"Remember, there was no Palestine as a state; it was part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and historically part of the Arab community; and they had the chance to go many places."FP: It’s not just that they could “go to many places: they came from many places:
Yoram Ettinger: Who are the Palestinians?
Most Palestinian Arabs are descendants of the Muslim migrants who came to the area between 1845 to 1947 from the Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, as well as from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Bosnia, the Caucasus, Turkmenistan, Kurdistan, India, Afghanistan and Balochistan.
Arab migrant workers were imported by the Ottoman Empire and by the British Mandate (which defeated the Ottomans in 1917) for infrastructure projects: The port of Haifa, the Haifa-Qantara, Haifa-Edrei, Haifa-Nablus and Jerusalem-Jaffa railroads, military installations, roads, quarries, reclamation of wetlands, etc. Illegal Arab laborers were also attracted by the relative economic boom in British Mandate Palestine, stimulated by Jewish immigration.
According to a 1937 report by the British Peel Commission (Palestine Betrayed, Prof. Efraim Karsh, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 12), “The increase in the Arab population is most marked in urban areas, affected by Jewish development. A comparison of the census returns in 1922 and 1931 shows that, six years ago, the increase percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent.”
As a result of the substantial Arab immigration between 1880 and 1947– and despite Arab emigration caused by domestic chaos and intra-Arab violence - the Arab population of Jaffa, Haifa and Ramla grew 17-, 12- and five-fold, respectively.
See Alex Joffe (Newt and the Palestinians) for a similar but more in depth perspective. Barry Rubin (Fact-Checking Newt Gingrich and the Fact-Checkers on the Middle East) makes an important point:
What’s important is whether a large portion of the people in question believe that they are a people. Moreover, the same “invented” charge has been made against the Jewish people by Stalin and of course by Arab and Islamist propaganda.
The fact that today, a Palestinian people does exist doesn’t give the Palestinians a right to invent history, of course. ABC News didn’t point out that they regularly claim a history of two thousand years or more. And Golda Meir was pointing to the fact that the dominant politics of the Palestinian movement certainly as late as 1945 was a pan-Arab nationalist one. If the “invention” of a Palestinian (Arab, Muslim) people is relatively recent, though, that does imply that they don’t have a claim to everything between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. And that’s what’s important.
Rubin also noticed that Gingrich said this:
Yet ABC and everyone else missed the real bombshell in what Gingrich said: “For a variety of political reasons we [the United States] have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic.” It would be fascinating to hear Gingrich expand on that point.
Note that this is a major argument of mine about the world in general and the West (including the US) in particular: funding the Palestinians and pressuring Israel for concessions has supported genocidal terror and Arab rejection of peace.
David Mamet: Israel, Isaac and the Return of Human Sacrifice
Previously the anxiety and fear attendant upon all human life was understood as Fear of the Gods, and dealt with by propitiation, which is to say by sacrifice. Now, however, the human burden was not to give The Gods what one imagined, in one's fear, that they might want, but do, in conscience, those things one understood God to require.
In abandonment of the state of Israel, the West reverts to pagan sacrifice, once again, making a burnt offering not of that which one possesses, but of that which is another's. As Realpolitik, the Liberal West's anti-Semitism can be understood as like Chamberlain's offering of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, a sop thrown to terrorism. On the level of conscience, it is a renewal of the debate on human sacrifice.
FP: As I wrote: the West has decided to sacrifice Israel to befriend the Islamists. If Israel is eliminated my only consolation is in knowing it’s a Western delusion.
Lee Smith: Lebanon Smolders
Yesterday, a rocket fired from southern Lebanon missed its target in Israel. Instead it wounded a Lebanese woman, hinting at a possible pattern of things to come. While Hezbollah contends that its weapons are to protect Lebanon from Israel, the reality is that the arms used to defend the resistance’s patrons Iran and Syria are likely to cause Lebanon yet more suffering.
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It’s worth noting that Israel, most likely to avoid escalation, often chooses to pretend that Hezbollah is not involved in incidents originating from the regions that it controls. For instance, three rockets were fired two weeks ago across the border at Israel, but after the IDF responded with artillery rounds, the Israelis seemed willing, publicly anyway, to play along with the idea that the guilty party was a little-known Palestinian faction allegedly affiliated with al Qaeda—the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, named after Osama bin Laden’s Palestinian mentor.
Even before the organization announced that it had nothing to do with the rockets, it was clear why Hezbollah and its allies might want to frame the incident as a Sunni operation. The point was to show that if Syrian president Bashar al-Assad falls, Sunni jihadists will cause lots of trouble for Israel and the West.
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While France and others apparently see the recent violence in Lebanon as a sign that the troubles in Syria might be spilling over the border, there is another equally or even more dangerous possibility—it’s about Iran. The secret war that Tehran’s adversaries, largely the United States and Israel, are waging against the Islamic Republic is driving the regime to distraction. In return, the Iranians are testing redlines; the problem is that the regime may well wind up leading itself, Lebanon, Israel, and perhaps even the United States to an open war. All it takes is one rocket hitting the right target at the wrong time and Israel will no longer be able to afford the luxury of looking the other way.
FP: Unlike Smith I would argue that if Assad falls and is replaced by an Islamist regime, Hizb’allah in Lebanon might not be a bad idea. With Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists influencing if not ruling Arab states a Shia Iranian ally in their midst without the Syrian protector and link to keep them on their toes may not be a bad idea (not that when it comes to Israel, Hizba’allah and Sunni Islamists can’t join forces, but still).
JoshuaPundit: Final Results Of The Climate Conference's Attempted Rip Off Of American Taxpayers
President Obama and the UN were unsuccessful in their attempt to soak America with a huge 'climate tax' and transfer billions to the UN while bypassing Congress, but the can was essentially kicked down the road until next year, and there was some progress towards that ultimate goal.
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So essentially, the entire scheme is put off for one year. Keep in mind that while President Obama may have been defeated by then,he will still be in office, so this bears careful watching.
Especially since the dinosaur media isn't telling you a thing about this foul effort to pick your pockets to benefit a lot of well connected greenies, Third world shakedown artists and UN bureaucrats.
Keep in mind that the framework agreed on in Durban was specifically designed to avoid being a treaty = because those have to be voted on by the Senate,not just put through by executive order.
FP: There are two aspects of this concoction that should worry Americans, which are reason alone to kick Obama out of office: (1) this is another attempt to emulate the anti-democratic and failing EU and impose government actions on the public without the consent of its elected representatives (2) apparently it is not enough to rob the public to enrich the parasites of the financial industry that keeps bringing the US and world economy down, now the UN, that good for nothing bureaucracy controlled by Islamic states and other anti-Semites and enemies of the US will also be bailed out at the expense of the American public. The acceleration of decline is pretty steep.
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