A century of willful ignorance

 A friend of mine just sent me an interesting article by Ramzy Baroud, about Johns Hagee and McCain:

 http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13720

 Here’s the first paragraph from Baroud’s article:

 A memorable quote in Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) still carries a wealth of relevance. He writes, “They own the [holy] land, just the mere land, and that’s all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven’t any business to be there defiling it. It’s a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them.”

 Never having read “Tom Sawyer Abroad,” I was horrified to read such foolishness.  Fortunately there is more; I did a bit of looking around and found the entire passage.  It’s from the first chapter, titled “Tom seeks new adventures,” and so brilliantly skewers contemporary American thinking about Israel and Palestine that I immediately copied it (it’s in the public domain) and added it to my online collection of flummery.  I think you’ll enjoy:

https://levantium.com/the-holy-land/

Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2008/05/13/a-century-of-willful-ignorance/

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