WHY DO THE NATIONS RAGE? (Continued from p.6) abetted by the powers of the world, define as an attack on Islam. Again the media resound with high-sounding phrases about Islam's "third holiest religious site" and the "intransigence" of the Jews is decried. If the IDF ever does withdraw from Hebron, the murders of 1929 will be repeated. Since history has been all but banned in a culture whose motto might as well be, "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow, yesterday's gone," we must review the origin of the mosques on the Temple Mount. When the Arabs invaded the Holy Land about 630 C.E. they found The lack of Arab attachment to the Holy Land was so total that they never had their own name for the place, and in 1200 years created only one city. a nation de-populated and re-named by the Romans. Thrusting out the Byzantine East Roman Empire, by 691 the Arabs had built the Dome of the Rock atop the remains of the Second Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. As to the name of the land: in 135 C.E., after putting down the Bar Kochba rebellion, killing, by their count, about 580,000 Jewish fighters and twice as many civilians, destroying some 40 cities and 600 towns, the Romans had re-named Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina and put a shrine to Zeus on the Temple Mount. Adding insult to lethal injury, Emperor Hadrian sought to obliterate the identity and memory of Judaism. He forbade worship at the temple site and re-named Judea, "Palestina," the Latin form of Philistine, the ancient enemies of the Jews. It was a revisionary technique made familiar by Stalinists in this century, and its ability to distort debate remains potent in the terms, "Palestine" and "West Bank" in place of Israel, Judea and Samaria. As Shmuel Katz documented in his earlier book, Battleground: Fact & Fantasy in the Middle East (4th edition, 1984), 1200 years of Arab and Ottoman misrule left the Holy Land dessicated and de-populated. By 1900, Arab, European, Turkish and latterly, American travelers like Mark Twain had described the barrenness of a once fertile land that in Roman times supported 4-7 million Jewish inhabitants. As Katz notes, the lack of Arab attachment to the Holy Land was so total they never had their own name for the place and in 1200 years created only one city. T.E. Lawrence summed up the matter simply, writing, "There is no national feeling among them" [the Palestinian Arabs]. So thorough was Palestinian Arab disinterest in and abuse of the Jewish homeland that

in 1841, Alphonse de Lamartine estimated the population at 50-100,000. A few decades earlier, in his magisterial history, Ruins of Empires, Count Francois Volney had described the chronic lawlessness of the Arabs in Palestine. "The peasants incessantly destroy each other's corn, sesame and olive trees, and carry off each other's livestock," he wrote. "The Bedouins are constantly at odds with the Turks, and the peasants avail themselves of the opportunity to do mischief to each other, according to caprice of the moment. Hence arises an anarchy more dreadful than despotism...and renders Palestine more wretched than any other province." So much for "Palestinian" claims to be indigenous or attached to the land. Their inability to govern themselves, much less anyone else, has long been a matter of fact. Arab spoilation of the Holy Land was so complete that many visitors were moved to make suggestions like one 19th century Briton quoted by Katz: "Replenish the deserted towns and fields of Palestine with that energetic people [the Jews] whose warmest affections are rooted in its soil." As late as 1918, Emir Faisal's father, Husein, expressed similar sentiments. "The resources of the country are still virgin soil, and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants." He welcomed "the return of these exiles to their sacred and beloved homeland." In the 1880s, when Jews indeed began returning to cultivate the desert places, Arabs pricked up their ears and nostrils and began flocking back to the land they had ravaged and left. This pattern, too, persists today. For all their incoherent complaints, Arabs know they are far safer and better off materially near Jews than anywhere in the Arab world. Imagine, for example, how their "rallies," much less their stone throwing, would be dealt with by Iranians, Syrians or Saudis. The chaos and brutality of Arab internal relations was on full display late in July and August when Palestinian Arabs in Nablus and Ramallah demonstrated against Arafat and the "occupation" as they called it, of his thuggish "Authority." In the October Commentary, Nadav Haetzni details the sadistic methods by which Arafat rules in the "West Bank," alienating the people he claims to represent. "There is no Palestinian law as such," Haetzni reports. "At least four different systems are in place, and no one knows which will be used when. Civil (Continued on p.11)

October 1996               - 7 -               Outpost