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The Myth of Arab Palestine
(Jerusalem Post) Sarah Honig- Palestine is a Roman name invented to rile defeated Jews, a European import adopted by 20th-century Arabs in order to wrest the narrow sliver of land Jews could call their own. There never was an independent Arab entity in Palestine. The myth of plundered Palestine was born after Arab aggression lost the Arabs more land in 1967. No one cares that the PLO had been founded three years before that. No one asks which Palestine Arafat sought to liberate prior to the onset of awful occupation. The struggle isn't about the liberation of "occupied Palestine" but about the attempted annihilation of Israel. Israelis are often told that had we not successfully defended ourselves, we'd be terror-free. (We also wouldn't be here.) The postulate that despair triggers terror isn't questioned. No nation had ever been as humiliated, tortured, and bloodied as the Jews during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, outraged Jewish survivors didn't storm German schools and massacre the Nazis' progeny. Jews are expected to obligingly turn the other cheek. The right to rage seems an exclusive Muslim preserve.