Friday, July 27, 2018

Dignity for the Palestinians

by Denis MacEoin • July 27, 2018 at 5:00 am

Given that all Palestinian leaderships have called for a Palestinian state that will encompass and obliterate the state of Israel, it is not surprising that they cannot bear to accept any proposal that will give them only one small state (or two small states) in the territory allotted to them by the United Nations in 1947.
Re-imposition of Islamic waqf law will not restore Spain, Portugal, Sicily, India, Greece and all the other states of the abandoned caliphal empires to Muslim rule, and it is futile to think that is nothing more than a fantasy.
A recent US report revealed that there are, it seems, actually no more than 20,000 Palestinian refugees in the world.
In the end, it is so-called pro-Palestinian activists such as Robert Fisk or writers for papers such as The Independent, The Guardian, or the New York Times who do their utmost to persuade the world to favour Palestinian intransigence over offers of upgrading lives and international law.

Pictured: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat (left) and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (right) acknowledge applause during a Joint Session of Congress in which U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced the results of the Camp David Accords, September 18, 1978. (Image source: Warren K. Leffler/Library of Congress)

Anyone who cares for Israel, who aspires to peace, who has a good understanding of the historical, ethical, political, and legal facts that underpin the right of the Jewish people to a state of which they are the indigenous people, will be familiar with the name of Robert Fisk. But not in a good way.

For decades, Fisk has been one of the most unrelenting of Israel's many haters and one of the most uncritical supporters of the rights of the Palestinians and their unending calls and actions aimed at the total destruction of Israel and the expulsion or massacre of the Jewish people living there.[1]

Fisk is a clever man. He took his PhD in 1983 from Trinity College, Dublin, an ancient and respected university. Although his doctorate was in political science on a topic related to Ireland and Britain, he has worked as the Middle East correspondent for the Times (1976-1988) and, since 1989, for the left-wing daily, The Independent.