Debunking Joe Farah's Jewish Fables

Rev. Ted Pike, July 12, 2010

The Bible warns Christians to ignore “Jewish fables.” (Titus 1:14) In 1948 Israel violently drove half of the Arab population from Palestine, stealing land on which they had lived and farmed for thousands of years. To distract the world from this outrage, Israel created an elaborate tapestry of fables deluding generations of evangelicals and much of the world.

The most audacious claim of such propaganda is that the Palestinians were not deprived of their land because the Palestinians as a land-owning people never existed! They never inhabited Palestine in significant numbers and only entered in the 20th century as squatters, benefiting from the hospitality and prosperity of Israel. Zionist mythology also teaches that the number of Jews living in much of Palestine, especially in Jerusalem, always exceeded the Arabs, strengthening Israel’s right to remain the dominant occupant.

The Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem explains Israel’s strategy:

“In order to create an alleged justification for the crime of genocide they have committed against the Palestinian Arabs, the Zionists have tried to convince the world that Palestine was practically uninhabited, ‘A Land Without People For a People Without a Land.’ They created and propagated the myths that the Palestinian Arabs were nomads or semi-nomads without a culture and a civilization, that the Palestinians had neither a national identity nor existence, that the Palestinians lacked an economic structure and roots in the land.” [1]

Those accepting these lies include Joseph Farah, owner and editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily. In his recent article “The Phony Mideast Debate,” he says, “Today, billions of people all over the world actually believe that the ‘Palestinians’ are just in their quest for a homeland they never knew, a homeland that never existed, a homeland that is as fictitious as their rewritten historical narrative.” ^[2]

Farah claims that Palestine, even after World War II, was “still largely unpopulated, untamed, undeveloped,” with most of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and adjacent regions being Jewish. Most Arabs, he says, became interested in coming to this near-wasteland only after Zionists brought economic and agricultural prosperity. They then flooded in as migrants from Jordan and other Mideast countries “coinciding with Jewish immigration and ingenuity.”

Zionist propaganda also claims that when war became imminent between the Israelis and Arabs in 1948, this large indigent population of about 800,000, possessing no loyalty to the land, fled to safer countries. After the war, Israel says they then preposterously claimed they were driven out of their “homeland,” a land they never owned! Israel, says Farah, has been falsely “recast in the public’s mind as Goliath,” persecuting the Palestinian outcasts and occupying their ancestral property.

“This is not occupation, as the world suggests.” Farah contends, “This is a people defending their one and only homeland against the most vicious and unjustified attacks imaginable.”

From Farah to Facts

In 1882, the Jewish population of Palestine was about 24,000. In 1914, the entire population of Palestine was estimated at 634,133 Muslim and Christian Arabs and 55,413 Jews. In 1920, after the British mandate, the official census showed the Arab population, both Muslim and Christian, at nearly 600,000, still greatly exceeding the Jews, who numbered 66,574. Until 1948 the Arab population continued to exceed the Jewish by roughly 2:1. [3] Farah says Jews for centuries had dominated the region, “the majority of the population of Jerusalem and surrounding areas being Jewish.” Yet the last official British census in 1931 found Arabs in Jerusalem outnumbered Jews 2:1 with surrounding areas averaging 98% Arab! The Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question in the United Nations found in 1948 that, except for Haifa, “the Arabs have a clear majority over the Jews.” [4]

So much for the Israeli/Farah claim that for centuries Jews in Jerusalem and surrounding areas have outnumbered a tiny Arab population!

During World War I, Arabs fought with the Allies against the Turks in hope of acquiring national independence. After the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the people of Palestine were considered by the League of Nations a “provisionally independent nation” very close to sovereignty. By 1947 Palestinian Arabs played a predominant role in government under the British. “The total number of government officials was 44,688 persons, of whom 4,314 were British, 30,178 Arabs, 9,276 Jews, and 920 others.” [5] Arabs also vastly outnumbered Jews in municipal councils and leadership in hundreds of primarily Arab towns and cities throughout Palestine.

The land of Palestine had been a breadbasket of agricultural plenty going back to the original inhabitants, the Canaanites and later Philistines (for whom Palestine is named). Enjoying a climate similar to California’s, the Old Testament description was a “land that flows with milk and honey.” Certainly, much of Palestine in recent centuries had been over-grazed, particularly the mountainous hill country of Judea surrounding Jerusalem. Such barrenness caused visitor Mark Twain to describe it as barren, with hardly an Arab to be seen. Yet, at nearly the same time, “Lawrence Oliphant, who visited Palestine in 1887, wrote that Palestine’s Valley of Esdraelon was ‘a huge green lake of waving wheat, with its village-crowned mounds rising from it like islands; and it presents one of the most striking pictures of luxurious fertility which it is possible to conceive.’”[6]Numerous pre-20th century accounts, recounted in the Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem, describe it as a veritable cornucopia of every kind of agricultural produce, with excess exported by the Palestinians even to the nations of Europe.

The Encyclopedia confirms that before 1948 “these Arab towns and villages were not merely place names on a map. They were developed communities containing farms, factories, stores and schools, with an infrastructure of doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, merchants, mechanics, industrialists, workers, and farmers which would be the envy of any developing country today…Before 1948 they resided in 12 cities, 8 major towns, and 830 small towns and villages. Arab homes in the cities were either luxurious stone villas with beautiful gardens, or apartments with 2-5 bedrooms. These residences were well-furnished with modern furniture and household goods. No Arab home of the middle and upper classes contained less than eight valuable Persian carpets. All these homes and their furnishings were usurped by Israel.” [7]

General Moshe Dayan tells the truth:  “We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is, a Jewish state here. Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you, because these geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahalal arose in the place of Mahalul; Gevat in the place of Jibta; Sarid in the place of Haneifa and Kefar Yehoshua in the place of Tellshaman. There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” [8]

After 1948, Israel took over 12 cities and large towns and 526 small towns and villages. They bulldozed the towns and villages, building new towns with Jewish names.[9]

The Encyclopedia extensively documents from British records that, far from Palestinians depending on Jewish prosperity, the Zionists were permeated with Marxist/collectivist values, resulting in eventual failure of the “kibbutz” experiment. Fairly new to Mideast agriculture, they were largely inefficient, dependent upon regular massive infusion of Western Jewish capital. [10] Despite a general Israeli policy of boycott of Palestinian goods and services, the Palestinians, with a rapidly growing population in 1948 of 1,444,274, were both politically, socially, and economically racing toward UN-sponsored nationhood in 1948.

Zionist Terror Ends Palestinian Dreams

Such prosperity came to an abrupt, horrific end after the Deir Yassin massacre by Zionist Irgun terrorists on April 9-10, 1948 and many subsequent Jewish outrages and atrocities, panicking 800,000 Palestinians into flight. “In 1948 the Zionists seized 90% of Arab-owned citrus groves, packaging and storage facilities, as well as that year’s crops, looting the prosperous Arab citrus growers, making them destitute refugees.” The same was true of all aspects of Palestinian industry, including olive oil, weaving, textile, tobacco, leather, dairy, wheat, fishing, and construction. In reality, confiscation of Palestinian resources largely constituted the “miracle” of Israel’s sudden abundant agriculture, of which the new state began boasting soon after expulsion of the Palestinians. This delighted evangelicals worldwide who saw it as stunning fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, making the “desert blossom as the rose.” In reality, Israel now possessed thousands of acres of citrus, olives, wheat, etc. seized from the foremost agriculturists of the Middle East, Palestinian orchardists and farmers. The Encyclopedia: “The economic achievements of Israel today are built totally on the capital base of lands, property, and possessions usurped from the Palestinian Arabs.” [11]

Is Israel’s massively documented theft of Palestinian land, as well as Palestinian demand for compensation, really a “phony argument,” as Farah contends? For the safety of his eternal soul, I sincerely hope he has spoken out of ignorance of what really happened in 1948 and has naively made himself the mouthpiece of Zionist lies. It is difficult, however, to believe that Farah, himself of Syrian/Lebanese descent, does not know at least something of the enormous magnitude of injustice towards the Palestinians. If he does yet, continues to parrot Israel’s propaganda (perhaps to please both evangelicals and Jews), there is little doubt where the real phoniness exists: in Farah himself.

In his article, Farah also endorses the Zionist heresy that a nation of Christ-rejecting Jews can lawfully inhabit God’s Holy Land. While God did promise the land to Abraham because of his faith and continuing obedience, He also told the Hebrews that only by such obedience could they enjoy the same covenant. God told them “because [emphasis mine] you listen to these judgments and keep and do them… the Lord your God will keep with you His covenant and His loving-kindness which He swore to your forefathers.” (Deut. 7:12) In dozens of clear Scriptures, God is emphatic that only by obedience could the Hebrews as a people legitimately occupy Canaan. If they disobey, they will be expelled. Someday, a believing remnant of Jews will give Christ such obedience. But for the present, a wicked, Christian-persecuting Israel remains a counterfeit return. It is Babylon the Great, the Great Harlot of Rev. 17, promoting ascent of anti-Christ, not Jesus Christ.[12]

Scriptures laying down God’s conditional terms for occupation include: Lev. 18:28, 26:27-46; Num. 14:23; Deut. 4:26-27; 6:18; 7:12; 28:21, 25, 37, 41, 56-64; 29:28; Deut. 30; Ezek. 13:9; Jer. 7:15; 29:13-14.

Volume 17, 2010