Now you're insulting family values??????
Anyway, on a related "palestinian" note, I found this a while back on the internet, and, though I have no idea as to it's source or authenticity, it makes some strong points-
"A Few Home Truths:
1. The palestinian arabs are mostly from Syria, Egypt, and other nearby countries, who emigrated to the area in the nineteenth century after Jews started investing money there, reclaiming swamps, and creating jobs and opportunities. Arafat himself was Egyptian. Palestine was the name the European occupiers gave to the Jewish kingdom in the area thousands of years earlier; there never was a palestinian kingdom (in the arab sense) there; no palestinian language; no palestinian money. In contrast we have irrefutable historical evidence of a Jewish kingdom, Jewish kings and governors, Jewish coins, Hebrew and Aramaic going back thousands of years. Later, sovereignity passed to the Turks, to the British, to the UN, and then to Israel and to Jordan. The Arabs, good friends of Hitler and never those to accept international law, made repeated wars to take away the Jewish state and murder its inhabitants. They failed. Repeatedly. Tough. They cannot now ask for a do-over as if their intervening acts had not taken place.
2. The palestinian arabs/PLO have never been able to get along with anyone, Arab or Jew. They tried to destabilize Kuwait and got kicked out. They tried to destabilize Jordan and got kicked out. They tried to destabilize Lebanon and got kicked out. This conflict is not about some bad behavior by the Israelis, but about the pathological sociopathy and extreme tribalism of the palestinian arabs.
3. One must distinguish between loyal Arab citizens of Israel, and occupied Palestinians outside the territory of Israel. The former are full citizens, even a cabinet minister. The latter (and their fifth column inside Israel) are enemy aliens who have tried to make war and "drive the Jews into the sea" repeatedly. They continue to massacre Israeli non-combatant women and children as a matter of policy; this policy is supported in the Arabic speeches of the highest levels of the "palestinian" government.
4. There is no such thing as the "innocent palestinian people". They voted for a terrorist government in free elections and must now be responsible for the consequences.
5. As the former Chief Economist of a major international oil company I have studied the middle east closely and visited it often. It is not the post-renaissance West. To understand Arab mentality one must understand that they are still pre-renaissance (medieval) and tribal. They never culturally learned the lessons of cooperation, accommodation, and peaceful negotiation with non-Muslims. Instead the Koran is rife with anti-Jewish and anti-Christian sentiments, and Christians are persecuted in many Islamic countries and must pay a special tax on non-Muslims (dictated by the Koran). Therefore one must speak to them in language they understand. Reading Shakespeare's Histories reveals how enlightened medieval monarchs thought. The were (like the Russians) pathologically territorial. Murder was the way to solve problems. The Israelis have learned this lesson--although repugnant to much Western thought, it is appropriate to the environment: "Step on my toes and I'll drop a house on you". When Israeli policy followed this principle it by and large worked; when they were "proportional" (as the European anti-semites like to call it) that policy brought them more death and ruin. It is not for nothing that a core Arab saying is "Me against my brother; me and my brother against my father; me and my brother and my father against my tribe, me and my tribe against the world." One must speak with one's interlocutors in language they understand.
6. Many of Arab claims are outright fabrications. I refer not only to tactical matters such as invented massacres, but strategic matters. The claim to Jerusalem is one such. Jerusalem is mentioned by name in the Torah hundreds of times. It is not mentioned once on the Koran--and the Prophet (pbuh) was an educated man who certainly knew how to spell. Instead the legendary "night journey" of the Prophet was described in the Koran in the original Arabic as "to the furthest Mosque". The Prophet certainly knew geography and "the furthest mosque" from Mecca had to be somewhere in the Mahgreb (North Africa) and not Jerusalem.
7. Al Aksa is a mosque, true, but certainly not the "third holiest place in Islam" except for its political value as an attempt to wrest control of Judaism's holiest spot from the Jews. This is not the first time it has been so used. Al Aksa was just another wooden mosque originally. Later, during the conflict between the Umayyad caliphate and Mecca, it was set up in competition with Mecca for political purposes. As soon as the conflict was resolved, it was abandoned and the roof was allowed to fall in. Its modern elevation to deny Jews access to their holiest place is anti-semitism, pure and simple.
8. It is false that the Arabs cannot be anti-semites because they are semites. They are not semites (descended from Noah's son Shem) but under the Middle Eastern practice of matrilineal descent they are Hamites (descended from Noah's son Ham). The Arabs stemmed from Ishmael, whose mother was neither Jewish nor Semitic; Hagar was Sarah's Egyptian maid. At a race memory level the Arabs have never forgiven the Jews for Abraham's kicking out Ishmael for having a thoroughly bad character, and favoring Isaac. Similarly with the Prophet--originally he was very friendly with the Jews, hoping they would convert. When they refused he turned viciously anti-semitic as can be seen in the Koran.
9. The Arabs' latest demand is the resettlement in Israel of Arabs who fled at the instigation of their leaders who promised to drive the Jews into the sea and let the refugees return to take over Jewish houses. Resettlement would be tantamount to a suicide pact by the Jews even if the gross inflation of the number claimed candidates were rectified. There are hundreds of stories of Arabs showing up at Jewish doorsteps with phony claims of ownership, only to find that the real owners were Arab emigres living happily in Lebanon, to whom the Jewish residents paid rent monthly.
10. Moreover, claims of restitution are absurd; if the Arabs want restitution for lost properties, let them pay restitution for all the Jewish properties taken by Arabs. The accounts would strongly favor the Jews. One of my friends was kicked out of Egypt by Nasser because she was Jewish, and died in Paris. She had owned the largest and most elegant hotel in Cairo, the Mina. Her story was repeated hundreds of thousands of times throughout the Arab world. In fact it would make a nice Ph.D. thesis for someone to add up the potential claims for restitution by Jews whose property was taken without fair compensation by Arab governments and compare it with comparable takings by the Israelis.
11. It is a fact that there is a large groups of people, calling themselves "Palestinians" who live mostly in poverty among rich and corrupt leaders, who have failed to destroy Israel and have been held political hostage by other Arab countries who refused to resettle them after they lost war after war. It is a fact that they present a humanitarian and a long term stability problem. But they cannot be helped until they give up their dreams of conquest and revenge for imagined slights, and start behaving like other civilized nations willing to live in peace with their neighbors. Once they act like such a nation they will become one, with massive assistance from the US and Israel and token assistance from Europe and the Arab world, and not a moment sooner. But first they must learn (to modify a Western expression) on which side of their pita the hummus is spread. Can they do it? History suggests otherwise, and thus they will present a perpetual containment problem for the rest of the world and will continue to be exploited by their leaders and often live in misery. Given the virulent anti-semitic and anti-Israeli sentiments inculcated in their schools and press, it is too late for this and the new generation. A pessimist would say it will take another 50 to 100 years; an optimist would say that if they experience a massive and humiliating defeat (a la Germany and Japan in WWII) followed by unconditiional surrender, it could be done in 10 to 20 years.
David Sternlight, Ph.D.
Los Angeles" |
