DEBUNKING JOE FARAH’S JEWISH FABLES
By Rev. Ted Pike
31 Oct 12
Editor's note:
Golda Meir largely invented the lie that Arabs virtually didn't exist in Palestine before the Zionists arrived, that Palestine was a desolation of sand dunes which Jewish agricultural genius and hard work made "blossom like the rose."
Last week Pam Geller loudly proclaimed this falsehood to her evangelical (largely WorldNetDaily) following. Zionist propaganda claims Arabs only came into Palestine to profit from Israeli prosperity. It says 800,000 fled in 1948 (despite Israel's pleadings to stay) so that invading Arab legions could annihilate the Jews, upon which the Arabs would return and seize Palestine.
Because Zionists like Geller and WND owner Joseph Farah continue to feed these lies to millions of gullible evangelicals, it is necessary to at least annually repost this article.
The Bible warns Christians to ignore “Jewish fables.” (Titus
1:14) In 1948 Israel violently drove half of the Arab population from
Palestine, stealing land on which they had lived and farmed for thousands
of years. To distract the world from this outrage, Israel created an
elaborate tapestry of fables deluding generations of evangelicals and
much of the world.
The most audacious claim of such propaganda is that the Palestinians
were not deprived of their land because the Palestinians as
a land-owning people never existed! They never inhabited Palestine
in significant numbers and only entered in the 20 th century as squatters,
benefitting from the hospitality and prosperity of Israel. Zionist
mythology also teaches that the number of Jews living in much of Palestine,
especially in Jerusalem, always exceeded the Arabs, strengthening Israel’s
right to remain the dominant occupant.
The Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem explains Israel’s
strategy:
“In order to create an alleged justification for the crime
of genocide they have committed against the Palestinian Arabs,
the Zionists have tried to convince the world that Palestine was
practically uninhabited, ‘A Land Without People For a People
Without a Land.’ They
created and propagated the myths that the Palestinian Arabs were
nomads or semi-nomads without a culture and a civilization, that
the Palestinians had neither a national identity nor existence,
that the Palestinians lacked an economic structure and roots in
the land.” [1]
Those accepting these lies include Joseph Farah, owner and editor-in-chief
of WorldNetDaily. In his recent article “The
Phony Mideast Debate,” he
says, “Today, billions of people all over the world actually
believe that the ‘Palestinians’ are just in their quest
for a homeland they never knew, a homeland that never existed, a homeland
that is as fictitious as their rewritten historical narrative.”
Farah claims that Palestine, even after World War II, was “still
largely unpopulated, untamed, undeveloped,” with most of the
inhabitants of Jerusalem and adjacent regions being Jewish. Most Arabs,
he says, became interested in coming to this near-wasteland only after
Zionists brought economic and agricultural prosperity. They then flooded
in as migrants from Jordan and other Mideast countries "coinciding
with Jewish immigration and ingenuity."
Zionist propaganda also claims that when war became imminent between
the Israelis and Arabs in 1948, this large indigent population of about
800,000, possessing no loyalty to the land, fled to safer countries.
After the war, Israel says they then preposterously claimed they were
driven out of their "homeland," a land they never owned!
Israel, says Farah, has been falsely “recast in the public’s
mind as Goliath,” persecuting the Palestinian outcasts and occupying
their ancestral property.
“This is not occupation, as the world suggests." Farah
contends, "This is a people defending their one and only homeland
against the most vicious and unjustified attacks imaginable.”
From Farah to Facts
In 1882, the Jewish population of Palestine was about 24,000. In
1914, the entire population of Palestine was estimated at 634,133 Muslim
and Christian Arabs and 55,413 Jews. In 1920, after the British mandate,
the official census showed the Arab population, both Muslim and Christian,
at nearly 600,000, still greatly exceeding the Jews, who numbered 66,574.
Until 1948 the Arab population continued to exceed the Jewish by roughly
2:1. [2] Farah says Jews for centuries
had dominated the region, "the majority of the population of Jerusalem
and surrounding areas being Jewish." Yet the last official British
census in 1931 found Arabs in Jerusalem outnumbered Jews 2:1 with surrounding
areas averaging 98% Arab! The Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question
in the United Nations found in 1948 that, except for Haifa, "the
Arabs have a clear majority over the Jews." [3]
So much for the Israeli/Farah claim that for centuries Jews in Jerusalem
and surrounding areas have outnumbered a tiny Arab population!
During World War I, Arabs fought with the Allies against the Turks
in hope of acquiring national independence. After the Balfour Declaration
in 1917, the people of Palestine were considered by the League of Nations
a “provisionally independent nation” very close to sovereignty.
By 1947 Palestinian Arabs played a predominant role in government under
the British. “The total number of government officials was 44,688
persons, of whom 4,314 were British, 30,178 Arabs, 9,276 Jews, and
920 others.” [4] Arabs also
vastly outnumbered Jews in municipal councils and leadership in hundreds
of primarily Arab towns and cities throughout Palestine.
The land of Palestine had been a breadbasket of agricultural plenty
going back to the original inhabitants, the Canaanites and later Philistines
(for whom Palestine is named). Enjoying a climate similar to California’s,
the Old Testament description was a “land that flows with milk
and honey.” Certainly, much of Palestine in recent centuries
had been over-grazed, particularly the mountainous hill country of
Judea surrounding Jerusalem. Such barrenness caused visitor Mark Twain
to describe it as barren, with hardly an Arab to be seen. Yet, at nearly
the same time, “Lawrence Oliphant, who visited Palestine in 1887,
wrote that Palestine’s Valley of Esdraelon was ‘a huge
green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising
from it like islands; and it presents one of the most striking pictures
of luxurious fertility which it is possible to conceive.’” [5]
Numerous pre-20th century accounts, recounted in the Encyclopedia
of the Palestine Problem, describe it as a veritable cornucopia
of every kind of agricultural produce, with excess exported by the
Palestinians even to the nations of Europe.
The Encyclopedia confirms that before 1948
“these Arab towns and villages were not merely place names
on a map. They were developed communities containing farms, factories,
stores and schools, with an infrastructure of doctors, lawyers,
teachers, engineers, merchants, mechanics, industrialists, workers,
and farmers which would be the envy of any developing country today…Before
1948 they resided in 12 cities, 8 major towns, and 830 small towns
and villages. Arab homes in the cities were either luxurious stone
villas with beautiful gardens, or apartments with 2-5 bedrooms.
These residences were well-furnished with modern furniture and
household goods. No Arab home of the middle and upper classes contained
less than eight valuable Persian carpets. All these homes and their
furnishings were usurped by Israel.” [6]
General Moshe Dayan tells the truth:
“We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs,
and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is, a Jewish state here.
Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do
not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame
you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the
books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal
arose in the place of Mahalul; Gevat in the place of Jibta; Sarid
in the place of Haneifa and Kefar Yehoshua in the place of Tellshaman.
There is not one place built in this country that did not have a
former Arab population.” [7]
After 1948, Israel took over 12 cities and large towns and 526 small
towns and villages. They bulldozed the towns and villages, building
new towns with Jewish names. [8]
The Encyclopedia extensively documents from British records that,
far from Palestinians depending on Jewish prosperity, the Zionists
were permeated with Marxist/collectivist values, resulting in eventual
failure of the "kibbutz" experiment. Fairly new to Mideast
agriculture, they were largely inefficient, dependent upon regular
massive infusion of Western Jewish capital. [9] Despite
a general Israeli policy of boycott of Palestinian goods and services,
the Palestinians, with a rapidly growing population in 1948 of 1,444,274,
were both politically, socially, and economically racing toward UN-sponsored
nationhood in 1948.
Zionist Terror Ends Palestinian Dreams
Such prosperity came to an abrupt, horrific end after the Deir Yassin
massacre by Zionist Irgun terrorists on April 9-10, 1948 and many subsequent
Jewish outrages and atrocities, panicking 800,000 Palestinians into
flight. “In 1948 the Zionists seized 90% of Arab-owned citrus
groves, packaging and storage facilities, as well as that year’s
crops, looting the prosperous Arab citrus growers, making them destitute
refugees.” The same was true of all aspects of Palestinian industry,
including olive oil, weaving, textile, tobacco, leather, dairy, wheat,
fishing, and construction. In reality, confiscation of Palestinian
resources largely constituted the “miracle” of Israel’s
sudden abundant agriculture, of which the new state began boasting
soon after expulsion of the Palestinians. This delighted evangelicals
worldwide who saw it as stunning fulfillment of Biblical prophecy,
making the "desert blossom as the rose." In reality, Israel
now possessed thousands of acres of citrus, olives, wheat, etc. seized
from the foremost agriculturists of the Middle East, Palestinian orchardists
and farmers. The Encyclopedia: “The economic achievements of
Israel today are built totally on the capital base of lands, property,
and possessions usurped from the Palestinian Arabs.” [10]
Is Israel’s massively documented theft of Palestinian land,
as well as Palestinian demand for compensation, really a “phony
argument,” as Farah contends? For the safety of his eternal soul,
I sincerely hope he has spoken out of ignorance of what really happened
in 1948 and has naively made himself the mouthpiece of Zionist lies.
It is difficult, however, to believe that Farah, himself of Syrian/Lebanese
descent, does not know at least something of the enormous magnitude
of injustice towards the Palestinians. If he does yet, continues to
parrot Israel’s propaganda (perhaps to please both evangelicals
and Jews), there is little doubt where the real phoniness exists: in
Farah himself.
Footnotes:
- The Encyclopedia of the Palestine
Problem, edited by Dr. Issa Nakhleh, Continental
Books, P.O. Box 756, Grand Central Station, New York,
NY 10163-0756, p. 33. This two-volume work, totaling
about 1,800 pages, by this Christian Palestinian barrister
and diplomat is available in most university libraries
and online at www.palestine-encyclopedia.com.
- Ibid., p. 25.
- Ibid., p. 26.
- Ibid., p. 28.
- Ibid., p. 33.
- Ibid., p. 34.
- Ibid., p. 34.
- Ibid, p. 347.
- Ibid., p. 49.
- Ibid., p. 34.
In his article, Farah also endorses the Zionist heresy that a
nation of Christ-rejecting Jews can lawfully inhabit God's Holy
Land. While God did promise the land to Abraham because of his
faith and continuing obedience, He also told the Hebrews that only
by such obedience could they enjoy the same covenant. God told
them "because [emphasis
mine] you listen to these judgments and keep and do them… the
Lord your God will keep with you His covenant and His loving-kindness
which He swore to your forefathers." (Deut. 7:12) In dozens
of clear Scriptures, God is emphatic that only by obedience could
the Hebrews as a people legitimately occupy Canaan. If they disobey,
they will be expelled. Someday, a believing remnant of Jews will
give Christ such obedience. But for the present, a wicked, Christian-persecuting
Israel remains a counterfeit return. It is Babylon the Great, the
Great Harlot of Rev. 17, promoting ascent of anti-Christ, not Jesus
Christ. (See, 'Babylon
the Great' is Israel)
Scriptures laying down God's conditional terms for occupation
include: Lev. 18:28; 26:27-46; Num. 14:23; Deut. 4:26-27; 6:18;
7:12; 28:21, 25, 37, 41, 56-64; 29:28; Deut. 30; Ezek. 13:9;
Jer. 7:15; 29:13-14.
(Article originally written July 12, 2010)
Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative
watchdog organization.
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