In this episode of Hebrew Voices #218 “Revealing the Proof of Palestine Through Ancient Maps. Part 1”, Nehemia is joined by Josh (_j0sh_a_), an antiquities collector and content creator, to debunk various misguided popular claims regarding Palestine and Jewish history based on archaeological evidence and old maps.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Well… and like you say, they’re not looking for truth, they’re looking to delegitimize the Jews. It’s really interesting, the olive tree argument, because from my little… and I have a lot of really bad allergies, right? I’m allergic to dust mites. So, you’re telling me I’m not native to any place that has dust mites, which is planet Earth… so I’m really an alien.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: I’m a lizard person from the center of the Earth where there’s no dust, right? It’s a ridiculous argument. So, they acknowledge that we’re the same people, unless they’re talking to some, like, Western woke leftist. Then all of a sudden, the Jews are Europeans who have nothing to do with the 7th century Jews we killed.

Josh: Yeah.

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Josh, who is an antique collector who creates content on Israeli archaeology and history. His name on Instagram and TikTok, and sometimes X, formerly Twitter, is _j0sh_a_. So, we’re going to throw that up on the screen…

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: …if you’re watching, because that’s a bit hard to follow otherwise. Anyway, on nehemiaswall.com we’ll also put in the link to his Instagram and TikTok and X. Josh, shalom and thank you for coming on the program.

Josh: Thank you for inviting me.

Nehemia: So, I’ve been following your content for a while, and I love what you’re doing because, you know, a lot of the discussions that are going on online about Israel, let’s say the Israel-Palestine conflict…

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: They’re dealing with… I don’t even know how to put it. They’re dealing with things that… look, I come from an academic background, and I hear their arguments, and I’m like, “This is ridiculous. Why would anybody even take that seriously?” But you take it seriously and you respond to it in such a concise way, and I love that.

Josh: Thank you.

Nehemia: Like, for example, there was some actress or something who was standing in front of a giant map that said “Palestine”, and you’re like, “Wait a minute! Let’s actually look at the details.” And her point was like, “Palestine has always existed. It’s been a land that was stolen by the Jews.” And so, talk about that example, because that actually kind of went viral in the broader world. I don’t even remember what her name was or what she does, but it’s probably not even important. So, you have right behind you… and I don’t know, I’m always confused… right?

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: Right. So, there’s a map. Does that map say Palestine on it?

Josh: Yeah, it does. It’s a 1800s map of Palestine, and it’s like one of the many maps of Palestine that are spread online. And the interesting thing about it is that 99% of those Palestine maps are actually biblical maps. They were maps that were added to Bibles or shown, not to represent how Palestine looked when the map was created, but they were meant to represent how Palestine looked during biblical times. That’s why 99% of the times you’ll find the tribes of Israel. Or you’ll find the regions in the time of Jesus, so it will include Judea, Samaria and the Galilee. And that’s why it’s so easy for me to go and look at the map and say, “Okay, you saw the huge, big title, with Palestine, but then let’s look at the details and you’ll find the list of the tribes of Israel and Judah.” And some cases you have the separation of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. So, it’s very easy to debunk those claims that are based on those biblical maps.

Nehemia: So, am I correct from your accent that you were born in Israel, and… am I right about that? Or where are you originally from?

Josh: I lived most of my life in Israel. I spent a few years in England, but… so, I have a combination of English and Israeli accent. But yeah, I mostly live in Israel.

Nehemia: Okay. And, you know, I said before, like, it’s… I can kind of dismiss these arguments, but they’re not trivial arguments in that they have an impact on real world situations. There’s the famous story that Ehud Barak was at Camp David with… I want to say it was Bill Clinton. Yeah, Clinton and Arafat, and they were talking about the Temple Mount. And Arafat brought up the argument. He said, “How do you Jews even know your temple was there?” And what they did is they opened up an encyclopedia. This was, I think, Clinton’s idea. They opened up an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia mentioned the Jewish presence much more than it mentioned the Muslim presence. But then later, people dug up and they said, “Wait a minute. The Muslim authorities that run the Temple Mount, they themselves admitted in the past that the Temple was there.”

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: And so, what they’re doing is, they’re bringing these kinds of, like, arguments that in the past they never made just because they’re convenient arguments and they can dupe people who don’t know any better. And what I love is, you’re digging up and actually looking for those sources and showing, “Wait a minute. I can find this map that they’re talking about, and it mentions the Tribe of Judah.” Right?

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: It doesn’t mention the tribe of, Bene-whatever.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, talk to me a little bit about that. Like, why is this important to debunk? Somebody who brings, like, I don’t know, an 18th century map that says “Palestine” printed in Britain. Like, why is that important?

Josh: Yeah. Well, it’s… the content I create is not there to convince any anti-Semite out there or… Like, in most cases, the people that bring up those maps of the tribes of Israel aren’t really interested in the truth, they just have, like, a talking point and they would use it. And tomorrow they’d use something else, and whatever sticks, great.

So, usually the purpose behind my content is to just show how absurd those claims are. Now, like, okay, there were people that used, a few days ago, like a few weeks ago, dug up research from the 1990s about Israeli Jews and Arabs, from the allergies to olive tree pollen. Like, they took a couple of words from that research to make it seem as if 66% of all Israeli Jews are allergic to olive trees, and that’s proof that Jews are not indigenous to the Land of Israel.

And then like, when I see that kind of stupidity, it’s very easy. Okay, that’s the research we brought up. Let’s open it and see what’s actually written there. And what’s actually written there is that… First of all, the name of the olive tree is European olive tree, so it’s not unique to the land.

Nehemia: That proves Jews are not native to Europe!

Josh: Yeah. But even more, like, you know, like… And then it wasn’t 66% of all Israeli Jews, or 66% of Jews that already have allergies to other things. So, it’s not most Israelis, it’s most Israelis with allergies also have allergies to that European olive tree. So, it’s very… when you, like, show the absurdity in, like, any type of claim… okay, they’re bringing up an ancient coin with a Hebrew letter with “Le’herut Tsion” and calling it a Canaanite coin, and it’s very easy to…

Nehemia: Wait, tell us about that coin, and we’ll throw it up on the screen if my editor can find it. So, what is their argument? Because I don’t know that I’ve heard that argument.

Josh: Okay, so, there’s an argument that the Israelis are stealing everything. All of the Israeli history is stealing, and now, like if you look at the modern shekel, for example, the modern Israeli shekel, it has an image of a lily flower. So, some kind of Palestinian creator said, “Okay, this lily flower looks very similar to an ancient Palestinian Canaanite coin.” And they put those images together and say, “Look. Israelis are stealing our Canaanite shekels.”

But the thing is that that Canaanite shekel that they’re talking about, that we “stole,” is actually a Jewish coin from the first revolt against the Romans between 66 CE to 70 CE and has the Hebrew inscription of Le’herut Tzion, “for the freedom of Zion”. It’s not… you can argue that paleo Hebrew is a Canaanite script, but you know it’s Hebrew with “for the freedom of Zion.” Nothing related to any Palestinian Arab identity.

Nehemia: And literally the word Tsion, Zion, is on the coin, and they’re saying it’s stolen!

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: This is part of this whole delusion of what they call cultural appropriation, right? It’s almost like a… what do they call that… a moral panic. Right?

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: Because culture is diffuse and they… I mean, this is one of the basic concepts in humanities, is that cultures aren’t static and they spread, and they influence each other and they’re dynamic.

Josh: Of course.

Nehemia: So, here’s an example, guys. So, they’ll say, you know, Israel’s national food is supposedly falafel. It’s not, but that’s what they tell the tourists. And like, how often do you eat falafel, Josh?

Josh: I have a good falafel place next to my house, so…

Nehemia: Okay. When I lived in Israel for 20 years, maybe it was like once every two months I would eat falafel.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: Schnitzel, though, on a regular basis, but… So, they’ll say, “Oh, falafel, it’s a Palestinian food and the Jews stole it from us.” Well, first of all, I mean… and where did you get, like, pasta? Right? Like, give me a break, right?

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, the Italians stole it from the Chinese. Like, what are we talking about here, right? But actually, it…

Josh: And then also Egyptians, like, are the ones that eat falafel and like…

Nehemia: Right! It’s the Copts in Egypt who specifically established it because during lent, which is like a Christian observance, they don’t eat meat, so they invented falafel to eat during lent. So, the Palestinians, they borrowed it. I mean, who stole, right? It’s good food, so we eat it, right? They took it from the Copts, and, you know, do we take it from the Copts? Or probably we got it from, I would imagine, from the Moroccan Jews or some other North African Jews, I would imagine. But um…

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: Right, and that’s… we didn’t get it directly… even if we got it from the Palestinians, so what? It’s food. It’s a ridiculous thing. Ridiculous.

Josh: Like, first of all, there’s was a huge Jewish community in Egypt, you know, that was… even after the Independence War, there was still a huge Jewish community. Like, I think in the 1950s there was a football team called Maccabi Kahir, and they won the Egyptian national football championship, like in 1951 or something. Like, you know, there were Jews all living there…

Nehemia: Maccabi Cairo was the team that won the Egyptian national championship, yeah.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: Do you know what happened to those Jews? Because I had a very dear friend who passed away a number of years ago who was born in Cairo, and he walked around with this petek, this, like, piece of paper in his wallet, for decades. And he found it in his mailbox one day and it said, “You have one week to leave the country. You can take 20kg with you and nothing of great value.” And he walked around with that for decades because he didn’t understand, like, “How come I’m not considered a refugee? My ancestors lived in Egypt, maybe since the time of, you know, Jeremiah. Or maybe before that” if you look at, like, the elephantine papyri, right? Like, they’re Jews living in the 7th century BCE in Egypt.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: And they’re expelled one day by a government decree, because Israel had a war with Egypt, and Egypt said, “We’re going to take revenge. We’re going to expel all our Jews.” It wasn’t all, but it was most of the Jews. And, you know… so you’re right, there were ancient Jewish communities. It’s interesting, we’ll talk… there’s this weird thing about this cultural appropriation, but, like, come on, when you think of Indian food, you think of really hot, spicy food. How long has the hot spicy element, the pepper, been in India? Not longer than the time of Christopher Columbus, because it comes from the Americas. And nobody says, “Oh, that’s cultural appropriation! Those Indians… give back the peppers! Give back the peppers!”

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: It’s ridiculous. Whereas…

Josh: Yeah, at the end of the day, they just take the term that sounds bad and just inflict on all the Jews. Like if Jews are eating food that’s similar to us, I’ll say that’s cultural appropriation. If they’re eating the gefilte fish, “Oh, they don’t adapt. They’re not from this region.” Like, anything you can throw… they can be contradicting even, if it’s negative, it has a negative sounding effect, so let’s say the Jews are doing that.

Nehemia: Well, and like you say, they’re not looking for truth, they’re looking to delegitimize the Jews. It’s really interesting, the olive tree argument, because from my little… and I have a lot of really bad allergies, right? I’m allergic to dust mites. So, you’re telling me, “I’m not native to any place that has dust mites, which is planet Earth.” So, I’m really an alien. I’m a lizard person from the center of the Earth, where there’s no dust. Right? It’s a ridiculous argument. It really is a ridiculous argument.

It also has to do with, I think, if I’m not mistaken, people who are raised around farm animals have a much lower incidence of allergies because they’re exposed to these, like, intensive allergens from when they’re very young.

Josh: Yeah. So, I heard, like, different things about it. Like, first of all, from what I saw, from what I read… like, I’m not a big scientist, but like, allergies are caused by exposure. So, like, if there’s no exposure at all, probably you wouldn’t develop an allergy. So, like, for example, I saw statistics from Finland that they are not allergic at all to olive trees because there are no olive trees there, so there’s nothing to be allergic to. And then there’s, like, in that research, trying to explain why there’s a bit of a difference between Jews and Arabs with existing allergies. The issue of hygiene, and like, if… you know, if your hygiene systems are different, it may have a different effect in terms of what kind of allergies you develop. So, you know, but um…

Nehemia: I can tell you, my sisters are firm believers that, if you have too hygienic an environment, you’ll expose your babies to diseases, and I don’t know if the scientific community accepts that or not, but like, there definitely was a period where we, meaning “we” as in Western civilization, we, you know, washed down every surface and prevented children from having, you know, any kind of, as much as we could, any kind of, like, cold. And then when they got older, they had really big problems.

Josh: Exactly, yeah.

Nehemia: All right. So, talk to me…. tell the audience, what is the Palestinian argument here? Let’s assume they’ve never heard any of this, never been exposed to any of this. What is the argument they’re trying to make here? Because it’s not obvious to somebody coming from my background, at first. What is… like, what is the claim here about Jews and Palestinians?

Josh: Yeah. So, like, the basic story that I hear, what I’ve been told, is that Jews are a bunch of Europeans that decided in 1948 that God promised them Palestine 3,000 years ago, so they came and colonized Palestine, and that’s it. That’s the story. And then, like, you can have different variations. Okay, it didn’t happen in 1948, it happened in 1917. Rothschild, that was a Zionist, he paid off the British to colonize Palestine. And all of that is based on some kind of religious mythology to excuse the colonialism of, or colonizing, Palestine.

And so, that’s like a big framework that, within it they try to, “You know, okay, they stole the Canaanite shekel. And look, all of them are allergic to olive trees.” And all of those other ridiculous stories lie on the idea that, you know, Jews, or Israelis, are a bunch of European colonizers. That’s when they decided that God owes them the land.

Nehemia: So, my friend, who was expelled from Egypt in 1956 is a European colonizer?

Josh: Exactly.

Nehemia: So, you’re missing… I feel like you’re missing a piece. So, they say the Jews are these Europeans who just showed up in 1917 or 1948 or something. What do they say about the Palestinians?

Josh: The Palestinians are the native people who always lived in Palestine for 4,000 years. I have an interesting book. Try to find it… let’s see, yeah. By Nur Masalha. Palestine: A 4,000 Year History. Now, what I love about this book is that the mosaic here is the Madaba Mosaic. It’s a Byzantine mosaic found in Jordan from, I think, the 6th century, if I’m not mistaken. And, like, this in the center is Jerusalem. What you can see here is Benjamin, like… it’s basically a biblical map like all of the other maps of Palestine. It’s a biblical map showing the 12 tribes of Israel. Like, there’s a huge section of Judah on it. It’s not shown on this cover, but if you look and find the original Madaba Mosaic, you can see, like they have big “Judah”, like the term “Israel” appears on it twice. And like the history, the 4,000-year history of Palestine is like a biblical map of the tribes of Israel. So… yeah.

Nehemia: That’s a bit ironic. I actually saw the Madaba Map when I was in Jordan in 2007. It’s a Byzantine church, and yeah, he’s just showing Jerusalem there, but it’s a map of, you know, at least of what survived as large parts of Israel. And so, you’re saying on the Madaba Map it has the word Israel itself, and so their 4,000-year history…

Josh: Yeah. It has a reference to Israel twice. Now, like the term Israel on the Madaba Map, it doesn’t… it’s more about the nation of Israel, so, like there’s an area in Refidim where Israel fought against Amalek. And then, I think there’s another area where Moses showed Israel the copper snake or something like that. So, like, it’s biblical references to the nation of Israel living there. So, no mention of any Palestinians.

Nehemia: Does that map mention the word Palestine on it?

Josh: So, yeah. There is, on the border, between Pleshet and Egypt, this is the border of Pleshet, or Palestine. So, there is reference to what you could interpret as Palestine, where the Bible refers to as Pleshet, like the…

Nehemia: So, tell us what Pleshet is.

Josh: Yeah, so… I think you know better than me, but, uh…

Nehemia: Well, yeah, but my audience has heard me lots of times. I wanted to hear it from someone who’s in the field dealing with these issues.

Josh: Yeah. So basically, around… I would say the 12th century BCE, a bit before, there was an invasion of the sea people from… coming from the sea, basically trying to take land in the coast of what was then Canaan, Egypt. And then the inscription’s like mentioning the Egyptians fighting against those sea people, that one of those groups were called Pleshet, and finally they settled in the southern coast of Israel, in cities like Aza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gat, Ekron. And they were, well, the enemies of Israel. According to the Bible, there were many fights between the Israelites and the Philistines, and like, they were a very strong or dominant power until around the 7th century BCE, if I’m not mistaken.

And then, the Assyrians came over, and there were like Assyrians, and later on the Babylonians fought against them, and in the 7th century BCE they’re already expelled. No continuation to the Philistine culture, apart from the area where they used to live. That was still referred to as Pleshet. This is where the Philistines used to live. But the funny thing about it is, from what I understand, we don’t have really any records mentioning what they call themselves. There are texts, like I saw in the Israel Museum some, like, records from the Philistine culture, but none of them are, like, talking about themselves. So like, you know, we don’t really know what they called themselves, we only know what surrounding entities call them.

Nehemia: So, Philistine is what the people around them call them. And what is the etymology of the word Philistine?

Josh: Well, in Hebrew it comes from a palash, or, like, invader. So like…

Nehemia: But they probably didn’t call themselves “invaders.” That’s what they were called, apparently, by the surrounding peoples.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: And that’s the origin of the word Palestinian, you’re saying. And you’re saying the Palestinians aren’t descendants of the ancient invaders, the ancient Philistines?

Josh: Well, there wasn’t any… there weren’t any Philistines left in the 7th century. Like, they were expelled to Mesopatamia, and like, a bit later, you could still find inscriptions in Mesopatamia referring to people that refer to themselves as Ashdodim, like, people from Ashdod. So, like they did, like, continue their communities a bit longer after they were expelled. But, yeah, that culture died out. Like there were no Philistines, you know, when the return of Zion when the Jews expelled later on by Babylonians and returned by the time of the Persians… there were no Philistines to deal with because that culture was gone…

Nehemia: Well, that’s interesting. So, it mentions the enemies of the Jews who returned. In Ezra and Nehemia it mentions Sanballat the Horonite, and it mentions Geshem haAravi, but it doesn’t mention the Philistines. That’s interesting.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. And by the way, by the way, on that… like, you know… A Zionist talking point is that Jews are from Judea, Arabs from Arabia, and that is, of course, as a Jew, because Jews are from Judea and Arabs did come from Arabia. But like, I feel that the Palestinian attempt to link themselves to the Philistines or link themselves to other groups is because they kind of don’t want to call themselves Arabs, because, like, they feel that it’s not, you know, it’s not their land. So, “Okay, if we identify with Arabs, it basically means that we are not from this area.”

But like you mentioned, like Geshem haAravi, there were Arab kingdoms in the Levant. Not specifically in the Land of Israel, but in the area of, like, you know, modern day Jordan. The Nabataeans were considered an Arab tribe. They did take over parts of Idumea that is now in modern day Israel, in the desert. So, there were Arabs in the Levant. Even like, you know, the Kurkh monolith from the 9th century BC mentioning King Ahab and the coalition of kings fighting against the Assyrians. One of those allies is Gindibu haAravi, like an Arab…

Nehemia: And it’s my understanding that’s probably the first reference to an Arab anywhere in history, I’m not…

Josh: Exactly.

Nehemia: I might be mistaken.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think so, too. And, like, so there were Arabs in the Levant, like, you know…

Nehemia: And by Levant, you mean the area of Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon.

Josh: Exactly.

Nehemia: That whole area is called the Levant.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like there were Arabs… And so, I think, like, you know, people should say, “Okay, we are Arabs. Arabs did live here.” Like I don’t, you know, a bit more than 20 percent of modern-day Israelis are Arabs, and there’s no shame identifying. I think they should have a lot of pride in their identity, not try to link themselves to groups that were never part of their culture.

Nehemia: Well, here’s a really interesting, kind of, like, historical sort of problem. So, when you say, like the Turks, very few people would say, “Well, you know, the Turks are foreigners in Turkey, and they’re invaders and conquerors.” But obviously they are, because the ancient population of Turkey wasn’t Turkish, it was Greek, and it was, you know, different people…

Josh: Exactly.

Nehemia: …from that area. So, how far back do you go? That’s one of the questions, right? Meaning, like, this is a problem that comes up in American history when they’ll say, “You know, a certain Native American tribe, they’ve always been in that land.” Well, wait a minute; no. We know that in the 18th century they got guns from the Europeans, and they went and conquered and wiped out this other tribe.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: And they’re really from Ohio, and not Minnesota or someplace like that, right?

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: So, who decides what the time frame is? Right? So, if we decide the time frame is, you know, I don’t know, a hundred years, let’s say 200 years, then maybe you could say the Palestinians are native to that. Even that’s not entirely true, because the whole…

Josh: It’s… no.

Nehemia: Right, the immigration in the 1880s. All right. So, the UN actually made a decision. If you were there in 1942, I believe is the date, something like that, then you’re a native, right? It was some kind of thing like that.

Josh: Yeah. There is the definition of a Palestinian refugee, is basically, if you lived in the British Mandate of Palestine between 1946 to 1948, that makes you a Palestinian. Then you… if you lost, you know, you lost your home or whatever because of the conflict, you are a Palestinian refugee. And like, they deliberately took like a very short period of time because there are a lot… First of all, there was Arab immigration into the Land of Israel from the early 1800s, like from 1834, when Ibrahim Pasha from Egypt, like, he had a whole big quest to try to take over Damascus. Basically, he went through the Land of Israel and tried to fight against the Ottomans that were trying to gain a bit more independence. That led a lot of Egyptians, first of all, to flee, because he… like, he had mandatory recruitment to the Egyptian army, that nobody liked. So, a lot of Egyptians moved from Egypt to the Land of Israel, and a lot of new villages were formed in the Land of Israel at the time, and they added like, for example, in Nablus, half of the families have Egyptian origins from that time period.

And then, of course, after the Zionist movement came and started developing the swampland and the dunes, many more immigrants came from all over the Arab world. There were, like, stories about how in, like, areas that were deserted, like, once you had a Jewish village there, suddenly you would find four, five other villages next to it for all of the workers that tried to come and work in that new village. So, yeah, there was a lot of immigration.

The immigration laws for Muslims in the time of the British Mandate were much more relaxed compared to the Jewish people, especially after the different rights…

Nehemia: But what you’re saying is, even if we were to stipulate, which probably isn’t the case, but even if we were to say that some Palestinians are descended from ancient Canaanites, a large percentage immigrated within relatively recent memory in the 1800s and on.

Josh: Exactly.

Nehemia: And they’re taking on the same alleged, or supposed, identity that, you know, “We’re the indigenous people of this land. We’ve been here for 4,000 years,” even though they’ll have a surname like al-Masri, the Egyptian, or al-Harrani, the person from Harran, which is in Syria. A very common name.

Josh: Yeah, I love, like… one of the things… By the way, there was also a huge immigration out of the Land of Israel the 1800s. The Christian population didn’t have a good time here, and a lot of them fled to South America. There’s a huge, big Palestinian diaspora. I think the largest Palestinian diaspora is in South America, in Chile. And this is before the time of the Zionist movement. It’s when the Turks were basically genociding the Armenians, the Greeks. They were very hostile towards the Christians, so it did make a lot of Palestinians flee, or Christians that were actually there. You could argue that they are more indigenous than the modern-day Palestinian Muslims living here.

But yeah. And one example that I like is that, during that same time period when the Christians were fleeing, the Ottomans were trying to import Muslims from different areas. So, there’s a huge… well, there was a big, relatively big, Muslim community from Bosnia, like Europeans that settled in…

Nehemia: Literal Europeans, right?

Josh: Literally Europeans, yeah. So, like, you know, you have a bunch of Europeans that have no ties to the Land of Israel settled here, and a lot of them, like the Bosnak surname is, you know, all of them have, like, surnames indicating where they came from, like al-Masri from Egypt. So, like, you have Bosnak from Bosnia, and later on, they joined a kind of terrorist organizations fighting against the Jews. So, like, you would have literally European immigrants fighting against the indigenous people, but not the way you think about it. It’s… yeah.

Nehemia: Well, I remember seeing… what is her name? She’s the little blue-eyed terrorist. I’ll tell…

Josh: Ahed Tamimi.

Nehemia: Yeah. And she’s being brought into court by this Ethiopian Jewish policewoman, and the narrative is: the white European colonizers are oppressing the native brown Palestinians. The girl’s got blonde hair and blue eyes. Like, what are you… what are you talking about, right? She’s probably a descendant of some crusader or something like that, you know?

Josh: Yeah. I think, like, the skin color… like, you know, they try, like, all of the talk is trying to, like, import dynamics that is happening in there, in the United States, I believe. Like, you know, they’re trying to, like, okay, there’s a whole, if you’re “white is bad, brown is good”, and, you know, they’re trying to bring that terminology to the Land of Israel. Okay, if they’re indigenous they must be brown, and if they are foreign colonizers, they must be white. Like, when you look at the actual communities, like DNA tests that, you know, have the most similarity to the ancient Canaanites because they never left the region, and they were, you know, the people that actually stuck here are… well, at the top of the list you have the Samaritans. And they’re like, you know, much whiter than me. Like, you know, they are…

Nehemia: They are whiter than you, that’s true.

Josh: Yeah. Like, you know, they are… like, a lot of them have blue eyes, like, you know, they are really pale and, like, second on the list, you have, like, the Druze community. And then, like, I saw just a few days ago there was a group of Druze sheikhs that came from Syria to Israel for a holy day celebration, and like, you know, they are white Europeans with blue eyes. Like, you know, science proved that they are the people that stuck here for the most. And their skin color is much lighter than any of those other people trying to claim that they are the indigenous people. So, I think that skin color game doesn’t really… isn’t really…

Nehemia: There’s a lot of confusion about skin color. I know that in Islamic sources it talks about their prophet, something like he was among the whitest of men, or something. And they’ll say, “Oh no, that just means he was very honest,” or something like that. That’s even worse.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: That’s… what? Okay. Let’s not get into that, but… So, there’s definitely a lot of confusion about skin tone and skin color and, you know, like it talks about King David being ruddy, you know, admoni. So… and there’s different explanations that Bible scholars will say, “Well, that means he didn’t have a lot of facial hair, so the redness of his face showed up.” Okay.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: That kind of means he probably had somewhat of a pale complexion, I don’t know.

Josh: Yeah, but like, then the comment I would get is, “Oh, the Jews left black, and they returned white.”

Nehemia: Right. But do you know who said that? Nasser said that. Nasser, whose goal was to kill all the Jews.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: And… let’s say that’s true, and my ancestor was… I don’t know if I can say this on social media… was… or on, you know, if this is published on YouTube. So, I’ll just say, my ancestor had a very unfortunate encounter with a Cossack, right? So, let’s say that’s true. So what?

Josh: Exactly. Yeah.

Nehemia: I mean, so… what is that? You know, okay, that’s horrible. You know that kind of thing happened, no doubt. Or with a Roman soldier or something, right? That definitely could have happened. Does that make me Roman? Well, my people have been persecuted for 2,000 years for being Jewish. It’s only now, all of a sudden, that, “Oh, well, you’re not really a Jew.”

It’s… I was going to say it’s funny, but it’s not funny. I saw a video of this man who was bragging about the October 7th attacks in Gaza, and he was saying, “Look what we did to the bani yisrael,” right? So, like, this is kind of, like, a message that they’re putting out externally. “These aren’t real Jews.” Until it comes to, “Well, why do we want to kill them? Because they killed all the prophets. It says it in the Quran.” Right?

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: Well, who killed all the prophets? The poles?

Josh: Yeah, yeah.

Nehemia: The Germans? No, it’s the Yahud. And… right? They weren’t saying, you know, itbach al-polani, or whatever, right? They were saying…

Josh: Exactly…

Nehemia: “Slaughter the Jews,” right? And they equate that with bani Israel, the children of Israel. So, it’s a kind of disingenuous argument…

Josh: Yeah, I find it like on Western translations, like when they try to translate things that are said in Arabic, like, you know, they’ll go on and saying, itbach al-yahud or whatever. The English subtitles will be, “Revenge against the Zionists.”

Nehemia: Oh, wow! Like, well, what does it really mean? Tell our audience who doesn’t know what that means.

Josh: Well, when I chant, itbach al-Yahud… Yahud means Jew. They are trying to…

Nehemia: It means “slaughter the Jew”.

Josh: “Slaughter the Jew,” yeah.

Nehemia: And that’s a common Palestinian chant.

Josh: It’s a common Palestinian chant. Yeah. That and khaybar, khaybar, ya Yahud, mentioning how…

Nehemia: So, tell us what khaybar is. I’m imagining most people don’t know who are listening.

Josh: Yeah, the Battle of Khaybar is basically… There were a lot of Jewish tribes in the Arabian Peninsula that, well, didn’t accept Islam, or were not convinced by that new religion. And long story short, they were all slaughtered, with women, children, et cetera. Battle of Khaybar is… they were tricked to believe that there would be some kind of peace agreement, and then when Muhammad arrived, it wasn’t so peaceful after all.

And a lot of times in ceasefire demonstrations, or “stop the war in Gaza”, the chant in Arabic would be, “Khaybar, khaybar, ya Yahud, jaish Muhammad soufa ya?oud!” “Remember Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will be back!” And continue doing what happened in Khaybar.

Nehemia: “We’re going to slaughter every one of you like we did in the 7th century,” is what they’re chanting.

Josh: Yeah.

Nehemia: Okay. So, they acknowledge that we’re the same people, unless they’re talking to some, like, Western woke leftist, when all of a sudden the Jews are Europeans who have nothing to do with the 7th century Jews we killed.

Josh: Yeah, basically, we are the bad, and now replace bad in… like the word for bad in your culture. Like, in our culture, bad means Jew? Great. And then in your Western culture, bad means white European. Okay, so he’s a white European. So, yeah, it’s a double messaging.

Nehemia: Okay. Any final words? Where can people find your videos? And any final words for the audience?

Josh: Well, my videos on Instagram and on TikTok, just search for them.

Nehemia: So, we’ll put a link on nehemiaswall.com.

Josh: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I think that, you know, the important, like, message that I try to bring up or what I try to highlight is that, first of all, Jews have always lived in the Land of Israel, nonstop. Over 3,000 years there’s a continuous Jewish presence in our homeland. These are the only people that had a local foreign entity in multiple occasions, like the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Later on, you had the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms of Judea. You had different revolts, like the first and second revolt. You had a revolt in the 4th century, you had a revolt in 7th century, that on all of those occasions Jews had self-determination and control in the Land of Israel.

There was never any independent Arab sovereign state, you know, in all of that 4,000 years of Palestine. So yeah, Jews are… and like, trying to claim that Jews are, those Europeans are… sticking to that like divine promise that God promised us the land 3,000 years ago, like, you know, it’s not an argument, because like, when, when I put up… You know, you can tell me that the Bible is a fairy tale, and great, like, I don’t care. I don’t have the evidence for Moses splitting Yam Suf. But I do have evidence for King Hezekiah when he was fighting against the Assyrians, and like, the Paleo-Hebrew inscription that belongs to the king, la melekh Hebron.

So, like, you know, I don’t need the Bible. The Bible helps understand, okay, what are these archaeological Hebrew findings that they are? Okay, you can see something mentioning King Hezekiah. Great, we have the Bible to confirm it. But even without the Bible, there is plenty of archaeological evidence throughout all of those 3,000 years of Jews living in their homeland. It’s not a biblical myth. No, it’s like the Jews living here created the Bible or, I don’t know, lived with the Bible as part of a religious system. But, you know, even if you take religion aside, you still have hard archaeological evidence that no other nation has in this place.

Nehemia: Well, thank you Josh so much for joining me. And guys, go check out his channel on Instagram and on TikTok. Shalom,

Josh: Thank you very much. Thanks, Nehemia.

—

Narrator: You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemiah Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemiah’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at nehemiaswall.com.

You have been listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon’s Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

We hope the above transcript has proven to be a helpful resource in your study. While much effort has been taken to provide you with this transcript, it should be noted that the text has not been reviewed by the speakers and its accuracy cannot be guaranteed. If you would like to support our efforts to transcribe the teachings on NehemiasWall.com, please visit our support page. All donations are tax-deductible (501c3) and help us empower people around the world with the Hebrew sources of their faith!

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VERSES MENTIONED
Ezra
Nehemiah
1 Samuel 16:12

BOOKS MENTIONED
Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History: Masalha, Nur: 9781786992727: Amazon.com: Books

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OTHER LINKS
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https://j0sh.bio

The post Hebrew Voices #218 – Revealing the proof of Palestine through Ancient Maps – Part 1 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.