http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2011/12/article119.htm
Why Sri Lanka, but not Samaria? Why not Rhodesia, but the “West Bank?”
It’s admirable (don’t you think?) when a people throws off the legacy of imperial oppression to embrace their new freedom. The very renaming of nations themselves has often been a reflection of this wonderful development.
Admirable, indeed–unless those people happen to be Jews.
Among the examples of this which have occurred over the last half century are people who lived in Great Britain’s former imperial possessions of Ceylon, Rhodesia, and Burma. Those nations are now known as Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and Myanmar.
While I’ve thought about this for decades, what brought this issue onto my own front burner was an article I read recently about Myanmar’s pro-democracy hero and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi. Too often foreign imperialism gets supplanted by home-grown despotism, as the latter knows only too well.
Here’s the problem, and admittedly, the Jews pose a unique case related to this discussion due to their forced exile in the wake of taking on the imperial conqueror of much of the known world not just once, but in two major (and other lesser) revolts recorded in depth by the Romans themselves. Before we proceed, please contemplate this thought for a moment…
Is a victim any less a victim because his victimization has been historically the longest enduring?
While the so-called “Progressives” of the world are adamant that the previous imperialist names of conquered lands be dismissed, why is it that when it comes to dealing with the oft-conquered land of the Jews, the opposite is the case?
Such sources of ethical enlightenment frequently insist instead that the millennia-old names of the land–Israel, Judea, and Samaria–be abandoned for the sake of the names Roman, British, and Arab imperialism and conquest gave to them instead…”Palestine” and the “West Bank.”
Everyone else is entitled to national liberation–but not Jews. The latter must agree to their scapegoat, victim, and preferred whipping post par excellence existence for eternity. Or just disappear.
With Christmas 2011 still of very much of recent memory, a good portion of the world once again became familiar with the story of Jesus’ birth. During this season, it has also become common for Arabs to declare the alleged “Palestinian”(non-Jewish) identity of Jesus.