Israel Matzav

'Jordan is Palestine' said... King Hussein of Jordan

In 1950, Transjordan annexed the "West Bank" (the name they gave the territory occupied after the Arab invasion of new-born Israel in 1948) and became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Its leaders, including the late King Hussein, stressed over and over in numerous pronouncements that "Jordan and Palestine are one and the same." So did Palestinian leaders, including Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian Covenant, in fact, covets all of Jordan - precisely because it's Palestine.

Yet eventually it became expedient, PR-wise, to claim that Palestine exists exclusively west of the mini-river, justifying the campaign for a second Palestinian Arab state.

Fearing that his Palestinian subjects would topple their imported Hashemite rulers, Hussein kicked out the PLO in Black September 1970. Too bad. Had he failed, Arafat would have taken Amman over and nobody could today deny that Palestine is divided among Jews and Arabs, with the Arabs owning nearly four-fifths thereof.

Now Hussein's son Abdullah II seeks to rewrite history once more in the well-trodden Jordanian tradition. His father dropped the claim to what he branded the West Bank but didn't revive the ludicrous moniker of Transjordan. After 17 years of annexation (1950-67), the Jordan trademark gained global acceptance. It rang authentic. Why then return to the obvious fake?

Jordan's population, though, is overwhelmingly Palestinian. The only exceptions are the Beduin who accompanied Abdullah I from Hejaz. Like the Hashemites, they're foreigners. Now these outsiders design to delegitimize the natives. Expectedly, governments and human rights NGOs worldwide are silent.

Jordan was born of fraud, which it's fated thereafter to prop up via unremitting retroactive repairs to the past - even the distant past. Not too many years back Jordan TV aired a documentary on Jerusalem portraying ancient Jebusites as Arabs.

Of course, were the Hebrews not the People of the Book, those Jerusalem-area Canaanites known as Jebusites would have never made their exceedingly fleeting appearance on the pages of history, or on JTV.

For anyone who forgot the brief biblical references, the Jebusites were the folks from whom King David conquered a wee hamlet he later turned into his capital. The books of Judges and Ezra indicate they intermarried and assimilated among the Israelites.

Posthumously Arabizing these Jebusites presumably establishes an Arab claim to Zion. JTV concomitantly magnified the Jebusites' contribution to mankind to proportions that would have doubtlessly astounded them. JTV outrightly expunged Jews from Jerusalem's annals, save for one abrupt but indispensable appearance in the Judenrein city. Villainous Jews arrived suddenly out of nowhere and stayed just long enough to crucify Jesus, described as "a Palestinian Arab prophet."

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:24 AM