Newt Gingrich may be able to occupy Palestine, but Israel can't
Mr. Speaker, if for the sake of Jesus and the Resurrection, you want the territories to stay occupied forever, you and your Christian Zionist allies will have to do some homework before Inauguration Day.
By Bradley Burston Tags: Palestine 1967 borders Israel USSpeaker Gingrich, if you're serious about becoming president, it's time that you got to know us a bit better.
Let's start with the Occupation, our 44-year-long experiment in re-inventing the Palestinian people. This is what you need to know before you bet your political farm on it:
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Republican presidential candidates former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, left, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, right, during a Republican debate, Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011. |
| Photo by: AP |
We don't have it in us. We can't pull it off.
No one here is of any use at it. Anyone who has ever occupied here knows it. The army trains you for everything: armored warfare, urban firefights, chemical weaponry, nuclear attack, biological agents, commando raids, missile strikes. Everything except the one thing you know you'll face – Occupation.
Your friend Bibi will tell you about our innovative, can-do nature. He may, however, omit this: We have proven ourselves incapable of doing the one thing that has come, against our will, to define us more than anything else we do as Israelis: Occupation.
Why not? Why the woeful preparation, the inappropriate equipment, the proven recipe for military fear and anger and, across the firing line, civilian tragedy? What's our problem?
Somewhere inside, we know that to succeed in occupying, we would have to truly believe in it. To believe in it, we would have to fully acknowledge that occupation, in all its obscenity, is what we are, in fact, doing.
To acknowledge the occupation is to recognize the Palestinians; not as terrorists or poseurs, not as inventions, but as full, flesh and blood human beings, as entitled to their rights as we are to ours.
And that is something that your friend Bibi, and this Israel, are not prepared to do.
You may know how to keep the Palestinians from asserting their rights, Mr. Speaker, but we don't.
Maybe you can control their sense that they want their own country in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, in their own lifetimes, but we can't.
In fact, we can't even occupy or control our own.
And this, as a devotee of Doomsday scenarios, is where you come in.
This week, when scores of Hilltop Youth, the rosy-cheeked stinkweed of the settlement movement, burst into an IDF base and hurled rocks at a brigade commander, we had no idea how to respond. So we didn't.
The same night, when another two dozen Hilltop Youth or their surrogates threatened our relations with Jordan and the Christian world, defying the army and the government by founding an illegal settlement outpost in border zone closed by the army – near a monastery at the traditional site of Jesus baptism – we put one of the leaders on the IDF's Army Radio, crowing about their next exploit.
And lest that not do enough damage, the next day saw a mosque torched in Jerusalem, and police cars slashed and smashed, all in the name of Outposts forever and Palestine Never.
Should you become president, and you display understanding for the settlers - as you will doubtless feel that you need to - you can bet that they will take that as license to go for the Day of Judgment play: the drive for the Temple Mount. World War III, here we come.
While settling into the Oval Office, however, you might do well to remember the name Mustafa Tamimi. The context as well.
On Friday, at the same time viewers heard you describe the Palestinians as an invented people, a real Palestinian named Mustafa Tamimi was murdered by our inability to occupy.
The Occupation, you will come to learn, murders in the second degree. "A non-premeditated killing," the legal definition holds, "resulting from an assault in which death of the victim was a distinct possibility."
Such was Tamimi's gruesome death, his face and brain crushed by a tear gas canister fired, contrary to all proper procedure, by an Israeli soldier at close range and at level aim, with minimal regard to a compromised field of vision, in an environment in which firearms, gas and other chemicals are routinely used prematurely, disproportionately, and inappropriately. No accident.
Maybe you know how to occupy Palestine, Mr. Speaker, but Israel clearly does not. Anyone who has engaged here in the business of occupying can tell you how it happened.
What you need to know, Mr. Speaker, is the why of it.
On your next visit, and there will surely be one, you should pay a call to Tamimi's village, Nabi Saleh. Not hard to find. On Fridays, you can find it by the thick clouds of tear gas alone.
The army, by its own open admission, will not allow non-violent demonstrations in Nabi Saleh. Non-violence is punished with tear gas. Or worse.
Nor is non-violence allowed in other villages with longstanding and well-documented land grievances over settlements which have taken over their property by force of arms, or law, or bureaucracy, or deceit.
Mr. Speaker, you may be capable of occupying Nabi Saleh, but we are not.
Mr. Speaker, if for the sake of Jesus and the Resurrection, you want the territories to stay occupied forever, you and your Christian Zionist allies will have to do some homework before Inauguration Day.
We're not going to be of much help. If you want all of this to stay occupied, you may have find a way to do this by yourselves.
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Newt made a factual comment which is 100% true. the pals are a separate people if at all only from the end of WWI. They are not a nation and never had a state at any time in history. on the other hand Newt also supports a 2 state solution and is totally pragmatic about the current perceptions of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. He did not suggest that we "occupy" them indefinitely or that they be transferred. This whole article is a typical Burston exercise in misstating someone's position to allow him to repeat ad nauseum his own ideology.
pd: only for you. Love
And he won't understand your article because he's never been under any type of discipline, certainly never in the military. He's already denying half or more of what he said.
The Palestinian people will never forget the brave defenders of human rights . We are very grateful to Mr.Burston Bradely for his historic role against racism , fascism and occupation>
as the number of the settlers increase it is natural on their part to claim more land.but destroying the historical sites like the temple of philistines of yester years cannot be allowed at any cost because it proves that the land belongs to goliath and david and not to the arabs
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according to abc news. He believes in science and math according to his last debate; Catholics are not fundamentalists and believe in evolution. Are the Christian Zionists his allies? I don't know; they certainly disagree on some issues.
Sounds like the 10 spies who had no faith or belief in G-D and His Word which promises all the land of canaan for starters then the land from Egypt in the south to euphrates in the north as an unconditional land inheritance for the Jewish people of the world Gingrich is 100% right .
He would have to write about the aftermath of an attack on the Jews and a massacre of them there on the order of the Crusades, if he was still alive!
President Obama has made the right noises about Israel after a period of uncertainty, and has therefore been selected for a second term. Newt Gingrich is now being promoted as a plausible alternative but ultimately the also-ran.
newt is running as a prime minister of israel.
I assume from your name that you are a Jew. It was not so long ago that you would have been a non person. Worse, that as such you should be exterminated. The horror of that time remains a scar on humanity. Yet here you are labelling Palestinians non persons. Are they to be exterminated also? Palestinians have for too long had to pay for the crimes of those who labelled Jews as non persons. When will this obsceene behaviour stop?
every arab country is occupying there people. there rae no palestinians .they are all jordanians
Do you really believe in your right for existene in Palestine( if you are an Israeli !!). Every stone and even every particle of earth defines itself as Palestinian..palestinian ..palestinian forever!!
They who call themSelveS Christian are welcomed in the land of Jews while a Jew isn't and that's how Newty wants it: they never care(d) about the Jews: all they're fighting for is their own@interests 'there'.
so far he has ben wrong on every article he has ever published !
does it want to be a democracy or a segregated state where a minority is ruling over a majority, which is unsustainable in today's world - it cannot have the land but not the people - it cannot have the west bank but not the millions of people within it - they are not going anywhere - and every year their numbers grow- the time of reckoning is near.
Arabs living in the West Bank should have a state of their own. It will be 23d Arab state. And this name already invented. So Gingrich is right.
I guess people forget 60% of west bank is a NGO military zone and Israel occupied lebanonon and has 1000s of checkpoints in west bank or isrelali soldiers protests eastern Europeans in Hebron
Unless both parties recognise the right of the other to have freedom, they will never live in peace. Congratulate the author.
Gingrich reminds me of a sketch the Munich humorist Karl Valentin played long before WWII: Cage with bird. He pretends that there is no bird he has to look at - that is whether there are people whose ancestors lived on the land for uncountable generations, who are deprived and who want a state of their own. Gingrich zaps them. We already had a smear comedian coming to power in Germany; a second on the other side of the Great Pool would do it for this planet!
it almost makes you sympathise with the occupiers
Oh, but of course you do speak only for yourself, despite the pretensions otherwise.
Israel may need those Right Wing Christians as a buffer between them and the Muslims. There are only 5.5 Million Jews in Israel compared to 300 Million Muslims. Eventually People imitate each other when they live side by side for too long. It's better to imitate Christians because some Arabs do things like wearing Burqas, cutting people up into tiny pieces, honor killing, and the list goes on. I don't blame you for being pissed off. You're the only person that can stand me. LOL! Know what? I don't know where this Occupy business is going. I saw on the news, people carrying posters in Long Beach protesting Goldman Sachs. I wonder if those Gentiles realize we don't own that anymore? Kol Hakavod!
No worries, honor killings are cultural even jews and christians in those cultural areas do honor killings. It has nothing to do with religion.
Indeed, the IDF does a good effort in training but nevertheless, after 44 years of this regional conflict, we're not in a better scenario today. The U.S. knows of our inability to continue an occupation of a people and our inability to always prevent terrorism. The Quartet needs to step in at this time.
"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people..." Zuhir Mohsen, former PLO leader. Put this in your pipe and smoke it Burston and Haaretz. Straight from the horse's mouth.
Hey Klutz, I think it came from the horse's ass
Maybe you need to travel in the area a little. There is a wast difference between palestinians, lebanese, syrians and jordanians. They don't even speak the same. They are culturally differently, and most importantly identify themselves differently. It's like saying all europeans are the same, just because they have the same ethnical roots, yet culturally different. Or say, jews are not one people because of so much ethnical diversity...
Kibitzing is allowed for the moment. Nothing more active than kibitzing is tolerated though.
only when it is too late that they helped to promote fascism by providing a detraction meant for foreign observers.
this analysis should be sent to the Republican national Committe, not that it would make any difference. As for gingrich he is doing what he does best: pander and then, let them flames ignite where they will. He's interested in votes not international implications. Bradley also uncovers the real threat from the current terrorist actions we see from these stinkweeds of the colonies and that is Temple Mount, Temple Mount, Temple Mount. Watch out and observe very closely because all of these attacks is nothing but a lead up to the big event for which this ilk has been chomping at the bit for decades. Strange coincidence isnt it all this fuss about the Moghrabi Gate at this juncture in time. And gingrich's supporters in South Carolina and Florida are equally foaming at the mouth anticipating the great event that will ignite the conflagration. Keep your eye on these Jewish terrorists as they prepare for the big one. It's coming.
DNA evidence repeatedly shows the ancient kinship of Jew to each other and to ancient Israel origins. Take your fantasies to a shrink.
DNA proves that Palistinians and Jews are blood brothers. Try to deny that?
IW did you read haaretz articles or are you just freely quoting whatever supports your delusions? Palestinians at least as much if not more common with the ancient israeli origins as they mixed with those people when they moved to the area.
This is one of those Jews that would have voted for Hitler believing he was only kidding. I for one am not an occupier of the Land that belonged to my forefathers that were kicked ot by Romans and Babylonians before Mohammed was in Diapers.
By his dumb mistakes, the world will facilitate annoucing Palestine!
you can go back where you came from Russia? Moldova? New Jersey?
Most Christians in the world - apart from those lunatic Evangelist who claim to be Christian are against your vile occupation of another people. Jesus would be the firs to point this out. Do not talk for Christians, you know nothing about us. If your right-wing religious fanatic gov't had its way, all Christian properties, churches, etc... would be destroyed for your "Jewish State".
Very, very, very well-written, I loved this one. I also remember one of your blog posts about the Palestinians, "Wishing The Palestinians Out of Existence". I printed it out and still have it. It's one of the best arguments that I have read that supports that the Palestinians exist.
Can anyone tell me what Palestine?
Delusional Liberal Jews Be nice to the Arabs and they will be nice to the Jews? What planet have you been living on? 1.5 billion Muslims are dedicated to destroy Israel, no matter what Israel does. The Muslims clearly state their goal to convert or kill all non-Muslims, especially Jews. They do not hide their goals, but many do not believe it. This is similar to statements by Hitler that all Jews must leave Germany, or they will be killed. The West refused to believe him. Do we not learn from history? Only a united strong Israel will survive. Being nice or fair with the Arabs can surely lead to the destruction of Israel. Think Israel and last!
Definition of paranoia 1: a psychosis characterized by systematized delusions of persecution or grandeur usually without hallucinations 2: a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward excessive or irrational suspiciousness and distrustfulness of others
"1.5 billion Muslims are dedicated to destroy Israel, no matter what Israel does."' Wouah ! you seem to know the Islamic world so well...such stupidity is beyond imagination !
How many Muslims do you know?
nemesis probably by the police trying to bring him back to the asylum.