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American Indians Aren t Like Palestinians
FrontPageMag.com ^ | April 9, 2002 | David A. Yeagley

Posted on 04/09/2002 6:50:00 AM PDT by Radioheart

American Indians Aren’t Like Palestinians
By David A. Yeagley

Many people see a similarity between American Indians and today’s Palestinians. I’m Comanche Indian. I see no similarity whatsoever. continue...



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Israel
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1 posted on 04/09/2002 6:50:00 AM PDT by Radioheart
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To: Radioheart
Perhaps the Palestinians should be allowed to open casinos?
2 posted on 04/09/2002 6:53:03 AM PDT by PBRSTREETGANG
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To: Radioheart
American Indians Aren’t Like Palestinians
by David A. Yeagley
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 9, 2002

MANY PEOPLE SEE A SIMILARITY BETWEEN American Indians and today’s Palestinians. I’m Comanche Indian. I see no similarity whatsoever.

Comanches were once "Lords of the South Plains," (Wallace & Hoebel, 1952). Arabs living in Palestine have never dominated anything but goats. Comanches were independent, and certainly not supported by two billion other Indian ‘brothers,’ like the Palestinian Arabs claim they’re supported by the Arab world.

There’s no similarity in the land claim issue. Comanches, never numbering more than six or seven thousand, were simply strong enough to take over the American southwestern plains, first from other Indians, then from white people. Palestinians have accomplished nothing but suicide bombings.

Palestinian Arabs are not indigenous to Palestine. They are leftover Arabs, residual of another age. Knowing Arab history is vital to understanding the situation in the Middle East. (Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial (1984) is a ‘must read’ on this subject.)

Arabs are from Arabia. Beginning in AD 622, under Mohammad, Arab "prophet" of Medina, the Islamic religion became a war machine and aggressively expanded from the Arabian Peninsula to all directions until AD 750 when it controlled North Africa westward to Spain and southern France, northward to Palestine and Armenia, and eastward 400 miles past the Indus River.

It was spectacular achievement, one which clearly proved Islam to be not a religion of peace, but of dominance. Arabs intermarried, enslaved, and otherwise lorded over every culture they encountered. Arabs established the African and Asian slave routes, which are still used today for slave trade out of India and Nepal, as well as Africa and the Far East.

European Christians finally fended off Islamic dominance to the east and west. By the 15th century, Muslims were ousted from Spain and from most of the Balkans by the 17th century. Mongolians broke Islamic dominance in the Orient. The last phase of Islamic political dominance, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), ended in 1840 when Constantinople submitted to terms of Western powers in its dispute with Egypt. Turkey’s government declared itself secular by 1922.

During all this time Palestine was little more than a wilderness of nomads, loosely associated groups of provincial subdivisions with frequently changing administrations. The people were a "pan-Arab" mix of gypsy-like leftovers, whom the General Syrian Congress of 1919 declared to be "the southern part of Syria." It wasn’t considered "Palestine," a separate Arab nationality, until the 1967 Six-Day War of Israel’s boundary expansions.

A ‘Palestinian Arab nationality’ was something Musa Alami began asserting after 1948, as a political reaction against Israel. As R. Sayigh wrote, "A strongly defined Palestinian identity did not emerge until 1968, two decades after the expulsion [of some Arabs living in parts of Palestine]," (Journal of Palestine Studies, 1977). In twenty years, Alami’s myth took effect.

But the land-by-residence claim gives Palestinian Arabs even less right. In 1950, United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) defined a Palestinian Arab as one who had lived in Palestine a minimum of two years before 1948. This is no ancient claim.

The ancient, indigenous inhabitants of Palestine are long perished from the earth. Canaanites, Phoencians, and then Philistines, all were dominated by the Israelites before 1060 BC. Most of these cultural identities dissolved completely by the neo-Babylonian age, or, the 6th century BC.

Arabs weren’t even in Palestine until the mid-7th century AD, over a thousand years later, after Palestine’s 1,300-year Jewish history. Arabs later living in Palestine never developed themselves or the land, but remained nomadic and quasi-primitive during their 1,200-year stay.

Then a stronger people ¯ modern Jews who’d been expelled from their homes in Europe and in Arab countries ¯ came in and conquered (without annihilating) the Palestinian Arabs.

As a Comanche Indian, I’m sensitive to this history. I believe the conqueror has a right to what he has conquered. No one owns the land. Only he who is strong enough to possess it will control it and the people living on it. That’s the law of war.

Teddy Roosevelt once said, "Let sentimentalists say what they will, the man who puts the soil to use must of right dispossess the man who does not, or the world will come to a standstill." (W. T. Hagan, Theodore Roosevelt and Six Friends of the Indians, 1997). The land developers, the agrarians, have become stronger than the hunters.

In the case of Comanches, we lost a magnificent hunting empire, and a lot of ego with it. In the case of "Palestinian" Arabs, what is lost? Why their sense of humiliation?

3 posted on 04/09/2002 6:54:06 AM PDT by Lorenb420
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To: Radioheart
Now that's the solution! Open up casinos in the territories.
4 posted on 04/09/2002 6:54:10 AM PDT by CasearianDaoist
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To: PBRSTREETGANG
Actually, they DID have casinos in thw West Bank and Gaza that were frequented by Israelis. The Jews stopped coming during the intifada since they were getting murdered for merely being in those areas.
5 posted on 04/09/2002 6:54:58 AM PDT by Edward Watson
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To: Radioheart
Right! A better analogy would be the AFGHANS and the American Indian tribes.
6 posted on 04/09/2002 6:56:47 AM PDT by litehaus
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To: Radioheart
American Indians had their own language and culture. The so-called "Palestinians" do not.

Another "take"

7 posted on 04/09/2002 7:02:05 AM PDT by isthisnickcool
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To: Radioheart
"Many people see a similarity betweem American Indians and Palestinians"

That's a new one to me, but it's so stupid that I can believe it.....whoever "many people" is/are.

My Hopi blood may say "yeah, most of us all have two feet and care about our children" but that's it.

Whoever "many people are" are not red, nor whatever is close to Palestinian.

Probably some white atheist newswriter in New York. Sorry about the slur, New York.

kj

8 posted on 04/09/2002 7:02:31 AM PDT by AzJP
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To: Lorenb420
"I believe the conqueror has a right to what he has conquered."

Umm, that justifies fighting for it, so I guess his beliefs justify the Palestinians carrying on the fight. Sort of contrary to what else he was just saying.

9 posted on 04/09/2002 7:05:05 AM PDT by jlogajan
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To: Radioheart,monkeyshine, ipaq2000, Lent, veronica, Sabramerican, beowolf, Nachum, BenF, angelo, bo
PINGING!   ) ) ) )  

If you want on or off me Israel/MidEast ping list please let me know.  Via Freepmail is best way.............


10 posted on 04/09/2002 7:08:34 AM PDT by dennisw
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To: PBRSTREETGANG
Perhaps the Palestinians should be allowed to open casinos?

Loved by Israelis, Oasis Casino now seems to have hit double zero.

11 posted on 04/09/2002 7:15:31 AM PDT by Alouette
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To: AzJP
"yeah, most of us all have two feet and care about our children"

I made one minor correction because Palestinian children are nothing more than suicide bomber commodities boasting a cash value for their breeding machines.
12 posted on 04/09/2002 7:22:02 AM PDT by PA Engineer
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To: dennisw
Recall that what is now Oklahoma was once clearly labelled "Indian Territory" on US maps.

Visualize "native Americans" sending their children to nailbomb Pizza Hut patrons every time a new suburban subdivision opened outside Tulsa, because that represented a "settlement" in "occupied territory".

Insanity.

13 posted on 04/09/2002 7:23:23 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker
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To: Radioheart
Never heard any stories of an Indian going into a town full of civilians and shooting himself full of arrows.
14 posted on 04/09/2002 7:26:55 AM PDT by Delbert
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To: PA Engineer
Please don't correct me.

Your opinion, use your words.

I have no idea who you are, or if you have any expertise on the subject.

To return the discourtesy, I doubt if an engineer in Pennsylvania knows anything more about the subject than what's on your local tv. So, how many Palestinian families do you know personally? You travel there often? Stay in their homes? Play with their kids? Cook with them? Help at their place of work? Share their religion practices?

I have.

Nothing worse than an assumed-omnipotent engineer. Of course that's a monolithic generalization, but you've done that.

IMHO

Have a nice day.

15 posted on 04/09/2002 7:32:01 AM PDT by AzJP
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To: AzJP
Get some skin. I have worked in the ME for many years and know the arab culture. You completely missed the irony of the correction when you shot off the handle into your ad hominem attacks.

It is public knowledge that families receive rewards for the death of their children in suicide attacks.

It is public knowledge that the vast majority of the palestinians support the genocidal practice of sending their children off to bomb Jewish civilians.

It is public knowledge that the majority of the palestinians by their own words find pride in this practice of genocide.


Your claims of helping palestinians whether true or not is nothing more than a strawman argument. I think you better keep you "gun" on safety rather than firing your load half-cocked.

PS. You are correct when you say you know nothing about me. By your words I know alot about you.
16 posted on 04/09/2002 7:43:59 AM PDT by PA Engineer
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Comment #17 Removed by Moderator

To: fishhawk; gg188; dennisw; 2sheep; Thinkin' Gal; Nix2
Arafat has, or had, a big ugly casino, no matter that the religion of submit-or-I-kill-you prohibits gambling.
18 posted on 04/09/2002 10:40:21 AM PDT by Prodigal Daughter
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To: PBRSTREETGANG
Perhaps the Palestinians should be allowed to open casinos? 2 posted on 4/9/02 6:53 AM Pacific by PBRSTREETGANG

BINGO !!!!!! [

19 posted on 04/10/2002 10:46:05 PM PDT by timestax
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To: NativeNewYorker
bump
20 posted on 04/10/2002 10:46:45 PM PDT by timestax
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