Let's pretend there is a Palestinian state (MUST READ!)

World Net Daily ^ | 4/4/02 | Katy Whelan

[truthandlife]

I think it's fair to say in order to prepare for a future state of Palestine, it may prove beneficial to journey into the unknown. Take a moment and step out of this present reality and into the world of our imagination. This will be a necessary tool in perceiving such a plan. I would hate to have to be the one to say I told you so or, be careful what you ask for.

Let's pretend that one day you wake up and read the morning paper. The headlines say, "A Nation is Born, the State of Palestine." Let's pretend that Yasser Arafat no longer lies, and he is now a man of honor driven to make a better life for his people. Let's pretend that the millions of dollars in aid subsidizing the Palestinian Authority and used to smuggle bombs, guns and weapons of carnage and death will be used to build a healthy society – a society filled with job opportunities, good education and prosperity for all Palestinians.

Imagine the schoolbooks that teach Palestinian children to hate and murder Jews are burned in the town square. Let's pretend Palestinian radio and television join in the celebration and destroy their library of media propaganda advocating martyrdom in order to achieve peace and heavenly reward. Let's pretend that the Palestinian people eagerly await the new schoolbooks that teach brotherly love and acceptance of their Jewish neighbors and to embrace the state of Israel with open arms.

Imagine that the Palestinian summer camps for children that instruct 5- and 6-year-old boys how to shoot and blow up Jews, are now filled with activities like painting, ceramics and horseback riding.

Let's also imagine that all Palestinian men, women and children wake up one day and have forgotten everything they have ever learned about hatred. All the mothers and fathers of children who have blown their bodies up for the cause of peace are now accepting the fact that it was all a lie, that their children were duped and sacrificed for absolutely nothing! Pretend they have forgiven their political and religious leaders for deceiving them and there is a sense of joy and forgiveness in the air.

Now don't give up yet folks! Stay with me on this one. The human mind is quite remarkable in its ability to venture beyond logic. Let's pretend that Yasser Arafat wakes up one day and one truth comes out of his mouth. He repents to his people and to the world for being a bloodthirsty killer. He asks forgiveness for masterminding and implementing terror on the world for the past 40 years.

Let's pretend that Yasser Arafat is a changed man. He no longer feels compelled to annihilate the Jewish people, but instead wants to live side by side in peace and harmony.

This will be a stretch for some. Try to imagine the tens of thousands of young Palestinian men (and women) who have known absolutely nothing but hatred and bloodlust towards the Jewish people from the time they were children, have found a new peace in their hearts. Imagine they surrender their guns, bombs and ideologies and long to befriend their Jewish brothers. Decades of lies, and PA-sponsored moral and social depravity have simply vanished from their lives.

Let's pretend that the Palestinian people are dancing in the streets, handing out candy and celebrating their newfound love for their Jewish neighbors and their willingness to embrace their differences and share their resources and live together in peace!

Game over. Reality check.

The Middle East reality is that a Palestinian state will never and should never be allowed to exist within the borders of Israel! It simply will not work. It will be a cancer in the heart of Israel. Cancer is not something that can be negotiated with, nor can it be managed by "surgical strikes." It must be attacked aggressively and completely until all signs of the deadly disease are destroyed.

Aside from the fact that all of the land of Israel was promised to the Jewish people by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the unfortunate reality is that Palestinian society, so diseased by hatred, will not be able to co-exist in peace with Israel.

Generations of Palestinian hostility and the destruction that follows will in fact grow more powerful if granted statehood. The cancer of Israel will have metastasized. It will now have a life and a sovereignty of its own.

We must stop pretending that a Palestinian State will bring peace to the Middle East. It will surely prove to be more deadly than any present horror that is occurring in Israel today.

[wideawake]

If any of them cause trouble, deport them to the new state. If the rest continue contributing to their society as they have historically done, there's no problem.

[Ooh-Ah]

Good points but what about the threat to the world of a sanctuary and training ground for terrorists?
Would an Osama be the Secretary of Offense?

[wideawake]

Some approximation of the pre-1967 border (modified for Israeli security needs) is quite defensible. The 1967 war proved that and, if anything, the technological gap between Israel and her enemies has widened since then.

I would keep the Golan Heights. I would suggest a Korea-style DMZ with a guarded perimeter. Kind of like the way the US defends Guantanamo from the Communists.

I'm not sure what you mean by "cantons" - since Israel is a centralized state without a cantonal government. If you mean the isolated settlements of Jews in places like Hebron - those settlements will have to be abandoned for tactical reasons. They would be indefensible.

[mondonico]

Don't know what the headband says, but I do recall from another story that this is, sadly, a little girl.

[crystalk]

change screen name to dreamin-on

[TxBec]

what a sad little face.

[Helms]

Imagine that Mein Kampf is no longer a best seller.

All of this is becoming a no brainer, yet the ratings driven media will turn this into a Crossfire Redux episode. No winners, nor losers, no right, nor wrong, just a paralysing angst and sence of powerlessness which the media allways fosters.

[krb]

Assuming the existence of a creator does not necessarily imply religion. I know people who firmly believe their creator was the random interractions of oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen in the primordial ooze of ancient Earth. And even in that belief system, it is a good premise to assume that we have unalienable rights to life, pursuit and happiness.

That's nowhere in any Bible. Our Deist Forefathers came up with that one, building on the advances of the Enlightenment, which, itself is the great manifestation of thought brought forth in the Western world after King John reluctantly signed the Magna Carta.

The freedoms we have today are the product of Millennia of thought and progress and painful, bloody human experimental existence, and a fortunate thread of thought that landed us where we are today. And, dare I say, they are largely the result of work done and blood shed against many organized Churches and religions.

Furthermore, the belief in the existence of Godly creation doesn't imply the truth of the various religious texts that go along with a particular religion.

The God of Abraham is the same God that gave us His son, who is not worshipped by the Jews, and is the same God that spoke to the prophet Muhhammed (sp?), whose followers are blowing themselves up to wage terror.

[Brett66]

Even if all of that happened there would still be terrorist acts against Israel. Many terrorists from numerous nations are funneled into the area to incite violence.

[wideawake]

Hmmm . . . it would seem that you suffer from a common problem here on FR: you have no rational or logical criticism to offer, so you offer a one-line insult instead.

What is your problem with my suggestion? Answer me this: how often has North Korea invaded South Korea since the DMZ was instituted? How does the addition of a West Bank full of hostile foreigners add to Israel's security? Is it a buffer-zone? Hardly - a zone full of armed enemies isn't a buffer-zone. The West Bank, unlike the Golan, has only religious and not military significance.

[GovernmentShrinker]

"Creator" is a beautifully vague term, which can be understood to mean any entity or natural force which resulted in the existence of humans. Christians, Jews, Muslims, pagans of various stripes, atheists, agnostics, and all the rest can agree that SOMETHING directly or indirectly "created" us. The wording of the Declaration of Independence doesn't contradict any of these belief systems. What it does contradict is political systems (often feebly justified with pseudo-religious babble) which declare a "master race" to be superior to others and thus have a right to treat others as subhuman, or which declare special rights to accrue to people on account of having been born into certain royal or "noble" families or into a certain "caste".

[fporretto]

Sigh. I should have known someone would throw that strawman at me.

If you base a claim to something entirely on a theological authority, it is a theological claim. Therefore, if the famous phrase from the Declaration of Independence about the Rights of Man had to stand as the sole justification for them, the Rights of Man would be theological claims. Fortunately, this is not the case.

Irrefutable empirical substantiation for individual rights arises from the failure of all societies which attempt to deny individual rights. ("A thousand reasoned arguments are as nothing compared to one case of going in and finding out." -- Robert A. Heinlein.) We in mathematics call this a "proof by contradiction." The world of practical experience often provides us with such skewerings of theorists' inanities.

A fine theoretical approach to the Rights of Man arises from the study of Man's nature: the specifics of our physical, intellectual, and emotional make-up that dictate the conditions we require to survive and flourish. Of course, one could say that our natures were decreed by God. However, at that point, one isn't making a theological claim about rights any more, but rather about how Man came to be what he is.

In citing the Creator as their authority, were Jefferson and the Founders wrong? I think not. However, as an argument for individual rights, the Declaration is of use only in conversation with those who share the Founders' religious and cultural context. That's not a slap against the Declaration; it was always meant to be more a manifesto than a syllogism.

For persuasive purposes, it's important to remember that "You cannot reason a man out of something he did not reason himself into." -- G. K. Chesterton. Since we do not reason ourselves into our religious premises, reasoning a man out of his theologically based political beliefs -- that is, the temporal claims he makes that he justifies by recourse to religious authority -- is impossible. Imagine trying to reason the Aztecs out of their practice of human sacrifice! Conversely, if you want to have a shot at reasoning a man into accepting your political beliefs, you have to base your argument on premises you and he share. If he doesn't share your religious premises, you're in for a rough ride if you try to use them as the foundation of your argument.

Hey, did I just say something cogent about the Israeli / Palestinian conflict?

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[berned]

you wrote:

The State of Israel can do one of two things: it can continue pretending to be identical with the Biblical Kingdom of Israel or it can recognize that it is a secular Western state.

Your posts here are all well-reasoned and logical from a human geopolitical POV. I'm sure the points you make here are the daily discussions in Washington and Tel Aviv.

However, they presuppose that...

a) God is not Sovereign

b) He's not too particular about the configuration of the land He promised to Israel forever, (and therefore is an imprecise God, willing to sacrifice His iron-clad promises on the altar of geopolitical expediency)... and

c) The difficulties we see in the Middle East today are just the random white-noise of M.E. politics -- not the God-orchestrated run-up to the climax of history that God PROPHESIED in the Book of Revelation. (Which I might add, leads to Armeggedon.)

Many would disagree with those particular suppositions, though we respect your thought-process and intentions.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"Don't know what the headband says, but I do recall from another story that this is, sadly, a little girl."

Uhhh... not to be obtuse or anything, but it's sad that it's a child, whatever the sex. We're looking at the future in that baby's eyes. The tragic truth is that terrorism won't be wiped out unless those kids are wiped out too, and that's not hatred or anger talking, it's history. The tragic truth on top of the tragic truth is that the West won't have the stomach to do what needs to be done, and that cherub faced little Palestinian child will grow up to perhaps blow up a school bus full of infidel children, probably Jewish, perhaps Americans.

[Jim Noble]

>>One cannot establish a temporal claim by recourse to a religious authority<<

Not only that-

If YHWH means for the people of Israel to inhabit the Land, nothing we do or don't do will matter.

Likewise, if He does not, or if He's changed His mind.

[wideawake]

The fact that State of Israel, as a secularized representative of the Jewish people, cannot hold all of the land covenanted by God to that people does not mean that the sovereignty of God or the truth of His promises are denied.

As you recall, Joshua himself was unable to conquer all of the Promised Land in his generation.

It may be time for the people of Israel to regroup and prepare for the next phase.

[Anamensis]

...diseased by hatred...

sums it up pretty well, I think

[Paul Ross]

Assuming a Creator [singular] is contrary to the random-forces notion of creation, and insofar as rights, these would be non-existent in a truly random materialistic universe, where Man is merely a misanthropic product of Darwinian evolution with anthropomorphized delusions of order and importance. For there to be rights, there has to be an order higher than that of simple nature. And for it to be simply a product of human reasoning will just lead us right back to Hitler and Mein Kampf, with Nationalist Socialism.

The progress you assert was at the expense of churces is confounded by the actual historicity of the United States of America, the greatest experiment in religious liberty in the world, and to date. Founded by 13 Christian colonies attempting to be INDEPENDENT of Britain's state church, and with the freedom to pursue their own faiths, they set in motion a sequence of intellectual developments which has been a light to all nations. And which remains totally opaque to the secular-humanist Liberals, who have arrogantly self-appointed themselves 'arbiters of progress'. Churches and Faith, have been as much the driving forces in our country's character, and successes, as any others...and ascribe THEIR success to the divine author. Failure to acknowledge this is dishonest and revisionist. And suggests a real ignorance by these arbiters. E.g., when you cavalierly lump in the junk-history notion that Allah equates to Jehovah, you are gravely and profoundly erring. Allah materializes in Mohammed's fevered imagination AFTER he is rejected by Jews and Christians. The Arabs may well be the genetic posterity of Abraham, via Ishmael. But they can't in any sense claim to follow his God. If they were, they would be following the Bible, not the Koran and Hedat. And then when you make your trivialization/comparison of the various scriptural traditions, you fail to actually make an honest evaluation of the bible for its clear, documented historical accuracy (even where it records ugly human decisions and wars, so it is encompassing warts and all), and the miracles which were performed by God for his people and can be corroborated by other sources. Which stands the test of time? Whereas the Koran was changed by human polity 56 times and is filled with contradictions and hate for others (ie. jews & gentiles), the bible is universal, commanding the jews and gentiles to be a light to others, that ALL might be saved.

It's time for a thorough scientific debunking of the Koran, and the people dedicatedly and miserably wasting their lives trying to debunk the Bible with the half-baked scholarship they bring to the task would be easily able to attack the Koran. Let them go to it...and see how long they live in the arab countries. Here, they are sheltered in intellectual freedom afforded by Christianity, which they would be denied in the Muslim world. They would torched as heretic infidels.

[tet68]

One cannot establish a temporal claim by recourse to a religious authority.

How true!