In light of recent discussion on my post Let Them Leave, I would like to post an article that I saw on Arutz-Sheva a few years ago (it is cited on many other places around the net. Most of the new commenters on said post have arrived via Umkahil, the blog of a palestinian sympathizer.
To all of my good friends at umkahil and elsewhere (joe90 and ryan, I am talking to you too), if you could answer any of the questions below, I would be very grateful, because up until now, I have not heard any good answers.
Also, to anyone wishing to comment: due to the aforementioned uninvited guest commenters, all comments on this blog now require moderation (by me) before being posted. As I will soon be travelling and may be offline for a bit, my apologies to anyone who writes a comment – it may be a few days before it will show up. But it will get there eventually.
Some background, found here: “This essay is a response to a letter by a newspaper reader who referred to the so-called ‘Palestinian people’”:
Who Are the Palestinians?
by Yashiko Sagamori
November 25, 2002A rebuttal:
If you are so sure that “Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history”, I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of “Palestine”:
- When was it founded and by whom?
- What were its borders?
- What was its capital?
- What were its major cities?
- What constituted the basis of its economy?
- What was its form of government?
- Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
- Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
- What was the language of the country of Palestine?
- What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?
- What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and try and find the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, British pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.
- Have the Palestinians left any artifacts behind?
- Do you know of a library where one could find a work of Palestinian literature produced before 1967?
- And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?
If you are lamenting the “low sinking” of “once proud” nation, then please tell me, when exactly was that “nation” proud and what was it so proud of?
And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call “Palestinians” are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over – or thrown out 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 by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War?
I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day “Palestinians” to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won’t work here.
The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today. Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal through military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it “the Palestinian people” and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the “West Bank” and Gaza, respectively, in the aftermath of the 1967 war?
The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less of a claim to nationhood than the American Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so-called “Palestinians” have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel. In my book that is not sufficient to consider them a “nation” — or anything else — except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.
In fact, there is only one way to achieve piece in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side, should pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited upon it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and acceptance of Israel’s ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.
That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?
———————————————————————–
Yashiko Sagamori is a New York-based Information Technology consultant.
December 28th, 2005 at 4:38
Mr. Sagamori is clearly thinking in categorical racist terms. I visit to his creepy website is all that is needed to see that he has a bias so thick it can only be cut with a sabre. But, rather than waste time on whatever it is he thinks he’s quizzing, I’ll just post a tasty bit from one of his articles, where he paints with the big brush. But this blog hates Arabs and that is no secret, so this should be neither offensive to them or surprising:
In response to my calls for an honest war, a reader sent me a letter asking how the Jews would keep their moral superiority over the Arabs if the former finally start fighting the latter in earnest. I explained to him that in the eternal struggle between good and evil, good inevitably wins, because the right to decide what’s right and what’s wrong invariably goes to the victor. Therefore, the only way to lose one’s moral superiority to a shark is to allow oneself to be devoured.
My sincerest apologies to the sharks for the unflattering comparison to Arabs.
December 28th, 2005 at 4:42
OOPS, my bad, Yashiko isn’t a Mr. Isn’t even Japanese! Here’s what we find on internet!
http://www.olegdulin.com/index.php/archives/2004/08/
Yashiko Sagamori: Baghdad to Boston (ed: Is it good for Israel?)
Filed under: Politics Is it good for Israel ?— oleg — 6:50 am GMT
I am starting a new category on my blog sarcastically called “Is it good for Israel?”. It is dedicated to all the people living in the United States who play the middle-east game with the bravery of being out of range.
Consider Yashiko Sagamori, a Jewish woman using a Japanese-sounding pen name. She wrote an article entitled Baghdad to Boston where she said:
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Alawi boldly outlined the blueprint for the most optimistic expectations regarding the future of his country. He announced that Iraq would not pursue normalization of its relations with Israel unilaterally, but would instead proceed in lockstep with the rest of the Arab world. That means that our invasion of Iraq has failed to breach the Muslim front of jihad. Therefore, this entire war stopped making any sense for us as soon as Saddam was deposed. Every coalition soldier killed thereafter was killed for nought. Every billion of dollars spent there has been wasted. Under the new management, Iraq will remain our enemy, just like every other Arab country, whether we call it an ally, like Saudi Arabia, or a member of the ‘axis of evil’, like Syria.
I can only assume that by “us” and “our” she means the United States of America. Please, let me know if she meant Israel and I will remove this post.
It appears as if Israel had a hidden interest in the U.S. invasion of Iraq even though the United States itself did not have Israel in mind when they decided to attack Iraq, but please correct me if I am wrong. With Iraq resuming business-as-usual as far as its stance towards Iraq is concerned the invasion makes no more sense for Israel.
This article appears to be in line with other writings by Ms. Sagamori. In particular, here is a good one:
If our civilization still exists 2,000 years from today, Jews will be still around even then, and, obviously, where there are Jews, there are child prodigies. If such a Jewish child prodigy with a knack for ancient history reads about our times, she is bound to experience the same surprise, because today, just like it was in biblical times, it is still all about Jews. Probably, no collection of historic evidence makes the exceptional importance of Jews to the humankind as obvious as the annals of the United Nations.
Sigh… Is everything about Israel ?
December 28th, 2005 at 4:48
in the FAQs section of the middle east facts website ms. sagamori says explicitly that she is not japanese, that she is jewish, that her views are her own and not associated with japan or japanese-americans in any way. she uses the pen name because she has recieved threats against her person.
Just to eliminate any idea that she might have a certain tribal axe to grind!
December 28th, 2005 at 12:30
Wow. All you manage to show on the “Let Them Leave” thread is that you block people who disagree with you, because you don’t want to read their “annoying” comments. Comments like those Ryan was making represent over half of the Israeli population, but I’m sure you’re much more of an expert on the topic, and that since they’re secular, these people just don’t count. Go ahead, block me if you want to, my husband and I are datim making aliyah to Nachlaot, b’ezrat Hashem, in a few months. But you get to decide what’s “pro-Israel” and what’s not. Loving something or someone means having the strength to be honest and criticize when things are not as they should be, and also to help makes things better.
Also, I’m extremely confused as to the point of your current post. What difference does it make when the “Palestinians” started? We know there were Arabs here since the beginning of galut, and that in 1948 there were some major upheavals in the demographics. Who cares if the national identity was created by the PLO? On the ground, this doesn’t change a single thing to help either Palestinians or Israelis. Denying national narratives only fuels the fire and doesn’t help us move forward. Plus, that’s just fighting dirty–and for no reason. We have the strength to make peace–or coexistence, at least–by promoting our values and rights, without destroying theirs.