Arabs have spent decades trying to convince the world that they are both the old and the new Jews.



Yasser Arafat and others have claimed that Jesus, Peter and others were actually Arabs - "Palestinians" to be exact - and not Jews. It seems that planes were not the only things Arafat's crew decided to hijack.



Too bad that besides the Jews themselves, the Romans, who ruled the land in Jesus' day, also left a clear record of the land belonging to the Jews - whom they were in the process of conquering - and also made a clear distinction between Jews and Arabs.



Tacitus and Dio Cassius were famous Roman historians who wrote extensively about Judaea's attempt to remain free from the Soviet Union of its day, the conquering Roman Empire. They lived and wrote during, or not long after, the two major revolts of the Jews for independence in 66-73 CE and 133-135 CE. They make no mention of this land being Arab, of it being called "Palestine", or its people "Palestinians". On the contrary, they detailed the difference between the native Jews Rome was fighting and the Arabs from surrounding lands, who decided to join the massive Roman assault on their Jewish neighbors.



Listen to this quote from Vol. II, Book V, The Works of Tacitus:



"...Titus was appointed by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea... he commanded three legions in Judaea itself... To these he added the twelfth from Syria and the third and twenty-second from Alexandria... amongst his allies were a band of Arabs, formidable in themselves and harboring towards the Jews the bitter animosity usually subsisting between neighboring nations...."



After the first revolt, Rome issued thousands of Judaea Capta coins, which can be seen today in museums all over the world. Notice, please - Judaea Capta, not "Palaestina Capta". Additionally, to celebrate this victory, the Arch of Titus was erected illustrating legionnaires carrying away the spoils of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. It stands tall in Rome to this very day. Arafat, of course, denies that such a Temple even existed.



When, some sixty years later, Emperor Hadrian decided to further desecrate the site of the destroyed Temple by erecting a pagan structure there, it was the grandchildren's turn to take on their mighty conquerors.



The result of the struggle of this tiny nation for its freedom and independence was, perhaps, as predictable as that which would have occurred had Lithuania taken on the Soviet Union during the latter's heyday of power.



Listen next to this next quote from Dio Cassius:



"...580,000 men were slain, nearly the whole of Judaea made desolate. Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war [the Bar Kochba Revolt - GH]. Therefore, Hadrian, in writing to the senate, did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, ' I and the legions are in health.' "



The Emperor was so enraged at the Jews' struggle for freedom in their own land that, in the words of the esteemed modern historian, Bernard Lewis, "Hadrian made a determined attempt to stamp out the embers not only of the revolt, but also of Jewish nationhood and statehood... obliterating its Jewish identity."



Wishing to end, once and for all, Jewish hopes, Hadrian renamed the land itself from Judaea to "Syria Palaestina" -- Palestine -- after the Jews' historic enemies, the Philistines, a non-Semitic sea people from the eastern Mediterranean or Aegean area. So, sorry Yasser. Trying to hijack the latter's identity, as you have tried with that of the Jews, won't work either.



The reality, of course, is that the vast majority of Arabs did not even begin to enter into the picture regarding the land of Israel / Judaea / Palestine until almost seven centuries after the fall of Jewish Jerusalem - during the beginning of the Arabs' own extensive imperial conquest, forced Arabization and settlement of much of the region. Imperialism is evidently only nasty when non-Arabs so indulge. Ditto for settlement and such.



While the story of the Arabs' attempt at establishing themselves as the "aboriginals" of the land could be developed further, I'll let it rest for now. So much for their attempt at becoming the old Jews.



[Part 1 of 2]