Why I Don’t Care Where Yasser Arafat Was Born And Why You Shouldn’t Either
Let’s get serious . . . it really doesn’t matter where Yasser Arafat was born. When we talk about peoplehood we are not talking about where one’s parents happened to be geographically when one took one’s first breath. So please stop using the fact that he was born in Cairo as if that disqualifies him from having called himself a “Palestinian”! Or as if that is how you are going to debunk the idea of there even being a “Palestine”.
Actually, Yasser Arafat’s pedigree seems intact: his father was from Gaza and his mother from Jerusalem. So even though Arafat himself was born in Cairo, his family roots to at least one generation previous were in the part of the Ottoman Empire that was called, by the time Arafat set foot on the planet in 1929, the British Mandate of Palestine.
Furthermore, so many of our own people were not born here. Golda Meir was born in Poland and grew up in the States. David Levy is from Morocco. And what about all the Jewish immigrants coming here to the present day? They are members of the Jewish people who have every right to live in Israel as full citizens the moment they get off the plane. The Israel haters use this against us, claiming that Israel is a European colonial imposition of foreigners that has pushed aside the “indigenous Palestinians”.
Therefore, when you retort that Arafat was not “really” a “Palestinian” because he was born in Cairo you are missing the point entirely. And shooting yourself in the foot at the same time.
It is not a matter of where someone was born, but a matter of peoplehood. We Jews are A PEOPLE with a country: an ancient kingdom and now a modern state. The Palestinians Arabs can make no such claim; there never was a country called Palestine, never a kingdom called Palestine, never a dominion or realm called Palestine, never even a city-state called Palestine. (And the only people referred to before 1948 as Palestinians were the Jews.) That is a huge difference and that is the crux of the matter.
When I argue that there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation, that it is a modern invention whose sole purpose is to wipe Israel off the map, someone who calls himself or herself a Palestinian will come back with the silly remark: “So then right now you are talking to a ghost?” or “Are you telling me that I don’t exist?”
Nobody is denying the existence of individuals. This is not about individuals. This is about “A People”.
Unfortunately or not, the way recent history has evolved, there now seems to be a Palestinian Arab people. This was accomplished by forcing them to languish as refugees, all the while promising them greatness if they could help get rid of the Jews. And this artificial identity was reinforced by international recognition of their (imaginary) peoplehood, including on the part of Israel (BIG mistake).
We have no idea how stable this newfangled “people” is. We have no idea whether or not they would remain a “people” if they were successful in their dastardly goal of destroying Israel. Maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t. After all, nations have risen and fallen throughout history, our own cycles of sovereignty and expulsion a case in point and modern Syria another case in point.
The thing is that this new Palestinian nation never existed before Israel bruised the Muslim ego. Muslim Arabs are not particularly known for their tolerance (sorry, I know it’s not PC to say so), and we ruffled their feathers unbearably when we refused to just die, either in Hitler’s gas chambers or under the Mediterranean Sea into which we were supposed to have allowed ourselves to be pushed. So they picked a convenient name that they could claim as their own — because we rejected it as rightly not ours — and then they inflated it all out of proportion and meaning as if there really had been an indigenous Arab Palestinian people before we Jews reclaimed our sovereignty. (Some even tried to claim to be Canaanites, but that didn’t fly.)
So when you are debating and claiming that there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation, please, just leave Arafat’s birthplace out of the equation. It is absolutely irrelevant and a distraction.
I thought it was his grandfather who was from Gaza.
His father was born in Gaza City and his father’s mother was from Egypt. His 5 older brothers were born in Gaza before the family moved to Egypt.
Brilliant! Plain simple truth!
But the truth concerning the Jewish people and their Covenant Land is yet deeper…..
The Jewish people were brought into being by the Creator in order to reveal himself to the whole world through them. Before they even placed one foot in their land, and in the full knowledge of their later moral failure and subsequent two exiles, he nevertheless married Israel at Sinai.
This was no mere figure of speech or allegory. This was an actual historical event in Israel’s history. 70 of the elders of Israel dined with God on the mountain, and Torah was given as the marriage covenant. This is precisely why, when Israel turned to other nations for help, instead of to Him, the LORD could rightly accuse his people of adultery.
The prophets spoke of two exiles and two returns, based not on Israel’s faithfulness to her husband, but on his faithfulness to her. Her return to the land in our day is the demonstration to all the world firstly that the Creator exists but secondly that he remains Israel’s faithful and long suffering husband.
He will now glorify himself through her to the entire watching world and he will fully restore David’s Kingdom in Jerusalem, from where he will govern the entire world.
Sadly, the “Palestinians” are mere disposable pawns in the One World Government agenda, of which the UN is the figurehead. This puts Israel and the wider world into irrevocable conflict until Messiah returns to finally save her.
Thus, the Israel/Palestinian conflict is truly of worldwide significance. It is a spiritual war at its heart, not a geographical political one. It can, therefore, only have a spiritual solution.
When and only when, Jerusalem is at peace, only then will the whole world know peace.
Thank you. C
I don’t quite understand the need to indulge in such completely needless intellectual acrobatics. Meant to prove what? The son of a bitch was born in Cairo, lived most of his life in Arab countries served and promoted Arab Nationalism before the fraudulent, fake, artificial invention of that “Palestinian” Nationalism in the 1960’s. Since the bastard himself lied about it pretending he was born in Jerusalem (and was an Arb refugee) to fabricate his tailored made fake narrative we must for historic accuracy insist he was born in Cairo!
Nowhere do I suggest we falsify the fact he was born in Cairo. The issue is about peoplehood and not about where someone was born. There is no “Palestinian People” regardless of whether or not the so-called Palestinian Arab was born in Mandatory Palestine and descended from a direct line beginning with original colonialists who came during the Muslim Conquest. By harking on the fact that Arafat was born in Cairo totally distracts from the important fact that there was never a “Palestinian” people.
Really well put. Israel is our homeland, and we as people, tribes, are from there. It is the only Jewish homeland, the only land that can be claimed by us. All the other arguments are to justify the attempt to destroy Israel and the Jews. Throughout history “they” never give up trying, and we must never give up or become complacent about protecting our rights to exist in our homeland.
We all knows never existed a land as Palestine is has been a land call Palestine by the diferent colonial people and they all knows it. The ones who call Palestinians are not the only ones who intend to send jewish to the sea.
Is the homeland of jewish and we are the ones to claim for Israel, therefore it is only Israel who has the right to claim Israel as our State, Shalom Julio Azancot Franco.