Once upon a political scientist.
Palestine
Why is it an antisemitic word?
Hate wins
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib discovered that the majority of her colleagues see the mention of a free Palestine as an antisemitic remark.
Singling out an individual for censure for supporting her ethnic/national origin is ipso facto discrimination against ethnic/national origin.
The Great Orange Ego rants about how gag orders issued by judges limit his free speech rights. His minions in Congress see no hypocrisy in punishing Tlaib for exercising her right.
To their shame, many of her fellow Democrats agree.
A free Palestine necessitates a reduction in territory claimed by Israel.
To the simplistic bigots in the room, that translates into the destruction of Israel.
To those who know the evolution of the problem, Israel created this necessity by stealing land from the Palestinians.
But first, what prompted this outrage?
Step away from the horrific violence
The culture in the USA has devolved in the last 50 years when it comes to depictions of savagery.
It probably started with pro wrestling. Violence became entertainment.
Someone discovered that bloodletting attracted attention.
Or perhaps it was the reports from Vietnam on the broadcast television news programs each evening. Showing violence rather than just reporting it became newsworthy.
The situation in Gaza is a prime example.
Videos are posted everywhere with warnings that the content is violent. Such warnings aren’t deterrents. They are invitations.
Might as well say: Watch this video because it has gore.
The most visceral video shown recently is about Hamas atrocities. Israeli atrocities are limited to showing buildings being destroyed.
It has become obligatory for news sources to state that Israel warned people in the building 40 seconds before it is bombed, like that absolves them of killing non-combatants in the building.
Those editorial choices matter. They reflect the deeply embedded bias that always promotes Israel as good and Palestine (if there is such a place) as bad.
They also reinforce compulsions to watch the consequences of hate without having to acknowledge they are viewing the consequences of hate.
Hook, line, and sinker
People in the USA have been socialized to believe that Israel is a fellow democracy that has been attacked multiple times by its Arab nations for no reason other than that Israel exists.
That’s not far from the truth but it’s still a lie.
Israel exists because the Western countries felt guilty about their horrific lack of compassion for European Jews prior to and during World War II.
Britain announced in 1917 that Palestine could become the location of a Jewish homeland.
The same declaration also stated that the rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine should not be infringed.
Israel declared independence ahead of the timetable to have both the Jewish State and Palestine become members of the international community.
Doing so underscored the fact that the people who emigrated to Palestine to found Israel were just as much invaders as Peter Stuyvesant and company were when they purchased the island now called Manhattan.
Why did no one say, “Hey! Are you sure you want to appropriate someone else’s territory to rebuild Israel when that someone else is going to resent your doing so and become your enemy?”
The Western world accepted that it was a good idea to do something never done before or since using occupation more than eighteen hundred years before as justification for reoccupation by the putative descendants of the ancient community.
And please stop saying Jews have lived in the area the entire time. Before the Zionist movement got underway, Jews were less than ten percent of the population in Palestine. They also have lived continuously in Damascus, Alexandria, Rome, and many other places. In 1947, Queens could have been the new Jerusalem.
Water under the bridge
No one minded much in 1919 when Bohemia, Moravia, and Slovakia were put together as Czechoslovakia even though the Slovakia part had been governed by Hungarians for centuries.
Before then, there had never been a Slovakia. If anything, it was Upper Hungary.
The capitol of Hungary was Bratislava née Pressburg for about four hundred years.
It was easy to remove Czechoslovakia's eastern end in the 1990s.
It was easy enough to declare Palestine as a territory in 1919.
If you have ever seen a map partitioning Palestine, you would know it made gerrymandering look reasonable.
Palestine is between the river and the sea, as it has been since Roman times. Since when is the truth antisemitic?
