Tired of mutton dressed up as lamb? Weary of pretenders? Sick of fakes like Israel's insufferable Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, whose parents came to Palestine from Poland via the US, touting his mob as the real Semitic thing?
"Israel has been our home for roughly 3,800 years. Archaeology shows that. The Bible says it... I just yesterday gave a coin that's 2,200 years old to Martin Shultz as a gift and it's got Hebrew on it."* (HARDtalk, BBC, 24/2/14)
You want the real thing? Here it is:
"The Semitic peasant has always been a conservative. In many ways he is to-day much like what the Canaanite occupier of the land must have been. Each wave of conquest or shower of civilization has left its effect, but underneath the Palestine peasant is a primitive Semite. Until within a few score years religion of one sort or another has usually come to him at the point of the sword. He has often adopted the veneer of a new faith in order to escape death. So it was when Joshua and the Hebrew host swept into the land, Bedawy fashion; so when Maccabean, Roman, Moslem, Crusader, and Moslem again took control. The Palestine peasant has worshiped the Baalim, Yahweh, Moloch, the God of Israel, the Son of God, the God of Islam. All the time he has kept a certain core of Semitic custom and superstition, a sort of basic religion that has been much the same all through these changes. But it is ofttimes impossible to distinguish between a survival of the old and a reversion or degeneration." (The Peasantry of Palestine, Elihu Grant, 1907, p 45)
[*Netanyahu likes to play the same game. See my 24/9/11 post Benzion, My Father.]
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