At the outset, we learn the following from the Jerusalem Center of Public Affairs in answer to the question, 'Who are the Palestinians?';
Palestinian leaders claim that the Palestinians are descended from the Canaanite people who lived in the Land of Canaan before the Israelite tribes settled in it.
What is the source of the name “Palestine?” It is not Arab; it is derived from the name “Palestina,” by which the Roman Emperor Hadrian chose to call the land after the defeat of the Bar Kokhba Revolt in 135 CE. His aim was to erase “Judea.”
According to Palestinian historian Muhammad Y. Muslih, during the entire 400 year period of Ottoman rule (1517-1918), before the British set up the 30-year-long Palestine Mandate, “There was no political unit known as Palestine.” In Arabic, the area was known as al-Ard al-Muqadassa (the holy land), or Surya al-Janubiyya (southern Syria), but not Palestine.
Not a single Palestinian tribe identifies its roots in Canaan; instead, they all see themselves as proud Arabs descended from the most notable Arab tribes of the Hejaz, today’s Iraq, or Yemen. Even the Kanaan family of Nablus locates its origins in Syria. Some Palestinian clans are Kurdish or Egyptian in origin, and in Mount Hebron, there are traditions of Jewish origins.
Mr. Blinken, only when history precedes politics, can any progress follow. On 05/12/2015, the Jerusalem Post published Daniel Grynglas' "Debunking the claim that 'Palestinians' are the indigenous people of Israel."It serves as a good starting point to an understanding how so many "useful idiots" in the US State Department have failed in their endeavors to comprehend Jewish claims to the Land of Israel. READ MORE
