by Melanie Phillips
Hat tip: Dr. Carolyn Tal
In the “Palestinians’” attempt to rewrite history and claim falsely that they and not the Jews are the indigenous people of the land of Israel, they have taken to claiming they have descended from the Canaanites. Since the Canaanites preceded the ancient Jews’ conquest of the land, that would make the Palestinians the rightful inheritors.Arabs -- came from Arabia and most certainly were not around in the Biblical land of Israel
Problem with this claim is that it is utterly ridiculous from all points of view. First off, it means the Palestinians aren’t Arabs. Which they are, by their own lights. Arabs, though, came from Arabia and most certainly were not around in the Biblical land of Israel.
Second, there’s not a shred of evidence that the “Palestinians” were descended from the Canaanites. Nor is there any evidence they descended from any other unified people or tribe, for the simple reason they did not. The immediate forefathers of today’s “Palestinians” either considered themselves southern Syrians or just part of the Arab nation; many others immigrated to pre-Israel Palestine in the first half of the last century from a variety of non-Arab countries. And of course, since the invading Romans tried to erase the Jews’ claim to the land by giving Judea/Israel the meaningless name Palestina, there was never any such people as “the Palestinians”.
The whole Canaanite heritage claim is merely another lie being propagated in order to rewrite the Jews out of their own history and conceal the fact that the Jews are the ONLY people for whom the land of Israel was ever their national kingdom. As Pinchas Inbari says in his JCPA paper Who Are the Palestinians:
“When one looks into what the Palestinians say about themselves, how each family describes its lineage, there is no trace of a ‘Canaanite’ ancestry. Most of the families find their origins in Arab tribes, some of them with Kurdish or Egyptian background, and there are even – by word of mouth – widespread stories of Jewish or Samaritan ancestry. Although one might have expected some effort to adduce a Philistine ancestry, there is almost no such phenomenon.
“In Nablus, there is a family named Kanaan – that is, Canaan. We asked members of the family about its lineage, and they affirmed that they had been Canaanites for 3,000 years. However, a look at the family’s website gave a different picture. It is indeed an ancient family – part of it Christian, indicating its pre-Islamic origin; but coming from Aleppo in Syria. From Aleppo, the family branched out to Damascus, Cyprus, and other places, including Nablus. Although the name may indicate Canaanite ancestry, the Canaanite forebears were in Syria, not in the land of Canaan.
“According to another source within the family, the clan originated in Homs,[23] Syria and became widely dispersed in the Middle East, apparently including Nablus, about 300 years ago. Despite the fact that the name suggests a Canaanite lineage, this source says the family’s origins lie in the ancient Arab Tamimi tribe.
“Thus, apart from the Kanaan family with its possible Canaanite ancestry coming from Syria, not Palestine, and its possible Arab origins, there is no direct or indirect evidence of the Palestinians having descended from the Canaanite people as they claim.”
The paper is an excellent and comprehensive demolition of this egregiously false claim. Do read it all.
Melanie Phillips
Source: http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-canaan-falsehood/
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