Palestinian Myths

Wikipedia's "Gaza Strip" article states, "The Palestinians are the only refugee group to have ever been given hereditary refugee status." Although I am not positive how this technically works, the basic concept is that if you are the child, grandchild, great-grandchild, etc., of an Arab displaced during Israel's 1948 War of Independence, you can also be considered a refugee. 

I have my view of the Israel-Arab conflict, which I will not discuss in this post, but we have lived in villages in Jordan that originated as Palestinian refugee camps. Although they are now concrete and stone buildings, as opposed to tent settlements, most of the people living in these "camps" are Palestinian. Bill and I gained a firsthand understanding of the Israel-Arab conflict from a human interest standpoint. These are real people with real families. Some of the men carry in their pockets keys to homes that they will probably never return to. 

The word "Palestine" refers to Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. 

For the record, I want to debunk some myths about modern-day Palestinians. They are not descendants of the biblical Philistines. In Arabic, the word "Palestinian" is pronounced "Fil uh steen," similar to our usual pronunciation of the biblical word Philistine. This has led some people to erroneously identity modern-day Palestinians with the biblical Philistines, who were Israel's enemies. I will discuss this more in a later blog, but for now it is enough to state the fact. I will give more information later. 

One other thing, just for the record… All Arabs are not descendants of Ishmael. I'm not sure how the "Jews are from Abraham and Arabs are from Ishmael" idea came into existence, but it is simply not true. There are enough problems between the two groups without categorizing all Arabs this way. Again, stay tuned for more explanation later!

As Christians, we have our loyalties for biblical reasons, but that does not negate the fact that God loves all people, Jews, Arabs, and everyone else. They are all human beings in need of His love and truth. We cannot afford to exclude groups of people because of our preconceived stereotypes.