Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The 'Ancestral' Deception

Of all the bruited falsehoods aimed at delegitimizing the Jewish claim to Israel (and legitimizing the Arab one), the one about Arabs living in Israel "from time immemorial" (the title of a book that proves the falsity of the claim) is arguably the one with most traction. Here it is, for example in a piece in the Guardian about the Palestinian Papers leaked by Al Jazeera:
Palestinians have expressed shock and dismay at the US suggestion to settle Palestinian refugees in Argentina and Chile rather than let them return to ancestral land in Israel.
In fact, many of their "ancestors" arrived sometime in the 20th Century, because there were jobs to be had once the Jews got the place up and running. In that case, I guess "the land" could be considered "ancestral" in the "my granddad/great-granddad from Syria/Jordan/Lebanon etc. worked there in the 1920s" sense, but not in the Old Testament "Hashem led the Jewish people out of Egypt to the Promised Land" sense.

In other words, our claim predates yours, Arabs, so you have no "right" to "return" and transform the Jews' ancient, ancestral land into another failed Arab state, another member of the modern-day caliphate.

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