The above blog title is the nicest way I can think of to answer the “Palestinian” students at Kent State University, who want a picture of former Israeli Prime Minister and one of her quotes removed from the campus.
Let’s start with the quote. Here it is, verbatim:
“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement”
Not what you’d call controversial – especially given that, before emigrating to Israel Ms. Meir taught school in Milwaukee.
But, in fairness, the quote itself is not what “Palestinians”, joined by a number of other Israel-hating groups, are complaining about.
Excerpted from Lea Speyer’s article in algemeiner.com:
President Beverly Warren responded to an op-ed written by Yousof Mousa, president of the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter — with the support of the Spanish and Latino Student Association (SALSA), Ohio Student Association and Muslim Students Association (MSA) — with a letter saying that she, the provost and the senior vice president of academic affairs had visited the display and will “decide about the course of action.”
Mousa told Kent Wired that it is not Meir’s quote itself that disturbs him and his fellow students, but rather everything the late prime minister represents.
“It’s from a person connected to the death of many Palestinians. That’s where the problem is,” he said.
As The Algemeiner previously reported, SJP and its allies want to remove the Meir display on the grounds that the late leader of the state of Israel participated in the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
Mousa wrote in an article, published by Kent Wired, that Meir “had policies and statements that were expressly racist against Africans,” which “produced many hurtful stereotypes, and we hear about people of color today in the racism authorized in the Trump campaign.”
“For Palestinians, it is doubly hurtful — Meir once said that we don’t exist as a people,” he added.
Passing by the photo and quote — which reads, “Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement” — makes Palestinian and black students uncomfortable, and “contributes to a climate that makes us feel like we do not belong here,” Mousa claimed.
Ok, let’s sort this out.
-Yes, many Palestinian Arabs died when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel. That just might have something to do with the fact that Palestinian Arabs were, during that entire time, at war with Israel in en effort to obliterate the Jewish state and kill every Jew in it – an objective which is fully operational to this day.
Ms. Meir’s term of office started two years after the “6-day war” and ended one year after the “Yom Kippur war”, both of which “Palestinians” avidly supported and participated in.
Call me a dreamer, but I have usually found that when people make war on a country, that country is likely to fight back and the people making war will suffer casualties.
-The “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” is a joke. It never happened during Golda Meir’s years as Prime Minister (and didn’t happen any other time either – but that’s for another blog). Israel had then, and has now, a large Palestinian Arab population (about 20% of the total country). That’s some ethnic cleansing, let me tell you.
-I don’t know the exact “we don’t exist as a people” quote Yousof Mousa is referring to. But I have no doubt Golda Meir said it, because it is true.
“Palestinians” do not – repeat, not – exist as a people. That is why I put the term in quotation marks when I use it.
Yes, there are Palestinian Arabs – i.e. Arabs who live on the land area known as Palestine, which encompasses Israel, Jordan, Judea/Samaria (aka the west bank ) and Gaza. But there is no discreet tribe called “The Palestinians”.
The actual Palestinians (more correctly called Philistines) disappeared over 2,700 years ago after being conquered and largely massacred by the Assyrians.
Today’s “Palestinians are an invention concocted by yasir arafat and his pals in the mid-1960’s, to create a false narrative that might fool a lot of people…which it most certainly has done.
Try and find a history book, including Arab history books, published before the mid 1960’s which references “The Palestinians”. You won’t. Because none exists.
Even the original PLO Charter refers to them as “Palestinian Arabs”, not “Palestinians”. Why? To distinguish them from Palestinians were were not Arab.
Did you know any of this? It would be nice if media referenced these facts, say, once or twice every decade, just in case someone was interested in the truth. Maybe Kent State President Beverly Warren should read up on it just a bit.
-Finally, Mousa complains that having the apolitical, purely academic quote with a picture of Golda Meir “contributes to a climate that makes us feel like we do not belong here”?
Here’s the correct response – the one President Warren will never give them: “Well, maybe if you have a problem with this, you don’t belong here.”
Not only is it the right answer, it is also far nicer then just about every alternative way of saying the same thing.
Think about that, Ms. Warren.
Ken, sadly when your generation and mine are gone, no one will know the truth of this dispute, that you have laid out above. The media have a lot of power and they will keep the truth hidden. I think I know why they do this in regard to muslims. If everyone knew the truth, who would ever support the muslim communities in the M.E. and Africa???