The "Plight" Of The Palestinians In Israel
If you look to how the Druze are treated in Israel, it becomes obvious: the "plight" of the Palestinians is self-caused -- by how they don't want to live side-by-side with the Israelis; they want them dead and gone.
Norman Podhoretz writes in the WSJ:
Let me leave aside the Palestinians who live in Israel as Israeli citizens and who enjoy the same political rights as Israeli Jews (which is far more than can be said of Palestinians who live in any Arab country), and let me concentrate on those living under Israeli occupation on the West Bank.Well, to judge by the most significant measure and applying it only to two instances of what is going on at this very moment: In Syria, untold thousands of fellow Arabs are starving, while according to the United Nations official on the scene in South Sudan, 3.7 million people, amounting to one-third of the population, are now facing imminent death by starvation.
And the Palestinians? True, when they wish to go from the West Bank into Israel proper, they are forced to stop at checkpoints and subjected to searches for suicide vests or other weapons in the terrorist arsenal. Once, when she was secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice bemoaned the great inconvenience and humiliation inflicted by such things on the poor Palestinians. Yet she had nothing to say about Palestinians dying of starvation on the West Bank, for the simple reason that there were none to be found.
Nor did anyone starve to death in Gaza when it too was under Israeli occupation. And despite propaganda to the contrary, neither is anyone facing the same fate in Gaza today because of the blockade the Israelis have set up to prevent clandestine shipments of arms intended for use against them.
Speaking of Gaza, it can serve as a case study of the extent to which the plight of the Palestinians has been self-inflicted. Thus when every last Israeli was pulled out of Gaza in 2005, some well-wishers expected that the Palestinians, now in complete control, would dedicate themselves to turning it into a free and prosperous country. Instead, they turned it into a haven for terrorism and a base for firing rockets into Israel.
The main reason he says the Palestinians don't deserve any sympathy?
It is that ever since the day of Israel's birth in 1948, they have never ceased declaring that their goal is to wipe it off the map. In all other contexts, this would be called by its rightful name of genocide and condemned by all decent people. Yet--here we go topsy-turvy again--for any and every step Israel takes to defend itself against so shamelessly evil an intent, it is the Israelis who are obsessively condemned at the U.N. and by the increasingly strident propagators of what calls itself "anti-Zionism" but is also increasingly indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.
A particularly cuddly hadith:
Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177: Narrated Abu Huraira:Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."
From thereligionofpeace.com:
The Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule. Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding. Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.Unlike nearly all of the Old Testament verses of violence, the verses of violence in the Quran are mostly open-ended, meaning that they are not restrained by the historical context of the surrounding text. They are part of the eternal, unchanging word of Allah, and just as relevant or subjective as anything else in the Quran.
The context of violent passages is more ambiguous than might be expected of a perfect book from a loving God, however this can work both ways. Most of today's Muslims exercise a personal choice to interpret their holy book's call to arms according to their own moral preconceptions about justifiable violence. Apologists cater to their preferences with tenuous arguments that gloss over historical fact and generally do not stand up to scrutiny. Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology.
Any time you like, I can hook you up with people in the West Bank and Gaza so you can go see for yourself.
NicoleK at April 10, 2014 1:21 AM
Any time you like, I can hook you up with people in the West Bank and Gaza so you can go see for yourself.
Posted by: NicoleK at April 10, 2014 1:21 AM
And I am absolutely sure, just by looking at them, you can acertain how they ended up where they are, the problems they have, and who is responsible for those problems.
Isab at April 10, 2014 3:29 AM
Why would I want to be hooked up with people who see me as an infidel worthy of having his head chopped and would do so not because I've committed a blood offense against their family, but because of the command of a dusty prophet from 1500 years ago?
At least I'm just an infidel. They might relent and give me an opportunity to convert. Our lovely blog hostess, on the other hand, would be considered a Jew, raped and murdered, and they'd high 5 each other and do a victory lap and post the video on youtube...
I R A Darth Aggie at April 10, 2014 5:51 AM
"Still, it is important to note that the problem is not bad people, but bad ideology."
From a practical standpoint, there's little difference... people who are attracted to a bad ideology are likeley either bad people to begin with, or will become that way as they follow the dictates of the ideology.
I will say, that from my perch thousands of miles away, the situation appears to be slightly more sane in the West Bank. They still believe in a bad ideology, but they don't seem to be living like absoute pre-civilizational savages the way the Gazans are. One can't help but wonder if there's an exploitable opportunity there.
Cousin Dave at April 10, 2014 6:31 AM
I used to have access to a database called "Polling the Nations". One set you could view in there was public opinion surveys conducted in the West Bank and Gaza over the period running from 2003 to 2008. They made depressing reading. The burden of the responses was that certain things were non-negotiable to that population. North of a third insist that a 'solution' requires the dissolution of the State of Israel. Another 30% or so are willing to sign agreements with Israel, but a non-negotiable element would be a franchise granted to a fuzzily defined set of Arabs (numbering in the 7 digits) to settle in Israel at their own discretion. So, more than two-thirds of the population in the West Bank and Gaza (in their current reduced economic circumstances) insists on Israel's suicide by express train or slow boat.
Something Conor Cruise O'Brien said a generation ago still applies: "there is no solution. There is only security.".
Art Deco at April 10, 2014 6:51 AM
From a practical standpoint, there's little difference... people who are attracted to a bad ideology are likeley either bad people to begin with, or will become that way as they follow the dictates of the ideology.
Agreed. We are not and have not been contending for generations with violent agitation by Silesian and Sudeten Germans, nor by Greek Cypriots. People have business to run, work to do, and families to attend to, and local communities to build. Or they do when they're stupid pride does not get in the way.
Art Deco at April 10, 2014 6:55 AM
The Israelis are being tongue lashed by the [dis]Honorable John Kerry for the peace talks breaking down.
The Israeli demand that is causing the rift: They want the Palestinians to acknowledge that Israel and Jews have a right to exist and live.
That's just such a minor detail that it should be ignored, right?
Jim P. at April 10, 2014 7:55 AM
Myths vs. facts:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths3/MFrights.html#10
Amy Alkon at April 10, 2014 8:12 AM
A quote from that site:
Amy Alkon at April 10, 2014 8:13 AM
A blog item I posted a while back:
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2014/01/10/palestinians_ar.html
Palestinians Are Starving -- But In Syria
Can't blame the Jooos? Then nobody in the world cares.
Amy Alkon at April 10, 2014 8:14 AM
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