HBO’s “Real Time” host Bill Maher blasted Palestinians for believing “myths” about Israel and defended Christians in the West Bank who have maintained peace even as Muslims now predominantly preside in one of believers’ most historically significant locations: Jesus’ birthplace of Bethlehem.
The 67-year-old comedian explained during the “New Rule” segment of the latest episode of his weekly show that Palestinians have unrealistic expectations and should not expect Israel to negotiate with a genocidal group, referring to Hamas, the terrorist organization controlling Gaza.
“I know it’s supposed to be that magical time of year, but maybe what we all really need right now is a good dose of realism,” Maher joked. “I see a lot of Nativity scenes when I’m out as you always do before Christmas, and I can’t help thinking about where that manger really is.”
Listen to them on the latest episode of “Quick Start” 👇
“It’s in the West Bank, on Palestinian lands controlled by the Palestinian Authority,” he added. “In 1950, the little town of Bethlehem was 86% Christian. Now, it’s overwhelmingly Muslim. And that’s my point tonight — things change. To 2.3 billion Christians, there can be no more sacred site than where their Savior was born, but they don’t have it anymore. And yet, no Crusader army has geared up to take it back. Things change, countries, boundaries, empires. Palestine was under the Ottoman Empire for 400 years. But today, an ottoman is something you put under your feet.”
The left-leaning political commentator continued:
The city of Byzantium became the city of Constantinople became Istanbul. Not everybody liked it, but you can’t keep arguing the call forever. The Irish had the entire island to themselves, but the British were starting an empire and well, the Irish lost their tip. They blew each other up over it for 30 years. But eventually everybody comes to an accommodation, except the Palestinians.
After World War II, 12 million ethnic Germans got shoved out of Russia and Poland and Czechoslovakia, because being German had become kind of unpopular. A million Greeks were shoved out of Turkey in 1923. A million Ghanaians out of Nigeria in 1983, almost a million French out of Algeria in 1962, nearly a million Syrian refugees moved to Germany eight years ago. Was that a perfect fit? And no one knows more about being pushed off land than the Jews, including being almost wholly kicked out of every Arab country they once lived in.
People get moved and yes, colonized. Nobody was a bigger colonizer than the Muslim army that swept out of the Arabian desert and took over much of the world in a single century. And they didn’t do it by asking. There’s a reason Saudi Arabia’s flag is a sword. Kosovo was the cradle of Christian Serbia, then it became Muslim. They fought a war about it in the ’90s, but stopped. They didn’t keep it going for 75 years. There were deals on the table to share the land called Palestine in 1947, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2008, and East Jerusalem could have been the capital of a Palestinian state that today might look more like Dubai than Gaza. Arafat was offered 95% of the West Bank and said, ‘No.’ The Palestinian people should know, your leaders and the useful idiots on college campuses who are their allies, are not doing you any favors by keeping alive the ‘river to the sea’ myth. I mean, where do you think Israel is going? Spoiler alert: nowhere.
It’s one of the most powerful countries in the world with a $500 billion economy, the world’s second largest tech sector after Silicon Valley, and nuclear weapons. They’re here. And what the media glosses over is, it’s hard to negotiate when the other side’s bargaining position is you all die and disappear. I mean, the chant ‘from the river to the sea.’ Yeah, let’s look at the map. Here’s the river. Here’s the sea. Oh, I see, it means you get all of it. Not just the West Bank, which was basically the original U.N. partition deal you rejected because you wanted all of it and always have, even though it’s indisputably also the Jews’ ancestral homeland, and so you attacked, and lost. And attacked again, and lost. And attacked again, and lost. As my friend Dr. Phil says, “How’s that working for you?”
Maher’s monologue comes as a new analysis from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) found widespread denial of the fact “Hamas has committed atrocities against Israeli civilians,” referring to the terror group’s deadly attack against the Jewish state on Oct. 7. It also revealed an uptick in Hamas’ “popularity.”
The PSR data also found support for Hamas among West Bank residents exploded from a mere 12% in September, just before the attack against Israel, to 44% in this latest survey. Support in Gaza has increased from 38% to 42%.
Additionally, the majority of residents (72%) between Gaza and the West Bank believe Hamas made the “correct decision” when it launched its assault on Israel. Broken down geographically, that number rises to 82% in the West Bank and falls to 57% in Gaza.
You can read more about that survey here.
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