Posted on 01/27/2019 6:36:38 AM PST by SJackson
The front page of the New York Times Sunday Review featured one of the most biased, poorly informed, and historically inaccurate columns about the conflict between Israel and Palestine ever published by a mainstream newspaper. Written by Michelle Alexander, it is entitled, “Time to break the silence on Palestine,” as if the Palestinian issue has not been the most overhyped cause on campuses, at the United Nations, and in the media.
There is no silence to break. What must be broken is the double standard of those who elevate the Palestinian claims over those of the Kurds, the Syrians, the Iranians, the Chechens, the Tibetans, the Ukrainians, and many other more deserving groups who truly suffer from the silence of the academia, the media, and the international community. The United Nations devotes more of its time, money, and votes to the Palestinian issue than to the claims of all of these other oppressed groups combined.
The suffering of Palestinians, which does not compare to the suffering of many other groups, has been largely inflicted by themselves. They could have had a state, with no occupation, if they had accepted the Peel Commission Report of 1938, the United Nations Partition of 1947, the Camp David Summit deal of 2000, or the Ehud Olmert offer of 2008. They rejected all these offers, responding with violence and terrorism, because doing so would have required them to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, something they are unwilling to do even today.
I know because I asked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that question directly and he said no. The Palestinian leadership indeed has always wanted there not to be a Jewish state more than it has wanted there to be a Palestinian state. The Palestinian issue is not “one of the great moral challenges of our time,” as Alexander insists in her column. It is a complex, nuanced, pragmatic problem, with fault on all sides. The issue could be solved if Palestinian leaders were prepared to accept the “painful compromises” that Israeli leaders have already agreed to accept.
Had the early Palestinian leadership, with the surrounding Arab states, not attacked Israel the moment it declared statehood, it would have a viable state with no refugees. Had Hamas used the resources it received when Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005 to build schools and hospitals instead of using these resources to construct rocket launchers and terror tunnels, it could have become a “Singapore on the Sea” instead of the poverty stricken enclave the Palestinian leadership turned it into.
The leaders of Hamas as well as the Palestinian Authority bear at least as much responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians as do the Israelis. Israel is certainly not without some fault, but the “blame it all on Israel” approach taken by Alexander is counterproductive because it encourages Palestinian recalcitrance. As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once observed, “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”
One striking illustration of the bias is the absurd claim by Alexander that “many students are fearful of expressing support for Palestinian rights” because of “McCarthyite tactics” employed by pro-Israel groups. I have taught on many campuses, and I can attest that no international cause is given more attention, far more than it deserves in comparison with other more compelling causes, than the Palestinians. It is pro-Israel students who are silenced out of fear of being denied recommendations, graded down, or shunned by peers. Some have even been threatened with violence. Efforts have been made to prevent from speaking on several campuses, despite my advocacy of a two state solution to the conflict.
Alexander claims that there is legal discrimination against Israeli Arabs. The reality is that Israeli Arabs have more rights than Arabs anywhere in the Muslim world. They vote freely, have their own political parties, speak openly against the Israeli government, and are beneficiaries of affirmative action in Israeli universities. The only legal right they lack is to turn Israel into another Muslim state governed by Sharia law, instead of the nation state of Jewish people governed by freedom and secular democratic law. That is what the new Jewish nation state law, which I personally oppose, does when it denies Arabs the “right of self determination in Israel.”
Alexander condemns “Palestinian homes being bulldozed,” without mentioning that these are the homes of terrorists who murder Jewish children, women, and men. She bemoans casualties in Gaza, which she calls “occupied” even though every Israeli soldier and settler left in 2005, without mentioning that many of these casualties were human shields from behind whom Hamas terrorists fire rockets at Israeli civilians. She says there are “streets for Jews only,” which is a categorical falsehood. There are roads in the disputed territories that are limited to cars with Israeli licenses for security. But these roads are in fact open to all Israelis, including Druze, Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians, and people of no faith.
The most outrageous aspect of the column is the claim by Alexander that Martin Luther King Jr. inspired her to write it. But he was a staunch Zionist, who said, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.” It is certainly possible that he would have been critical of certain Israeli policies today, but I am confident that he would have been appalled at her unfair attack on the nation state of the Jewish people and especially on her misuse of his good name to support anti-Israel bigotry.
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There are Palestinian Arabs, and Palestinian Jews. There are no Palestinians. There never have been. Those people claiming to be Palestinian are Jordanians who got screwed as useful idiots.
When all the rhetoric is over, everybody realizes that the Fakestinian lies and twrrotist murder attacks will end only when they’re repatriated/ sent to their own Muslim- conquered countries, thus restoring some degree of justice and hope for the future ( including most especially their own). The Arabians and Egyptians and Iraqis should be moved now. The Syrians should be moved as soon as it’s safe there. Use the money the Eurobazis and USA and others are sending (now being used for terrorist attack tunnels, weapons, and wages for murder gangsters) as humanitarian assistance for the move, with careful control of the funds to prevent their being stolen by the murder gangs like plo
hamas hezballah - wtc).
Unfortunately the hearts and minds of the Arabs will never change. The Arabs will never give the Jews real peace. Most Israelis have come to the conclusion that an adjacent militarized “Palestinian” state would be the predicate of their ultimate demise. Permanent defensible military and social borders are absolutely necessary for the survival of the Jewish state. Soon, if what has happened to Western culture is prelude, the greatest threat to Israel will come from within.
“There will be no peace so long as the Palestinians hate the Israelis more than they love their own children.” -Golda Meir
Does anyone else notice that the Left has a tenuous relationship with the truth and a strong tendency to blame others for the exact things that they, in fact, themselves do?
At the end of days, Muslims will repent the way their father Ishmael did before he died.
Do you really think so?
...or they will be destroyed, literally.
Jews are Semites as are Arabs.
Jews are the original Palestinians.
Another great quote that came from that time, “If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be no more war; and if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be no more Israel.”
Yep! The Arab/Muslim nations appropriating the “Palestinian” label was a masterful piece of disinformation. Jews have lived in Judea/Palestine since time immemorial.
I can’t remember a time over the last 45 years where there was less International interest in the Palestinians then there is now. The Sunni States are in a de facto alliance with Israel against Iran. Putin is not reflexively anti Isreal, and Russia’s sphere of power is much weaker than it used to be. Israel has taken steps to reduce terrorism down to a bare minimum. And most importantly of all, the average European on the street has lost interest in the Palestinians due to having to deal with their own Muslim barbarians within their countries.
So it’s no surprise that in response to this apathy, the left-wing activists are doubling down on their solidarity with the Palestinians. The same desperation on the left applies to climate change as well. It’s hilarious to watch the left try to enforce their Orthodoxy on issues that they’ve been whining about for decades, only to find that a lot of people have completely tuned them out.
People have been telling the truth about the “pali(fake)” issue since they started this BS but there are a hell of a lot of Jew haters and one can barely nic the narrative after decades of beating down the facts and preaching a lie and lies.
The Left is a finely honed machine that gets every single topic wrong.
Locally, regionally, statewide, nationally, and internationally, there isn’t one thing they get right.
Thanks SJackson. Time to Tell the Truth *again*.
I won't argue, you're right, though maybe 30-35. You can't be the world's darling forever I guess. And if you're a darling of no economic, cultural or geographic import to the rest of the world, only sympathy, you need to strike when the iron is hot. Which Arafat and Abbas did, fattening their bank accounts. The rest of the south Syrians and assorted Arabs, on their own. The cost to the world in the context of terrorist, they can take credit but it really was in the name of world socialism.
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