Israel and Palestine: Who's Land Is It?

     One of the greatest myths that has been propagated by the politically correct, most often anti-Semite, news media, political left and Muslim nations, is that Palestine was the true name of historical Israel.  They use this argument to help solidify Palestinian claims to the land they claim was traditionally their home.  Never mind the fact that they sold their land willingly to the Jewish people.  So let's take a brief look at who really has a right to the land.

     It is well known by Christians that the land of Israel was promised by God to Abraham and his descendants for all time.  What is not as well known is the conflict that Abraham and Sarah caused by not having faith in God's timing and conceiving Ishmael by Hagar.  The Bible refers to him as being 'a wild donkey' who is constantly at war with his neighbors.  Now when you dig through the genealogy of Ishmael's descendants, you see that they became the Arab people, which now surround the state of Israel.  And it's a testimony to the accuracy of God's word that the Arab people have a natural tendency toward violence and war.

     So the Palestinians were direct relatives of Ishmael, and thus retain his proclivity to act in 'defiance' of God's will.  There is an ingrained jealousy of the covenant that was made with Abraham regarding the birth of Isaac, God's promised blessing.  Muhammad is a stark example of this jealousy.  He claimed to have been visited by God when he was forty years old and told to cleanse the scriptures.  Methodically he wrote over a more than twenty year period and changed the promised child from Isaac to Ishmael, and by doing this changed the promise of the land of Israel over to the Arab Muslims.

    An interesting side note on the name Palestine is mention in Bryant Wright's Seeds of Turmoil when he writes, "To add insult to injury, the Romans chose the name Palestine, a Roman derivative of the word Philistine, the longtime enemies of ancient Israel whose stronghold was in Gaza (now referred to as the Gaza Strip) and used it to rename the land of Israel."  So interestingly enough the name Israel predates any use of the name Palestine.  In fact, the Bible never once mentions the name Palestine, and therefor, the oldest God-given claim to the land would fall with Israel, and not the Arab Palestinians.  It would be nice if historians would leave politics and the tide of opinion to be left out of their work and stick to the truth!

By Jeffrey Brandon Lee