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Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Hilmar von Campe

Author and former Hitler's Youth & Soldier
Posted December 1, 2003

The Big Lie
by Hilmar von Campe and Sharon Nader Sloan, a Lebanese-American

During the month of November my son and I were visiting London, Switzerland and Germany. We encountered great ignorance with regards to the Middle East conflict, the war in Iraq and consequent global issues especially in Germnay. Opinions were not related to reality but had their roots in emotional pre-dispostions created by a hostile environment of media and government information toward the United States and Israel. According to a survey about 80% of the German people thought that Israel was the greatest danger to world peace.

In London the British Political Cartoon Society awarded the first price in a competition to an artist whose cartoon showed naked Israeli prime minister Sharon eating a Palestinian. A Swiss friend asked me how the Americans could live with developments in Iraq. What do you mean, I returned her question, naturally the majority of the American people get even more determind to see that battle through. "So", she came back, the Americans want to continue imposing their will on the Iraqi people?"

That line of thinking had been fed into her by somebody. When I spoke to the Lions Club in Levercusen, one of the members said to my hosts, "if Mr. von Campe is going to defend Mr. Bush I shall leave the room." There definitely is a global smear campaign of Israel, George W. Bush and "the Americans" afoot...for power purposes. I shall come back to this in one of my next articles. However, with the following artice I want to set the record straight on Israel...

" The West Bank is occupied Palestinian land." This phrase is repeated, as a given, by all the governments of the world and by the entire news media, etc., etc. This idea that the West Bank is occupied Palestinian land has been accepted by almost everyone. Yet, it is, in fact, the greatest lie ever perpetrated on the whole of humanity. If you think this is an outlandish statement please read on and decide for yourself.

Palestinians claim that Palestine is their land, and that Jerusalem is their capital, and that Israel is occupying their land. To resist occupation they have the right to send suicide bombers into crowded bus stations, pizza parlors, etc., and kill innocent men, women, and children. And all Arab and Muslim countries support them in their claims and actions against Israel. Because of this occupation of Palestinian land by Israel, because of this crime committed against their Palestinian brothers, all Arabs hate Israel and want to destroy it.

To anyone who is familiar with the facts, and has an objective eye, all this must be fascinating. Because never before has a complete lie, on such a large scale, been so successful.

First, if Arab animosity toward Israel is based on their love and support for their Palestinian brothers, and in wanting their Palestinian brothers to have their own state, where was that love and support before the Jewish state existed? Where were they when the Kingdom of Jordan ruled Palestine? Why were they not accusing Jordan of occupying Palestinian land? Why did not the Arab world and the United Nations call on Jordan to stop occupying Palestinian land? Second, where were the Palestinians themselves, with all their grievances and claims, when Jordan occupied the whole West Bank, including Jerusalem?

Did you know that? Did you know that for 19 years Jordan occupied and ruled the whole West Bank, including Jerusalem? Why didn't they clamor for a Palestinian state then? All this time, did we hear a word about Palestine being occupied by the Kingdom of Jordan? Did we hear anything about a Palestinian state? Or about Jerusalem being the capital of Palestine? No, we did not.
Why not? Because there never existed a Palestinian state. And in the entire history of nations, Jerusalem was never the capital of any country other than that of ancient Israel and modern Israel. So how can there be a claim on Jerusalem as the capital of a state that never existed?

One of the problems here is that so few people know the history of the world. Hence, lies and more lies, repeated often enough, are assumed to be facts.

I have heard many scholars, including an Arab journalist, question the very notion of a Palestinian people. What, they ask, makes a people? Well, there are three elements that define a people: language, religion, and culture. For example, the Chinese and Japanese are both Oriental. Still, they are two different peoples, because they each have a different language, a different religion, and a different culture.

The Palestinians speak the same language, follow the same religion, and manifest the same culture as all the other Arabs. They are really Arabs who happen to live in a region called Palestine.Palestine is not, and never was, the name of a country, or the name of a people.

It is the name of a region - just like Siberia is a region, not a country. There is no Siberian country, nor is there a Siberian people. It is a region. Just like the Sahara is a region, not a country. There is no Saharan country, nor is there a Saharan people. The Arabs living in that region are Libyans, Moroccans, etc., etc. It is a region.

Because Palestine is a region, not a country, England was able to carve out half of it and give it to the Arabs living on the other side of the Jordan River and call it the Kingdom of Jordan. Because Palestine is a region the United Nations was able to divide the rest of it between the Jews and the Arabs living there. Had the Arabs accepted the United Nations resolution there would have been a newly created Arab state called Palestine. Instead they rejected the United Nations compromise and went to war to destroy Israel. They lost the war. Hence, no Palestinian state.

Here are some cold facts.

King David built the city of Jerusalem, and King Solomon, David's son, built the holy
temple.This commonwealth of Israel lasted for a thousand years. There was only one break, when, 400 years after King David, the Babylonian invaders occupied the land for 70 years. Then, with the help of Cyrus the Great of Persia - yes, Persia - Israel came back to the land, rebuilt the temple, and ruled for another 600 years.

Then the Romans came and ruled the land, then the Crusaders ruled the land, then the Ottoman Empire ruled the land, then the British Empire ruled the land, then Israel returned to its homeland and built a modern Jewish state. It was never - repeat, never - a Palestinian state. So what is all this talk about occupied Palestinian land?

They certainly have a right to live there freely and happily. Nobody wants to move them away from their land. But from where comes the right for a Palestinian state? Is it because they live there?

Imagine, if the Mexican-American community in California, whose numbers are greater than the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, decides tomorrow to claim that the United States is occupying their land, because they live there and they want their own Mexican state. Imagine, if when the U.S. government says, "No, you can live here but you cannot have sovereignty, you cannot have your own state," they start sending suicide bombers, shooters, mortars, etc., etc. into the rest of the country, what do you think would happen?

This is precisely why there was never any suggestion of a Palestinian state; not under the Romans, not under the Crusaders, not under the Turks, not under the English, and not under the Arab Kingdom of Jordan, not until after Israel was again established in its homeland.

I believe it is the big lie of our generation and we are all buying into it.

Whatever you believe, don't you think these facts deserve to be raised when discussing Middle East policies?

Reprinted by permission by Hilmar von Campe

Hilmar von Campe: "I had thought that as a soldier I was fighting for my country, but I came to realize that in reality I was fighting for the immoral purposes of a bunch of gangsters." Hilmar von Campe lived through the years of Nazi power and brain-washing in Germany as a former member of Hitler's Youth and a Wermacht Soldier in the German Army under Hitler. Hilmar's testimony and wealth of inside stories are fascinating, including his escape from a prisoner of war camp in Yugoslavia. As a graduate of the University of Hamburg, he has traveled the world investigating political and social conditions of the countries he visited, where he was even kidnapped by the Communist leaders of the Bolivian Mineworkers Union. Hilmar von Campe was listed in the 1992 "International Who’s Who of Intellectuals." and is the Author of four books. Contact: Hilmarvc@cs.com; www.voncampe.com