(Augusta (GA) Chronicle) Editorial - Israel, an oasis of democracy in a desert of despotism and religious intolerance and hatred, encompasses about one-tenth of 1 percent of the Middle East - leaving the remaining 99.9 percent to Arabs. And yet, Arabs carry on as if Israel was about to crowd all of them into the Mediterranean. When Israel was established in 1948, the notion of "Palestinianism" was more than a little fuzzy. As Arab Christian writer Joseph Farah notes, "There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no distinct Palestinian culture. There has never been a land known as Palestine governed by Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese, Iraqis, etc." How is it that the world, and the United Nations, has managed to ignore all the rockets that Palestinians have rained down on Israel's civilian society all these years? Not to mention all the suicide bombers. Now the reward is to be statehood? The truth is, there would be a Palestine already today if Palestinians had been more concerned with peaceful coexistence and statehood and their own well-being and less bent on killing Jews and trying to win the PR war. Given history - in which no Israeli concession was ever enough - would a "Palestine" be content with its current borders? Or would the next push be to "liberate" the "rest" of it - i.e., Israel? Without ironclad guarantees of its peaceful intentions, it would be historical folly to recognize a Palestinian state, and the U.S. should veto such a resolution.
2011-09-23 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive