'a good serviceable fiction'

Judges 18 Danites Seek Territory 1 In those days there was no king of Israel; and in those days the tribe of the Danites was seeking an inheritance for themselves to live in, for until that day an inheritance had not been allotted to them as a possession among the tribes of Israel. 2 So the sons of Dan sent from their family five men out of their whole number, valiant men from Zorah and Eshtaol, to spy out the land and to search it; and they said to them, "Go, search the land " And they came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and lodged there. 3 When they were near the house of Micah, they recognized the voice of the young man, the Levite; and they turned aside there and said to him, "Who brought you here? And what are you doing in this place? And what do you have here?" 4 He said to them, "Thus and so has Micah done to me, and he has hired me and I have become his priest." 5 They said to him, "Inquire of God, please, that we may know whether our way on which we are going will be prosperous." 6 The priest said to them, "Go in peace; your way in which you are going has the LORD'S approval." 7 Then the five men departed and came to Laish and saw the people who were in it living in security, after the manner of the Sidonians, quiet and secure; for there was no ruler humiliating them for anything in the land, and they were far from the Sidonians and had no dealings with anyone. 8 When they came back to their brothers at Zorah and Eshtaol, their brothers said to them, "What do you report?" 9 They said, "Arise, and let us go up against them; for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good. And will you sit still? Do not delay to go, to enter, to possess the land. 10 "When you enter, you will come to a secure people with a spacious land; for God has given it into your hand, a place where there is no lack of anything that is on the earth." 11 Then from the family of the Danites, from Zorah and from Eshtaol, six hundred men armed with weapons of war set out. 12 They went up and camped at Kiriath-jearim in Judah. Therefore they called that place Mahaneh-dan to this day; behold, it is west of Kiriath-jearim. 13 They passed from there to the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah. Danites Take Micah's Idols 14 Then the five men who went to spy out the country of Laish said to their kinsmen, "Do you know that there are in these houses an ephod and household idols and a graven image and a molten image? Now therefore, consider what you should do." 15 They turned aside there and came to the house of the young man, the Levite, to the house of Micah, and asked him of his welfare. 16 The six hundred men armed with their weapons of war, who were of the sons of Dan, stood by the entrance of the gate. 17 Now the five men who went to spy out the land went up and entered there, and took the graven image and the ephod and household idols and the molten image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the six hundred men armed with weapons of war. 18 When these went into Micah's house and took the graven image, the ephod and household idols and the molten image, the priest said to them, "What are you doing?" 19 They said to him, "Be silent, put your hand over your mouth and come with us, and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be a priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and a family in Israel?" 20 The priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod and household idols and the graven image and went among the people. 21 Then they turned and departed, and put the little ones and the livestock and the valuables in front of them. 22 When they had gone some distance from the house of Micah, the men who were in the houses near Micah's house assembled and overtook the sons of Dan. 23 They cried to the sons of Dan, who turned around and said to Micah, "What is the matter with you, that you have assembled together?" 24 He said, "You have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and have gone away, and what do I have besides? So how can you say to me, 'What is the matter with you?'" 25 The sons of Dan said to him, "Do not let your voice be heard among us, or else fierce men will fall upon you and you will lose your life, with the lives of your household." 26 So the sons of Dan went on their way; and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his house. 27 Then they took what Micah had made and the priest who had belonged to him, and came to Laish, to a people quiet and secure, and struck them with the edge of the sword; and they burned the city with fire. 28 And there was no one to deliver them, because it was far from Sidon and they had no dealings with anyone, and it was in the valley which is near Beth-rehob. And they rebuilt the city and lived in it. 29 They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father who was born in Israel; however, the name of the city formerly was Laish. 30 The sons of Dan set up for themselves the graven image; and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Manasseh, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. 31 So they set up for themselves Micah's graven image which he had made, all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh. Judges 18:1-31 (New American Standard Bible)

It is a lie that Palestinians "had their own land, first of all, occupied." This is like saying that Texans had their own land occupied by Hispanics, ignoring the fact that Hispanics were there first. The very word Palestine is a Roman appellation for the people called Philistines, who were not Arabs but red-haired sailors from the Aegean. The Jews were there as well. In short, first of all the Jews were in the land before the Arabs. Second of all, the Arabs who inhabited the Palestine Mandate in 1948, at the time of the creation the state of Israel, considered themselves Syrians. Third, the Palestine Mandate was not created on land taken from the Syrians or the Arabs. It was taken from the Turks. It was not taken from the Turks by the Jews, but by the British and the French. They took it because Turkey sided with Germany in the First World War and, of course, lost. The Turkish empire had ruled the entire region including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan for four hundred years before Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan were artificially created by the English and the French. Jordan - a state whose majority is Palestinian - occupies 80% of the Palestine Mandate. So it is a preposterous lie to say that the Palestinians had their own land and that it was occupied by the Jews. Fourth, the individual plots of land that Jews now own were in the first instance bought from the Arabs who regarded themselves as Syrians and who lived in the area of Israel. The only property that was confiscated was confiscated as a spoil of the aggressive war that five Arab states waged against Israel from the day of its birth. Five Arab armies invaded Israel, a sovereign state, with the declared intent of "pushing the Jews into the sea." The cry today of the Muslim majority in the Middle East is to "liberate Palestine from the river to the sea." In other words push the Jews into the sea. By the standards of occupation and legitimacy Jimmy Carter invokes, Israel has more legitimacy as a Jewish state than Texas does as an American state, rather than a Mexican province. The fifth Jimmy Carter lie in this lone Jimmy Carter sentence is the claim that the Jews have colonized anything. "The Israelis have built more than 200 settlements inside Palestine." Why is it wrong of the Jews to live in the West Bank? (The 7000 Jews of Gaza, of course, have already been expunged as result of the Arabs' genocidal hate.) Why can't Jews have settlements in the West Bank? The answer is because the Palestinians Arabs are filled with a racist and theocratic hate towards the Jews. They can't tolerate a non-Muslim, non-Arab people — however small a minority — living in their midst. (The 7000 Jews of Gaza - out of a population of 1.2 million - were law-abiding and peaceful and created a horticultural industry that produced ten percent of Gaza's gross national product. But they were Jews. And that was intolerable to Palestine's Nazis. So they had to be removed.) Contrast Carter's attack on Jews living in the West bank as "colonizers" who must be expelled with the fact that more than a million Arabs live in Israel, where Israel provides them with more rights - including the right to vote and elect Arab members of Israel's government - than any Arab who lives in any Arab state in the Middle East. There is indeed a wall now between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. But it is not a wall to keep Arabs out of Israel because they are Arab, as Carter maliciously maintains. There are more than a million Arabs living in Israel. There are indeed checkpoints in the West Bank and into Israel and obstacles to Palestinians crossing them. But this is not because the Israelis discriminate against Palestinians because they are Muslims or Arabs. It is because too many Palestinians have shown themselves to be bloodthirsty, murderers who have been indoctrinated by their religious leaders and their government to believe in a sick Islamic fantasy that it is their Muslim duty to kill Jews by blowing themselves up; and that, if they do so, they will go to heaven along with 70 members of their family; and, that, if they are lucky enough to be male they will be rewarded by 72 virgins on the other side. David Horowitz. Jimmy Carter: Jew-Hater, Genocide-Enabler, Liar

—No wait don't not that no I, wait... She caught the corner of the table, flushed, —oh... getting breath, —oh. He'd straightened up with the Natural History magazine. —I thought you'd thrown it out. —No that's all right yes, yes for that story about, on the cover? you said they steal cattle? And her sudden urgency seemed to weigh everything on his response, the Masai and their cattle raids, as though right now in this kitchen, clinging to the table corner, nothing else mattered. —Well, well yes, he said — they, it's their ancient belief that all the cattle in the world belong to them. When they raid other tribes they're just taking back what was stolen from them long ago, a good serviceable fiction isn't it ... He held the magazine out to her —you might want to read it? It's not what I want anyhow, there's a piece here on the Piltdown fraud I can just tear it out and... William Gaddis. Carpenter's Gothic

Counter-spin:
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