"Because It's theirs!"

[JM]

Helen Thomas . . .

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/06/04/helen-thomas-go-home-to-europe-jews/
--
When she says, "Remember, these people are occupied, and it's their
land," does she have a point?

Imagine that this interview had occurred circa 1956 in Palm Beach,
Florida on the grounds of a "restricted" Gentiles Only country club,
with reporters there following up on a big expose about some golf-
crazy Jews that had gone incognito under names like Smith, Jones and
Brown to surreptitiously become members of the club. Helen Thomas was
there being interviewed by another member of the press who asks . . .

"Helen! Any comments today on this shocking business, where it is now
revealed that this country club has been taken over by Jews who have
been here golfing and chipping and putting around under assumed names,
and not only that, have managed to gain to a majority on the board of
directors, and elect a Jewish president?"

Helen pauses for a moment, just long enough to connect with her
righteous anger, to say, "Tell them to get the hell out of Palm Beach
Greens!"

"Woo!" says the reporter. "Any better comments than that?"

Helen laughs, and then straightens her face to say, "Remember, these
Gentile golfers are occupied, and it's their club. This is not Poland,
it's not Abe's Deli in Bedford Stuyvesant, it's not Germany or east
91st street in Brooklyn."

"So where should they go, what should they do?"

"They go home to Poland or to Goldman's Miniature Golf on east 91st
street . . .

"Wait. Where's home?"

"East 91st Street. Also, they can freely play stickball there, or over
in Poland and Germany, or in America or everywhere else."

"Anywhere but Palm Beach Greens."

"They can just get the hell out of there."
--
Of course I realize there isn't anything funny about this. Nobody
should be laughing--but there is a point, not to what Helen Thomas
said, but to this analogy, which is to show that Helen had no point.
Her point would be that Jews have a home, anywhere, and everywhere
except in that restricted Arab and Gentile country club known to Helen
Thomas and her ilk of ancient Romans and the Imperial British as
"Palestine."

The point Helen Thomas makes is that Jews have somehow
'surreptitiously' come into occupation of a land she only knows as
"Palestine" which for some inscrutable reason cannot be 'home' to
Jews, any more than Palm Beach Greens can be their club, whereas
Germany and Poland, in her view, is the Jewish 'home', the Jewish Palm
Beach at Buchenwald and Treblinka.

But the land historically known in countless Greek and Roman archives
as "Judah" or "Judea" is no home to the Jew. Germany is, Judea, not.
Could anything be more obtuse? As Jonathan Swift once wrote, "How can
you reason a man out of something he didn't reason himself into?"
Helen's point has nothing to do with reason, or history, or ethics. It
goes to one point and one point alone: possession.

What? Are these people 'possessed'? Yes. The are possessed by the
passion of possession. Helen says, "It's their land!"

Is it? In what sense? Is it in the same sense that the Palm Beach
Greens is *their* Gentile golf course, which they have every right to
restrict against Jewish membership? The problem with a person like
Helen Thomas is that she can't understand that mere current
possession, or 'occupation' as it were, does not of necessity confer a
certification of ownership, insofar as there may be clouds, even liens
on that title, claims of a prior occupier or possessor of that land.
More important and more to the point . . .

What right had Arabs who were occupying the Hills of Judah under
Turkish and British rule, to tell a Jew that he could not come home to
Judea, buy land and live there, same as they? Did this Arab claim the
same 'right' as that Palm Beach country club, to restrict what he
wanted to call "Palestine" only to Muslim and Christian occupation?

He most certainly did, and does still to this day, as Helen Thomas
becomes his mouthpiece to say, "This is a home for Christians and
Muslims, Arabs and Druse, but totally not the Jews. Jews belong in
Germany and Poland," where as everybody knows they had been made to
feel so very much 'at home'.

Possession is what she argues from because she is possessed, made mad
by what she feels (there is no thought to it) to be the righteous and
holy position of possession. "Because it's their's!"

Is it really "theirs"? What is "theirs"? If an Arab can show
documentation either oral or written sufficient to convince a judge
that his claim to so many hectares is just and true, this is all well
and good, but he has no claim of possession whatsoever to what may lie
on the other side of the hill to which he holds no such deed, such as
to say, "It's all mine because I am an Arab, and as an Arab, I can
decide who can occupy that land over the hill, all the way from the
river Jordan to the sea, because we, along with the Greeks and Romans
ran the Jews out long ago. We don't want them around here and what we
say goes."

Does it, indeed! But the very fact that the Arab says, "We ran the
Jews out" is evidence in court of a prior Jewish possession. The very
presence of the Dome of the Rock over the ruins of the Temple is proof
that what the Arab claims is true, whether it was only the rubble
Arabs managed to seize from the Romans via a later Byzantine
possession, or not. The proof stands true and plain, at the Wall where
Jews wail that they hold and cherish a prior claim.

The world remains in a state of savagery so long as this goes
disrespected and ignored by Helen Thomas. When mere present possession
trumps all reason, all thought, makes ownership automatic; law,
judgment and reason and history are all usurped by force. "Because
it's theirs!" is no argument, it's just xenophobia, an excuse for
discrimination based on no equitably demonstrated legitimate right,
but only on force of ethnic occupation and possession. It is by just
such rude madness as this that Helen Thomas makes her "point" along
with all these who certainly are her sympathizers, these
"Progressives" from Code Pink who recently raided a Nancy Pelosi
speech with their razzing and their Banners, "Stop Funding Israel
Terrorist State"--which is no point in civilized, reasoned discourse,
at all.

But what will many say, of Israel as the "Jewish State"? Is it not the
same? No. Not at all. What rises by dint of necessity after all
liberal attempts at equity have failed, comes by force of reason, and
not by lust of mere possession alone. The modern state of Israel was
not a foregone conclusion, no matter the dreams of Theodor Herzl. Had
it been the case that Arabs in a spirit of cooperation had been open
to the return of Jews to the hills of Judah--everything would have
been different! What if Arabs had been more inclined toward the views
of T.E. Lawrence's old comrade at arms King Faisal rather than those
of Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem with his extreme of anti-
Semitism? What if Arabs had decided to be good instead of bad, nice
instead of mean?

Why, the very presence of Arab members in Knesset to this very day
stands as proof of the goodwill of Jews toward Arabs, in a hope that
one day things can and should be different! As Israel exists today as
the "Jewish State", this is a state of emergency, still, as following
upon the Shoah, and of all the wars fought to keep putting a stop to
it, as is arises again and again from the hand of Arabia and Russia,
and from the liberal Progressive Left, and from Iran and now again
from Turkey, and MSNBC, BBC, NPR and PBS.

I daresay there would not be many Jews so 'stiff-necked' in a latter
day, when peace at long last seemed well established between Arab and
Jew, that the land of Israel would see any need to restrict the
citizenship of resident Arabs, whether to position in government or
title deed possession of land. No man can ever know the wonders of
goodness and brotherhood that peace can bring. We have never known,
and so do we do not know, nay we cannot even begin to imagine.

But to ask of Israel to cease being the Jewish State would be so
absurd as to ask of Norway to cease being the Norwegian state, or
France the French state. So long as a state can establish equanimity
and justice within its borders as a nation of one dominant ethnicity,
French, German, Jordanian, Israeli, providing equal treatment to all,
and rationally regulated entry, even citizenship to many, then what
more can a civilized world ask of itself?

In the day this should happen, then we'll know what can or cannot be
asked.
--
JM