Roll Out the Red Carpet - A New State is Born (Kind Of)

Roll Out the Red Carpet - A New State is Born (Kind Of)

Happy Birthday, Palestine! Strike up the band. Ice the champagne. Run up the flag. Rally and cheer. Orate and pose for the cameras. Declare victory. Dance the night away. Sing another chorus of Baladi! Baladi! Better yet, gather 'round the campfire, and pass the finjan till dawn telling glorious stories of a past that never was.

Historical revisionism, it used to be called. The new name for it is counter-narrative. But the basic theme hasn't changed: the mutability of the past, the flexibility of fact, the preference for what we wish had been over what was. Who says Arabs and...