The Appropriation of the Philistines

The Philistines were an ancient people in ancient Israel who are widely considered to have been seafaring European colonialists.

http://jewishideas.net/2011/08/18/the-appropriation-of-the-philistines/

Although Philistines disappeared as an ethnic group in the mist of ancient history, their Hebrew designation has been repeatedly stolen and indeed invoked by imperialists. (1) The Romans thus invented and instituted the Latinized name Syria Palaestina in the Roman province of Judaea after having committed genocide against the Jews of Judaea in the years 132-135 C.E., having killed half a million Judaean Jews and sold countless others into slavery. (2) The British similarly revived the term Palestine so as to legitimize their imperialist “mandatory” rule after having captured this region from their Turkish Ottoman fellow imperialists. It has also been argued though, that the Arabic term for Philistia remained in some use for various administrative divisions under Muslim imperialist rule as well, although certainly unrelated to any ethnicity or nationality. (3) Lastly, the term was appropriated by Arabist neo-imperialists who sought to revive medieval Arabian imperialism based on the long-since dead liturgical idiom of Islam that historically transformed into the living, distinct idioms of Amian, Darian, Judean and Maltese. Yet, in the Arabic idiom and in the Amian idiom, local Arabists are not known as Palestinians, but indeed as Philistines.

Of course, none of this should be construed to mean that the specific contemporary, yet historically very recent ethnicity among certain Amians (whose members refer to themself as Philistines in Amian and Arabic while strangely calling themselves Palestinians in European idioms) are somehow not entitled to an ethnic identity of their own and even use an ethnic designation of their choice, but rather that forgery & theft of history is indeed an obstacle to peace. Certainly, the modern Arabist, Amian ethnic self-designation Philistines is much worse in terms of theft of history than is Palestinians in European translation. Rather, it is just that the designation needs to be deconstructed.

The Jews of Israel and the Greeks of Greece have retained ancient ethnic historical continuity with ancient Judaea and ancient Greece respectively and the contemporary ethnicity known in European idioms as Palestinians are thus similar to Macedonians in the sense that they appropriated an ancient designation from another nation. While Jerusalem only grudgingly came to accept the Amian PLO’s Neo-Philistine self-designation; Athens still refuses to accept the official South Slavic appropriation of this ancient Greek (and possibly pre-Greek) regional self-designation. Arabist propaganda has similarly sought to appropriate the historically extinct identities of other Hebrew-speaking peoples of multiethnic, ancient Israel. Yet, Phoenicians, Canaanites and other peoples of the region were non-Arabian Hebrew-speaking peoples as the Phoenician and Canaanite dialects represented mere variations of the shared Hebrew idiom.

(1) While the Roman change of name of its province of Judaea was intended to semiotically formalize the Roman genocide against the indigenous Jewish nation, (2) the British Empire under local and regional, political Arabist influence, calamitously prevented persecuted Jews in 1939 and onwards from immigrating to the internationally recognized Jewish homeland. The British imperial government of the time and their Arabist political partners thus bore indirect responsibility for the Shoah in the sense of not permitting persecuted Jews from escaping to the internationally recognized Jewish homeland. The WWII local Arabist Amian Neo-Philistine leadership in the Mandate was closely aligned with Nazi Germany and their top leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al Husseini famously agreed to extend the extermination of the Jews to the Jewish homeland, recruited Bosnian Muslims to the SS and was in charge of Nazi German shortwave propaganda broadcasts in Arabic. Of course, the Amian Neo-Philistine movement has never apologized for its active participation in and direct responsibility for assisting the Nazis in the Shoah. (3) Genocide against the Jews of Israel and the Arabophonie was subsequently declared and attempted in 1948 and 1967, yet failed as the Jewish nation these times successfully managed to defend themselves from declared and attempted, yet failed genocide. It is quite telling that the Amian Neo-Philistine movement has never apologized; neither for their complicity in the Shoah, nor for their part in inciting the declared and attempted, yet ultimately failed genocides against the Jews of sovereign, indigenous Israel & the Arabophonie in 1948 and 1967. Of course, it is too late to apologize for this since the Amian Neo-Philistine leaderships of 1939, 1948 and 1967 are no longer alive. Yet, genocide incitement within the organizations and regimes of Hamas and PLO has never ended so there is still plenty to apologize for. Indeed, contemporary Arabist propaganda like Nazi propaganda before it continues to stigmatize Jews generally as inherent foreigners by mythical essence. This is not say that the sovereign, indigenous Jewish nation has not committed mistakes or constitutes a perfect utopian society as ostensibly in jurisdictions such as Cuba and North Korea. Of course, as is well-known, “a perfect society” needs neither political freedom, nor representative government because “everything” is already spotless under totalitarianism!

Many Arabist Amians reacted with riots, pogroms and significant hostility and jealousy to the peaceful pre-state Jewish immigration to the internationally recognized Jewish homeland and to the ensuing rapid economic growth engendered by Jewish immigration that attracted significant Amian immigration as well. These aversions against the indigenous Jewish nation later peaked into concerted military aggression against the sovereign Jewish nation by identifying fervently, indeed religiously with that British imperialist territorial construction that existed only during the 27 years that span the historical period of 1921-1948. Amians of the Neo-Philistine movement thus in time came to develop, not merely a distinct political identification with that European territorial imperialist construction, but also gradually developed a distinct ethnicity as well. Yet, the notion of Neo-Philistine nationality emerged officially only in the 1990’s during the unfinished Oslo process of partition, as Amian members of the Neo-Philistine movement until then had consistently claimed only Arabist nationality, including in the 1988 PLO virtual “declaration of independence” in Algiers of all places. Today, it is in contrast common to hear that Amian ethnic Neo-Philistines, unlike other peoples of the Homo genus have three nationalities; Muslim, Arabist and Neo-Philistine, reflecting multilayered Muslim imperialism, both religious/religious and religious/secular.

Amian Neo-Philistines do indeed constitute a contemporary ethnicity of their own without any historical ethnic connection to the long since extinct historical Philistines of ancient Israel, yet it is distinctly not in their political interest to be encapsulated even hypothetically within the 1949 and 1950 armistice lines with a rapidly growing demographic surplus. While in no way condoning the Arabist propaganda voices (including from the PLO) who claim that Jews and Muslims respectively are inherently incapable of responsible exercise of political freedom and representative government, each on their own, not every human people is yet politically sufficiently prepared for this transition as seen in the great number of failed historical democratizations around the world. Premature elections and unfounded, premature optimism have indeed killed many emerging democracies. Few majority Amian societies outside of Grand Liban are yet completely ready for political freedom and representative government, yet a responsible political process among Amians requires a responsible political framework of a free and unified Amistan under royal Jordanian federal government, under which each Amistani state may select its own model for responsible and incremental, yet determined civic evolution leading towards political freedom and representative government without risking political calamities of the kind experienced in Algeria and the Gaza region after indeed holding free and fair, yet no doubt premature elections.

While certainly entitled to nurture their own ethnicity, this does not mean that what follows with Arabist imperialism and its consistent Anti-Jewish propaganda polarization is hence true and legitimate. No politically responsible person in the Balkans would claim that regurgitation of historical grievances is conducive to peace and reconciliation as denial, forgery and theft of history certainly are not. Jews can thus only be demonized into ostensibly omnipotent, scheming Protocols-style victimizers if the historical and contemporary political agency of those who actively negate indigenous Jewish self-determination – through armed aggression and Anti-Jewish propaganda – is continually subject to retroactive discursive erasure.