On 13 November 1974 Yasser Arafat addressed the United Nations. He told them that from 1881 the Jewish invasion began of the verdant area inhabited mainly by an Arab people in the course of building its life and dynamically enriching its indigenous culture.

Everything he said was true.

Well not that there was a Jewish invasion. There was no Jewish state so how could they invade a part of the world that formed a part of one of the world’s then great powers the Ottoman Empire without an army. It took England, Russia and Australia four years to defeat the Ottoman Empire with their vast and powerful armies, but the idea that a bunch of Jews could forcibly take land off the poor Muslim farmers in the Holy Lands and from the Ottoman Empire, which had a proven track record of really hating the Jews for hundreds of years, did nothing to stop them is just nonsense.

The real story is that the Jews came into possession of land in the Holy Lands the way most of us do. They bought it. They bought it from wealthy Arabs, who mostly lived nowhere near the Holy Lands. Who lived in more distant and sophisticated cities in the Muslim world, like Cairo and Damascus. Muslim owners who had finished robbing their peasant fellahin farmers of every last shekel they had, then had expelled them from their land to become nomads roaming all through Muslim controlled lands. Then those same rich Arabs, the notables, the effendi, sold the land, at outrageously high prices, to the Jews. After they’d sold the land, those effendi told their poor fellow Muslims that the Jews were stealing their land. Yes, they did that and that lie continues today, as Yasser Arafat’s speech to the UN revealed. It’s a lie we hear all of the time in the media today as well as from many of the world’s leading politicians.

Oh, and the land was verdant - a rich green. No it wasn’t. It was a barren desert from centuries of neglect by the Ottoman rulers and their sultans who had robbed Muslim farmers blind until they were forced to walk off their land.

And, of course people who don’t know where their next meal’s coming from aren’t going to be dynamically enriching their indigenous culture, as Yasser Arafat said they were doing. In any event the people living in the Holy Lands brought their culture with them from some other part of the Ottoman Empire or the Muslim world because there were very few Muslims who had lived in Palestine for long.

The Zionist movement that Yasser Arafat complains about, began with the first Zionist Congress held in 1897. The first settlers from Europe under this new movement didn’t arrive in the Holy Lands until about 1907. So Yasser Arafat saying the invasion by Zionists began in 1880, is again way off the mark.

Well it looks like everything that Yasser Arafat said at the UN was wrong about the Holy Lands.

Let me tell you now what was really happening with Jews going onto their Promised Land to start farming, something they hadn't really done in a serious way since the Muslim invasion in 630AD – 1250 years before. But in the late 1870’s they did start to go back onto the land, even before the Zionist movement came into existence, and before settlers under that movement started coming to the Holy Lands. Something was stirring.

Tag words: Yasser Arafat; United Nations; Jewish invasion; Ottoman Empire; Holy Lands; Muslim; peasant farmers; fellahin; the notables; the effendi; Zionist movement; Zionist Congress; Baron Rothschild; Moses Montefiore; Petachvah; Petach Tikvah; Rishon-Le-Zion; Sephardic Jew; Jehudah Halevi; Promised Land; Rudolf Kayser; The Life and Time of Jehudah Halevi; Mohammad; Torah; Assimilation; state of Israel; Nazis; World War I; UNRWA; Theodor Herzl; Rabbi Yehudah Alkalay; Destiny of the Lord; WT Young; Viscount Palmerston; Colonel Charles Churchill; James Finn; Damascus Affair; 2 Samuel 5:7;