More Death and Blood {Updated}

Palestinian factions announce immediate cease fire

Defense minister at Gaza border says IDF will continue responding to anti-tank missile attack as long as necessary; IDF strikes targets throughout Strip, at least 4 Palestinians killed.

It just goes on and on and on and on.

From the 1920s until the present, it's death and blood and destruction, assassinations and suicide bombings and border raids. This is not what the Jews wanted and none of this was the least little bit necessary. People continue to be killed because for racist and religious reasons the Arabs, including the Arabs of the British mandate who later came to be called "Palestinians," have never accepted a Jewish state on even a sliver of land that was at one time part of Dar al Islam.

They would rather fight, die, and live in squalor than give up on the dream of destroying the Jewish state. It's the Palestinian raison d'être. Their whole identity is entirely bound up in the effort to kill the Jews and drive them out of their historical homeland and for many, such as the Nazis in Hamas, this is a religious obligation.

I know that many liberals and progressives do not like this kind of talk because they consider it "racist." Well, I do not know that it is racist so much as I know that it is stone-cold historical fact.

Is it still "racist" if it also happens to be true?

{As an aside, I remember some time ago when I was still a regular participant on Daily Kos someone, perhaps deaniac, claimed that the Palestinians taught their children to hate Jews and he used some video of Palestinian children's television to prove his point.  And then, of course, they started yelling at him, calling him a racist, down-rating his comment, and so forth.  It was actually kind of funny, because he kept saying things like, "But here's the evidence!... It's right here!... We have it on film!"  Yet, somehow, the truth was entirely irrelevant as they continued to berate the poor bastard.  -  I wonder whatever became of deaniac?  When I first started up this joint he would occasionally put in an appearance.}

Anyway, as I was saying, Palestinian identity is brand-spanking new. There's is nothing the least little bit controversial about that statement, or certainly there shouldn't be. All national identities have a starting point and usually those identities are born out of conflict, just as Palestinian identity was born out of conflict. This is as true for the Jews as it is for the French as it is for the Palestinians.

Of course, us Jews have been around for one hell of a long time, something close to 4 thousand years. The French have been the French for a matter of centuries.

And the Palestinians, as Palestinians, arrived at a quarter past Tuesday. That they would rather fight, die, and live in squalor than give up on the dream of destroying the Jewish state is proven from the fact that they refuse to give up the conflict by accepting a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one.

If I were wrong, there would have been peace many decades ago.

Needless to say, their advocates on the progressive-left would argue that the Palestinian struggle is a noble struggle against racism, oppression, colonization, imperialism, militarism, ethnic-cleansing, Zionism, gefilte fish, and other really, really bad things like that. The Palestinians have nothing in particular against the Jews, they would tell you, other than that want to live in dignity, and in prosperity, on their ancient homeland.

Or so they would have you believe.  Of course, it was only after Arafat starting strategizing with the Soviets that they reframed the struggle from one of "pushing the Jews into the sea" to a "noble struggle against imperialism."  That imperialism actually has nothing whatsoever to do with this fight is entirely irrelevant.  The framing is necessary in order to get well-meaning, but soft-headed, western dupes to buy what Arafat was selling, which is the legitimacy of the conflict, itself.  By framing the Long Arab War Against The Jews as a matter of "human rights" Arafat was able to fool progressives into the belief that the struggle is a righteous one.

The only problem is that for 1,400 hundred years the Arabs oppressed the Jews of the Middle East and kept them in dhimmi status. In the early part of the 20th century, decades before the arrival of Israel as the Jewish state, the Arabs of the mandate were already rioting and killing Jews because they did not want large numbers of Jews living among them as equals. For Jews to live as equals among Muslims is in violation of the Sharia, so they were having none of it.

And that's why the conflict goes on. If it were a simple matter of social justice for the Palestinians who want nothing more than to live in dignity and peace then they would have accepted one of their many offers for statehood, but they did not. They chose war instead. A war that they continue to lose and that results in the ongoing misery and poverty of their own people.

There is nothing noble about the Palestinian struggle. There is nothing the least little bit uplifting about strapping a bomb onto a young woman and then sending her into a pizza parlor to blow people up. The truth is that the Palestinian struggle is an abomination that no one should support, not even them. It is the Palestinian struggle, itself, which is the very cause of Palestinian misery.

If the Palestinians want a decent life for themselves and their progeny they need to stop fighting. So long as they continue to fight they will continue to die and live in rotten economic circumstances. Us Jews do not want to fight, but we will no longer allow ourselves to be attacked without redress. Those days are done.

Say it loud and say it proud.

The Day of the Dhimmi is Done.

Update:

In the comments, unspokable (heh) claims that the notion that the Palestinians live in squalor is largely propaganda.  According to the CIA World Factbook, the "West Bank" ranks 169th out of 229 countries in terms of GDP per capita.  This means that the economy of the western bank of the Jordan River is doing better than the economies of Yemen or Pakistan or Afghanistan or many, many other places throughout the world.  And while much of the Gaza strip is unquestionably squalor, the "West Bank" is doing considerably better.  I think that it's more than fair to say that most of those people are poor, however.

My recommendation, which I am sure that they will immediately adopt en masse, is that they give up on efforts to blow stuff up in favor of little projects like organic chemistry, micro economics, computer science, industrial engineering... and baseball!

Things like that.

Update 2:

I also changed the graphic on this one because the grinning skull is inappropriate. I think that it more or less reflected my mood at the moment that I chose it... a mood of absolute fucking horror and disgust... so I have changed it.

This current photo is from David Rubinger in TIME, 1948.

The caption reads:

Face of War

During the War of Independence, 1948, a woman receives basic training in grenade throwing.

It nicely illustrates the fact that the Day of the Dhimmi is Done.