I was made in Palestine. My parents met there, got married there and I was conceived there. So the subject of Palestine and Palestinians naturally interested me enough to want to learn more about the people and region—and I did. As a political science major in college, I took a couple of classes on Government and Politics of The Middle East. I have also written about Palestine and Palestinians in my books.
Now that the question of Palestinian refugees is again making the news after the U.S. withdrew its funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency last Friday, I thought I should share what I know and think about Palestine and Palestinians.
In Custom Maid Spin for New World Disorder, I wrote:
Joseph Farah, an Arab-American journalist, reminds us that East Jerusalem was not captured from Yassar Arafat and the Palestinians during the Six Day War. In fact Arafat was not born in Jerusalem either. He was born in Egypt. Jerusalem was captured from Jordan’s King Hussein. “The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never Land. The first time Palestine was used was in 70 AD when the Romans committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple and declared the land of Israel will be no more. They promised from then on the land of Israel would be known as Palestine – a name derived from the Philistines, a Goliathian people conquered by the Jews earlier. Palestine has never existed before or since as an autonomous entity. There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestine culture. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese or Iraqis. There has never been a land governed by Palestinians. It was ruled alternatively by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Turks and, briefly, by the British after World War I.”
In Custom Maid Knowledge for New World Disorder, I went on to write:
It was the Palestinians who rejected the United Nations decision in 1947 to partition the land between Arabs and Jews, with Jerusalem as an international city. The subsequent war launched in 1948, by the Palestinians and five Arab armies with the intention of eliminating the newborn Jewish state, was won by Israel. The departure of 800,000 Palestinians, who fled at the urging of their leaders to avoid being killed, was supposed to be temporary. However, they continue to remain in suspended animation and have not been assimilated into other countries (unlike the more than 1 million Jews evicted from Arab countries that were absorbed by Israel). Unfortunately, they remain useful political pawns in the Middle East millennium chess game. They have been perpetually promised by their leaders that they will return. Their leaders, including the late Yassar Arafat, became victims of their own propaganda. “The reason for this fantastic attachment to Palestine is partly because the Arabs encouraged it,” said Kamel Abu Jaber, a retired Jordanian foreign minister and peace negotiator. “To say, let’s settle them, let’s absorb them, was considered treason and still is.”
For Palestinians to claim there are more than five million refugees from the “occupied territories” is a gigantic sham-scam! Of the 800,000 Arab refugees from the1948 war, maybe 30,000 are alive today.
In 2012, Congress ordered the State Department to disclose how many Palestinians currently served by UNRWA fled the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and how many are merely their descendants. The Obama administration classified the report on national security grounds. Really? What national security? It should be declassified for all to see.
UNRWA was created solely to attend to Palestinian refugees — while the rest of the world’s refugees are overseen by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees — that unlike UNRWA, has resettled them. Any wonder UNRWA figures and budgets have been grossly inflated annually?
In ending its decades of funding UNRWA to the tune of more than $300 million a year ($355 million in 2016) of U.S. taxpayer money, most of which found its way into the personal bank accounts of unscrupulous Palestinian leaders, the U.S. said it “will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation.”
False Palestinian narratives have to be challenged and uprooted if there is to be a Palestine state. Lasting peace can only take root if it is grounded in truth. Facts not myths. Reality. The alternative, more homeless and stateless Palestinians.