Values Added: The Vision Thing (Michael B. Dougherty & Daniel Strauss)

[Sulla the Dictator]

Originally Posted by Wonderment

You, like Newt, are missing the whole point. Newt, however, did it for crass political purposes. You are trying to gloss that with irrelevant historical associations.

Irrelevant? The debate is whether it is true. You initially said it wasn't, and moreover, that it was stupid and wicked. Now you are saying that it is irrelevant.

Here is the supremely simple issue: Palestinians are the people of what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.* That is where there land is, and that is the land they identify with. It doesn't matter one whit if they previously called themselves Syrians, Pan-Arabs, Jordanians, Natives, Muslims, Christians Holy Landers or Martians. The issue is their rights under Israeli goverance and UN refugees, victims of war and the Israeli expulsion (Nakba).

That is a different matter. I am objecting to the casual appeal of authority leftists seem to take for granted in politics. People who suggest Newt was in error, in that flippant way where not only is error casually ascribed, it is suggested as a sign of mental defect. But it isn't an error. It is factually correct.

The reason why it is relevant that Palestinians are an invented national identity is a different matter. It means that we should discuss the responsibilities Syria and Jordan have to these people as their countrymen, and how they have cruelly used them for politics by locking them in camps.

But I suspect that doesn't bother you as much as Israelis, seeking security.

*I have no problem including Jews in this definition of Palestinians. They too have roots, culture, geography and legitimacy. They just don't have exclusive rights, and they need to redress their fellow Palestinians' grievances by granting them full citizenship in the new "invented" nation of Israel.

Absolutely not. That should never happen.