Official PA daily op-ed: "Palestine was called Palestine even before Abraham"
Headline: “Do not Islamize the [Palestinian] issue”
Excerpt of op-ed by Hanan Bakir, regular columnist for the official PA daily
“Several years ago head of the Jewish Association in Norway Rolf Kirschner wrote an article in which he claimed that Palestine or the Palestinians did not exist in history, and that this is the historical Land of Israel, and we are nothing but groups that harass this state!
I answered him in an article that did not go near religion; I just gathered for him all the verses in the holy book (i.e., the Bible) that note Palestine and the land of the Palestinians. [I said] that their God turned to them only as strangers in the land of Palestine, and said to them ‘Be strangers in the land of the Palestinians’ (sic., see note below). I argued with him through history and his holy book! I asked the editor in chief to send him an invitation to a debate on the history of the area and its residents, in any media outlet he wished, and he refused. I argued with the journalist with historical facts, and he answered: ‘In any case it is no longer your land, and you need to forget it!’
Palestine was called Palestine even before Abraham, the father of the three religions. So why do you, some of my people, want to distort our history, so that it will be less than 2,000 years old?”
The quote: “Be strangers in the land of the Palestinians” is an apparent misappropriation of the medieval Jewish scholar Ramban’s commentary to Genesis 26:2, in which he explains that God said to Isaac: “Dwell now in this land, in the land of the Philistines, for I will give it to you and your seed.”
Excerpt of op-ed by Hanan Bakir, regular columnist for the official PA daily
“Several years ago head of the Jewish Association in Norway Rolf Kirschner wrote an article in which he claimed that Palestine or the Palestinians did not exist in history, and that this is the historical Land of Israel, and we are nothing but groups that harass this state!
I answered him in an article that did not go near religion; I just gathered for him all the verses in the holy book (i.e., the Bible) that note Palestine and the land of the Palestinians. [I said] that their God turned to them only as strangers in the land of Palestine, and said to them ‘Be strangers in the land of the Palestinians’ (sic., see note below). I argued with him through history and his holy book! I asked the editor in chief to send him an invitation to a debate on the history of the area and its residents, in any media outlet he wished, and he refused. I argued with the journalist with historical facts, and he answered: ‘In any case it is no longer your land, and you need to forget it!’
Palestine was called Palestine even before Abraham, the father of the three religions. So why do you, some of my people, want to distort our history, so that it will be less than 2,000 years old?”
The quote: “Be strangers in the land of the Palestinians” is an apparent misappropriation of the medieval Jewish scholar Ramban’s commentary to Genesis 26:2, in which he explains that God said to Isaac: “Dwell now in this land, in the land of the Philistines, for I will give it to you and your seed.”