The fault of their own leaders

Dear readers and viewers,

Shalom!!!

From Yafo (Jaffa) I send you the most heartfelt, brotherly and warm greetings as Middle East correspondent for GOD News.

But: from which country am I sending you these greetings?

'From Israel, of course,' many of you will say, but there is also a growing group of people who will say: 'From Palestine.'

Both parties are partly right, but looking at the historical and proven facts I simply have to state that I report daily from Israel.

The name Palestine was the name of the British mandate territory after the British defeated the Ottoman colonial empire in the First World War. Long before the Jews were allowed to call it the state of Israel in 1948 following a UN resolution. The people who lived there at the time called themselves, until the founding of their homeland, 'people from the mandate territory of Palestine' and even received a British mandate passport for that area.

Back then there had already been, for years, a Palestinian football team, Palestine Airways, Palestine Electric Corporation, The Palestine Post, The Anglo-Palestine Bank, Palestine Potash Ltd. and the Palestine Symphony Orchestra.

All founded and owned by Jews. After all, they had lived there for centuries under the colonial oppression of successive genocidal and colonial empires, the last of which were the Ottomans.

The Arabs who also lived there, who had conquered much land in North Africa, were simply called Arabs. Not Palestinians. Good for our TikTok generation to know when they chant the obligatory 'Free Palestine.'

'Thanks for the support,' I would say to these uninformed do-gooders.

The current false narrative about present-day Israel, from both the left and the right in the Netherlands, has shifted. Increasingly it is the image of a genocidal, illegally occupied and brutally conquered land by Israel that violates the fundamental and political rights of Palestinians. The Arabs of the former British mandate territory have suddenly become 'Palestinian' Arab refugees. Israel is now even said to starve them in Gaza, deliberately murder them, bomb them without scruples and cut off their water.

Oh yes: because of climate change we suddenly have harsh winters in the Middle East, and after more than seventy years the Gazans still cannot heat their tents.

The morbid Zionist country that has turned Gaza into a prison by building the wall between Gaza and Israel. Conveniently forgetting that the border with Egypt has been sealed shut for many years and that neighbouring Jordan absolutely does not take back Palestinians — often of Jordanian origin. Not to mention the Arab brother nations that watch from their oil states with their water pipes and also keep their borders closed.

What Iran's role in this narrative is has also become clear by now. It too has been given the role of victim. Iranian flags blend seamlessly at demonstrations with Palestinian flags, Turkish flags, Moroccan flags and of course with climate flags and rainbow flags. This completes the demonstration cocktail with its loudly shouting protesters. Find the NOS camera and you will see.

In this day and age, opinions count, not hard facts.

I have been living here in the Promised Land for some time now, and I notice that every time I return to the Netherlands to visit my family, business relations and friends, the mood toward Israel is hardening.

The propaganda of the so-called displaced Palestinian people, which began in the 1960s, is bearing fruit among everyone who views the Middle East conflict from their Dutch living room. Sitting in their armchairs, virtuously watching, with the NOS and the printed press as their only journalistic source and guide.

Since 22 September I now run the risk, upon returning to the Netherlands, of going to prison for six years. As a guest of the taxpayer. I may end up in jail — from the word bayit in Hebrew, which simply means house — when I take dates, wine or other products from here to my country of birth.

Our resolute minority government is busy issuing an ordinary old-fashioned boycott against Israel. The Netherlands has, of course, perfectly mastered the rest of its much-needed projects with its visions of castles in the air. We can do it.

A matter of priorities.

Hopefully, when my illegal date import is discovered at Schiphol and after the subsequent arrest with immediate custody, I will be staying in the 'Oranjehotel' in Scheveningen, the fishing village where I lived from 1981 to 2022.

Why do I not run that risk with Turkish dates, Moroccan tagines, hardwood from French Guiana, gin from Gibraltar and cars from China? To name just a few countries that truly have occupied and oppressed colonised population groups. Groups that were or are being displaced by violence.

Here it will truly have no influence whatsoever on the flourishing Israeli economy with its low inflation.

It does, however, have a major influence on employment for approximately 25,000 Arabs in the West Bank who earn their income working for Israeli farmers. They will be the first to notice that the Western world loves to be virtuous.

Disastrous, because the local Arab economy in the areas governed by the Palestinian Authority lives off foreign aid, much of which then disappears into the pockets of their unelected leaders. Both the Gazans and the residents of the West Bank lead a dwindling existence without a real economy.

The fault of their own leaders

How come?

Take a good look at the collage of historical newspaper headlines at the top of this article. You read there that the Arab colonists did not want the Jews — the real refugees of that time.

Palestine for the Arabs. No place for the indigenous people. Not then and not now.

The result: a three-state monstrosity.

In the first years after the Second World War, the allies were eagerly drawing with pencil again, on a staff map during the redistribution of the mandate territory. Without truly taking earlier claims, promises and sensitivities into account, this monstrosity of countries was sketched out by the British and the French. Countries that, moreover, were mainly on the side of the Arabs.

The rest is history.

From the day Israel was founded, it only produced Arab attacks. There was no question of a Palestinian state then. The attacking and ultimately losing Arab League did not even know the term. Egypt occupied Gaza and Jordan conquered the West Bank and Jerusalem. No mention of a Palestine from the Arabs. Not in 1956 during the Suez Crisis either.

But suddenly, in 1964, the Palestinian people and the Palestinian ambition were born. Egypt had not swallowed its defeat of 1948 and 1956 and wanted once again, with the other Arab states, to drive Israel into the sea. In the run-up to the 1967 war they needed extra attacks and assaults on the Jews to weaken the country, and they wanted international attention for their struggle against Israel.

According to this reading, the Palestinians did not exist before that as a people with their own history and culture. They would suddenly own the Israeli land and would never have legally sold any ground to the Jews.

The Jews had to go into the sea.

Finally, do not forget that Gaza and the West Bank have each had their own unelected regimes for decades, with all kinds of parties, tribes and families. Armed first by the Russians and now by Iran, to kill each other, but above all the Jews.

A fascinating region, about which I will inform and report to you extensively from today.

With facts.

GOD News

The voice of Free Israel