05-15-2012, 06:40 AM
Quote: I know of Middle East departments where faux history required students accept that the current-day Palestinians are the descendants of the Philistines.
It doesn't get any stupider than that.
The name Palestine is likely from the name Philistine but there was over 1,000 year gap from the last Philistine to the first Arab.
There is a large school of thought, myself included, that places the development of a Palestinian people to post 1967. Prior to 1918 there was a large population of Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula to Suez to the Mediterranean to Turkey to Persia who considered themselves one people. National labels were meaningless. Probably still are.