Preventing ‘Palestine’ Part I: Essential pre-conditions
By MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST
Into the Fray: Formula for an alternative to two-state-solution requires policy that depoliticizes the context and ‘atomizes’ the implementation.
PHOTO: REUTERS/SHARIF KARIM
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If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? – Hillel the Elder,Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14
In Part 1 of this three-part series I set out the essential preconditions for implementation of a viable alternative to a “two-state-solution” (TSS) approach consistent with the long-term survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
To reiterate…
I emphasized that, given how ingrained the TSS-approach has become in the culture of the discourse on the Arab-Israeli conflict, generating any conceptual space for the consideration of alternative, Zionist-compliant proposals requires a dramatic restructuring of Israel’s diplomatic apparatus.
However, judging from some of the talk-backs received, the centrality of Israeli diplomacy – particularly public diplomacy – was not fully appreciated.
So to reiterate this point, allow me to quote one of the country’s foremost experts on the role of public diplomacy, Prof. Eytan Gilboa, who, in an article aptly titled “Public Diplomacy: The Missing Component in Israel’s Foreign Policy,” warned:
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“The lack of an adequate PD program has significantly affected Israel’s strategic outlook and freedom of action… Any further neglect of PD would not only restrict Israel’s strategic options, it would be detrimental to its ability to survive in an increasingly intolerant and hostile world…”
Gilboa is right. In the absence of a well-financed and well-formulated public diplomacy offensive, Israel will find not only that its strategic options are restricted, but that its very survival is threatened. Among the survival- threatening strategic restrictions that Israel will be subjected to, is the inability to break out of the stranglehold the TSS has on its perceived range of actionable alternatives.
Instrument of what policy?
Furthermore, in Part I, I underscored that diplomacy must be an instrument of policy designed to achieve national goals, rather than diplomatic pressures being a determinate of policy that dictates those goals.
So to what goals should such reconstituted and reinvigorated diplomatic machinery be directed in order to facilitate the repudiation and replacement of the TSS? To answer this question in an operationally useful manner, it is first necessary to identify the fuel that drives the TSS-compliant perspectives.
In this regard, there is little room for ambiguity. Clearly, sustaining the TSS mythology is what is commonly known as the “Palestinian narrative” – the notion that the Palestinian Arabs are a distinct people that comprise a coherent and cohesive national entity, with a clear vision of a “homeland,” in which they aspire to exercise national sovereignty.
If this claim can be disproven in a manner that is not only substantively persuasive, but that can be pertinently packaged politically, the foundations upon which the edifice of the TSS is erected will no longer be tenable.
Conversely, as long as the perceived legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative persists – or more accurately, is allowed to persist – it will continue to fuel the myths and the misperceptions that perpetuate the TSS.
TSS-opponents must be forced to acknowledge the bitter truth. If the contention that the Palestinian Arabs are indeed a distinct people that comprise a coherent, cohesive national entity with a clear vision of a homeland in which they aspire to exercise national sovereignty cannot be repudiated, then there is little ground – moral or practical – for opposing the TSS.
Deconstructing the narrative
Accordingly, the overriding aim of an adequately endowed and appropriately energized Israeli diplomatic drive, on which all subsequent endeavor is predicated and to which all subsequent effort is harnessed, must be the deconstruction of the Palestinian narrative.
This assault on the pervasive but unmerited legitimacy of the narrative must be directed both at its factual veracity and it moral validity – i.e. both at the empirical elements on which it is founded and the objectives it is being used to promote.
Delegitimizing the Palestinian narrative will be a daunting task, but the difficulty should not be overstated. We should take heart from the accomplishments of the TSS-advocates themselves. Imagine how hopeless the situation of any pro-TSS Palestinian activist must have seemed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the wake of Israel’s dramatic Six Day War victory.
Faced with the perception of invincible Israeli military might on the one hand, and resolute US rejection on the other, any realistic pundit could well have been excused for considering the TSS dead in the water.
Will and wherewithal
By way of illustration, the 1980 Republican platform that brought Ronald Reagan to the White House stated: “We believe the establishment of a Palestinian state on the West Bank would be destabilizing and harmful to the peace process.” Moreover, in Israel, up until the late 1980s, successive opinion polls found that 80 percent or more of the electorate opposed any significant territorial withdrawal in Judea/Samaria.
Yet despite the bleak prospects, TSS-advocates did not despair. With commendable resolve and resourcefulness they managed, against all odds, to convert the status of their highly improbable political paradigm from marginal to mainstream – eventually even monopolistic. For almost a quarter of a century, it has dominated and dictated the discourse as the preferred mode of ending the Mideast conflict.
This, then, is the example that must be emulated – in reverse. The opponents of the TSS need to marshal the will and the wherewithal to achieve what the proponents of TSS did: dislodge a dominant paradigm and replace it with their own.
Without wishing to understate the difficulties entailed in this, in some important aspects this reverse endeavor is – or could be – easier.
For those seeking to debunk the Palestinian narrative, and hence the fundamental rationale of the TSS, have an important ally on their side – the truth. After all, to strip the wafer-thin veneer of legitimacy off this narrative, all one needs is to echo what the Palestinians themselves do and say.
A contrived people
The Palestinian Arabs are a contrived people and their professed national identity is bogus not because Newt Gingrich designated them as “invented,” or because some right-wing religious radical dismisses their claim on the basis of a divine dictate, allocating all of “Greater Israel” to the Jews. They are a contrived people and their professed national identity is bogus because they – and their Arab patrons – openly admit it.
As I have documented in detail in previous columns, the Palestinians characterize themselves not as a distinct people, but as part of the Arab nation, indistinguishable from other components of it. They openly confess that their national identity is neither authentic nor permanent, but merely a temporary contrivance to help the Arabs eliminate Israel. No less a figure than the spokesman of the Arab League revealed that pan-Arab policy is to refuse Palestinians wishing to acquire citizenship of Arab countries in which they have been resident for decades, so as to artificially preserve their identity – lest there be no “reason for them to return to Palestine.”
Even more tellingly, the Palestinians have no clear vision of a “homeland” in which they aspire to exercise their national sovereignty. They have put forward wildly divergent – even mutually exclusive – delineations of what comprises that “homeland.”
Significantly, until 1968, they not only explicitly eschewed any sovereign claims to the “West Bank,” but conceded that it was part of a another sovereign country, the Hashemite Kingdom, which up until 1988 claimed the territory for itself.
Clearly then, the Palestinians do not genuinely see themselves as a distinct people with an authentic national identity, striving to exercise sovereign rule in a defined territory. Rather their claim to nationhood is a thinly disguised device to thwart the exercise of Jewish national sovereignty and to undermine the Jewish nation-state.
Conveying this message assertively and articulately must be the primary mission of the nation’s diplomatic offensive and the vital precondition for the foundation of a viable TSS-alternative.
Depoliticizing the context
Deconstructing the Palestinian narrative and debunking the authenticity of Palestinian national claims are crucially important stages in terms of practical policy formulation. They comprise an indispensable step toward devising a comprehensive policy paradigm to replace the TSS that furnishes a valid rationale for ceasing to relate to the Palestinian Arabs as a cohesive political entity.
This “depoliticizing” of the context of the problem has huge consequences on two complementary levels.
On the one hand, it directs energies away from searching for solutions that require agreement with one, or more, Arab polity(ies). Since the express purpose of the contrived Palestinian national identity is to undermine the foundations of the Jewish state, the pursuit of such a genuine, sustainable accord with some Arab political entity is so implausible as to be irrelevant as an element of policy, as the experience of the past 100 years demonstrates.
On the other hand, it directs energies toward solutions that address the Palestinian Arabs, not as a coherent national collective, but rather as an amalgam of unfortunate individuals that has been continually mislead and misinformed by cruel, corrupt cliques whose overriding objectives were anything but the communal well-being of those whose fate they strove to control.
Atomizing the implementation
But depoliticizing the context of the predicament of the Palestinian Arabs will not, in itself, dissipate that predicament, or render the need to do so any less pressing.
What it will do, however, is open the door to solutions that circumvent the ruling cliques and directly engage the households, family heads and breadwinners in the wider Palestinian Arab public, without the agreement of any intervening Arab organization which might – and probably will – have a vested interest in preventing a peaceable resolution of the predicament.
Indeed, recognizing the futility of seeking a political solution underscores the need for a humanitarian one.
Accordingly, these notions of depoliticizing the conceptual context and “atomizing” the implementation of practical measures lead inexorably to a policy prescription based on the eminently liberal (as opposed to “illiberal” rather than “conservative”) doctrinal principles of: (a) eliminating ethnic discrimination toward the Palestinian Arabs – first as refugees and second as residents in the Arab world, and (b) providing individual Palestinian-Arabs the freedom of choice to determine their future and that of their families.
‘Hillelian’ humanitarian rationale
These doctrinal elements translate into a comprehensive tripartite proposal, based on a humanitarian “Hillelian” rationale, set out in the introductory excerpt, of sober recognition of the need to look after one’s own interest without descending into callous disregard for the fate of the “other.”
The three components should be seen as a mutually interactive, integrative whole:
• Dissolution or radical restructuring of UNRWA to bring the treatment of Palestinian refugees into line with that of all other refugees on the face of the globe.
• Resolute insistence on the cessation of ethnic discrimination against Palestinian Arabs in the Arab world and of the prohibition on their acquiring citizenship of the countries in which they have resided for decades.
• Generous relocation loans provided directly to individual Palestinian Arab breadwinners and family heads, resident in Judea/Samaria (and eventually Gaza) to allow them to build better futures for themselves and their dependents, in other countries of their choice.
Why these three components do, indeed, comprise an effective, interactive and integrative TSS-alternative mechanism that complies with the Hillelian prescription of preserving self-interest while displaying sensitivity to the fate of other actors – indeed, even antagonists – will have to wait until next week.
For despite the allure of discussing the nitty-gritty, I believe that elucidating how proposed practical measures are moored to their intellectual foundations is essential for comprehending the proposal itself and for convincing others to accept it.
Readers’ reservations
A persuasive enunciation of a comprehensive formula for the replacement of a dominant paradigm to a conflict that has proved intractable for over a century cannot be adequately conveyed in pithy sound bites. Out of the box proposals inevitably provoke a maelstrom of queries and critiques.
Indeed, previous columns have induced much animated responses – not all in the most courteous of terms.
Clearly the presentation hitherto has left much as yet unexplained. This should not be interpreted as an attempt at evading thorny questions.
In the final piece in this series I will deal with the major points that have remained unaddressed and questions/ reservations/criticisms that readers have raised in past weeks including topics such as:
• control of the decision variables;
• accusations of racism;
• fear of fratricide;
• allegations of ethnic cleansing;
• diplomatic and economic feasibility;
• identity of prospective host countries; and
• evidence of acceptability in Israeli and Palestinian societies.
Until then, allow me to leave you with this thought: If there is nothing reprehensible in advocating funding the voluntary relocation of Jews from Judea/Samaria to facilitate the establishment of what, in all probability, would be a failed micro-state and a haven for radical extremists on the fringes of Europe, what possible objection could there be for funding the voluntary relocation of Arabs from Judea/Samaria to prevent the establishment of such a forbidding entity?
What is the matter with Dr. Martin Sherman’s buy out plan, which is the one I think is best?
Continuing the present policy is coarsening the Jews; even if the situation is justified, it is militarizing and coarsening Jews who serve in the areas of conflict. The brutality against Jews seen in Amona was probably learned from anti-Arab practices first used at Hebron.
The situation is not good for anybody.
I advocate a buy out, and I am hammered for being too easy on the Arabs. But you cannot turn war training off. The violence used in the territories against Arabs will surface against Jews later on. It surfaced at Amona.
@ Ted Belman:
I think SS had more in mind than just the Arabs in Y&S.
Problem is your principled urge to compromise is exactly the PC you referenced. THEY WALK AMONG US NOW; and are increasing their demographic % daily. They have today over 35% of children under the age of 15.
SarahSue Said:
That’s right. When its the rational thing to do, it must be done. Many conflicts have been solved by ethnic transfer. It should never be ruled out because of PC. The Arabs in Judea and Samaria refuse a reasonable solution so one must be imposed. My preference is to negotiate autonomy. Until such time as a deal is cut, we could continue with what we have now which is actually autonomy. I am also in favour of annexing Area C and then negotiate autonomy.
There are worse things then ethnic cleansing, such as leaving an implacable enemy in your midst.
SarahSue
Think again.
Anybody who deviates from the partly line on this site is mislabelled a Nazi.
Even Rabbi Kahane entertained buy outs.
Involuntary population transfer, no matter who does it, is ethnic cleansing.
@ CuriousAmerican:
I don’t think I’m misstating you, I’m pinning you down. You use the insidious style of indirect directness, and are indeed a slippery customer. However, it was YOU who made the direct connection between Jews wanting non Jews to leave their country, and Germans wanting non Germans to leave Germany, not I.
And you want us simple minded peasants to believe that you IMMEDIATELY followed your “Germany” text with a NAZI comment, purely in innocent naivety ……??? Even if I didn’t have loads of evidence that that you are slimy laddie who has an anti-Jew, andti-Israel agenda, I would be cretinous to believe that.
We used to say “….can you see any green in my eye….”. No, we know what you are, and I’d say you’ve long outstayed your welcome on this site, arguably since after your first few comments.
This is what I wrote:
Why do you misstate me?
I NEVER CALLED THE JEWS NAZIS. I was careful to point that out. Read the quote. You misrepresented me.
But ethnic cleansing and property expropriation are the same, whether by Germans or Israels or French or Arabs or whomever.
The Israeli Dr. Martin Sherman is right. BUY THE ARABS OUT!
@ CuriousAmerican:
I didn’t say you were a Holocaust denier I was merely pointing out the utter irrelevance of your comments that The Jews wanting the Arabs to leave was equivalent to the Germans wanting others to leave. YOU brougt in the term “NAZI” immediately ofter your “German” comment, and obviously connected with it.
I don’t suggest that YOU are crazy, but, if I were you, I should get help for your obvious mental condition. A purely benevolent suggestion.
“I AM SAYING there was a Palestinian identity.”
As I said earlier, he’s “f**ked in the head.” As my grandpa used to say, “I work up a sweat just talking to you.”
What’s that proverb? “Cavil will enter at any hole.” This is summative of Curious American.
@ CuriousAmerican:
i once formed a Table-ennis Club in our Synagogue to compete in the provincial league. The Dynagogue’s English name was-more-or-less_ The Lennox Street Hebrew Congregation”, because it was in Lennox Street….. Not too difficult fr you to understand, I hope. We titled ourselves “Lennox Table-Tennis Club”.
I hope this is getting through to you. Manchester City Soccer Club, by huge coincidence is located in Manchester City……… Are you still with us…I hope not.
What are you talking about?
Are you insane. I am not a Holocaust denier.
I am NOT arguing FOR a state of Palestine. So let’s get that straight. I am saying there was a Palestinian identity.
In 1947, the Arab states did NOT trust King Abdullah of Jordan.
Why not?
Because they suspect that rather than fighting to free Palestine, Adbullah would grab the land for himself; and cut the Palestinian areas up for himself in a deal with Israel.
Which, by the way, is what happened.
The Israelis and Jordanians (in collusion with the British) decided to prevent a Palestinian state from being born.
The Fgyptians and Syrians were furious at what they considered Abdullah’s double dealing and treachery.
If doubt this: Let me cite two sources:
The VERY ZIONIST Dr. General Arieh Eldad on this video at (42:25)
http://vimeo.com/29448794
General Arieh Eldad ADMITS that Israel and Jordan colluded to prevent a Palestine.
This book link:Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine
http://www.amazon.com/Collusion-Across-Jordan-Partition-Palestine/dp/0231068387
General Arieh Eldad of the IDF confirms it.
The other Arabs states were furious at Abdullah’s treachery. They were furious that he would NOT fight for Palestine, but only to grab divided portion, with an agreement with the Israelis.
The agreement was never officially signed but even in 1948, the Jordanians, who could have, never tried to divide Israel in half. The Jordanian officers were under orders to go no further than the UN partition lines.
Again: if you do not trust me – and no one here does – then listen to that video with Dr. General Arieh Eldad, who is also a very right wing member of the Knesset. HE ADMITS IT!
There were minor bordering scuffles but neither side pressed too hard against the other, except for Jerusalem.
General Eldad admits it.
The Arabs considered Abdullah a traitor which is why he was assassinated in 1951.
The reason Abdullah did this was because neither he nor the Israelis wanted a Palestine run by the Mufti.
But do not say Palestinian identity never existed. Yes, it did. But it was aborted at birth.
Jordan and Israel had NO intentions of ever letting it be even born.
I am NOT defending Palestine’s right to exist.
But neither will I deny that their identity DID exist.
They had a national identity. But Jordan and Israel agreed – listen to the video – to carve it up between themselves.
You can blame Jordan for doing this to the Palestinians, but Israel colluded too.
I am NOT saying their should be a Palestine. I AM SAYING there was a Palestinian identity.
Jordan alone did not crush it. Israel did too. So if you blame Jordan for “occupying Palestine in 1948” then you have to blame Golda Meir, too. Abdullah acted in concourse with Israel. Israel wanted Jordan in there to prevent the Mufti from taking over.
They fought only over Lod and Jerusalem. But all other actions were by agreement.
Take it up with General Eldad.
@ SarahSue:
SaraSue has made the most comprehensive and fundmentally correct comment on this subject since it was first introduced. israel was the darling of the world on June 10th 1967 and could have done this without a single “nay” vote. I wrote to’4-5 government leaders at the time begging them to do this. I got no replies……The fault lies completely on the backs of the foolish and/or corrupt Israeli “machers”. And, since then, on the Israeli people who are too indolent to “clean house” and sweep thm all to ail to jail.
@ CuriousAmerican:
THis is a pippin even for you, the epitome of stupidity, equating an elephant with a discarded wrapper. The Arab Christians have, I understand, diminshed down to about 10-15% of their former numbers due to Islamic persecution. The only increasing Christian population in the Middle East is in Israel.
Nice of you to bestow fair and humane qualities on the Nazis. The general understanding is that the Jews were allowed only a small case of personal items and dragged to concentration camps where they were relieved of both their beelongings and their lives. Surely you’ve seen the pictures of mountains of old suitcases and torn clothing…I cried when I saw it….and the stacks of bodies……..
I shouldn’t waste my time by commenting on your inanities.
@ CuriousAmerican:Identification of members of a soccer team as Palestinos doesn’t cut it. In order to lay a claim to Palestine, there has to be a “Palestinian PEOPLE.” If they were in fact Arabs, they were identifying themselves as Arabs who had formerly lived in Palestine. There was no state of Palestine in 1950. There was a state of Jordan, a state of Israel and Egypt had sovereignty over a small part of Palestine. And there was no Palestinian people with a common language separate and distinct from the language in other Arab countries, no separate coinage, no separate customs. Identifying themselves based on the territory from which they had come does not create a Palestinian People. There was no mention of a “Palestinian Arab People” people until the PLO Charter was drafted in Moscow by the Soviets. The 1964 charter identified the “Palestinian Arab People” as the Arabs living inside the Green Line. Then sometime after 1967 they added the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza. And then after Oslo, they claimed to have changed their charter to exclude the Arabs inside the Green line. So whom do you claim to be Palestinians, the Arabs inside the Green Line, the Arabs outside the Green Line, or both.
@ CuriousAmerican:
I suggest that he’s avoiding you, that he’s already seen some of your comments and that he hasn’t any time to waste on trivialities.
Any nation would immediately revolt at having several millions of others expecially contentious Arabs, (what other kind of Arabs are there??) aliens foisted on them, especially when they far outnumber the indigenous population. not even their Arab “brothers” want them……… A curious “solution”.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Your premiss is wrong from the beginning. “Many” were not there for centuries, “Few” were there for centiuries. mny had been there one generation or less.
Curious American,
Do you believe that anyone who is not “born again” and “saved” by Jesus is going to Hell? This is a fundamental belief of Christianity. Therefore Christians believe in “supremacism”…but without the needed virtue of being supreme. Jews are morally “supreme” in that they are chosen by G-D (unlike Christian and Muslims who have undeservedly aggrandized and larded themselves with that mission at the expense of Judaism, the Jewish people and their G-D) to be a “light unto the nations” by virtue of the Torah given them at Mount Sinai.
As I said earlier, you have not accepted your status as a Gentile. I have. G-D respects me and honours me as a Gentile because I observe the 7 Laws of Noach and pulicly honour the Jewish people. But HE does not honour me as a Jew because I am not a Jew. It’s really very simple. You HE regards as an idolator and a Jew-hater.
As I said earlier, you have not the slightest clue about Judaism or about the divine mission of the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. This is why you publicly excoriate the Jewish people and the State of Israel. As Pascal wrote, so it is true of you: “The greatest shame is having no shame.”
Your ignorance and obduracy are becoming very cumbersome here. You really should move on to a jihad blog or a pro-Palestinian blog. They’d love you.
So you believe in supremacism?!
Thanks for proving my point. You admit there was an appellation. Since it was transreligious, it must have been a national identity.
THANK YOU!
“…and you are not even Jewish.”
Not even close to being Jewish. But you believe you’re equal to being Jewish, which is a fallacy of Christianity and Islam. Christians believe (IF you’re really a Christian: I think you’re a Muslim) their noetic journey (and that’s all it is) elevates them to the status of the Jewish people, but Christians are no better than the greatest non-Jew nor are they even close to being equal to the real Jew, no matter how low his/her station in life.
You believe your sciolistic Christian (same as Muslim) intellect merits you the wisdom to instruct Jews how they should govern and inhabit the Land of Israel. “Before honour comes humility.” You’d do better to repudiate whatever religion you follow and accept that you do not deserve the honour befitting the Jew. You are offending the G-D of Israel by pretending you’re qualified to instruct Jews about how and where they should live. At least I’m truthful about who I am. That’s more than I can say about you.
“IF there was NO Palestinian identity until 1964, where did they get that name in 1920?”
The appellation in 1920 included Jew and Muslim and Christian. Are you obtuse? We’ve been trying to point this out to you, but you don’t seem to be reading the posts.
@ CuriousAmerican:You ask: “If there was no Palestinian People before 1964, where did these Christians from the Holy Land get the idea to call themselves Palestinos if Palestinian meant Jewish?
The easy answer is there was a territory called Palestine, not a “people”. They were playing in South America. The term simply represented the area in which they lived. If they weren’t Jews, they were likely a part of the “Arab people” whose existence as a separate and distinct people is not in dispute. Zahir Muhsein explained all this in 1973 in an interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw:
“Between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese there are no differences. We are all part of ONE people, the Arab nation. Look, I have family members with Palestinian, Lebanese, Jordanian and Syrian citizenship. We are ONE people. Just for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel and for Arab unity.
A separate Palestinian entity needs to fight for the national interest in the then remaining occupied territories. The Jordanian government cannot speak for Palestinians in Israel, Lebanon or Syria. Jordan is a state with specific borders. It cannot lay claim on – for instance – Haifa or Jaffa, while I AM entitled to Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem en Beersheba. Jordan can only speak for Jordanians and the Palestinians in Jordan. The Palestinian state would be entitled to represent all Palestinians in the Arab world en elsewhere. Once we have accomplished all of our rights in all of Palestine, we shouldn’t postpone the unification of Jordan and Palestine for one second.
So why did those Christian Chileans from the Holy Land call themselves Palestinos in 1920?
Why not Los Franceses / The Frenchmen.
IF there was NO Palestinian identity until 1964, where did they get that name in 1920?
If you want to defeat the Palestinians, you have admit they exist.
Those Palestinians were calling themselves Palestinians even before Arafat was born.
General Miles defeated the Apache in 1890. He did not redefine them as Chicanos.
What a lie!
I am against innocents: Christian, Jewish or Muslim being killed.
I believe that Jesus Christ is God come in the flesh to atone for the sins of men; and
that Mohammed was a child molesting, murderous bandit.
That should prove my point to you. Stop fantasizing.
You are obscene, and projecting your bigotries on others.
Who is?
Not all of them prophesy. Some use weak polemics. You certainly use weak polemics, and you are not even Jewish.
“The Palestinian Christians did not call themselves the South Syrians, or the Arabs.”
I was talking about the Jews who were regarded as “Palestinians” not the Christians. I don’t give a shit about what the Christians called themselves.
Again, what do you want here? By now it doesn’t matter what you or any of your revisionist friends think, Israel is going to kick ass, one way or the other.
“Kill all the Arabs is not a good argument.”
Tell that to your Arab Muslim friends: they want to kill all the Jews. But you’d love to see Jews murdered, I can tell. You are ardently against Arab Muslims (Muslim terrorists and their supporters included) being killed, but you don’t mind your Muslim friends killing Jews. That’s becoming obvious. I wouldn’t doubt that you’re a Muslim. You’re certainly an asshole and a well disguised anti-Jewish bigot, just like Felix Quigley.
Jews don’t use “weak polemics,” they prophesy.
@ CuriousAmerican:What was invented in 1964 was the “Palestinian Arab People” as you will see by looking at the PLO Charter. That screened out the Jews and likely the Christians too. So unless you want us to read “Palestinians” as “Palestinian Christian People” you will have to try again to establish that there was a “Palestinian People” before 1964. In any event, the number of Christians left in Judea and Samaria and Gaza is in a fast decline, and your definition is self destructing. Soon there will be none unless the Jews assert sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and take the Palestinian Arab Christian People under their protection.
If there was no Palestinian People before 1964, where did these Christians from the Holy Land get the idea to call themselves Palestinos if Palestinian meant Jewish?
One does not defeat an opponent by denying his existence.
Buy the Arabs out.
@ Wallace Brand:
Now they are intermarried. But in 1920, they were Palestinian Christians. Where did this name from if not an ethnic national identity.
This site tends to attract those who compete for being the most vicious strain of right wingers.
If you want to win a war, you have to deal with real facts, not with what you want them to be.
I suggest a solution that would NOT be a one-state, nor a two-state atrocity. I suggest paying the Arabs to leave. Hardly anti-Israel; but many here would prefer blood.
What I hate to see is a good cause weighted down with irrational illogical strains of jingoism.
You have good cause, but your polemics fail. Kill all the Arabs is not a good argument.
Until it blows up in your face.
If Israel wants to win, it will have to deal with what was and what is, not what some polemicist denies then and now.
The Palestinian Christians did not call themselves the South Syrians, or the Arabs. They called themselves Palestinos.
Where did this identity come from if not an Palestinian ethnic identity? These were not Jews, but Christians from the Holy Land.
Why did they call themselves Palestinians in 1920, if you say they considered themselves Syrians? There were some real Syrians in Chile, but these Christian Palestinians called their team the Palestinos not Sirios.
The point is that an ethnic identity did exist.
They called themselves the Palestinians in 1920. Where did this ethnic identification come from if not from a national ethnic identity.
Maybe so, but weak polemics will not help your cause.
Rather than denying an identity that did exist, Jews should emphasis why their identity is better.
One does not win a war by denying the existence of the enemy. One deals with the situation.
@ CuriousAmerican:
IT IS A KNOWN FACT THAT THE BEST DEFENCE IS A GOOD OFFENCE. LOVE VICTOR
@ CuriousAmerican:
Curious, It is not going to work for your plans because there are no “palestinians”. That is a Roman fabricated name for our Land after the bestial garbage invaded, and as it was usual until 1948, slaughtered, destroyed and enslaved my people in Eretz Israel.
The marauding islamic Arabs were inserted to our Land by the subsequent occupiers of Eretz Israel. They are Arab inserts here and shall be extracted. Preferably voluntarily but that is a remote option.
NO ONE ever had a right to setup terms and conditions or partition to their whims what was never their to partition and set rules for our return to our Land Curious. Those foreign thieves do not have rights. DO you understand that?
Now comes the nasty part. The invaders from Syria, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc, must go. Or they will be taken out. We and the enemy have no other choice Curious.
You must find another solace away to your well planned tries to force upon us foreigners long held plans.
Time is up.
@ CuriousAmerican:You are referring to “the “Palestinian Soccer Team” not the Palestinian People. How many people on the team were jewish? Look at the faces. Do they look like Arabs to you? The term “Palestinians” was also used to designated the Jewish soldiers who fought for the Allies during WWI in the Palestinian Brigade.
Neither of those is relevant to a “Palestinian Arab People” that appeared three times in the preamble of the 1964 PLO Charter, corroborated only by the 422 first members of the Palestinian National Council formed at the same time, each hand picked by the KGB.
A better case for you is Professor Porath’s book on “Palestinian Nationalism 1918 – 19?” The only problem is that if you look at the facts in the book you see that no groups seeking self government were involved. This was only a Palestine wide anti-Zionist group – disassociated from the Syrian group because Feisal was too friendly to the Jews. And Effraim Karsh, Porath’s student, disagrees with him that there was any nationalism at that time. See Palestine Betrayed, p. 139.
The Jerusalem Post, if I am not mistaken, was formerly called the Palestine Journal. But it was read by Jews and some Arabs.
You will have to try harder to establish that there was a “Palestinian People” before 1964 who wanted political self determination. Even if everyone on the team was an Arab, the soccer group only wanted to win soccer games.
“They set up a soccer team calling themselves the Palestinians in 1920…”
During the 1920s Jews were part of the Palestinian identity. This is before Yasser Arafat and Soviet Russia ethnically cleansed the term of its Jewish content.
What is it you want, anyway, Curious? Why are you here? No-one is going to surrender to your bullshit arguments, so why stick around? Why don’t you go and find solace in a jihad blog or a Jew-hating “Palestinian” blog and piss off from here? I’m tired of your hungry ghost commentary.
I am not in favor of a two state solution.
But the Palestinians had a palestinian identity.
They set up a soccer team calling themselves the Palestinians in 1920 in Chile. These immigrants to Chile did not invent the name out of nothing. They called themselves Palestinians because they had come from Palestine. They started moving to Chile in 1890.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Nuw-g6_0A
The team colors were chosen from the Arab revolt, but they called themselves Palestinians.
The chose the colors red, green, white and black.
Here are some images from videos out there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv1E9O4PhO4 Look at those team colors in the 1950s.
The reason this conflict is so violent is because both side have GOOD claims to the land. Israel’s is better, but the Palestinian claim is not made up.
You cannot deny the obvious. The Palestinians are going to have to be dealt with; but you cannot deny them.
You have a problem.
Palestinian immigrants to Chile called themselves Palestinians and founded a major leaque soccer team called the Palestinians in 1920.
If you can read Spanish, this is their history: http://palestino.cl/?page_id=806
Wikipeida on the Palestinian Soccer club: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.D._Palestino
The Palestinians in Chile founded a major elite social club in Chile in 1938: http://www.clubpalestino.cl/02_01_historia.php
They even made an arrangement with the British Mandate over it.
The Palestinians had a national identity long before 1964.
Chile has 500,000 Palestinians who have been in Chile since 1890. They called themselves Palestinians. Over 99% are Christian.
Now, it may be that the concept of nationality was more common among the Christians than the Muslims; but it did pre-exist 1964.
The Arabs in Chile are elites. They were calling themselves Palestinians LONG BEFORE 1964.
ABBAS visited the Palestino social club (which was founding in 1938) when he made a trip to Chile in 2009.
http://vimeo.com/10214548
These people are elites in South America long before Arab Oil Wealth. Being Christians they worked their way up.
But they had a Palestinian identity long before 1964.
:Look at this one minute documentary which I translated
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Nuw-g6_0A
An effective public diplomacy should be able to cover the keystone of the two state solution, the invented “Palestinian People”, like a newspaper reporter writes the first paragraph of his story: Who, what, when, where, why, and how. So let us review briefly. “What” is the invention that that part of the Arab People currently living in Palestine are a “people”, the alleged “Palestinian People”. Who invented the term? The Soviet dezinformatsia. How and when did they do this? In 1964. Where, in Moscow. By using the term “Palestinian Arab People” three times in the preamble of the 1964 PLO Charter drafted in Moscow. Look as long as you like, but you will not find this term used prior to its use in the 1964 charter to refer to Arabs living in Palestine within the Green Line. In that version they excluded Arabs in their so called “West Bank” but later, after the Six Day War, added them to the newly coined collective noun. Then, in Oslo, they claimed to have subtracted the Arabs living within the Green Line. Why did they invent this term? To wrest from the Jews the political rights to Palestine that had been recognized by the Bitish in 1917 in the Balfour Declaration as belonging to the Jewish People; recognized in 1920 by the principal WWI Allies at San Remo when they placed these rights in trust for World Jewry, a trust to vest when the Jews in Palestine had attained, with the help of the trustee, a population majority; a trust confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922. A second reason was to disguise the motivation for the murder of Jews in Palestine as being motivated by secular nationalism with a quest for self government, a more politcally acceptable motive than the true motivation of religiously motivated jihad to reclaim a part of the Dar al Islam. If anyone should find a way to contact Martin Sherman, tell him I have an outline for his public diplomacy and can support all of it from credible sources.
Nice try. Babies are innocents.
Shalit got back.
Col Dov. Harari was a solider.
I may not like what happened to them; but killing babies is a whole lot worse.
This was a horror.
So is the 8 year old Gazan girl, Maria Amen, who is paralytic, because when Israel attacked some people in Gaza – aiming for members of Islamic Jihad – apparently Israel ended up killing a lot of the Amen family and paralyzing two others, including Maria Amen.
Their tragedy is NO LESS than the Fogels.
But we hear about the Fogels in the USA, not the Amen Family.
BTW: This happened before the Fogels were killed.
And, yes, inncents were killed in Iraq by the USA. It is the nature of war. But in the Israeli-Muslim conflict, each side ONLY BRINGS UP ITS OWN VICTIMS.
Gilad Shalit was not paralyzed.
Dr. Sherman’s way is the best.
“Stop prattling about totally nonsensical contortions.
“Only one side will survive.”
Well said.
End game is at the most 50 days away and that is that. Either way it goes it will not be “elegant”, “pretty” at all. One side will be destroyed. I prefer it not to be our side.
How to assure that? The people must adopt de facto the US Constitution Second Amendment and also prepare to reconstruct the Israel government system from scratch.
Stop prattling about totally nonsensical contortions.
Only one side will survive.
“But most Gentiles will fail to appreciate the difference.”
Der oilem iz a goilem.
“Then kill the Muslims if you want. Dash their children’s head against rocks if you want. Pull the babies out of the mothers wombs.”
I was thinking more in terms of having them removed from their homes like the PA and Hamas and the West demanded of the Israeli government in removing Jews from Gaza. I’m really not fond of dashing children’ heads. You should go to your Muslim friends for those types of executions. They’re quite practiced at decapitation of Christians and apostates and acid-in-the-face attacks on young women.
“I would add “So shoot me,” but Yamit probably would.”
Yeah, saying that to Yamit would be pushing all your chips forward, as they say in Texas. I know I wouldn’t mess with him. I have a lot of Jewish friends I wouldn’t mess with. Not a good career move.
Yamit says,
You are mistaken, my friend. Americans have no problems with Mexicans, they have a problem with illegals. I think you are confusing the actions and positions of our corrupt, dishonest, pusillanimous and deceitful politicians with the positions of the great majority of the American public. That is why we have created a new party called the Tea Party.
Regarding Martin Sherman and his article, Martin says:
I have no problem descending into the callous disregard for the Other. The Other has earned my callous disregard. They are the enemy. They need to be treated as an enemy. Our enemies do not deserve our compassion. Their many innocent victims do.
While I agree with the great majority of Martin Sherman’s opinions, I disagree with the way he thinks the muslims need a humanitarian solution. The muslim need a solution alright, but they need to be shown the same humanitarianism that they have shown others, none. He and many like him seems to think that if you treat the muslims with outright hostility, that makes you less of a good person. Baloney! The Fogel family and people like them deserve our compassion not the people that killed them. If the muslims come out on the losing end of any solution, they only have themselves to blame. They have rejected any resolution that would allow Jews to live in peace with them, so why should their wellbeing have any merit in any discussions? Their utter disregard for anyone else should come back to bite them in the butt.
Martin Sherman also thinks that the problems with the enemies of Israel can be solved with lots and lots of money. So do I. But whose money is the question. Why does the money need to come from the tax payers of Israel? How about we take the money given to them as aid and use that to that to relocate them? How about we confiscate the bank accounts of Arafat, Abu Mazen and all the other corrupt people of the muslim leadership and use that money? And when we relocate them let’s relocate the corrupt UNRWA with them? Why call for the restructuring of that corrupt organization, when Israel would be better served to remove them and the people dependent on them lock, stock and barrel far away from Israel? Surely, there is some African leader willing to take money to look the other way, while his country his swamped with the dregs of society. Let them become someone else’s problem.
Martin Sherman also said:
I wonder what people Martin is referring to? I always thought is was terribly reprehensible to remove Israelis from any part of Israel, disputed or not. The Israelis that live there are not the problem. The people that say they are can repeat that lie a thousand times, but that does not make it true. The Great Gaza Experiment shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt, even though liberals et al seem to think that history is so yesterday.
CuriousAmerican decries any solution that adversely affects babies. But the sad fact is that all of today’s terrorists were yesterday’s babies. Today’s terrorists have brought this on themselves. Let them be responsible for the blood of their young, not us. Let us not go down into the cesspool of moral equivalence and be as concerned for the murderers and their families as for their victims and their families.
Remember the Fogel’s, remember Lt. Col. Dov Harari, remember Cpl. Gilad Shalit, remember Malki Roth then decide who deserves our compassion and who does not.
Okay, Yamit, you have a deal. I will plunder the war chests of the muslim leadership and offer them a one way ticket to any muslim country far away from Israel. You ‘convince’ any hold-outs that is it our way or…
God Bless America, God Bless Israel
SarahSue
Then kill the Muslims if you want. Dash their children’s head against rocks if you want. Pull the babies out of the mothers wombs.
Happy is the one who takes your babies and smashes them against the rocks! Psalm 137:9
That is what you want anyway. Blood!
Isn’t it!
But if you do, do not expect any Gentile to ever give reparations again. Do not expect any Gentile to sit through Schindler’s list again.
The two matters may not be morally equivalent. But most Gentiles will fail to appreciate the difference.
Look, the Israeli Dr. Sherman has come up with a humane plan.
I know that you and Yamit would prefer to dash babies’ heads against rocks. It would make your day.
But I am weak. I think Dr. Sherman’s way is better.
I would add “So shoot me,” but Yamit probably would.
No one pays for anything. This is the problem already. This is why the Palestinians (Arafat’s transmogrified and ethnically cleasned term) refuse to leave: because they have this money being given them from bleeding heart Western democracies, so why should they give up such a good deal? Why would they ever admit to the truth? Yamit is right. They must be removed physically, otherwise they will just keep getting up and coming back with more terrorism and malefic designs against the Jews of Israel. Western countries shelling out the money do not want to listen to anyone who tells them how insalubrious an Arab Muslim presence is within the Land of Israel. These imprudent and insouciant Western countries fit the Hebrew proverb: “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruelty.” The recipients of these cruelties in this case are the Jews of Israel; the perpetrators of these cruelties are the Western democracies donating this money to the PA and the friends of the Palestinians, idiots like Rachel Corrie.
That may be true, but there were 600,000 non-Jews on the land – many for centuries – in 1947.
The Christians in Judea and Samaria have certainly been their for centuries. Those ancient churches were NOT built after 1948.
You have a population that has to be dealt with. Sherman is at least thinking out of the box.
If you believe that
Israel is for the Jewish people and we can tell non-Jews to leave and take their property
Then why do you condemn Germany for declaring
Germany is for the German people and we can tell non-Germans to leave and take their property
I am NOT saying Jews are Nazis. You have NOT built gas chambers. That charge is ridiculous; but some of the rhetoric sounds similar.
I KNOW THE ARABS ARE WORSE!
But if your own standard is being better than Muslims, you have cut a low standard.
I like Sherman’s idea. It is very similar to my own.
Palestine NEVER EXISTER THERE WAS ONLY ISRAEL
Sherman suggested $100-200 Billion. Is he a loser? He suggested Israel pay for it. Is the good Israeli Dr. Sherman a loser?
The only difference in our numbers was that I suggested buying a province in Uruguay : Artigas. I figured that would cost $90 Billion for Uruguay to sell. When that is removed, we come up with almost identical numbers.
What amazed me is that Sherman and I came up with reasonably similar numbers independently. I would like to talk to him.
@ CuriousAmerican:
$200-$300 billion?? A lot of money for a population that makes 2-5 K$$ a year and whose legal property is mostly disputed and not worth much on the open market especially if the market is flooded with lot of property at any given time.
for $$300 billion most Israelis would leave and the Arabs can have the country instead. For $$ 300 billion America and every country in Europe and even some in the ME would take the the Plague in, America takes in many more illegals over their open Southern border than there are so called Palis. and they don’t bring in $300 billion they cost a $$trillion. I think fiscally conservative Americans would rather have the Arabs than the Mexicans.
Your plan is a non starter because you expect the Jews to pay for it. Problem No Tengo Dinero
My ultimate solution is a few million bullets. Cheap efficient and final. I’d be willing to pay for the bullets. 🙂
Martin Sherman is hard to get hold of. I have tried to email him, but he hides his emails; the one email I found bounced back. It was deactivated. His websites have no emails on the contact page.
http://www.martinsherman.org/ (no contact page)
http://www.martinsherman.net/ (no contact page)
I came up with a plan, an idea to relocate Palestinians in the West Bank to South America which would cost from $200-300 Billion, which is very close to Mr. Sherman’s idea – which I did not know about until later on.
http://palestinesolution.com/costs-overall/
I would like to email him since our estimates are so close – I broke it down in stages – that we must be on to something. I came up with my idea before I was even aware of Sherman.
But I cannot find his email.