculous and I could say criminal.”
Today the lies of Israeli occupation are treated as “fact” by the leftist-liberals and the mainstream press.
Nevertheless, even if a billion people believe a “lie”, it is still a lie.
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