They don’t even attempt to do a fair reading of Kimmerling’s book. He doesn’t say that the participation of the local sheikhs in the rebellion against Mohammed Ali makes the Palestinians a nation. He says that it’s one of the factors that draws certain people together politically and economically so that they can later become one. And it’s quite well supported by most other history of this period.

You say:
All this business about migration of Arabs coinciding with the migration of Jews has been completely discredited time and time again
It hasn’t been discredited by any credible sourses, unless you consider Norman Finkelstein and his likes credible. The fact is that Eretz Yisrael was completely empty before the Zionist rebirth. Mark Twain travelled to Eretz Yisrael in 1867, and here’s what he had to say in his book “The Innocents Abroad”:
“A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
Many other travellers recounted similar experiences.
It is about time the whole world acknowledged that Eretz Yisrael belongs to Jews and only Jews. Unfortunately, it is unlikely to happen in the current political climate. But, at least, we as Jews need to acknowledge this simple fact. And we need to stop worrying about a so called palestinian people that the arabs themselves admit never existed:
“Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian
identity serves only tactical purposes. The
founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool
in the continuing battle against Israel …”
— Zuheir Muhsin, late Military Department head
of the PLO and member of its Executive
Council, Dutch daily Trouw, March 1977

Are you implying that Mark Twain and other sourses are Zionist revisionists? As far as I know Zionism did not exist as a political movement in 1867. When I say completely empty, I mean it was completely devoid of any national life. I am sorry I did not express myself clearly the first time. There were Jews, Christians, Turkish muslims and gangs of Arab marauders in Eretz Yisrael before Zionism. I don’t see how my perspective is not historically accurate and informed. You failed to offer yours.
You say:
Saying it was “uninhabited” is a transparent rhetorical device, and it only inflames those who seek to argue against the establishment of a modern Jewish homeland.
My target audience in this case are the Jewish guilt mongers and other creatures of the night who run this blog and post the most ridiculous anti-semitic accusations against Israel and the Jewish people.

Oh, and lest we forget. Here’s Ahad Ha’am in 1891, barely 10 years into the first aliyah:
“We abroad are used to believing that Eretz Yisrael is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed . . . But in truth this is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains . . . are not cultivated.”
Oh, and “national community” or no, Ahad Ha’Am also noted then that “If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily.”
Even your revisionist godfather Jabotinsky knew this much. Stop deadening your mind with propaganda.

“Sigh. Okay, so Mark Twain, in that one paragraph, found Palestine unbeautiful. I can’t believe anyone still makes these arguments.”
Sam,
Were you in Palestine in the mid to late 18th century? i wasn’t. So I amass as much information as I can to help me understand the current situation. And yes, I use Mark Twain’s observation to debunk the caca that spews out of the mouths of “anti-Zionists” and looney lefties. Actually, I agree with you, I can’t believe anyone still makes these arguements…but usually I’m refering to quotes like this:
“I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,” said Abdullah, a Bahraini scholar commenting on the situation in Beslan.

Sam says:
“In that year there were about 457,000 people there. That’s not a lot of people — but 400,000 of those people were Muslim Arabs. A little over 42,000 of them were Christians, and between 13,000 and 20,000 were Jews. OK? Those are the facts we have. Deal with it.”
1) What is the source for this?
2) What does “there” include? Today’s Israel only, the West Bank, today’s Jordan (which was then considered Palestine)?

Benny Morris is a revisionist historian who changes his views according to the current political fashion. The area refered to as “Palestine” was indeed, not only Israel and the “West bank” (Western Palestine), but also Jordan and parts of Syria and Lebanon (Eastern Palestine). I don’t belive that the left leaning academics would ever provide us with accurate statistics on the population of what was then called Palestine. According to a Turkish poll of 1905 there were NO Arabs living in Jerusalem at that time.
Sam says:
Sigh. Okay, so Mark Twain, in that one paragraph, found Palestine unbeautiful. I can’t believe anyone still makes these arguments.
Not only did he find it “unbeautiful” he found it almost completely desolate. You might want to read the quote again.
I’d like to see the sourse of the Ahad Ha’am’s quote, because if it is counterpunch or some other leftist rag, I would find it difficult to believe. If this quote is real, it would also be helpful to find out in what context it was said.
And about “national community” What kind of goverment did “palestinians” have before Zionism? Was it a monarchy? Was it a democracy? (Arab democracy, yeah right) Can you name any recognized leaders of this ficticious nation? Did they have their own currency? What about world renowned “palestinian” musicians, artists, scientists etc?
The only propoganda I see is the ridiculous assumption that Arabs have ANY right to our Eretz Yisrael. If you the other quote I posted at the beggining about the purpose of the existance of the separate palestinian identity, I don’t see how you can still argue that Arabs have any national rights to Eretz Yisrael.

Sam,
Let’s start with the Turkish Poll. According to the Catholic encyclopedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08364a.htm “The total population is estimated at 66,000. The Turkish census of 1905, which counts only Ottoman subjects, gives these figures: Jews, 45,000; Moslems, 8,000; Orthodox Christians, 6000; Latins, 2500; Armenians, 950; Protestants, 800; Melkites, 250; Copts, 150; Abyssinians, 100; Jacobites, 100; Catholic Syrians, 50. During the nineteenth century large suburbs to the north and east have grown up, chiefly for the use of the Jewish colony. These suburbs contain nearly half the present population” The 8,000 moslems that inhabited Jerusalem were Turkish citizens responsible for administration of “palestine”. Most Arab christians are Catholic, and, and according to the census, there were only 50 of them in Jerusalem. And those Christians (Maronites) don’t even consider themselves Arab, they claim to be descendants of Phoenicians. Most Christians that lived in Jerusalem were RUSSIAN Orthodox Christians, who have absolutely nothing to do with the delightful people who declared themselves to be palestinians. It should not be surprising to anyone that there were no arabs in Jerusalem, because Arabs in “palestine” were for the most part nomadic people who simply didn’t have the skills needed to live in the cities. Calling these well known facts ” the biggest bullshit you’ve ever heard” demonstrates your total lack of credibility in the matter.
You say:
Your questions about the Palestinian nation also border on moronic. I bet you can’t name any world renowned Angolan musicians, artists, or scientists either. This is because you are probably a Westerner who received a Eurocentric education.
We were debating whether there was any national life in “palestine”. Yes, indeed, there was a rise in Arab nationalism all over the arab world, however, there is not ample evidence that there ever was Arab PALESTINIAN nationalism before the 1960s. In fact most Arabs in “Palestine” considered themselves Syrians:
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine:
“There is no such country [as Palestine]! ‘Palestine’ is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria.”
“There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not”
— Professor Philip Hitti, Arab historian to
Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 1946
“It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria.”
— Delegate of Saudi Arabia to the
United Nations Security Council, 1956,
The only people who considered themselves palestinians before 1948 were in fact the Jews. Now, if you insist that there was a palestinian national identity/life, then you have to present at least SOME evidence that it did indeed exist. The only thing you could’ve come up with is some newspaper called “Falastin”. We have the New York Times, does it mean that there is a New York national identity? Your “proof” is simply laughable, if this is the best you can come up with, no wonder you’re resorting to insults.
You say:
clearly, the propaganda machine you live inside of has hidden a lot of Zionist history from you.
The best example of propaganda machine is the myth of the palestinian nation and all the related anti-zionist nonsense that you have swallowed.
As for Ahad Ha’am’s quote, it seems to be one man’s misrepresentation of facts, because there are plenty of testimonies that clearly show that palestine was not inhabited for the most part. And Ahad Ha’am himself certainly never refers to any arab palestinian nation.
And about Benny Morris, like I said, he changes his views when it suits him… The man is totally unreliable. He starts off his book by describing “palestine”. According to him, palestine was what is today Israel and the “occupied territories”, which is a blatant misrepresentation of reality. Pick up any old map, and you will see that “Palestine” included not just Israel, but all of Jordan, and parts of Syria and Lebanon. The entire book is full of falsehoods and outright lies. It is no suprise, that most academics are in love with this book, since they tend to be viruently anti-Israel.

Ah. In responding to your previous post, I assumed you were trying to say that your Turkish poll showed that Jews were the only people living in Jerusalem. The fact of a Jewish majority in Jerusalem dating to the mid-19th century is not something I need to deny. The fact of an extreme Jewish minority in the entire region, apparently, *is* something that *you* need to deny, seeing as how you ignored my statistics, which I corroborated using three non-Benny Morris sources, and instead ranted incoherently about Benny Morris. I notice, as well, that the Turkish poll does not make your outlandish claim about the 8,000 Muslims not being Arabs. If you could souce that claim, that would be great. And if you could source the claim about the 8,000 Orthodox Christians being Russian, that would also be great. Because I happen to know that you are wrong. The Jerusalem Arab notable families (Husseini, Nashashibi, Khalidi) date back to well before 1905, and they also lived there during that period. So at the very least, you have failed to account for them, and beyond them you have failed to account for — oh. All the other Arabs.
As for the allegation that most of the population of Palestine didn’t “have the skills to live in the cities”, I don’t understand what you’re trying to claim. That farming is an unskilled profession? That Arabs didn’t have the skills to work in new cities set up by Zionists who only wanted to employ Jewish labor? That Jaffa and Haifa did not, in fact, have large Arab populations? Really, what is it that you’re trying to get at? And Jerusalem is just about the worst city you could have chosen as the occasion for your claim, given its status for most of the early years of Zionism and before as a total welfare case. Money for the Old Yishuv flowed from the rest of Jewry; they ate it up and studied. Skills?
Second claim: “there is not ample evidence that there ever was Arab Palestinian nationalism before the 1960’s.” oh, and “most Arabs in Palestine considered themselves Syrians.” This is a common argumentative tactic that just doesn’t hold water when you get to the bottom of it. Your idea of the Palestinian nation as “fictitious” is necessary, I suppose, for you to maintain your extreme claims about Jewish rights to the land. But you’re being silly. The fact that there was dissent and disagreement between different Palestinians about who they were, and who they should consider themselves, does not mean they had no rights to the land. Maybe you can’t understand this, but the right to the land came from being born on it and living on it for many years, not from having a nationalism that would need to have pre-dated Zionism. You don’t get to kick someone out of their house because they don’t identify with a nation of people. Palestinian nationalism developed as a way of claiming the land after previous ways of trying to assert counter-claims to Zionism failed. So far, Palestinian nationalism has been the most successful, but there’s no reason it should have had to develop if the indigenous people hadn’t felt a threat to their existence on the land and a need for a way to defend their right to live there.
Beyond that though, you’re wrong anyway. Many of them did identify as a nation, at least as part of the Arab nation. A prominent example is the Muslim-Christian Associations of the 1920s, which united Arab Palestinians of different religions against Zionism and proclaimed the distinction between the Arabs of Palestine and those of other regions. I am not claiming that the Palestinian identity was a deep, driving force at this time, or denying that its later development was a result of the vicissitudes of their history and being cut off from other Arabs, but how else could you expect things to develop for a people living in a region to which nationalism was completely foreign until the very late 19th century (for most of the history of the region, people identified foremost with their religion, then with their local cities and the regions around them)? First they learned to identify as Arabs, then as Palestinians. But that’s really — really — not the point.
Here’s Yitzhak Epstein, a Jew born in Palestine in 1862, on the “Arab question” in 1896: “[Athough] there is no Arab movement in the national or political sense in Palestine [remember, we’re in 1896 now — s.] . . . among the difficult questions connected to the idea of the renaissance of our people on its soil there is one which is equal to all others: the question of our relations with the Arabs . . . We have forgotten one small matter: There is in our beloved land an entire nation, which has occupied it for hundreds of years and has never thought to leave it. . . We are making a great psychological error with regard to a great, assertive and jealous people. . . The Arab, like every man, is tied to his native land with strong bonds.”
This is where things like “rights to land” come from, SY. If you want evidence that some of those Arabs involved in the nationalist movement preferred a Palestinian identity separate from the Syrian, I can provide that for you. But it doesn’t matter. If you want me to provide more quotes corroborating Ahad Ha’Am’s account of the widespread nature of Arab agriculture, I can do that too. I have a feeling that would disturb you even more.
Finally, your attempt to say that I am Eurocentric because I don’t share your entire idee fixe about “Muslim Arab culture” is nothing short of laughable. You took a Western idea of Arab culture and imposed it on what certain extremists are doing. You know next to nothing about Arab culture, and probably next to nothing about Islam. I wonder if you even know any Arabs or Muslims personally. Everything that you do know comes from alarmist, western writing about what’s going on there. You are the one who is fooling himself.

#6. The reaction of the Arab population to Jewish immigration (including the violent Arab
revolts) & the subsequent Arab assault on Israel in 1948 were the primary causes for
de-population of many Arab villages & for the Arab “refugee problem”. Let’s not ignore the
fact that the number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries (post-1948) was actually higher
than the number of Arabs who fled Israel during the War of Independence. Most of those Jews
were ethnically cleansed from virtually the entire Arab world in peace-time, one step at a
time. Most Arab refugees, by contrast, were simply fleeing the war. In a historical context,
this can be viewed as a population exchange between 2 warring sides, although, once again,
we have to remember that most Arabs left Israel voluntarily, which was NOT the case for most
Jews fleeing from the Arab world.
#7. Present-day Jordan, in its entirety, was a part of Palestine under the British Mandate.
The Brits lopped off that huge chunk of Palestine – about 78% of Palestine’s total area –
and gave it over to the Hashemites in the early 1920’s. The UN Partition Plan of 1947
proposed splitting what remained of Mandatory Palestine roughly 50/50, giving the Arabs an
ADDITIONAL Arab state in Palestine & leaving the Jews a puny 12% of the area they sought for
a state – a small fraction of the historic homeland of the Jewish People. And even that
proposal envisioned Israel split into 3 tiny, completely indefensible cantons, only
symbolically joined at 2 points – one in the North & one in the South. The vast majority of
the proposed Jewish state would be comprised of the desolate desert wasteland known as
Negev. As unfair as this offer was, the Zionist leadership accepted it, agreeing to give up
even Jerusalem, with its high Jewish population & immense historic & religious significance
to the Jewish people. On the other hand, the Arabs, who were to control about 88% of the
total area of Palestine, violently rejected the Partition Plan and launched a bloody war
against Israel in 1948. In my opinion, the primary reason for the rejection is clear. In the
eyes of the Islamic World it’s inconceivable to give a non-Muslim “infidel” sovereignty over
any part of what Muslims *CONSIDER* to be Islamic property, no matter how small or
insignificant. Non-Muslims can be tolerated and have been tolerated in the Islamic world,
but only as long as they’re dominated by their Muslim overlords. It’s as simple as that.
There’s a ton of historic evidence to support this view.

Merkava — I’m glad you think this is an interesting debate, but so far I’m the only one who has sourced any of my claims — especially by providing multiple, corroborating sources. You claim to be correcting me or SY on a number of things, but sources would be nice.