Author Adriani Relandi was a geographer, cartographer, traveller, philologist.
He understood many languages, including Arabic, Ancient Greek and Hebrew.
He described nearly 2,500 settlements mentioned in the Bible, and made an approximate census according to settlements.
His book, written in Latin in 1695, describes the region called Palestine at that time and is instructive to us today.
He wrote:
1. Palestine is mostly empty, abandoned, sparsely populated. The main population is concentrated in Jerusalem, Akko, Tsfat, Jaffa, Tveria and Gaza.
2. The majority of the population is Jewish; almost everyone else is Christian. A very small part is Muslim, mostly Bedouin.
(Relandi refers to Muslims as nomadic Bedouins who come to cities only as seasonal workers in agriculture or construction.)
3. The only exception is Nablus, inhabited by about 120 members of the Muslim Natsha family and approximately 70 Samaritans.
4. The names of most of the settlements are of Jewish origin, and some have Greek or Roman Latin names. Apart from the city of Ramla, there is no Arab settlement whose original name is Arabic.
5. About 5,000 people live in Jerusalem; almost all Jews, and a few Christians.
6. Approximately 550 people live in Gaza, half of whom are Jews and half are Christians.
7. Jews were successful in agriculture, especially vineyards, olives and wheat, while Christians were engaged in trade and transportation.”
Andriani Relandi gives us witness, going back 330 years, that the majority of inhabitants in the mainly barren land were Jews and Christians rooted to the land by their religious beliefs. The minority Arab were mainly rootless peasants and nomads, wandering Bedouin.
His instructive book destroys the false indoctrination of Palestinian replacement theorists such as Edward Said, Omar Barghouti, and even the fake framing of pre-state Israel by the imported Mahmood Mamdani into Columbia U who have brainwashed the minds of impressionable young rebels looking for a vacuous but deadly cause that fake Palestinians are victims of a white Jewish colonial oppression and displacement.
Real history proves their Palestinian theories utterly wrong.
Barry Shaw, Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
I thank Hashem that this inforamton about the massive recent largely illegal Arab influx into the land of Israel. This was allowed by the British who were charged under international law to assist the Jewish return and not to cede land to any foreight powers – as you can read in the Mandate. The Palestine Mandate – for the Jewish People – because Palestine meant the Jewish Homeland. But the British disregarded the League of Naitons 52 member vote for Jewish Palestine, at the same time voting to give the land title for the vastly larger area under previous Ottoman control – to the Arabs. And then in a massive War Crime – the British allowed those invading Arabs to claim they were indiginous and to use arms against the Jews, while they – the British prevented the Jews from having or even learning about self defense, in their own land! And the British blocked the Jews from fleeing Nazi Germany under the excuse that it would cause Arab violence! How many millions might have escapted the gas chambers if Britain had honored the international law!
We should remember that earlier “Palestinians” were often Christians. This may give them a toe-hold. Although my sentiments are congruent with yours, the influx of Arabs into the region of the British mandate was, unfortunately, legal. The British allowed them to migrate into the mandate and had no problems at all settling them in the predominantly Jewish regions.
If we acknowledge the truth of the Bible, the British will be cursed for the crime of cursing the Israelites who, nowadays, are the Jews. If we take a look at current conditions in the UK, that may well be the consequence of their previous misbehavior.
This cursing by the British includes all of the nasty things they did to the Jews such as blocking them from entering the region of the mandate, biasing their behavior to the advantage of the Arabs such as denying them the capability to defend themselves, and keeping their numbers so low that any order that considered the populations of the cities would always benefit the Arabs as the majority.
I thank Hashem that this inforamton about the massive recent largely illegal Arab influx into the land of Israel. This was allowed by the British who were charged under international law to assist the Jewish return and not to cede land to any foreight powers – as you can read in the Mandate. The Palestine Mandate – for the Jewish People – because Palestine meant the Jewish Homeland. But the British disregarded the League of Naitons 52 member vote for Jewish Palestine, at the same time voting to give the land title for the vastly larger area under previous Ottoman control – to the Arabs. And then in a massive War Crime – the British allowed those invading Arabs to claim they were indiginous and to use arms against the Jews, while they – the British prevented the Jews from having or even learning about self defense, in their own land! And the British blocked the Jews from fleeing Nazi Germany under the excuse that it would cause Arab violence! How many millions might have escapted the gas chambers if Britain had honored the international law!
The comments above of
dreuveni are indeed very worthy. The issue of whether the British – in regards to the massive Arab influx before but espeically under their Mandate time – acted illegal is very importnat in my opinion. My understanding is that the specific dicates of the Manadate and the circumstances overall – where the land title for all but a tiny niche of the previoulsy Ottoman held land of the Middle East was given to the Arabs – made the massive Arab influx completely illegal to the internatinal law as enhrined by the 52 League Nations and the US. I think this is a point that mertis study and clarification.
@dreuveni
Why do you say it was legal?