The following was posted on the Seattle site and normally these things are spammed acroos the network, and in any case is typical of certain postings from right wing Christians and Zionist. Who are the Palestinians, it asks, and then gives the typical Zionist answer (no one you need be concerned about, terrorists, congenitally evil, liars, attempted thieves, etc etc...read all about it).

 http://seattle.indymedia.org/comment.php3?publishtype=webcast&top_id=16047

The piece is a fundamentalist Christian distortion of History...
as recognized by sources such as 'Answering Islam', and it really does get tiring to read those same twisted distortions, racist rants, and obvious falsehoods again and again. Some of it was lifted from that 'raptureready' website that was given front page treatment in Time magazine for God only knows what reason, so we will probably be hearing a lot of this for a while as some of those millions of visitors to the site regurgitate the historical nonsense you can find posted their, these people apparently not having much a sense of history after all, or one must suppose. Let's just brush the surface, shall we, and if refreshing everyone's memory of the real truth about the creation of the state of Israel on already occupied land is not served by the briefest of reminders of actual history, then perhaps something more intensive might be required. Its my hope that those Christians who read Time magazine might pause on their way by to drop off some more of that same crap they picked up off of that raptureready website, read this, and maybe get their memory refreshed, if they forgot the simple well known truth, or learn something if it should be the case that they were home schooled or went to religious school, and thus never learned a thing in the first place...

If you need to refresh your memory of what right wing Christian/Zionist propaganda sounds like you can visit the link above, or visit rapture ready, where you find much of the same thing, some of it literally quoted, and then you can return here for the briefest refresher course in basic simple history...

The census data during the Ottoman rule show hundreds of thousands of "palestinians' and only about ten thousand Jewish people, most of them imports under the doctrine of Zionism that began to flourish in the late nineteenth century. The wave of Jewish immigration, mostly from Eastern Europe, began around 1880. Then during the British mandate the population had increased to 1.3 million palestinians and about a hundred thousand Jewish people, once again imports under the doctrine of Zionism, most of them from Eastern Europe, since the Jewish people in such places as Western Europe or America didn't have much enthusiasm for moving to Israel, while the Eastern European Jews were leaving poverty and squallor, and so if they found poverty and squallor in this new land, it wasn't like they were taking a step down in the world.

The Christian fundamentalist and Jewish distortion of history is best summed up as 'an empty land for a landless people'. You might recall the recent wave of sackings and wide spread vilification in Israel of certain professors and academics and others who dared, publically, yes, that's right publically, to question the doctrine that Israel was empty before Jewish people came. The huge underlying blood guiltiness, not to mention theft and wide spread terrorism that went into the creation of that state of Israel is not a big secret to those who don't get all their indoctrination from that Jewish lobby or the Christian right, and let's just say it is such a festering sore point for Israel, that even mentioning the fact that maybe, just maybe, you were living on someone else's farm, on land where someone else lived for centuries, land taken, without compensation, just simply thieved and stolen, which is what happened, well you can understand how Zionists will go ballistic when you start rubbing that sore point and pointing out how criminal it is to steal and oppress, and then steal more and more (witness those shrinking Palestinian Indian reservations, those worthless treaties offering those INdians a smaller reservation). Best to keep pumping out that wild Indian propaganda you always get from those Christians and their Zionist allies, propaganda that would be recognizable to anyone who lived in the 17th and 18th and 19th century, and also instantly recognizable by how deeply offensive such racist rants always are...but such are the methods that must be resorted to by unjust and oppressor, not to mention the national thief. Let's just get it all out in the open then shall we, and quit beating around the bush when it comes to that state of Israel, founded on terrorism, guilty of wide spread theft, and now driven by cognitive dissonance into that same offensive bigotry and racism that characterized the age of colonialism, and pumping out similar sounding racist propaganda and a steady stream of perversions of history and outright falsehoods and lies in the process. All these things are directly linked to Jewish guilt, which is directly related to Jewish deeds.

But let's look at some of the most commonly understood well known history for a moment just to get some minimal idea of the great mountains Jewish and Christian propagandists must move if they are to do the Orwellian thing and clip out of the papers all those bad people and bad newspaper articles, and just finally get history rewritten in such a way as they can live with it, all hammered into place by that Jewish racism, so familiar to anyone who has actually listened to the Jewish lobby, the Jewish posters, the travelling road shows of those racist Jewish politicians, and just disgusting and offensive to anyone with a sense of justice (just as bad, really, as reading some of that colonial crap from centuries past, instantly recognized for the self serving, guilt avoiding, oppressive racist garbage that it is, if only because of the passage of time. At the time it was written those settlers and colonizers needed that virulent racism, you know, so they could live with themselves while they did what they did, and so do Israeli bigots and racists - same need same offensive racism and dirty propaganda, distorted history, lies, oppression, theft and fraud...)


Let's review some of what we would hope would be common historical understanding, just to get an idea of what the Christian/zionist lobby are up against here in propagating that myth of the 'empty land' that conveniently was waiting empty for the 'last days end times return of Israel' as the Christians like to call it (quoting a bunch of old prophecies about the return from the Babylonian exile over 2500 years ago, in the process, but never mind)

The Arab Sasaaniam empire was ruling over Jerusalem as early as 540 C.E. In the 690s the Arabs living in what we now call Israel built the first mosque in Jerusalem. Very long time ago. Ages really. 1400 years ago. YOu might be familiar with it. Its called the Dome of the Rock. Built by Arabs. Living in Israel. Not an empty place, just recently filled with imported Arabs (God and Magog, the Philistine shock troops of Armageddon). No built a long time ago by Arabs living in what was then and remained until 1948, Arab land.

You might be familiar with 'the Tomb of Abraham in Hebron.' Now whether it really is the tomb of Abraham is beside the point. Let's just say that in the middle ages the Arabs spent a lot of time visiting Hebron, you know, after they would do a pilgrimmage to the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, an Arab city for long centuries, they would then visit that other sacred site on Arab land, the Tomb of Abraham. Very popular site. Visited a lot. Fabulously popular for close to 1500 years...

You might recall the long history of the crusades. Terrible time. Many people killed. You see, Arabs were living in the 'Holy Land' God forbid, the Jewish people having been scattered for well centuries. Despite the best attempts of Christians throughtout the middle ages to dislodge those freeloading interlopers who were now living there, those Arab squatters continued to rule over what we now call Israel going back for a very very long time. As for Jewish people they were scattered in Arab cities across the Middle East, as well as across the face of the earth, and those who remained in the cities of Palestine during the middle ages spoke Arabic, since, this was after all, now the Arab empire, and when in Arabia, do as the Arabs do, right. I just mention this as a counter to that bit about 'a long history of conflict' (that same story being posted on CNN over and over again, which tends to suggest that Arabs and Jews have been at each others throats since Biblical times, something that will appeal to Zionists and right wing Christians, who like to think of Palestinians as "philistines", the bad guys of the Bible, in fact the raptureready site featured on time magazine goes into detail about how Palestinian actually means 'Philistine' something that should resonate with right wing Christian visitors to the site, who can then open their Bibles and read of contemporary history, those Philistines (the shock troops of Gog and Magog) being up to their usual evil deeds, as such rotten races usually are (just read the ancient racism of the Bible to get a snout full of this sort of thing). There was no long history of conflict, as Jewish people lived in cities in what we now call Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, well they were scattered all over the Arabian empires, speaking Arabic of course, just anyone Jewish in America speaks English. The ancient history of conflict story is a myth, and really just an attempt at invoking religious mystification in the service of that hard working Israel as she tries to do the Orwellian thing and falisify history long enough to pull off that American Indian thing she has going in that place she's colonizing and pioneering with settlers and so on...at which time everyone will forget the past and she can just live their in peace the way Americans do. of course that will take a while and until then she will need all the help she can get...

But back to our elementary history lesson for the sake of those who might not know any history and thus listen to a Christian or a Zionist instead, which would be a big mistake, as even the most cursory overview of history suggests. For a few passing years in the eleventh century the Christian crusaders managed to set up a Christian state in Palestine, but they were kicked out by Salah al-Din, who was able to appeal to religious fervor of those angered Arabs in Egypt and Syria over the loss of their sacred and holy sites and defeated the European invaders. Notice I said European Christians. Not Jews. And this time it was Arabs who were incensed over the loss of their 'Holy Land' what with the tomb of Abraham and the Dome of the Rock and various other regional and smaller monuments scattered throughout those Arab lands, what we now know of as Israel. Lots of Arabs living there. Constant thorn in the side of Christian Europe that this was Arab land. Many crusades. Centuries of terrible violence. Many people killed, but to no avail, as time and again those Arabs managed to fend off those crusading Christian interlopers and hang onto their land, you know, what we now call Israel, Israel 'the empty desert' as these right wing propagandists, our modern crusaders (unfortunately) continue to misrepresent the real history of the place. Presently the descendants of these Arabs, with a history stretching back close to two thousand years, you know, when the Romans removed all the Jews, well these people are among those 'squatting' on more sacred land, you know in Gaza and the West Bank, and so all Christians, like Mary, the author of 'Who are the Palestinians' (having picked a good chunk of it up from that raptureready website, I noticed) well these crusaders are once again being called on to crusade against those unwanted Arabs, crusading on Indymedia sites and God only knows where else, as well as on the blood soaked streets of the West Bank and Gaza, continuing the long long holy Christian crusade, (how little things have changed) with not a few lies and distortions of well known and documented history along the way, things they would rather you either didn't know (hence the propaganda) or if you do know maybe you might forget, which will make the evil of that crusading so much easier, not that they won't do this abomination anyway, evil or not - it would just be easier, that's all, if you didn't know, and instead believed transparent lies and racist tripe, which you can fill your mind with, if you choose, by reading such books as 'Answering Islam', a right wing crusader screed, or visiting that raptureready.com site that was recently featured on the cover of Time magazine, and recycles the same non historical twisted crusader distortions of the type you can read by following the link above, if you feel that you need to read one more right wing Christian or Zionist twisting of history.