Truth about West Bank

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Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon explains the historical

facts relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The video explains where the

terms “West Bank”, “occupied territories” and “67 Borders” originated and how

they are incorrectly used and applied.

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Origin of the Name Palestine

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Where did the name Palestine come from?

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The name Palestine refers to a region of the eastern Mediterranean coast from the sea to the Jordan valley and from the southern Negev desert to the Galilee lake region in the north. The word itself derives from “Plesheth”, a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as “Philistine”. Plesheth, (root palash) was a general term meaning rolling or migratory. This referred to the Philistine’s invasion and conquest of the coast from the sea. The Philistines were not Arabs nor even Semites, they were most closely related to the Greeks originating from Asia Minor and Greek localities. They did not speak Arabic. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs.

The Philistines reached the southern coast of Israel in several waves. One group arrived in the pre-patriarchal period and settled south of Beersheba in Gerar where they came into conflict with Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael. Another group, coming from Crete after being repulsed from an attempted invasion of Egypt by Rameses III in 1194 BCE, seized the southern coastal area, where they founded five settlements (Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gat). In the Persian and Greek periods, foreign settlers – chiefly from the Mediterranean islands – overran the Philistine districts.

From the fifth century BC, following the historian Herodotus, Greeks called the eastern coast of the Mediterranean “the Philistine Syria” using the Greek language form of the name. In AD 135, after putting down the Bar Kochba revolt, the second major Jewish revolt against Rome, the Emperor Hadrian wanted to blot out the name of the Roman “Provincia Judaea” and so renamed it “Provincia Syria Palaestina”, the Latin version of the Greek name and the first use of the name as an administrative unit. The name “Provincia Syria Palaestina” was later shortened to Palaestina, from which the modern, anglicized “Palestine” is derived.

This remained the situation until the end of the fourth century, when in the wake of a general imperial reorganization Palestine became three Palestines: First, Second, and Third. This configuration is believed to have persisted into the seventh century, the time of the Persian and Muslim conquests.

The Christian Crusaders employed the word Palestine to refer to the general region of the “three Palestines.” After the fall of the crusader kingdom, Palestine was no longer an official designation. The name, however, continued to be used informally for the lands on both sides of the Jordan River. The Ottoman Turks, who were non-Arabs but religious Muslims, ruled the area for 400 years (1517-1917). Under Ottoman rule, the Palestine region was attached administratively to the province of Damascus and ruled from Istanbul. The name Palestine was revived after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and applied to the territory in this region that was placed under the British Mandate for Palestine.

The name “Falastin” that Arabs today use for “Palestine” is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Roman “Palaestina”.

Quoting Golda Meir:

• The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation’s supposed ancient name, though they couldn’t even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity. [In an article by Sarah Honig, Jerusalem Post, November 25, 1995]

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There are Arabs who lived in Palestine, just as there were Jews. They were all “Palestinians”
in that sense. Yasser Arafat coined the term “Palestinians” for the Arabs who who emigrated

from Israel on recommendation of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, just
before they attacked the new nation of Israel. They were Arabs before they emigrated, and
they are still Arabs. They are not Palestinians. They are palestinian Arabs, just as the Jews

who live in the West Bank are Palestinian Jews. There are even Palestinian Christians.

All because in ancient times, the Roman legions have mandated that area, that is east of the

Mediterranean, as “Palestine”.  But, in truth, there is NO Palestinian people!

 

 

The “Black Horse” of Revelation is Riding

 

2011 FOOD CRISIS

Grain shortages, soaring prices, food riots Mar 2011’s beginning

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Violent food riots in Iran, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco
and Mozambique and mounting protests in
India, Jordan, Indonesia and elsewhere at the very
outset of 2011 are alarming many government officials.
They fear extreme weather conditions that have wiped out
thousands of acres of crops in the world’s largest grain exporting
nations portend skyrocketing prices and widespread
uprisings throughout the world as the new year
begins.
In 2008, higher grain prices triggered food riots and
protests in nearly three dozen poor countries, including
Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, Kenya, Somalia, Burkino Faso
and Cameroon. Philippe Chalmin, a French economic adviser,
said Jan. 6 that violence could especially flare this
spring because of a spike in cereal grain prices.
“I’m very concerned. … For the cereals, I expect very
strong tension around March, April. There are no more
stocks available with the large exporters,” Chalmin told the
Bloomberg news agency, which reported that corn prices
rose 52 percent and wheat prices 47 percent in Chicago last
year.
The Washington Post reported on Jan. 14: “The state of
emergency in Tunisia has economists worried that we may
be seeing the beginnings of a second wave of global food
riots. Battered by bad weather and increasing demand from
the developing world, the global food supply system is
buckling under the strain.”
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization
(FAO) announced that its food price index jumped 32 percent
to an all-time high in the second half of 2010, “surpassing
the previous record, set in the early summer of
2008, when deadly clashes over food broke out around the
world, from Haiti to Somalia,” the Post reported. “We are
entering a danger territory,” a top FAO official warned.

 

FOOD RIOTS IN ALGERIA

Algeria_Food Riots_Survival of the Fittest

Estimated corn reserves were cut to about half the level in
storage at the start of the 2010 harvest; soybean reserves
are at the lowest levels in three decades, and the ratio of
stocks to demand is expected to fall later this year to “levels
unseen since the mid-1970s,” msnbc.com reported Jan. 14.
“I haven’t seen numbers this low that I can remember in the
last 20 or 30 years,” Dennis Conley, a University of Nebraska
agricultural economist, told MSNBC. “We are at
record low stocks. So if there is any kind of glitch at all in
the U.S. weather, supplies are going to remain tighter, and
we might see even higher prices.”
Many mainstream news media outlets and economists
are starting to realize that massive grain shortages,
steeply rising food costs and worsening hunger in Third
World countries pose a grave threat to the global economy
and world peace.
These ominous end-time developments were predicted hundreds
of years ago in Bible prophecy and are coming to
pass with alarming speed! So far this year, corn is up 63
percent; wheat, 84 percent; soybeans, 24 percent; and
sugar, 55 percent in price!
As the Philadelphia Remnant recently forewarned regarding
the black horse of famine described in the Book of
Revelation: “The black horse symbolizes grain shortages,
steeply rising food costs and mass starvation, which is beginning
to accelerate as the black horse starts to gallop
throughout the world! … This scene described by the Apostle
John shows extreme inflation and severe grain
shortages. No longer will food costs be relatively inexpensive!”
(“The Black Horse Gallops,” September/October issue)
“The price of grains began to rise last fall after fires in Russia
wiped out hundreds of thousands of acres of grains and
heavy rain destroyed much of Canada’s wheat crop. The
problems were followed by hot, dry weather in Argentina
that devastated the soybean crop of the key exporter. This
month, floods in Australia destroyed much of the country’s
wheat crop,” the Washington Post reported. Much of the
Ukraine’s grain harvest also was eradicated by extreme
heat.
JP Morgan, a major investment bank, said Australian food
prices could rise as much as 30 percent in coming months
as a result of devastating floods in the Queensland region,
which is one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and
sugar cane. Other grains, fruits and vegetables also have
been adversely impacted.
“The bank’s chief economist in Australia said 50 percent of
crops had been affected by the floods, with 20 percent
wiped out,” the BBC reported on Jan. 11. Flooding also
damaged crops in Pakistan last year.
In a Jan. 12 article, the Financial Times reported: “The
world has moved a step closer to a food price shock after
the U.S. government surprised traders by cutting stock
forecasts for key crops, sending corn and soybean prices to
their highest level in 30 months.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the nation’s
2010 corn stockpiles will fall to 745 million bushels or 18.9
million tons, the lowest since 1996. It predicted that global
corn production will plunge by 20.1 million tons, 17 percent
worse than expected in December.

ONION/POTATO VENDOR IN INDIA WITH SCALES

India_onion potato vendor with scales

U.S. soybean stockpiles may slide to
3.82 million tons before this year’s
harvest from 4.49 million tons estimated
last month and 4.1 million tons
last year, the USDA said. Global soybean
inventories were projected at
58.28 million tons before the next harvest
versus 60.1 million tons estimated
in December and 60.2 million tons a
year ago.
Meanwhile, soybean production in Argentina,
the world’s third-largest producer,
is forecast to fall 15 percent to
47 million tons this year because of
severe drought. India’s billion people
are seeing food prices rising at an annual
rate of 18 percent – with the steepest increases for
onions and potatoes, which have doubled in price.
“Some experts warned that the world could be on the verge
of a ‘nightmare scenario’ of cut throat competition for the
control of shrinking supplies,” the Telegraph reported on
Jan. 7, noting millions of the world’s poor must spend 80
per cent of their income on food. Adding 80 million people
a year, the world’s population is expected to soon exceed
seven billion. A sharp increase in prices could be catastrophic.
Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute president, told the
Telegraph: “The reality is that the world is only one poor
harvest away from chaos. We are so close to the edge that
politically destabilizing food prices could come at any
time.”
Brown said if a heat wave were to hit Chicago and the Midwest
(the U.S. breadbasket), like what scorched Moscow
and Russia’s crops last year, the U.S. harvest could slump
40 percent, spiraling prices “off the chart” and causing “the
global economy to start to unravel.” Such weather extremes
are increasing, he noted.
In the Jan. 10 issue of Foreign Policy, Brown observed: “In
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, wheat yields
are no longer rising at all. These three countries together
account for roughly one-eighth of the world wheat harvest.”
He predicted the unrest in recent weeks is “just the beginning.

… It is … spreading food shortages and rising food
prices – and the political turmoil this would lead to – that
threatens our global future.”

Revelation 6:5-6 describes this frightening development
with graphic symbolism: “When He (Christ) opened the
third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come and
see.’ So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who
sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard a
voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, ‘A
quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for
a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.’ ”

This scene shows extreme inflation and severe grain shortages.
No longer will food costs be relatively inexpensive!

Christ showed in the parable of the vineyard workers that a
denarius, a form of Roman currency, was a full day’s
wage! (Matthew 20:1-2)

The black horse symbolizes a time when a full day’s wage
will buy only about a quart of wheat and only three quarts
of barley for extremely expensive loaves of bread! No
longer will bread be abundant or inexpensive!
Look for global food shortages to become more acute,
prices to soar and tensions to escalate into violence in
2011 as hungry people turn desperate and Bible
prophecies are fulfilled in greater intensity!

excerpted from “Philadelphia Remnant Magazine January/February 2011”

The Jewish Dream

 

*The song starts at 7 minutes*

 

DREAMING

 

The morning rays strike the place
Masada’s heroes fought
Our tears swell for those who fell
Forever in our thoughts
Dreaming of some day at hand
When innocent blood no longer stains the sand
The glistening sea of the Galilee
Reflects the azure sky
Birds’ sweet trill from Tzfas’ hills
Echo as they fly
Dreaming of some future time
When joyful songs replace the siren cries

So with hope we lift our eyes to you, Jerusalem
G-d’s grace will surely rise from you, Jerusalem
Though for thousands of years we’ve been scattered
In you our prayers are gathered
Near and far, any place we are, Jerusalem

So we take you in our heart and soul, Jerusalem
We will never ever let you go, Jerusalem
For all that we’ve had to endure, now
Israel’ll be strong and secure now
G-d will help us through
Dreams do come true, Jerusalem

Machpela Cave given away
No more to hear our prayers
Walls cast gloom on Rochel’s tomb
We still have much to fear
Dreaming of the perfect dawn
When new griefs no longer must be mourned

In her mountain coves, under olive groves
They long for time to spend
But the Golan Heights and border fights
Her young soldiers must defend
Dreaming of some coming day
When tools of war can be forever thrown away

So with hope we lift our eyes to you, Jerusalem
G-d’s grace will surely rise from you, Jerusalem
Though for thousands of years we’ve been scattered
In you our prayers are gathered
From near and far, any place we are, Jerusalem

So we take you in our heart and soul, Jerusalem
We will never ever let you go, Jerusalem
For all that we’ve had to endure, now
Israel’ll be strong and secure now
G-d will help us through
Dreams do come true, Jerusalem

The Kotel’s stones hear the moans
Of desperate groups of Jews
We must unite in Israel’s fight
We have so much to lose
Dreaming of a day to be
When we walk our land, together, proud and free!

So with hope we lift our eyes to you, Jerusalem
G-d’s grace will surely rise from you, Jerusalem
Though for thousands of years we’ve been scattered
In you our prayers are gathered
So we turn to you, each and every Jew, Jerusalem

So we take you in our heart and soul, Jerusalem
We will never ever let you go, Jerusalem
For all that we’ve had to endure, now
Israel’ll be strong and secure now
G-d will help us through
Dreams do come true, Jerusalem

 

*Shalsheles – Dreaming*

Difference between TIBETANS and PALESTINIANS

A TALE OF TWO PEOPLES

By Dennis Prager
3/25/2008

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The long-suffering Tibetans have been in the news. This happens perhaps once or

twice a decade. In a more moral world, however, public opinion would be far more

preoccupied with Tibetans than with Palestinians, would be as harsh on China as

it is on Israel, and would be as fawning on Israel as it now is on China.

But, alas, the world is, as it has always been, a largely mean-spirited and morally

insensitive place, where might is far more highly regarded than right.

Consider the facts:

Tibet, at least 1,400 years old, is one of the world’s oldest nations, has its own language,

its own religion and even its own ethnicity. Over 1 million of its people have been killed

by the Chinese, its culture has been systematically obliterated, 6,000 of its 6,200

monasteries have been looted and destroyed, and most of its monks have been tortured,

murdered or exiled.

Palestinians have none of these characteristics. There has never been a Palestinian

country, never been a Palestinian language, never been a Palestinian ethnicity, never

been a Palestinian religion in any way distinct from Islam elsewhere. Indeed, “Palestinian”

had always meant any individual living in the geographic area called Palestine.

For most of the first half of the 20th century, “Palestinian” and “Palestine” almost

always referred to the Jews of Palestine.

The United Jewish Appeal, the worldwide Jewish charity that provided the nascent

Jewish state with much of its money, was actually known as the United Palestine

Appeal.

Compared to Tibetans,few Palestinians have been killed, its culture has not been

destroyed nor its mosques looted or plundered, and Palestinians have received

billions of dollars from the international community.

Unlike the dying Tibetan nation, there are far more Palestinians today than when

Israel was created. None of this means that a distinct Palestinian national identity

does not now exist.

Since Israel’s creation such an identity has arisen and does indeed exist.

Nor does any of this deny that many Palestinians suffered as a result of the

creation of the third Jewish state in the area, known — since the Romans

renamed Judea — as “Palestine.”

But it does mean that of all the causes the world could have adopted, the

Palestinians’ deserved to be near the bottom and the Tibetans’ near the top.

This is especially so since the Palestinians could have had a state of their own

from 1947 on, and they have caused great suffering in the world, while the far

more persecuted Tibetans have been characterized by a morally rigorous

doctrine of nonviolence.

So, the question is, why?

Why have the Palestinians received such undeserved attention and support,

and the far more aggrieved and persecuted and moral Tibetans given virtually

no support or attention?

The first reason is terror. Some time ago, the Palestinian leadership decided,

with the overwhelming support of the Palestinian people, that murdering as

many innocent people — first Jews, and then anyone else — was the fastest

way to garner world attention. They were right.

On the other hand, as The Economist notes in its March 28, 2008 issue,

“Tibetan nationalists have hardly ever resorted to terrorist tactics…”

It is interesting to speculate how the world would have reacted had Tibetans

hijacked international flights, slaughtered Chinese citizens in Chinese

restaurants and temples, on Chinese buses and trains, and massacred

Chinese schoolchildren.

The second reason is oil and support from powerful fellow Arabs.

The Palestinians have rich friends who control the world’s most needed

commodity, oil. The Palestinians have the unqualified support of all Middle

Eastern oil-producing nations and the support of the Muslim world beyond

the Middle East.

The Tibetans are poor and have the support of no nations, let alone

oil-producing ones.

The third reason is Israel. To deny that pro-Palestinian activism in the

world is sometimes related to hostility toward Jews is to deny the obvious.

It is not possible that the unearned preoccupation with the Palestinians is

unrelated to the fact that their enemy is the one Jewish state in the world.

Israel’s Jewishness is a major part of the Muslim world’s hatred of Israel.

It is also part of Europe’s hostility toward Israel:

Portraying Israel as oppressors assuages some of Europe’s guilt about

the Holocaust — “see, the Jews act no better than we did.”

Hence the ubiquitous comparisons of Israel to Nazis.

A fourth reason is China. If Tibet had been crushed by a white European

nation, the Tibetans would have elicited far more sympathy. But, alas, their

near-genocidal oppressor is not white. And the world does not take mass

murder committed by non-whites nearly as seriously as it takes anything

done by Westerners against non-Westerners.

Furthermore, China is far more powerful and frightening than Israel.

Israel has a great army and nuclear weapons, but it is pro-West, it is a free

and democratic society, and it has seven million people in a piece of land

as small as Belize. China has nuclear weapons, has a trillion U.S. dollars,

an increasingly mighty army and navy, is neither free nor democratic,

is anti-Western, and has 1.2 billion people in a country that dominates

the Asian continent.

A fifth reason is the world’s Left. As a general rule, the Left demonizes Israel

and has loved China since it became Communist in 1948. And given the power

of the Left in the world’s media, in the political life of so many nations, and in

the universities and the arts, it is no wonder vicious China has been idolized

and humane Israel demonized.

The sixth reason is the United Nations, where Israel has been condemned in

more General Assembly and Security Council resolutions than any other country

in the world. At the same time, the UN has voted China onto its Security Council

and has never condemned it. China’s sponsoring of Sudan and its genocidal

acts against its non-Arab black population, as in Darfur, goes largely unremarked

on at the UN, let alone condemned, just as is the case with its cultural genocide,

ethnic cleansing and military occupation of Tibet.

The seventh reason is television news, the primary source of news for much of mankind.

Aside from its leftist tilt, television news reports only what it can video. And almost

no country is televised as much as Israel, while video reports in Tibet are forbidden,

as they are almost anywhere in China except where strictly monitored by the Chinese

authorities. No video, no TV news. And no TV, no concern.

So while grieving Palestinians and the accidental killings of Palestinians during

morally necessary Israeli retaliations against terrorists are routinely televised,

the slaughter of over a million Tibetans and the extinguishing of Tibetan Buddhism

and culture are non-events as far as television news is concerned.

The world is unfair, unjust and morally twisted.

And rarely more so than in its support for the Palestinians — no matter how many

innocents they target for murder and no matter how much Nazi-like anti-Semitism

permeates their media — and its neglect of the cruelly treated, humane Tibetans.

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A very interesting piece of article from FrontPageMagazine.com