ABC News “fact-checked” Newt Gingrich’s Middle East statements and some readers asked me to fact-check ABC, so here is my view:
Gingrich said Palestinians are an “invented” people. ABC says: Not true.
I think Gingrich was basically correct, but that point isn’t so significant. There is a strong tendency of contemporary experts to argue that pretty much every nationality is invented including the French, British, Italian, Polish, and German.
ABC says that the Palestinian Arabs began to have a consciousness in the 1890s. I cannot imagine what evidence would be brought to make that argument. The bare beginnings were around 1920 when actual groups began to form, though even then the “southern Syria” identity was strong. One is safer at putting the date in the late 1920s.
Yet again I don’t see this point as very significant. What’s important is whether a large portion of the people in question believe that they are a people. Moreover, the same “invented” charge has been made against the Jewish people by Stalin and of course by Arab and Islamist propaganda.
The fact that today, a Palestinian people does exist doesn’t give the Palestinians a right to invent history, of course. ABC News didn’t point out that they regularly claim a history of two thousand years or more. And Golda Meir was pointing to the fact that the dominant politics of the Palestinian movement certainly as late as 1945 was a pan-Arab nationalist one. If the “invention” of a Palestinian (Arab, Muslim) people is relatively recent, though, that does imply that they don’t have a claim to everything between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. And that’s what’s important.
Gingrich also said at the debate that “every day rockets are fired into Israel.” ABC says: True.
Of course, ABC exceeds its “fact-checking” job here by trying to make some anti-Israel propaganda. It gratuitously adds:
No Israelis have been killed by these attacks since Oct. 30 when one man was killed in the southern city of Ashkelon. Nine Palestinians were killed in retaliatory Israeli air strikes….18 rockets were launched at Israel from Gaza since Friday, but no injuries or damages were reported….The Israeli Defense Force struck back against Gaza with aircraft attacks on Friday and Saturday, which killed a Palestinian man and his 12-year-old son and wounded several family members….
What relevance is there to mentioning these Palestinian casualties? Moreover, the implication is that these attacks are only a minor annoyance and that with far more Palestinians being killed that somehow Israel is the aggressor. I’d like to see ABC officials live under constant threat of missile attack and see their children suffer from anxiety as a result. If ABC wanted, it could have given the numbers for the first half of 2011, about 150, or the number for the last three years, about 870. The total for 2010: 150 rockets and 215 mortar shells. In 2009: 569 rockets and 289 mortar shells. (See also here.)
Incidentally, ABC didn’t fact-check Gingrich’s accurate statement that Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist.
Yet ABC and everyone else missed the real bombshell in what Gingrich said: “For a variety of political reasons we [the United States] have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic.”
It would be fascinating to hear Gingrich expand on that point.
More, Glenn Beck: If You Support Newt Instead of Obama, You Might Be a Racist
(Also read my article, “Make Way for the Muslim Brotherhood International”)
The Palestinians may have a national consciousness, but let’s explore that consciousness a bit:
‘Palestinians’ have no identity other than as the instrument of Israel’s destruction. No history, no ancient kings, no ancient texts, songs, or dances. Their modern heroes are famous for murder. They name schools and squares after people who kidnap kids, take them to caves, and mash theri heads to jelly, who break into homes and cut the necks of sleeping children and their parents, who blow up Passover Seders killing old men, women, and children, who shoot pregnant women and kids point blank. The most famous Palestinian is a murderous deviant who died of God knows what, now buried in a concrete filled hole in Ramallah.
What history they have is manufactured, a usurpation, no, outright theft, of Jewish history, aided and abetted by Koranic interpretations. Kings David and Solomon, and even Jesus, were not Jews, but Palestinians, in their view; Jerusalem is not an ancient Jewish city, but an Islamic city the Jews are trying to usurpate with their phony Jewish history, to illegally ‘Judaize’.
They are a weaponized people. Whether it be terrorism or illegitimization, they are the most effective weapon the Islamic world has ever fielded against Israel.
To recognize these facts for them would be to recognize the bankruptcy of their entire existence as a people. It would require them, further , to repudiate major Islamic tenets. To give up the hatred that sustains them and gives their lives value beyond the mean existence the Arab world has forced upon them.
Just because they have a national consciousness does not lead to the need for a state. What about Kurds, Tibetans, and a hundred others more deserving. What about them? The focus on them is a manifestation of the world’s agenda vis a vis the Jewsih state.
The way the Israeli -’Palestinian’ conflict is rigged, it’s a zero sum game.
Any legitimacy the ‘Palestinians’ gain comes at Israel’s expense.
The logic is simple – if Israel concedes something to the ‘Palestinian’s, that is proof of’ ‘Palestinian’ legitimacy. If the ‘Palestinians’ are legitimate, then Israel can’t be. Unfair, but there it is. When the world doesn’t like yo to begin with, that’s how it goes.
The greatest bit of Judo ever seen was the Arab world’s turning the Arab Israeli conflict into the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Over night , David became Goliath, and the Arab Goliath disappeared, replaced with a ‘Palestinian’ David.
Good post, anyone starts whining about Israel making sacrifices or taking risks for peace should be forced to read your post.
Thanks. I wish Krauthammer would read it.
Krauthammer read it, wishes he hadn’t, and that he wrote it himself instead.
So why didn’t he write it?
Because Fox News (Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, that is), would drop him if he did.
Does no one find it strange that the ”Palestinians” have no name for themselves in their own language? Is there any group or people on Earth who have no name for themselves? Even tribes of primitive people call themselves by some name in their own language. ”Palestine” is not an Arabic word.
Zuheir Mohsen, a leader in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in an inverview, March 1977, with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, said the following:
“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.”
“For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”
for quoting that. American Jews should read it, and a whole lot more than just once or twice, in fact.
Why should American Jews read it so many times
Because they’ll fidget, fuss, moan, groan, shiver, and shake in denial before, if ever, it finally sinks in.
the home page of http://www.think-israel.org features the same quote. it’s a website well worth a look-see.
“Pundit” is not an English word: does that mean you’re going Hindu or is this just common pedantry?
Do you here mistake factual point of origination for factual existence in usage—i.e., if “pundit” originated in India, how does that make it not now an English word?
How does Filistine not being Arabic disallow its usage? Lots of words in other languages are used cross culturally. Anyway it’s disingenuous to submit the Palestinians are putting themselves out there as an old culture: they’re not. Winning that argument is easy. They don’t see themselves as having wings either so it’s hardly smart to crow they don’t have wings.
They’re just saying they’ve been there a long time and have some claim to continue living where they’ve been living, which in any event would be longer than European Jews newly arrived off a boat.
John Striker,
How does Filistine not being Arabic disallow its usage?
It does not, but what is the Arabic word for those people, not Arabic translation of Palestine or Palestinian?
By the way the Philistines were a boat people from the region of Greece and Cyprus. They were not Arabs
Cynic, how do you know the Filistines were from Greece or Cyprus since historians themselves don’t know for sure. And what difference would that make if they’d then been there since the time of Ramses III? Didn’t the Jews arrive around the same time? People don’t spring from the rocks, the come from somewhere else.
Hi Terry,
Long time no read.
So don’t keep us in suspense.
What should U.S. policy toward the Middle East be?
Because after all this ranting about the Palestinians, we’re still left with the question of what *policy* to formulate.
Gingrich managed to deflect his lack of a coherent policy (there’s NOTHING about the Middle East on his campaign website list of issues), by an academic discussion of regional history. Just like Obama keeps deflecting his lack of a coherent economic policy by talking about the days before FDR.
Sorry, we’re not fooled by either.
I can tell you what it should not be.
It should not be this:
http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/12/03/how-the-obama-administration-is-selling-out-israel/
and USA policy to Israel should not be this:
‘We need you to bleed, and, more importantly, to be seen to bleed, by the Arab world. We will shrink you down, over time, and in return for Arab acquiescence to our needs and machinations in the wider middle east, to the smallest size sustainable by the best military technology and diplomatic invention. When the technology improves, we can and will shrink you down further. This will continue until our needs in the middle east are fulfilled. You cannot refuse. By refusing, you will lose the American veto in the UN Security Council. This will subject you crippling sanctions. You will also lose access to critical military spare parts you must have, and you will lose assurance of resupply in the event of war with your neighbors. ‘
The US has managed to sell out both the Jews and the Serbs in much the same way, and for much the same (purely selfish and thoroughly misguided) reasons.
See: [LINK]
To quote Ben Chorin.
It seems that some people have a hard time understanding what was so problematic about Obama’s speech. This is especially the case of Jews committed to the Democratic Party (or, more precisely, committed to a particular self-image) at all costs. In order to explain the point succinctly, it is necessary to say explicitly something that Israeli politicians generally talk their way around.
There will be no peace with the Palestinians and the Arab world. They want us dead. We engage in sham “negotiations” with them only because of the high diplomatic, economic and political price of not doing so.
In order to maintain the appearance of negotiating, we need to state positions on the central issues. There are two tactics with regard to this. One is to offer concessions that are limited enough — either territorially or functionally — to do little harm in the event that they ever need to actually be paid. This is a fool’s game because the amount we can profitably concede in the face of continuing hostility is so limited as to not even constitute the appearance of negotiating. The second tactic is to condition any concessions on corresponding Arab concessions that they are unlikely to ever pay. At the moment, requiring cessation of claims on the part of the Arabs is a sufficiently high bar, though not without risk.
What Obama did in his speech (and what Europeans have been doing for years) was to counter both tactics simultaneously. First, he demands concessions (the 1949 armistice lines as the default in the absence of agreement on swaps and no Israeli military positions in the conceded territory) that are indefensible in the absence of genuine stable peace. Second, he demands these concessions prior to cessation of claims by the Arabs (refugees and Jerusalem to be negotiated after borders).
There is a point at which the price of participating in these sham negotiations becomes higher than the price of not participating in them.
Well said.
As everyone knows, but nobody seems to want to admit to knowing, Palestine already exists….it’s called JORDAN. Same people. Transjordan, a British protectorate since after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following WWI, was in 1948 partitioned (much like India) with Jews being given the left side of the Jordan river, and the Muslim ‘palestinians’ being given the right bank. As with India, neither camp was obliged to re-locate to the intended side, but again as with India, many did. A good portion of the Muslims who stayed in Israel decided that rather than move to Jordan, they’d much rather kill all the Jews and stay put. When the surrounding Arab states agreed and invaded, the rest was history.
exactly well said
smash their heads to jelly wow, but Maines post tells it like it is, Palestine is an invention, A word invented by the Romans and made popular by the British. most of the Arabs who now call themselves “palestinians” moved to the region to work for the British. Jerusalem was only divided after 1948 when the Arabs drove the Jews out, so where is their right to return? the “west bank” is another invented term regarding Judea & Samarria that Jordan an invented country stole from Israel, Israel took it back in 1967. so how is it “occupied”? 1948 Egypt stole the Gaza “strip” from Israel and now has the “right” to be an independent state? how can the west bank and Gaza become one single state? link the two together and it will cut Israel practically in half. seems to be the goal right? it has nothing to do with peace or land, only the elimination of Israel, people need to wake up. the loony left are friends of Hamas
Well, you seem to have dotted all the ‘Is’ and crossed all the ‘Ts’ and that’s that. Bring on the next incredibly complicated and decades-long controversy for summary and simplistic dismissal.
what you’re leaving out is that Israel offered a plan like what you’re describing: the Pals would have gotten almost all of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and even part of Jerusalem.
the Pals turned it down. why? because it would have meant allowing Israel to exist. and since destroying Jews is what they want, not a country of their own, any sort of peace agreement is impossible.
Have you read Daniel Greenfield take on this issue?
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2011/12/in-post-news-environment-media-no.html
The Palestinians are Hitler risen from the dead conniving and scheming to realize their nightmare of turning Israel into the Auschwitz of the Middle East.
Would that be before or after several hundred thousand Jews arrived from Europe and declared the desire to establish specifically Jewish ruled enclaves if not a nation?
Postscript. A nation actually magically happened. Result: anger. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t be angry if the roles were exactly reversed and you would’ve said come on in and take over half the place.
Pity you ignore historical facts of the recognition by the League of Nations, the San Remo Conference, Sevres of the need for a homeland for the Jews.
And while you worry about the remnants of European Jews who survived the slaughter please comment on the Middle Eastern Jews from Arabian countries who were kicked out of their centuries old homes when the were not killed; the Iraqi massacre in 1941, the Hebron massacre in 1927 and so on.
You ignore and quote international law as regards this conflict at your leisure.
Many of the Nazis of the Third Reich actually WERE Muslims.
Not so many. Hitler decided at the explanation of his expert that the Arabs were in fact Aryans. The Mufti of Jerusalem visited Auschwitz (pic available) and there was a plan to build a replica North of Haifa to bring all the ME Jews. Fortunately the allies stopped the Desert Rat in N Africa and we were saved. The men and women here were already training in Guerrilla war! Eventually he was given some Bosnian Muslims to command and they killed a number of Christians in Serbia. Hitler never believed they were Aryans and hated the Mufti. Eichmann was head of the Jewish section of the NAZI party and visited Israel (Palestine) and even learned a bit of Hebrew.He thought that the Jewish ‘problem’ could be solved by shipping us here. Britain opposed.
Michael:
Good stuff! All I can add is a “Thank You” for writing it. And a “Thank You” also, to Barry Rubin for today’s piece and all of his past writing.
“What’s important is whether a large portion of the people in question believes that they are a people.”
Self-identification may be important, but for our side to play along and accept that nothing else matters is unimaginative, misguided, and frankly stupid. Throughout human history it was commonly (though not necessarily articulately) understood that a separate people or nation is defined by its possessing at least several attributes in common that distinguish it from neighboring groups. These can be (among possible other things) religion, a separate language, a body of received folklore, or a presumed common descent. The thesis of a supposed, separate “Palestinian people” does not survive this test, and that is not–should not be–controversial.
I would also argue that what people believe in the Arab world, including about themselves, should be regarded with additional scepticism, because their views are always being deflected hither and thither by totalitarian propaganda from their various dictators and movements. Not all beliefs carry the same weight. This has nothing to do with race, but is a matter of intellect, education, and culture.
“Moreover, the same “invented” charge has been made against the Jewish people, of course, by Stalin and of course by Arab and Islamist propaganda.”
This is a variation of the irritating they-used-to-say-the-same-thing-about-the-Jews. The answer is always the same: so what? “They” used to say everything about the Jews and its opposite. Such is the nature of the monster of antisemitism. What the Soviet, the Arab, and the Islamist propagandas, including the “Palestinian people” propaganda, have in common is their complete disregard for history and the truth.
Language is part of the propaganda war.
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, many West Berliners used to refer to East Germany as “der sogenannte Deutsche Demokratishe Republik”, which means “the so-called German Democratic Republic” and if you asked about it they would say “because it is not German or Democratic or a Republic!”, since the Soviets ran the Communist Government of East Germany.
Since Rome gave the land of the Jews the name of Palestine, the Jews are the true “Palestinians”.
We should refer to today’s alleged “Palestinians” as “the so-called Palestinians”.
Dr. Rubin continues to overlook the fact that Morocco also elected an Islamist government, last month. Algeria remains the lone holdout to this trend among North Africa’s Arab states. The question is for how long. And when add Sudan’s Islamist regime to the mix, that’s a pretty emergent constellation of radical Islamist regimes that did not even exist in the region a year ago. On the eastern side of the Arab World, this leaves Saudi Arabia, the Gulf principalities, Kuwait, Yemen, Jordan and Syria as the lone holdouts in the face of the Islamist tide. Israel protects the PA while Gaza is under the rule of the Islamist Hamas. Lebanon is already dominated by the Islamist Hezbollah. And you have Islamist regimes in non Arab Turkey and Iran. This is not a century of democracy and process in the Muslim World.
It IS democracy and process, just not one you agree with. Muslims are not you, they are Muslims. And those lone holdouts are not democracies but kings, princes and generals. Revolutions don’t happen to please you but to please the imperatives of the people involved. Muslims like being Muslims. They don’t lay awake at night and with they had a George Washington or Thomas Jefferson any more than you wish you had Yassir Arafat and Nasser.
This will be a democracy for a very short time before it turns into a theocracy. And if it’ll take 10 years instead of one like happened in Iran it still won’t change the eventual results. Since the West prefers to deny the writing on the wall we’re left only with time to tell the eventual consequences, so really the current argument about the democratic nature of this turn of events is futile except for those, like Rubin, that will make a name for themselves for having correctly predicted events time after time. Those media outlets that started by saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is weak, and then that it’s moderate, will not even pay the price of irrelevance and going out of bussiness for their journalistic malpractice and betrayal of public trust, just like they’ve not paid a price for the mischaracterization of both the Nazis (another democracy in action before it stopped being a democracy) and the Soviets.
And even in the short period of ballot box democracy it won’t be that much of a democracy for Christians, atheists, liberals, moderate Muslims, particularly women, and people wishing to openly express their views if those views do not fall in line with those of the regime or the majority. Ask the Christians in Gaza how wonderful was democracy for them after Hamas (a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood) got the majority vote in parliament. Oops, you can’t because there isn’t a Christian community in Gaza to speak of anymore, and those very few Christians remaining, if any, will not publically say anything that might upset Hamas unless you cover their faces and promise to twist their voices so they can’t be recognized. Remember that democracy is also freedom of speech and freedom of religion and not just the vote. So let’s see 5 years from now what will be the state of freedom of speech in Egypt before we celebrate the arrival of democracy in the Middle East.
You seem to feel that there is no such thing as an actual democracy but just righteous and evil people, like Batman and the Joker, and that democracy is in fact just a pair of useless pants people wear but don’t really need.
Since we are residing in the realm of the proverbial “benevolent dictator,” why not just bring back kings in America? Being that we’re good guys the kings will be good and we can replace the useless and overly formal “police” with Batman because he’ll always do the right thing as well.
Meanwhile Muslims are voting for Muslims rather than the values of the “Rainbow Coalition” which has you confused. Well done.
It is democracy like Hamas is democratic… (aka, not at all).
If, as you say, Moslems do like being Moslems, how might your conception be said to embrace also, those many unfortunate Moslems who are Moslem victims of Moslem honorable dismemberment, decapitation, acid disfigurement, stabbing, stoning, rape, deprivation, and so forth? Which Moslems like being Moslems?
And maybe, while you’re at it, how can it be known which Moslems do not facilitate or enable the more violent Moslems which also, move freely among those former?
Now, now: let’s put those things in context as far as how often they actually happen compared to massive violent crime in the United States including thousands of rapes a year. How much fun is that for the victims? Last I heard they still like being Americans and haven’t fled to Brazil or become atheists if religious.
That’s American culture and it’s a fake argument to say American culture “enables” crime simply by existing. If it’s not a fake argument, then it’s goose/gander.
I would say that, by no rational mind can the blurring attempt at moral equivalence in your “massive violent crime in the United States including thousands of rapes a year” be taken as making a proper conjunction in comparative use of logic with the Islamic honor murders (Sounds like such an oxymoron—doesn’t it?), the Islamic honor dismemberment, the Islamic honor acid disfigurement, the Islamic honor rape, and so forth, the former category being one of random violence done by relatively unconnected individuals, and these later being united in the arbitrary impulse which is a prime essence of Sharia, . . .
Your suggestion that all Muslims are okay with hideous honor crimes is like saying all Americans are okay with rape. I am not a fan of moral equivalence or cultural relativism but not all analogies are wrong. The massive amount of rape in America suggests that there is an ad hoc culture in this country okay with it. The fact it isn’t written down on tabernacles doesn’t mean it’s okay or random but suggest shared values by men not otherwise career criminals. One could argue that honor crime ignores true Islam and not obeys it. I mean, which Islam are we talking about: Hyderabad, Djkarta, Cairo?
Re the rockets, here are the reasons why there’s a relatively low number of casualties, and it’s not because these are fireworks:
- Good (if not 100% satisfactory) preparedness: There’s an alarm system that monitors and when spotting a rocket launching it goes off and gives people 15-60 seconds (depending on how far they live from the border with Gaza, i.e. how far the rocket has to fly before hitting) to run for shelter. There are shelters and many people have “safe rooms” with fortified walls, and there are good instructions for civilians on what to do when they hear the alert to try as much as possible to avoid harm if they’re not around a shelter or a safe room (if you’re in a car, get out and run as far away as you can from any vehicle, because if it hits a car it might create a very powerful explosion and the fuel will certainly burn. Get away from anything that has glass that might break and try to hide behind or under anything that can cover you from shrapnel. Lie on your stomach on the floor with your hands covering your head. And do on).
- Today there’s also Iron Dome that intercepts many of the Grad type rockets.
- From Gaza they can mostly his the south (though they are said to already have longer-range rockets, but in short supply and they haven’t used them yet), and these rockets aren’t accurate. The south isn’t densely populated, so some of the rockets fall in uninhabited areas. A large part does hit towns, but if it was in central Israel it would be even worse.
- LOTS of luck. If I was a religious person I would call it miracles because the number of such lucky incidents seems extraordinary. For instance, a rocket hits a house, but the family just happens to be vacationing out of town. A rocket hits a school just after the kids left. A rocket hits a house, but the owner was just outside helping her elderly neighbor to go to the shelter. And many MANY other cases like that.
Some of the effects of living under rocket attacks for a prolonged period:
- Direct casualties, dead, wounded, crippled.
- Anxiety casualties, a substantial part of the population suffering from PTSD and other anxiety related syndromes, a much higher rate of mental breakdowns.
- Damage to property, which costs a lot.
- An extensive disruption of normal life which causes massive damage to the town’s economy, people and children having to stay home, nearby a shelter or a safe room, for whole days or longer at a time, closure of businesses, loss of investments, high rates of unemployment, disruption of services, overload on health services, decline in individual functionality on a broad scale due to prevalent anxiety related disorders.
Don’t let the lying media fool you. Use your heads. Living under rocket attacks for prolonged periods simply CAN’T be just a minor annoyance. Use your common sense. This kind of lie just can’t pass the simplest common sense test.
And a military response not only works, but it’s the only measure that had significant results. Don’t buy into the lie that if they keep firing rockets the military operation failed. There’s a HUGE difference between hundreds of rockets and thousands of rockets. There’s a huge difference for a town and its people between absorbing dozens of rockets a year, dozens of rockets a month, dozens of rockets a week, or dozens of rockets a day. I don’t live in Sderot, the most attacked town in the south, but I live in a southern city, and I can tell you there’s an enormous difference between running to shelter 3 times a day hoping it won’t hit you this time too, and having to do that 3 times every two months. HUGE difference.
The Western media is insane. You are not being yourselves when effectively condoning these attacks. You are being fooled. Something is very very wrong with the West today.
Do you want to see what a rocket hit really looks likes, before believeing me these are not fireworks? Israel normally avoids telling where exactly the rocket hit or releasing pictures because if Hamas knows where exactly it hit it will help them aim better next time – the more information they have about locations, the more they can fine-tune their aim. But there are videos taken by amateurs. So here are some and see for yourselves:
This is a Katyusha rocket launched by Hizballah on Haifa in northern Israel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cERo8I4HZNQ
And 2 other Katyusha rockets caught on Israeli TV camera:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0atDiMCwk
A house in fire in Be’er Sheva, southern Israel, after being hit by a Grad rocket launched from Gaza:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_RxZqLBFFI
A factory ceiling in Sderot collapses over a worker after being hit by a Kassam rocket from Gaza (the other workers are seen running out for shelter seconds before the rocket hits – that’s why there was “only” one casualty), caught on security cameras inside and outside the building:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds0I0L1aGIk
“Red Color” (“tzeva adom”) alert, school children running for shelter seconds before a kassam rocket hits nearby in Sderot:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggKOjY_daiM
Fire after a Grad rocket hit vehicles in Ashdod, southern Israel:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8TrZKEmfLQ
And another one from Haifa – fire after a Katyusha rocket hit vehicles:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1flnTrlpJpE
So don’t let the media tell you that living for 10 years under the threat of rocket attacks is a minor annoyance.
maybe replace “the threat of” with “incessant” or “constant” in your final sentence?
trouble is, most of the world relishes the sight of rockets exploding in Israel, however one words it.
Most of them don’t see the sight of rockets exploding in Israel because the media rarely even reports it unless Israel retaliates (in which case the headline will be “Israel bombs Gaza, kills two, after rocket launch”), and the media gives people the impression the rockets are pretty much harmless, so they don’t have an opportunity to relish the sight.
I know antisemitism is so deeply ingrained in the European culture that IMO it can never be eradicated (came to this conclusion in recent years, not based on prejudice). Americans *are* different, though the US has its share of antisemites, but every country has its share of racists, including Israel. However, it’s mostly the media that creates the Israel-hate frenzy. For instance, I’ve been watching Pat Condell’s videos and how his views were transformed over the years due to changing his sources of information. In the beginning he had a video where he was extremely negative about Israel – his views at the time were completely based on the disinformation he was getting from the British media. But as he learned more and more from other sources, over time his views have gradually changed (he even visited Israel to see what it’s like in person), until they became the opposite of what he believed in the beginning. Recently he came up with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1N1zhUm84w
And this:
hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeGYAfh9A1k
So he turned from an Israel-hater to an Israel supporter after getting enough accurate information and after being exposed enough to the profound, often genocidal, Islamic Jew-hatred mixed with Nazism one can see on mainstream Arab media.
People often believe that antisemitism came from the bottom – from simple minded ignorant people, – but the truth is that antisemitism, particularly the most lethal kind, often came from the top. From clergimen, intellectuals, leaders and other authority and cultural figures that mold people’s minds, control the information they get, and that incited the people with repeated false information. The same thing happens with the extreme Israel-hatred. Someone like Pat Condell wouldn’t think of Israel one way or another if he hadn’t heard about it on the news. He doesn’t give a damn about the existence of this or that county, he just wants to live his life, like most people. Israel wouldn’t have bothered him at all, he wouldn’t be thinking about it at all, let alone hate it or like it. So all he knew about Israel and the so-called Middle East conflict (as if there was just one conflict here) came from the media. The media is the main factor molding people’s opinions about the world. The phenomenon of mass Israel-hatred was created mainly by the media using false information, by commision and by omission, to move public opinion in a their desired political direction, so it creates pressure to form policies in this direction. They chose a side and promoted it, discarding all journalistic standards and ethics. That’s how we got to where we are. If it weren’t for the constant demonization of Israel in the media people wouldn’t be relishing the sight of rockets exploding in Israel.
It seems that when the media gives Israel massive attention you don’t like it and when the media doesn’t give Israel massive attention you don’t like it.
Though to the illiterate who may be among us, quite unknown—in the nature of all things, as one of our laureates has left for us: “Things are not as they seem.”.
Would it be alright with you if I post your comment with whatever accreditation you’d like on my blog, or link to it? This is an angle I’ve discussed before with my audience, and it’s something people overlook / ignore -alot-,so it would be really nice to have a great sum-up explanation to point people to.
Thank you very much
You can post it anywhere you like, no need for accreditation. Just do me a favor and clean up the grammar errors before posting
. This post has more than my usual.
Don’t forget to mention there’s no such thing as mass Israel-hatred: it’s always nice to touch base with reality after being on a moon base, just for context.
“Willy”? As sometimes occurs, on a trip, someone opening the trunk might say: “Huh, there’s no air in the spare.”; but they don’t merely toss the deflated spare in a dumpster, . . . thinking somewhere along the line, to bet some air in it.
In each of your posts, you put something which may or may not be debatable, such as: “Don’t forget to mention there’s no such thing as mass Israel-hatred:”, but for each such instance of possible worth, you include such stuff of your unpleasant ruminations as that about Batman and Robin, or: “it’s always nice to touch base with reality after being on a moon base.”. It’s neither worthwhile sardonic usage, nor skillful sarcasm, . . .
And you can’t just be droped in a dumpster, . . . somewhere, . . .
You’re posting up against—as least some—learned commentors (commentators) on a serious enough topic, but yet, . . . one might easily wonder: “Why are you even in the trunk, anyway?”—ya know what I’m getting at? And cartoon shows are available—you know, where the Road-runner is mid-air, his feet jest-a-spinnin’, before he drops far over the edge of the cliff?
It would be in such a context as this that, one might hear said: “Get! a grip.”, . . . they mean, in thought as at least some personal grip on reality, . . . “Willy”.
Using superheroes in the context of democracy useful/not useful is perfectly understandable. In comics, the ends justifies the means because the hero is a good guy. In real life the hero might be a crazed vigilante. Positing that democracy, or rule of law, is irrelevant puts one in the realm of trusting in the so-called benevolent dictator which is the same thing as Batman. If you only like elections when they turn out as you want, then you are advocating for the ends justifies the means in place of law. Ipso facto.
And yes, not Batman and Robin, but Batman and the Joker.
But in all, while those many Arabs will vote for the nominee most vocal in advocacy of mass-Israel hatred, and whatever Zuheir Mohsen, a leader in the PLO, in an inverview, March 1977, with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, said of the necessity for invention of those Arabs into “a Palestinian People”, and whatever might be said about war crimes on all sides, sovereignty over land being maintained in force of arms, for each instance of missile attack, hopefully, the IDF will respond with large enough bombs so as to make Arab initialization of missile attack to become no longer a conceivable option—would that make sense to you?
Did you notice how that, many Arab nations—and, in all corners of the globe—Moslems generally, appear to be an unwarrantable drain on the world’s economy, . . . and that, if “religion” refers to systems of belief which are geared to bring out the best in the individual, maybe, in actuality of the thing, maybe they have no religion at all, but in the indiscriminate violence are simply, war-like barbarians—or criminals though at present, uncharged?
Pnina,
Totally agree. I also live in the south under the rockets.
Only one correction: Katyusha and Grad are different names of the same soviet rocket. The first came from the WW2 and is a Russian feminine name (it was one of the main factors at the end of that war), while the second is the official Russian military term. It is a powerful weapon intended to burn out whole areas. The original idea was to fire tens or even hundreds of rockets at once.
Grads fired from Gaza contain thousands of small metallic balls – shrapnel. A man in Beer Sheva was seriously wounded in his chest after he looked out of his window in the distance of 500 meters from the explosion. It was at night, and he had just got up due to alarm, and had not realized what’s happening. In another accident a woman lied over her small son to protect him, and he was killed under her, while she remained intact. Just few examples of miracles.
A lot of people here have no place to hide, especially if they live in a separate house (not a large building). I know people who hide behind their door, or their refrigerator.
I THINK you are wrong. I remember in my number of wars the Grad was one at a time and bigger than the Katyusha. While the Katyusha was fired from multiple barrels (or one at a time). What the Hamas calls a Katyuasha – isn’t. It may be wrong but that was what told to us in 73 and other wars. I was, anyway, in all cases meant to get honors for digging the deepest trench at the highest speed. ( We just about don’t have medals in the IDF. A medal is given for things like holding up a regiment of tanks single handed – Ramat Hagolan – Kahalani)
Its not the damage or even the deaths that are the real problem. A million ( out of 6 million)Israelis live in constant terror. Kids already have PTSD.Schools have replace bells with quiet music! Everybody checks the distance to the closest shelter. Some factories have been moved and farmers feel they are a firing range. Often I drove down to Shedrot ( about one and a half hours from Tel Aviv) when there was a constant rocketing. They are all heroes living in the most surrealist existence and like the Jews of Europe feeling abandoned by the world. In a country that could fit into the Grand Canyon!
I was listening to late night radio when the announcer asked the people of Ashkelon to get off their roofs and get into into their shelters – they had gone up to party and watch the Steel-Dome shooting down the incoming rockets.
Maybe Western media isn’t insane, . . . though all too often, simply inane and thus, quite unbelievable, . . .
If you don’t like Western media start your own.
The Palestenians belong in Jordan. Jordan is the Palestinian state. The people in Gaza belong in Egypt. They are Egyptians. Before 1967, the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, were controlled by the King of Jordan. Gaza was controlled by Egypt. Judea, Samaria, Gaza belong to Israel. This is Israeli or Jewish land from thousands of years ago which stretched past Jordan. Solomon’s Temple sits in the middle of Jerusalem. In 700 BCE, the Muslim Crusaders invaded the Jewish lands and built a mosque upon Solomon’s Temple. Now only the west wall remains of the temple. The Arabs occupy 99% of the Middle East. There is enough room for Arab countries to take in their fellow bedouins or nomads from Jewish land. Israel needs very secure borders without any murderers or terrorists adjacent to Jewish land. The Fogel family had their throats slit when terrorist Palestinians slipped into Jewish land. Rockets continuously hit Israel each day from Hamas in the Gaza. I agree with Newt Gingrich. The Palestinians are another group of Arabs who should be moved into their homelands of Jordan and Egypt.
And after the Palestinians say “No way” to living in Jordan, and repeat their demands for their own state,
what should the U.S. do then?
You may think it’s a lot of fun to rant and get your adrenal glands working. But remember what we’re doing here. We’re choosing a President who has to formulate foreign policy. A Presidential candidate has to be able to sell the voters on the idea that he can formulate policies that can work.
They first and foremost need to relinquish their demand to resettle the descendants of the 1948 refugees INSIDE Israel. Every sane world politician can easily understand that no Israeli government will ever agree to that under any circumstances because it means collective suicide, and therefore there should be pressure on the Arabs to give up that demand, otherwise there will never be peace. Israel will not commit suicide for the sake of “peace” (your peace), no matter what, because we have nothing to lose if demanded to die for “peace”. So if you want peace your leaders should say clearly they reject this demand and make sure the Arabs understand it, otherwise there is no reason for them to stop demanding it. If all you do is make clear to them that Israel will always be blamed and that the more the Arabs procrastinate the worse things become for Israel, the more it is pressured, the more it is isolated, the more it is hated, and the less it is supported, then the Arabs conclude their strategy is working and Israel is getting nearer and nearer to its end. And they are very right to conclude their strategy is working, except there’s one thing the West needs to understand – Israel will not go quietly. We will not just accept our fate and die. We will fight for our survival whatever the cost. And think about it very carefully, including all the implications, before opting for our murder as the formula for “peace”. So you’d better get the Arabs to understand that we’re here to stay and that any final agreement will include a Jewish state. Without swamping it with millions of Muslim-Arabs – that will end either in the genocide of the Jews or the expulsion of the Arabs.
The Israelis are generally pragmatic people, no matter what your media tells you. And whether there is or isn’t an Arab-Palestinian nation we’ve already accepted the solution of a second Arab state in the territory of the former Palestine mandate (the first one being Jordan, founded on 78% of the terittory). But in return for PEACE, and not in return for more war and more terror, with proper security arrangements because we have EXTREMELY good reasons not to trust our neighbors’ good will as the only guarantee for our peace and security, and with the Arab refugees resettled in the new Arab state and/or any other Arab state and not in Israel (BTW, just like most of the Jewish refugees from Arab states were resettled in Israel and the rest in the West).
And please don’t bother telling me that they’re just looking for a genuine solution to a genuine problem, and could be offered compensation and then everything will be fine. They were already offered compensations and declined. The Arab refugees could have been very easily absorbed in the Arab states, far easier than the Jewish refugees in tiny Israel where they about doubled the population – their number was and is a fraction of the Arab population in the Middle East, and the last thing the Arabs lack is land, and they could also get lots and lots of money from the UN, the Euros, Americans and Israelis. The only reason the refugee problem is kept alive, the only reason the other Arabs won’t give them citizenships, is to use them as a weapon against Israel. This is why they refuse to solve the matter with conpensation and resettlement in the new Arab state. And as long as that’s the case there will never be peace.
And Newt Gingrich does have a detalied policy on the matter, whether it’s posted on his website or not. One of its points is indeed to clearly reject the demand to resettle the refugees inside Israel. That’s just common sense really. You should have done that a long time ago rather than let the Arabs delude themselves that the end of Israel is in sight, but no one had the guts to say it out loud, except for W Bush on one accasion. Now with the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood it might be too late for any kind of peace.
It’s not so simple as that, the Arab Palestinians might merely say, “No way!”; for, in the late 60′s early 70′s they schemed and fought long and hard to kill the Jordanian king.
And insofar as, a president who can formulate policy which works, may be of interest, how about you elect the president who can whip-saw Society—both in its economics and in its politice—such that, the red horse can be released from the Book of Revelation and, power can be given to him who sits thereon to take peace from the earth, that, being thoroughly blinded by confusion, the people will kill one another in civil strife, . . . for food—how about that?
And then too, how about a president who can oversee a black horse market of successive inflation and devaluation so that, once more will one buy “A bushel of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny.”; money will again be worth something—there’s your president, . . .
A typo perhaps but a significant one. That would be 700 AD not 700 BC (or CE not BCE if you must). Cheers, E
thanks Pnina for helping some of us to get a feel for the horrors of living under the threat of constant death for yourselves and your loved ones.
i had a Palestinian roommate once and we had many vigorous discussions about all things middle east. he was a decent sort and could cook some great dishes. he was also very passionate about his religion and heritage. however, being of a hard science mind set, i always had one question he never could answer to my full satisfaction. if your people really claim to be from the area of modern day Israel, why not let archeologists carefully and respectively dig around the site of the old Temple? the only answers i got to that sort of inquiry just didn’t pass my smell meter. imho, if you are not looking for truth of exactly what went before among the servants of G_D, of old, what kind of servant of G_D are you today? i see many places, even here in the u.s., where people want to keep others from digging up and scientifically examining the truth of the past. their arguments just never ring true for me.
Thanks for listening.
And the Arabs cleared out a lot of historic evidence from the Temple Mount. They’ve built there new mosques (the site is managed by the Muslims even under Israeli rule), and threw out all the soil they dug out. Arachelogists were going through the rubble later and found all kinds of artifacts, but much of it was completely destroyed.
Side point, but important: So many commentators, and commenters above, talk about ‘democracy’, whether in the ME, the US, or around the world, as if it were a good thing, as if it were the form of gov’t in the US. It’s not. It’s a dreadful form of gov’t. The closer you get to democracy, the closer you get to mob rule, oppression of the minority by the majority. The Founders knew democracy to be a very bad form of gov’t and rejected it. What form of gov’t does the US have? Repeat after me: “…and to the REPUBLIC, for which it stands…” We have a Constitutional Republic. We’re fast losing it, since the sovereign of this nation, We the People, couldn’t care less whether the ministers we hire to run the gov’t actually follow our own foundational law. We are not a democracy; not yet, anyway.
Well then let’s cut out that “all men are created equal” stuff and go back to the divine right of kings. Heck, let’s cut out the kings and just go straight to religious polities, like Israel and Egypt, two peas in a pod, each hating the other because they’re ethnic/religious states.
We can have a witch doctor appoint leaders based on how righteous they are without all that icky secularism which is a lot of words anyway and boring too.
For an in-depth study of this question, go to http://www.mythsandfacts.org/Conflict/7/palestinians.pdf (and read it all, including the footnotes).
from what I have read… the Palestinians are outcasts of the middle east. they are people who are considered scum.
If a man can kill his daughter or his sister, with the mother’s agreement, for ‘dishonoring’ the family, can he not easily mistreat a more distant relation, never mind a stranger?
Look at how they treat each other, and how their leaders treat them.
The palestinians are merely ‘other’ arabs playing a role, the role of weapon of the arab world against the Jewish state.
To be taken into the arab fold as citizens of other arab nations would neutralize the weapon. What would the point be of that?
The Palestinians are like people (as Arabs sometimes do in celebrations) firing guns straight in the air…
except that they blame the Jews whenever those bullets fall to earth and hit the crowd.
If I am correct Sir, a more correct name, one I like, is pagan scum.
They are considered scum for two reasons:
A. The way they were treated – people should realize it wasn’t always their choice or the choice of each and every one of them. They were not given citizenships, were left in camps, were barred from various professions in certain countries. The Arabs wanted to prevent their assimilation because that would diffuse the problem and give them alternative other than destroying Israel. If a Pal-Arabs marries an Egyptian Arab, their children can’t get citizenships in Egypt. So they became a problematic group.
B. Yasser Arafat was a scum, a reckless radical, had no scruples nor limits, and the Pal-Arabs allied with the worst dictators in the Middle East. Under his leadership they created problems everywhere they went – Jordan, Lebanon, after the first Gulf War they were expelled from Kuwait for supporting Saddam, and aren’t very liked in the Gulf states for that reason. They have killed more Lebanese, particularly Christians, than Israelis in the civil war they took part in starting.
If you read Iranian forums before the regime clamped on Iranian websites, you could find some Iranians who hate them because there are Pal-Arab mercenaries working for the regime.
So yes, a lot of people in the Middle East are not great fans.
The political identity of “Palestinian Arab” was created the day the Mandate of Palestine was established as a separate political jurisdiction. For this, Britain was responsible.
It exists as the appropriate label for Arabs resident in the territory of the former Mandate from 1920 to 1948, and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1948. (Arabs in the West Bank had Jordanian nationality from 1948 to 1988; Arabs in Gaza did not have Egyptian nationality. Arabs in Israel have Israeli nationality.)
Since 1988, Palestinian Arabs have not been citizens of any recognized sovereign state. They are the only people in the world for whom this is true. This anomaly will have to be resolved eventually.
Either the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be united with Israel (by Arab conquest or Israeli annexation), or the West Bank and Gaza Strip will become a sovereign state, or the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza will move (voluntarily or involuntarily) to other countries and become citizens of those countries.
None of these solutions are at present acceptable to all parties. Some will never be acceptable to all. Eventually one will happen – but not soon.
Newt is absolutely correct, the majority of soo called Palestinians are migrant Arabs who came to the territories for better economic life after The collapsed of the Ottoman empire. Read Joan Peters book on the subject ‘From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine’ Unfortunately the world is soo sorry for the creation of The State of Israel no one wants to hear the truth. If there is any group of people in ME who deserve their own state are The Kurds and not made up Palestinians. Beside The Palestinians already have a state is called Jordan.
“There is a strong tendency of contemporary experts to argue that pretty much every nationalist is invented including the French, British, Italian, Polish, and German.”
Inaccurate. There is a strong tendency of contemporary experts to argue that pretty much every national identity is invented, EXCEPT the Arab-Palestinian national identity where there’s a tendency to exaggerate and go out of one’s way and clench at straws in a desperate search for anything that will make it look like it predated Zionism rather than be a reaction to Zionism. The Arab-Palestinians (that’s their formal name) are, apparently, the only genuine nation in the world, in spite of lacking any real characteristic of a nation.
This tendency is not due to honest scholarship, but to the general ideological attack against the nation state (except, of course, an Arab-Palestinian nation state). In the case of Israel its purpose is to delegitimize the very existence of the State of Israel (and yes, that includes some Israeli far leftists). By that I don’t mean the purpose of the far leftists (unlike our lovely neighbors) is genocide – the Jews can become a minority in an Arab-Muslim state or else leave. Aside from the Jewish people, this sort of denial of national identity is focused mainly on European nations, much less so on Asian nations, because it’s ideologically motivated. It has three main ideological purposes:
- Eroding and weakening the national identity of each European nation, and the national feelings and attachments of its people, as part of the process of creating the supranational European Union.
- Allowing for easier acceptance of multiculturalism. I still remember how surprised I was to read in the comments on some article in a Dutch newspaper in English that the Netherlands has no culture of its own and that her culture is the result of contribution of many immigrants over the centuries. This is obviously intended to make people believe that mass immigration is the norm, and to counter claims about preserving the Dutch culture (which now seems to be defined by a single characteristic: Tolerance). Say some French or Italians want to preserve the French or Italian nation, so you tell them there is no French or Italian nation in any meaningful sense, and never has been, so there’s nothing to preserve. Problem solved.
- A general rejection of the nation state as inherently racist and a cause for wars, coupled with a general desire for replacing national sovereignty with a multitude of supranational bodies that dictate more and more policies.
Well, if we can’t all live without working, maybe at the very least, those who run the multitude of supranational bodies which dictate more and more policies, can—and their families and friends, and their friends families and friends, . . .
The funny thing in the debate about this is ignoring the fact that Gingrich has a PhD in History. Fact-checking this expert was a waste of time. If you asked Gingrich about some slight nuance, I am sure he could fill it in for you, but there is a very limited time on that debate stage for him to clarify every triviality.
It was also ridiculous for Paul and Romney to argue with him about it. He has worked as a Professor of History. You are literally gonna get schooled by him.
Yes. History professor AND proto-Tea-Party Speaker of the House who ended decades of Democrat control. No wonder he terrifies Liberals and RINOs alike.
Yet ABC and everyone else missed the real bombshell in what Gingrich said: “For a variety of political reasons we [the United States] have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic.”
That’s a good line except for the odd date chosen. I don’ think we’ve been sending support to the Palestians that long, but we and plenty of our allies are NOW.
If Newt said something with useful policy implications like “since the Palestinians have no intention of ending the conflict we can not in good conscience, support them in any way and neither should any other country that opposes eternal warfare” then I would have been forced to have some extra respect for the man.
The USA boycotted Israel in the 48 war of independence. We stole WW2 planes from American junk yards, and after saving Cheacheskos life received ww1 rifles as a gift. On the start of being attacked there WAS no army. Each head of each regiment was in fact the head of nothing.
On the capture of Eilat a Piper Cub was used to spot. They had no radio so the pilot used to switch off the engine, open the door and shout instructions to the troops below. This is just one instance of desperation.
There is a myth hanging over all discussion of the Palestinian problem: the myth that this land was “Arab” land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews. Whatever may be the correct solution to the problems of the Middle East, let’s get a few things straight:
* As a strictly legal matter, the Jews didn’t take Palestine from the Arabs; they took it from the British, who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. And the British don’t want it back.
* If you consider the British illegitimate usurpers, fine. In that case, this territory is not Arab land but Turkish land, a province of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years until the British wrested it from them during the Great War in 1917. And the Turks don’t want it back.
* If you look back earlier in history than the Ottoman Turks, who took over Palestine over in 1517, you find it under the sovereignty of the yet another empire not indigenous to Palestine: the Mamluks, who were Turkish and Circassian slave-soldiers headquartered in Egypt. And the Mamluks don’t even exist any more, so they can’t want it back.
So, going back 800 years, there’s no particularly clear chain of title that makes Israel’s title to the land inferior to that of any of the previous owners. Who were, continuing backward:
* The Mamluks, already mentioned, who in 1250 took Palestine over from:
* The Ayyubi dynasty, the descendants of Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim leader who in 1187 took Jerusalem and most of Palestine from:
* The European Christian Crusaders, who in 1099 conquered Palestine from:
* The Seljuk Turks, who ruled Palestine in the name of:
* The Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, which in 750 took over the sovereignty of the entire Near East from:
* The Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus, which in 661 inherited control of the Islamic lands from:
* The Arabs of Arabia, who in the first flush of Islamic expansion conquered Palestine in 638 from:
* The Byzantines, who (nice people—perhaps it should go to them?) didn’t conquer the Levant, but, upon the division of the Roman Empire in 395, inherited Palestine from:
* The Romans, who in 63 B.C. took it over from:
* The last Jewish kingdom, which during the Maccabean rebellion from 168 to 140 B.C. won control of the land from:
* The Hellenistic Greeks, who under Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. conquered the Near East from:
* The Persian empire, which under Cyrus the Great in 639 B.C. freed Jerusalem and Judah from:
* The Babylonian empire, which under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. took Jerusalem and Judah from:
* The Jews, meaning the people of the Kingdom of Judah, who, in their earlier incarnation as the Israelites, seized the land in the 12th and 13th centuries B.C. from:
* The Canaanites, who had inhabited the land for thousands of years before they were dispossessed by the Israelites.
As the foregoing suggests, any Arab claim to sovereignty based on inherited historical control will not stand up. Arabs are not native to Palestine, but are native to Arabia, which is called Arab-ia for the breathtakingly simple reason that it is the historic home of the Arabs. The territories comprising all other “Arab” states outside the Arabian peninsula—including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria, as well as the entity now formally under the Palestinian Authority—were originally non-Arab nations that were conquered by the Muslim Arabs when they spread out from the Arabian peninsula in the first great wave of jihad in the 7th century, defeating, mass-murdering, enslaving, dispossessing, converting, or reducing to the lowly status of dhimmitude millions of Christians and Jews and destroying their ancient and flourishing civilizations. Prior to being Christian, of course, these lands had even more ancient histories. Pharaonic Egypt, for example, was not an Arab country through its 3,000 year history. The recent assertion by the Palestinian Arabs that they are descended from the ancient Canaanites whom the ancient Hebrews displaced is absurd in light of the archeological evidence.
There is no record of the Canaanites surviving their destruction in ancient times. History records literally hundreds of ancient peoples that no longer exist. The Arab claim to be descended from Canaanites is an invention that came after the 1964 founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the same crew who today deny that there was ever a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Prior to 1964 there was no “Palestinian” people and no “Palestinian” claim to Palestine; the Arab nations who sought to overrun and destroy Israel in 1948 planned to divide up the territory amongst themselves. Let us also remember that prior to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the name “Palestinian” referred to the Jews of Palestine.
The only nations that have perfect continuity between their earliest known human inhabitants and their populations of the present day are Iceland, parts of China, and a few Pacific islands. The Chinese case is complicated by the fact that the great antiquity of Chinese civilization has largely erased the traces of whatever societies preceded it, making it difficult to reconstruct to what extent the expanding proto-Chinese displaced (or absorbed) the prehistoric peoples of that region. History is very sketchy in regard to the genealogies of ancient peoples. The upshot is that “aboriginalism”—the proposition that the closest descendants of the original inhabitants of a territory are the rightful owners—is not tenable in the real world. It is not clear that it would be a desirable idea even if it were tenable. Would human civilization really be better off if there had been no China, no Japan, no Greece, no Rome, no France, no England, no Ireland, no United States?
Back to the Arabs: I have no problem recognizing the legitimacy of the Arabs’ tenure in Palestine when they had it, from 638 to 1099, a period of 461 years out of a history lasting 5,000 years. They took Palestine by military conquest, and they lost it by conquest, to the Christian Crusaders in 1099. Of course, military occupation by itself does not determine which party rightly has sovereignty in a given territory. Can it not be said that the Arabs have sovereign rights, if not to all of Israel, then at least to the West Bank, by virtue of their majority residency in that region from the early Middle Ages to the present?
To answer that question, let’s look again at the historical record. Prior to 1947, as we’ve discussed, Palestine was administered by the British under the Palestine Mandate, the ultimate purpose of which, according to the Balfour Declaration, was the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. In 1924 the British divided the Palestine Mandate into an Arabs-only territory east of the Jordan, which became the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan, and a greatly reduced Palestine Mandate territory west of the Jordan, which was inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. Given the fact that the Jews and Arabs were unable to coexist in one state, there had to be two states. At the same time, there were no natural borders separating the two peoples, in the way that, for example, the Brenner Pass has historically marked the division between Latin and Germanic Europe. Since the Jewish population was concentrated near the coast, the Jewish state had to start at the coast and go some distance inland. Exactly where it should have stopped, and where the Arab state should have begun, was a practical question that could have been settled in any number of peaceful ways, almost all of which the Jews would have accepted.
The Jews’ willingness to compromise on territory was demonstrated not only by their acquiescence in the UN’s 1947 partition plan, which gave them a state with squiggly, indefensible borders, but even by their earlier acceptance of the 1937 Peel Commission partition plan, which gave them nothing more than a part of the Galilee and a tiny strip along the coast. Yet the Arab nations, refusing to accept any Jewish sovereignty in Palestine even if it was the size of a postage stamp, unanimously rejected the 1937 Peel plan, and nine years later they violently rejected the UN’s partition plan as well. When the Arabs resorted to arms in order to wipe out the Jews and destroy the Jewish state, they accepted the verdict of arms. They lost that verdict in 1948, and they lost it again in 1967, when Jordan, which had annexed the West Bank in 1948 (without any objections from Palestinian Arabs that their sovereign nationhood was being violated), attacked Israel from the West Bank during the Six Day War despite Israel’s urgent pleas that it stay out of the conflict. Israel in self-defense then captured the West Bank. The Arabs thus have no grounds to complain either about Israel’s existence (achieved in ’48) or about its expanded sovereignty from the river to the sea (achieved in ’67).
The Arabs have roiled the world for decades with their furious protest that their land has been “stolen” from them. One might take seriously such a statement if it came from a pacifist people such as the Tibetans, who had quietly inhabited their land for ages before it was seized by the Communist Chinese in 1950. The claim is laughable coming from the Arabs, who in the early Middle Ages conquered and reduced to slavery and penury ancient peoples and civilizations stretching from the borders of Persia to the Atlantic; who in 1947 rejected an Arab state in Palestine alongside a Jewish state and sought to obliterate the nascent Jewish state; who never called for a distinct Palestinian Arab state until the creation of the terrorist PLO in 1964—sixteen years after the founding of the state of Israel; and who to this moment continue to seek Israel’s destruction, an object that would be enormously advanced by the creation of the Arab state they demand. The Arab claim to sovereign rights west of the Jordan is only humored today because of a fatal combination of world need for Arab oil, leftist Political Correctness that has cast the Israelis as “oppressors,” and, of course, good old Jew-hatred.
Yes. Of course, every nation state on Earth today is an “invented’ entity. What aspect of our geopolitical globe is not invented? America is an invention. The former Soviet Union was an invention. The former United Arab Republic (UAR) was an invention. The British Commonwealth is an invention. The subdivided continent of Africa as we know it today is an invention. The nation states of today’s Arab World are an invention that came into being at around the same time as the founding of the U.N.-sanctioned Jewish nation of Israel. The world today is completely divided into discrete geo-political parcels. Even Antarctica is parceled out. There is not a single scrap of land left over — with one exception: the undesignated territories of Gaza and the West Bank (which Leftist elites and academics have come to call “Palestine” for no historically defensible reason, as there has never been a solidly mappable land called Palestine). Gaza encompasses some 360 sq. km. — about twice the area of the District of Columbia. The West Bank has some 5.600 sq. km. — a bit smaller than Delaware. These lands are a colonial left-over that neither Europe nor the U.N. has ever been able to figure out what to do with. Should they go to Israel? Egypt? Jordan? The “World Community” seems to have no clue on the matter, so it chooses to saddle Israel with the problem of governing these territorial vacuums that have since evolved into a set of terror-don fiefdoms answerable to no one.
I have long argued that Gaza should go to Egypt and the West Bank should go to Jordan, as the possibility of these undesignated territories ever becoming a viable, self-governing, sovereign state is just too ridiculous to entertain.
But I’m afraid it is too late for that now. Egypt is boiling over, and Jordan is on the brink of a national melt down — just what the jihadi fundamentalists want. So Israel will be forced to continue to try to deal with these basket cases on its borders, and in trying to do so they will be scapegoated every step of the way by the international Left and the Islamofascists (both of whom envision a global sovereign — though the former would be secular while the latter would be religious — the details of which would be worked out later, to the colossal misery of all mankind).
Dear Frank,
Unfortunately history is bunk. True the feeling of nationalism came very late – it was more of a tribal society. But now for a multiple of reasons they regard themselves as Palestinians and are prepared and do die for this – as we do for Israel. (I personally feel the only difference between them and other Arabs is the degree of hate they have for us – but if we weren’t around they would find something else to hate. ‘As Bismark said ‘If you have internal problems seek a foreign war – and boy, as feudal and worse societies they certainly fulfill this category!)
I am sure we can make peace with most of them as their desire for a good life out-ways their desire for continuing the fight. I believe we should leave the West Bank as soon as possible – knowing full well that the following day there may indeed be Katyushas in Tel Aviv. I also think we are the bravest people in the world and powerful – so we should take the chance. I have a wonderful grandchild – I really don’t want him to go through what I and my boys went through
Thanking you in advance.
Soft left,
I empathize with everything you said, but I think you are wrong in your prescription – leave the West Bank – because you make certain unprovable assumptions. You assume that most Palestinians just want a good life because that is probably the way you and most people you know think having grown up in a society where a good life is possible and is the goal of most individuals. Do you have any EVIDENCE that this is what most Palestinians want? Palestinian society accords the highest honors – naming schools, night camps, boulevards, even girl scout troops, after a woman named Dalal Mugrabi, who murdered 38 bus travelers and got herself killed as well – suggests a very different thinking process and values. Maybe for these people, the ideal is to murder as many Jews as possible and then martyr oneself. That is the message Hamas and Fatah routinely deliver to their children. Yes, we do have evidence of that thanks to MEMRI and PMW, who have the videos of schoolchildren as young as 4 or 5 being taught this message.
The only thing I have to go on is the way they have developed their towns and industry since the last Intafada and Arafats death.
The unemployment is still very high and income 3rd world and most of their budget are donations. They have been working hand in hand with us re Hamas and terror and things OK here (Im on the N border next to 45000 missiles) for the time being. My dream is for us to give them our programming instead of working with China, India etc.
While Gaza has spent all it donations on weapons.
comment 2 to Steve – you are also right. I hope things change
Dear Frank,
Unfortunately history is bunk. True the feeling of nationalism came very late – it was more of a tribal society. But now for a multiple of reasons they regard themselves as Palestinians and are prepared and do die for this – as we do for Israel. (I personally feel the only difference between them and other Arabs is the degree of hate they have for us – but if we weren’t around they would find something else to hate. ‘As Bismark said ‘If you have internal problems seek a foreign war – and boy, as feudal and worse societies they certainly fulfill this category!)
I am sure we can make peace with most of them as their desire for a good life out-ways their desire for continuing the fight. I believe we should leave the West Bank as soon as possible – knowing full well that the following day there may indeed be Katyushas in Tel Aviv. I also think we are the bravest people in the world and powerful – so we should take the chance. I have a wonderful grandchild – I really don’t want him to go through what I and my boys went through
Thanking you in advance.
Wrong name4 sorry for typo
How can you have a “solidly mappable” land when it’s been under foreign domination for 2,000 years and more? A neat trick if you can do it.
That’s like the Aztecs saying after the fall and destruction of Tenochtitlan “Oh look, it’s still there and we’re still in charge. Ignore the Spanish and maybe they’ll go away. Just act as if nothing happened.”
I suppose Greeks who survived the fall of Constantinople carried maps of the city in their heads. Those died when they did, wherever they happended to die.
The shape of Israel changed about 10 times in the Bible
These people have a name : Arabs,
their profession : squatterrorists
For Israeli purposes, this Palestinian peoplehood debate is irrelevant and obscures the real issue, that is, the desire of the Palestinians and the Arab world to destroy Israel and exterminate the Jewish People.
The Palestinians are at war with Israel on every level possible, indeed, the Palestinians as such only even exist as a means of destroying Israel and should Israel be destroyed, within a short time the Palestinians would cease to exist.
Israel knows this and has to be on guard 24/7, that’s really all there is folks!
I admit that I am at sea with all this pedantry and semantic gibberish over the word “Palestine” which sees history as a one-way street while pretending to provide context which will reveal the “truth.”
The Palestinian Arabs didn’t invent themselves solely because of the creation of Israel but because of the nationalistic hopes of Arabs in the entire area after centuries of being buried in the Ottoman Empire. Arguably, the same thing would’ve happened with or without Israel.
It certainly did in Jordan and Syria, “invented” nations and peoples in the wake of Ottoman empire. How can a people have an identity when it is squashed? From where can come coinage and rules of gov’t? What the European powers did amounted to something that had the same de facto effect as the just departed Ottomans, namely subvert cultures to nation status.
Where is a Kurdish nation? Are they then a fantasy people because other people with bigger guns drew lines on a map? They have no coinage or laws and yet they exist.
This name game with the Palestinian Arabs is pedantic foolishness. Jordan exists and has a king from another culture entirely. Being not in control of one’s destiny is not the same thing as being a fantasy people as being prevented from organizing one’s common interests into a nation is not the same thing as not existing in the first place.
Had the Palestinian Jews lost the civil war prior to the creation of Israel but stayed in the area they would no longer be Palestinian but European because they never had the chance to build a nation or introduce coinage or gov’t? Winners name things, winners draw lines on a map: that doesn’t reduce the losers to phantoms but only losers. It is inarguable that Arabs occupied that land and that European Jews did not. Remarking on ancient Jewish provenance doesn’t make the Arab argument weaker but stronger since it is more recent.
How many gov’ts and coins and Jewish examples of monumental architecture were left in Europe? None because they were under someone else’s thumb for centuries, occupying that same cultural space the Palestinian Arabs did under the Ottomans.
There is reality put in context and there is semantic quibbling and word games and my history is longer than your history over nothing. If a people are there then they exist and can name themselves whatever they wish. Being prevented from incorporating this into a nation for 2,000 years hardly rises to the level of an argument.
How many gov’ts and coins and Jewish examples of monumental architecture were left in Europe? None because they were under someone else’s thumb for centuries, occupying that same cultural space the Palestinian Arabs did under the Ottomans.
But they left behind mathematics and physics. That they could mint coins because they were wanderers after being kicked out of their own space.
And now we have the Europeans using their Muslims to kick out the remaining Jews with Malmo in Sweden as just one example.
As for the Arabs, what did they leave behind prior to Ottoman control? How many millions did they slaughter on their way to occupy the Indian subcontinent for example?
And the Ottomans, how many East Europeans, they forced to convert, did they inject into desolate Palestine while denying the still existing Jews, resident for centuries in the helly land, any rights?
Jews per se didn’t leave behind mathematics and physics in Europe; it was the larger culture they swam in and there were just a teensy weensy bit of other folks involved. Were this not true, those mathematics and physics would’ve been present in Jewish enclaves in N. Africa and the Gulf – they weren’t.
Saturns moons Mimas and Enceladus were discovered in 1789 by William Herschel but Islam knew about 7 not 5 moons in medieval times. It’s not in Wikipedia but William Darymple’s “White Mughals” sources this by making reference to an ancient Persian book, “The Wonders of Creation,” an amateur English astronomer in India Thomas Deane Pearse encountered, about which mention of 7 moons he says “I am much inclined to believe that the [medieval Arabs] had much better instruments than we had.”
History isn’t so straightforward or revealing as is thought and invention is where you find it, not where you want to find it. Even the so-called “racist” late 18th century Englishman are doing better at giving credit where it is due than you.
Yes the comments are glib and thoughtless: no surprise.
Why don’t we look at what they do and how they do it. Any self-organization to solve local problems? None apparent. When they got Gaza back, all we saw was looting. No hint of civil culture or decency.
Spare the world talk of ideas or ideals, until people act on them. All the rest is mummery.
NEWT GINGRICH, THE PALESTINIANS, AND THE AUSHWITZ OF THE MIDDLE EAST
The Palestinians are the wicked creation of Islamic and Arab supremacists (emotionally stuck in the dark ages) who can’t tolerate the existence of a non-Moslem state on the Arabian Peninsula-the birthplace and “holy land” of Islam. In reality, as jihadists themselves candidly say, the Palestinian people are nothing more than a tactical weapon in the war of annihilation (ongoing for 63 years) to wipe out Israel’s catastrophic existence (a catastrophe for Islam as Israel is a refutation of its supremacy). They are in a very real sense a “terrorist people” as Newt Gingrich says. Most Palestinians are poisoned with hatred against the Jewish State-a hatred driven by racism, cultural imperialism, and religious intolerance. Indoctrinated with Jew hatred from cradle to grave, in their homes, mosques and schools, the Palestinians collectively dream the ultimate, inhuman Jew hating nightmare of turning Israel into the crematorium and Auschwitz of the Middle East-killing every Israeli Jew down to the last innocent child in a sacrificial holocaust to their bloodthirsty god (a demon disguised as the Deity, as the imposter Mohammed masqueraded as a prophet).
The Palestinians are the stupidest, vilest, and most despicable people on the face of God’s earth; and until they wizen up and accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state their quest for an independent state is immoral, illegitimate, and self-destructive as they doom themselves to more failure, tragedy, suffering, and ruin.
LONG LIVE ISRAEL!
LONG LIVE THE JEWISH STATE!
GINGRICH FOR PRESIDENT!
Click my name to read the entire article.
No thanks, I can just read “Mein Kampf.”
Willy try “Dreams of my Father” instead you will find it a trip to the fantasy land where Obambi lives in narcissitic isolation Hitler was too truthful Obambi( or should I say his Ghost Writer Bill Ayres) on the other hand wouldn’t know the truth if it jumped up and bit him in the a**………….LOL
It’s amazing to me that friends of Israel here can read minds and declare anyone not in line with Israel is an anti-Semite though Israel is not all Jews on Earth but when someone writes “The Palestinians are the stupidest, vilest, and most despicable people on the face of God’s earth,” that somehow is not a much worse example of bigotry and gets a total pass. Instead it’s better to get out the magnifying glass and parse the word “Palestinian” when racism is staring you in the face.
It’s a double standard you find in droves here along with Egyptians called “pigs,” “savages” and “cowards.” When it’s Jews, it’s racism and when it’s Arabs, it’s pragmatic rationalism. To say many of the commenters here are silly hypocrites is an understatement. When it comes to racism you attack the practice and not dole it out like lumps of sugar.
If you are so sure that ” Palestine , the country, goes back through most of recorded history,” I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine :
When was it founded and by whom?
What were its borders?
What was its capital?
What were its major cities?
What constituted the basis of its economy?
What was its form of government?
Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
What was the language of the country of Palestine ?
What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine ?
What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.
And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?
Palestine comes from the name Philistine given to the land by the Babylonians after conquest and exile.
I am left wing and in regular and reserve service went through so many wars and skirmishes that my nightmares get mixed up!
There are no pain free choices in the mid east. Israel has avoided going ‘into the red’ to an admirable degree, indeed with a strength (or is it weakness) no other nation would have shown in the face of genocidal provocations and violence.
The ‘Palestinian identity’ must be modified from one ENTIRELY based on the negation of the Jewish homeland to one that is based on . . . what?
I don’t know what it can be based on. They have created nothing other than a literature and practice of murder. Genocide, infanticide, human sacrifice, you name it. All the demons of the ancient mid east are alive and at play in Palestinian culture.
What is to be done with them?
As a people they are irredeemable. Not as individual human beings, of course – but they have to be removed and rehabilitated out of their toxic cultural environment.
Yeah, yeah we know: Israel is the most noble and moral country that ever was, blah, blah, blah and everyone else is lucky it exists and without Jews the entire world would be living in huts made of their own feces.
Funny how corn cob smoking Americans in cultural short pants and Soviet undermen opened concentration camp gates in ’45, to the everlasting gratitude of the people in them, which apparently wasn’t you.
The Americans didn’t open the camps gates in 45. They kept the Jews in the camps, (under obviously better conditions) for another 2 years! Just a bit of history we all try to forget. One of the high ranking officers ( forgot which one) discovered this and went berserk.
Speak for yourself. I don’t know anyone trying to forget history in America. Who the hell do you think wrote all the histories you read?
Even I as a member of a decimated family didn’t know this till recently. Some moved from camp to camp to get to the sea where they were smuggled onto boats by the Sea Palmach (pre army – army) to get them home to Israel. Some of these went straight into battle dying without any mourners as they had no families left.) this was a big story here some time back). 50% of Israelis are directly linked to the Holocaust.
The Americans asked them if there was anywhere they were prepared to go except Israel. They answered – “Israel or the crematoria!”
“What is to be done with them?
As a people they are irredeemable. Not as individual human beings, of course – but they have to be removed and rehabilitated out of their toxic cultural environment.”
Did you copy/paste notes from the Wannsee Conference to be ironic or are you just an unflinching Nazi?
No Israelis have been killed by these attacks since Oct. 30 when one man was killed in the southern city of Ashkelon.
But many hundreds if not thousands are suffering from PTSD and that is torture; especially for the children.
But of course from the manner in which Israeli Jews are dismissed in their suffering one can imagine that they are not human.
Yet ABC and everyone else missed the real bombshell in what Gingrich said: “For a variety of political reasons we [the United States] have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic.”
Quiet easy to go back and see the West’s, not just the US’s, behaviour after every incident in which the Arabs became a cropper, as the Brits would say, how the money came pouring in to sooth the shamed hearts, and the rhetoric to vilify the Jews poured on.
That’s why to my thinking one could conjure up the conspiracy that the West all the time was using the Arabs to grind down Israel.
It was in research into UNWRA that Alexander H. Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky discovered that former Lt. General Sir Alexander Galloway then head of UNWRA in Jordan said to a Senate commision of enquiry:
On 25 May 1953 in testimony before the Subcommittee on Near East and Africa of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Reverend Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee stated:
The political picture within the Arab refugee camps is important to an understanding of the problem, and I must say it is of special significance to this committee.
In April of 1952, Sir Alexander Galloway, then head of the UNRWA for Jordan, said to our study group, and this is really a direct quote from what he said:
It is perfectly clear than the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel.
Then, by way of emphasis he said:
Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.
And the UN and the West did diddly-squat.
I was happy to hear Gingrich expose the Fakestinians, but of course disappointed whenthe very next day he still said he would endorse two-state- these people have already got 2 states (Jordan and Gaza) and want all of Israel, and willnot change from that. I say give them Sinai now that Egypt has rescinded it’s peace agreement.People who support two-state farce are advocating ethnic cleansingof JEWS from their lands (again)and expect Israel to do this to her OWN people.(dig their own graves like the Nazis made them do)
Fakestinians are not refugees of anywhere- unless they are over 80 years old- these people have been born in Lebanon, Syria, Libya and other MUSLIMS nations who refuse the papers to travel out, refuse them most jobs and keep them in apartheid, substandard conditions – Kahane wsa right- not a single one should remain in Judea or Samaria- march them to the borders give a check and OUT!!! after all that is what the Muslims did tothe JEWS without a check.
As for the rockets cause no damage in Israel propaganda- one must continue to point out that GAZANS are MASTERS of tunneling and building underground when they need to smuggle weapons and terrorists- so obviously they are capable of building shelters for their kids as Israel has done-which proves Gazans are not interested in protecting their kids when obviously they prefer them to die for a photo-op
Just to add something that few realise exists, and that is that the Balata “refugee camp” in Nablus, a Palestinian city governed by the PA/PLO/Fatah, is fenced off from the rest of the rest of Nablus and the inmates are refused the rights that residents of Nablus have.
How can we be blamed for such a thing (if it is true) when Nablus is in total control in the area totally controlled by the PA. When I served during the various intafadas there was no such thing.
just realized that this is what you said!
When thinking about Palestine and the Fakestinians’ think on this .
1) Why is it that only the Mohammedan ARAB Invaders get to enjoy a ‘Right of Conquest’ and why do they and the naive , gullible and frankly moronic Islamophilic left wing moonbats continually excuse or ignore their Terrorist assaults on a sovereign Nation and deny that SAME ‘Right’ to the Jews.
2) If the Mohammedans laid down their arms there would be peace however if the Jews laid down their arms there would be no more Jews.
As has been said – The Arabs can lose a number of wars – we can only lose one.
It’s appropriate time to make some plans for the future and it is time to be happy. I’ve read this put up and if I may just I want to suggest you some attention-grabbing things or tips. Maybe you could write next articles regarding this article. I desire to read more issues about it!