‘From the River, To the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!’ First Chanted AD 1009?


Feeling a bit like that legendary ‘knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering’ – well, not exactly pale, as I spend around two hours daily sunning myself out front – I was gripped by stir-craziness again and jumped an angkot to Citraland mall, where not only eggs but apples were available at 50% discount.

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angkot angkots

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No visitors till tomorrow  – but one of my favourites due then!  I find this post-Ramadhan shut-down tiresome, though I acknowledge the workers need a break.

Whilst day-dreaming on the little red mini-bus, my thoughts strayed to a video watched last night, the commentary nearly as predisposed towards Israel as the local ‘serious’ media here in Jakarta is biased against ‘the Zionist aggressor!’

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  • But the footage – from a demo in Miami, of all places – was startling, an obnoxious Arab lout telling a Jewish reporter he’d “f**king kill” him, “and all Israelis.”

A typical genocidal chant, its meaning clear, no peace terms possible, the eradication of Israel the only acceptable solution – a Final Solution, as old Adolf might have put it.

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  • c7f1d-day11-evildead2 ISIS
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And I cast my mind back to the real Palestine, the Byzantine Province, ruled by the Christian Emperor of the East, which was populated by Christians and Jews and maybe a few remnants of paganism.

That province was over-run by invaders in AD 640.

 

 

The Islamic victors were apparently not bloodthirsty – they merely extorted the Christians and Jews, forcing them to pay jizya, a ‘tax’ on which their peculiar interpretation of ‘tolerance’ depended.

Later, though, things got worse, until a blasphemous Caliph, in AD 1009, destroyed the Holy Sepulchre itself, one of the key causes of the ill-starred wars of liberation known as the Crusades. Thereafter, Christians and Jews became minorities in their own land.

I’d need a time-machine to know exactly how this came about. Colonisation by Arabs? Forced ‘conversion’ no doubt played a part, with the most principled victims either dying or fleeing. Plus ca change…

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Sounds a bit like Mosul this past month!Christians flee Mosul amid threats to convert or die

But I just wonder, as they took flight for the right to practise their religion freely in other lands, if perhaps the refugees chanted something similar to that we hear from Jew-haters on the streets of the world’s cities at present.

‘From the River, To the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.’

The heirs to those true Palestinians, those Christians driven out by a long-ago brutal caliphate, will never, I suppose, get their ancient homeland back – they are lost, scattered to the four winds.

But one day, one hopes, that land will be free of the terrorist Hamas scourge –

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/07/25/war-weary-gazans-lash-out-at-hamas-over-refusal-cease-fire/

– there’s how they treat their own people!.