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Heaven On Earth
From the Nile to the Euphrates: Paranoid Imperialism Projects Its Cognitive Egocentrism
PMW has a review of the Palestinian contention that Israel wants the land from the “Nile to the Euphrates.” Perhaps one of the least-well appreciated elements of the Arab-Israeli conflict lies embedded in this belief that pervades the Arab world. Given what they believe about Israel, their hostility is more than understandable. For them Israel is, like the other European powers who came to the Middle East, an expansionist state with imperialist ambitions. Now this has virtually nothing to do with Israeli realities, where we find a powerful voice agonizing over occupying the small area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But it has a great deal to do with Palestinian and Arab realities.
Indeed, the dream of Arab conquest from the Nile to the Euphrates represented the earliest imperial ambitions of Islam, and defines the core of Arab imperial expansion (Islam went further East than the Euphrates, but Arab ethnic dominance stops in Iraq). What we see in their hysterical accusations of imperial ambitions on the Israelis is a projection of their own profoundly imperial mentality. The fact that this imperial ambition appears once in the biblical text (Deuteronomy 11:24), confirms for Arab and Muslim observers that this must be at the core of Jewish religious ambitions. The theological reality that this text never appears in the rabbinical corpus as a warrant for expansion or in current Jewish discourse, that it cedes to a far more extensive narrative where the Jordan is the border within the biblical narrative, makes no impression on Arab analysts. Again they project their own maximally belligerent reading of the Quran onto the Jews: Who would have such a sacred text and not use it to justify conquest?
I speak often at this blog on LCE (liberal cognitive egocentrism). This is the other side of the moebius strip of cognitive egocentrism, DCE (dominating cognitive egocentrism), where the imperialist projects his mentality onto the other. This is the core projection that “nails down” prime divider societies, and justifies the principle of “rule or be ruled,” that is, “do onto others before they do onto you.” It is the kind of thinking that poisons the existence of Arabs everywhere where their own elites rule, and most especially poisons the Palestinians, whose “reality” gets defined by such paranoid and debilitating fantasies, what Blake called “the mind-forged manacles.”
Now normally, this information would be a dead give-away for anti-imperialist progressives (notice, no scare quotes). The deeply seated cultural and psychological signatures of libido dominandi are here for anyone who cares to, to see. To ignore this, and assume that the conflict pits an expansive Israeli imperialism to a modest “we just want our state” Palestinian national aspiration, systematically misreads the sitauton and strengthens the imperialist impulse.
But on the contrary, the Western “progressive” tendency towards PCP strengthens the grip of these mind-forged manacles by affirming the Palestinian “victim narrative.” Post-colonialism comes in and affirms the paranoid fantasies of the Arabs that the Israelis are imperialist; politically-correct comes in to silence anyone who might point out the gaping chasm between Israeli and Palestinian culture, between the fantasies of the Palestinians and the reality they supposedly describe. As a result, the Palestinians remain locked in their universe, feeling fully justified in telling their self-destructive scape-goating narrative, incapable of the self-criticism that will get them out.
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook – June 12, 2007
Lies and libels have been used for many years by the Palestinian Authority to present Israel as a dangerous existential threat to the Arab and Muslim world. One of the repeating libels, that Israel is planning to conquer Arab lands, including lands in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia – “from the Euphrates until the Nile” – was repeated this week in the PA daily Al-Ayyam.
For many years the Palestinian Authority (PA) has promoted this “Euphrates to the Nile” libel, and below PMW has cited more than 20 additional Palestinian references in recent years. As with all effective propaganda, detailed fictitious allegations are often advocated to make the lie sound credible.
The following are some of these PA fabrications:
The term “From the Nile to the Euphrates your land, oh Israel,” is written above the gates of the Knesset.
The term “The Nile to the Euphrates” appears on Israeli money
The two blue stripes on the Israeli flag represent the Nile and the Euphrates and the Star of David represents the state of Israel.
Israeli children in school are taught through repetition of the expression: “Land of Israel -from the Nile to the Euphrates.”
Repeatedly presenting Israel as a country that plans to expand and destroy other countries is an integral part of Palestinian hate promotion. Palestinians are more likely to feel justified fighting and killing Israelis when it is presented as an act of self-defense. The repetition of this charge over so many years should categorize this almost as an ideology.This week the PA presented the “Nile to the Euphrates” libel again as an principle so intrinsic to the State of Israel it is said to be written above the gates of the Knesset: “From the Euphrates until the Nile, your land oh Israel.”
Former Israeli PM, Ariel Sharon, on a map of Mid-East
looking at the Nile.Caption: “From the Euphrates to.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Aug. 5, 2003]Below is this latest version of this libel, and more than 20 other references from among the many times this libel has been made in the past:
Click here to see previous PMW reports on Lies and Libels
A video clip which has been airing on PA TV since 2001 depicts a classroom of Jewish children wearing kippot (religious skullcaps) in front of the Israeli flag, repeating after a teacher: “The Land of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates”. The video clip is shown as if were an actual classroom in an Israeli school. The child actors speak Hebrew
.[PA TV, since January 31, 2001]Click here to see the video
“In 1967, it [Israel] occupied all that was left of Palestine in addition to the larger Arab territory… before initiating the third stage, in order to make the slogan written on the top of the gates of the Knesset come true: “From the Euphrates until the Nile, your land oh Israel.”
[Al-Ayyam, June 4, 2007]“…The Zionists’ aspirations are not limited to Palestine from the sea to the river, and not to Egypt and the Sha’am lands [includes parts of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel], extending to Iraq and Al-Medina, or from the Euphrates to the Nile … the idea of ‘the greater Middle East’ includes [lit: swallows] many countries in the Islamic world…”
[Al-Risalah, December 7, 2006]Political sciences lecturer, Dr. Hamd Al-Fara claims that “Israel already realized with success its dream to be from the Nile to the Euphrates – since, currently, Israelis from the Mossad [Israeli secret service] are in Iraq, and there is an Israeli embassy in Egypt.”
[PA TV, July 7, 2006]“The Israelis think in a completely different way. They think that the problem is summarized with how to get away with the loot they looted during unusual circumstances, in the near and distant past, that is the land of Palestine they hold serves as a departure point to the [territory] between the Euphrates and the Nile.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nihad Munir Al-Rees, March 20, 2006]Barakat Al-Fara of the PLO, former Palestinian deputy ambassador to Egypt:
“The June 67 war took place and emphasized that the Zionist enemy did not set as a goal only Palestine, but it set as a goal the Arab nation, from the ocean to the gulf, and it plans a Jewish state which will spread out from the Nile to the Euphrates…”
[PA TV, January 1, 2006]“There is a fairy tale or a slogan of the global Zionist movement which states that the borders of Israel are from the Euphrates to the Nile. When [the settlements] were destroyed, and when the settlers were banished from the settlements, the Palestinian people, all the free people and all Arabs erased this fairy tale.”
[PA TV, August 5, 2005]“There is no escape, but to clarify to the world that our enemies, that Zionism in particular, yearn to establish their state to control the world from east to west, and not the greater state of Israel from the Euphrates to the Nile, but they stare and want to establish their state over the entire planet earth.”
[PA TV, June 18, 2004]“The Arabs and Muslims must consolidate a political-military defense strategy, in which the armed masses will participate… I emphasize the word ‘defense’… for taking a defensive stance and a defensive initiative, which are meant to prevent the most dangerous and the worst [thing] of all, that is seen in the horizon, that is approaching comes from the United States, that is allowing Israel to establish the Israeli empire from the Euphrates to the Nile including the city of Medina [the second most sacred site in Islam, the burial site of the Prophet Muhammad].”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, September 22, 2003]Headline: “Why are the Palestinians committed to the Hudna [ceasefire] and the Roadmap, and the Israelis are acting as opposed to it?” by international law lecturer, Dr. Hana Isah:
“There is no doubt that the politicians in Israel are not interested in stability, and as a result, they escape from any agreement we will sign with them, since their goal is to extend their theft and their arrogant repression with all that concerns Palestine… ‘The land of Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates, from Lebanon to the Nile.’ This slogan is the basis which drives the foundation of Israel since the foundation of the Zionist movement until today, and the future.”
[Al-Hayat Al’Jadida, August 10, 2003][Ahmad Halas Abu-Maher, Fatah secretary in the Gaza Strip] confirms the matters: “We are not only fighting for the Palestinian people. We are fighting in defense of the Arab nation and on this region, in which every people is a target for Israeli aggression. The slogan of Israel is ‘from the Nile to the Euphrates,’ in geographic terms. But in terms of its interests, Israel is larger than that. It extends to the entire Arab and Muslim territory. Therefore, when we are fighting and being killed in Gaza and Jenin, it is for the sake of the entire Arab nation.”
[PA TV, July 29, 2002]Abu-Karsh: “Even the Israeli flag, the blue line and the second blue line, and the Star of David in the middle, this is what is between the two rivers, that is the Nile and the Euphrates.”
Abu-Sharakh: “The Zionist project still exists. They want a greater state of Israel from the Euphrates to the Nile. If it will not happen in the next 50 years, they will ask [to make it come true] within the next hundred years, until their hopes and their aspirations in establishing a greater state of Israel will be realized. And this must be understood by the Arab nation and the entire world… They [Israelis] think about the state of Israel from the Euphrates to the Nile as something that cannot be avoided. From the Euphrates to the Nile.”
[PA TV, July 17, 2002]“The Zionists are behind the plot aiming to disconnect the rivers that extend from outside the Arab homeland in, such as the Euphrates and the Nile. The Zionists stole the Palestinian water and founded projects that transferred the water from the north to southern areas. They control the southern waters and steal them, and established the settlements above the water sources.”
[PA TV, March 22, 2002]“Zionism decided in the Basel committee in 1897 that Israel will be established between the Nile and the Euphrates, and this is what Israel aspires to realize. Therefore, every piece of land that we achieve is a withdrawal from the Zionist idea.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, February 11, 2002]“The Hebrew state adopted an official flag – a blue Star of David (symbolizing the state of Israel), between two blue lines symbolizing the Nile River and the Euphrates which the Zionist movement viewed as its borders.”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, October 28, 2001]“Poor Israel: Its primitive, childish dream “the land of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates” is reduced to a flag with a Star of David and two blue lines, one of them is the Nile, in the imagination, and the other is the disappointing Euphrates. These two lines will approach inwards, and will squeeze the Star of David until it bursts. This is what it [Israel] chose for itself…”
[“The Voice of Women” in Al-Ayyam, July 19, 2001]“… All the killing is followed by an intensive bombing of the national security outposts… what does it mean if not a declaration of an encompassing war on the Palestinian people, if not the determination to realize the constant goal of Zionism, of extending the occupation territory as far as possible, from the Euphrates to the Nile…”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 2001]Friday sermon by preacher Dr. Muhammad Madi:
“Arabs and Muslims! The Zionist slogan, the slogan of the Jews’ state in Palestine – from the Nile to the Euphrates. It is written in their books and on their coins…”
[PA TV, May 4, 2001]“The Palestinians view the Israeli flag as a symbol for the greater Jewish state that spreads out from the Nile to the Euphrates according to the Zionist dream: the two blue lines symbolize the two rivers, and the Star of David between them is the symbol of the state. The Palestinians pride themselves in their flag with the four colors, which represents the blood, the war, and the peace…”
[Al-Ayyam, May 14, 2000]“A strategy was consolidated by some of the ones who hold a Jewish perspective, which was subsequently known as ‘Zionism’ aiming to establish a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine – or according to the traditional idea which sets the borders of the state of Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates.”
[Al-Ayyam, February 12, 2000]Hussein Abu-Shanab: “The map storm reminds us of the three superpowers [that emerged] in the [original] map in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’… Herzl sent a furious letter to these nations and demanded they change the mandatory borders of Palestine so that they include the Litany River, that is ‘from the water to the water’ – [a slogan] expressed by the poster spread over the Knesset ‘from the Euphrates to the Nile.’ Sharon’s declarations to journalists following the Palestinian-Israeli-American triple-meeting were for abolishing the process… considering that the historical homeland, according to the Zionist perspective, is from the Nile to the Euphrates…”
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, December 21, 1997]
Note how often the claim serves as a justification for “defensive” total war on Israel. Note also the use of contempt — fairy-tale, primitive, childish dream… — which actually refers to the primitive, childish dreams of the Arabs and Muslims to control the world. Cognitive dissonance, for sure (i.e., they think of these dreams — in others — as immature, do they know they cherish them?). Awareness? Not until people in the West tell them that this is nonsense and says more (and deeply unflattering things) about them than about Israel.
The actual text of Deuteronomy 11:24 does not have the word Nile, Y’or יאור in Biblical Hebrew [as in the pen name of the author בת יאור Bat Yeor = daughter of the Nile]. The Hebrew text has instead HaYam haAharon הים האחרון , that is literally, the last sea or the furthest sea. The New Jewish Version translation [Jewish Publication Society] renders this term as “the Western Sea.” The passage goes: “From the desert and the Lebanon [= Mount Lebanon], from the River, the Euphrates River, up to the Furthest Sea will be your border.” [My translation]. The NJV has “from the wilderness to the Lebanon and from the River –the Euphrates– to the Western Sea.” The Western Sea or Furthest Sea would seem to mean the Mediterranean, certainly not the Nile.
Hence, if the Arabs cite this passage, then the claim really has nothing to stand on. On the other hand, other passages refer in various contexts to the River of Egypt. This does not mean the Nile. It refers to what today is called the Wadi el-Arish, which was the ancient border between Egypt and Israel, later Egypt and Judea. This is well-known, but the Arabs and their supporters will seize on the most bizarre “fact” or pseudo-fact or factoid or plain lie to advance their cause.
By the way, while in America, I once went to a discussion at a college in which Jim Zoghby, the favorite Arab of the Washington insiders, was a featured speaker. Zoghby too claimed that there was a sign at the Knesset saying: “From the Nile to the Euphrates.” Zoghby is really as much or more an American than he is an Arab. Yet he too used that big lie.
As you may know Daniel Pipes had an excellent article on the history of the Nile to Euphrates calumny in 1994. It includes the bit on the “River of Egypt” as mentioned above.
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/247
People who think of themselves as ‘progressives’ SHOULD see those quotes there. Korzybski called the single quotes a “safety device” to get people to question the usefulness and accuracy of a taken-for-granted term. Of course, if one is stuck in the PCP paradigm, it will be easier to see the quotes, dismiss them as ‘scare quotes’ and defend ones’ delusions with greater ferver. The ‘progressives’ are the enablers of those bloody-minded Arabs and Muslims, they seem like the majority, who want to destroy Israel and who are making it impossible for the true moderates in the Arab-Muslim world to do anything other than hide. See Barry Rubin’s “It’s Hard To Be An Arab.” at http://www.israpundit.com/2006/?p=4975
while most of this stuff is rooted in muhammad and the quran, my guess is that a lot of this “jews want to dominate the world” is actually projection.
it is islam that has always been explicitly imperialistic in both words and deedd. and if that’s what you are, you will tend to think that others are the same.
one of the most astounding aspects of this libel is that it is actually upside down and backwards: it’s usually the anti-semites — be they leftists, nazis or islamofascists that want to dominate, but it’s the jews — who never did — that are libeled with it.
I agree that projection is at work. Of course, lying is par for the course for PLO/PA spokespersons, as well as for their Western advocates and apologists, such as BBC. Projection is a kind of lying. But I think we have to recognize that lying is a big part of the anti-Israel strategy. There are all sorts of anti-Israel lies, big and small. This one here about the sign in the Knesset was spread by James Zoghby, as I said above. Zoghby is quite the persona grata in DC and he got away with this lie too.
Another bizarre claim which some in the anti-Israel community have enjoyed taking seriously or pretending to take seriously turned up about 18 or 19 years ago. This came in an article in The Nation mag which –many many years ago, before the Flood– used to be a serious publication. One Joost Hiltermann, an international PLO sympathizer, wrote a whole article claiming that Israeli soldiers at checkpoints in Gaza and Judea-Samaria routinely –and apparently following orders– checked the wristwatches of Arabs stopped at checkpoints to see whether the watch was set to Israel time or to Jordanian time. According to Hiltermann, if it was set to Jordanian time, the soldiers confiscated and destroyed the watch [as I recall his article]. I find this claim very dubious. I too served –by the way– as a soldier at checkpoints on several occasions. Neither I nor any of my comrades in arms did what Hiltermann claimed. Nor did I ever see such a claim in the publications of B’tselem which is always eager to find something defamatory about Israel to put in its glossy, expensively produced publications. Of course, it’s the kind of thing that you can’t prove never happened. Proving “never” is very difficult. But I never saw the charge anywhere but in the Nation article. I don’t know who made it up, whether Hiltermann himself or some imaginative Arab informant that he chose to believe.
But I insist that even these petty lies that seem so ridiculous have to be answered, otherwise they add up, their impact adds up. Even if it all seems so ridiculous. In this vein, I think it was disastrous not to have constantly and consistently refuted the big lie about a so-called “palestinian people” supposedly existing since the Stone Age. Some think that the Arabs are still in the Stone Age [at least if we go by one of their favorite weapons].
Further, people who are constantly inventing and repeating lies such as discussed here are not interested in peace. Can we stop pretending that there ever was such a thing as a peace process??
taqiyya is an integral part of islam and jihad, and lying is pervasive in the arab culture — they lie among themselves too.
but projection is something else: is assuming and believing that everybody is like yourself.
it is difficult in this mixture of religion and culture to know where projection ends and lying starts.
fp, I’m saying that it’s not only the Arabs who lie. Of course, there’s taqiyya and Kasb, etc. But the Western supporters of the Arabs lie too. Nobody forces the BBC to falsify and/or distort their reports about doings in Israel. The bbc does it because that’s their policy. Further, the Western friends of the Arabs choose to believe the Arabs’ lies.
I should point out that casting doubt on the Jews’ veracity, indeed on the Jews capacity for truth and science, goes back to the European Middle Ages when Christian theologians/philosophers came to think that Jews not only falsified or misinterpreted their own Scriptures but were incapable of reason. This was all because these Christian philosophers/theologians had proven Christian dogmas [purgatory, the virgin birth, etc] by reason and logic [to their own satisfaction at least]. Therefore, since the Jews did not accept these dogmas, then they were impervious to logic, reason, etc. This attitude continues today in dismissal of Israeli arguments and assertions of fact.
but of course. you’re preaching to the choir. but there’s more lying on the arab side.
but i do think that the western allies of the arabs have either bought the propaganda, are moved by ideology, antisemitism, have ulterior motives, or are simply ignorant or scared shitless and need a scapegoat.
Here’s one example:
http://gloria.idc.ac.il/articles/2007/spyer/06_11.html
and here’s the bbc at its best:
http://the-american-israeli-patriot.blogspot.com/
“taqiyya is an integral part of islam and jihad, and lying is pervasive in the arab culture — they lie among themselves to” – such false statement to mentioned islam
Whose/Which authority said such false statement?? This is not islam, there is no such act/term that Allah allow muslim to lie everywhere, every one at anytime. You tell me which verse of the Quran or Hadith made that up, huh ???
What?? You got the quote from Daniel Pipe? That man is just as dumb as you are… Believing he is knowledged enough to understand islam, just study your own holy books if you’re eager to REALLY UNDERSTAND ISLAM.
And why islam must be synonymically refer to the Arabs?
In fact, there are millions of muslim in every part of the globe???
Why islam must be synonymically refer to terrorist?
The answer because your media put a BIG effort and succeed to brain wash all of you, disgusting western secularised unpresentatived-in-history civilization. Huh, you’re not even close to spirit of Christianity…
Christian suppose to put LOVE as their major role in their life as prophesied by Jesus ( peace be upon Him )
If you want to know about islam, ask the muslim themselves, not the Christian/Jews/any religion follower! because hatred will always comes around when it comes to discussing religious matters unless you humble enough to ignore the hatred which is very hard for most people,LOL
ISLAM = SALAAM (PEACE in ARAB)/ (SHALOM IN HEBREW)
ISLAM = UNIVERSAL (NOT TO JUST ARABS)
JIHAD = struggling to ‘reach’ Allah
JIHAD IS NOT KAMIKAZE / HOLY SUICIDE
JIHAD leads to HOLY SUICIDE? ( Arabic term is shaheed)
No, shaheed is when you die during a battle and by means of protecting islam and muslim from being oppressed.
In addition, muslim cannot wage war unless they are being waged in the first place and the wager threaten to opress the muslim and destroy islam.
JIHAD in war = A means to oppose back to those who wage war on them ( must leave any harmless civilians like women, elders and children, unlikely to what the Israel did to palestinians recently) and Allah said in the Quran that war is the last resort to final confrontation and that Allah less prefer that final confrontation.
To those who ignorant and eager to learn understand islam, gongratulation coz you’re just being well brain-washed by your own media . Dumbass to media, so to you for swallowing their lies!!!!
your article is nothing but propaganda. you need to admit that jews are the real scums of the earth that cause corruption, evil and war all across the world. you jews are the real evil of this earth,and im guessing that this article is pro-israeli, so you must be a jew fucker ur self. The last holocaust is coming soon, so be ready.