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Thursday, March 4, 2010

THE BLOOD SPILLED IS ALL TOO REAL; THE WORLD CONVERSATION IS A MISFORTUNATE MYTHOLOGY.

ARAB PALESTINIANS ARE NOT MYTHICAL BEINGS, NEITHER ARE JEWISH PALESTINIANS MYTHICAL BEINGS; WHAT IS CRUEL AND USELESS IS THE HATRED AND PROPAGANDA SPEWED FORTH BY BOTH ARABS AND JEWS, WHO AT VARIOUS TIMES IN HISTORY HAVE EXPERIENCED SHARED OCCUPATION BY FOREIGN POWERS, MOST RECENTLY BY EUROPEAN POWERS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.

The world should express sadness and compassion at all loss of life. At the same time, the world should not be blind to the differences of language and culture behind the Arab-Israeli Conflict, nor to the reality that, if perhaps a third of the Arabs currently living within Israeli controlled boundaries prefer the life and protections of a democratic modern Israel, the other two-thirds are indifferent or hateful of Israel and represent a Fifth Column that Israel cannot tolerate and that the world should not require Israel to tolerate.

The world should carry the ball in seeing to an enforced and well-paid resettlement of that Fifth Column. The sooner the world ceases to worship the "false idol" of the idea of a "State of Palestine", then the sooner the killing can stop and peace be realized.

There is no need to bribe or leverage either side or both sides with money or the withholding of money. There is only need to see the realities of past and modern history, which suggest the solution. Proper boundaries and resettlement of the FIfth Column will make for sounder nations able to sustain investments and to engage in mutually beneficial trade and tourism.

Let us stop using degrading language that clouds conversation and incorrectly defines who is who and what is what. The myth of a State of Palestine does not make the millions of Arab Palestinians mythical beings any more than it makes the millions of Jewish Palestinians mythical beings. Every drop of blood that is spilled is real blood, not mythical blood; only the conversation is mythical, for it does not correspond to reality.

Even as I write this, most of the world is programmed to believe that by definition a Palestinian is not Jewish and that Israeli Arabs are oppressed Palestinians; therefore, most of the world may have to read comments such as mine over and over until it sinks in that the term "Palestinian" applies equally to Arabs and Jews -- including exiled Jews living in the Diaspora for two or more thousand years -- and that a "State of Palestine" would deny Jews a secure homeland and at the same time would deny Arabs entry into their natural homelands.

Similarly, the mythical "West Bank" is a European invention of territorial naming; the proper designations for that territory are Judea and Samaria, part and parcel of historical Israel, the singular tiny national homeland of Jews. For every reason the world must support Israel to be whole again as one undivided State; so, too, the world can support the Arab right to return to the many existing States that are their historical homelands.

PRESIDENT BARAK HUSSEIN OBAMA CAN STAND UP AND SET HISTORICAL PRECEDENT WITH THE NAME HIS FATHER GAVE HIM.

FIRST, CORRECT THE LEXICON IN THE CONTEXT OF WHICH THE ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT IS DISCUSSED; THEN, REALITY MAY HAVE SOME CORRESPONDENCE TO THE TERMS OF DISCUSSION. BOTH JEWS AND ARABS ARE PALESTINIAN. IT IS JUST PLAIN WRONG TO EXCLUDE JEWS FROM THE PALESTINIAN IDENTITY. SIMILARLY IT IS JUST PLAIN WRONG TO DEFINE THE CONFLICT AS AN “ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN” CONFLICT, WHEN IN FACT IT IS AN “ARAB-ISRAELI” CONFLICT.

Once the terms are properly defined, once the distortion of incorrect ‘prescription glasses’ is removed, the reality of the conflict may come into focus. That reality has far greater implications than the world conversation has embraced in the past several decades. Ever since the decisive wars of 1967 and 1973, the world has believed that the scale of the Arab-Israli Conflict no longer ranged outside Israeli controlled borders and that therefore a final peace with the local Arab population could only be a few moments away. The world chose to call the Arabs within Israeli controlled borders “Palestinian”.

“Palestinian” is a term given by the Ancient Roman occupation of the middle east to all the inhabitants of that geography — Israeli, Arab, and everyone else. The British and French and Germans (Modern Romans) applied this Roman lexicon to the middle east, when in modern times they themselves occupied these lands and subjugated these middle eastern Peoples. There never existed a People or a State called “Palestine” except as a subjugated territorial entity of the Romans and the Modern Romans. [Today's Arabs from that geographical area are not identifiable with the "Philistines", although it has been a convenient myth with which the Arabs and Jew-haters propagandize in order to falsely claim an historical claim to Gaza.]

Jews have lived in Israel/Palestine dating back to the times of ancient Egypt. There has been continuous Jewish life in Israel/Palestine throughout history, even during the most decimating occupations by Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Turks, Modern Romans….

The vast majority of Arabs are Muslims, not Christians, and if at street level most people are not motivated by militancy, there are two powerful minorities that are married to militancy. These are the Jihadists, who wage their terrorist utopian Holy Wars; and then there are the Governments of the many Islamic nation-states, who rule by terror and by diversion of attention away from their own repressions by scapegoating Jews and the West; too often they find common cause with the Jihadists.

Israel has no peace with the Arab population within Israeli controlled borders because the Arab Governments don’t want peace with Israel and to this day refuse to make peace with Israel, the well-paid semi-exceptions being Egypt and Jordan. When the world at large understands that the Arab-Israeli Conflict is like a giant iceberg, and that the localized violence that is visible in Israel is visible in the same way that the tip of an iceberg is visible, perhaps then the world can become constructive in the seeking of real solutions. Denial just means ’shipwreck after shipwreck’ and a steady rise in ‘maintenance and insurance costs’.
If President Obama has the courage to stand up to reality, and not just be team leader in a never ending Washington game of “Capture The Flag”, he may make the most of the name his father gave him, declare himself to be the first American Muslim to be President of the USA, and establish a worldwide Muslim precedent demanding worldwide recognition of the State of Israel inclusive of Judea-Samaria (commonly referred to as the “West Bank”); he should suggest the creation of a world fund to support the voluntary emigration and resettlement from Israel of all willing Arab residents living within Israeli controlled borders, who cannot stomach the idea of living in a Jewish State, to the nations of their choice.

More than 1500 years of Muslim expansion in the world has created no shortage of possible destination homes for the Arabs today living within Israeli controlled borders; by nation of origin they may be identified in fact as mostly Egyptian, Saudi, Jordanian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Iranian, and Turkish.

All should remember not only the decimations of Hitler; Hitler had many allies including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and a Muslim world that raped, murdered, and exiled Jews all the way from Afghanistan to Africa and from Russia to Iran. Israel remembers, and yet despite this history 20% of Israel’s voting citizens today are Arabs…. At what point must Israel’s idealism gove way to Israel’s survival needs as a tiny ‘island’ Jewish State in a vast ’sea’ of Muslim States?

President Barak Hussein Obama can make a profound difference and set positive democratic precedents in the solution of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Israel is already a democracy with two-million Arab citizens. This reality can be preserved and can be a precedent towards liberalization of Arab States to become inclusive and tolerant of non-Muslims. Anything less is a profoundly anti-Israeli, anti-democratic double standard that the world must reject on principle.