Arnold Ahlert recently reminded us that the Palestinian Authority gets some $400 million yearly in US aid; this is in addition to what they receive from the UN (funded in part by the US) and the EU. Since a portion of this winds up financing terrorism against Israel and against us, perhaps it is fair to ask what legitimacy the PA has, and exactly who are these people called “Palestinians.”

There is, of course, the official mythology that all good progressives accept without question, just as they accept without question every other lie fed to them by government, academia, and the controlled media. Once upon a time, the story goes, there was a happy, happy land inhabited since the dawn of time by a noble people called “Palestinians,” peaceful Arab Muslims who tilled the soil and produced useful goods and wished no harm to anyone. Then, without warning or reason, they were invaded by hordes of tall, blonde Aryan people called “Jews,” whose ancestors all came from Europe, and who had no ties to the region known as Palestine. The Palestinians fought heroically, but were no match for the superior numbers and modern weapons of the wicked, wicked Jews, who drove them from their land and forced them to live in poverty and misery. No wonder a tiny minority have since engaged in asymmetric warfare (referred to as “terrorism” by Islamophobes).

Reality check. First of all, the “Palestinians” are in no way a separate and unique people. They are Sunni Muslim Arabs; their language is Arabic, and their diet and customs are identical to the diet and customs of Egyptians, Jordanians, Lebanese, etc. There was never a specifically Arab and/or Muslim state even approximately coinciding with the boundaries of present day Israel. To top it all off, many “Palestinians” are actually the descendants of Lebanese, Jordanians, Syrians, and Egyptians who migrated into Palestine after Jewish settlers had improved the economy. Once there, they declared themselves to be the rightful natives of the land, and claimed that the Jews were invaders. The Jews, with few exceptions, did not drive them out; they left of their own accord when invading Arab armies promised them that they could return and take everything once the Jews were exterminated. After the invasion failed, their Muslim Arab “friends” refused citizenship in their countries to most of them, condemning them to be refugees for generations.

As for the Israeli Jews, the land had, in ancient times, been the site of one, and at times two, Jewish states, and both Jews and a few Arabs had always lived there. After repeated Jewish revolts, the Roman Empire killed many of the Israelites and drove many others out; they settled all over the Empire. But many remained, surviving the fall of Rome and the Muslim invasion and the conquest by the Ottoman Empire. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the movement known as Zionism was begun by such men as Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, mainly in response to the centuries-long persecution of Jews by other Europeans, including, most recently, the Russians under their Tsar. It is unfortunate that the left (Labor Zionists) captured this movement, but that does not change the fact that the Jews had suffered cruel persecution (much worse was to come) and this was, indeed, their ancient homeland. European and some Sephardic Jews began settling the region, creating industries, draining swamps, irrigating deserts, and suffering brutal persecution by their Arab neighbors, including frequent atrocities like mass murder, child murder, torture, and mutilations (Muslims will be Muslims). Eventually, the Jews began doing something new: they organized, trained, and fought back.

On 11/2/17 British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour sent a letter to Walter Rothschild pledging support for a Jewish state in Palestine; the Rothschilds had aided Britain with loans in WWI. The fact that the rather sinister Rothschild banking dynasty was involved in Zionism still does not negate the basic fact that the Jews have a right to a homeland. This declaration was approved by Britain’s major allies, and, after WWI, the League of Nations gave Britain a temporary mandate over Palestine, due to expire 5/14/48. On 11/29/47 the League’s successor, the UN, recommended that Palestine be partitioned between Muslims and Jews. The Muslims would get the area east of the Jordan River (now the Kingdom of Jordan) and the West Bank area, leaving the Jews only the small portion that remained. Of course, Arab Muslims also retained the vast areas of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Gulf States, Iraq, Syria, part of Lebanon, and Egypt and the rest of North Africa. Non-Arab Muslims retained Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan (after the partition of India) Malaysia, Indonesia, and many other areas. The Jews agreed to the deal, but the Muslims wanted it all, and wanted the Jews exterminated, and invaded Israel, which had declared statehood 5/14/48 — the day the mandate expired. The “heroic” Arabs had the Jews surrounded and heavily outnumbered — but they lost the war.

As for the Palestinian Authority, it was established in 1993 by the Oslo Accords, and was really a creation of Egyptian Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Army, a sadistic terrorist group supported by the Soviet Union. The PLO more or less split into two terrorist groups, the relatively “moderate” Fatah (a moderate Muslim is one who kills you but doesn’t eat you), and Hamas, which is supported by Iran. So why are we giving aid to them? We might as well ask why “our” government has brought hundreds of thousands of Muslims into the US and given them special rights, while declaring Christians, veterans, and gun owners to be potential “extremists.” Why did our own Obaminable King Hussein support the Islamists who became ISIS? Why did he support extreme Islamists in Libya and Egypt? Whatever side Hussein and the US government are on, they’re definitely not on America’s side.