The Jews Face a Double Standard

[shagdrum]

The Jews Face a Double Standard
Why doesn't Israel have the same right to self-defense as other nations?
By MARVIN HIER

The world-wide protests against Israel's ground incursion into Gaza are so full of hatred that they leave me with the terrible feeling that these protests have little to do with the so-called disproportionality of the Israeli response to Hamas rockets, or the resulting civilian casualties.

My fear is that the rage we see in the protesters marching in the streets is far more profound and dangerous than we would like to believe. There are a great many people in the world who, even after Auschwitz, just can't bear the Jewish state having the same rights they so readily grant to other nations. These voices insist Israel must take risks they would never dare ask of any other nation-state -- risks that threaten its very survival -- because they don't believe Israel should exist in the first place.

Just look at the spate of attacks this week on Jews and Jewish institutions around the world: a car ramming into a synagogue in France; a Chabad menorah and Jewish-owned shops sprayed with swastikas in Belgium; a banner at an Australian rally demanding "clean the earth from dirty Zionists!"; demonstrators in the Netherlands chanting "Gas the Jews"; and in Florida, protestors demanding Jews "Go back to the ovens!"

How else can we explain the double-standard that is applied to the Gaza conflict, if not for a more insidious bias against the Jewish state?

At the U.N., no surprise, this double-standard is in full force. In response to Israel's attack on Hamas, the Security Council immediately pulled an all-night emergency meeting to consider yet another resolution condemning Israel. Have there been any all-night Security Council sessions held during the seven months when Hamas fired 3,000 rockets at half a million innocent civilians in southern Israel? You can be certain that during those seven months, no midnight oil was burning at the U.N. headquarters over resolutions condemning terrorist organizations like Hamas. But put condemnation of Israel on the agenda and, rain or shine, it's sure to be a full house.

Red Cross officials are all over the Gaza crisis, describing it as a full-blown humanitarian nightmare. Where were they during the seven months when tens of thousands of Israeli families could not sleep for fear of a rocket attack? Where were their trauma experts to decry that humanitarian crisis?

There have been hundreds of articles and reports written from the Erez border crossing falsely accusing Israel of blocking humanitarian supplies from reaching beleaguered Palestinians in Gaza. (In fact, over 520 truck loads of humanitarian aid have been delivered through Israeli crossings since the beginning of the Israeli counterattack.) But how many news articles, NGO reports and special U.N. commissions have investigated Hamas's policy of deliberately placing rocket launchers near schools, mosques and homes in order to use innocent Palestinians as human shields?

Many people ask why there are so few Israeli casualties in comparison with the Palestinian death toll. It's because Israel's first priority is the safety of its citizens, which is why there are shelters and warning systems in Israeli towns. If Hamas can dig tunnels, it can certainly build shelters. Instead, it prefers to use women and children as human shields while its leaders rush into hiding.

And then there are the clarion calls for a cease-fire. These words, which come so easily, have proven to be a recipe for disaster. Hamas uses the cease-fire as a time-out to rearm and smuggle even more deadly weapons so the next time, instead of hitting Sderot and Ashkelon, they can target Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The pattern is always the same. Following a cease-fire brought on by international pressure, there will be a call for a massive infusion of funds to help Palestinians recover from the devastation of the Israeli attack. The world will respond eagerly, handing over hundreds of millions of dollars. To whom does this money go? To Hamas, the same terrorist group that brought disaster to the Palestinians in the first place.

The world seems to have forgotten that at the end of World War II, President Harry Truman initiated the Marshall Plan, investing vast sums to rebuild Germany. But he did so only with the clear understanding that the money would build a new kind of Germany -- not a Fourth Reich that would continue the policies of Adolf Hitler. Yet that is precisely what the world will be doing if we once again entrust funds to Hamas terrorists and their Iranian puppet masters.

In less than two weeks, Barack Obama will be sworn in as president of the United States. But there is no "change we can believe in" in the Middle East -- not where Israel is concerned. The double-standard continuously applied to the Jewish state proves that, for much of the world, the real lessons of World War II have yet to be learned.

Mr. Hier, a rabbi, is the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance.

 

[shagdrum]

Who Are the Real Nazis?
With Hamas, Hitlerism comes to the Middle East wearing the mask of anti-Hitlerism.
By Jonah Goldberg

"Go back to the oven! You need a big oven, that’s what you need!”

This is what one young woman thought passed for acceptable discourse during an anti-Israel rally last week in, of all places, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Other chants were similarly unlovely. You can watch it on YouTube if you like.

But why bother? The Fort Lauderdale outburst is just one window on the upside-down world of Israel hatred. Across the Islamic world, and in too many points West, it is still considered a penetrating and poignant insight to call Zionists the “new Nazis.” For instance, in Sunday’s Gulf News, Mohammad Abdullah al Mutawa, a sociology professor at United Arab Emirates University, penned an essay titled “Zionists are the new Nazis.” He began: “Today, the whole world stands as a witness to the fact that the Nazi Holocaust was a mere lie, which was devised by the Zionists to blackmail humanity.”

At a Saturday protest in New York against Israel’s military assault on Gaza, some carried signs that read: “Israel: The Fourth Reich,” “Holocaust by Holocaust Survivors,” “Stop Israel’s Holocaust,” “Holocaust in Gaza” and “Stop the Zionist Genocide in Gaza.”

Type “Israel” and “Nazi” into any news search engine and you’ll be rewarded, or punished, with a bounty of such statements from just the last week or so. Gaza is the new Auschwitz, the Israeli Defense Forces are SS troops ... I find myself tempted to simply write “et cetera” because it’s all so familiar by now. But to do that is to dismiss, and therefore accept, such grotesqueries as trivialities, when in fact such charges are deeply revealing — just not about Israel.

First, let us note that if supposedly all-powerful Israel is dedicated to exterminating the Palestinian people, it is doing a bad job. The Palestinian population has only grown since 1948. There are more Arab citizens living in Israel proper today than there were in all of Palestine the year Israel was founded.

Perhaps one reason Israel fails at genocide is that it isn’t interested in genocide? That would explain why Israel warned thousands of Gazans by cell phone to leave homes near Hamas rocket stockpiles. It would clarify why, even amid all-out war, it offers aid to enemy civilians. It would even illuminate the otherwise mysterious clamor from Israelis for a viable “peace partner.”

But no. For millions of Israel haters, the more plausible explanation is that the “defiant” Palestinians have miraculously survived Israel’s determination to wipe them out.

Meanwhile, calls for the complete extermination of Israel are routine. The Hamas charter, invoking the fraudulent “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as justification, demands the destruction of Israel. Hamas exists solely because it is dedicated to the complete obliteration of the “Zionist entity.” Remove that “principle” and Hamas is meaningless.

A sick mixture of Holocaust envy and Holocaust denial is the defining spirit of Hamas. Indeed, Holocaust denial passes for a scholarly pursuit not just in Gaza but throughout much of the Arab and Muslim world.

The head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, literally earned a doctorate in it. His doctoral thesis became a book, The Other Side: the Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism, in which he denounces “the Zionist fantasy, the fantastic lie that 6 million Jews were killed.” In Hamas’ eyes, Abbas is an incorrigible moderate.

It’s Palestinian Islamists who have ideological and political ties to Nazism stretching back to the days of “Hitler’s Mufti,” Haj Amin al-Husseini, a happy warrior for the Nazi cause.

So why the obsession with casting the Israelis as the new Hitlerites? One answer is surely that critics know such charges are painful to a country largely born of the Holocaust and marked by its scars. It also grabs attention, galvanizes radicals, vents legitimate frustrations and anger, and helps demonize the enemy and, hence, justify the murder of “Zionists everywhere,” as Hamas often declares in its communiques.

But I think the desire to cast the Israelis as Nazis is fueled, deep down, by the haters’ need to see their own hatreds and ambitions mirrored in their enemy’s actions. Hamas has an avowedly Hitlerite agenda. The only way to make such an agenda defensible is to convince yourself and others that the Israelis deserve it. Hence, Hamas and its allies insist that when they aim rockets at grade schools and playgrounds, they are resisting the “new Nazis.” It brings to mind Huey Long’s reported prophecy that if fascism ever came to America, it would be called anti-fascism. Well, with Hamas, Hitlerism comes to the Middle East wearing the mask of anti-Hitlerism.

 

[JWerner2]

This is something that has been going on before WWII.

In fact from my readings the Jews had migrated from Europe before the 40's in the early 20's do to the British selling off land. The British found it to be great agricultural land and knew that they were losing territories and figured it would only come to Israel next. Both Zionists living inside the territory and Arabs did not like this much cause neither could afford it nore wanted they country to modernize but who could and who would really want it more other than European Jews.

I found some very good info in reading The Birth of Israel and also watching the document that goes along with it bearing the same name by the BBC.


The European Jews were known to commit Genocide on the Arabs and Zionists living in the country before Hitler devised his plans for Jews himself. They also had developed what we today would call Terror groups to fight off the British and the Arabs.

The documentary makes it appear as if the Jews were radicals of this time and both true Zionists and Arabs have always recognized and respected each others presence but the British made promises to the Arabs which lead to illegal immigration by Jews and then the Holocaust which brought even more illegal immigration. We face it here today and disapprove just as the Arabs did back then but by that time everyone was so sympathetic do to the Holocaust no one cared.


One thing that I stand by with this conflict is that the Jews did win a Independence but they did not do it for the people of Israel, they did so all Jews could come claim land and kick out its inhabitants which to me is just not right.


HAMAS needs to go but Israel needs to respect the Palestinians which they never have and doubtfully ever will.


Im interested to see how much of Gaza Israel occupies this time. Its as if they take more and more with every operation like this one. With the Housing developments going up in what is said to be illegal on Palestinians right full grounds and what the past has shown I really cant help but to wonder if it is all they are up to. I haven't followed it for a few days now but last I checked Israel didn't want a regime change. Why?

 

[Calabrio]

JWerner, I simply don't have time at the moment to go through your post, but it is ENTIRELY WRONG. You're perception of the history in that region couldn't be more wrong unless you studied at a mosque somewhere in Saudi Arabia.

From your point that Israel was "great agricultural land" to your equating the Israeli population with genocide to your closing point that makes no sense.... You're completely wrong.

It's just so fundamentally flawed, I can't even just quickly correct you-
the entire thing is wrong. Nothing you said was correct.

 

[JWerner2]

Ok so tell me why the BBC would make any of this up at all. And tell me exactly ( not in your words ) what went on.


I didnt make this up so dont come off on me, this is what I have read.


You dont wanna correct me cause you dont know exactly what to correct!


I guess by watching un biased BBC documentaries Im studying at a mosque somewhere in Saudi Arabia.


By the way, you once again did nothing but bash the opposing side with out point or anyway of proving they are wrong. When faced with facts as I said the extreme right does nothing but bash and attempt to humiliate. You asked for a example and you just gave one.

 

[shagdrum]

You dont wanna correct me cause you dont know exactly what to correct!

Careful with your wording there...

As you phrased that, the problem would be with the person making the argument (in this case, you) not making it clear, specific and/or substantive enough.

And, the BBC is notoriously anti-Israel and borderline anti-semite ; a bias that has been shown to distort their reporting to the point of mischaracterization and spin...

By the way, you once again did nothing but bash the opposing side with out point or anyway of proving they are wrong. When faced with facts as I said the extreme right does nothing but bash and attempt to humiliate. You asked for a example and you just gave one.

Calabrio was not "bashing" anyone he simply said he didn't have time to respond with any substance at the moment. You claim the he is "once again...bash(ing) the opposing side without...proving they are wrong". If that is the case, then you can prove it. Cite examples of other instances that you claim to have occurred. It seems you are the one lashing out here without any substance.

Your "facts" are distortions and smears that you are buying into, but it is clear (due to that last comment) that you are unwilling to have an honest debate on this, and are simply going to echo the current dishonest and decietful talking point to marginalize the right that has become en vouge on this forum...

Can you not have patience? When Calabrio has the time, I am sure he would be willing to respond substantively. Though, after that last comment of yours, I think he would be wasting his time with you. You are more eager to smear someone to defend your position then to give them an honest chance to actually respond with any degree of substance.

 

[JWerner2]

Sorry. I understand your point. I also do understand your post and it was good readings. I just wanted to share

Also about my lashing out, the words used by him were uncalled for and offensive to me. He made it sound as if I made it up which I did not and I did take ofens to and do understand his point when he said...

You're perception of the history in that region couldn't be more wrong unless you studied at a mosque somewhere in Saudi Arabia.

If my readings are untrue and can be proven not to be true than I can admit that but dont make it sound as if Im coming up with this stuff on the spot if you have nothing to back that up.


Your word of advice to be patient can be said just the same for him. Why was he not so patient as to wait to make his post when he had valid proof?

 

[Calabrio]

The problem is, JWerner, you're history wasn't just a little bit wrong, it's completely wrong. I can't just correct it, I have to either write an essay on the histories of the Nation of Israel or find a source online that has done it for me.

Michael Medved: Wednesday, July 26, 2006

.... In order to place these realities in proper perspective, it’s first necessary to reject some thirty years of wildly irresponsible anti-Israel propaganda. First of all, it’s not true in any sense that the modern Jewish State ever supplanted or destroyed an existing nation of “Palestine.” From the time of definitive destruction of the ancient Jewish commonwealth in 70 A.D., the land that comprises the current State of Israel never enjoyed independent existence but, rather, passed back and forth among competing world empires—Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Crusader, Mamaluke, Ottoman and British. Over the course of more than 1,800 years, no nation with the name “Palestine” appeared on any maps, anywhere. The distinguished Arab-American historian Philip Hitti, professor at Princeton University, testified to the Anglo American Committee in 1946: ‘There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in history, absolutely not.”

Mark Twain visited the Holy Land in 1867, shortly before the commencement of modern Jewish resettlement, and described it as “a desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent, mournful expanse… A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action.” According to the careful population figures of the Ottoman Empire, in 1882 (at the very beginning of the modern, organized Jewish immigration back to the ancestral home), the total population of land between the Jordan and the Sea was less than 250,000 – in an area that today supports ten million people, Israelis and Palestinians.

The resettlement of the sparsely populated Holy Land by the descendants of its ancient inhabitants, however, did not take place solely in the modern era. Throughout Jewish history, waves of returnees came back to the sacred soil of their ancestors. In the 8th and 9th centuries, A.D., Jewish immigrants re-established major communities in Jerusalem and Tiberias; by the 11th Century, they had built new communities in Jaffa, Ashkelon, Caesarea and Rafah. In the 16th Century, more Jewish immigrants developed the famous center of mysticism in Safed and beginning in the 1700’s religious scholars and pilgrims intensely repopulated Jerusalem.

The Jewish connection to Israel, in other words, remained impassioned and unbroken for some three thousand years, while the British connection with North American began only in 1607 (with Jamestown) and 1620 (with the Pilgrims at Plymouth). No European settlers to the New World claimed an ancient connection to the land they discovered, developed, and gradually populated. Moreover, the Native Americans who preceded them came to the Western Hemisphere across the land bridge from Asia at the very latest some 13,000 years before the White Men arrived, while the Arabs appeared in Israel for the first time in the 7th Century.

If opponents of the modern Jewish State argue that Israelis have no meaningful claim on the land they occupy then on what basis do today’s Americans have a stake in the vast continent once inhabited by millions of members of hundreds of Indian tribes?

Moreover, the Jewish title to the land of Israel received long-standing recognition from international organizations that didn’t even exist at the time of American independence. On July 24, 1922, the 52 governments of the League of Nations formally recognized and endorsed the British Balfour Declaration calling for “reconstituting….a national home for the Jewish people” in the land with which that people enjoyed “historical connections.” Twenty-five years later, the United Nations (successor body to the League of Nations) validated this title with the partition plan, dividing the British Mandate in the area into two states—one Jewish, one Arab. The Arab leadership violently rejected that solution, but after Israel’s bloody war for Independence the UN recognized Israel as a full member state in 1949.

Unlike Israel, the United States won no international recognition prior to the commencement of our own war for Independence; we only won that acknowledgment after the courage and sacrifice of the patriots who waged our Revolutionary struggle. In the end, an estimated 25,000 Americans died in the war—nearly 1% of the Colonial population at the time. In a haunting similarity, Israel lost 6,373 fighters in its War of Independence—nearly 1% of the Jewish population of nation at the time. In the case of the American struggle, final victory only became possible through the direct intervention of France, and the participation (at the climactic battle of Yorktown) of a French fleet and army of some 20,000. In the case of Israel, foreign assistance remained strictly limited (the US imposed an arms embargo on Israel and the rest of the Middle East in 1947) and no foreign armies of any kind ever fought alongside the beleaguered Israelis.

In other words, the founders of the modern Jewish State built their nation on the same basis as the founders of the United States—with generations of building, toil, business development, land reclamation, settlement, and sacrifice in battle. Tel Aviv – by far the largest city in today’s Israel, and the nation’s financial center– was founded in 1909 and built from nothing, mostly on reclaimed sand dunes. In Jerusalem, Israel’s capital and second largest city, some two-thirds of the population lives in new neighborhoods built on empty land after Jewish immigrants began moving outside the Old City walls in the nineteenth century. Apparently, those who make the idiotic (but occasionally well-meaning) suggestion that the Jews of Israel should save the world some trouble and relocate in Florida, or Australia, or the moon, remain unaware of this history. The idea that literally millions of people would uproot their homes -- along with their businesses, parks, universities, museums, freeways and so forth – makes no more sense than expecting residents of New York or Los Angeles to dismantle and abandon the cities that they (and their ancestors) built.

Of course, those who suggest that Israelis should simply move their country somewhere else don’t always mean well—as evidenced by Iran’s demented president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. His mad obsession with transplanting all Jews from the Middle East to Europe (he recently wrote a public letter to the Chancellor of Germany with that plan in mind) reflects one of the most pernicious big lies of Islamist propaganda: the contention that Israel was an alien intrusion “imposed” on the Palestinian people to compensate Jews for the Holocaust (which may never have happened anyway). Of course, this argument ignores the fact that the League of Nations endorsed the idea of a Jewish State in 1922—11 years before Hitler even came to power! It also provides no explanation for the fact that the British Empire, which supposedly sponsored Israel as a refuge for allegedly persecuted Jews, actually blocked and outlawed settlement in the Middle East of all Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution both during the Holocaust years, and in the period immediately following the war. Most important of all, more than 700,000 Jews arrived in Israel as refugees from Islamic countries of North Africa and the Middle East and outnumbered all immigrants fleeing Hitlerism by a ratio of more than two to one. Ironically, one of these “Oriental Jews” who fled to the Jewish State from the Near East is the current President of Israel, Moshe Katzav—who was born in Ahmadinejad’s Iran, not Germany or Poland. Just as the population of the United States is made up of people whose forebears came from every corner of the globe—from Africa and Asia and Latin America as well as Europe—so too Israel has been populated by immigrants of all imaginable shades of skin color, from more than 80 nations (including a major recent influx from Ethiopia) on six continents. In neither case does the slogan “Go Back to Europe Where You Came From” make even the most superficial sort of sense.

For those who instinctively resist any comparison of Israel’s “right to exist” with that of the United States, the crucial difference must be one of longevity: America has now enjoyed 230 years of prosperous independence, while Israel has yet to reach its sixtieth birthday. Yet other nations (Slovakia? Turkmenistan? Namibia?) have come into being far more recently than Israel, without endless public challenges to their legitimacy. Montenegro, for instance, just joined the family of nations a few months ago—despite the fact that more that 45% of the citizens of the new country voted against its independence.

So if the long-standing, successful functioning of the American Republic provides the main basis for greater acceptance of our national existence, it might be more useful to analogize Israel today and the United States some 60 years after our own beginnings –say, in the year 1836, at the height of the Jacksonian Era, when the admiring French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville toured the young Republic in eloquent amazement. Had America earned a “right to exist” by 1836? Countless Indian wars to secure the lands of the Great Plains and the West still lay in our nation’s future, as did a spectacularly successful war against Mexico which brought about a vast expansion of American territory (into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and more)--- sort of the U.S. equivalent of Israel’s Six Day War of 1967.

Except for the fact that Israel has already given back most of the land it gained in that conflict – returning all of Sinai and Gaza to Arab adversaries, with the current Israeli government committed to still further (and very significant) concessions in the West Bank. These compromises (and potential compromises) reflect a fact that nearly all Jews understand, but that most Americans want to deny: that history is frequently, even generally, unfair. Whatever Israel’s claims to legitimacy – no matter how ancient the connection with the land, or how definitive the recognition by international law and putative world governments – the nation exists only because of the ability and willingness of its people (past, present and future) to defend it against ruthless enemies. By the same token, it might be pleasant to assume that America remains secure and safe because a grateful world appreciates what our nation has done to introduce the concept of liberty to peoples around the world, or to save humanity from Hitlerism, Stalinism and now, Islamo-Nazism. But with unreasoning, fanatical anti-Americanism on the rise nearly everywhere, more citizens have come to realize that we survive on the same basis Israel survives: through determination, through strength of character and (not least) through military power.

Like Israel, the United States isn’t a nation that grew up organically in one small corner of the earth, combining people who already spoke the same language and looked the same and shared common cultures. Both nations drew a dazzling array of dreamers and visionaries and crazies from around the world who made the choice to embrace the values and plans of the pioneers (“Halutzim,” in Hebrew). Of course, these national origins (involving acts of will, rather than accidents of birth) mean that Israel and America can’t ever be as perfect, and blameless, and pure in our turbulent histories as, say, our old world counterparts like France, say, or Spain, or Belgium. But as long as people in Tulsa and Tel Aviv, Jefferson City and Jerusalem, remain ready to sacrifice and even die for the still stirring visions of the founders, the two dynamic Republics will continue to exist – regardless of the world’s acceptance of their “right” to do so.

 

[shagdrum]

Your word of advice to be patient can be said just the same for him. Why was he not so patient as to wait to make his post when he had valid proof?

Because, frankly what you posted is distortion (likely) rooted in anti-semitism. Not that you hold that hateful view, but certian talking points that you based your analysis on and are believing and repeating are based in that. It is effectively mischaracterizing things. As such, the talking points can come across as a little offensive, hence an impassioned response. I will let Calabrio more fully elaborate on the decietful talking points, and the bigger picture with regards to Israel and it's creation.

But I will point out that in the wake of WWII, the Jewish community felt that the only way they would be safe would be to have their own country. Due to the Holocaust, the newly created UN decided to give that to them in Israel. Your analysis never mentions the security concerns of the Jewish community which was arguable at the forefront of the reasons why they wanted their own state, instead of being immigrants in another state, especially in Europe which had a long history (even before WWII) of anti-semitism. That is why they wanted a land that "the Jews could claim as their own".

 

[fossten]

HAMAS needs to go but Israel needs to respect the Palestinians which they never have and doubtfully ever will.

Why should they? The "Palestinians," as you call them, didn't even exist 30 years ago. Yasser Arafat was Egyptian, did you neglect to learn that salient fact?

The Palestinians are the invaders. That's a fact.

 

[TheDude]

Why should they? The "Palestinians," as you call them, didn't even exist 30 years ago. Yasser Arafat was Egyptian, did you neglect to learn that salient fact?

The Palestinians are the invaders. That's a fact.

Could you point me to good source of reading for this, I've had to deal with the "Jews invaded and stole land" and "Zionist doctrine' rant many a time.

I've read snips regarding the 'creation of Palestine', but nothing solid.

 

[TheDude]

Im interested to see how much of Gaza Israel occupies this time. Its as if they take more and more with every operation like this one. With the Housing developments going up in what is said to be illegal on Palestinians right full grounds and what the past has shown I really cant help but to wonder if it is all they are up to. I haven't followed it for a few days now but last I checked Israel didn't want a regime change. Why?

Maybe this will interest you more; the very land that Hamas is attacking Israel from is land they gave back just three years ago, land Israel occupied after winning the war of '67.

They made a step towards peace, despite this causing much strife within Israel as the Jews living on that land did not want to be moved, some resisting up until the final day and Israel having to forcibly remove them. This also placed close to 700 thousand Jews within range of Hamas rockets. What does Palestine do in return, they vote in Hamas who has sworn to destroy Israel and they've suffered well over 2,000 rockets fired at them in the last 2 years.

Now tell me how you go about negotiating with an enemy like that?

 

[fossten]

Could you point me to good source of reading for this, I've had to deal with the "Jews invaded and stole land" and "Zionist doctrine' rant many a time.

I've read snips regarding the 'creation of Palestine', but nothing solid.

Start here. It's an Israeli source, but the timelines are accurate. I'll see if I can find some more material later today.

Here's an interesting quote from the link:

WHAT DOES THE WORD "PALESTINE" MEAN?

It has never been the name of a nation or state. It is a geographical term, used to designate the region at those times in history when there is no nation or state there.

The word itself derives from "Peleshet", a name that appears frequently in the Bible and has come into English as "Philistine". The Philistines were Mediterranean people originating from Asia Minor and Greek localities. They 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 time of Herodotus, Greeks called the eastern coast of the Mediterranean "Syria Palaestina".

The Philistines were not Arabs nor even Semites, they were most closely related to the Greeks. They did not speak Arabic. They had no connection, ethnic, linguistic or historical with Arabia or Arabs. The name "Falastin" that Arabs today use for "Palestine" is not an Arabic name. It is the Arab pronunciation of the Greco-Roman "Palastina"; which is derived from the Peleshet, (root Pelesh) which was a general term meaning "dividers", "penetrators" or "invaders". This referred to the Philistine's invasion and conquest of the coast from the sea.

The use of the term "Palestinian" for an Arab ethnic group is a modern political creation which has no basis in fact - and had never had any international or academic credibility before 1967.

 

[hrmwrm]

foss is missing a few in between years. from 950bc to 1948ad?

here's one that starts from 1400, the ottoman empire.
http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/chronology/0_chronology.htm