MEMRI sent out a report the other day that got my attention. It translated the ravings of a sheikh saying that the Palestinians “are a Nation of Jihad and Martyrdom.” This is more telling than he probably realizes. Many observers dismiss Palestinian nationalism as fictitious, promoting a non-existent people invented only after 1967. As true as that was, the Palestinians are now a real nation in the hearts and minds of its people, the only way that counts — but a nation which exists solely to extirpate the Jews. In other words, the Palestinians really are a “nation of jihad” because, unlike the Chinese nation or American or Persian or Mexican or Russian, Palestine has no past, no distinctiveness, no commonality other than being the negation of Israel, the anti-Israel — anti-matter, if you will, on the periodic table of nations. (I’ll accept nominations for which nation is which element — I vote for France as helium, an inert gas.) I don’t mean that every Arabic-speaking person from the old British mandate of Palestine is a killer, but that Palestinian nationhood as an idea is inextricably tied to the liquidation of Israel. And this is why they need to be walled off.