The Indigenous Who?

Michael L.

So, there I was, a few years ago, sitting in a meeting of San Francisco Commonwealth Club's Middle East discussion forum when someone started yammering at the group about the indigenous rights of the "Palestinian" people and I kept thinking, "Who is indigenous, again?"

This is not a matter of speculation or interpretation or bias.  This is a matter of basic historical fact.  It is a fact that the Jewish people have the longest standing claim to what was known as the "British Mandate of Palestine" than any other people on the face of the earth.  The Jews have as much claim to the Land of Israel as the Chinese have to the Land of China.

We certainly have far more claim to Jerusalem than the French have to Paris.  And, yet, somehow, no one ever questions the rights of the French to autonomy and self-determination.  No one ever suggests that merely because France is the land of the French people that it is somehow inherently unjust to those without a French ancestry.

Or, do they?

One never knows these days.

In any case, the very last thing that the Israeli government should do is to carve out a hunk of Jerusalem as a birthday present to dictator Abbas or to the Arab League.  We need to stop empowering our enemies.

Jerusalem is the capital city of the Jews, just as Paris is the capital city of the French and London is the capital city of the English.  We are no less a people than they are and we have as much right to our capital city as do they.

That is all.

{A big Tip 'O the Kippa to Doodad.}