Questions About Palestine

Questions About Palestine

Excerpted from an interview with Dr. Jimmy DeYoung

What or who is a Palestinian?

A Palestinian is an individual that’s being called a Palestinian by the world, who is Arab today. But that was not true prior to 1948. “Palestinians” were people who lived in what they refer to as Palestine. Now, that’s a misnomer as well. I mean, the word Palestine was introduced way back about 132 A.D. by Hadrian the Roman Emperor. It should never be used. The Bible refers to that piece of geography as Israel. No place in the Bible does it call it Palestine. But Jews and Arabs living in Palestine prior to 1948 when they established a state called Israel were called Palestinians. The Jerusalem Post was the Palestinian Post, for example. So you had Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs. But they’ve taken that name, now. They’ve moved ahead with it and they say, “We deserve a state. We have rights. Here’s our leader. Let’s move forward. We need to have two different states: a Jewish state and a Palestinian state in this part of the world.”

The media often uses the term “occupied territory” in reference to Palestine. What does that term mean?

You know, the media needs to use words properly. It’s not occupied territories, it’s captured territories. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

Going back even to 1947, the United Nations came out with a partition plan. They said, “We’ll take this piece of geography. We will allow a portion of it to be given to the Arab peoples and a portion of it to be given to the Jewish peoples.” Well, the Jews agreed. “Okay, that sounds fine with us. We’re just looking for a homeland.”

The Palestinians, the Arabs, said, “No way.” And in fact, they sent their children out. They sent their wives out, the elderly out. Most of them went across the Jordan River into what we know as modern-day Jordan. They said, “Look, you go away for about three weeks. We’re going to wipe these Jews off the face of the map, and when we get finished, you can come back in.”

Well, they left. And of course, we know the story. The Jews won that battle, or at least, that part of the War of Independence. Through the years, there have been many, many wars. I guess the main one that deals with the Palestinians and the Jews and what’s been going on would be the “Six-Day War.”

There is a military strategy, as far as the Israeli government is concerned, and their military might. The strategy is two-pronged: number one, you go for the jugular. They don’t like to fight so they want to get the war over quickly. And number two, you don’t fight in Israel; you fight in your attacking enemy’s geographical territory.

So what happened? Well, in 1967 in the Six-Day War, from the north the Syrians were attacking. Where did the Israeli defense force fight? In the Golan Heights – at that time controlled by the Syrians. They were attacked from the south by Egypt. Where did they fight? In the Sinai Desert. They were attacked in the east by Jordan. Where did they fight? What is referred to as the West Bank – Judea and Samaria, between Jerusalem and the Jordan River. And so they pushed their attacking en­emies back. They set up buffer zones. And this was not to occupy this territory, but simply to capture it and protect themselves – put up a secure border so they could have their people sustain life. That’s all that has happened!

Now, what they have done is, they have sent families into the Golan Heights. In 1967 until today, those families that have gone in there, they’ve raised their families, built their homes, started their businesses. The same in Judea and Samaria. The same in the south. And they’ve just tried to sustain life in a secure atmosphere for the Jewish people. That’s what has been going on.

But now the Palestinians stand up and say, “Hey, wait a minute. This is occupied territory. We had a state here.” No. There was never a Palestinian state. Maybe at another time we can talk more about that, but “We want our state!” What state? You never had a state.

You know, if you’re talking about occupied territories, I think the United States, as they push Israel to come out of those occupied territories better be consistent, because if you want to follow that philosophy to its ultimate end, we’d have to move out of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern California. That is exactly what the United States did early on in their history. That’s all the Jewish people have done. And the world media needs to recognize the truth of what’s going on and quit using the term.

You use the term “West Bank.” That’s a political term. It’s talking about the west bank of the Jordan River belonging to Jordan. It’s not the west side of the state of Israel. It’s the east side of the state of Israel. Occupied territories! Word have mean­ings, thus we have to use the proper words when we address certain issues.