Last night I saw a friend who was jumping up and down about the Helen Thomas news. He was saying, This is so absurd it's a giant victory, it will expose the hasbara types. Matt Yglesias, from 2002.
AFTER THE LATEST DEPRESSING news from the Middle East I think we have to start asking just how inhumane it would be for Israel to just expel the Palestinians from the occupied terroritories. The result would probably be out-and-out war with the neighboring Arab states, but Israel could win that.
All forced population transfers are humanitarian disasters, of course, but so is the current situation. It's not like there's not any room in the whole Arab world for all these Palestinian Arabs to go live in, it's just that the other Arab leaders don't want to cooperate.
Yglesias spoke at J Street last year, by the way, as the liberal on a panel with Jonathan Chait of the New Republic. Chait dissed me on that panel and said, Mondo should not be in the Jewish conversation about these issues. We're coming in, Chait. With bells on.
The Yglesias was spotted by Sadly, No.
There can be no doubt that the Palestinians of today are descended from the ancient Hebrews, perhaps even more than the Ashkenazim are.
Another study refuting Shlomo Sand’s myth.
link to nature.com
link to nytimes.com
A large portion of the Jews of Palestine became Christians in the first two centuries A.D. Where did they go, if they are not the ancestors of the later Christian Palestinians?
Since Rabbinical Judaism and Islam are such similar legalistic religions, it is at least plausible that a large portion of the Jews in Palestine who had not become Christians converted to Islam after the Arab conquest.
When you come to appreciate that reading the New York Times regularly cannot make you sophisticated, you have come of age.
Well-said — when you’re too much of a grown-up for the NYTimes, you’re really a grown-up. Or at least well on your way.
Phil : We’re coming in, Chait. With bells on.
Ring ‘em, Phil!
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