Shavua TOV!

B"H, a good start to a good week! Thanks to Jewel and an old scout friend of mine, we raised enough to pay the piper and BtB is back in business. My thanks to everyone who helped get us there, for the contributions and the encouragement that came with them.

Just think, with Gd's help, another year of blogging will get us past the Nov. 2012 election.  

I can't blog about it yet (we have house guests), but Newt was awesome on Israel in last night's debate, and I thought Perry showed real leadership when he summarized the issue by reminding everyone that Obama is our problem in the Middle East, "not something that Newt Gingrich said."

 

For reference on the invented Palestinian people, this dates back to at least 2004:

 

Who Are Palestinians? By Yashiko Sagamori

If you are so sure that "Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history", I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:

• When was it founded and by whom?
• What were its borders?
• What was its capital?
• What were its major cities?
• What constituted the basis of its economy?
• What was its form of government?
• Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
• Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
• What was the language of the country of Palestine?
• What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?
• What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.
• Have they left any artifacts behind?
• Do you know of a library where one could find a work of Palestinian literature produced before 1967?
• And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?

You are lamenting the "low sinking" of "once proud" nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that "nation" proud and what was it so proud of?

And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call "Palestinians" are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over -- or thrown out of -- the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?

 

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See also how Soviet Russia contributed to the creation of both the palistinian people and the piece process. And the Heebz' Peace FAQ on the Levant Arabs.

• "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria."- Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, to the UN Security Council.
• "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria... politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." - The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted this in a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947
• Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted: "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds." 
• "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria." - Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, to the Peel Commission, 1937

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While Charles Krauthammer is right when he says that the "Palestinian People" train already left the station, maybe we can still stop it in its tracks.

Kol hakavod to Newt for speaking the truth... to an electorate that is starving for exactly that.

 

"History is long, the Jewish people everlasting

and truth is sacred..."

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

What we saw and heard last night was a glaring example of what may well be our country's biggest problem. It's not the economy, it's not our perilous situation abroad -- it's the aversion on the part of our federal officialdom to telling the truth. That's all Gingrich did a few days ago: he told the simple truth about the "Palestinians" -- and for that he was treated as a fool, a pariah, and a threat to the safety of the Republic. Romney's pusillanimous comments last night -- to the effect that it's okay to tell the truth as long as we do it in a whisper and on tiptoe -- was a disgrace, and should -- alone -- disqualify him for high office. Newt's remarks were tonic, bracing, and vitalizing. We may have found something even better than a winning candidate -- we may have found a mensh!