Today’s Observation For You is this:
Jerry Seinfeld said the quiet part out loud, and Ilhan Omar did what Ilhan Omar does — she turned history upside down, wrapped it in moral outrage, and then lectured everyone else to “be a human.”
Well, Congresswoman, let’s be human.
Let’s also be honest.
Seinfeld was confronted after a Knicks game and asked to say “Free Palestine.” His response was blunt: “It doesn’t exist.”
Now, cue the outrage machine.
Ilhan Omar says that kind of language is dangerous. She says Palestinians have a land. She says Israel is taking it. She says people like Jerry Seinfeld need to “be a human.”
Fine. Let’s talk like humans.
Omar called it “disgusting,” “disturbing,” “genocidal language.” She urged Seinfeld — a Jew whose people know real genocide — to “be human” and care about others. The irony is thicker than a New York deli sandwich. Omar, who has her own serious immigration and citizenship questions hanging over her head from her journey out of Somalia, should worry less about lecturing Americans on humanity and more about basic intellectual honesty.
Let’s cut through the propaganda with some detective-style facts, shall we?
The Jewish people have deep, continuous roots in the land of Israel going back thousands of years — religion, language (Hebrew), culture, archaeology, and historical record all confirm it. They were displaced by conquerors — Romans, others — but never lost their connection. They returned in waves, especially after centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust, and re-established their ancient homeland. The modern State of Israel in 1948 wasn’t “stealing” anything. It was correcting a historic wrong after the Holocaust and centuries of diaspora.
“Palestine”? There has never been a sovereign, independent country called Palestine. Not once in history. The name was slapped on the region by the Romans after they crushed the Jewish revolt — derived from the ancient Philistines, sea people unrelated to today’s Arabs. Under Ottoman rule, British Mandate — it was a geographic designation, not a nation-state with a Palestinian king, currency, or distinct national identity separate from the broader Arab world
Palestinian people exist. Human beings exist. Families exist. Children exist. Suffering exists. No decent person should deny that.
But that is not the same thing as saying there has ever been a sovereign, independent nation-state called Palestine that Israel simply came along and stole.
That is the intellectual dishonesty at the center of this entire debate.
There was no ancient sovereign country of Palestine with a Palestinian flag, Palestinian currency, Palestinian king, Palestinian constitution, Palestinian capital, and Palestinian national government that Israel invaded and conquered in 1948.
That is not history.
That is propaganda.
The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in Judea. Think about that word: Judea. The Jewish people come from that land. Their language, religion, history, archaeology, prayers, temples, and national memory are tied to that land going back thousands of years.
The Jews were driven out, scattered, persecuted, slaughtered, exiled, and told by one empire after another that they had no right to exist as a people in their own ancestral homeland.
And then, after centuries of persecution — culminating in the Holocaust — the world finally recognized what should have been obvious: the Jewish people needed a homeland, and they had every historical, moral, and legal claim to return to the land from which they came.
The 1947 UN partition plan was not Israel “stealing” land.
It was an attempt to resolve a very old injustice by creating two states: one Jewish and one Arab.
The Jewish side said yes.
The Arab side said no.
Then came war.
And every time Israel survived another attempt to wipe it off the map, the story somehow got rewritten so that Israel was the villain for not dying.
That is the part Ilhan Omar never wants to say out loud.
There could have been an Arab state alongside Israel in 1948. There could have been peace. There could have been recognition. There could have been coexistence.
But too many leaders in that region chose rejection, war, terrorism, and the fantasy that Israel would eventually disappear.
And now, decades later, we are told the real problem is Jerry Seinfeld making a three-word comment outside Madison Square Garden.
No.
The problem is a political class that keeps pretending history began yesterday.
The problem is people who use the word “Palestine” as if it means one thing, when historically and politically it has meant many things — a region, a mandate, an aspiration, a grievance, a slogan, and for some, a weapon against the legitimacy of Israel itself.
So when Jerry Seinfeld says “it doesn’t exist,” the honest interpretation is not that human beings do not exist.
The honest interpretation is that the sovereign nation-state of Palestine — the one activists pretend Israel invaded and stole — never existed.
And that matters.
Because if you get the history wrong, you get the morality wrong.
If you erase Jewish history, you are not defending Palestinians. You are participating in a lie.
If you pretend Israel is a colonial project, you are ignoring the oldest indigenous claim in the region.
And if you demand that Jews justify their existence in their ancestral homeland while giving Hamas, the PLO, Iran, and every anti-Israel radical a moral pass, then you are not seeking peace.
You are seeking Israel’s surrender.
Ilhan Omar should know better.
Before she lectures Jerry Seinfeld about humanity, maybe she should show a little intellectual honesty about Israel.
Be a human?
Absolutely.
Start by recognizing that Jews are human too.
Start by recognizing that Israelis have the right to live.
Start by recognizing that history did not begin in 1948, or 1967, or October 7.
Start by recognizing that the Jewish people did not wander into someone else’s story.
They returned to their own.
And if the two-state solution was ever going to mean anything, it had to begin with two peoples recognizing each other’s right to exist.
Israel did that.
The Arab leadership rejected it.
That is the part the activists never want to discuss.
So yes, Palestinians exist as people. Their suffering is real. Their future matters.
But no, there has never been a sovereign country of Palestine that Israel stole.
And no, Israel is not some temporary mistake on Jewish land.
Israel is the correction of a historic injustice.
That’s Today’s Observation For You.
I’m Joe Mangiacotti.
Common sense conversation for the common sense citizen.
Live in Liberty.