BROOM THE STRIP?

Sounds like ethnic cleansing. Or perhaps just a jolting, immodest proposal by a professional jolter.

Asking people to give up their land, however savagely broken it has been by war….

Say wasn’t there a song about “the land?”

Yeah, of course, “this land is your land/ this land is my land….”

No,no — another song about the land which suggests that the people who occupy that land, however rich or barron that land may be in the eyes of outsiders, love it without reserve; call it home, have put down roots in its soil, absorbed its good and bad memories, no matter how dusty or unregenerate.

It was the Jews who , according to ancient testimonials, were infamously forced from their land. It was the Palestinians who were subsequently forced from THEIR land. The same land. And round and round it goes.

The Jews, in our time, have told– and lamentingly sung –of their embrace of the land they once lost – we heard it notably in one period in popular lore and melody.

None other than Pat Boone sang that popular anthem. Leon Uris wrote the book that inspired it — and Otto Preminger made the movie. It was called EXODUS.

But it was really about arrival, and an embrace of the land….(and exodus from being scattered or enslaved in other lands and then returning.

And once upon a time, it seems like everyone was humming along …

This land is mine, God gave this land to me
This brave, this ancient land to me
And when the morning sun reveals her hills and plain
Then I see a land where children can run free

So take my hand and walk this land with me
And walk this lovely land with me
Though I am just a man when you are by my side
With the help of God I know I can be strong

So take my hand and walk this land with me
And walk this golden land with me
Though I am just a man when you are by my side
With the help of God I know I can be strong

To make this land our home
If I must fight, I’ll fight to make this land our own
Until I die this land is mine

It spilled out of juke boxes in the early Sixties. Not great poetry; bad, actually. Not even a great lyric. The melody was better.

But it is the Palestinians who are returning now. This is their Exodus, their Return.

It is cruel and preposterous to assume they can ever be forced to leave — forced into another Exodus.Into Exile. Banished to Nowhere.