Of course there Is no Arab “Palestinian” People and there never was an Arab “Palestine.”

The dizzying repetition of that Big Lie for so many decades causes people who should know better to speak of a “Two-State Solution.” Op-ed.

By Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, INN

Of course Minister Bezalel Smotrich is correct. Of course there is no Arab “Palestinian” people and never was an Arab “Palestine.” It all is a fraud. It’s just a fact. Repeat the truth: There never was an Arab political entity of “Palestine” and never a “Palestinian Arab nation.” The dizzying repetition of that Big Lie for so many decades causes people who should know better to speak of a “Two-State Solution.” But that very notion is illogical, absurd, nonsensical.

People say it without thinking about it: “The Two-State Solution.” What are they talking about? Given America’s never-ending nightmares in purgatory-holes like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, and Lebanon — does it really advance American interests to create yet another Muslimarabstan that will be yet another center for international terror that ultimately will bog thousands more American troops and billions more in defense spending in another Middle East dirt hole? Does America really benefit by giving Hamas and Fatah terrorists new countries of their own based on falsified history?

The danger is so perilous that no one admits they are speaking of giving the terrorists a “country,” not a “state.” Delaware is a state. North Dakota is a state. Iowa is a state. But Muslimarabstanpalestine would be a country. That is a solution? And look at the map of the region. Gaza is on one side, and Judea-Samaria (the “West Bank) is utterly separate. Those two regions are not one entity. Even now, Gaza is ruled by Hamas terrorists, and the “Palestine Authority” is run by Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas) and Fatah terrorists. They regularly hate and kill each other. So it is not about a “Two State Solution” but a “Three Country Quagmire.”

More: Given that no Muslimarabstan in “Palestine” will allow any single Jew to live there, how exactly are 500,000 Jews going to be uprooted from their homes in Judea and Samaria, plus another 325,000 Jews from Jerusalem’s eastern neighborhoods? Is the American “Two State Solution” to send in stormtroopers, round-up and shove Jews onto cattle cars, and force-march them into concentration camps?

What exactly is the European Union idea for uprooting 800,000 Jews from the lands Israel liberated in 1967, more than half a century ago? Where exactly will they be re-concentrated? In refugee camps in Syria? Will the European Union ask Germany to restore some of their available facilities, perhaps in Dachau and other picture-postcard locations, although it will cost them the tourist trade of those who love to visit concentration camp museums?

None of this “Two State Solution” makes any sense once one actually thinks beyond a slogan.

Now look deeper at real facts:

First, the Arabs of pre-state Israel were pro-Hitler Nazis. Their undisputed leader, Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, traveled to Berlin and met with Hitler, counseled Hitler and his Nazi leadership, and urged the tertiation of the Jews. As Menachem Begin has stated, the Jews were not decimated by Hitler but tertiated. That is, the Nazis did not murder one Jew in ten but one-third of all European Jewry. The Grand Mufti played a major role in inciting the tertiation of the Jews. Here is the official transcript of the Grand Mufti’s meeting with Hitler on November 28, 1941. Despite falsehoods taught in colleges by tenured professors who cannot be fired, these Arab Muslims were not freedom fighters; they were Hitler Nazis. They did not welcome Jews; they helped Hitler murder Jews.

The Arabs of pre-state Israel launched vicious pogroms in 1920-21, 1929, and 1936-39. These are facts. Look it up: 1929. 1936-1939. The Hebron Massacre.

The entire “Palestine” myth is built on one Big Lie after another. The New York Times even published an op-ed asserting that Jesus was a “Palestinian Arab.” Having spread the Big Lie for so long — half a century — having defrauded so many gullible people and a new generation of campus ignoramuses to believe the Big Lie that there ever was an Arab country called “Palestine” and the concomitant Big Lie that there ever was an ancient Arab people called “The Palestinians,” they moved to the next phase: that Jesus was one.

Let the Myth and Fraud of “Palestine” and the Lie of “The Palestinians” be set straight.

Roman conquerors under Vespasian and Titus destroyed the Holy Temple in the year 70 C.E., and the Romans drove most of the remaining Jews out of Israel in the year 135 under Hadrian and Julius Severus with the fall of Fortress Betar. To extinguish the Jewish bond with the land for all forthcoming eternity, and to prevent yet another Jewish return to Israel from Exile as had happened only seventy years after the Babylonian expulsion of 586 B.C.E., the Romans changed the very name of the land to identify it with one of the pagan Biblical tribes who preceded the Jews there before Joshua: the Philistines (“Plishtim,” in Biblical Hebrew, meaning ‘invaders,’ as they came from islands in the Mediterranean Sea).

That is where the name “Palestine” comes from: Philistine-Palestine. Rome named the conquered land for the Plishtim, the Philistines of Joshua and Samson and King Saul. And the Philistines clung to the Gaza-Ashkelon corridor along the Mediterranean coast, utterly irrelevant to the Judea-Samaria (“West Bank”) heartland. There were no Arab Muslims in the Bible. Open any Bible. Every sentence proves it. Indeed, there was no Islam until Mohammed half a millennium later in the Seventh Century.

For the two thousand years after the Romans renamed Israel, the expression “Land of Palestine” was synonymous with the Land of Israel. Israel’s Jews were recognized as the “Palestinians.” There never were a “Palestinian Arab” nation; no Arabs denominated themselves “The Palestinians.” They staked no claims. There never was an Arab political entity called “Palestine.”

Open an Encyclopedia pre-dating 1964, and look up “Palestine.” Identify the name of any Arab Muslim who ever was the “King of Palestine,” the “Sheikh of Palestine,” the “Emperor of Palestine,” the “Prime Minister of Palestine,” the “President of Palestine.” Name a “Palestinian” painter of note, a soccer team. There never was an Arab anything called “Palestine,” no coinage, no currency — and never an Arab people by such name. Any statement otherwise is a lie and a fraud on a society that easily can be fooled when mass media decide to partner in a Big Lie.

They claim there never was a Jewish Holy Temple on Mount Zion. Open your Jewish Bible. I Kings 6-7. Look in the Christian Bible: Matthew 21. Luke 2. John 2. Yet today’s Grand Mufti of Jerusalem preaches that there never was a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Abu Mazen (aka Mahmoud Abbas), Holocaust Denier and leader of the Palestine Authority, likewise denies all such history. That Big Lie not only negates Judaism but also Christianity’s core narrative of the life of Jesus.

And the irony of their Holocaust denial and Jerusalem Temple denial is that there never was an Arab country or people called “Palestine.”

“Palestine” always meant “Israel.” The American organization that raised money for the Irgun — the Jewish underground that fought alongside the Haganah when England would not allow Jewish refugees from Hitler, fleeing desperately on ships like “The Exodus,” to find sanctuary in Israel — was the “American League for a Free Palestine.” The English-language Jewish daily newspaper in Israel before the State of Israel was established in 1948 was the “Palestine Post.” The United Jewish Appeal before 1948 was the United Palestine Appeal. Indeed, Encyclopedia Britannica’s entry on Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, titles him the “Chief Rabbi of Palestine.”

Think particularly about that last one: The Arab “Palestinians” had a Chief Rabbi? Arafat had a Chief Rabbi? Hamas has a Chief Rabbi? Of course not.

Until 1964, Arabs never undertook to establish their own “Palestine” in either Judea-Samaria (the “West Bank”) or in Gaza — even though they controlled both regions for two decades from 1948-1967. (Jordan illegally occupied Judea-Samaria and Egypt illegally held Gaza.) When the “Palestine Liberation Organization” was fabricated by Ahmed Shukairy in 1964, the “Palestine” they wanted to “liberate” was the entire country of Israel. They harbored no designs or interest at all on the “West Bank” or Gaza because Arabs occupied those regions. Rather, they defined “Palestine” as the map of pre-1967 Israel and nothing more.

All PLO terror attacks from their 1964 founding and until June 1967 were aimed exclusively at sites within Israeli cities. Only after Egypt, Syria, and Jordan allied for war in 1967 to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea — and lost Judea-Samaria and Gaza in their ensuing debacle — did a new revamped “Palestine Myth” emerge. Only then — suddenly — did the “Palestine” myth change: Now the PLO suddenly wanted Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) and Gaza. Suddenly, that was “Palestine.”

Indeed, why do the Arabs call Judea and Samaria the “West Bank”? Do people call Jersey City or Hoboken or Secaucus the “West Bank” even though those cities lie on the west bank of the Hudson River? Why call Jewish cities in Judea and Samaria the “West Bank” when they are nowhere near the Jordan River? Answer: Because, through all of Arab history, Arabs never had any name for the region because it was not theirs. They had names for Egypt, for Lebanon, but no name for Judea and Samaria. They would sound laughable if they were to proclaim:“Judea belongs to Arabs because there never were Jews in Judea.” “Judea” (“Yehudah” in the original Biblical Hebrew) is eponymously named for the Jewish tribe of Judah (likewise “Yehudah”), the tribe of Nachshon, Calev, David and Solomon, that was apportioned that region by Joshua.

Christians find that Luke 17:11 discusses Jesus in Samaria and that John 4:1-4 discusses Jesus going from Judea to the Galilee by way of Samaria. Nowhere in the Jewish Bible — nor in the Christian Bible — is the region, the very heartland of Israel, called “West Bank.” That name is utter nonsense. So the Arabs call it “The West Bank” even though All the remainder of that region is known by Biblical names: Lebanon, Tyre, Sidon, Damascus, Hebron, Bethlehem, Galilee, Beersheba, Jerusalem. Yet, after all the millennia, they never had reason to name Judea and Samaria.

“One picture is worth a thousand words.” Click here for he Al Fatah flag of the PLO of Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) of the “Palestine Authority” which depicts the “Palestine” they seek: the entire State of Israel. Same with the flag of Hamas. Also the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. And of their “General Command.” Likewise the flag of Palestine Islamic Jihad i

Each flag depicts their definition of “Palestine”: not a country comprised of “West Bank” and Gaza. Rather, the entirety of Israel. That is what they mean when they chant: “From the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea / ‘Palestine’ Will Be Free.”

It has been the dream of Nazis from Adolf Hitler to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and their ilk: an Israel free of Jews once again. After two thousand years of driving Jews out of European countries and yelling “Go to Israel!” now they would declare Judea and Samaria as the one place on earth barred to Jewish residence. The arrogance.

AL FATAH: note top center green vertical: map of entire pre-1967 Israel plus “West Bank”, Gaza, and Go

HAMAS: note top center green vertical: map of entire pre-1967 Israel plus “West Bank”, Gaza, and Golan

PFLP: note arrow pointing to entire pre-1967 Israel plus “West Bank”, Gaza, and Golan

PFLP-GENERAL COMMAND: note middle vertical in green: map of entire pre-1967 Israel plus “West Bank”, Gaza, and Golan

ISLAMIC JIHAD: note middle vertical in red: map of entire pre-1967 Israel plus “West Bank”, Gaza, and Golan

Facts remain facts. Jews, Catholics, and Protestants all have access to Biblical narratives that tell a profound truth: There never ever was an Arab country called “Palestine,” and there never ever were an Arab people who called themselves “The Palestinians” until the past century. Their claims are bogus. Their lies are brazen.

Minister Smotrich is correct. Even Labor Socialist Golda Meir published in the New York Times that “There is no Palestinian people.”

In foreseeable time, the Israeli Government finally will extend sovereignty over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, just as it did in uniting Jerusalem and in annexing the Golan Heights. No one is going to uproot and displace nearly a million Jews from their homes in cities throughout Judea and Samaria. To remove Jews from Hebron, where Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah repose? From the region where Rachel’s Tomb stands? To ethnically cleanse Jews out of the regions where Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel prophesied? Absurd.

The opinions of the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab and Muslim World, and the Russia-China-North Korea Axis do not mattder. That is the beauty of Israel having been the target of their one-sided, viciously unfair and biased attacks for more than seventy years: Israelis and those who support Israel throughout the world learned decades ago to tune out their endless condemnations. France’s opinion does not matter. Poor Parisians, they now have to work until age 64 instead of retiring at 62. Britain does not matter. The whole European Union does not matter.

Nor do Biden, Blinken, Nides, and that crew. America is facing a mega banking crisis that even has driven Leftist Jewish money back to Israel. They have to deal with train derailments, Russia and Ukraine, China’s designs on Taiwan, North Korean nuclear tests, Iran uranium enrichment, a debt exceeding 30 trillion dollars, the craziness that soon will ensue if they arrest or indict Donald Trump, a southern border out of control, a culture war in their schools, newly stoked racial divisions, fights over abortion-on-demand and gender dysphoria that sees men saying they are women, women claiming to be men, others claiming to be neither or both, pronouns by which he is they and they is she, and so much more.

2None of those characters has time, energy, or serious care about “Palestine.” They simply say what they are expected to say, and they move on.

Minister Smotrich has done a great public service by leveraging his enhanced public platform to state a 1simple fact. And as Ben Shapiro famously has written, facts don’t care about your feelings.

Adapted by the writer for Arutz Sheva from a version of this article that first appeared here in The American Spectator.

To receive Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer’s Weekly Extensive Torah Commentaries or to attend any or all of Rav Fischer’s weekly 60-minute live Zoom classes on the Weekly Torah Portion, the Biblical Prophets, the Mishnah, Rambam Mishneh Torah, or Advanced Judaic Texts, send an email to: shulstuff@yioc.org