[ank_the_elder]

Your statements show staggering ignorance - and your map is deceptive and false.

A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into exile by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, the Jews suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years. No matter how far they were scattered, they never gave up their rights or desire to return.

By the early 19th century—years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement—more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel. The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the reestablishment of the Jewish State.

When many Jewish people returned to Israel in 1800s it was dry and barren. Today more than half of Israel is still desert. But Israelis are finding unique ways to make the desert bloom and prosper. “We are not the first but maybe one of the first nations ever who really found the way to cultivate the desert and make it bloom,” said Alon Badihi, executive director of the Jewish National Fund. JNF has developed and forested the land of Israel for more than 100 years.

The term “Palestine” is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestinato Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word Filastin is derived from this Latin name.