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Friday, October 11, 2024

Fact-Checking -- clearing up a lot of ignorance part 9

There's a sucker born every minute. Twitter has turned up three new pieces of ignorantly desperate pretense that there was once a nation called Palestine.

As usual, two are newspapers that refer to Palestine which was under Arab attack. Think about the logic of making that claim: the Muslim Arabs were attacking a place full of Muslims. 

One is dated May 1, 1948. The British Mandatory period did not end until May 15.

The other is more subtle. The masthead date is May 16, 1948. The people making this claim are too young to know how print newspapers work. To get out a morning edition, the editor(s) and typesetters worked all the afternoon and night before that. The first print copy went to an editor who looked it over for gross errors. At this point, even if somebody reminded him about the end of the British Mandate, he would probably say, "I'm not going to pay a typesetter to tear apart the entire first page just because of a name nobody cares about."

They were so rationally naive in those days that they could not imagine pro-terrorists using this one piece of business rationale out of irrationally ignorant desperation.

The new example is two coins struck with the word Palestine on them. The date on one coin is 1927. Yes, people put dates on coins. If you have any lying around, check them out. Anyway, 1927 is well within the British Mandatory period. So is the date on the other, 1942.

I keep hoping that this will stop but when you're dealing with nutjobs, you have to shoot them down every time or they claim victory.


UPDATE: proof positive that you have to answer every nutjob. A third coin has turned up. The date on it is 1939, again, within the British Mandatory period. There never has been a self-governing nation called Palestine.