by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n Newt Gingrich touched off a mini-firestorm when he told a Jewish television channel that the Palestinians are an \u201cinvented\u201d people \u201cwho are in fact Arabs,\u201d and \u201cwho were historically part of the Arab community.\u201d This simple statement of historical fact was of course met with the usual bluster from the Palestinians, who called the statements \u201cignorant,\u201d \u201cdespicable,\u201d and of course \u201cracist,\u201d a meaningless charge. And what response from the Palestinians would be complete without the usual threat that the statement they don\u2019t like will \u201cincrease the cycle of violence,\u201d as Palestinian lead negotiator Saeb Erekat put it?<\/p>\n The truly \u201cignorant,\u201d however, are those who have bought the \u201cPalestinian homeland\u201d propaganda. Where was all this talk about a homeland for the Palestinians in 1948, when the Arab armies invaded Israel? Their aim was not to create a Palestinian state, but rather to carve up the rest of British Mandatory Palestine, as the secretary-general of the Arab League, Abdel Rahman Azzam, confessed at the time: \u201cAbdullah [ruler of Transjordan] was to swallow up the central hill regions of Palestine . . . The Egyptians would get the Negev. The Galilee would go to Syria, except that the coastal part as far as Acre would be added to the Lebanon.\u201d Until 1967, the so-called \u201cWest Bank\u201d was part of Jordan, but none of the Arab nations agitated for the creation of a Palestinian state. The \u201cPalestinian homeland\u201d became a tactical weapon after violence failed to achieve the real aim, the destruction of Israel.<\/p>\n In fact, the Palestinians themselves have admitted that the \u201cPalestinian homeland\u201d is a tactical weapon for the destruction of Israel. Listen to Zahir Muhsein, a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee, from an interview with a Dutch newspaper given in 1977: \u201cThe Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct \u2018Palestinian people\u2019 to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.\u201d<\/p>\n Muhsein\u2019s statement is consistent with the stated aims of the Palestinian leadership for the last half century: to destroy Israel in \u201cstages.\u201d In 1993, on the same day that the Oslo Accords handed over the West Bank to the PLO, Yasser Arafat told Jordanian television, \u201cSince we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do it in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty [sic] there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.\u201d Indeed, before 1967, Palestinians did speak of a homeland, but it was not to exist in the West Bank, but in Israel. The 1964 PLO Charter Article 24 explicitly said, \u201cThis Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area.\u201d After 1967, this article was removed for strategic purposes. Thus any content to the notion of a \u201cPalestinian homeland\u201d is inextricably predicated on the destruction of Israel, as Article 2 of the 1968 Charter makes clear: \u201cPalestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.\u201d Consistent with this principle, Arafat said in 1970, \u201cWe shall never stop until we can go back home and Israel is destroyed, peace for us means Israel\u2019s destruction and nothing else.\u201d In other words, the \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d that Westerners continue to chant like a mantra will not resolve the conflict between Israel and the Arabs.<\/p>\n Our failures in dealing with a dysfunctional Middle East in part result from a failure of imagination, our unwillingness to think beyond our own ideals and see beyond the duplicitous pretexts of our adversaries. The tactic of a \u201cPalestinian homeland,\u201d for example, exploits the Western ideal of the nation-state as forming the fundamental structure of a people and their collective identity. But nationalism is not an organic part of Islam, which recognizes no separation of church and state. A people are created by their adherence to Islam, by being members of the global\u00a0umma<\/em>\u00a0or Muslim community. The PLO Charter makes this clear in Article 15: \u201cThe liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national (qawmi<\/em>) duty and it attempts to repel the Zionist and imperialist aggression against the Arab homeland, and aims at the elimination of Zionism in Palestine. Absolute responsibility for this falls upon the Arab nation \u2014 peoples and governments \u2014 with the Arab people of Palestine in the vanguard.\u201d Palestinian nationalism is an expression of Arab nationalism, in a way unimaginable for any Western country, for the simple reason that Arab nationalism is in fact another expression of universal Muslim identity.<\/p>\n In fact, every Middle Eastern Muslim country that has shaken off its kleptocratic dictators writes its government charters to reflect the religious foundations of Muslim nationalism. Iraq\u2019s constitution \u2014 purchased with American blood and treasure \u2014 reads at the start, \u201cIslam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation,\u201d and asserts, \u201cNo law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.\u201d The second article proclaims, \u201cThis constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people.\u201d In Afghanistan\u2019s Constitution, Article 2 says, \u201cThe religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam.\u201d Article 3 adds, \u201cIn Afghanistan, no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.\u201d And these are the two states where the United States has provided billions of dollars, security, and a custodial presence all meant to create \u201cfreedom and democracy\u201d in an Islamic state. We can imagine what will arise in Libya and Egypt, where Islamist parties dedicated to founding a state on Sharia law are driving events. Influential Egyptian cleric\u00a0Safwat Higazi<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 who appeared on stage with Muslim Brother \u201cSpiritual Guide\u201d Yusuf al-Qaradawi when the latter returned in triumph to Cairo after Mubarak\u2019s fall \u2014 has given us a clear indication of what to expect: \u201cI am convinced that Islam is imminent, the caliphate is imminent. One of these days, the United States of Islam will be established. Allah willing, it will be soon. Egypt will be one state in this [United States of Islam.] Morocco and Saudi Arabia will be states as well.\u201d<\/p>\n National identity, then, means something very different to most Muslims from what it means to us. For most Muslims in the Middle East, being Muslim takes precedence over being an Egyptian, a Libyan, or a Palestinian. And being Muslim means endorsing Sharia law, which is incompatible with Western notions of universal human rights and tolerance. The obsession with Palestinian \u201cnational identity\u201d or \u201cnational aspirations\u201d blinds us to the religious foundations of Arab hatred of Israel and Jews evident throughout the Middle East and driving policy toward Israel.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine Newt Gingrich touched off a mini-firestorm when he told a Jewish television channel that the Palestinians are an \u201cinvented\u201d people \u201cwho are in fact Arabs,\u201d and \u201cwho were historically part of the Arab community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[152,22],"tags":[319,443,66,1035,544,1043,30,500,446,1046,542,543,545,1041,458,1016,453,454],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-lp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3052,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/corrupt-language-breeds-bad-history-and-bad-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1327,"position":0},"title":"Corrupt Language Breeds Bad History and Bad Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society As the history of communism and fascism both illustrate, modern political tyranny has relied on fabricated history to legitimize its claims and actions, and such history in turn relies on the debasement of language. Nowhere is this axiom more evident than in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":978,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/harvard-promotes-the-palestinians-slow-motion-final-solution\/","url_meta":{"origin":1327,"position":1},"title":"Harvard Promotes the Palestinians’ Slow-Motion ‘Final Solution’","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Media There is no idea so hateful or useless that some university somewhere won\u2019t hold a conference on it. The latest example of this unfortunate truism is the recently announced \u201cIsrael\/Palestine and the One-State Conference\u201d scheduled for early March at the Harvard Kennedy School. Nineteen\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":545,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/romney-and-the-palestinian-culture-of-destruction\/","url_meta":{"origin":1327,"position":2},"title":"Romney and the Palestinian Culture of Destruction","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is under attack for speaking an important truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict. At a fundraiser in Jerusalem on Monday, Romney made the obvious, even banal, point about the economic disparity between nations. Speaking of Israel and the Palestinian-run West Bank,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Palestine"","block_context":{"text":"Palestine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/palestine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7190,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/israels-worst-enemy-lies-and-myths\/","url_meta":{"origin":1327,"position":3},"title":"Israel’s Worst Enemy: Lies and Myths","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 8, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0reports that some members of Secretary of State John Kerry\u2019s senior staff think it\u2019s time to say \u201cenough\u201d of Kerry\u2019s futile and delusional attempts to broker peace between the Israelis and Arabs and implement the \u201ctwo- state solution.\u201d That\u2019s a revelation one would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1676,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-pathology-of-double-standards\/","url_meta":{"origin":1327,"position":4},"title":"The Pathology of Double Standards","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The surreal moral idiocy that characterizes hatred of Israel is illustrated daily by states whose actions are shrugged away by the international media. Consider the recent Turkish invasion of northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish militants who killed 24 soldiers at military posts near\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Israel"","block_context":{"text":"Israel","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/israel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":442,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-palestinian-playbook\/","url_meta":{"origin":1327,"position":5},"title":"The Palestinian Playbook","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thronton Frontpage Magazine The most depressing thing about the Obama administration\u2019s foreign policy debacle unfolding in the Middle East is that for sixty years we\u2019ve repeatedly experienced the same Islamist game plan for defeating us that is being employed today. There is no tactic currently being used by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Palestine"","block_context":{"text":"Palestine","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/palestine\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1327"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5627,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions\/5627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}