Let's Support Palestinian Statehood

To the surprise of many, President Barack Obama stood up at the UN to oppose giving Hamas-ruled Palestine the august status of an official UN-recognized nation-state, even threatening an American veto if necessary.

The usual suspects on the left, including the New York Times in what purported to be a news article, were not amused.

For Mr. Obama, the challenge in crafting the much-anticipated General Assembly speech was how to address the incongruities of the administration’s position: the president who committed to making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians a priority from Day One, now unable to get peace negotiations going after two and a half years; the president who opened the door to Palestinian state membership at the United Nations last year, now threatening to veto that membership.

Regardless of the Times' protests, Obama's plainspoken reasons why the Palestinians don't deserve statehood are incontrovertibly true.

Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side... Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map.

Hmm, something missing here...

For as long as Israel has existed and quite some while before, the Palestinian Arabs have been willing, nay eager, to ruin and beggar themselves to have a chance at shedding Jewish blood.  Rather than put in place sewer systems or even use the ones they have, Palestinians prefer to use sewer pipe to make makeshift rockets that rarely hit anything noteworthy but occasionally pulverize a hated Jew.  Rather than try to teach peace, the official Hamas TV station broadcasts funny-animal children's shows glorifying suicide bombers and portraying Jews as murderers.

Is it any wonder that Israel doesn't trust an entity that, in its very bid for UN statehood, displays a map showing Israel as 100% Palestinian Muslim?  There can't be peace until the loser wants peace.  The inhabitants of the Palestinian territories, such as they are, are the very definition of barbarians unworthy of civilized acceptance.

It is for precisely this reason that they should be granted their wish and declared an independent state with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto.

Wait, What?

No, Palestine doesn't deserve independent-nation status, but it should get it anyway.

The terrorists who run, reside in, administer, and otherwise infest Palestine no doubt figure that being an independent country would further their evil cause.  In the short term, perhaps that's true.

In a conflict that's gone on for millennia, though, it's wiser to take the long view, and to stay out of the way of your enemy when they're making a mistake.  The Palestinians are forgetting several important details: being a nation grants rights, but also imposes responsibilities under the same international laws.  One of which, note, is not attacking or invading your neighbors.

For lo these many years, hardly a day goes by when Hamas doesn't shoot rockets or throw bombs over the border against Israel.   Up until now, they have been able to portray these murderous attacks as "resistance against an occupier."

If, however, they become officially their own nation, this won't be true anymore - no occupier, no war, thus officially no conflict.  Yet we have every confidence that Hamas will still murder Israelis, by religious force of habit if nothing else.  What excuse will they have then?

No doubt they'll cook something up, and no doubt the left will at least pretend to buy it.  The fact remains, however, that invasion by a foreign nation has always been a legally valid reason to fight back, always will be, and will be extremely difficult to spin as anything else.

When responding to an attack by forces of a foreign nation-state, it has also always been legal to conquer them.  Israel has done this before, in conquering the Sinai during the Six-Day War after Egypt committed an act of war by closing the international Straits of Tiran.

Unfortunately, they didn't expel the Palestinians into the Sinai then, and as a result the world has bled for the past forty years.  Giving the Palestinians their state, which we all know full well they'll abuse, gives Israel a second chance to correct that historic mistake.

With a little luck, the Palestinian state will be as short-lived as they wish Israel would be and we'll finally have done with their barbarism.