Palestinian Extinction .

" Palestine"
 where  Jewish - Muslims
would have lived in harmony was
creation of 
of failed British Colonialism.

 Donald Trump's moving the US embassy to Jerusalem .Its was unavoidable .  We have seen its consequences already . This week the eruption of Palestinian protests , and more dead Palestinians . It has become a downward spiral for them . The Arab themselves seem to have abandoned them , there is hardly much recognition of the United Nations . My honest feelings here . I wished that  Palestinians would have their country . (1)>>Questions? Where do you put them ? Do carve out Israel ? remember Israel has been taking away lands that are "claimed" by the Palestinians like the Golan Heights for decades. I think the Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" may have inherited some ancient biblical curse . I have always been intrigued with the Palestinian and Israeli situation. We have two vary similar peoples . The "Jewish" state came out of Diaspora out of Nazi Germany , the "Palestinian" Arabs who occupied the land for the least 1400 years were suddenly up rooted in 1948 to make room for a vast displacement of peoples of Jewish refugees. While the creation of the modern state of Israel was nothing more than a fulfillment of centuries long Zionism  , (2)>>pro-western Christian Evangelical promptings of delusional biblical prophecies . Both the Israelis and Palestinians are both born out of refugees, they came from the same stock of the Patriarch Abraham , pray to the same god . Yes, they have biblical hatred of each other that would rival any story out of the Bible .  Now that the Jewish decedents have returned  to the promised land , they are now doing to the Palestinians what the Nazi's did to them . The Palestinians are facing extermination  . Gaza is nothing but a ghetto a ruin heap, poverty , desolation while the occupying power Israel dominates with apartheid tyranny .  For a great number of years, I have been interested to know why the Palestinians are suffering the way they are. What caused this continued oppression to rain down upon them? It seems like a curse .↓

The Biblical Philistines ? .

Modern Palestinians "claim" to have been in the Levant from the beginning. Much of PLO movement  , and its Constitution is based on the nationalism of the word Philistine .While much can be associated with the "word" . Palestinians are not Philistines . As far as both names of these two peoples , these names are not in any sense of describing races of peoples . The Ancient information both biblical and ancient non-biblical seem to be used as a (3)>>derogatory word for a group of people . First, the Philistines were Aegean (or Cypriot) sea peoples who migrated to the southern coast of Israel/Canaan in the 12th century BC. (3.1)>>It is unclear what relationship they bear with the Philistines who are mentioned in Genesis, hundreds of years earlier. In short, they were not a Semitic people, as the Israelites and Arabs were. Second, from the 8th-5th centuries BC, they were crushed or ruled by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, ultimately being absorbed by these populations and entirely disappearing from history. In other words, there was a distinct, end of the line for the Philistines roughly 2,500 years ago.Third, six hundred years after the extinction of the Philistines, and after putting down a Jewish revolt, the Romans changed the name of Judea to Palaestina (in Latin) in order to discourage Jewish patriotism. So, there is absolutely no lineal or ethnic connection between the (earlier) Philistine people and the (later) land called Palestine. In fact, the Philistines had previously lived in the western part of the country, on the Mediterranean coast, whereas Palestine originally referred to the eastern part of the country, on the West Bank of the Jordan river.Fourth, some Muslim leaders have claimed that there was a continuous Arab presence in Palestine dating back to Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD. But this dubious claim, even if true , would still mean that the continuous Jewish presence in the land predated the first major Arab presence by at least 2,000 years, and it would also underscore the fact that there is no connection between the later Arabs and the earlier (extinct) Philistines.
How British Colonialism created the "Palestinians" & " Israelis" 

Ninety-six years ago , on November 2, 1917, British imperialism in Palestine began when Lord Balfour, the then British foreign secretary and former prime minister, sent a letter to Baron Rothschild, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement. This letter became known as the (4)>>“Balfour Declaration”.In that letter, Balfour promised British support for the Zionist programme of establishing a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This pledge of support was made without consulting the indigenous Christian and Muslim inhabitants of Palestine, the Palestinian people. And it was made before British troops had even conquered the land [ remember "Palestine" has been conquered , re-conquered over many thousands of years , while it was originally part of the history of Judaism  , it was up the last 1300 years that the region was dominated by Arab Muslim conquerers . The British broke the Muslim dominance  with the break up of the last Muslim empire  of the Ottoman Turks.] The British rule over Palestine lasted roughly thirty years, from 1917 until 1948. In a country that has three thousand years of recorded history, thirty years is a tiny fraction. If we conceive of three thousand years on a scale of one day, the period of British rule takes barely eight minutes. In comparison, Turkish Ottoman rule over Palestine, which lasted four hundred years, takes an hour and forty minutes. Yet the influence of these thirty years was deep and wide-ranging. For its first six years, Israel was as good to the Palestinians as Britain was. There was a genuine effort on behalf of the Israelis in charge of the Palestinian territories, especially under Moshe Dayan, to be so-called good colonialists.But all that utterly changed after the war of 1973, and a terrible ugliness of Israeli colonial rule was born. There are many reasons for the difference between the relatively benign rule before 1973 and what happened after: the economic oil crisis, the shrinking of the Palestinian labor market, terrorism, the two intifadas. The list goes on. But one of the main reasons behind the change was that Israeli settlements were built in the West Bank and Gaza. (5)>>British colonial rule in Palestine never threatened to displace the indigenous population and to disinherit it (though it did infamously prohibit Europe’s displaced Jews from entering Palestine). But Israeli colonial rule did threaten and disinherit the Palestinians, and continues to do so.

Modern Palestine .The word ‘Palestine’ and what comes along with it has for far too long been under attack, cursed, slammed and denigrated. Numerous prominent human rights authorities, advocates, and scholars have claimed that Israel’s policies and actions with respect to the Palestinian people have amounted to a form of genocide. There are a lot of words that one could use to describe the collective punishment of a stateless people living in what a top United Nations official describes as an “open-air prison,” The Gaza Strip has also been subjected to three ruthless Israeli military offensives, in 2008, 2012 and 2014. The cost has been devastating, in terms of civilian casualties as well as infrastructure. Thousands of Palestinians have been slaughtered with the most horrible weapons, including remote-controlled bulldozers that demolish their homes over their heads, and drones that fire missiles onto crowded streets and into apartment blocks, schools, clinics and hospitals. Gaza has been showered liberally with depleted uranium, white phosphorus and cluster bombs.    And to a greater percentage, it has worked.

NOTES AND COMMENTS: 

(1)>>Questions? Where do you put them ? . The Saudi Peace Plan of 2002 could have furnished a basis for a partition-based solution, because in its original version, it did not include the “right of return.” However, after the Arab League amended it and grafted the “right of return” onto it, it became a non-starter (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 6031, Former Lebanese President Émile Lahoud Reveals How The Right Of Return Was Forced Into The Saudi Peace Plan In The 2002 Arab Summit (Archival), Dec. 11, 2014 to May 22, 2017; see also Professor Itamar Rabinovich’s analysis of that summit, The Warped Saudi Initiative, Haaretz.com, April 7, 2002).(2)>>pro-western Christian Evangelical promptings of delusional biblical prophecies .The decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, rather than as an issue to be decided in negotiations, drew condemnation from heads of Christian churches throughout the world, including Pope Francis. It widened the rift between American Christian evangelicals who support Israel’s hardline policies and the Christians in Israel and the West Bank, who identify politically as Palestinians. And, since even the most moderate Palestinians insist that the capital of a future Palestinian state will be in Jerusalem, it enraged the Palestinian community and raised the possibility of a new outbreak of violence in the Holy City. President Trumps recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last December made little sense to most Middle East experts. His own national security team opposed the decision. But for many white evangelical Christians, 81 percent of whom voted for Trump, it was great news.(3)>>derogatory word for a group of people . Though the definite origins of the word Palestine have been debated for years and are still not known for sure, the name is believed to be derived from the Egyptian and Hebrew word peleshet. Roughly translated to mean rolling or migratory- (3.1)>>It is unclear what relationship they bear with the Philistines .Much of what we know about the Philistines comes from Egyptian and Assyrian texts as well as the stories told in the Hebrew Bible. The Book of Joshua claims that the cities of Ashkelon, Gaza, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron were controlled by the Philistines about 3,000 years ago. The Philistines themselves left no texts and, as such, much of what we know about them comes from the people they encountered. These texts often describe them negatively and today the name “Philistine” is sometimes used to describe someone who is warlike or who doesn’t appreciate art or culture. Its really a "crude" word , it can be equated to a racial slur , one of the oldest . Again  One of the earliest mentions of the Philistines is recorded by the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III (reign ca. 1184–1153 B.C.) who engaged them in battle. In a papyrus Ramses III boasts that “the Philistines were made ashes” by the Egyptian forces, a claim that modern-day scholars doubt.Stories in the Hebrew Bible say that the Philistines clashed with the ancient Israelites many times. One of the battles supposedly took place between a Philistine force led by the giant man named Goliath and an Israelite force that included a man named David who would go on to become king of Israel. In the story David kills Goliath with a slingshot and the Israelites go on to rout the Philistine force. Whether David or Goliath ever existed — or if a series of wars between the Philistines and Israelites occurred — are matters debated by scholars.  (4)>>“Balfour Declaration”. how his "declaration" all those years ago had altered the destiny of so many people is amazing. It was the catalyst to middle-east mayhem .The Balfour Declaration was hardly an aberration, but had, indeed, set the stage for the full-scale ethnic cleansing that followed, three decades later. (5)>>British colonial rule. The British mandate was supposed to deliver independence to Palestine through the establishment of representative institutions. It was never meant permanently to thwart Palestinian national aspirations. Nor was it ever envisaged that the British mandate would end with a catastrophe in the form of the expulsion of the majority of the Palestinian people from their homeland.