The Mythologies of the Middle East: Part Three Victor Davis Hanson
https://victorhanson.com/the-mythologies-of-the-middle-east-part-three/
The Myth of the Oppressed Palestinians
There are lots of refugees in the world with much longer claims of displacement than the Palestinians, and also some with much more recent suffering. And yet we hear nothing about them. Does anyone challenge Turkish president Erdogan for his ongoing threats to send missiles into Athens or to brag that he has a solution like his “grandfathers” for the Armenian “problem”?
Or do they lament the 1974 ethnic cleansing of northern Cyprus that resulted when the Turkish military invaded the island, created a puppet separatist regime in the north, appropriated land that had been Greek for three millennia, and then slaughtered Greeks and drove them down into the south of the island? Are there protests today demanding justice and a “right of return” for the Greek Cypriots? Do we talk of “colonialist” or “settler” Turks who were moved from the mainland to Cyprus to alter the demography of the island?
For that matter, do any lament the fate of the Volga Germans (nearly two million) who were packed up by Joseph Stalin and uprooted from their ancient homes in 1941–42?
Are we aware that until 1939 western Ukraine was the ancient home of millions of Catholic Poles, who were driven out by communist Russia in its hideous 1939 deal with Hitler and never returned after the war?
Or do we lament the 13 million East Prussians who were ethnically cleansed after World War II to give lands to a new Poland that was robbed by Stalin of its old domains? Are any of these peoples today considered UN refugees? Do octogenarian Germans dangle the keys of their old homes in Danzig to cameras, as if they will someday have “a right of return” to present-day Poland?
Had Hamas not confiscated hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid to build their macabre 300-mile-long subterranean military network and instead simply used the money for the benefit of its own people, would Gaza have been a Hong Kong or Singapore rather than the home of murderous cliques?
Twenty-one percent of Israelis are Arabs and enjoy the greatest freedom in the Middle East—and the highest standard of living apart from the oil-rich Gulf states. How can Israel be an imperialist apartheid state when a fifth of its own citizens are Arabs who form political parties, vote, and enjoy constitutional protection unheard of in the Middle East?
As far as the “right of return,” why would anyone on the West Bank or Gaza wish to return to live in Israel given their eliminationist rhetoric of “From the River to the Sea”? Or is the message that they wish to return to Israel to overwhelm and destroy its constitutional system and then set up a government analogous to the one-election/one-time Palestinian Authority or Hamas—and thus enjoy less freedom and prosperity than the Israeli Arabs do now, none of whom express a desire to move either to Gaza or the West Bank?
Why would anyone from Gaza or the West Bank wish to emigrate to the United States, given the venomous rhetoric about the so-called Great Satan? Is the point to emigrate to America, demonstrate on behalf of Hamas, break the law, surge bridges to disrupt traffic, harass Jewish-Americans, take over classrooms and disrupt lectures on university campuses—all in order to abuse such freedoms to support those who never would extend such tolerance to such kindred protesters?
Why are the calls to Israel for proportionality, ceasefires, avoidance of collateral damage, and to form a bipartisan wartime cabinet of all views not extended to our other ally Ukraine that seeks to defend itself by being disproportionate, refusing ceasefires, not worrying about collateral damage, and canceling elections and political parties?
Why can we agree that the Russians started the war by invading Ukraine and are waging a brutal fight, but cannot say the same about Hamas which started the conflict on October 7th, by outdoing even the Russians in its beheading, mutilations, raping, torturing, murdering, and hostage-taking?
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