The rather bizarre notion that the Palestinians must first build a "practising democracy based on tolerance and liberty" before they can have a state was first articulated by George W Bush in June 2002.
Back then, with Israeli-Palestinian tensions at a high point, the world waited for two months while Mr Bush framed his approach to restoring peacemaking efforts.
How, I asked back then, could a people under military occupation establish a functioning democracy without any functioning economy and their people seething in anger at the daily humiliation they were forced to endure, the denials of their rights to movement, and the loss of their property and hopes all brought to them by their "democratic" neighbour?
Really?
One, Gaza was not under military occupation when they had a Hamas coup that ended voting in Gaza.
Two, how can Palestinians possibly establish a functioning democracy while they are owned by someone else? Well there is this example.
Three, if the protest is that Gazans can hardly be expected to avoid corrupt authoritarian rule while their brethren in the West Bank are not independent, I'll mention that we managed to implement democracy even though we believed we'd been cheated out of liberating the 14th colony.
We even tried to liberate them three decades after we failed to get them in round one. Still we managed to practice democracy rather than seethe with anger and justify a repressive regime because our poor Canadian brothers languished under the rule of the British. Yes, our democracy was imperfect by today's standards, but it was revolutionary at the time. And even with its limitations, our democracy then still exceeded what Gazans have today by a wide margin.
And four, does anybody think Iraq would have even a chance to develop democracy if we didn't insist on that first before turning over complete responsibility for running their affairs? We didn't say to the Iraqis, "Oh, you are facing murderous thugs. Wait until that is over to implement democracy."
But apologists for the Palestinians always insist that we expect too much of them if we expect them to avoid bloodthirsty killings (that end with psychopaths dipping their hands in the pool of blood from the victims and waving them at cheering crowds like they had won a trophy) and practice simple democracy and respect for their own people under their own rulers.
It may be regrettable in his mind that Palestinians are brutal to themselves and others, but oh well. Essentially, he'd have us believe that right after the Palestinians kill all the Jews, they'll get right on that democracy thing.
Perhaps that isn't how the Palestinians would act, but when people keep making excuses for the behavior of the Palesntinians, who can blame the Israelis for thinking that is exactly what the Palestinians want?
