Some of our local Anglicans recently held a meeting in support of Palestine, at which they were told not to separate Gaza from the West Bank, because they are both part of Palestine (presumably from the River to the Sea). The report in the parish mag made no mention of Hamas, October 7, tortured hostages, purloined aid, or, as far as I can tell, history. It was all about the “occupied land” narrative of the MSM and UN.
Now I have a problem with all this, and as I have recorded before it stems from reading a detailed (Christian) travel book written in the late part of the Ottoman Empire, which doesn’t match that narrative at all. When that empire was defeated in the First World War, what now constitutes the contentious area consisted of Beirut Vilayet in the north, and the Mutasariffate of Jerusalem in the south, which included a largely uninhabited Sinai with an established border with Egypt. Both were subject to rule from Damascus – and Palestine, and Palestinians, did not exist. Indeed, no state of Palestine had ever existed during the various Roman, Christian and Muslim empires that had ruled them since the time of Christ, nor before that.
After the war, the League of Nations put this area, and the much larger area renamed as Transjordan to the east, under British administration. This was specifically in order to require Britain to fulfil a prior commitment to providing a safe homeland for the Jewish people, whilst also playing fair by the Arab majorities and the various Bedouin, Christians, Druze, and Maronite minorities also inhabiting the area, preparing them for independence. For want of a better name, the area was called the “Palestinian Mandate,” probably reflecting the artificial historical area the Romans called Syria Palaestina to spite the Jews whose ancient nation they dismantled after the Bar Kochba revolt of 130AD. Incidentally, it was only several centuries after this that Arabs began to inhabit areas of any size here, a migration process accelerated greatly by the Arab conquest of the whole area in the seventh century, and the subsequent Islamic colonial occupations and slaughters.
Partly as a result of their support in the First war, Britain gave the entire Transjordan area to be ruled by an Emir with no connection to the area at all, having been born much further south in the Hejaz, and specifically Mecca. This huge area became the Arab Kingdom of Jordan. This left the area west of Jordan for the new nation of Israel, which “two nation solution” would obviously require the same adjustments of population as had occurred in Pakistan’s partition from India in 1947, though it was hoped without the same ethnic bloodshed.
A peaceful solution was not to be, however, for as soon as Israel declared independence in 1948, after the Mandate expired, the surrounding Arab nations all waged war on it. Israel won, but in the hostilities Jordan annexed what is now called the “West Bank,” (to which it had no historical claim, but only the right of conquest), an area which included the eastern part of the ancient Jewish capital of Jerusalem. Also, Egypt annexed the coastal strip of Israel now known as Gaza.
Those Arabs displaced by the war, a majority of whom had been directed to leave by the Arab belligerents to facilitate the abortive conquest, went to various places, but many were segregated as refugees in these two quite separate occupied areas, as the surrounding Muslim nations were, and still are, unwilling to assimilate them. Unlike Hindus or Christians expelled from Pakistan, their descendants remain refugees 77 years on, as this enables them to claim the legally-established state of Israel as their Arab homeland (which became “Palestine” only in the 1960s, through Yassar Arafat). Incidentally, the historical Jewish populations of these areas and the surrounding nations were progressively expelled, but are not regarded as refugees by the UN.
Some of us remember the coalition of Arab nations that again invaded Israel in 1967 in the Six Day War. During this Israel recaptured the West Bank back from Jordan, yet for some reason their re-conquest is not recognised by the international community as was Transjordan’s first incursion.
We’re now entering the more modern era of Palestinian terrorism that began with the anti-semitic Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympics, and continues to this day, most recently in worldwide attacks on Jews in the wake of the October 7th atrocity. The Munich event was believed to be facilitated by leftist gangs with whom the Islamist Black September trained, so the unlikely present coalition between “progressive” socialists and fundamentalist jihadis is of long standing. It is interesting how William Thomson, writing in 1866, had to seek safe quarters from the population of Gaza because: “They bear a bad character, and have lately shown symptoms of Moslem fanaticism and insubordination, which render it safest and wisest to avoid all occasion of trouble.” Not so easy when the refugee Gazans grow in numbers in English cities.
Back in 1895, our old Church Proceedings Book records how our people signed a petition calling on the world powers to intervene to save the genocide of Armenian Christians under the Ottomans. The lack of response led to maybe 1.2 million deaths. No doubt the Baptists got their news from the imperialist Western press, but history has shown the stories were all too true. The press is less forthcoming about Christian massacres by Muslims in Nigeria, Congo, Syria or Sudan, but we don’t seem to be having any local church meetings for those well-verified concerns, but only for the Gazans, few of whom are Christians, and whose cause, as I have documented, is far from clearcut.
As it happens, one world leader, and one only, has stepped up to the plate to offer military help in response to the pleas of Nigerian church leaders for relief from actual genocide (70,000+ deliberate murders in Nigeria, so far). The trouble is, that leader is Donald J. Trump, the man many Christians like to see as the antichrist. For them, Jesus’s words about God’s reward for those who even offer a cup of cold water for the sake of Christ don’t apply to the wrong kind of helper. They would no more welcome Trump’s offer for Nigeria than they would accept… I don’t know, Tommy Robinson offering support to the wrong sort of rape victim, even though he now identifies as a Christian.
But with Palestine, the virtue-signalling is safe, because it agree with that of all our institutions, and so any Christians who don’t buy the narrative are unlikely to come out of the woodwork in Morning Service. Though some might dare to blog about it.
