C’mon Malthus, you’re just being silly here. It’s insulting to me & demeaning to you.
The definition of Middle East as including Turkey is hard and fast. It’s a matter of objective fact. Your alernative proposition is absurd.
We should be trying to determine truth here, but I’m getting an increasing feeling you’re defending an unstated interest.
Find me a definition of the Middle East that excludes Turkey and then we’ll talk. A cite. Every single definition I’ve looked into is clear on the point. In fact present a reputable dictionary, encycolpedia or similar defintion and I’m yours: Ambiguity established: Malthus is right, argument over.
Until then everybody who continues the Canard is either lying or ignorant.
I’ll go through the motions and explain why your proposition is absurd.
Firstly and absolutely it concerns a state of affairs which has not yet come into being; i.e. Turkey becoming part of Europe. Our concern is the present.
Secondly, it’s a false dichotomy. Europe in the Solana article is clearly shorthand for EU membership. Nobody is arguing that if at some future date Turkey becomes part of the EU it will cease being in the Middle East. There is no EU/Middle East dichotomy.
Don’t insult me. Cut it out.
Honestly! If… you are uncomfortable…Would like things to be simple… simplistic POV. What is this?
Finally, the Israel thing, you are attempting to draw me into arguing the case. I stated earlier that my whole point is that the argument is possible, but that I wasn’t going to have it.
It is really too bad if you don’t like my arguments; it demonstrates that you can’t counter them, if you resort to declarations of absurdity.
The fact is, if you read my posts carefully, you will note that I am not arguing that Turkey as being part of the ME is not a reasonable POV; it is, and very widely used. However, you keep missing the point (I think deliberately, in pursuit of you non-so-secret “canard” theory) that it is quite equally reasonable to define the ME as not including Turkey - since the ME has no hard and fast definition, but is based on a melange of cultural and geographic factors - as I have already proven with my cites - which you have not refuted.
The point of the Europe article (as I see you missed it) is that the choice of category is just that - a choice; there is nothing hard-and-fast about it. If you bother to research why the ME is called the ME, as opposed to being obsessed with one-line definitions in a dictionary, you would understand this.
And I disagree that it is a false dichotomy. A country cannot be “part of Europe” and “Part of the ME” at the same time – it has to be one or the other; clearly, in modern usage, the term has more resonance than simply being part of the Union (although that is a part of it, too).
In other words, I have conceded all along you have a reasonable argument here; you refuse to concede the same to me, call my argument absurd, say I have a hidden agenda for raising it, can’t believe I defend it, “warn” me you may trot out your feeble definitional argument again, accuse everyone you disagree with on this point of either lying or being ignorant (never mind that so far you have been unable to counter my argument to the contrary!) - and then come out with this sorry whining above when I poke a bit of fun your way.
So stop acting all wounded already.
As for the Israel is not a democracy argument, you were arguing the case - until I pointed out that, by your definition, the US was not a democracy. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
Care to try that again, Alessan? According to this breakdown of the ethnic populations of Palestine in 1946, there were only 608,000 Jews in Palestine. I suppose you could call that “nearly a million” in the same way you could call 500,001 “nearly a million” on the principle of rounding to the nearest million.
The UN was tasked with the solution to the problem almost immediately after its founding and committed the members of eleven other nations (the only one on that committee even remotely close to the region was Iran) to providing that solution. Here is what they came up with. Compare it with the 1950 map shown here, and figure out who did the ignoring of borders after the partition was declared.
That’s just flat out untrue.
As far as the British Mandate in the Middle East is concerned, Britain had withdrawn from Jordan and Iraq enough to qualify them as founding members of the UN in 1945. What made Britain hang on to Palestine? Why did they wait until the Zionist presence was strong enough (and that only in two coastal districts) to assure the founding of the state of Israel via UN fiat?
I always thought the “is Israel really a democracy?” question hinged on its legally established religious chauvinism. That is, if the government officially discriminates among its citizens (and potential citizens) based on their religious beliefs, can it truly be said to be a democracy? It certainly can’t claim to be a secular democracy. How necessary is official governmental secularism to our definition of democracy?
I tend to agree with Malthus, though, that it doesn’t seem obvious that Israel’s treatment of the people in the occupied territories necessarily vitiates its claim to be a democracy. If it did, I don’t see how we’d be able to draw a line between “a country that’s not a democracy” and “a democracy that’s currently doing bad things”. Surely the mere fact that a country in a particular historical context may be behaving undemocratically doesn’t change whether or not its fundamental political structure meets the basic definition of democracy.
And then we’re right back to the question, what is the basic definition of democracy? And does it necessarily include secularism?
Just imagine the wrath the Arabs would have had to endure had there been a million Jews in the area.
“Nearly-a-million” or “more-than-600,000”, the point is that jewish presence was already there and was not going anywhere else. If the UN had decided on an Isreali state anywhre alse then there may well have been two states as a result. 3000 years of history tells any jew that Isreal is where it should be. And anyone who has closer look at those 3000 years with a disire to seek out some truth must surely agree.
Even if you disagree with the UN, one must be able to see, Arab or otherwise, that living in Jerusalem under Isreali rule must be better than living there under Arab rule. To consider a state other than what is now Israel, one must consider what the condition of the most sacred place on earth (and its people) would be like now. Access to Jerusalem should be a god-given right to any Jew… or anyone… My bet is that access to Jerusalem under Arab rule, if allowed in any form, would have resembled entry into East Berlin back in its hey-day – only with less public-works. Jerusalem would be a mere shadow of what it is today.
If you really do believe that the UN and UK actively sought out the state of Israel, then rest assured they made the right decission. What the Arab nations did in retaliation to the decission is the root of the problem. If it weren’t for Arab leaders preaching to their people people to leave Palestine in order to make the Jewish extermination more efficient (sound familiar), then perhaps more people would have a home right now.
In fact the point I was making is that to call Israel a democracy it is necessary to make a number of fairly large allowances.
Once making allowances is on the table then Egpyt’s claim to be a democracy is commensurately stronger. Remember we’re making allowances.
Accordingly, the claim that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is stopped dead by the brute facts of Turkey & Egypt.
As an aside, it’s an interesting argument for another day as to what constitutes a democracy. I’d be prepared to argue that the nature of the US occupation of Iraq could devolve to corrode the US’s democratic status. Although I think there are a number of domestic factors that do that work too.
