Sunday, April 14, 2013

Palestinian-Arabs to Build Museum of Lies

Mike L.
Palestinian Arab Museum that “Rewrites” History Funded by the West (VIDEO)

Palestinian Authority officials on Thursday joined a ceremony to lay the cornerstone for a new museum of “Palestinian culture, history and society” in Birzeit near Ramallah.

“The museum will not only be for Palestinians but will reach out to the whole world through an advanced digital network,” project manager Omar al-Qattan said as ground was broken on the new venture.

“It will be more than a traditional building with archaeological relics. We are looking at an institution that will transcend all boundaries — geographical and political,” he added.

In a video celebrating the museum’s launch the claim is made that Palestine was home to “one of the most infuential [sic] cultures the world has ever seen” but that the fabric of the nation was torn apart by “dispossession” and “forced exile” in the 20th century.
Part of the delegitimization effort among Israel's enemies is the theft of Jewish heritage by the Palestinian-Arabs, as well as the fabrication of a Palestinian-Arab history that does not exist.  If you go to the Heritage Theft tab at the top of the screen you will find a number of articles on the topic, but I hope to focus more on this question going forward because it is clearly not getting nearly the attention that it deserves.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that there was no distinct and separate Arab nation that went by the name "Palestinian" until the end of the twentieth century.  That is not a matter of opinion, but of historical fact.  There have been Arabs on Jewish land for centuries, of course, but they identified along religious, tribal, and family lines, not a distinct ethnic line with a distinct culture.  To say otherwise is simply to lie about history.  In fact, it's questionable if the Palestinian-Arabs represent a distinct "nation" even today.  If they are a distinct nation, they are a distinct nation that is identical to the other Arabs in the region in all the ways that count.  They share the same food, the same language, the same religion, the same traditions, so it becomes exceedingly difficult to conclude that they are somehow different.

Furthermore, if they are a distinct nationality they are a nationality that came into being for the sole purpose of destroying the Jewish national home.  This being the case, it becomes rather difficult to respect any allegedly distinct Palestinian-Arab culture.

And, needless to say, if some local Arabs were dispossessed of their homes during Israel's War for Independence that is entirely because they launched a civil war against the Jews at the end of November, 1948, only a few years after the Holocaust.  The Arabs fought Jewish women and Holocaust survivors, yet they still got beat and now they want to pretend that they were merely innocent victims of those vicious, militaristic and racist Holocaust survivors.

In any case, heritage theft is a vile tactic that we need to counter in any way we can.

If they want to lie about our history, we'll tell the truth about theirs.

32 comments:

  1. "and nobody cares..." Exactly; the hypocrisy is massive. Goes to show the love for Palestinians isn't that at all, really. It's something else and it rhymes with "death to the Jews."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, the question of Palestinian-Arab national identity is very interesting and also very fluid. One need not have been born in an area that was part of the British mandate to be considered "Palestinian" as Arafat clearly knew.

    And while it's true that all nationalities are social constructs that have a starting point, I find it difficult to respect any national group with such a recent vintage that came into being solely for the purpose of destroying the Jewish national home.

    I don't really understand why we should respect that and the truth of the matter is that I don't respect it. If the Palestinian-Arabs wanted a state for themselves in peace next to Israel then I would be happy to respect their claims to a distinct nationality, but that's clearly not what they want.

    And let's ponder this for a moment:

    If the "Palestinians" represent a distinct national group that arose in a natural and organic manner, how is it that they have a Latin name that refers to a Greek people?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Respect them or not, Mike, the Palestinian-Arabs exist as a people in 2013.

      What, if anything, they 'deserve,' is surely a question up for debate.

      (For instance, I don't think they 'deserve' anything at all, myself - though I wouldn't object if Israel's government decides to hand them certain parts of Judea and Samaria and Gaza to build a criminal terror enterprise... errmmm, I mean... a 'state' on)

      I agree they've had multiple chances to end the 'occupation' they seem to be so murderously pissed off about (yet they never choose to end it, despite multiple offers?), but their leadership's criminality doesn't cancel the Palestinian-Arab people's existence, as a people, in 2013, is all I'm saying.

      I'm certainly not arguing that they have any history (aside from generic Arab Levant history) prior to 1967 or so. Because they don't. But in 2013, they now do.

      What I want more than anything is for Israel to unilaterally declare its final borders, and leave these folks to their own devices.

      And if those 'devices' happen to be terror, then destroy them, is my call.

      Delete
    2. "...the Palestinian-Arabs exist as a people in 2013."

      Nope. They're still nothing but a propaganda device. No distinct culture, no distinct language (just Arabic dialects in the regional continuum), no ethnic unity (as diverse as the Jews are in skin, eye and hair colors—there are fair-skinned, blond, blue-eyed Arabs in the Galilee), and no history except the negative (therefore not making them a nation) reaction to the return of the Jews.

      "...but their leadership's criminality..."

      It's not just their leaders—the man in the street among them wants the destruction of the Jewish State as much.

      "But in 2013, they now do."

      A negative history, therefore of no value. But even if we were to accept it, I fail to see why the claims of a 3000 year old nation should take the back seat to those of a nation that's not yet reached 50.

      "What I want more than anything is for Israel to unilaterally declare its final borders, and leave these folks to their own devices."

      That won't solve the problem of the Arab colonists within Israel's pre-1967 borders.

      Delete
  3. JayinPhiladelphia,

    "Palestinian-Arabs clearly consider themselves a people today, so that's good enough for me."

    Not good enough for me. If every small group of people with a nefarious agenda started calling themselves a nation, and were accepted as such on that basis alone, the world would become a madhouse. (Which, come to think of it, it pretty much is.)

    I don't recognize any nation that doesn't have something positive to show for it—a distinct and unfabricated history, language, culture, ethnicity, any and all of the above. Decolonial artifacts like the "Syrian nation" or "Iraqi nation" or "Lebanese nation" don't count, and malicious fictions like the non-Jewish "Palestinian nation" count even less.

    Doodad,

    There once was a pro-Israel demonstrator carrying a sign saying, "Free Palestine is code for Kill The Jews." Simple, direct and profound.

    Mike L.,

    "I find it difficult to respect any national group with such a recent vintage that came into being solely for the purpose of destroying the Jewish national home."

    Exactomundo. That's where it all starts.

    The recognition of this malicious construct of a pseudo-nation is for Jews like scoring into your own goal. Indeed, ever since Israel acquiesced to, and later itself adopted, this falsified terminology of calling "Palestinians" a nation other than the Jewish nation, her PR stature has consistently gone south.

    I wish to make Zionism's righteousness to be self-evident and beyond debate. I have two planks of truth in order to further that ambition:

    1) The truth that the Jewish nation is the only nation with a tie to the Land of Israel a.k.a. Palestine of all the lands in the world—no other nation has had its life centered on that land of all lands.
    2) The truth that the Arab nation is rightfully entitled to the Arabian Peninsula only, and although its gains outside the Arabian Peninsula (except for Palestine) should be accepted after the fact, they are in no position whatsoever to complain about dispossession.

    With those two truths taken together, there is simply no debate that Zionism is a bona fide national self-determination movement while anti-Zionism is imperialist and colonialist aggression. The matter is, as it should be, settled; from here only action is possible.

    That's the ideal state. But, as you can easily see, expounding those two truths necessitates the total, categorical rejection of the non-Jewish "Palestinian nation" lie, with no concession left for a debate to creep through. That's why I can't give ground on this, and why I think any Jewish nationalist had better think hard about the terminology he or she uses.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fair enough, Zion. Then you and I disagree. And of course, as an Israeli, your opinion matters much more than mine as regards what your government will do.

      Honestly, I don't really have much of a personal stake in what the Palestinians decide to finally make of their situation (just as I didn't tell them to launch multiple genocidal wars, conventional and otherwise, on the indigenous Jewish people of the region), although I do have a stake in the future of Israel and hope it makes the right move in finally ending this stage of the conflict.

      Whatever that move may be. I don't claim to be any kind of expert on what it must end up being.

      As for their contributions...

      'Positive' is in the eye of the beholder, and what I'm ultimately hoping for is that the Palestinians can overcome their hatred and genocidal bigotry, realize who is really holding them down, and respond accordingly.

      I think we could both agree that would be pretty positive.

      What they deserve, if anything, is certainly a question up for debate; but the Palestinian-Arabs are a people in 2013, as pretty much everybody in the region acknowledges.

      I only wish they'd turn their fire on their Arab neighbors who slaughter and force them to live in filth, is what I really wish for...

      Delete
    2. Your two planks do make much sense to me, too, btw, Zion.

      Just to let you know where I'm coming from.

      Delete
    3. "And of course, as an Israeli, your opinion matters much more than mine as regards what your government will do."

      If we're going from that angle... my government doesn't listen to my opinion any more than it does to yours. :P

      "I do have a stake in the future of Israel and hope it makes the right move in finally ending this stage of the conflict."

      As there is another side in this conflict, this isn't entirely in our hands.

      "...and what I'm ultimately hoping for is that the Palestinians can overcome their hatred and genocidal bigotry, realize who is really holding them down, and respond accordingly."

      Not gonna happen. After more than 130 years, I've lost all hope in that department.

      "...but the Palestinian-Arabs are a people in 2013..."

      No. At the most I'd be willing to call them "Southern Syrians," as they once held themselves. But not "Palestinians." Arabs aren't Palestinians, any more than Turks are Greeks; the Jews are the only true Palestinians (when considering "Palestine" as the Latinate coinage for the Land of Israel).

      The terminology I consistently use is "Arab colonists," with no qualifier to "Arab." For those of them who wound up in places like Lebanon or Kuwait to be abused by their brothers, I have the term "ex-Palestine colonists." It is my purposeful intention to highlight their inseparability from the Arab nation at large, and their being the interlopers and oppressors of the only true Palestinians, who are the Jews.

      "...as pretty much everybody in the region acknowledges."

      Pretty much everybody in the region thinks Zionism is a settler-colonial enterprise, despite it being a horrific lie. That alone should caution us against according weight to international consensus.

      "Your two planks do make much sense to me, too, btw, Zion."

      They're what the whole world believed before Arab imperialist revisionism took hold in the 1960s. Israel's PR position was much better in those days. That's why I think every effort should be made to go back to that position and reverse the damage wrought by the adoption of the false nomenclature.

      Delete
    4. I don't really have an argument with any of this, aside from, I guess, my tendency to grant the descendants of Arab-Muslim imperialist colonists currently living in Judea and Samaria and Gaza the name they choose for themselves.

      Thanks for the reply.

      Delete
    5. "...my tendency to grant ... Arab-Muslim imperialist colonists currently living in Judea and Samaria and Gaza the name they choose for themselves."

      Any name but this. That's the problem. Here it all lies. Even if we left aside for the moment the issue of having nothing positive to show for their nationhood, the fact remains that, by calling themselves "Palestinian" they have taken a head-on collision course with Jewish nationalism. Refer to my Greek/Turkish analogy below: It's exactly as if the Turks started calling themselves Greeks.

      The name "Palestinian" for this indistinct group of Arab colonists was chosen for the explicit malicious purpose of denying what people all over the world have known for centuries: That the Jews are the only true Palestinians. That which Immanuel Kant knew, when he referred to the Jews of Germany as "the Palestinians among us," is being buried in an act of revisionism far worse than Holocaust Denial. 3000 years of history, not just what happened 70 years ago, are flatly denied by this fraud.

      Delete
    6. I see your point, but then it seems to me we've long since dropped the ball. How do we get the rest of the world to call them by any other name? How do we make the best of a bad situation, then?

      Delete
  4. To give an inkling of the enormity of the faux-Palestinian lie, imagine the following:

    That the Turks were to call themselves "Greeks," positing themselves as the original, indigenous people of Greece, to contrast with the "new arrivals" and "invaders" the Hellenes;

    That those faux-Greeks were to appropriate the entire history of Hellas as we know it, calling for the "liberation" of Athens and saying the "revisionist" name Constantinople is "settler nomenclature" for the "indigenous Greek" Istanbul;

    That they were to recast the national liberation movement of the Hellenes in the 1820s as a "settler-colonial enterprise" called "Byzantism," and claim that it had always had the goal of "ethnic cleansing" of the "original Greeks" from what had been their "homeland from time immemorial";

    That they were to insist on a "Right of Return" of all Turkish-speaking "Greeks" to pre-WW1 Hellas from which they had been "ethnically cleansed" following that war; a precondition without which there could be no peace, not only in the Aegean region, but in the whole world.

    I could go on, but that sample should be just enough to make any thinking person realize what a gargantuan feat of historical rewriting and denialism this whole Phakestinian fraud is.

    ReplyDelete
  5. When I hear Palestine I think "terrorist." That's their culture as far as I'm concerned. I would love it if they could change that and have a nice little state of their own but I'm not holding my breath.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jay the Palestinians may exist in some form as a 'people' today and if so then let the history of them begin with today more or less. Fine - they are a 'people' in much the same say I suppose the East Timorese are a 'people'. All we're doing is using a political reality as an analog for identity. It would be like saying Democrats are a people. Which maybe they are and maybe they too deserve a homeland.

    In any cast if we're to call them a 'people' then let's use the same rules as any other political construct and allow them that their vaunted narrative started in 2013. That's as far back as we should go. If we don't then we may as well erase all of Roman Gaul and call them all as French as Maurice Chevalier. If it were me, I'd create the Assyrian People's Front to expel these Palestinian upstarts.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm finding myself in a rather odd position here, defending a group of people I frankly do not give one whit about (basically because their leaders want to kill you and me and pretty much everyone else reading this), but I suppose it's just the liberal in me.

      Again, I don't see anything positive in denying their peoplehood, and I don't see that recognizing same necessarily means supporting them, either.

      That's the only point I'm trying to make here, I guess.

      I don't think I'd start their narrative in 2013, but I certainly wouldn't go back any farther than 1967, either.

      Delete
    2. And let it be noted that these people came out of two lost, attempted wars of genocide which they and their allies started. Along with numerous unconventional / terror campaigns.

      They do not get to dictate any terms of resolution, and they should be happy with whatever they're offered. Which of course, should never include even one inch of Jerusalem. That's the cost of launching and losing multiple wars on their neighbors, the indigenous Jewish people of the region.

      I think you and I both ultimately agree on unilateral Israeli drawing of final borders, if I've read your past comments right.

      My ideal would be to keep all of Jerusalem and its suburbs, along with the large settlement blocs close to the Green Line, as well as whatever else is considered necessary for defense, and then toss the Palestinian-Arabs the keys to the rest.

      Delete
  7. This is a terrific conversation.

    It is raw and uncomfortable and cuts directly to the bone.

    I am not the least bit comfortable with this conversation, but that is a good thing. It means we're on to the hard questions that reside at the very center. Also, of course, I know that the charges of "racism" will fly and because I am young enough not to remember when the Palestinian-Arabs were referred to as anything other than "Palestinians." Thus the entire conversation cuts across the grain and this, too, is a good thing because it means that we are going through the process of rethinking.

    It should be noted that prior to 1948 the word "Palestinian" referred to Jew, not Arab. The Arabs, in fact, rejected that term precisely because it was associated with the Jewish people in what was commonly called "The Holy Land."

    Nonetheless, I grew into political awareness thinking of Palestinian-Arabs as a distinct and separate nationality, but then when I became interested in Israel I started reading and researching and realized that "Palestinian" national identity is not only brand-spanking new, but organized around the desired ruin of the Jewish people in the Middle East.

    What we are doing now - those of us on the cutting edge of this conversation, which includes everyone who regularly participates on this blog - is thinking our way past ignorant media conditioning and past Soviet and Arab propaganda efforts that went on for decades and that continue to inspire long after the Soviet Union is no more.

    In truth, Israel made a terrific mistake when it recognized Jordanian nationals as a distinct ethnic group, something which even the Palestinian-Arab majority did not do until after the 6 Day War.

    In western opinion, which unfortunately matters, this mistake turned the Jewish "David" into the Israeli "Goliath" and the Arab-Muslim "Goliath" into the Palestinian-Arab "David."

    That was a major screw-up, perhaps the very worst mistake in the history of Israel because with a mere cognitive switch - a bit of propagandistic Jiu-Jitsu - the Arabs yet again turned the Jews into the world's whipping boy.

    Every generation they tell us why we need a good beating before they deliver that beating.

    This generation is no different, except for the fact of the IDF.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And I'm even younger, probably I think by about the far end of a generation (if I'm correct, I'm guessing you're the leading edge of 'Gen X,' while I'm from its tail at the end of the 70s, yeah?).

      Anyone who would hurl a charge of 'racism' based upon the conversation here is simply not to be taken seriously, in my opinion.

      I agree this is a terrific conversation, and whose opinion I'd really like to read is School's, whenever he gets here...

      Delete
    2. "It should be noted that prior to 1948 the word 'Palestinian' referred to Jew, not Arab."

      The word "Palestinian" meant "of or pertaining to Palestine," with "Palestine" being the Roman name for the Land of Israel (that's a topic all its own, but for the moment let's say Hadrian's attempt at a new nomenclature to sever the tie between the Jews and their land has pretty much lost its sting). A flower such as the veronica palaestinensis was given the adjective because it was particular to Palestine, not because it had a suicide vest wrapped around it. Neither did the Jewish rabbis of ancient times mentioned in the Preface to the 1917 JPS English translation of the Tanakh:

      "While Philo and his Alexandrian coreligionists looked upon the translation of the Seventy as a work of inspired men, the Palestinian Rabbis subsequently considered the day on which the Septuagint was completed as one of the most unfortunate in Israel's history, seeing that the Torah could never be adequately translated."

      In the above, "Palestinian rabbis" stands in contrast to "Alexandrian rabbis"—the rabbis located in the Land of Israel contrasted with those living in the Nile Delta at the time.

      As for a Palestinian nation, if the topic were ever brought up, it was the default assumption that only the Jews could be called such. I already mentioned Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century philosopher, who wrote of "the Palestinians among us" in reference to the Jews of Germany, not to any kind of Arab settler-colonists. And don't forget that, before the Jew-haters suddenly discovered that we Jews are "interlopers" who should "get out of Palestine," they had wanted us to go out of their lands and "back to Palestine"! (Juden nach Palästina in the German propaganda publications before WWII)

      I'm old enough to remember when the news in Israel never referred to "Palestinians," but only to Arabs; what is now "our Palestinian affairs correspondent" was always "our Arab affairs correspondent" in the news broadcasts in the 1980s. I also have a Penguin historical atlas from the early 1970s that never gives the Arab colonists in Palestine any separate term, let alone calls them "Palestinian." All the evidence points to the fact that we've been taken for a ride; Israel's PR stature has plummeted accordingly, especially once Israel's officials relaxed their stance.

      I have no problem agreeing with Jay that, even if they were a legit nation, they lost their claim by virtue of their genocidal conduct. However, I argue that from the PR point of view this isn't enough: Their conduct matters little to those who would excuse it as "resistance to the occupier"; therefore, my aim is to show that there is no possibility of the Jews being the occupier of Palestine, and there is no possibility of the Arabs being anything other than occupiers. My ambition is to frame the debate away, to make Zionism's righteousness beyond dispute. In an academic or scientific setting, debate is a good, healthy thing; here it costs lives, therefore we ought to make every effort to make our righteousness undebatable.

      Delete
    3. This is a very good point...

      "In an academic or scientific setting, debate is a good, healthy thing; here it costs lives, therefore we ought to make every effort to make our righteousness undebatable."

      ...and pretty much sums up why outside of the occasional 'thinking out loud' moment(s) here, I feel no need or desire to ever add to the cacophony of anti-Israel voices elsewhere, even if I do disagree with something.

      Delete
  8. I don't think this is quite fair.

    The Arabs who call themselves Palestinians do have a long history on this plot of land, even if much of it is indistinguishable from what any other group of generic Arabs in the Levant may have.

    The question as I see it is what right do they have to any part of the Land of Israel?

    My answer is none. They have no 'right' to any of it. They lost that when they rejected numerous offers of statehood, and instead decided to launch, and lose, multiple wars, conventional and otherwise, on their Jewish neighbors.

    Tough noogies, as they say.

    However, if Israel's government decides to end this stage of the conflict by handing the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians a few pieces of the land for a criminal terror enterprise... I mean, a state... of their own, then who am I to object?

    I do believe that is the best way to go, and that once the so-called 'occupation' comes to an end, the anti-Israel fanatics will be stripped of their main rhetorical weapon.

    I do believe that once this happens, Israel can safely tell the rest of the world to go f* itself on such bull as 'right of return' (Palestinian 'refugees,' so called, can 'return' to their state of Palestine), and all that. And I also believe the pressure from the West will pretty much end once Israel declares its final borders and withdraws its armed forces behind same, as well.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "I do believe that is the best way to go, and that once the so-called 'occupation' comes to an end, the anti-Israel fanatics will be stripped of their main rhetorical weapon."

    I know we've been through this before, but I most definitely don't share your optimism. Jew-hatred is like those dinosaur genes in Jurassic Park: It's a fact of nature that will always find a way.

    I stand by my prognosis that the South Africa or Lebanon model would be moved to focus on the "oppressed" "Palestinians" (yes, they will be called so by the world, and not "Arabs") of pre-1967 Israel, with all the attendant vitriol (U.N. resolutions, boycotts et cetera).

    ReplyDelete
  10. That's just residency, not nationhood. Louis CK and Carlos Slim are 'Mexican'. But they are not really of the Mexican nation and Mexican people. Louis CK was born there and Carlos Slim emigrated there. One is a half American half Hungarian Jew and the other is Lebanese. And yet when we open the kimono on the Arab press - for example al Monitor we see articles on "Arab Politics" in South America. Apparently to the Arab mind, the fact that there are Persians and Arabs in Venezuela and Brazil, ostensibly makes them Arab or Persian Muslim 'states'. So I would submit that behind any Arab notion of peoplehood or nation is a vastly expansive definition that's not in synch with anyone else's. We at least have the common sense to call us the Diaspora. But that's only in relation to our nation our homeland, metaphorically, in Israel. Expand that notion across the Arab world and you're really talking about a peoplehood subsumed by this "Ummah" real or imagined.

    Ok so the Palestinians are a 'people' in that sense. But I read today that Hamas bulldozed a UNESCO site in Gaza that the locals are crying about because it shows 'the 3000 year history of the one of the oldest civilizations in the world - the Palestinians' and the Mycenaean-Palestinian civilization, I have to laugh. Homer wasn't a Palestinian. Helen of Troy wasn't Arab. Linear B isn't from the Koran. Santorini isn't the 7th most holy site in all of Islam.

    ReplyDelete
  11. One way where the notion of Palestinian 'peoplehood' is in the strictest sense that there are no longer any political entities called 'nations'. This is has been the long running narrative of post WW2 identity politics. One is no longer Belgian, one is Flemish or Walloon. One is no longer Spanish but Catalan. One is no longer French but Breton. One is no longer a British subject in the UK but a Scotsman, a Welshman, an Irishman, and worse - a political subgroup like a Green or whatever. In this sense 'peoplehood' makes sense as political tool used to splinter the state into tiny fragments. If one's first allegiance is to Ireland or Sunni Islam or the Gaelic language or al Aziz ibm Saud clan then while you're a member of that 'people' that's as far as it extends.

    In the wider sense, in the Arab world, with no history of coherent nations on the scale of nations - only empires, caliphates, broad kingdoms or city-states, one's allegiance is either to an abstract concept like Allah or mosque or political party or to a family, clan or tribe. No middle ground. In the end this is what blunts all their efforts. For as soon as we agree the Palestinians are a 'people' then Palestinians themselves will jump up "Woah there, we're GAZA Palestinians, not RAMALLAH Palestinians." And some others will jump up and "Hey there Hoss - we're 'refugees' in Lebanon, have been for 65 years. Never been to Gaza or Ramallah, don't even know anyone who knows anyone who has, so don't include us." And so on. Which is where the idea of a peoplehood begins to fall apart unless you accept that it's merely a political convenience.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And, yet, after 4,000 years the Jews remain a people.

      It is one of the great ironies that even though our enemies within the progressive-left call us "racist" for requiring a Jewish state, the Jewish people are the most inclusive people in world history.

      The mass importation of Ethiopian Jews into Israel may be the only time in world history in which Africans have been transported out of that continent for reasons other than economic servitude.

      Whatever else Israel is, it is not a "white" country.

      Delete
    2. Nationhood, the existence of a nation state is perhaps what irks the left most of all about Israel. That is even so much as HAS borders that matter to it. That there is an inside of Israel and an outside of Israel. In the US at least, the happiest people in the far left fringe of American Jews is that group which doesn't embrace the idea of Jewish identity at all. Not allegiance it, to Israel to even much in the way what you'd call the US either. It's allegiance to some abstract 'thing' like humanitarian values or a political movement. They see Israel sticking out there with its non black red white green flag and its not Arabic language and its predominately non Muslim population and it irritates them that the uppity Jews presume to be different from the great unwashed sea of everyone else there. They listen to the Arabic and Muslim pundits here in the west and they imagine that a world w/o Israel would be no different than Westchester with synagogues here and there and everyone will get together at the farmers market to buy locovore crops and gluten free pita. Where everyone will drive a Subaru and listen to NPR. All we have to do is eliminate that obnoxious little country and it will all be fine; because nations to them are the root of all evil.

      Delete
  12. "Palestine" is not a state in waiting but an antistate. An abomination based entirely on hatred and rejection of another nation. Without that nation Palestinianism would never have come into existence. We would never have heard a murmur about it.

    An antistate. The first in all of history.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. geoffff,

      "An antistate. The first in all of history."

      I'm so stealing this, this is spot on. Plus, in what may be the best merger of Jay's view on the matter and mine, we might call the grouping-for-the-sake-of-bashing-Israel of those particular Arabs an antination. Not a nation as nations are properly known, but having distinction as an antination—having their being and whole purpose entirely in the goal of countering Jewish nationalism, without which they would be nothing at all. (Gilad Sharon, former PM Ariel Sharon's son, wrote words to that effect after the Fogel murders.)

      An antination. Not the Palestinian nation, which only the Jews are, but the anti-Palestinian faux-nation; the propaganda sleight of hand whereby the Jewish nation's rightful claim to the Land of Israel a.k.a. Palestine is denied.

      Delete
    2. You guys scare the holy crap out of me.

      But take that as a compliment.

      Delete
  13. To me the political issue is "so what?". In fact the world is chock-full of less-than-states which do not receive universal accreditation as bona fide nations. Kosovo, Chechnya, South Ossetia, Trans-Dniester, Naxcivan (as a separate country), Abkazia, Ajaria...Heck there's a page in Wiki on just Asia

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_movements_in_Asia

    And to be charitable we're only talking strictly separatist movements not the reverse of separatism which is what the Arabs want.

    So I'm unconcerned about the instability of the Arabs so called unsettled situation. Their existence in neither one state nor another isn't remarkable in the world. Millions of people live that every day.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You slay me, lady.

      Abkazia?

      Really?

      Look, I know nothing about the political situation in Abkazia, but I am sure that it is dire and deserves much more attention than it receives.

      For those of you who do not know, care of our friends at wikipedia, Abkazia is disputed land on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. The whole area is probably not all that much smaller than Israel, but then you can't get much smaller than Israel, anyway.

      Given the amount of attention that Israel receives - because they are mean - I think that we need to refocus on Abkazia!

      .

      Sorry, I'm just laughing my ass off!

      I have never even heard of Abkazia before.

      Trudy, you kill.

      Delete
  14. Or Nagorno-Karabakh, for that matter. It's been a life or death matter to THEM. But no one else should be concerned. Whatever happens to the Nagorno-Karabahks is their issue to sort and won't change the wider world in the least. For most of these smaller statelets (Oh wait - the Spaniards are still furious about Gibraltar too!) the rest of world doesn't need to be involved and honestly, Israel should fall square in that class too.

    ReplyDelete