Palestinians: Israel simply is not yours

Chicago Sun Times ^ | From September 9, 2001 | NEIL STEINBERG

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

Palestinians: Israel simply is not yours

BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Why does the United States control immigration from Mexico? The answer is simple. As much as the United States is a melting pot of races and cultures, it does have a certain makeup, a comfortable balance. The Latino population is 12 percent and growing. Should the floodgates open and the nation suddenly find itself 40 or 50 percent Latino, well, it would be a different sort of place. Maybe better, maybe worse-I won't enter into that.

But I think it is fairly uncontroversial to say that the United States tries to keep change at a certain crawling pace. All countries do this. The Australians turn away a ship filled with Afghan refugees; Germans foam about the Turks in their midst. The Japanese consider descendants of Koreans who have lived in their country 100 years to be Koreans still.

So universal is this idea of keeping Our Side from being too richly seeded with Their Side that it must echo some deep chord of human nature. No doubt a throwback to the 100,000 years or so when we travelled in small tribes and slept in big, smelly piles for warmth at night. Given the basic, in-your-boneness of this desire to maintain the group, it would be almost funny-if it weren't so tragic-to see the Palestinians argue that Israel's attempts to preserve its own identity as a country and keep its people from being blown apart in public places as not only racism, but a particularly loathsome form of racism.

To return to the comparison with Mexicans, a number of Americans harbor antipathy toward Mexicans-they want those borders sealed tight. It's a mystery to me. As far as I can tell, the central crimes held against Mexicans once they get here seem to consist largely of working hard at low-paying jobs and tending to speak a language not our own.

Now, imagine the reaction if, in addition to these transgressions, Mexicans also lobbied for open borders by every so often showing up unannounced at local malls wrapped in dynamite and nails and blowing themselves up in crowds of shoppers. We'd go berserk. We'd have a big wall along the Rio Grande so high it would put the Great Wall of China to shame. Our racists and haters-who are snarling and straining at their leashes on the best of days-would be liberated to run the countryside.

Palestinians reading this will no doubt point out that, unlike Mexicans in the United States, the West Bank and Gaza (and no doubt, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel) are their land. Being a sympathetic sort, I can appreciate the power of that argument-it must be very vexing to spend your life crouching in a blazing sandy nowhere, convinced that some usurper is relaxing in your olive garden.

The problem with the Palestinian logic is that it isn't true. It isn't their land-not anymore. Israel has it, and you can complain all you want about the injustices of history, but that doesn't change a thing. The United States got hold of Texas in a manner not nearly so fair and open as the creation of Israel, yet if Mexicans started to blow themselves up at Northbrook Court, trying to get Texas back, they wouldn't make nearly the progress that the Palestinians made before their hunger to have absolutely every inch of Israel undid them.

Before the West Bank was Israel's, remember, it was Jordan's. Jordan had it for years. They didn't rush to make it into a Palestinian homeland. The only reason Israel got hold of it was because, in 1967, the Arabs tried, for the third time in 20 years, to destroy Israel. The Israeli Army, as per tradition, kicked their collective butts. It took Gaza and the West Bank and Sinai and would have rolled into Cairo and done the hora around the pyramids, but with an eye toward future relations, pulled up short.

The Egyptians played nice, so they got Sinai back. The Palestinians would have gotten a country already, with stamps and coins and a code of maritime law, had they been able to forget the fact that what they really want is all the Jews in Israel dead and their heads placed on spikes all along the border. You have to stand in awe of a hatred so hard and bitter you'd send your kids out to blow themselves up, just to give the hatred its daily exercise.

I find it puzzling, though I try to ask myself how I'd feel if my grandfather fled the country where his family had dwelled for hundreds of years, leaving his land and possessions to be claimed by others.

Then I remember, oh yeah, my grandfather did flee the country where his family had dwelled for hundreds of years: Poland. He fled, and those who stayed were slaughtered, every man, woman and child. And you know what? I don't want the family farm in Bialystok back. I don't hate the Poles at all-heck, I consider myself half Polish. The Palestinians, who are scoring points borrowing a page from the Anti-Defamation League playbook for manipulating publicity, could also learn something from Jews when it comes to hatred. Jews have been done wrong all over the place. (I know Palestinians believe the Holocaust never happened, but we're fairly convinced. Nobody from the Polish side of the family shows up at reunions) Despite this, we are not overwhelmed by hatred, because we know that it doesn't get you anywhere. We've learned a secret-life is precious and short, and hatred only consumes the haters, sometimes literally, in a deafening flash.

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

It has often been said, but we did not listen. It has been written, but we paid no heed.
Are we paying attention yet?

[FreedomPoster]

Glad you posted this on it's own thread. Early East Coast AM Bump!

How much longer can we allow a culture to exist that supports and condones this?:

It's to the point where we just can't allow societies to exist, that raise kids like this, espouse ideologies like this. Islam is not a religion - it's a political system with religious underpinnings with a death wish.

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

Exerpt:

Netanyahu, 51, said three things must first be asked and then answered if the war on terrorism is to be won: "The first is, who's doing it? The second is, why are they doing it? The third is, what do we do about it? What do we do to defeat them?"

The former Israeli prime minister then answered his own queries.

"The first thing to understand is that there is no international terrorism, none whatsoever, without the support of sovereign states. It is simply impossible to sustain an effective terrorist attack for months or years without the support of the terror regimes that stand behind them," he said. "They do not work from a cafe in Milan and a burger joint in New Jersey. It just doesn't work that way. The terrorist leadership must have a headquarters, must have a place where they can hatch their plots, arm their killers and be protected so they're not on the run all the time."

Netanyahu said there were very few of these "sovereign states" in the world today. In his view, this small group included Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Arafat's dictatorship "and one or two other middle-eastern states such as Sudan. That's it." He pointed out that Osama bin Laden, the former Saudi multimillionaire, had been given safe harbor by a few of the above-named countries.

The next question Netanyahu asked was, why are the terrorists doing it?

"Although the various constituencies of this terror network have their own pet enemies and sometimes even have internal rivals — the Taliban and the Iranians fighting — each one wants to be the king of the Islamic area," said Netanyahu. "Though they're fighting and though they have their own separate agendas, at the heart of this terror network is a military Islam that seeks, that is guided, that is fueled by the very powerful anti-western mentality and behavior."

Therefore, said Netanyahu, "When you hear that the militant Islamists hate the west because of Israel, they actually have it the other way around. They hate Israel because of the west. They hate Israel because it represents an island of western values, of liberties, in a sea of what otherwise would be a completely unified Muslim-Arab sea. They hate any western presence there, for hundreds of years."

But at the same time, Netanyahu said, these terrorist networks have "cells of militant believers in the west creating a new brand of what I call domestic international terrorism. They live in America to wage jihad against her buttressed by the organizations that are housed in the home states. I said that this creates an entirely new threat because these groups could serve so that you would not need intercontinental ballistic missiles as delivery systems for Islamic nuclear payloads."

Now the question is, Netanyahu said, what do we do?

"The first thing to understand is exactly what President Bush said in his historic speech before Congress: 'to make no distinction between the terrorist organizations and the regimes that harbor them.' That's the starting point," said Netanyahu. "You can hit the terrorists again and again and again. It won't stop them."

And Netanyahu warned: "You can only win internationally if you have moral fiber, because what the terrorists do, and the terrorist regimes behind them try to do, is to create a moral confusion. What terrorism does is to deliberately and systematically attack civilians to gain political ends. In this, terrorism is very different from the unintentional killing of civilians that very often accompanies legitimate acts. What terrorism does is obliterate the line drawn by humanity in the last 150 years in various conventions."

He advocated providing "our governments the necessary moral backing to pursue this war against all the slings of criticism and opposition. Or, we can push the collective snooze button and go to sleep. If we do," he said. "We incur our common disaster."

[Clifdo]

A very, very astute, learned man who is right on the money. Israel does itself a distinct disservice not having Bibi as head of its government. I stop and listen every time I hear him.

Love, Do

[FreedomPoster]

Your excerpts all ought to be full article posts, if they aren't already. Netanyahu gets it. Let's hope that we, as a people, do also.

[Weatherman123]

Read, bumped and will be bumping throughout the day.

This should be required reading. I was explaining this to my 7 year old daughters this am while watching the news. Kids that age have a way of cutting to the heart of the matter. And then I have to give then a simple, easy to understand answer. Even THEY get it.

Now if we could just get more grown ups to think like 7 year olds. But not like the 7 year olds wearing explosives around their waist and watching "Kill all infidels ala Sesame Street" morning programing, I mean brainwashing.

[Alouette]

Excellent! Big analogous bump!

[Weatherman123]

Keeping it bumped. I hope more people read this.

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

G-d bless you for reading this. Even more, bless you for understanding.

To Justice,
Nix

[Valin]

Very well put!

[Weatherman123]

bumping again!

[an amused spectator]

Great stuff bump.

[elephantlips]

If you mean by "why," what is the real motivation behind what they're doing, then fine, I agree but if you mean "why," in the social context, who cares?

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

I'm sorry. I've been up all night and day, and I just don't understand your post. What do you mean? Are you talking about the first article or the Netanyahu article?

[usconservative]

BUMP for an *excellent* read.

Every day Netanyahu is not at the head of the Israeli Government, they do themselves a great dis-service.

Bibi gets it. Put him back in power, and watch how fast Arafat and his ilk run for their lives.

The only difference between Arafat and Bin Laden (as Bibi Netanyahu himself pointed out this morning on Fox news) is 20 years additional experience. Bin Laden is Arafat, 20 years ago.

Netanyahu is right. Where's our CIA? Why aren't we eliminating these two terrorists?? Take out Arafat, we kill one part of the snake. Take out Bin Laden, we eliminate the other.

It's really that simple.

[LincolnLover]

Nice read. Thanks for posting this.

[cardinal4]

That picture sums up for me completely the mindset of the muslims.

[NixNatAVanG InDaBurgh]

Thank YOU. I hope it does some good. I tried several times to tell some of the people on the board that hatred is irrational. But they were too irrational to care.

[SKempis]

bump

[csap]

Bump