Yossi Schwartz, ISL the RCIT in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 02.04.2023
“Bezalel Yoel Smotrich (Hebrew: בְּצַלְאֵל יוֹאֵל סְמוֹטְרִיץ׳, born 27 February 1980) is a far-right Zionist politician and lawyer who has been the Minister of Finance since the end of 2022. He is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party and was a Knesset member for Yamina” [1] (to the Right) of Naftali Bennet (The former PM). He is known for his racism and homophobia. He is a resident of the settlement Kedumim in 1967 occupied lands in the West-Bank, in a house that was also built illegally according to the Zionist’s laws, as it was built outside the settlement proper. Recently he became known outside of Israel for his denial of the existence of the Palestinian nation and for his broken poor English in a speech he made in the U.S.
“PARIS — Bezalel Smotrich would like to set fire to the Palestinian Territories. This is not the first time the Israeli Minister of Finance has made such an inflammatory statement. But what he said on Sunday evening in Paris has provoked a strong reaction.
The far-right leader, who lives in a West Bank settlement and is now a minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, said what he was thinking: “The Palestinian people are an invention which is less than 100 years old. Do they have a history, a culture? No, they don’t. There are no Palestinians. There are just Arabs.”
“If these words were not enough, the podium at which he spoke was decorated with a map of “Greater Israel,” which included not only the West Bank but also Jordan, with which Israel has a peace treaty” [2]
While anyone who knows the history of Palestine is familiar with the fact that the history of the Palestinians is as old as at least of the ancient Jews (The Islamic, as well as the Jewish religions, consider the patriarch Abraham to be the father of the Arabs(Ismail) and of the Jews(Itzhak ), many Palestinians consider the history of their families from the time of the nations of Canaan. For example, Yasir Arafat stated that his origin is the Jebusi (Jebus is the old name of Jerusalem that according to the bible was occupied by king David.
“And David and all Israel went to Jerusalem, that is, Jebus, where the Jebusites were, the inhabitants of the land. The inhabitants of Jebus said to David, “You will not come in here.” Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David” [3]
It will be a mistake to believe that in the Zionist apartheid only Smotrich claims that there is no Palestinian nation. Nadav Shragai a Zionist Journalist writes:
“The one who invested nine dollars about six years ago in Assaf Wall’s book “The History of the Palestinian People, from Ancient Times to Modern Times” devoured its pages at record speed. The book opens with a quote from George Louis Costanza from “Seinfeld”: “It’s not a lie if you really believe it”, and then comes 120 tiresome blank pages that “describe” the same history. Amazon removed this work from its shelves following cries of gevald from the Palestinians but only after the book reached first place in the “Israeli Palestinian History” category.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who a few days ago threw a similar historical truth in the face of the Palestinians – “There is no such thing as a Palestinian” – is in good company. Wall went for a gimmick. But the “Late Prime Minister Golda Meir, about 50 years ago, used exactly the same words, as did Republican Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the American House of Representatives. Gingrich spoke of the Palestinians as “an invented people who want to destroy Israel” [4]
Even the Liberal Palestinian journalists know the truth about the Zionist’s myths and lies. Marwan Bishara writes in Al Jazeera:
“At the heart of the ongoing turmoil engulfing Israel is a pathological liar and a pervasive lie. The liar has long been exposed, but the lie he and others have long propagated has only now begun to unravel”… Netanyahu has proven ready to do anything in his power to hold on to power, including conspiring with the most rogue and dangerous elements of the Israeli polity to undermine the secular liberal Ashkenazi-dominated establishment that built the foundations of the Israeli state and shaped its development. In response, hundreds of thousands of secular and liberal Israelis from all walks of life poured onto the streets to protest against his attempts to undo their old liberal Ashkenazi-dominated order and replace it with new autocratic rule. Many of the protesters waving Israeli flags in a show of patriotism and in defense of their freedoms do not seem to realize or admit that as long as their colonial Israel maintains its oppressive Jewish supremacy in Palestine, its entrenched system of apartheid will continue to feed into tyrannical fascism and fanaticism” [5]
This racist lie that there is no real Palestinian nation is answered by professor of history from Turin Lorenzo Kamel in an article called: Bezalel Smotrich’s ancestors would have told him he was lying.
“A century ago, in November 1923, Jabotinsky himself used words that seemed to suggest a very different understanding of Palestine to the one Smotrich has outlined.”
“There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs […] it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting ‘Palestine’ from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority,” Jabotinsky wrote.”
“Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized”.
According to the family tree provided by Smotrich himself, some of his ancestors may have met the mufti Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, an influential lawyer in 17th-century Ottoman Palestine, who lived in the city of Ramla from which he drew his surname.
They might have also come across all-Ramlī’s manuscripts (Jews in Palestine spoke Arabic in their daily life), and the concept of “Filastin”, which al-Ramlī referred to as “biladuna” (“our homeland”).
Unsurprisingly, Filastin was commonly referred to in much older works too, including in al-Uns al-Jalil bi-Tarikh al-Quds wa’l-Khalil (The glorious story of Jerusalem and Hebron), written around 1495 by the Qadi of Jerusalem Mujir al-Din, who used the expression “‘Ard Filastin” (the Land of Palestine) 22 times.
A text from the 8th century, attributed to the scholar Abu Khalid Thawr Ibn Yazid al-Kalaai, argued that “the holiest place on Earth is Syria; the holiest place in Syria is Palestine; the holiest place in Palestine is Jerusalem [Bayt al-Maqdis]”
The first official census in Palestine was conducted by the British authorities in 1922. A total population of 757,182 individuals was found, of whom 590,890 were Muslims, 83,794 were Jews, and 73,024 were Christians.
The most reliable estimates of the previous century reveal that in 1800 the total population of Palestine numbered 250,000 individuals, reaching 500,000 in 1890. As noted by American demographer Justin McCarthy, of the 411,000 inhabitants in Palestine in 1860, the overwhelming majority were Sunni Palestinians, with important “minorities” – in particular Christian, Shia and Druze – present” [6]
Down with the Zionist apartheid state!
For a Palestine red and free from the river to the sea!
Endnotes:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezalel_Smotrich
[2] https://worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/bezalel-smotrich-palestine
[3] Chronicles 11:4-5
[4] https://www.israelhayom.com/2023/03/28/palestinian-nationhood-what-does-that-mean/
[5] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/3/28/israelis-need-to-see-through-the-biggest-lie-of-all
[6] https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/3/30/bezalel-smotrichs-ancestors-would-have-told-him-he-was-lying