ISRAEL’S DUBIOUS HISTORICITY

By Mohammed Adamu

They say that before the modern state of Israel there was the British mandate, not a Palestinian state; and before the British mandate there was the ottoman empire, not a Palestinian state; and before the ottoman empire there was the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt, not a Palestinian state; and before the Islamic mamluk sultanate of Egypt there was the ayyubid dynasty, not a Palestinian state; and before the ayyubid dynasty there was the christian kingdom of Jerusalem, not a Palestinian state; and before the christian kingdom of Jerusalem, there was the Fatimid caliphate, not a Palestinian state; and before the Fatimid caliphate there was the byzantine empire, not a Palestinian state; and before the byzantine empire there was the Roman empire, not a Palestinian state; and before the Roman empire there was the hasmonean dynasty, not a Palestinian state; and before the hasmonean dynasty there was the Seleucid empire, not a Palestinian state; and before the Seleucid empire there was the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon, not a Palestinian state; and before the empire of Alexander the 3rd of Macedon there was the Persian empire, not a Palestinian state; and before the Persian empire there was the Babylonian empire, not a Palestinian state; and before the Babylonian empire there was the kingdoms of Israel and Judea, not a Palestinian state; and before the kingdoms of Israel and Judea there was the kingdom of Israel, not a Palestinian state; and before the kingdom of Israel there was the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, not a Palestinian state; and before the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel there was the individual state of Canaan, not a Palestinian state.

And they concluded by saying: “In fact in this corner of the earth there was everything but a Palestinian state!”

MY TAKE:

THEY SAID, THEY SAID
But between the ‘they said’ and ‘they said’ is a lot that remains unsaid! By the way, thank God they have admitted that before the kingdom of Israel or the theocracy of the 12 tribes of Israel, there was “the individual state of Canaan”. So then the question arises: who were the inhabitants of the land of Canaan? Why did the historicity stop at just the “state of Canaan” without mentioning who the Cananites were? Were they Jews or were they Israelites? Herein lies the obvious fraud in their malevolent revisionism. The Jews and the Israelites were not always there on the land of Canaan. They were several generations of progenies of a stranger to the land, namely Abraham. The man himself from whose loins came the Israelites and the Jews, was not indigenous to the land of Canaan. He came from somewhere else!

Why did they stop at the “state of Canaan”? Did not the land of Canaan have a history itself? Since the controversy is over whether or not the Jews and the Israelites were the original inhabitants of the land of Canaan, why not go beyond the the land of Canaan to trace where Abraham himself originally came from. Because Abraham himself was not originally an indigene of the land of Canaan. Even the Bible confirms that he came all the way from the Ur of Chaldea to settle in the land of Canaan. And so the question again arises: where was the Ur of Chaldea? It was in far away Babylon. Mesopotamia. Around the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, in the present day Iraq. Abraham, the grand patriarch of the Israelites and the Jews, was an Iraqi of Chaldean descent. He left there with his father and his household of three to settle in the land of Canaan. So then again, another question arises here: when he came to the land of Canaan, did he meet an empty land, bereft of inhabitants or did he meet a people there? Of course he did not meet an empty land! He met the Cananites there who had been living there since time immemorial. And who were the Cananites?

The Cananites were a mixed grill of diverse tribes and tongues; not the least of which were the Philistines, the Moabites, the Amalekites and some records say the Assyrians, etc! The Bible says that when Abraham’s father died, not too long after they arrived Canaan, Abraham bought a tiny piece of land from the indigenous people, and in which he buried his father! It was thereafter that he settled down to sire, in the midst of his hospitable hosts, Ishmael and Isaac. And we all know that it was from Ishmael and Isaac that the lineages of the prophets began, and from which the Israelites, the Jews and the Arabs descended! By the way, it was at the lattermost part of these lineages that a throne (of David), about 3,000 years back now, was established in Urusalem -or what would later be corrupted as Jerusalem.

But as the original inhabitants of Canaan did not cease to exist with the arrival of the stranger (Abraham), so did they not cease to exist too even after Abraham had fecundated the land with the seeds of his loins! The philistines, the Moabites, the Amalekites and others had continued to tolerantly live with the seeds of the stranger, Abraham, even though the seeds of the Israelites, particularly, had persistently waged one war of conquest after another over them. At some point in fact, according to biblical records, the Israelites, on the claim that they were instructed by God, had virtually massacred and anihilated the Amalekites. They had butchered not only men and women, young and old, infants and babies, but they also claimed that their God instructed them to kill sheep and goats, donkeys and dogs.

The present day Palestinians (philistines) were neither Jews nor Israelites; nor were they even Arabs. They were mostly the philistines of the pre-Abrahamic Canaan. And there is a perfectly good reason they pass for Arabs today: the advent of an Arabian prophet (Muhammad), came with two strong currents (of Arabization and Islamization) which had reached from the peninsula up to the River Jordan and beyond. The Palestinians were not originally Arabs. They were said to have largely been self Arabized, especially by the incidence of their acceptance of Islam.

The notion that the Arabs waged a religious war of conquest (like the Israelites did), and thereafter came to settle on the land of the Canaanites, is totally anachronistic and has no basis in religious history. But far more anachronistic even is the ridiculous notion that the Jews and the Israelites were there in the land of Canaan before anyone else! Tracing the titular right of the Israelites only as far as to the last 3,000 years when David established the Jewish throne in Jerusalem, is obviously dubious! You have to go beyond the throne of David; back to the birth of Judah (the progenitor of the Jews); and back further to the birth of Jacob (the progenitor of the Israelites); and back much further too to the birth, on Canaan, of Ishmael and Isaac; and then back again to the arrival of the grand patriarch himself (Abraham) to Canaan or Philistia (the land of the Philistines) and then back to Iraq, around the Ur of Chaldea, in the land of Babylon, of Nebuchadnezzar, whence Abraham originally came.

No history of the Jews and the Israelites is complete unless it goes back to the Euphrates, where Abraham originally hailed!
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