I despise Palestinians, I really do. Out of all ethnic or national groups in the world that do not have their own state, they are the last that should ever be given any consideration.
But I'm not saying this because they're violent anti-Semites, terrorist supporters, whose entire existence started and continues to revolve around exterminating people who wanted nothing else but to live in peace right next door.
This sort of hate isn't anything particularly extraordinary in the history of human race, so it wouldn't make Palestinians much different than most other nations.
No, what places Palestinians among the lowest of the low, is how they treat... themselves.
Countless distinct national groups have faced persecution, often being conquered and deprived of their sovereignty.
I'm from Poland – we had been wiped out off the maps for over 100 years, before returning a little over a century ago. Many Europeans nations have had similar experiences – most of Eastern Europe, in fact, but also the Irish, the Scottish, the Balkan Slavs. Not to mention the Jews, who have been deprived of their own home for thousands of years before Israel was reborn. Persians were conquered, Indians were conquered. The list goes on. Some are still living under somebody else's control – like the Kurds, but also Basques, Catalans or Scots in developed Europe.
What you'll find is that those nations that survived, whether eventually becoming independent or not, have always preserved their culture, their identity, their languages, their customs.
Yes, they had to deal with occasional treason in their ranks, internal conflicts and whatnot – but in the absence of better options, they mostly adapted and built as good lives for themselves and their children as they could.
This has NEVER been the case with Palestinians.
Palestinian nation has been conceived as, supported as and continues to be run as a vehicle for violence, little else. And while this violence has usually been directed at the Jews, it was occasionally used against other groups and entire countries as well.
Nobody in Palestine has ever been interested in building a nation, about providing good education, about improving the living standards, about supporting anything other than endless war.
Nobody.
Palestinians continue to rob each other, oppress each other and, whenever necessary, kill each other without flinching.
They indoctrinate their own children to throw their lives away to senseless martyrdom, because that's what their entire existence is built on. They have virtually no history, no culture, no heritage that would bind them – and, worst of all, they aren't even trying to build one.
They are just a bunch of Arab tribes of mixed Levantine and Egyptian lineages, who had spent hundreds of years under Ottoman rule and then only shaped into a distinct group in the 20th century through a violent opposition to the creation of Israel.
This is why neither Egypt nor Jordan created the Palestinian state when they had Gaza and West Bank under their control for nearly 20 years after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. The reality of the time was that every Arab nation around sought to subsume Palestine under its rule – either through direct annexation (like in the case of Jordan) or the ultimate creation of a united Arab state (as Egypt intended, and briefly tried through a merger with Syria).
It's also why financial and material aid has long been defrauded by Palestinians themselves, redirected either to extremist goals of organisations like Fatah or Hamas, or directly into the pockets of corrupt individuals, their families and followers.
Even today, as there is allegedly grave famine happening in Gaza, food and medical supplies are being pillaged by either Hamas or local gangs, with complete disregard for the lives of their very own people, who are treated either as disposable pawns to be blown up or starved for media photo ops, or a source of money to be extorted in exchange for aid that was donated by foreign nations to ease their suffering.
Can you imagine what a state run under these rules would look like?
Well, you don't really have to, since the Palestinian Authority has had 30 years to prove how it can constructively manage its autonomous territories and accomplished little, despite international support for its cause far greater than what the Kurds, for example, have ever received.
And yet the Kurds enjoy self-governance in Iraq and Syria, have their own administrations, armed forces, run public services for their people and organise elections. Somehow, however, Palestinians can't – or, actually, don't want to, despite billions pumped to them over the years.
Perhaps they're just too busy organising educational camps for their kids, like the one described here a few days ago:
It was only in February of this year that the PA officially ended it yearslong pay-for-slay scheme that disbursed money to families of terrorists either killed or jailed by Israel.
Yes, that's the supposedly "civilised" administration in the West Bank, often contrasted with the "extremist" Hamas in Gaza.
It's the best that Palestinians have been able to create over nearly eight decades of "conflict".
Amidst the complaints that it's all because of Israeli "occupation", I'd like to remind everybody that you don't need to have your own state before you stop stealing money, food, medical supplies or construction materials.
When you're in charge of your education system, like Palestinians are, it's your choice to teach kids math & physics, investing in them to become future scientists and engineers, not prisoners and martyrs.
As I said, every nation once oppressed survived because its people have managed to cultivate constructive habits, which created new generations of elites who could represent its interests even in the absence of formal statehood.
Conversely, broken, corrupt, violent nations regularly implode around the world, quite regardless of their political sovereignty.
It's one thing to harbour animosity towards a neighbour, whom you may have some legitimate grievances against (it's common around the world, after all) – it's something entirely different to rob and destroy your own nation.
And this, unfortunately, is the only thing Palestinians excel at.
