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Fitzgerald: Palestine [sic]

Jan 21, 2007 2:36 pm By Hugh Fitzgerald

“Talking to newsmen at Chaklala Airbase before his departure, Musharraf said the world should resolve the problems faced by the Ummah urgently, to get rid of terrorism and extremism.

President Musharraf said an urgent solution of problems is must due to gravity of situation in Iraq, Iran, Palestine and Lebanon.”
— from this article

What is “Palestine” as referred to so blithely by Musharraf, and reported as if it were not to be questioned? The toponym “Palestine” was used in Western Christendom to refer to that land on both sides of the river Jordan which roughly corresponded to Biblical Palestine. More recently, it was the name given to that territory set aside by the League of Nations under the Mandate for Palestine for the establishment of the Jewish National Home that became the State of Israel — after Israel successfully defended itself from the attacking Arabs during the War of Independence.

The use of the word “Palestine” by Arabs and Muslims is an attempt to efface Israel, and to replace it by a term that reifies that which does not exist — an Arab “Palestine.” It is not an innocent matter, devoid of meaning. Those non-Muslims who, like Blair, may refer to “Palestine” are in fact behaving, nolens-volens or perhaps willingly, as mouthpieces for Arab propaganda. No one who uses the term “Palestine” at present is doing anything other than furthering the Arab and Muslim worldview.
After each appearance of the word “Palestine” in the Western, i.e., non-Muslim press, there should be an indication that there is not now (and many hope there never will be) a state called “Palestine.” It is as phony as a state called “Mandela” which some black-power advocates wished, a dozen years ago, to carve out of parts of Boston, or the “Caliphate” that was created by a certain Turk in Cologne and which attracted a few thousand potential inhabitants.

There is a “Palestinian” Authority. There are local Arabs carefully renamed after 1967 as the “Palestinian people” — a phrase that appears nowhere in the statements of any Arab leader, or U.N. ambassador, or any other public figure, between 1948 and 1967. And even after the Six-Day War, it took several years for the new phrase, as with any propagandistic effort, to stick. There is not now a “Palestine.” What was known in the West as “Palestine” is the current state of Israel and includes the land to which it had right by the terms of the League of Nations’ Mandate. Israel has a legal, historic, and moral claim to that land that is much more considerable than anything concocted by the Arab Muslims. There are Arabs and Jews in Israel, as there are Arabs and Kurds in Iraq and Arabs and Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, and Arabs and Copts in Egypt. But there is not, even if the phrase is used a hundred million times, a distinct “Palestinian people.” And there is no “Palestine” that should rightly be referred to without the reporter or news agency quoting someone using the phrase taking the time to simply indicate its not referring to a real country — lest the ignorant be confused.

Here is how Musharraf’s little comment, deplorable for many reasons, should appear if the Khaleej Times report is reprinted or quoted:

“President Musharraf said an urgent solution of problems is must due to gravity of situation in Iraq, Iran, Palestine [sic] and Lebanon.”

One mo’ time:

Palestine [sic], Palestine [sic], Palestine [sic].

Such a country does not exist. Muslims, both of the Slow and the Fast Jihad variety, would like it to exist. Infidels understand that the existence of such a state would create for Israel an intolerable threat to its existence, and would almost certainly lead after a suitable interval to Israel’s disappearance and to the loss of the Holy Land to the Western world. That would be a colossal blow to Western morale, which is already still reeling, subliminally, from the effects of the Nazi murders and widespread participation or support by others in those murders and the battening on that loot. It would lead not to a sating of Muslim appetites in the world but to a whetting of those very appetites. For there is no such thing as “compromise” with Infidels. Either the forces of Islam can keep fighting, or they must stop fighting temporarily, or seek new instruments of warfare, if they are defeated on the battlefield. But the state of war between Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb continues forever, and is not affected by a temporary hudna, or by the inability of Muslims, for the moment, to attack.

Triumph in one area — and the disappearance of Israel would be a great triumph — does not lead to a willingness or desire to stop working steadily for the spread of Islam, and against all barriers to its ultimate dominance everywhere. The Qur’an does not say, and Allah never said: Win back from the Jews any land that they may control, and stop there. The Qur’an does not say, Allah never said: Take back all the lands that once were part of Dar al-Islam, including Spain, Sicily, parts of southern France, Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Rumania, Bulgaria, much of Hungary, most of India, and so on, and then the Jihad can stop. No: Allah commands that the world belongs to him, and to Islam, and to the Believers. Why should it be otherwise?

Indeed. Why should it be otherwise?

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