Politically motivated mythology of "Palestine" Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel ... -- Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head of the PLO and member of its Executive Council, Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977The Prophet Muhammad said, "War is deception -al-Bukhari, al-Jami al Sahih Although a politically based mythology has grown up around and smothered, the documented past of the land known as "Palestine," there is recognition among preeminent scholars of what one of them has called "the more chauvinist Arab version of the region's history as having begun with the Arabs and Islam."1 The claim that Arab-Muslim "Palestinians" were "emotionally tied" to "their own plot of land in Palestine" -- based upon a "consistent presence" on "Arab" land for "thousands of years"2-- is an important part of that recent mythology. It was contrived of late in a thus far successful Orwellian propaganda effort-an appeal to the emotions that would "counter Zionism" and that "serves" tactical purposes as a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel," as the late PLO official Muhsin stated candidly in an interview, quoted at the beginning of this chapter. In order to understand how that tool, aided by a general near-ignorance of the "unrelenting past," has distorted the perception of the present, a look at the "yesterday" of "Palestine" is necessary. The inspection will be focused upon completing a circle-tracing the actual conditions and events that have been glossed over or omitted from the dialogue about the Arab-Israeli conflict; they are conditions and events that shaped the real political, economic, and demographic circumstances in the area. Those circumstances in turn critically affected what "justice" really consists of-for the Jewish and Arab refugees, or the "Palestinian Problem"-for the Arab-Israeli conflict.  Illuminating that situation reveals and fills in the chasm between the documented facts and the Arab claims, and gives perspective to those contentions and assumptions that have become key in interpreting what is "just" for the population in question today. "The only Arab domination since the Conquest in 635 A.D. hardly lasted, as such, 22 years...," the Muslim chairman of the Syrian Delegation attested in his remarks to the Paris Peace Conference in February 1919.3 The British Palestine Royal Commission reported in 1937 that "it is time, surely, that Palestinian 'citizenship' . . . should be recognized as what it is, as nothing but a legal formula devoid of moral meaning."4 That the claim of "age-old Arab Palestinian rights to Arab Palestine" is contradicted by history has been pointed out by eminent historians and Arabists. According to the Reverend James Parkes, "The Land was named Palestina by he Romans to eradicate all trace of its Jewish history..." It may seem inappropriate to have devoted so much time to "a situation which passed away two thousand years ago." But it is only politically that the defeat by Rome, and the scattering of the Jewish population, made a decisive change in the history of The Land. That which had been created by more than a thousand years of Jewish history [a thousand years before A.D. 135] remained, as did that which was beginning to be created in the thoughts of the young Christian Church.5 Many authorities have addressed the misconceptions surrounding the word Palestine. The name derived from "other migrants from the northwest, the Philistines.  Though the latest arrivals, and though they only exercised control over the whole country for a few uncertain decades, they had been the cause of its name of Palestine. These Philistines were an Aegeanpeople, driven out of Greece and Aegean islands around about 1300 B.C.E. They moved southward along the Asiatic coast and in about 1200 attempted to invade Egypt. Turned back, they settled in the maritime plain of southern 'Palestine', where they founded a series of city-states."6According to Bernard Lewis, an eminent authority, "The word Palestine does not occur in the Old Testament. . . . Palestine does not occur in the New Testament at all." The official adoption of the name Palestine in Roman usage to designate the territories of the former Jewish principality of Judea seems to date from after the suppression of the great Jewish revolt of Bar-Kokhba in the year 135 C.E.... it would seem that the name Judea was abolished ... and the country renamed Palestine or Syria Palestina, with the ... intention of obliterating its historic Jewish identity. The earlier name did not entirely disappear, and as late as the 4th century C.E. we still find a Christian author, Epiphanius, referring to "Palestine, that is, Judea." As many, including Professor Lewis, have pointed out, "From the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries; it was a group of provincial subdivisions, by no means always the same, within a larger entity.7 [See the map of "Ancient Palestine" in Appendix I"In other words, it appears that Palestine never was an independent nation and the Arabs never named the land to which they now claim rights. Most Arabs do not admit so candidly that "Palestinian identity" is a maneuver "only for political reasons" as did Zuheir Muhsin. But the Arab world, until recently, itself frequently negated the validity of any claim of an "age-old Palestinian Arab" identity. The Arabs in Judah-cum-Palestine were regarded either as members of a "pan-Arab nation," as a Muslim community, or, in a tactical ploy, as "Southern Syrians."8 The beginning article of a 1919 Arab Covenant proposed by the Arab Congress in Jerusalem stated that "The Arab lands are a complete and indivisible whole, and the divisions of whatever nature to which they have been subjected are not approved nor recognized by the Arab nation."9 In the same year, the General Syrian Congress had the opposite view; it expressed eagerness to stress an exclusively Syrian identity: "We ask that there should be no separation of the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine . . .'10 The Arab historian George Antonius delineated Palestine in 1939 as part of "the whole of the country of th name [Syria] which is now split up into mandated territories..."11 As late a the 1950s, there was still a schizoid pattern to the Arab views. In 1951, the Constitution of the Arab Ba'ath Party stated: The Arabs form one nation. This nation has the natural right to live in a single state and to be free to direct its own destiny ... to gather all the Arabs in a single independent Arab state.12 A scant five years later, a Saudi Arabian United Nations delegate in 1956 asserted that "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria."13  In 1974, Syria's President Assad, although a PLO supporter, incorporated both claims in a remarkable definition: ... Palestine is not only a part of our Arab homeland, but a basic part of southern Syria." 14 The one identity never seriously considered until the 1967 Six-Day War -- and then only as a "tool" -- was an "Arab Palestinian" one, and the absence was not merely disregard. Clearly there was no such age-old or even century-old "national identity." According to the British Palestine Royal Commission Report, In the twelve centuries or more that have passed since the Arab conquest Palestine has virtually dropped out of history.... In economics as in politics Palestine lay outside the main stream of the world's life. In the realm of thought, in science or in letters, it made no contribution to modem civilization. Its last state was worse than its first.15 1 . P.J. Vatikiotis, Nasser and His Generation (London, 1978), p. 254.2. Thames Television Series, London, "Palestine," aired in the United States January February, 1979. 3. Minutes of the Supreme Council, in D.H. Miller, My Diary at the Conference of Paris, 22 vols. (New York, 1924), vol. 14, p. 405 4. Palestine Royal Commission Report, Command Paper # 5479,1937, p. 120, para. 14. 5. James Parkes, Whose Land? (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 31. 6. Ibid., p. 17. 7.Bernard Lewis, "The Palestinians and the PLO, a Historical Approach," Commentary, January 1975, p. 32-48. 8. Yehoshua Porath, "Social Aspects of the Emergence of the Palestinian National Movement," in Society and Political Structure in the Arab World, M. Milson, ed. (New York, 1973), pp. 101, 107, 119. 9. Marie Syrkin, "Palestinian Nationalism: Its Development and Goal," in Michael Curtis et al., eds., The Palestinians: People, History, Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1975), p. 200. Syrkin found that Haj Amin al-Husseini-the notorious Mufti of Jerusalem himself - "originally opposed the Palestine Mandate because it separated Palestine from Syria." Ibid. 10. Ibid. According to Neville Mandel, Arabs and Zionism Before World War I (Berkeley, 1976), p. 152, n. 49: "After World War 1, when the nature of an independent Arab state and it's component parts were being discussed, the term 'Greater Syria' was advanced to embrace the Fertile Crescent and its desert hinterland. Palestine, as an integral part of that area, was dubbed 'Southern Syria.' But these terms were not in use in 1913 and 1914, when very few nationalists contemplated complete Arab independence."  11. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening. The Story of the Arab National Movement (Philadelphia, New York, Toronto: J.B. Lippincott, 1939), p. 15, n.1; also see Mandel, Arabs and Zionism, pp. 151-153. 12. The Balath Party "describes itself as a 'national, popular revolutionary movement fighting for Arab unity, Freedom and Socialism,"' in 1951. Syrkin, "Nationalism," in Curtis et al., Palestinians; p. 200; also see Menahem Milson, "Medieval and Modem Intellectual Traditions in the Arab World," in Daedalus, Summer 1972, particularly pp. 24-26; Michel Aflaq, prominent Ba'athist and Christian, on Arab Nationalism, cited in Milson, above; also see Aflaq, Fi Sabil al Baath (Arabic) Beirut, 1962 (3rd printing), cited in Milson, p. 26; also see Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 (London: Oxford, 1962), particularly p. 301.  13. Ahmed Shukeiry, as head of the PLO, to Security Council on May 31, 1956, cited by Syrkin in "Nationalism," in Curtis et al., Palestinians, p. 201. 14. President Hafez Assad of Syria, Radio Damascus, March 8, 1974. 15. Palestine Royal Commission Report, Chapter 1, p. 6, para. 11. After the destruction of the Temple, the Jews fled to Arabia Long before the Arab conquest, as a British Member of Parliament pointed out in 1939, a thousand years before the Prophet Mohammed was born, the Jew, already exiled, sitting by the waters of Babylon, was singing: "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning."1 The Reverend Parkes says that the theme that "gives to Jewish history characteristics which begin by being unusual and end by being unique" is that "the religion which was developing into a universalistic ethical monotheism never lost its root in The Land."2 ... Jewry has nowhere established another independent national centre; and, as is natural, the Land of Israel is intertwined far more intimately into the religious and historic memories of the people; for their connection with the country has been of much longer duration -- in fact it has been continuous from the 2nd millenium B.C.E. up to modem times.... The Land therefore has provided an emotional centre which has endured through the whole of their period of "exile", and has led to constant returns or attempted returns, culminating in our own day in the Zionist Movement."3 Israel had already become a nation about 1220 B.c.-nearly two thousand years before the first Arab invasion began.4 The Jews' persistent presence on the land survived periodic attempts to extinguish them throughout their history. Around the first century, Many Diaspora Jews observed the commandments of pilgrimage, and on the High Holidays in Jerusalem one might have met Jews from such different lands as Parthia, Media, Elam, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia Minor, I'hrygia, Pamphylia, Cyrene, Crete, Rome and Arabia.5 By the time of the Roman conquest of Judea the Jews were considered "turbulent and troublesome people to deal with," according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica,6 when they stubbornly refused to surrender their country to Roman rule. The Emperor Hadrian, "determined to stamp out this aggressive Jewish nationalism," ruled that henceforth Jewish traditions such as circumcision, the Sabbath, reading of the law-in fact, the beliefs of Judaism itself-were illegal and "forbidden."7 Hadrian was "determined to convert the still half-ruined Jerusalem into a Roman colony." After the Jews' Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, the revolt of Jewish leader Bar Kochba-who had "200,000 men at his command" -- recaptured Jerusalem and many "strongholds and villages throughout the country." The "full-scale country-wide war ... raged with fierce bitterness for four years, the Romans having to bring in legion after legion of reinforcements to suppress the insurgents."8 Although the Romans ultimately regained political reign, "sacked the city [of Jerusalem] ... and expelled the bulk of the Jewish survivors from the country"9 the cost of victory was shattering -- "It is said that as many as 580,000 men were slain!" -- Romans as well as Jews. It was after the debacle that Hadrian changed the name of the city of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, ordered the building of a temple of Jupiter on the Jewish Temple site and "forbade any Jew, on pain of death, to appear within sight of the city."10 But in the same way that the name Judea did not disappear, neither did the Jews abandon their land. A number had obstinately remained, and many others quickly returned to rebuild their world. Some Jews, however, fled the Roman conquest for other points -- including Arabia, where they formed some new settlements and in many instances joined Jewish Arabian communities established at the time of release from the captivity in Babylon or existing even before then. Thus evolved the flight of the first "Palestinian" refugees-the Judeans, or Jews. The Haven in Arabia A look at the haven where these "Palestinian" or "Judean" Jewish refugees from the Romans found sanctuary is important to understanding the "heart of the matter" in the Middle East today -- the conflict between Arab and Jew. The circumstances of the Arabian Jewish communities in the Arabian Peninsula -- both before and after the Arab Conquest-bear importantly upon Arab-Jewish relationships until this day, because the pattern that developed in Arabia established a tradition that has been followed ever since. According to Arabist scholar Alfred Guillaume, Jews probably first settled in Arabia in connection with the fall of Samaria in 721 B.C.: ...it is almost certain that the self-contained Jewish military colony in Aswan and upper Egypt, about which the world knew nothing until a few years ago, was founded just after the fall of Samaria, and consequently it is not impossible that some Jewish settlements in Arabia were due to fugitives fleeing from the old northern capital of the Hebrews. Guillaurne is certain that "in the first and second centuries A.D., Arabia offered a near asylum" to the Jews who had been victimized by the "utterly ruthless" Romans.11 In the Arabian land considered by many to be "purely Arab," the land which would spawn Islam many centuries later, Numbers of Jewish and Christian settlements were established in different parts of Arabia, both spreading Aramaic and Hellenistic culture. The chief southern Arabian Christian centre was in Najran, where a relatively advanced political life was developed. Jews and Judaised Arabs were everywhere, especially in Yathrib, later renamed Medina. They were mainly agriculturists and artisans. Their origin is uncertain and many different theories have been advanced.12 Although the fact is little recognized, more than one historian has affirmed at the Arab world's second holiest city, Medina, was one of the allegedly "purely Arab" cities that actually was first settled by Jewish tribes." Bernard Lewis writes: The city of Medina, some 280 miles north of Mecca, had originally been settled by Jewish tribes from the north, especially the Banu Nadir and Banu Quraiza. The comparative richness of the town attracted an infiltration of pagan Arabs who came at first as clients of the Jews and ultimately sucqeeded in dominating them. Medina, or, as it was known before Islam, Yathrib, had no form of stable government at all. The town was tom by the feuds of the rival Arab tribes of Aus and Khazraj, with the Jews maintaining an uneasy balance of power. The latter, engaged mainly in agriculture and handicrafts, were economically and culturally superior to the Arabs, and were consequently disliked.... as soon as the Arabs had attained unity through the agency of Muhammad they attacked and ultimately eliminated the Jews.13 Guillaume reports that the anti-Jewish attack at Khaibar was fiercely fought off, but "though the inhabitants fought more bravely here than elsewhere, outnumbered and caught off their guard, they were defeated."14 Those who somehow survived constituted the formula for Islam's future successes. Some of the Jews, "non-Muslims" or infidels, "retained their land," at least until Muslims could be recruited in sufficient numbers to replace the Jews. Meanwhile, the Arabian Jews paid a fifty-percent "tribute," or tax, for the "protection" of the new plunderers. As Professor Lewis writes, "The Muslim victory in Khaibar marked thefirst contact between the Muslim state and a conquered non-Muslim people and formed the basis for later dealings of the same type."15 Other Jewish colonies succumbed in much the same way: "Jews were allowed to keep their land on condition that they surrendered half the produce to Medina." But, "the arrangement did not last long  Virtually all of Khaibar's and Medina's surviving Jews -- along with "all the other Jews and Christians in the peninsula" -- were dispossessed and expelled through the Prophet Muhammad's edict, zealously implemented by his caliph Omar.16 Much of the wealth of the country which had been concentrated in the hands of the Jews had now been seized by the Muslims, who were no longer indigent immigrants but wealthy landowners, men of substance, owning camels and horses and their own weapons.... Muhammad's fame spread far and wide, and the bedouin flocked to him in thousands.17 1. Parkes, Whose Land?, p. 26. 2. Ibid., p. 10. 3. J.B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955), p. 378. 20.M. Stem, "The Political and Social History of Judea Under Roman Rule," in A History of the Jewish People, H.H. Ben-Sasson, ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 266. 4. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911), vol. XX, p. 622. 5. Ibid., pp. 621-622, 6. Yigael Yadin, Masada (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 11. 7. Ibid. 8. Encyclapaedia Britannica, vol. XX, p. 622. 9. Alfred Guillaume, Islam (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1954), pp. 10-11. 10. Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History, rev. ed. (New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper-Colophon Books, 1966), pp. 31-32. 11. Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), 1, pp. 308T 12. Lewis, Arabs in History, p. 40. 13. S. Safrai, "The Lands of the Diaspora," in A History ofthe Jewish People, Ben-Sasson, ed., p. 380. 14. Guillaume, Islam, p. 49. 15. Lewis, Arabs, p. 45. 16. Guillaume, Islam, p. 49, 17. Ibid., pp. 49-50. The appellation Bedouin derives from the word badia (steppe), which connotes the Arabian desert territories native to the wanderers. Also see C.M. Doughty, Travels in Arabia Deserta (London, 1888), since then in many editions; H. St. Philby, Arabia (1930); Heart of Arabia (1922); Arabia of the Wahhabis (1928); T.E. Lawrence, Revolt in the Desert (1927) and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1935); In Arabic, A'rif al-A'rif, Al Kada'Bein Al Badou (1937), Taarikh Beir Al Sab' (1932). In German see G.H. Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Palestina (1928), 5 vols.  Medina, Islam's second holiest city, was originally a Jewish "settlement"  Although the fact is little publicized, more than one historian has affirmed at the Arab world's second holiest city, Medina, was one of the allegedly "purely Arab" cities that actually was first settled by Jewish tribes.1 And like the 16th Century English Protestants who financed their endeavors through the plunder of Catholic monasteries in England, the roots of Islamic anti-Semitism might be found in the initial plunder of Jewish settlements, and the imposition of a "poll tax" to fund Arab campaigns. Bernard Lewis writes: The city of Medina, some 280 miles north of Mecca, had originally been settled by Jewish tribes from the north, especially the Banu Nadir and Banu Quraiza. The comparative richness of the town attracted an infiltration of pagan Arabs who came at first as clients of the Jews and ultimately succeeded in dominating them. Medina, or, as it was known before Islam, Yathrib, had no form of stable government at all. The town was tom by the feuds of the rival Arab tribes of Aus and Khazraj, with the Jews maintaining an uneasy balance of power. The latter, engaged mainly in agriculture and handicrafts, were economically and culturally superior to the Arabs, and were consequently disliked.... as soon as the Arabs had attained unity through the agency of Muhammad they attacked and ultimately eliminated the Jews.2 In the last half of the fifth century, many Persian Jews fled from persecution to Arabia, swelling the Jewish population there.3 But around  the sixth century, Christian writers reported of the continuing importance of the Jewish community that remained in the Holy Land. For the dispersed Arabian Jewish settlers, Tiberias in Judea was central. In the Kingdom of Himyar on the Red Sea's east coast in Arabia, "conversion to Judaism of influential circles" was popular, and the Kingdom's rule stretched across "considerable portions of South Arabia." The commoners as well as the royal family adopted Judaism, and one writer ports that "Jewish priests (presumably rabbis) from Tiberias ... formed part the suite of King Du Noas and served as his envoys in negotiations with Christian cities."4 According to Guillaume, At the dawn of Islam the Jews dominated the economic life of the Hijaz [Arabia]. They held all the best land ... ; at Medina they must have formed at least half of the population. There was also a Jewish settlement to the north of the Gulf of Aqaba.... What is important is to note that the Jews of the Hijaz made many proselytes [or converts] among the Arab tribesmen.5 The first "Palestinian" or Judean refugees -- the Jews -- had resettled to become prosperous, influential Arabian settlers. The prosperity of the Jews was due to their superior knowledge of agriculture and irrigation and their energy and industry. Homeless [Jewish] refugees in the course of a few generations became large landowners in the country, [the refugees who had come to the Hijaz when the Romans conquered Palestine] controllers of its finance and trade.... Thus it can readily be seen that Jewish prosperity was a challenge to the Arabs, particularly the Quraysh at Mecca and ... [other Arab tribes] at Medina. The Prophet Muhammad himself was a member of the Quraysh tribe, which coveted the Jews' bounty, and when the Muslims took up arms they treated the Jews with much greater severity than the Christians, who, until the end of the purely Arab Caliphate, were not badly treated.6 One of the reasons for "this discrimination" against the Jews is what Guillaurne called "the Quran's scornful words" regarding the Jews7 The Jews' development of land and culture was a prime source of booty in the Arabian desert peninsula. Beginning at the time of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam8from the expulsions, depredations, extortion, forced conversions or murder of Jewish Arabians settled in Medina to the mass slaughter of Jews at Khaibar -- the precedent was established among Arab-Muslims to expropriate that which belonged to the Jews. Relations between the Prophet Muhammad and the Jews were "never ... easy": They had irritated him by their refusal to recognize him as a prophet, by ridicule and by argument; and of course their economic supremacy ... was a standing irritant.9 It appears that the first "instigation" by the Prophet Muhammad himself against the Jews was an incident in which he had "one or two Jews ... murdered and no blood money was paid to their next of kin." ... Their leaders opposed his claim to be an apostle sent by God, and though they doubtless drew some satisfaction from his acceptance of the divine mission of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, they could hardly be expected to welcome the inclusion of Jesus and Ishmael among his chosen messengers.10... the existence of pockets of disaffected Jews in and around his base was a cause of uneasiness and they had to be eliminated if he [Muhammad] was to wage war without anxiety.11 Because the Jews preferred to retain their own beliefs, a tribe of Jews in the neighborhood of Medina, fell under suspicion of treachery and were forced to lay down their arms and evacuate their settlements. Valuable land and much booty fell into the hands of the Muslims. The neighboring tribe of Qurayza, who were soon to suffer annihilation, made no move to help their co-religionists, and their allies, the Aus, were afraid to give them active support. 12 The Prophet Muhammad's pronouncement: "Two religions may not dwell together on the Arabian Peninsula."13 This edict was carried out by Abu Bakr and Omar 1, the Prophet Muhammad's successors; the entire community of Jewish settlements throughout northern Arabia was systematically slaughtered. According to Bernard Lewis, "the extermination of the Jewish tribe of Quraiza was followed by "an attack on the Jewish oasis of Khaibar."14 Messengers of Muhammad were sent to the Jews who had escaped to the safety and comfort of Khaibar, "inviting" Usayr, the Jewish "war chief," to visit Medina for mediations. Usayr set off with thirty companions and a Muslim escort. Suspecting no foul play, the Jews went unarmed. On the way, the Muslims turned upon the defenseless delegation, killing all but one who managed to escape. "War is deception," 15 according to an oft-quoted saying of the Prophet.16 The late Israeli historian and former President, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, judged the "inhuman atrocities" of the Arabian communities as unparalleled since then: ... the complete extermination of the two Arabian-Jewish tribes, the Nadhir and Kainuka' by the mass massacre of their men, women and children, was a tragedy for which no parallel can be found in Jewish history until our own day .... 17 The slaughter of Arabian Jews and the expropriation of their property became Allah's will. According to the Koran, ... some you slew and others you took captive. He (Allah] made you masters of their [the Jews'] land, their houses and their goods, and of yet another land [Khaibar] on which you had never set foot before. Truly, Allah has power over all things.18 Guillaume reports that the anti-Jewish attack at Khaibar was fiercely fought off, but "though the inhabitants fought more bravely here than elsewhere, outnumbered and caught off their guard, they were defeated."19 Those who somehow survived constituted the formula for Islam's future successes. Some of the Jews, "non-Muslims" or infidels, "retained their land," at least until Muslims could be recruited in sufficient numbers to replace the Jews. Meanwhile, the Arabian Jews paid a fifty-percent "tribute," or tax, for the "protection" of the new plunderers. As Professor Lewis writes, "The Muslim victory in Khaibar marked the first contact between the Muslim state and a conquered non-Muslim people and formed the basis for later dealings of the same type."20 Thus the Jewish dhimmi evolved [the protected ones] -- the robbery of freedom and political independence compounding the extortion and eventual expropriation of property. "Tolerated" between onslaughts, expulsions, and pillages from the Arab Muslim conquest onward, the non-Muslim dhimmi-predominantly Jewish but Christian too -- provided the important source of religious revenue through the "infidel's" head tax. He became very quickly a convenient political scapegoat and whipping boy as well. 1.Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), 1, pp. 308T 2. Lewis, Arabs in History, p. 40. 3. S. Safrai, "The Lands of the Diaspora," in A History ofthe Jewish People, Ben-Sasson, ed., p. 380. 4. S. Safrai, "From the Abolition of the Patriarchate to the Arab Conquest (425-W)," in History of the Jewish People, Ben-Sasson, ed., pp. 358-359. Of this little-known history Safrai writes: "Twice the Jews of Himyar succeeded in throwing off Ethiopian domination; even in the eyes of Byzantium it was a Jewish kingdom, small but occupying a strategic position. The king of Himyar prevented Byzantine traders from passing through to India on the grounds that Jews were being persecuted in Roman lands. Byzantium was reluctant to risk a war so far away in South Arabia, but was able to persuade Ethiopia to take up its quarrel. The king of Himyar hoped for Persian aid, but there was a lull in the fighting between Rome and Persia at the time, and the Persians did not appreciate the importance of this outlet from the Red Sea being controlled by an ally of Byzantium. Du Noas fell in a battle against an invading Ethiopian army, and the Jewish Kingdom came to an end." 5. Guillaume, Islam, pp. 11-12. 6. Ibid., p. 12. 7. Ibid. See examples in Chapter 4. 8. For details of the Prophet Muhammad-Ab-u al-Qasim Muhammad ibn'Abd  Alla ibn 'Abd al-Muttal-ib ibn Hashim-see Guillaume, Islam, pp. 20-54; the "tradi- tional" biography of Muhammad (Arabic) is Ibn Hisham's recension of Ibn Ishaq's al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1955); The Life of Muhammad, abridged English trans. by A. Guillaume (Karachi, 1955). Cited by Norman A. Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, A History and Source Book (Philadelphia, 1979), p. 6, n. 9. See also Lewis, Arabs in History. 9. Guillaume, Islam, p. 43. 10. Ibid., pp. 43-44. 11. Ibid., p. 44. 12. The Nadir tribe. Ibid., p. 46. Also see Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, pp. 8-10, for a study of "exclusively Muslim" sources, tracing Muhammad's "face-to-face contact with a large, organized Jewish Community," an "encounter" that "did not prove to be an auspicious one." The Nadir tribe in Medina went to Khaibar in "exile," Stillman, Jews~ p. 14. 13. Salo W. Baron, Social and Religious History, Vol. 1, p. 311. He cites Muwatta, in Al-Zurkani's commentary IV, p. 71. 14. Lewis, The Arabs in History, p. 45. 15. Al-Bukhari, al-Jami al-Sahih, bk. 56 (Kitab al-Jihad, Bab 157), ed. M. Ludolf Krehl (Leiden, 1864), Vol. 2, p. 254, cited by Stillman, Jews, p. 17. According to Stillman, "This hadith appears in several other canonical collections." 16. Stillman, Jews~ p. 17, citing Ibd Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, ed. by Edvard Sachau et al. (Leiden, 1909), Vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 66-67; al-Waqidi, Kitab al-MaghaZ4 Vol. 2, pp. 566-68; Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, Vol. 2, pp. 618-619. 17. Itzhak Ben-Zvi, The Exiled and the Redeemed (Philadelphia, 1961), p. 144. Also see Stillman, Jews, p. 14ff. 18. The Koran, Surah 33, v. 26-32, Dawood translation. 19. Guillaume, Islam, p. 49. 20. Lewis, Arabs, p. 45. Islam justifies its existence through the failure of Judaism A successful Jewish State, especially one successful militarily, is a theological threat to Moslems everywhere His right derived from time immemorial in his family, to enter Jewish houses, and take toll or contributions at any time without giving account. -A "Muslim in Hebron," as reported by James Finn, British Consul in Jerusalem, 1858I have learned with horror of the atrocious acts committed by bodies of ruthless and blood-thirsty evil-doers, of savage murders perpetrated upon defenseless members of the Jewish population, regardless of age or sex ... acts of unspeakable savagery .... -J. R. Chancellor, High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief in Palestine, September 1, 1929 Islam has a lot to fear from Judaism. Not because Judaism is in any way antagonistic to Islam, but rather that Islam justifies its existence because of the failure of the Jews -- in particular their failure militarily over Rome.  To have a successful Jewish State, especially one successful militarily, is a theological threat to Moslems everywhere. The Church had similar replacement theology, blaming the Jews for the death of Christ.  "Replacement theology" was understood to be rooted in the cursing of the Jews (the cursing of the field of Judas), and the reason behind their national misfortune.  But the de facto success of the State of Israel, and disdain for centuries of anti-Semitism within the Church, led to profound theological changes.  In 1965, the Catholic Nostra Aetate, stated clearly and plainly 1) The Jews as a whole were no longer ... responsible for the death of Christ, and, 2) Above all, they were no longer considered "rejected by God" or "cursed."  Fortunately the Church had an alternative "Grafted on" Theology to fall back on, where the Church is a extension, rather than a replacement, of Judaism. Islam does not particularly blame the Jews for death of Christ, rather specifically for its failure militarily over Rome during the lifetime of The Prophet Mohammed, and generally for Judaism's failure to become a successful world religion.  The de facto success of the State of Israel, causes similar problems within Islam, but this time there is no theological alternative.  The right and proof of the legitimacy of Islam was originally the Jews misfortune at the hands of Rome and later Byzantium.  When these empires disappeared, Islam itself took on this role.  The Jews lowly status was no longer a fact of circumstance, but an Islamic right. Before proceeding to the evidence and indications of the "systems" of immigration and their crucial consequence in Palestine, it is important to look at the conditions under which the Palestinian Jews lived during the generations prior to the "new," late-nineteenth-century Jewish settlements. In order to assess accurately the responsibility for the plight of the Arab refugees, the true role must be seen of the Jews in Palestine among the many ethnic groups constituting the Muslim inhabitants who are all called -- and for the sake of convenience will be called here -- Arabs. Although the same as in Arab countries in some fundamental respects, the relationships in the Holy Land developed special qualitative differences. Those attitudes were the residual of a long tradition of intrinsic prejudice inflamed by cynical political manipulation. That tradition has been perpetuated for generations-and for more than three decades at the cost of the well-being of some of the Arab refugee-emigres themselves. The violence that the PLO's Yasser Arafat and others now claim was "only begun against Jews with the 1948 rebirth of Israel" -- "Palestinian" terrorism -- was actually a critical factor in the early developments that instigated the pivotal population conditions in Palestine. In their Holy Land, the Jews, as well as Christians, suffered long from harsh discrimination, persecution, and pogroms. According to the British Consulate report in 1839, the Jew's life was not "much above" that of a dog.[1] The inverting of facts -- turnspeak * -- has had the propaganda effect of perpetuating the false claim of "displaced" and "terrorized" Arabs in the Jewish-settled area of Palestine until the current time-long after the charge had been disproved by investigations. In fact, as following chapters will show, it was the Jews who were displaced by Arabs-the Arab immigrant flocks would migrate into the Jewish areas of development, filling the places that the Jews were clearing for other Jews -- on land designated at that very time as the mandated "Jewish Homeland." [*Tumspeak-the cynical inverting or distorting of facts, which, for example, makes the victim appear as culprit.] Those few "Arab effendi" families-like the Husseinis and the Nashashibis and the Khalidis-who had been dispossessing and then continuing to exploit the hapless peasant-migrant in underpopulated Palestine would become threatened by the spectacle of dhimmi Jews living on the land as equals, tilling their own soil and granting previously unknown benefits to the Arabic-speaking non-Jewish worker. The Jews would undoubtedly upset the "sweets of office," which had been accruing to the effendis. Thousands of peasant-migrants would be emigrating to reap the better wages, health benefits, and improvements of the Jewish communities. Although theeffendis would charge scalper's prices for land they sold to the Jews, at the same time they would lose thousands of their former debtors who saw an escape from the stranglehold of usury and corruption prevalent in Palestine for generations. Yet perhaps most galling of all to effendi leadership was the Jew who would settle the land. This was not the dhimmi Jew--cowering to survive, as in Arab lands -- but a person who commanded equal treatment. The outrage which that insistence created, among those weaned on the tradition of Muslim supremacy, would infect the multi-ethnic Arabic-speaking Muslim workers of Palestine as well: for centuries Jews had been objects to oppress and despise. As a Muslim in Hebron retorted when he was confronted with his theft and vandalism of Jews in 1858, "his right derived from time immemorial in his family, to enter Jewish houses, and take toll or contributions at any time without giving account."[2] This attitude and its prevalence in Palestine cannot be overlooked. It is perhaps the most powerful factor in the Middle East conflict today and certainly the core of the "Palestinian" question -- the true "heart of the matter." From the beginning of Turkish rule in the sixteenth century, the infidel dhimma code of oppressions against nonbelievers was maintained in Palestine.  The humiliation was a given; the degree of harshness of injunctions against Jews depended on the whim of the ruler, local as well as the lord of the empire. Among the constants of dhimma restrictions in the Holy Land: Jews had to pass Muslims on their left side, because that was the side of Satan. They had to yield the right of way, step off the pavement to let the Arab go by, above all make sure not to touch him in passing, because this could provoke a violent response. In the same way, anything that. reminded the Muslim of the presence of alternative religions, any demonstration of alternative forms of worship, had to be avoided so synagogues were placed in humble, hidden places, and the sounds of Jewish prayer carefully muted.[19] 1. Italian daily Corriere della Sera. But this declaration came too late. From the Middle Ages until the modern era, it would have been extremely useful, since Christian anti-Semitism was in fact at the root of the persecution of Jews in Europe. Undoubtedly, had it been pronounced before the Holocaust, Hitler would have been far more limited in his implementation of the "Final Solution." Pius XII would probably have acted differently regarding the extermination of the Jews. It is also true, however, that in the considerably de-Christianized western world of today, the theology of Nostra Aetate has practically no effect on the general public.