Fundamental Misunderstanding

Submitted by George Laker (United States), Dec 11, 2011 at 23:45

Your view is quite commonly being expressed as a response to Gingrich's statement: "So what if he what he said is true, every nation is invented!"

The relevance lies in the fact that the commonly accepted narrative is that the Palestinians are inherently and unconditionally entitled to the West Bank and Gaza, that they have always been a distinct people inhabiting the land without interruption, and that prior to the "illegal" invasion of the European Zionists, Palestine was a jubilant and contiguous state. Many uninformed individuals in the West, and the vast majority of the world's Muslims truly believe this is the case; the international community of leaders and intellectuals, for the most part, is either indifferent to the espousal of such counter factual assertions or is actively ensuring their perpetuation.

The narrative has become so ingrained in the crippling air of fear and political correctness that not even its glaring falsity is any longer considered an acceptable justification for the expression of any dissenting honesty. The more practical issue with accepting the narrative is that it implicitly denies the existence of a legitimate disagreement over territory that has not been part of a defined or legitimate state for the past hundred years. The petition for unilateral recognition through the U.N. is the latest and most egregious example of the consequences of such thinking, the basis of which is the notion that no dispute exists and that an obstinate Israeli state is all that stands between the Arabs of Palestine and sovereignty.

The fact is - and it is a fact - that the Arabs of Palestine have been branded a distinct "Palestinian" people purely for political and military purposes; this is considered either false or so disrespectful that it may as well be false. Has the manipulative emergence of the Arabs of Palestine as "Palestinians" made them any less of a nationality? Absolutely not. But it remains the undeniable qualifier of their entire existence as a distinct people. The Arabs of Palestine were never nationalized with the intent of securing their own sovereignty and stability; they were nationalized for the purpose of laundering a perpetual political, social, and military opposition to a Jewish presence in the region by the surrounding Arab states. That is a gargantuan strike against their credibility.

What kind of state can possibly exist whose people and entire culture have been defined in terms of guaranteeing the destruction of another people? That the Palestinians were invented does not speak to their lack of a nationality - it speaks to their lack of responsibility, credibility, and commitment to securing a stable government. There is no shortage of failed, tyrannical states in this world - do we really need to sanction the creation of another under the auspices of an international organization that was created to combat precisely that?

The answer to your question is not that the Palestinians don't really exist as a people, it is that they don't deserve to exist as a state.

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