Let us not be Palestinians

Our ardently national socialist Jobbik party has a slogan which says: "Let us not be Palestinians in our own homeland".  I think I agree with that. Actually, I not only agree, but I claim something even more:

I say we should not be Palestinians basically anywhere!

There is of course the thing that I wouldn't like to live in an open prison - something which Jobbik actually wants to create for gypsies and social democrats, by the way - but there is an other aspect which has something to do with the origin of the word itself.

This word was actually invented by the Roman empire. After they successfully vanquished the Bar Kochba rebellion, killing half a million Jews and dispersing the rest, the great emperor Hadrian thought it would be best to eradicate judaism not only from the land itself, but also from its very name. That's why they renamed the province after the jewish people's deadliest enemies, the Philistines.

Now if you still wonder why I hate this word, you might need to check out the Wikipedia article on Philistinism:

"...a derogatory term used to a particular attitude or set of values perceived as despising or undervaluing art, beauty, spirituality, or intellectualism. A person with this attitude is referred to as a Philistine and may also be considered materialistic, favoring conventional social values unthinkingly and forms of art that have a cheap and easy appeal (e.g. kitsch)."

Actually there is a lot of similarity between Romans and Philistines. Both people were highly advanced technologically as well as economically during their respective heydays. So why do we still have such a bad connotation for Philistines? Well, it's simply because on the field of morals and spirituality, their state of development was rather, err... Let's just say 'limited'.

Just like that of the Romans. No, not because they tolerated homosexuality! Actually they started to tolerate it in a relatively late period of their history. Centuries before their demise - before anyone might start to contemplate about this being the cause - but also centuries after the greeks did the same. Those greeks to whom they had every single achievement of their civilization to thank for, by the way.

On the other hand, they always were a nation of arrogant, narrow-minded and obsessively superficial people. From the foundation of Alba Longa until the Romulus Augustus.

Just like the Philistines. And the Hungarian right-wingers en bloc.

So this is why I say we should not be Palestinians...