| In stark contrast to the commonsense decency of modern Germans, Axel perpetuates the old-style Prussian pedantry so known and loved in his countrymen of centuries past. A tedious disquisition on the semantics of the word `Palestinian` in legal documents of the 1920s, drafted by, of all personages, British colonial officials! Could anything be less apposite? Michael`s point is that the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine itself prior to the 1950s did not conceive themselves as constituting `a people` or `a nation,` at any rate not a people or nation distinct from those constituting what was then called `Transjordan` and is today called `Jordan.` Note, moreover, that Axel says nothing what ever about Michael`s larger point: the near universal Arab support in the 30s & 40s of the Nazis - among whom, no doubt, were Axel`s family itself and perhaps Axel as well. Nazis, Fascists, bigots more generally always lose. Always. That is the whole of the reason for current Arab misfortunes. |
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