I had the pleasure yesterday of starting in Los Angeles, having lunch in Las Vegas, dinner in Atlanta, and a nice 2am arrival this morning in Miami. Such is the hub and spoke system of air travel.
Yet all is right with the world, as Hanukkah in Miami begins tonight.
Tomorrow I will be back with my own warped view of the world on my favorite holiday, but for today I am outsourcing my column.
Hanukkah is a celebration of victory in war. If Jews learn anything, it is that wars end when one side gets crushed. Israel is at war now, and the enemy must be crushed. With that, I shall let a man wiser than me ask the question…
“Is the world just plain stupid? Palestine was NEVER a country or a nation.”
Those words arrived in my inbox, with the original source attributed to a Japanese individual named Yashiko Sagamori. While rumors have it that this is a pen name, and the person may or may not be Japanese, the questions Sagamori asks are absolutely relevant.
I rarely get enthused about Facebook groups, but for obvious reasons an exception was warranted in this case.
I have outsourced every word today from this site, and hope that everybody on Earth does likewise. If ever anything was worth disseminating at a rapid clip, this was it. First I repeat a joke that hould be taken seriously, and then the questions of Sagamori.
“The Israeli Ambassador at the U.N. began, ‘Ladies and gentlemen before I commence with my speech, I want to relay an old Passover story.
When Moses was leading the Jews out of Egypt toward the Promised Land, he had to go through the nearly endless Sinai desert.
When they reached the Promised Land, the people had become very thirsty and needed water. So Moses struck the side of a mountain with his staff and a pond appeared with crystal clean, cool water. The people rejoiced and drank to their hearts’ content.
Moses put down his staff and went to a solitary corner of the pond to drink, and meditate in prayer. But once Moses returned, he found that his staff had been stolen.
‘I have reason to believe ladies and gentlemen that the Palestinians stole the staff of our great Prophet Moses.’
The Palestinian delegate to the UN, hearing this accusation, jumps from his seat and screams out, ‘This is a travesty. It is widely known that there were no such thing as ‘Palestinians’ at that time!”
‘And with that in mind,’ said the Israeli Ambassador, ‘let me now begin my speech.'”
Now for the brilliant Socratic method employed by Sagamori.
“Is the world just plain stupid?
An interesting questionnaire for Palestinian Advocates
By Yashiko Sagamori
If you are so sure Palestine , the country, ‘goes back through most of recorded history,’ I expect you to be able to answer a basic questions about that country of Palestine :
1. When was it founded and by whom?
2. What were its borders?
3. What was its capital?
4. What were its major cities?
5. What constituted the basis of its economy?
6. What was its form of government?
7. Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
8. Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
9. What was the language of the country of Palestine ?
10. What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine ?
11. What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese Yuan on that date.
12. And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?
You are lamenting the ‘low sinking’ of a ‘once proud’ nation.
Please tell me, when exactly was that ‘nation’ proud and what was it so proud of?
Here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people that are mistakenly called ‘Palestinians’ are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over — or throw outs of — the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?
The truth: these people are Illegal squatters on the land in the Country of Israel.”
Let us all say “Amen,” and a heart “Amen!” to Sagamori.
Happy Hanukkah to the Jews of the world and the people of Israel.
Israel forever, alone, one, and indivisible.
eric
Silly, trifling, semantics. Why you guys think making light of such a serious problem is a good idea is beyond me. Whatever you call them, the “Palestinians” are people who live in that region and have lived there for a long time. What more do you need to know?
And it is utter historical ignorance displayed by Sagamori here. Does he have any idea how complex the history of that part of the world is? I am currently reading a history of the Byzantine empire. Over the course of that empire alone, countless people’s, rulers, religions, cultures, governments, and armies swept accross, conquered, and/or were vanquished in Palestine. Some settled, some moved on. Some were wiped out, some were removed. The one “group” that could be said to have always been there are the Semites – the ancestors of all Jews and Arabs – belying Sagamoris entire line of questions.
To use this insipid faux-historical argument for what is essentially arguing for the displacement (or worse) of millions of people, only further shows a complete lack of regard for humanity by the arguer. It is a malevolent and childish, pedantic and petty, misrepresented and misguided argument.
There are many serious arguments to be made of the Palestinian Question. Sagamori makes none.
JMJ