Israel stuck under my claw

I posted this reply to this post (text of original post follows) on Betsy's page:

The only definitive way out of the Israeli/Palestinian mess is a major war with massive casualties. At that point, when Israel wins, they need to let the Arabs (Palestinians) they have marginalized for decades to come into the fold.

What Jewish immigrants did with the land of Israel is impressive, but irrelevant. Using westernization as a justification for expelling people from land makes no sense. "Palestine" was an Ottoman-backwater when the Zionist movement began. Of course it wasn't developed to the extent it is now.

That is like saying it is OK for some group of people with no contemporary ties to the land but are loosely descended from some former inhabitants of West Texas that they have the right to take it over and expel current inhabitants that are not OK with the new rulers because they plan to create farms and forests there.

Israel exists, and it is OK for it to kill people in defense of its citizenry. It isn't right, but it should be acceptable given they are a sovereign country.

It is not OK that they "withdrew" from Gaza and have kept it sealed off from the outside world. That is their error. Poverty and isolation only encourages support for the one group (Hamas) willing to stand up to the oppression.

It is a difficult situation, but if you dig through history you will find that Israel dug its own hole. The only part of it I resent is the US sends such a large amount of aid to Israel since it is such an affluent society.

You can thank Kids Prefer Cheese for bringing my attention to your blog. Lucky you...

Here is the original copy:

It's time for the Palestinisns to "get over it"

David Gelertner writes that, after 60 years, it's time to tell the Palestinians to get over themselves.

ow, every human being on earth who cares about facts and can tell a lie from a truth knows that there was no such thing as "Palestinian nationalism" until modern Zionism created it out of whole cloth, by placing enormous value on a piece of land that used to seem as precious to its landlords as a rat-ridden empty lot in a burnt-out neighborhood in the middle of nowhere, in the suburbs of nothing. The Jews gradually got possession of an arid stony wasteland (where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief / And the dry stone no sound of water)--complete with the odd picturesque, crumbling, dirty town; and they loved it. They turned it into a gleaming, thriving modern nation, not only a military but an intellectual powerhouse. And so it is only natural that the former owners' descendants want it back, and remember how much their ancestors loved it, and how the new owners only got possession by wickedness and deceit. Such memories have the strange property of growing clearer instead of cloudier every day.

Only one thing can restore the former owners' peace of mind. They must be kicked firmly in the pants and told "stop whining and get lost" so many times that they finally move on to another grievance.

Any competent psychologist will agree: When someone is mooning over a thing he can't have because it belongs to someone else, the responsible and humane course of treatment is not temporizing sweet-talk but a blunt lesson in the facts of life. "No, you cannot have my wife (girlfriend, husband, etc.), and we are not going to negotiate over it; let's talk about something else." (And it really doesn't matter that the two of you used to keep company; you never loved her.) "Know Thyself" was supposedly carved on the ancient Temple at Delphi; "Face Reality" should have been carved right next to it. There is no irreconcilable difference in the fight between Israel and the Palestinians, no bone-deep dispute that will haunt humanity forever. There is only greed and envy. They never disappear, but can easily move from one target to the next. The problem will be solved as soon as the world stops trying to solve it. When the international community moves on to fresh causes, so will the Palestinians.

And he has a proposal for what the UN could start debating.

The Bush administration, which has done so many small and medium things wrong and the biggest of all things right, could leave the world a parting gift by introducing some appropriate resolution in the Security Counsel or General Assembly. A proclamation that "anti-Zionism is a form of racism" might be just the thing. (The infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution, passed in 1975 and rescinded in 1991, remains a perfect symbol of depraved worldwide attitudes to Israel.) Or a U.S. resolution might call on the U.N. to take the unprecedented step of enforcing its own charter and booting out members that preach the destruction of Israel. (Article 2 part 4: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.") To start the ball rolling, Iran might be designated for immediate expulsion.

The resolution would be savaged and hooted down. But here and there it might make people think.

It shows how absolutely meaningless the United Nations is that they have so many members continually breaking the U. N. charter and that is considered of no significance.