To understand the people of Gaza, who now lay claim to the passions of humanitarians-without-a-cause, one might begin by considering Gazans’ freely elected leadership: the Hamas terror network. And to understand Hamas, one might begin by looking closely at the Hamas logo. The logo’s center features swords and a golden-domed structure, but the squiggle at the top-center of the logo is most descriptive. One squiggle is worth a thousand words. That squiggle is not an Arabic symbol but the map of Israel.
Look even more carefully: the squiggle – the map of Israel depicted on the Hamas logo – primarily is pre-1967 Israel. It is Israel without the Gaza Strip. Hamas has no designs on the Gaza Strip it controls. Rather, leveraging Gaza as a springboard for its actual aspiration, Hamas illustratively has designs on the only Palestine it ever has coveted: the Palestine that now is called “the State of Israel.” As Jew-hating journalist Helen Thomas recently said about Israelis, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these [Arab] people are occupied, and it’s their land.” The Jews, Thomas added, can go back where they come from – “Poland. Germany. . . . And America and everywhere else.” (Reflecting ignorance all too common among the White House press corps, Thomas is unaware that the majority of Israelis are children of the Middle East, descendants of the 850,000 Jews exiled by Northern African Arab dictatorships during the years Israel was being founded.)
The only “Palestine” that ever existed was always synonymous with the Jewish homeland that later was renamed “Israel” in 1948. Rent a copy of the 1960 movie “Exodus.” Listen dispassionately to the dialogue. Don’t take sides. Just listen for definitions. The British, fairly or unfairly, are depicted as the bad guys in the movie, trying to keep the Jews out of “Palestine.” Paul Newman is trying to get the Jews into “Palestine.” Everyone watching the movie perceives that “Palestine” is a name that refers synonymously with “Israel.” Thus, what we seem to have had here is a failure to communicate. It could not be simpler: For the past two thousand years, since the Romans renamed the land of Israel after they expelled and exiled the Jews, “Israel” always was synonymous with “Palestine,” and “Palestine” always was “Israel.”
There never ever was an Arab Palestine entity. Who, after all, ever was its leader? Try to name any leader who ever in history led a sovereign “Palestinian Arab” people of “Arab Palestine.” What year was that entity founded? What was the name of its capital city — any capital city? Where is the drawing or photograph of its seat of government, or the place where its governmental leader lived? What was the name of its currency? Whose face, what slogan was on that currency? When did it fall? In which Olympic Games did it compete? Which issue of Encyclopedia Britannica had an entry for its government?
Consider this way: The American city of Palestine, Texas was founded in 1846. It was so named in honor of an early settler there, Daniel Parker, who hailed from Palestin
Share