WILL LEE HSIEN LOONG WAVE ISRAELI OCCUPATION MAP IN PARLIAMENT?

Occupation, Open-Air Prison, Genocide, Apartheid, Resistance, Decolonisation, and Jews steal Palestinian lands. These are very strong emotive words. And they have been chosen precisely for the purpose of evoking your emotion. Repetition through mass distribution legitimizes the message. Tiktok, Whatsapp, X (Twitter), memes, paid and unpaid online social influencers, and in no time, millions of people all over the world get it. Apply to Israel and Jews get demonised. Israel may win in the battlefield, but they are loosing in the propaganda war. And that is why anti-Semitism is rising again. Most people simply cannot comprehend the dark money, or legit money from innocent donors, that has gone into funding the propaganda machinery for decades.

Occupation, Open-Air Prison, Genocide, Apartheid, Resistance, Decolonisation and Jews steal Palestinian lands, all depict Israel as evil and destructive aggressors, therefore to be hated. Destroying them is therefore justifiable.

The fact is, all seven slogans are lies. All those who bought into the propaganda lacks historical knowledge, has a poor world view, and simply too lazy to do their own research. It is somewhat frightening that those members of parliament who filed the questions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for discussion are obviously persuaded by propaganda. If MPs are lost, what are we to expect of the ordinary Singaporeans. When we see students of great universities in US and EU demonstrating against Israel, their inability to see the real situation is very disconcerting. This is the cream of the youths of society who will one day occupy positions of power.

PM Lee Hsien Loong put it most diplomatically when he said many Singaporeans are “agitated” at what's happening in the Middle East. In my various online encounters, I told several commenters they are reacting with hysteria. Of course I hit some nerves. Last night when I watched Gregg Gutfeld on Foxnews, I felt exonerated when he said:

“…. this is not a protest movement. It is hysteria. You are witnessing a hysteria. It is a brainwashing effect when you look at how the seeds were planted and amplified by the oppression filter. You talk about the sloganeering, that is the linguistics, phrases like decolonization, you don’t even have to know what that means. Or resistance, calling terrorists resistance fighters. But this — they are targeting a very susceptible group, and that is American college students, because they live in a plastic bubble.”

In this post I focus on only the “Occupation” slogan.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the greatest balancing act for any politician, especially for a multicultural country like Singapore. So far, PM Lee has navigated it very well. This ‘map of Israeli occupation of Palestine’ (feature image above) has been waved by brainless politicians, by Abbas, head of Palestine Authority, by clueless pro-Palestinian demonstrators and carelessly shared by online influencers and the misinformed. There is certitude PM Lee is the least persuaded by it. But chances are, ordinary Singaporeans would have been easily persuaded with no research. It is a lie meant to extract emotions and sympathies, and it succeeds damn well.

Era of decolonisation and nationalism

Taking into the context of the time, emerging from WWI was a period of decolonisation and nationalism. People everywhere were carving out new states.

Zionism is a nationalist movement started in the 1800s to re-establish a homeland for Jewish diaspora being persecuted in the countries they were living in. It is not a military organisation like PLO, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, ISIS, Taliman, Boko Haram, Irish Republican Army.

After WWI, the French Mandate created the Kingdom of Syria as a French vassal. A small socialist nationalist group revolted and Franco-Syrian war broke out in 1920. The French won and many of these Arab nationalists fled to Palestine.

There has always been Jewish and Arab settlements living side by side for centuries in the region. Now this group of nationalists that moved down from Syria was the catalyst that fermented the seed for Palestinian Arabs to agitate for one-state Palestine for Arabs.

One of these nationalists was Haj Amin Al-Husseini, known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. A very popular and influential figure in Jerusalem, Al-Husseini was driven by the grand idea of pan-Arabism comprising of the area of Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and Palestine. The Balfour Declaration hardened his stand on an Arab Palestine to prevent a massive influx of Jews.

There have been academic debates whether Al-Husseini was driven by politics of nationalism or anti-semitism. In November 1941 he met up with Hitler and asked for Nazi support in his fight for Palestine against the British. He was said to have aided the Nazis in WWI in recruiting Islamic militants to fight for Germany in the Caucasus. It was also rumoured he pleaded with Hitler not to expel German Jews which would have flooded Palestine. To which Hitler asked what was he going to do with the Jews. The mufti said “Burn them”. There is no evidence to this. In 2015 Benjamin Nentayahu mentioned this and he got lambasted. Some rabbis took him to task that he had history wrong because Hitler was already burning Jews before the mufti met him. My history says the mufti-Hitler meeting was 30 Nov 1941 and Hitler announced his Final Solution for the Jewish Question in January 1942.

There is a saying we know a person by the type of friends he keep. In 2017 an old telegram dated 2 Nov 1943 was uncovered in the National Library of Israel. The document was first confiscated by US Army in Germany, before falling into the hands of a member of the Jewish Haganah paramilitary group. It was a telegram from Nazi monster Gestapo boss Heinrich Himmler to El-Husseini to mark the 26th anniversary of Balfour Declaration. It said:

“To Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini. From the outset, the National Socialist movement of Greater Germany has been a standard-bearer in the battle against world Jewry. For this reason, it is closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs, particularly in Palestine, against the Jewish invaders. The shared recognition of the enemy and the joint fight against it are creating the strong base [uniting] Germany and freedom-seeking Arabs around the world. In this spirit, I am pleased to wish you, on the anniversary of the wretched Balfour Declaration, warm wishes on your continued fight until the great victory.”

Seems like a sharing of a mutual sentiment on anti-semitism.

In an interview, El-Husseini said he considered that the land of the Palestinian Arabs had been unjustly seized by the Israelis. This land, he pointed out, had belonged to the non-Jewish peoples of Palestine since Biblical times. “No unjust or unfair solution can be accepted. No man will accept anything in exchange for his country.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is basically the struggles of two nationalist groups disputing over the same land, one side having an immovable position of not sharing an inch of the territory.

Whose land is it anyway?

First let’s check out the evidence of Israel’s presence in the region. There are famous rock slabs known as stele dated thousands of years old that specifically mention biblical Israel and its inhabitants in the region. Isn’t it a wonder that archaeology consistently proves the Bible right?

Everywhere archaelogists dig in the area, they find evidence of ancient Jewish race. Sometimes traces of the other races are also found. But nothing has ever been found of Palestinians. Ancient historians have written hundreds of books on the Jewish people. There is not a single ancient book of a Palestinian people.

Still don’t believe? Go get a copy of “A Brief Guide to the Dome of the Rock and Al-Haram Al-Sharif” published in 1964 by The Supreme AQWAF Council (Muslim authority). It admits the Dome was built over Solomon’s temple. Yes, the Jews were there before there were Muslims.

The Roman Palestina

Now let’s look at an ancient map. Note that at the time of the Roman Marcus Antonius, the areas marked as Free Land and under Herod roughly corresponds to the kingdoms of Judea and Israel.

So what about Palestine? There was no kingdom or state called Palestine. The term Palestina was given by the Romans to demarcate this whole region between Assyria and Egypt, the two kingdoms of great interest to Rome for their riches and trade. To Rome, Palestina was a trouble-making spot of no economic interest other than it connected Rome to Assyria and Egypt.

No Palestine state means no Palestinians. There were several ancient Semitic peoples there besides Jews (Judeans, Israelites, Samaritans), such as Moabs, Edomites, Ammonites, and Canaanites. The Philistines were a group of Grecian Bronze Age people that settled in the southern coastal region, roughly the Gaza strip. In the tale of David vs Goliath, that giant was a Philistine. So where are all these ancient peoples? All disappeared from history except for the people Mosses took out from captivity in Egypt. Originally, only Judeans were called Jews (Ju) but gradually all the tribes of Moses came to be called Jews.

But how come the Jews can survive as a race after all the pogroms and displacements all over the world for thousands of years? The answer is culture. The Jews kept their culture strong and so was never assimilated into other dominant races. They were so strong that they have even retained their ancient Hebrew language.

So what about all the other non-Jews living in the area today. Some Romantics may want to think the Gazans are perhaps Philistines. That at least sound close to Palestinian. But no, they have all disappeared. The other folks there are essentially Arabs.

Where are the ancient Arabs in the region? To the right of both maps you can see Nabatu tribes, or Nabateans. These are Arabic people who later grew in power in the Levant region with their capital at Petra. Nabateans too, have disappeared from history.

Jewish Diaspora

In historical times, Jews were either forced to, or voluntarily, leave their homeland by Assyrians, Babylonians, Romans, Christians and Muslims. In modern history, pogroms over the centuries all over the world brought Jewish diaspora back to Palestina. Medieval persecution brought Ashkenazi Jews of Northern and Eastern Europe back, expulsion from Spain brought Sephardic Jews back, British expulsion did the same.

Many Jews used to live in Arab lands. They actually lived safely there because they were recognised as “people of the Book”. However, they lived as dhimmis, much like 2nd class citizens, but nevertheless had certain rights and protection. They paid a special tax and faced harassment and discrimination. Say what you like, the Ottoman Empire welcomed Jews when they were persecuted elsewhere.

In more recent times, two events caused mass movement of Jews to safer countries like US and Palestine. (a) The rise of Nazism caused Jews to fled Europe and Arab countries aligned to Nazi Germany, namely Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. (b) The many Arab-Israeli Wars galvanised Muslim anger and hatred for the Jews never seen before in world history. Jews began to empty out of all these Arab lands. The only exception was Lebanon which was then a Christian majority country, peaceful, prosperous and its capital Beirut was known as Paris of the East. Until influx of Muslims changed the demographics and civil wars ensued, mass exodus of Christians and Jews, and Lebanon is now a shell of what it once was.

In current times, the economic miracle of Israel that turned desert lands into a land of milk and honey, has become a pulling factor for Jews to return.

Genesis of the violence

After WWI the Ottoman Empire collapsed. The French and British were given mandates to manage the Levant region by the victorious Axis (which included Japan).

The British drew a line East of River Jordan and called it Transjordan. So out of nowhere the British created a new people called Jordanians. King Abdullah set up the Hashemite Kingdom and declared independence in 1946 as a British protectorate. They were lucky. They got a large piece of good land.

West of River Jordan the British came up with the Balfour Declaration, a proposal for the creation of a Jewish state in 1916. It was a smaller plot with a dessert and swamps, a landscape which Mark Twain described “The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became…There was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country”. The British called this Mandatory Palestine. Had history turned out well, today we would have a Jewish state of Palestine.

Up to that point before Balfour Declaration, Arabs were OK to have small Jewish settlements living amongst them as dhimmis. But a Jewish state in Middle East, well the Arab nationalists in Palestine and all Arab countries cannot stomach that. Violence broke out and Jews, Arabs and British got killed. That was the genesis of the sectarian violence that has not stopped to this day.

Maps of deception

Map A starts off the deception. Since the 14th century when the Ottomans defeated the Eastern Roman Empire, the whole region came under the Turks. There was no Israel, no Palestine. It was just a province of the Ottoman Empire. The white patches are simply settlements of many Jewish people. Certainly there were Arab settlements too. But there were no Palestinians. Jews and Arabs had private ownership of their properties.

Before 1948 there was no Israeli or Palestinian collective that own the land. The map deceives one into thinking other lands, in green, without Jewish settlements, must be land belonging to Palestinians. The truth is there are deserts, swamps, and large tracts of no-man’s land.

First two-state solution rejected by Arabs

Map B was UN partition plan. In 1947 the UN agreed to partition Palestine into 2 states, one for Jews and one for Arabs. More than 50% of the land was for Arabs. Jews accepted, but Arabs in Palestine and Arab countries rejected the plan. Arab countries, which collectively has 14 million sq km of land, refused Jews a small little homeland where their ancient forebears once lived.

This marked the first time Palestinians rejected the two-state solution.

The British mandate ran out on 14 May 1948. On the same day, David Ben-Gurion declared Israel an Independent state. Since Arabs rejected the two state partition, the status of the green areas were in limbo. There was still no state of Palestine.

So now the Jews have a collective to own the land, the State of Israel. Private ownership remains. Jews and Arabs own their own properties. There were many, and still are, absentee landowners of various nationalities in the land that is now Israel. Many Arabs chose to remain and even take up citizenship. Today, there are now more than 2 million Arab Israelis. 

In the year Israel declared independence, 5 Arab states - Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria—attacked Israel. Israel managed to win this First Israeli-Arab War.

Gaza/West Bank under Egypt/Jordan occupation

Map C is the status after the First Israeli-Arab War.

It was a land grab. Egypt acquired Gaza and Jordan had the West Bank area. Israel added 10% more land. It’s a consequence of war.

Egypt occupied Gaza from 1949 to 1967 except for 6 months from Oct 1956 to Mar 1957 when Israel invaded Gaza and Sinai in the Second Israeli-Arab War (Suez Canal Crisis). Britain and France invaded Egypt when President Nasser nationalised the company that operated the Suez Canal. The war ended when US, Soviet Union and UN demanded British, French and Israeli forces to withdraw. Israel entered the war to force Egypt to open the Straits of Tiran and they achieved what they wanted.

From 1948 to 1959 Egypt governed Gaza via the All-Palestinian Government. This was symbolic. There was still no state of Palestine. However, many All Arab League nations recognised Palestine at the time.

By then, Nasser was known as the canker of the Arab World and his Pan-Arabism goals did not go down well with the Jordanians and other Arab countries. In 1959 Nasser annulled the All-Palestinian Government for failure to achieve Palestinian objectives and placed Gaza under military rule. In 1959, Gaza, Egypt and Syria merged into the UAR (united Arab Republic). It was short-lived as Syria went independent in 1961. When Yasser Arafat formed PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) in 1964, Nasser promised to hand over administration of Gaza to PLO but that never happened. The UAR entity continued without Syria, which meant Gaza was effectively merged into Egypt.

As for the West Bank, well Jordan annexed it. That meant it became part of Jordan.

The propaganda war lies about 70 years of Israeli occupation. They don’t tell you of Egyptian and Jordanian occupation for 20 years. Bet nobody told you this.

Arab states make public statements of Arab solidarity and fight for Palestinians. But look what actually happened? For 20 years Gaza and West Bank were under Arab countries who had every opportunity to form the State of Palestine. Nothing happened. Palestinian Arabs were never on their minds.

From 1949 – 1967 there was still no Palestinian state.

Israel won territories from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria

Map D is another deception.

In 1967 the Third Israeli-Arab or Six Day War broke out. It was Israel vs Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. When Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran, Israel declared war and launched a preemptive attack. Israel captured Gaza and Sinai from Egypt. When Syria attacked from the North, Israel captured the Golan Heights. Israel begged Jordan not to enter the war. When Jordan opened up the Eastern front, IDF entered the West Bank.

Did Israel take over Palestinian territory? Of course not. How could Israel take over a state that did not exist? Israel captured Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian territories.

Should Israel return these lands? Should Britain return Falklands Island, Russia return Crimea and Sakhalin Island, should China return Tibet. These are all very difficult questions.


Land for Peace

In 1979 Egypt and Syria launched the 4th Arab-Israeli War, known as Yom Kippur war, to wrest the Sinai and Golan Heights back. Israel triumphed but this time it took some beating. The Yom Kippur war seemed to have decided for Israel a major policy change to embark on ‘land for peace’.

The Camp David Accords led to the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel in 1979. Egypt recognised Israel’s right to exist, Israel returned the Sinai. Egypt never bothered with Gaza. It washed its hands off Gaza, a piece of land offering no economic fruits and chock full of jihadists. In effect, Egypt ceded territory to Israel.

As for West Bank, Jordan relinquished its claim in 1988 in exchange for a peaceful settlement between Israel and PLO. In 1994 Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty brokered by Bill Clinton. What did Jordan get out of West Bank? In the 1948 war, 200,000 Palestinian Arab refugees flooded into Jordan giving it a big headache. Many of these were absorbed into the Jordanian army that was to play a role in the 1956 attempted coup against a 21 year old King Hussein. Palestinian Arabs were Nasserites, supporters of Nasser’s socialist Arabism goals, certainly no friends of old monarchies. At the time, Nasser was orbiting in Soviet circles. Jordan was probably glad to wash its hands off the West Bank.

So after 20 years, Egypt and Jordan joined the rest of us to give love and support to Palestinians from a thousand kilometres away where no jihadist rockets are raining down on our heads.

Syria never recognise the legitimacy of Israel and the 2 countries have been locked in a state of war since 1948. Israel still retains control of the Golan Heights.

Palestinian Arabs became Israel’s problems

It is easy to say Israel should return the land to Palestinians. What does this even mean? Do you mean Jews should move into the sea and leave the entire Palestine to Arabs? Or are you more equitable to mean Israel to leave Gaza and West Bank alone and perhaps remove illegal settlements. Assuming you are the equitable type, then it is possible to have a conversation. There were big picture issues that the whole world now dump on Israel’s laps.

Firstly, there is no Palestinian collective since there is no state of Palestine. Now a foreigner may own say a piece of real estate in Singapore. He has title deeds. He has private ownership, but it is still Singapore land. In Gaza and West Bank, Palestinians and Jews may have private ownership but the land does not belong to a collective because there isn’t any. There are many real estate in the West Bank owned by Jews.

Secondly, Britain’s UN mandate lapsed in 1948 so the proposed land partition is in limbo. Added to this, Arabs rejected the UN proposal. So who is to say where are the boundary lines? On top of that, Israel fought all those wars with Egypt and Jordan and captured their territories. Israel took nothing from the people calling themselves Palestinians. So those Arabs may own their homes and farms, but the place, having been turned over by Egypt and Jordan, belonged to Israel.

Thirdly, there being no Palestinian collective, who should Israel deal with?

Fourthly, no statehood, no civil administrative capacity to handle the business of running the territories, Israel needed funds and more importantly, time to develop governance or the whole place will collapse into utter chaos.

Lastly and most importantly, what does it mean by "return the land" to Palestinians. Non-Muslim supporters of Palestinians think it is handing Gaza and West Bank to Palestinians. To Muslims, it means return the whole of Palestine to Palestinian Arabs.

With PLO and Hamas, Israel deals with organisations whose constitutions state clearly they seek the annihilation of the Jewish state. Hamas was founded in 1987 out of Palestinian Chapter of Muslim Brotherhood. It is an ideology organisation whose endgame is Islamic world domination. Just imagine its stealth and power. Obama took them into the White House and in his second term, Christmas was no longer celebrated in government offices and all Christian symbolisms were banned. Hillary Clinton's chief of staff was a MB operative.

Hamas Covenant 1988 (its constitution) had the first few lines say boldly :

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it”

Two mutually exclusive solutions

Israel and many sensible countries in the world support a two state solution. Palestinians and Islamic countries support a one state solution.

These are mutually exclusive positions. Neither side is blinking.

In the 1980s Israel had indicated it wants to work towards autonomy for Gaza and West Bank. This will undoubtedly lead to self-rule and subsequently independence. With Yasser Arafat’s PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) formed in 1963, there emerged the possibility of a Palestinian leadership Israel can work with. The only condition demanded on Arafat is PLO must recognise Israel's right to exist.

On 9 Sep 1993 Arafa blinked. He recognized Israel's right to exist and renounced terrorism. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Palestinian Authority was formed with Arafat as head to handle self-governance. Real negotiations progressed on issues like administrative transfers, legislative bodies, funding, co-operation arrangements, joint police patrols, ec. Over the years, civil responsibilities transferred hands slowly but surely despite in the background, sporadic violence and killings continued.

Palestinian palace intrigues and PLO corruption got in the way. Besides PLO there were several smaller organisations like Fatah and Hamas. Civil war amongst them broke out. 

On 5 Sep 1993 Hamas spokesman said that Hamas would accelerate its armed struggle against Israel in an effort to defeat the Israel-PLO accord.

On 10 May 1994, in a speech in Johannesburg, Arafat calls for a "jihad to liberate Jerusalem," prompting protests from Israeli officials.  Arafat was obviously speaking to the gallery of Palestinian hawks against the two state plan. 

On 2 Dec 1993 Foreign Minister Peres announced that the Israel-PLO accord would be null and void if Hamas won the elections scheduled for 1994. PLO won so talks and preparations continued.

28 Sep 1995 Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo II Accord which called on a West Bank military pullout and expanded Palestinian self rule.

28 Nov 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Peres announced that if the PLO does not cancel the sections of the Palestinian Covenant calling for the destruction of the State of Israel, the peace "train will stop."

20 Jan 1996 Palestinians voted for the new Palestinian Council and for the President. Arafat won with 88%of the vote. 

24 Apr 1996 PLO amended it's Charter and the sections calling for the destruction of Israel removed.

The peace plan moved along. But there is no happy ending. With support of Muslim Brotherhood and Iran, Hamas grew stronger and in 2007, it won the elections and took control of Gaza to this day. Talks were off the  table again.

That election was the second time Palestinians rejected a two state solution.

In 2007 Prime Minister Ehud Olmer proposed another two-state peace plan which Palestinians rejected.

That was the third time Palestinians rejected a two state solution.

Conclusion:

One can never understand objectively the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by getting into the emotional mess of tit for tat sectarian violence. Both sides are culpable, sometimes one side, sometimes the other, bear the greater blame. Neither are angels.

To search for Occam's Razor one needs to step back to discern the bigger picture. Getting sucked into a hurricane, one gets lost amongst the swirling debris and cannot see the devastating natural phenomenon.  Occupation, Open-Air Prison, Genocide, Apartheid, Resistance, Decolonisation, and Jews steal Palestinian lands, these are the swirling debris most people see, fed to them insidiously by well-greased propaganda machinery using state of the art technology and creative marketing geniuses. Occupation is dissected in this blog and propaganda LIES are revealed. Each of the slogans can be reviewed individually and LIES will be revealed.

Above all, reacting with hysteria instead of a calm and collective mind, blinds one to facts hidden behind the swirling debris.

A parting shout out :

Plato said:
“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
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