Posted on 05/08/2002 2:29:57 PM PDT by liberalism=failure
A brief overview of the situation is always valuable, so as a service to all Americans who still don't get it, I now offer you the story of the Middle East in just a few paragraphs, which is all you really need. Don't thank me. I'm a giver. Here we go:
The Palestinians want their own country. There's just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It's a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like "Wiccan," "Palestinian" sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no "Palestinians" then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no "Palestinians" then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the "Palestinians," weeping for their deep bond with their lost "land" and "nation."
So for the sake of honesty, let's not use the word "Palestinian" any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they're being taped. Instead, let's call them what they are: "Other Arabs From The Same General Area Who Are In Deep Denial About Never Being Able To Accomplish Anything In Life And Would Rather Wrap Themselves In The Seductive Melodrama Of Eternal Struggle And Death." I know that's a bit unwieldy to expect to see on CNN. How about this, then: "Adjacent Jew-Haters."
Okay, so the Adjacent Jew-Haters want their own country. Oops, just one more thing. No, they don't. They could've had their own country any time in the last thirty years, especially two years ago at Camp David. But if you have your own country, you have to have traffic lights and garbage trucks and Chambers of Commerce, and, worse, you actually have to figure out some way to make a living. That's no fun. No, they want what all the other Jew-Haters in the region want: Israel. They also want a big pile of dead Jews, of course--that's where the real fun is--but mostly they want Israel. Why? For one thing, trying to destroy Israel--or "The Zionist Entity" as their textbooks call it--for the last fifty years has allowed the rulers of Arab countries to divert the attention of their own people away from the fact that they're the blue-ribbon most illiterate, poorest, and tribally backward on God's Earth, and if you've ever been around God's Earth, you know that's really saying something.
It makes me roll my eyes every time one of our pundits waxes poetic about the great history and culture of the Muslim Mideast. Unless I'm missing something, the Arabs haven't given anything to the world since Algebra, and, by the way, thanks a hell of a lot for that one. Chew this around and spit it out: Five hundred million Arabs; five million Jews. Think of all the Arab countries as a football field, and Israel as a pack of matches sitting in the middle of it. And now these same folks swear that if Israel gives them half of that pack of matches, everyone will be pals. Really? Wow, what neat news.
Hey, but what about the string of wars to obliterate the tiny country and the constant din of rabid blood oaths to drive every Jew into the sea? Oh, that? We were just kidding. My friend Kevin Rooney made a gorgeous point the other day: Just reverse the numbers. Imagine five hundred million Jews and five million Arabs. I was stunned at the simple brilliance of it. Can anyone picture the Jews strapping belts of razor blades and dynamite to themselves? Of course not. Or marshalling every fiber and force at their disposal for generations to drive a tiny Arab state into the sea? Nonsense. Or dancing for joy at the murder of innocents? Impossible. Or spreading and believing horrible lies about the Arabs baking their bread with the blood of children? Disgusting. No, as you know, left to themselves in a world of peace, the worst Jews would ever do to people is debate them to death.
Mr. Bush, God bless him, is walking a tightrope. I understand that with vital operations coming up against Iraq and others, it's in our interest, as Americans, to try to stabilize our Arab allies as much as possible, and, after all, that can't be much harder than stabilizing a roomful of supermodels who've just had their drugs taken away. However, in any big-picture strategy, there's always a danger of losing moral weight. We've already lost some. After September 11 our president told us and the world he was going to root out all terrorists and the countries that supported them. Beautiful. Then the Israelis, after months and months of having the equivalent of an Oklahoma City every week (and then every day) start to do the same thing we did, and we tell them to show restraint.
If America were being attacked with an Oklahoma City every day, we would all very shortly be screaming for the administration to just be done with it and kill everything south of the Mediterranean and east of the Jordan. (Hey, wait a minute, that's actually not such a bad id . . . uh, that is, what a horrible thought, yeah, horrible.)
BWAHAHA!
Particularly if you expand "lampshades" a little to tanning human hides there's a lot more than a "grain" of truth to it.
Well, yeah, but the British made a big boo-boo in handing over the Arabian peninsula to the Saud gangsta krew instead of to the Hashemite who had the more legit claim to it, so to pacify the Hashemite they gave them 80% of what was supposed to be the "Jewish National Home."
Yes and no - I believe you have got it reversed.
In 1921 (after defeating the Turks in WW1 and creating a mandate over the Turkish province of Palestine) the British cut off 78%, the part of Palestine east of the Jordan river, renamed it Jordan and installed a Saudi Arabian Hashemite royal as king. The people in Jordan were the same people as those that remained on the other side of the river.
So immediately these people were called Jordanians but they are the same people who today (and only since 1964) call themselves Palestinians. So the Palestinians received their state in 1921 and now they want a second state carved out of Israel. Until 1948 (pre Israel) the only people who called themselves Palestinians were the Jews living in the British Mandate of Palestine - the Arabs there called themselves Arabs because that's what they were.
I'll just throw in another interesting piece of history - as soon as the Hashemites took over "Jordan" about half the population left and settled on the West Bank. That's from the Mandate Reports to the League of Right so if someone wants to challenge me I'll go to the trouble of posting an extract from the report.
One can speak of "Palestina" as a named portion of the Roman province of "Syria," and not find a mention of the "nation" of Israel.
Similarly, this area known today as the nation-state of "Israel" the Greeks were content to consider as a part of greater Egypt or Syria.
The Persians under Xerxes let the Hebrew tribes of Judah and Benjamin formerly carried captive by Babylon return to the area which was once Jerusalem and under the leadership of Nehemiah rebuilt the "city".
Babylonians (who snagged the Kingdom of Judah) and Assyrians (who snagged and assimilated the other 10 "northern" tribes of Israel) left the region to go to seed and remained desolate to occupiers as the "Israelites" were made captives and held in "slavery," pondering how they lost it all (read Jeremiah).
Disobey God = lose your nation.
David fought against "Philistines"=== read: Palestinians, and did not utterly defeat them. The Hebrews were instructed to anhiliate the Canaanintes, but disobeyed and failed to do so.
Today's resident Jews in today's UN-created US-subsidized nation-state of Israel share the land with today's descendants of Philistines, Canaanites, Ishmaelites, Edomites (descended from Esau): people the UN threw off of land that they had lived in for thousands of years along side other resident Jews since the original diaspora.
In times prior to 1948, the British Mandate was referred to as "Palestine" not as "Israel." True it was a region and not a government of its own, but was just another area of British Administration. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was a British-Zioist expression of intent to provide a homeland for Jews in Palestine, not necessarily a new nation state called "Israel," created at the expense of the then-current inhabitants
Palestinians and Jews lost "entitlements" to specific land masses a long time ago. They've got to learn to make peace and share it, and if they can't, better administrators ought to be sought from more responsible parts of the world to do so.
Christians get sucked into a supposed need to support today's Israel under the flawed notion that Israel which exists today is the same Israel into which God entered covenants of ancient times.
Disobey God = lose your nation. Obey God and restore your nation (2Chron 7:14). Can you cite an event of manifest heavenly obedience and a spiritual humbling and pennance that the current UN established secularized state of Israel has accomplished a la 2ndChron 7:14?
Didn't think you could. The birthright/covenants/national devine restoration concept does not apply to what passes today for the secularized UN-mandated nation state of Israel, nor as a Christian am I duty bound to promote their position and claims to their feigned legitimacy blindly.
The only point I was trying to make is that God is not through with his chosen people. I don't know his plans and no one else knows his plans -- but in the end, His will is going to prevale. That is what makes the present day events so interesting.
Thanks again for the history of the region.
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