Ring a-ring o' roses, | A pocketful of posies. | Ashes, ashes. | We all fall down.
What, might I ask, is the point of U.S. Middle East envoy and former Walt Disney CEO George Mitchell's visit to the region? Landing in Egypt, he's set to visit Israeli war criminal Ehud Olmert and West Bank quisling Mahmoud Abbas, former president of the Palestinian Authority and current leader of Fatah.
The Gaza government, i.e. Hamas? Forget about it. The Guardian tells us "Mitchell has no plans to meet Hamas, which the US, Israel and the EU classify as a terrorist group."
Seriously.
Given the exclusion of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh from Mitchell's lopsided schedule, Obama's overtures to the Islamic world ring decidedly hollow. And his envoy's former position as the head of Disney World no longer seems as weird as it did a couple of weeks ago.
As for Afghanistan ... does Mitchell know something we don't?
Ashes in the water, | Ashes in the sea, | We all jump up | With a one-two-three.
Zand's central argument is that the Romans didn't expel whole nations from their territories. Zand estimates that perhaps 10,000 ancient Judeans were vanquished during the Roman wars, and the remaining inhabitants of ancient Judea remained, converting to Islam and assimilating with their conquerors when Arabs subjugated the area. They became the progenitors of today's Palestinian Arabs, many of whom now live as refugees who were exiled from their homeland during the 20th century.
As Israeli journalist Tom Segev summarized, in a review of the book in Ha'aretz:
"There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened — hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua."
Joshua Holland | When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?
The bird up on the steeple, | Sits high above the people. | Ashes, ashes. | We all fall down.
