One of the biggest bugs that the Moonbat Left has discovered in its bonnet the past few weeks is the College of Judea and Samaria. It is a college that Israel set up in the Samarian town of Ariel, a town that was constructed outside Israel's 1967 borders (the "Green Line") in land liberated from illegal Jordanian occupation when Israel expelled the Jordanians in 1967 (following the coordinated Arab assault against Israel that started the Six Day War).

The Left is upset because the college operates in "occupied territory". Never mind that the college has oodles of Palestinian Arab students among its student body. The College of Ariel was the official excuse for the anti-Semitic British leftists to announce a boycott of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, one of two universities so named, all because Bar-Ilan has some partial connection to the College of Ariel. (The other target of the British academic pogrom is the University of Haifa, about 20% of whose students are Arabs, and which has the largest group of Arab students getting a liberal Western education in the entire Middle East.)

Then, to upset the Moonbats even more, Israel this week announced it was going to spend large amounts to upgrade and expand Ariel College and turn it into a full-scale university, in which its Jewish and Arab students will get an even better education. The Left, including Israel's own local ultra-moonbats, had a conniption when they heard that. Now the PLO has chimed in, to oppose expanding a school that threatens to educate Israeli and Palestinian students. "Israel has decided to build a university inside a settlement that was built on Palestinian land, and this is something that we can't accept," Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei (sometimes claimed by the "lib'ruh" media to be "moderate") said after the weekly meeting of the PA cabinet in Ramallah. Qurei called for US intervention to prevent the educating of students in Ariel.

Arab residents of the town of Salfit, which is located near Ariel, took time off from the Saddam Hussein birthday celebrations and issued a statement in which they warned that transforming the college into a university effectively means "killing the peace process." The statement, signed by the "national and Islamic forces" in Salfit, called on PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas to suspend talks with Israel until it revoked its decision regarding the college.

So, let's clear things up. Ariel is on land that was never "Palestinian land". None of the West Bank and Gaza was ever part of a "Palestinian Arab state". There has never been a Palestinian Arab state. Israel has far more legitimate claims to all of the West Bank and Gaza than does the PLO and its affiliates, although successive Israeli governments have expressed willingness to relinquish Israeli claims to some of those lands in exchange for peace. Israel has never been offered peace in exchange for relinquishing those lands, although some foolish Israeli politicians have tried to delude themselves into thinking such an offer has been made.

The Palestinians have no more legitimate right to statehood than do the Arabs of Marseilles or Detroit. Even if the Palestinian Arabs could be thought to have once had legitimate claims to statehood, they forfeited all such rights through engaging in a century of terrorist atrocities. Israel building a college or university is no more a violation of "Palestinian rights" than construction of Harvard and Yale on lands once claimed by Indians.

The assault by the Left against educational institutions in the democratic countries that they hate is part of a generic Leftist dislike of all education. You see, education allows humans to see how ridiculous and stupid leftist "ideas" are. The Pink Floyd song that says "We don't want no education" has long been the Left's real mantra.