I Actually Spent Time in Palestine - Here's what I saw about their society
An American college student notices the prejudice of extremist Israelis...
...and a complete denial of reality by the Palestinians.
Looking back, my conversation with the two Palestinians who denied the existence of the Second Temple foreshadowed something that I gradually came to recognize: while I was more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause when I first traveled to the West Bank, I came to realize that facts are largely irrelevant for the vast majority of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists.
2 comments:
I went to Israel in 2014. I've probably said this before at my own place, but what struck me at the time was how much better off they were treated than Iraqis treated each other. When I went to Egypt in 2018, I saw the same thing again. They Syrian civil war proved it in spades.
For some reason we focus on this one, but Assad would not have been so gentle if they'd crossed him. Saddam would not have been. Even the Egyptians; even the Kuwaitis, who come to think of it ethnically cleansed themselves of Palestinians after the Gulf War. They'd helped Saddam, you see. None are left.
And the Jordanians kicked them out in Black September. After the Six-Day War in '67, the PLO started operating from Jordan, not only attacking Israel but blowing up civilian airliners and eventually inciting a revolution to try to overthrow the king. So Jordan fought them and were finally able to kick them out in '70-71.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
The PLO fled to Lebanon where they fed into the tensions that started the Lebanese Civil War, causing roughly a million refugees to flee and ending the Christian (mostly Maronite Catholic) plurality there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War
I've heard that the Palestinians who fled to Egypt joined the Muslim Brotherhood, which tried to overthrow the Egyptian government, but I haven't looked into it.
Anyway, they don't seem to be gracious guests wherever they end up, even in Arab Muslim nations.
Post a Comment