William Tecumseh Sherman on the Palestinians
Well, not exactly. General Sherman is one of my boyhood heroes; what I learned in school in New York was that his campaign through the heart of Dixie is what may have ultimately convinced General Lee (strangely enough, another boyhood hero) that prolonging the conflict was not useful. I later discovered, once I lived in the south, that Sherman was not universally admired, but, hey, the winners write the history, sorry about that scorched earth campaign and all that.
More to the point, the extract below attributed to Sherman was provided by James H. Fink in a letter published in the July-August 2002 issue of Commentary. Mr. Fink made the direct analogy between the Confederacy, the object, of course, of Sherman's wrath, and the Palestinians:
Well, that boy could write. There's not much question concerning what he's about. Now, to apply that to the Palestinians, it would seem that Israel won the "occupied territories" in a war that was not of their making, except in the most technical of senses that they struck preemptively. This does not mean that Israel should necessarily keep the West Bank and Gaza; that would be demographic suicide for a Jewish state unless they have the heart and stomach to transfer the Paleos to Egypt and Jordan from Gaza and the West Bank respectively.
Rather, it means that they are within their natural rights to suppress and eliminate the sources of violence from the conquered Palestinians. Israel, as a liberal (Western) democracy, with concern for human life, will not do what almost any Muslim nation would do were the positions reversed -- massacre the inhabitants until the remainder flee for their lives to a safe haven.
Come to think of it, that's almost exactly what happened to the Jewish minorities in Arab nations just after the establishment of Israel -- they had to leave areas they had lived in for centuries if not millenia. The world's press, not to mention a goodly portion of the European and North American "intelligentsia", commits moral blindness when they take up the Palestinian "cause", when they ignore the history of how things got to where they are today. Reading a little Sherman may be just the antidote.
Well, not exactly. General Sherman is one of my boyhood heroes; what I learned in school in New York was that his campaign through the heart of Dixie is what may have ultimately convinced General Lee (strangely enough, another boyhood hero) that prolonging the conflict was not useful. I later discovered, once I lived in the south, that Sherman was not universally admired, but, hey, the winners write the history, sorry about that scorched earth campaign and all that.
More to the point, the extract below attributed to Sherman was provided by James H. Fink in a letter published in the July-August 2002 issue of Commentary. Mr. Fink made the direct analogy between the Confederacy, the object, of course, of Sherman's wrath, and the Palestinians:
If they want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue and will dispossess them and put our friends in their places...Next year, their lands will be taken; for in war we can take them and rightfully too, and in another year they may beg vainly for their lives.
Well, that boy could write. There's not much question concerning what he's about. Now, to apply that to the Palestinians, it would seem that Israel won the "occupied territories" in a war that was not of their making, except in the most technical of senses that they struck preemptively. This does not mean that Israel should necessarily keep the West Bank and Gaza; that would be demographic suicide for a Jewish state unless they have the heart and stomach to transfer the Paleos to Egypt and Jordan from Gaza and the West Bank respectively.
Rather, it means that they are within their natural rights to suppress and eliminate the sources of violence from the conquered Palestinians. Israel, as a liberal (Western) democracy, with concern for human life, will not do what almost any Muslim nation would do were the positions reversed -- massacre the inhabitants until the remainder flee for their lives to a safe haven.
Come to think of it, that's almost exactly what happened to the Jewish minorities in Arab nations just after the establishment of Israel -- they had to leave areas they had lived in for centuries if not millenia. The world's press, not to mention a goodly portion of the European and North American "intelligentsia", commits moral blindness when they take up the Palestinian "cause", when they ignore the history of how things got to where they are today. Reading a little Sherman may be just the antidote.
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