The call for a Balestine is a very serious matter, but some serious humor must be injected into a world that has sunk into confusion and darkness. I had a conversation with my friend, Janet Abishor, about Balestine and why people don’t understand the word.
“Balestine? Don’t you mean Palestine?”
There’s no letter “P” in the Arabic language, so how do they pronounce “Palestine”?
How do Arabic speaking people [p]bronounce the letter [P]B? It’s very easy, they don’t.
Here are some exambles (examples) of words with the letter [P]B and the way Arabic speaking people pronounce them:
Baris [Paris]
Bebsi [Pepsi]
Barking [Parking]
Bray [pray]
Balestine [Palestine]
[P]Berfect, right?! And now we can say that the Arabic speaking multitudes who cannot pronounce the letter ‘P’ but claim they want to “free Balestine” are in fact asking to free a non-existing entity.
Maybe someone will [p]bublish an Arabic language [p]bronunciation scientific baber [paper], which would be [p]bretty remarkable.
Nevertheless, I am not making fun of the Arabic language nor of those who speak it. I am just stating a fact that there is no ‘P’ in the Arabic language. Therefore, there is no “[P]Balestine,” nor there is even a “Palestine” which is a fiction.
Balaestina (Palaestina]
Syria Palaestina was the name of a Roman Empire province between the early 2nd and late 4th centuries AD, its provincial capital was Caesarea Maritima in the land of Israel. Today ancient Caesarea is known as the town of Caesarea, in Hebrew Keisarya, a Mediterranean seashore Israeli town. The Herodian kingdom that was split into a tetrarchy, was gradually absorbed into Roman Syria, while its capital Caesarea Maritima served as the “administrative capital” of the region beginning in 6 AD.
Upon the Roman Empire conquering the land of Judaea, it became a Roman Province that incorporated the regions of Judea, Samaria and Idumea; it extended over parts of the former regions of Hashmonean and Herodian Judea, named after King Herod Tetrarchy of Judaea*. The name “Judaea” was derived from the 6th century BCE Israelite-Jews’ Kingdom of Judea.
* Subsequently to the death of King Herod the Great, in 4 BCE, his kingdom was divided between his sister Salome and his sons Herod Archelaus, Herod Antipas, and Philip. The Herodian tetrarchy was a regional division, a client state of Rome.
Following the deposition of Herod Archelaus in 6 AD, Judea came under direct Roman rule, while local Jewish leaders retained broad discretion over affairs within Judaism.
During the 1st and 2nd centuries, with Jews unreconciled to Roman rule Judaea became the epicenter of a series of unsuccessful large-scale Jewish rebellions against the Roman conqueror, known as the Jewish-Roman Wars. Consequently, the Romans suppressed these revolts with wide-scale destruction, a very high toll of life and enslavement. The first Jewish-Roman war, the Great Jewish Revolt (66-73) resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the 2nd Temple structure.
The Bar Kochva [Kokhba] Revolt (132-136), two generations later, erupted in Judea’s countryside in which many were killed, displaced or sold into slavery. After the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jewish presence in the region significantly dwindled.
In order to erase all traces of Jewishness in the land of Israel and following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Jerusalem was rebuilt as a Roman colony which was named Aelia Capitolina, and the province of Judea was renamed Syria-Palaestina, with its capital still Caesarea Maritima, to differentiate it from Syria to the north, with its own capital in Antioch.
Although the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem, it held a very special and holy religious significance for the Jews. The Romans rebuilt it and named it colonia Aelia Capitolian and Jews were forbidden to settle there or in the immediate vicinity.
The name Syria-Palaestina is often attributed to the Roman Emperor Hadrian. However, no real evidence exists as to exactly when the name change was implemented or by whom.
The name “Palaestina” addressing the whole region had been previously also used and for centuries by the Greeks and the new term had a strict geographical meaning.
The word ‘Palaestina’ derives from Philistia, the name given by Greek writers to the land of the Philistines, who in the 12th century BCC occupied a small pocket of land on the southern Mediterranean Sea coast, between what is today known as modern Tel Aviv-Yafo to the south to the Gaza Strip.
That is where the name [P]Balestine was born without any reference that Arabs from Arabia were involved in its birth.
British Mandate for Palestine
In 1920, following the end of WWI Britain was assigned to be the Mandate for Palestine’s superintendent, a prelude to a sovereign Jewish state. The mandate’s land was inhabited by Jews and Arabs. The Jews arrived back in their historic land from which they were expelled, escaping persecutions and pogroms in different host lands. The Arabs arrived in the land seeking better economic conditions which the Jews provided for them.
But the Arab population turned hostile toward the Jews.
Bloodshed
In August of 1929, following tensions between Jews and Arabs regarding Jewish prayer at the Western Wall, a well-known massacre had begun in British Mandate Palestine. Arabs attacked Jews throughout the land, and 133 Jews were murdered and hundreds injured. Jewish settlements were destroyed and were abandoned. The massacre shocked the Jewish community in the land and Jewish communities all around the world.
Jews had no independent country. They were without an army and did not “oppress” any Arab anywhere. Yet, the massacre took place. What was it all about? It was the presence of Jews in the land and Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, in Jerusalem.
Arab massacres of Jews were never about political or territorial issues. The Jewish people’s existence, in general, and Jewish presence in Jerusalem, in particular, is the Arabs’ problem.
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) 1947 181 partition resolution stipulated the division of the Mandate for Palestine land into a Jewish state and an Arab state, not a ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian state’. This is because there were no “[P]Balestinians” then, only Arabs.
The Arabs in British Mandate for Palestine, still referred to themselves as Arabs, often perpetrated violent attacks on Jews. They called their riots “1936-1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.” They got Arab governments to speak on their behalf at the 1939 London Conference and later at the United Nations (U.N.).
The Arabs of British Mandate for Palestine used a variant of the flag of the Great Arab (Hashemite) revolution as their flag.
Even after the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the Arabs who remained in the land and did not escape Israel’s War of Independence did not call themselves “Palestinian”; they remained the proud Arabs they were.
The United Arab Republic
The United Arab Republic was established on February 1, 1958 as the first step towards a larger pan-Arab state. It was originally proposed to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser by a group of political and military leaders in Syria.
On September 28, 1961, following a military coup, Syria declared itself independent of Egypt and the United Arab Republic (UAR).
Syria wasn’t the only country that didn’t like Nasser’s experiment with the UAR. Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Jordan were against it too. Nasser backed a Yemeni rebel group against the Royalists, who were backed by Saudi and Jordan.
While Nasser was taking defeat in Yemen, starting 1962, to avenge his losses and hit back at the Jordanians and Saudis, Nasser instigated the idea of the Arabs of the “West Bank” to secede from Jordan and create a “Palestine” that would join Nasser’s Egypt’s United Arab Republic and thus replace Syria.
This is where the intimation to a [P]Balestine appeared first, centuries after the Roman empire ceased to exist and their Palaestina protectorate was long forgotten.
Lacking Cognitive Dissonance
Is it possible that today’s anti-Israel mobs can wrap their heads around “[P]Balestine” with cognitive dissonance*?
*Cognitive dissonance is a person’s discomfort when he she feels their behavior does not align with their values or beliefs. Cognitive dissonance is seen as a psychological phenomenon that occurs when a person holds two contradictory beliefs at the same time.
It is a fact; there has never been an Arab State called [P]Balestine. Historically, during the Greek, the Roman and even the Arab Muslim occupations of Jerusalem for 451 years until the 1st Crusade, 638 CE to 1099, people referred to the land as the land of the Jews, the land of Israel or Al-Quds, “The Holy,” the Arabic name for Jerusalem.
But cognitive dissonance is absent and hypocrisy reigns. This is because they only know the propaganda – small pieces of the whole. Of course, it is a complex puzzle, but it does have a long history that people should know before they come out in support of one side over the other.
Mohammed’s Followers
Arab tribes that sprang from the Arabian Peninsula and then the Ottoman Empire colonized the Christian-majority Middle East and North Africa all the way to Europe’s Gates of Vienna. The battle of Vienna took place at Kahlenberg Mountain, near Vienna, on September 12, 1683. The city had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire and this is where the Muslims conquerors were finally stopped.
The Ottomans brutally killed or forcefully converted many of the indigenous population – Jews, Persians, Egyptians, Phoenicians, etc. Now however, they see themselves as the oppressed while they see the survivors of their ruthless colonial supremacism as oppressors.
“[P]Balestinians” are actually Arabs seeking allies to help push their false narratives and propaganda. They align with likeminded groups and together they falsely call the land of Israel occupied “Palestinian” territory. They also point at Jews to be a white privileged oppressive force while Marxist academic professors reinforce this false narrative.
Death and Martyrdom Cult
These Arabs, the likes of Hamas, Fatah, and the [P]BLO ([P]Balestine Liberation Organization] praise death and martyrdom. They brainwash their children, from the day a toddler begins talking, that violence is good and that dead Jews are a path to his or her heaven. Violence and terrorism is resistance and that resistance is a hodgepodge of self-deception and brainwashing elements.
Over the past 6 decades, Arabs who, since 1964, were brainwashed to be identified as “[P]Balestinians,” have kidnapped, assassinated world leaders i.e. Abdullah King of Jordan, Robert F. Kennedy, etc., hijacked airplanes, murdered Jewish athletes, perpetrated terror attack all over the world and as of recently, during October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel they brutally murdered people, viciously raped women and men, burned people alive, beheaded their victims, and took Jews as a bargain chip hostages.
These Arabs named “[P]Balestinians” and their cohorts have managed to gaslight the world to believe that there is a [P]Balestine which is in fact the state of Israel. That the land of Israel belongs to them from time immemorial and the Jews simply invaded it and took away what is theirs. History and facts do not come to mind to these crowds who lack cognitive dissonance.
While yelling the slogans, “from the River to the Sea [P]Balestine will be free,” they mean the land of Israel to be freed of Jews. It seems they want a genocide while the term “intifada,” means uprising against oppression whether it is against Israelis, the Jews and even Christians. The truth to be told, the oppression is in fact enacted by the Arab Royals and Arab leaders.
Since October 7, 2023, these [P]Blestinians and their supporters have marched in the streets of an untold number of countries. There, they disrupted the lives of others using violence and intimidation while pretending they are victims of some sort. Even in those places where they were given a chance to build a good and civilized life.
The Arabs who have been living in the land of Israel, from 1948 until 2009 were offered a state of their own by Israel four times.
They refused all four offers.
The reason is only that if they would accept having their own state, they would need to recognize the sovereign Jewish State Israel on its ancestral land. This mean, their ongoing parade to destroy Israel will come to an end.
So the only purpose in their life, which is to terminate the existence of Israel, would be taken off their century-long agenda.
Remember the B Instead of the P
Throughout history there never was a [P]Balestine. There has been the Philistines, Roman Palaestina and the British Mandate for Palestine but never any historical Arab entity named [P]Balestine. This [P]Balestine is a fiction created in order to destroy the state of Israel.
America’s current president Joseph Biden announced recently that he wants to unilaterally call to establish a “Palestine state.” He however needs to answer to 9 million Israelis where exactly he suggests this [P]Balestine should be established?
After what Hamas did in Israel and the fact that the majority of the Palestinian Authority (PA-Fatah) people support and align with Hamas’ gruesome venture on October 7 in Israel, a “[P]Balestine” with an army and air force can never be established in the Gaza Strip or Judea and Samaria.
The 2-state [dis]solution died on October 7, 2023.
It is time for the world to wake up to this [P]Balestine scam and bring it to an end.