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Yet Another Joe's avatar

I believe it was PJ O'Rourke who noted that Gaza could have become a new Monte Carlo if they could have only gotten off the stupid train.

But too many of their leaders beginning with Arafat (may he rot in hell) decided that radicalism got them more money, power, & prestige over actually helping their people. A lot of the aid money getting spent on weapons also gets skimmed into pockets.

For all teh Concern that certain people express for the Palestinians, very few have ever really taken the time and effort to point out how much their leadership is deliberately working to keep things as bad as they are, in order to make a personal profit. But Radical Leftist Chic is more fun I guess, and fits better into their "West = Bad" mindset.

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it's just Boris's avatar

And some people would simply prefer to rule in hell, than serve in heaven.

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Yet Another Joe's avatar

It's not like those flats in Dubai are crawling slums.

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Killbait's avatar

It still amazes me how many people have "forgotten" where the Palestinians were before they got their claws into Israel.

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Andrew Milbourne's avatar

Or else never learned. I grew up with the "Palestinians were always there!" BS being bounded into my head by public indoc- er, education. It wasn't until LawDog first explained things and I looked into it further that I realized that a) it wasn't true and b) what they'd done to every other country that had made the mistake of letting them in.

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BamBoncher's avatar

Watching Egypt close their border to the Palestinians after October 7th, along with the fact that no Arab nation offered to take the refugees, painted the picture quite clearly of what the rest of the Arab world thinks of the Palestinians, that's for sure.

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Robert Arvanitis's avatar

In the 1948 partition of the British Mandate, Arabs got 98% of the land and 100% of the oil. That was not enough for the irredentist islamists, who attacked, and lost, in 1948, 1956, and again in 1967. Failing to learn from such absolute failures, they resorted to vicious assaults on civilians both in Munich and the Holy Lands.They continued to lose but proved ineducable.

That is now over. Israel is resolute and America is sane at minimum until January 20, 2021, with likely continuation of policy thereafter. So to the mad dogs, we say FAFO.

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Weapons of Legend's avatar

You're 100% on target about the Palestinians, IMO. When I was in Afghanistanin 2011, we had a company-sized element of Jordanian troops on our base and your article reminded me of a conversation I had with one of their officers during King Abdullah's birthday celebration. The lieutenant said that not did the military love them, the people do as well. He then asked me: "Did you notice we were the only (Arab) country who didn't have problems during the Arab Spring?" A few years later, King Abdullah led strikes against ISIS after they burned one of his soldiers alive--so, it can be argued that loyalty is well-earned, IMO.

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Jolie's avatar

And here I just thought you were a bit shirty because on 7 October they went on a raping and killing spree which included raping the corpses of women and children they had tortured to death and sending pictures thereof home to Mummy. I should have known you had actual reasons. Yes, sarcasm, in case it need be said.

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Heather Wiegel's avatar

Gah. I have never been able to travel overseas for any reason, but I grew up seeing all the bushwa on Ye Olde Television News back when the news was still at least somewhat news reporting where you got to hear "This went on, make up your own mind about it," instead of the current clime of "This is what we want you to believe went on, and we will make up your mind for you about it." I remember a LOT of that idiocy that went on in my long-ago youth, and the Palestinians have never done themselves or the Arab world any favors with their behavior. Feh.

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The Scuttlebutt's avatar

"The only reason that most Arab states tolerate the Palestinians is because of the inbred antipathy" Oh, it's not just the antipathy that's inbred.

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carlton mckenney's avatar

I would say inculcated rather than inbred antipathy. I am continually horrified and amazed by the number of US Jews that aide with Hamas.

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Yet Another Joe's avatar

Many are finding out that having the approved Leftist views doesn't matter in the eyes of the Radicals. Just being Jewish is a defacto crime to them. Now, where have we heard that before?

Anti-Semitism: It's a quick & easy shortcut to seeing who the evil people are.

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Blind Archer's avatar

"Overconfident much?"

As the saying goes (in various forms): If you take a shot at the king, you'd better not miss.

Also (in various forms): Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

But those bits of wisdom are NOT contained in the Qu'ran; they come from Western infidel culture. Imams don't teach them, so the Palestinians don't learn them.

Yet another historical case of FAFO, before it was known under that term.

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Yet Another Joe's avatar

To be fair, those concepts are pretty much universal to anyone with a political culture. Sun Tzu wrote basically the same thing, and those are principles that would have been well understood in the courts of Montezuma or the Mongolian Kahns. Every Ottoman Sultan would have known those concepts quite well, as would his Grand Vizir- there's probably whole libraries of writings on the subject.

The problem is, tyrants promote ignorance. The leaders of the Palestinians, Iranians, and other religious tyrannies would suppress any ideals that might go against their personal authority- even if it wasn't Western in origin. They can't be having people thinking things that might cause them to ask questions!

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mark's avatar

Thanks for the thumbnail history lesson! Succinct, well written and accurate.

Nice work, Amigo!

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Dale Flowers's avatar

Take those corrosive comments and wear them as a badge of honor.

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Tom Hunter's avatar

Also Kuwait, where decades of support - money, diplomacy, jobs for some 300,000 Palestianians - came to nothing when Saddam invaded and the bastards cheered, presumably because they figured he'd deal to the Jews in ways Kuwait would not.

As usual things didn't work out this way (I'm sensing another theme with this group) and once back in power the Kuwaiti government booted all of them out - with probably 100% support from Kuwaiti citizens.

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Victoria's avatar

Yet they are admired in the Muslim world as jihadis.

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Just Me's avatar

It seems the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in Rockland County, New York have their own country, as well.

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Just Me's avatar

It seems the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews in Rockland County, New York have their own country, as well.

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