Arab Islamo-Fascist nationalism wants you to believe that "Palestine" suffered a catastrophe or "Nakba" in Arabic in 1948 when the State of Israel was founded and thousands of Palestinian cowards fled their villages from what is today Israel.
The same thing happened between India and Pakistan in 1947, with millions, not thousands, of people fleeing in both directions - Muslims from India into Pakistan, and Hindus from Pakistan to India. Yet, no one today in Pakistan or India talks about a "catastrophe". No one claims a "right of return", and there are no refugees left in squalid camps. However, there is one difference between these two post-British mandate splits. In the Pakistan and Indian situation, both sides accepted the United Nations vote to split the area in two countries. But the fucking Arabs in the Middle East rejected Palestine.
The Palestinian themselves refused to accept the birth of their own country following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the brief British interlude between the two world wars. The Palestinians, stupid as they have always been, did not accept their own Palestinian State back in 1948, and instead chose the path of refugee status and insist, even today on reclaiming something they lost long time ago. A monumental mistake which, to this date, they are still divided upon. Palestinians today are negotiating for crumbs of Palestine when they could have had the bulk of it back in 1948.
Everywhere in the post-World War I and World War II interim, countries were being created, even in the heart of Europe. Why, of all these places and countries, the Palestinians chose to reject their own country, remains a mystery. But in fact, it is not a mystery. This historic failure has all to do with a primitive Arab sense of masculinity and machismo, the notion that only one's big balls count in this world, and nothing else. To accept a State of Palestine in 1948 would have been an admission of defeat, when sometimes historic compromises are based on an admission of defeat by both sides. The Israeli Jews saw a victory in their loss of the other half of Palestine, but the Palestinian Arabs saw a defeat in the same event.
Other areas under the British and French mandates were also being carved out of the dead Ottoman Empire. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey itself, Egypt, etc.. all are countries that came into being at the time, and no one today makes claims of "catastrophes" like the Palestinians. Of course, the Fascist Baathists of Syria and Iraq will claim that Greater Syria and Greater Iraq should have included Lebanon, Cyprus and other Greek islands, Kuwait, the Arab Emirates, etc... But only Nazi-like Arabs of the ultra-nationalist Islamic-Arab brand make such claims: The Baathists, the Syrian National-Social Party (the exact Arab equivalent of the Nazis, with racist claims of the superiority of the Northern Arabs over the Southern Arabs... Yeah, just look at what the superior Syrians are doing today to their people).
The Palestinians have lost Palestine. They should accept this fact and move one. Japan lost and moved on. Germany lost and moved on. Turkey lost and moved on. It is time for the Arabs to accept their loss and move on. After all, the Jewish people are of the same ethnic Semitic stock as the Arabs, much as the Lebanese are Semitic but not Arabs, or the Ethiopians are Semitic but not Arabs, or the Iraqis are Semitic but not Arabs.
The only ethnic group that lost after the world wars of the 20th century are the Kurdish people. If there is one people today who deserves a country from the territories that were stolen from them by Iraqis, Syrians, Turks and Iranians, it is the Kurdish people. A Kurdistan should be created from the region straddling the borders of the four countries. The Kurds have their own language and their own culture, and the harm done to them by denying them a country should be undone.
But the Palestinians should give up. They should take the small fucking few hills of the West Bank and make the insignificant country of Palestine from them today and move on, before there is no Palestine left at all. The refugees should leave the squalid camps in which they deliberately kept themselves (There are 15 refugee camps in Palestine today, including in the Gaza Strip.) or in which the other Arab countries have kept them on purpose (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan etc..).
Countries of emigration (Canada, US, Australia, Latin America....) should offer to resettle these people for new lives and future, now that the young Palestinian generation is 4 generations removed from the long lost Palestine. I have met many well-adjusted Palestinians who are very happy to be Israeli citizens, or who want to stay in Lebanon as Lebanese citizens, etc...
We no longer live in the Middle Ages or the Barbaric times of conquest and invasions....
Hanibaal
9 comments:
Have you ever done the National Geographic DNA test?
I had one done not too long ago. Myself and along with over 85% of Lebanese people are actually NOT arab but rather a mixture of Phoenician (who would have guessed), Italian, Northern European etc
Just on the Kurdish point - a people way more deserving and robbed by history of not having a nation would have to be the Assyrians.
They have their own unique language, culture and history and were not given a country.
The Assyrians were almost wiped out by the Turks along with the Kurds during the Armenian genocide.
Also, during the Lebanese civil war, some of the most ardent anti-PLO and anti-Arabist fighters were of Assyrian background.
Joseph,
I agree with you on the genetics of nationhood. Not all speakers of Arabic today are genetically "Arab", much as not all speakers of English are genetically "English".
The fallacy of an "Arab world" where everyone speaks the same language is one big lie that is unfortunately perpetuated more by the West and the international community than by the Islamo-Fascist Arab nationalists.
However, those peoples with claims to distinct identities from the Arab bullshit, such as the Phoenicians, the Kurds, the Assyrians, the Copts, etc. have to make up their minds about how to approach making those claims politically.
For example, the Lebanese with claims to an identity that is different from the Arab identity need to CLEARLY and SMARTLY articulate those claims to the world. It is enough to keep saying "we are not Arabs" to the rest of the world because no one will take you seriously. The problem, as I see it, for the Lebanese-Phoenician claims is yet another identity that has stolen and destroyed our national identity, namely the Christian identity for the Lebanese Christians. The Lebanese Muslims who also are of Phoenician stock are lost for good because Islam and Arabic have completely and forever subverted their identity into the Arab and Muslim identity.
What the Lebanese Christians need to understand is that the same process took place for them around 400 A.D. because when they became Christians, the new Christian religion was as tyrannical as Islam is today. It forced them to abandon their Phoenician identity and traditions and religion, and embrace the "Universal Church" (a concept that is identical to the Muslim Umma of today).
Then, the European enlightnment and the Renaissance came and with them the separation of religion and state. This has slowly allowed all the national identities of Europe to emerge from under the Christian Church's repression and re-assert themselves as Celts, Vikings, Romans, Gallic, etc... Hence, you see devout Catholics in Ireland, for example, today who are also very proud of their Celtic language and origins.
This phenomenon has not happened among non-European Christians, such as the Lebanese or the Copts or the Assyrians, where the Christian religion continues to dominate their lives and identity. In Lebanon, it is the Christian churches who repress claims to a Phoenician identity, more so than the Muslim establishment.
The Christians of the Middle East, like their counterparts in Europe, have to FIRST get rid of the dominance of religion over their lives and identities, and only then can they resurrect their nearly defunct national identities as Phoenicians, Coptic Egyptians, or Assyrian Iraqis...
Our problem is two-fold. Not only are we resisting integration into an identity that is not ours (Islam and Arabism), but we have to resist and reject the primacy of our religious identities (i.e. Christian) over our real authentic identities. Until we do, the world will see us as Arabs. The fact that the Kurds are recognized today as a nation is because the religious factor is moot in their case. Like the Syrians, Iraqis, Turks and Iranians who continue to repress them, they are Muslims. Because the religious factor has been equalized, the national identity of the Kurds is free to assert itself. This is the challenge for the Lebanese Phoenicians, the Egyptian Copts, the Assyrian Iraqis, etc. They must stop using their religious identity as a way to survive the Muslim onslaught, and re-assert their national identities. The only way to do this is to relegate their religious identity to the background, if not completely eliminate it from their definition of who they are. They must become secular, agnostic, atheist.... As long as they claim their national identity on the basis of their religious one, they are doomed to fail and continue disappearing under the Arab-Islamic onslaught.
Hanibaal
You raise some very good points Hanibaal. I almost completely agree.
I am not so sure about the "Christian churches who repress claims to a Phoenician identity, more so than the Muslim establishment."
Personally, I have seen priests wearing vestments embroidered with cedar trees and phoenician ships!
In fact, I know of at least one school run by the maronite church that has the cedar tree and a phoenician ship as the school logo.
Have you done the National Geographic DNA test?
You make a very good point here.
"the Lebanese with claims to an identity that is different from the Arab identity need to CLEARLY and SMARTLY articulate those claims to the world."
From a PR perspective, I think the Lebanese who claim to be non-arabs have completely and utterly failed in having their message projected to the world (regardless of whether one agrees with that message or not).
What do you suggest they do? From a communications/PR offensive perspective, what could they practically and realistically do to assert their unique identity?
Also, would it be up to the Lebanese state or should individual sects/parties be up to the task?
They need to STOP talking to the West as "Lebanese Christians". Their discourse should completely be divorced from their religious affiliation. Nothing in their political language should invoke religious ideologies.
Irish Catholics lost their wars to the extent of their definition as Catholics. But they gained the most sympathy against Britain when their claims were based on Irish nationalism, not on the Catholic versus Protestant divide.
The Lebanese Christians lost the war for the specific reason of their identifying themselves as "Christians". The West is nowadays secular, anti-religious, anti-clerical, and hates people who identify themselves on religious grounds. It's very simple: Look at what the Islamic movements have done in the name of Islam. Look at what the Israelis have done in the name of their Judaism... The last thing the West wants (particularly because of its own Christian heritage) is Christian activism, or political Christianism.
Lebanese Christians should stop saying things like, "As Christians, we represent an island of Western civilization here in the middle east". I remember during the 1975-1976 war, when L'Express magazine put on its cover the photo of a stupid Phalangist militiaman stepping on the dead body of a Muslim Palestinian woman (all veiled and tchadored) with a huge cross dangling from his neck and a picture of the Virgin Mary on the butt of his Kalashnikov. That is the image that made the Lebanese Christians lose any sympathy in the West.
In order to gain the sympathy of the West, and the world for that matter, they have to appeal to the universal human principles that are current today, and those principles are no longer "Christian" or "Muslim" or of any other religious brand. They are human, humanistic and appeal to universal sense of justice, fairness, human rights, upholding the dignity of people whether poor or rich, whether Christian or Muslim or Jew or Hindu.
The world has changed, but the Lebanese Christians continue to define themselves in opposition of - instead of beyond - their Muslim counterparts.
One last point: For the average neanderthal Maronite of the Lebanese mountain, the concept of "freedom" or "rights" is limited to being able to, for example, toll a church bell on Sundays. This is an archaic notion of freedom. It is a tribal notion where the object of that freedom is the tribe, the sect, the clan... and not the individual. The Western notion of "freedom" has, on the other hand, for object the individual, regardless of any other consideration. This disparity leaves the Lebanese Christians misunderstood by the West, and hence unable to gain any sympathy.
Hanibaal
How can animals like these people deserve a country called palestine.
Read and weep:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/20/mideast.honor.killing/index.html?hpt=C1
FireDepartment,
In answer to your question:
... For the same reason that animals like these have a country called the United States of America.
Read and weep:
http://antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444
Hanibaal
Hanibaal
Just on the Phoenician heritage - this comment is from the Maronite Bishop in Australia.
"We Maronites are unique. We are Antiochian, Syriac, Phoenician and Lebanese ... these are our roots and they should be preserved for our children’s children"
http://www.catholicweekly.com.au/article.php?classID=3&subclassID=9&articleID=3941&class=Features&subclass=A%20conversation%20with
I could be wrong, but I think the Orthodox Churches tend to side with a more "arab" history of Lebanon
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