printOn purely utilitarian grounds, it’s difficult to understand the “civilized” world’s almost universal drive to shrink the civilized sphere that is Israel and expand the anarcho-terrorist territory that is the Palestinian Authority. Why in the world would anyone who prizes productivity, industry, and trade push for the eviction of productive, industrious, traders from the “disputed territories,” only to replace them with destructive occupants? Even if you believe this folly serves the cause of justice, you have to admit that ceding territory to the Palestinians is a terrible waste of scarce resources.
In 2008, the US ran a “goods trade deficit with Israel of $7.8 billion.” We still do (link). Why? Because Israelis make and export things, a lot of high-tech things. Other than explosives, animate and inanimate, what have the Palestinians ever made and traded? Why, without Israel, Palestinians would be without electricity. The main market for Palestinian goods (labor) is Israel. Yet the Palestinians keep bombing their economic lifeline.
Since its independence, Israel has demonstrated its capacity for self-governance. Since they began demanding self-determination, Palestinians have proven incapable of the same. Any more territories Israel cedes will soon fall into disrepair, as did Gaza.
The Palestinians can’t feed themselves, although they manage to cannibalize their own and those around them. Still, the so-called civilized world wants to imperil the existence of the those who’ve turned a howling desert into a thriving country, and reward a warring, whining faction of self-styled victims.
Why? It’s a vexing question.
UPDATE (May 24): There is an interesting thread on Facebook. My response will give you an idea of the discussion’s direction:
“Euclid was a Greek mathematician [not an Arab]. I am not sure what Chris means. But so as not to advance something along the lines of the mythistory called Afrocentrism, let me say that “The origins of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians.” And then the Indians, who were subsequently brutalized under some or other caliphate.
As Mises observed, no doubt, the Arabs were great preservers of culture by means of its translation. They were also great copiers too. No doubt there was an Arab civilizational heyday. But innovation was less in that DNA…
If I may quote Meatloaf here, “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
It might be different for the arab squatters if they had not been coddled financially while attacked and reviled politically by their arab brothers. Cut off all “aid”. That is Step One. Let them try to establish their “state” in Jordan and Syria, then they will see what REAL occupation and repression look like. They might learn. Or they might not. I don’t really care.
The leftist West is consumed with self-hatred and “guilt” for having produced a prosperous civilization. This idiocy goes back to the rather moronic idea of the “Nobel Savage”
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/416988/noble-savage
Nevertheless, it is not a good idea politically to sell yourself “under the bus” (except for the far left in Israel) so selling Israel under the bus gives one the vicarious thrill of watching the Palestinians take 2.7 nanoseconds to destroy all the Greenhouses of Gaza in 2005, for example.
Somehow, wholesale ONE-WAY EVICTION (All Jews must leave Palestine but no Arabs leave Israel!) is a sign of evenhandedness and peace. This is, of course, bald face nonsense. But logic has little sway with the majority of people.
However, I disagree that nothing can be exported from the People’s Democratic Republic of Hamasistan – such export products could include the Mark-23 Arafat Backpack Bomb, the Rantisi Mark-17 Do-it-yourself Rocket Propelled Grenade kit, and other good utensils for the Global Peace Process. Don’t worry – the mainstream idiots will make no connection between their demands for concessions and the additional trouble.
Why? I’ll tell you why. We are witnessing a generation in our culture untrained by the education system to think, reason or look at the world with even a modicum of logic. They are suckers for propaganda. The more radical and far fetched the better. On this particular subject Mercer makes, and has made for years, perfect sense. She is a voice in the wilderness.
Why?
Because much as stern faced puritans cannot bear that someone somewhere is having a good time, the covetous cannot bear that someone somewhere cannot succeed without education, industry, imagination, thrift, et al. Israel’s demonstrated in fifty years what the Arab/muslim would not so much as attempt in hundreds.
Man may not live on bread alone but he has demonstrated he can thrive on envy.
It is indeed very vexing. The simplistic anti-semitic model (Jews control US foreign policy) fails to explain it.
However, the sight of Netanyahu being applauded and welcomed as if a King hath descended upon Congress was revolting to me. I’m more pro-Israel than most people on this earth, but that kind of spectacle only feeds the anti-semitic trolls.
Perhaps the best explanatory model is ‘liberal internationalism’ – the naive belief in the equality of all people applied to the whole world.
It speaks volumes about the state of civilization today that Israel has to constantly justify its right to exist, yet no one seems to question the basic premise of Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah: that Israel has no right to exist, within ANY borders, because once land has been conquered by Islam, it must stay Muslim forever.
If a bunch of people got together in Texas saying they want their own country, would the “civilized world” tell the US to give them the state?
“The Palestinians can’t feed themselves, although they manage to cannibalize their own and those around them. Still, the so-called civilized world wants to imperil the existence of the those who’ve turned a howling desert into a thriving country, and reward a warring, whining faction of self-styled victims.”—alas, the root issue…they’re natural-born oinkers. No wonder the international community has such a fetish with them.
Oh…one more thing, your article a few days ago The Power of Private Property is simply beautiful.
“If a bunch of people got together in Texas saying they want their own country…”
Believe me, there’s a sizable number of us here who DO want our own country. Yes, you can bet if it were ever actively pursued the hypocrisy from D.C after their justifications for foreign interventions in the name of people “just wanting a chance at freedom” in Libya, Kosovo etc. would be blaring.