In the Middle East, Not All Narratives Are Valid

by Lee Bender

In the Middle East, not all narratives are valid or equal; some are based on lies. And the biggest falshehood of them all is the narrative of the Palestinians Arabs.

Their story goes something like this: The “Palestinians” are the indigenous people of “Palestine,” with a history that stretches back 5,000 years to the Canaanites; the Jews have no claim or connection to the land, including the Temple Mount; the Jews are colonizers and a European implant — and stole the “Palestinians’” land; the creation of the state of Israel was a “nakba” — a catastrophe; and the Palestinian Arabs have an eternal “right of return.”

Is any of this accurate? Hardly. In reality, the Palestinian Arabs have an invented history.

Palestine was a place — not a people. The Romans renamed the entire region Syria-Palestina after they destroyed the Second Temple. Why? Because they wanted to erase the Jewish connections to the land. The Philistines were a seafaring people, the Assyrians were Greek in origin, and both were enemies of the Jews. The name of Syria-Palestina was later shortened to Palestina (Palestine in English).

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