Stealing History
More than 20 years ago, the Palestinian Authority had a primitive website. One of the pages was devoted to “Palestinian history.” It consisted of some recipes, a few items of clothing (such as homemade dresses) and currency from Mandate Palestine (which included language in English, Arabic, and Hebrew!).
It was a pathetic attempt to create a “Palestinian history” out of whole cloth. The depth of the Arab hatred for Jews is deep. The “sky is blue” reality is, the Jews possess the history of the Land of Israel. The Canaanites and others are gone from the landscape. But in order to make the Jews illegitimate in their own land, the Palestinian leadership seeks to erase Jewish history and replace it with a false, fictional history of their own.
The Arabs are some melting pot of ancient peoples descended from Ishmael. The Jews of course come from Isaac, and are heirs to the land according to Scripture.
The world today though, particularly the Western World, does not recognize the Bible as authoritative. So arguing from this perspective yields little value.
Except, one must continue to push against that false narrative, and the Bible eerily confirms Jewish history, seen in modern archaeological digs.
In Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8, Joshua’s altar is mentioned. Archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be that very altar on Mt. Ebal. The surrounding area is a settlement from the time of Joshua.
A few weeks ago, a Palestinian contractor bulldozed part of a wall in the complex. The wonderful Caroline Glick has written about this affront:
“With the two-state solution,” Zaki said, ‘Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made—just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward.’
“In other words, the purpose of the Palestinian war against, and appropriation of, Jewish history in the Land of Israel is to set the conditions for Israel’s ultimate physical destruction. Where better to strike than the site where, in Moses’s words, the Jews became ‘the nation of the Lord your God?’”
I was on the Temple Mount several years ago and saw large piles of paving stones and columns dumped. The Palestinians have been destroying Jewish history at the site for a long time. This outrage is supported by such groups as UNESCO.
And remember, during the Clinton years in particular, U.S. policy turned a blind eye to such destructions. Yasser Arafat visited the White House 13 times and yet he also continuously claimed that there never was a Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem! Such a gross distortion of history cannot square with a “peace process.”
Everywhere you look in Israel, archaeology confirms the biblical record and thus the Jewish record in the region.
I’ve never seen evidence of “ancient Palestinian” society. It doesn’t exist. In the 1960s, the “Palestinian people” were invented as a political tool against Israel. Read any papers from the era. Prior to the Six Day War, the Arabs in the region are called Arabs. After 1967, they suddenly became the “Palestinians.” Look it up for yourself.
The thing is, though, you can prove Jewish history and reveal Palestinian lies. And those you are trying to convince will continue to believe the lies. Why?
They want to believe them. Their hatred of Jews is that intense. Unfortunately, as I often write, this includes too many in evangelical circles. This is a spiritual sickness.
But we know that in the end, every knee will bend in acknowledgement of the Jewish Messiah.
It is coming.