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My Palestinian Wife
By Charley Reese
25/08/08 "Lew
Rockwell" -- - Every
now and then, the rumor arises that I have a Palestinian wife.
Some of my kin were highly amused by a debate on that subject
that was being conducted by letters to the editor in their local
paper recently.
Apparently, it does not occur to anyone simply to ask me. As a
matter of fact, I don't have a wife. I'm a widower, and the one
wife I had was a sweet Midwestern girl of Methodist, German and
Swedish extraction. I don't have a Palestinian mistress or
girlfriend. I don't even have a Palestinian bowling pal.
The recurring Palestinian wife rumor, I believe, is a result of
some people finding it impossible to believe that an American
would have any sympathy for the Palestinian people without an
ulterior motive. That is a credit to the effectiveness of the
Israeli propaganda machine, which has, for more than 50 years,
stereotyped Palestinians as a wild, violent people. It is a
stereotype helped greatly by the news media, which rarely
reports in depth on anything foreign, and by Hollywood, where
lately the venerable Nazi has been replaced as the chief villain
by the Arab terrorist.
Actually, Palestinians are a gentle people. If you get to know
some and hear their side of the story, you will feel sympathy
for them, too, unless you have a flint heart. The Palestinians
were run over by history. I know that various ethnic groups in
the United States fiercely contend for the title of victim, but
the Palestinians had it imposed on them.
There was nothing they could do when the Ottoman Empire absorbed
their land. There was nothing they could do when the British
Empire took their land away from the Ottoman Turks at the end of
World War I. There was nothing they could do when the British
Empire created the Palestine Mandate. There was nothing they
could do when the British Cabinet, for reasons historians still
argue about, decided Palestine would make a nice national home
for European Jews when and if the British Empire ever decided to
give up its occupation of Palestine.
That it did in 1947, after considerable encouragement by Jewish
terrorist organizations – the Irgun, led by Menachem Begin, and
the Stern Gang, led by Yitzhak Shamir. Yes, Jews used terrorist
tactics against the British occupation, and now Palestinians are
using terrorist tactics against the Israeli occupation.
In 1948, about 700,000 Palestinians were made refugees and then
told they could not return to their homes. Their homes, land and
businesses were eventually confiscated. In 1967, Israel seized
the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights
from Syria and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. These are now the
"occupied territories." The state of Israel has no legal claim
to even 1 square inch of any of this territory, but with the
backing of the United States it has been able to tell the rest
of the world to go stuff it.
Palestinians appreciate the irony of the fact that the United
States went to war allegedly to get Albanian refugees back into
Kosovo and went to war twice against Iraq allegedly to enforce
United Nations resolutions. Of course, we've done nothing for
the return of the Palestinian refugees, and we've ignored the
fact that Israel is in open defiance of more than 60 United
Nations resolutions. We've also ignored the fact that Israel is
the only country in the Middle East that really does have
weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs.
For us, it's all about domestic politics. I've never heard of a
Palestinian donor invited to spend the night in the Lincoln
Bedroom.
All Americans should feel a great deal of sympathy for the
younger generations of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews. These
young people were born into a conflict started by people long
dead or now in their dotage. The issue is simple: It's land.
Both sides are dying over land. Unless some outside power forces
an agreement on them, they will go on dying, generation after
generation after generation.
You don't need a Palestinian wife to feel sympathy for these
people. All you need is to know the facts. Learn the truth, and
you will feel sympathy for Palestinians – but not very proud of
American Middle East policy, which is a continuing failure
driven by greed and cowardice on the part of American
politicians. The hypocrisy of it has poisoned our image around
the world.
© 2008 by King
Features Syndicate, Inc.
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