Palestinians Want

Michael L.

They want and they want and they want.

Writing in Arutz Sheva, Jack Englhard says:

We read that “the Palestinians want to establish a state in East Jerusalem.” Well I want to play quarterback for the Green Bay Packers.

I have  as much right to this as they have to that, but they keep on wanting. There never was a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem or West Jerusalem.

There never was a Palestinian state anywhere.  Period.

End of story. If only that were so.

Who were their kings? Who were their prophets throughout the Holy Land for some 3,800 years? We can name thousands. It’s in the books. Can they name one?

But they keep on wanting. They want and they want and they want and the news media keeps wanting it for them.

Like crybabies who want the other child’s shiny toy, they want what is not theirs, a thing that never belonged to them. So they go crying to Mommy, in the form of the European Union, or they throw a tantrum for help from their uncles at the United Nations.

I have to say, Englehard is one tough cookie.

There is not a whole lot of moral equivocation with Jack Englehard.

What I like most about the guy, however, is that he has not allowed the so-called "Palestinian narrative" even so much as a foothold in his way of thinking.  He discusses the conflict in a manner which, to my mind, demonstrates an independence of thought that we can certainly use more of.

For example in the article linked to above he criticizes Reuters for publishing this line:

Palestinians want to establish a state in East Jerusalem, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Englehard writes:

Notice each word dipped in poison – “occupied” and “captured” and the most reliable phrasing of all, “Palestinians WANT.” 

It is this kind of attention to the assumptions behind the framing of the conflict that we must constantly be aware of.  That one brief sentence seems so innocuous, yet is so dangerously and unjustly wrong on so many levels.

First of all, just what is "East Jerusalem"?  There is no such place!  Jerusalem is a city which, like every city on earth, has an eastern section, a western section, a northern section, and a southern section.  There is no distinct and separate part of Jerusalem with big signs reading, "Welcome to East Jerusalem: You Know, the Arab Section!"

They refer to something called "East Jerusalem" because they want to plant in the mind of the reader the notion that there is a part of Jerusalem that naturally belongs to the Arabs and that just happens to be the part of town that contains the Jewish section of the Old City, the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall.  Thus, we often get the construction "Arab East Jerusalem."

Also, of course, notice the phraseology "occupied West Bank."  This usage is so insidious precisely because it runs under the radar of the vast majority of readers.  The term "West Bank," needless to say, was a term invented by the Jordanians after 1948 in order to erase Jewish history on Jewish land and thereby justify their land-grab of Judea and Samaria.  For thousands of years Judea and Samaria has been known as Judea and Samaria (if not Yehuda and Shomron) and the name was only changed recently to accommodate Arab attempts to oust Jews from the land of our ancestors.

And, obviously, to refer to the "West Bank" as "occupied" implies that Israel - the one, lone, sole sovereign state of the Jewish people - has no rights to property on historically Jewish land.  To imply that Jews are wrongfully "occupying" Judea and Samaria would be like suggesting that the French are wrongfully "occupying" Burgundy and the Côtes du Rhône.  In fact, it is even more ridiculous, yet, because the Jews were living on that land as Jews thousands of years before anyone ever heard of any such place as "France."

And, yes, the idea that Israel simply "captured" the area during the 6 Day War erases Arab aggression from the conflict, thereby leaving in the mind of the reader Israeli-Jewish aggression.

Finally, where in the world did Reuters ever get the idea that what the local Arabs want is a state for themselves in peace next to the Jewish one?   Does Reuters not read the news?  The Arabs have turned down offer after offer after offer for a twenty-third Arab state to be implanted directly on top of the Jewish homeland, just as they built a mosque directly on top of the site of the Second Temple.

So, no, the so-called "Palestinians" do not want to establish a state for themselves.  On the contrary, what they want is to destroy Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land because it violates their theocratically-based sense of righteous superiority above the sniveling dhimmi.

Thus, all I am really suggesting is that we must read critically and not allow pro-Arab / anti-Israel western media bias to go by without criticism and commentary.

If we use the terminology of our enemies, as the media does, than we have lost the fight before it has even begun.

After all, if you honestly believe - as very many western-left Jews do - that Israel is engaged in an "Occupation" of someone else's land, then you are ultimately spreading the message that Arabs are fully justified in attempts to harass and kill Jews.

I recommend against.