I admit I don’t know as much about the situation involving Israel and their occupation (?) of Palestine as I would like. It seems that Israel and Palestine both have the right to exist. Is Israel occupying what are without a doubt Palestine’s lands and if they are is this in some way justified. I was watching a youtube clip with Norman Finkelstein in which he basically says that any claim that Israel is occupying Palestine in the interest of security are pretty much bogus and that Palestine poses little threat to Israel, whom according to him have one of the most powerful militaries, which I believe is true. He sort of insinuates that the real reason is for them to spread the state of Israel. Educate me and debate!
You live in the USA, you’re asking on a predominantly US message board for a debate on this subject, and you’re suggesting mainstream perceptions may be a little, erm, ’off base’ ?
The first thing to understand is that there is no media bias in the USA regarding Israel, and if you use the word ‘bogus’ once more, CK Dexter-Haven’t A Clue will be along - on behalf of the Chicago Reader, of course - to remind you of that fact.
Btw, there are a thousand threads on this subject, just search for ‘ anti-Semitism’ and you won’t miss one of them.
I never claimed there was.
Not sure where you are going with this bogus thing. I said that someone else claimed that if Israel claims that they are occupying Palestine out of safety concerns that is a bogus argument, I did not say I believed what they were saying, just presenting the opinion which someone else can correct if it is an uneducated one.
This strikes me as you indirectly implying that I am an anti-semite. I started this thread because I wanted other posters to educate me a little about the situation. I am completely neutral really as I am not informed enough to form an opinion. But thanks for your well thought out response!
As suggested, Israel’s problem is propaganda. Now there are Jews there and people tried to kill them not long ago. So you understand why unbending devotion to truth is not their number one thing.
But that was in another country and in any case the wench is dead. Currently, it is clear that many victims of Israeli propaganda in North America are wising up to the facts and becoming a little irate at all that deceit on behalf of a Jewish state. Some may even have believed Israel was a bona fide participant in the roadmap for peace, bet they’re mad now.
One strategy would be for Israel to come clean. Sadly, like the scorpion in the frog story, the Israelis & kin have held true to their nature. The strategy AIPAC, the anti-defamation league, Charles Krauthammer &etc embraced is to issue still more propaganda in response. If you watched closely you used to see it here too, but lately empirical debate has banished a lot of it. Anyway, as seems obvious, to issue further lies in response to your earlier ones will tend to create a vicious circle and make annoyed people quite cross indeed*. So the real issue for debate is: How long before the whole thing blows?
Elsie, perhaps you meant MEBuckner, but yes you are correct. By and large it’s a debate which is not permitted on this board. Although the censoring forces tend to work below the surface here.
*cf George W. Bush.
Well I seem to be linking to this site a lot lately but again, a good fairly balanced starting point is this site for basic background and good links that try to be fairly myth and hyperbole free. If you want to be educated that is where you should begin.
Question one from your post is: what is the “Palestine’s lands” that Israel is occupying and that giving up would pose no risk? That answer varies from all of Israel and the OTs to anything post 1967 (an arbitrary point where one particular set of hostilities stopped) to that there never was a distinct Palestine. Let us presume that Finkelstein means the OTs but accept that the various interests have different meanings to that phrase. Obviously those who use the first definition of Palestine (which includes the current PA leadership, Hamas) pose a risk to Israel if they try to act on saying that Palestine should not be occupied.
Question two. What risk would going to pre-1967 pose to Israeli security? The concern is not one of a traditional military engagement with a Palestinian army. The concerns instead range from Katusha rockets to easy infiltration by terrorist bombers. Finkelstein must clearly know that and must know that a strong army does nothing to protect you from that. Strong walls do. He is being specious.
Question three. Is there a desire within the Israeli leadership or general populus for a “Greater Israel”? As a general principal those who had that dream have woken up from the nightmare. Picking up some extra along the edges, while the Palestinian side dithers, to satisfy the settler contingency is, unfortunately still not beyond current leadership (much to my disappointment) but most efforts to do so have been reversed by the Israeli Supreme Court.
Hope that this helped.
I’m not sure where you think you are going with this, but mangling another poster’s username (outside the Pit) is more than simply frowned upon. Mangling another poster’s username in an insulting way when they are not even participating in a thread, is definitely out of bounds.
I have noticed in other threads that you appear to be carrying abit of a chip on your shoulder. I strongly urge you to remove it before you post or you may not have to worry about posting.
[ /Moderating ]
While arguing from one’s extreme bias is not prohibited on these boards, doing so in an insulting fashion in an absence of evidence just to prove how rude you can be is not encouraged. I’m not quite sure why you are looking to pick fights where you could be simply arguing the facts, but it is liable to get you in trouble.
Now, I am sure that you are going to point to this post as an example of “censorship,” but that would appear to be the result of your insistence on polemic over discussion. I don’t really care which side you take, but your arguments will be more persuasive if you actually provide evidence and stop resorting to emotional and unsupported claims.
[ /Not Yet Moderating ]
Here is a short answer. There are no countries in the world that now, or ever, disagreed with a Palestinian state as long as it did not serve as a launching pad to wipe out Israel.
Historically, and currently, there are countries that advocate the destruction of Israel.
Every year that goes by without the acceptance of Israel, and every act of violence launched from lands surrounding Israel, decrease the chances of a Palestinian state.
If people stopped attacking Israel, and used non-violent means, there would be a prosperous Palestinian state within 5 years. If Israel gave up violence they would all be dead within 5 years.
The first thing that your ignorance will likely be removed about is the question of whether threads asking general questions on this topic can avoid turning into flaming cesspools of innuendo and irrelevance… 
I second DSeid’s website suggestion. If you prefer books, the best brief treatment of the situation I know of is Rabbi Michael Lerner’s Healing Israel/Palestine .
Briefly, and necessarily oversimplified…the State of Israel emerged in 1948 from a Jewish/Arab civil war precipitated by the British departure from what had been the Palestinian Mandate. Although the international community generally recognized Israel, Palestinians have generally not accepted the legitimacy of Israel’s existence, though recently there has been more willingness to accept that it is a fait accompli and that Israel is not going away. In 1967, Israel conquered more Arab lands, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in a war; the responsibility for starting this war is controversial. This brought a population of about a million Arabs, mostly very impoverished, under Israeli control. Although Israel has since placed civilian settlements in large parts of this territory, international law and public opinion has always been unanimous that Israel does not have the right to govern these territories, and that the civilian settlements are therefore illegal. For complicated reasons involving Israeli internal politics, however, the building of settlements has continued even while becoming increasingly unpopular in Israel. Note that although everyone agrees Israel does not have the right to permanently occupy these territories, it is possible to argue that Israel still needs to temporarily (going on 40 years now!) occupy them due to the military necessity to prevent those territories from being used to launch attacks on Israel. The legitimacy of this argument is highly controversial. The West Bank and Gaza are generally referred to as “the Occupied Territories”; Palestinian partisans often muddy the waters by talking about “Occupied Palestine” without making clear whether they are referring only to the territory seized in 1967 or to all of Mandatory Palestine (the latter formulation would imply a desire to do away with Israel entirely). Conversely, anyone referring to these areas as “Judea and Samaria” is a Zionist extremist who supports full Israeli annexation of the Occupied Territories.
Norman Finkelstein, although a respected academic, would be generally regarded as taking a rather one-sided anti-Israeli tack on the debate.
BTW, I don’t know if Elsie was implying that you were an anti-Semite so much as noting that accusations of anti-Semitism almost always crop up in these threads sooner than later.
Hope this helps.
Dan, although I fully agree with you that nonviolent means of resistance would be both more effective and more moral for the Palestinians, I think you are minimizing Israel’s responsiblity for the conflict. The fact is that the one thing Israel absolutely has to do to create a possibility for peace is remove civilian settlements from the West Bank, the first step to doing that is to stop expanding said settlements, and Israel has failed to do that, even during periods when Palestinian leadership did unequivocally recognize Israel’s right to exist. Although none of this justifies terrorism against civilians, I can’t blame the Palestinians for doubting Israel’s (at least the current government’s) sincerity.
Actually, they were Jordan’s lands until 1967, but Jordan emphatically does not want them back. Israel has formally annexed East Jerusalem, but not the rest. Which leaves them in a stateless limbo.
Not at all, pool. Thing Fish has it right:
“noting that accusations of anti-Semitism almost always crop up in these threads sooner than later.”
Sorry for the confusion.
Tom - Fwiw, I liked you better as a poster. I’m not sure your role here sits well with you. Just an opinion you don’t need.
And, sure, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
As I understand it, the Israelis had the major advantage of caring about their populations and willing to stage unified defenses as a state to protect as many of them as possible. The surrounding Arab populations are more bound their respective clans and tribes and historically were quite happy to screw each other over for short-term gain. There is no historical “Palestinian” state that’s been conquered or overrun or whatever, just a collection of people getting used and manipulated by whatever ruthless dictator-of-the-moment has clawed his way to the top of the local power structure.
Short answer: the Israelis are organized and the Palestinians are not. Aside from the Israelis, no-one in the area has any incentive to help the Palestinians get organized anytime soon.
Thing Fish’s summary is pretty good, although attention should also be paid to the period from the mid-19th Century to 1948. Also, the status of East Jerusalem appears to be an absolute point of non-compromise between the Palestinians and Israelis.
I don’t think you can possibly do any better than the site linked to by DSeid.
If you want to get a human perspective (as opposed to an academic one) on the bloody mess that was the formation of Israel, read O Jerusalem by Lapierre and Collins. It’s so heartbreaking (on both sides) that I barely got halfway through it.
We’ve been down this road before, and any further discussion here is going to end very badly. Guaranteed.
The settlements are stupid and illegal, but the conflict pre-dates them.
Okay, let’s go way back. There’s a region (with no clearly defined borders) on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea that has been occupied and/or controlled by various people for the last four thousand years or more. These groups include the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Jews, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Kurds, and the Turks (among others).
A hundred years ago, this area was part of the Ottoman Empire and was controlled by the Turks. The occupants of the region were mostly Muslim Arabs but also included non-Arab Muslims, Jews, Christians, and a few other people.
One group of Jewish people felt that rather than live in other countries where they would always be a minority, they should look for a country of their own where they would be the majority. These people got organized and called themselves Zionists. The most-favored location for this theoretical country was the region we’re talking about (which, as mentioned above, had been a Jewish Kingdom at one time). Not all Jews were Zionist and not all Zionists insisted that their theoretical country had to be in the old homeland.
World War I happened. Turkey joined the German side. Britain was on the other side. It wanted to make things difficult for Germany and Turkey. So Britain promised various Arab groups that if they rebelled against Turkey, Britain would help them to be independant countries. Britain also promised the Zionist groups that if they supported the British side in the war, they would support the creation of a Zionist homeland in the Middle East. Both the Arabs and the Zionists generally carried out their end of the deal during the war.
It was easy for Britain to make these promises during the war because it was making vague promises to land it didn’t own. But when the war ended, Turkey left the area and Britain was given control of it. And both the Arabs and the Zionists showed up and claimed that Britain had promised them a country and it appeared it was the same country.
Britain muddled along for another thirty years. A lot of Zionist Jews settled in the area. In 1948, the British said they had enough and divided the area in half and gave one half to the Jews and one half to the Muslims. The Jewish half became the original State of Israel.
Neither side was real happy about the split but the Muslims were more active about changing the situation. They (being the Muslims who lived there and the Muslims in several neighbouring countries) immediately attacked Israel with the stated purpose of occupying the entire area and kicking out all of the Jews. But Israel won that war and ended occupying a large portion of the land that had originally been given to the Muslims.
So the Israeli position is basically: 1 - The Jews were here before the Muslims were here, 2 - The British owned this country and they gave it to us, 3 - The Muslims refused to recognize our claim to half the country, so they can’t complain if we don’t recognize their claim to the other half, 4 - The Muslims said they were going to establish their claim to our half by military means, so they can’t claim it’s wrong when we did the same thing to them, and 5 - It’s our country now and we’re not giving it away.
Uh no.
[ol]
[li]Rephrase it anyway: Israel was always the Jewish homeland; Jews never entirely left it and never relinquished their claim to it.[/li][li]Modern Israel as a Jewish state was created not by Britain but by the United Nations which voted for partition on 11/29/1947. Britain abstained.[/li][li]The surrounding Arab nations attacked the newborn Israel. They absorbed the land that was to be Palestine into themselves without absorbing the refugees. After Israel pushed Arab forces out of the current OTs Israel offered land for peace and was answered with “The Three Noes”. There is no lack of willingness to recognize a claim by Arabs to live peacefully in the area. [/li][li]As there is no policy to create “A Greater Israel” and absorb the OTs within it, this one is a “Huh?” Israelis percieve themselves as attempting to provide themselves with security and are willing to use military means as they see the situation requires. Perhaps they are choosing the wrong tool, but expansion is not the prime motive for most Israelis.[/li][li]True enough. Israelis will not just pick up and leave to other parts of the world. They are there to stay. They will give up land. They will help create an economically viable neighbor. But only if so doing helps their own futures as well. Doing so without reasonable expectation of less risk of terror attacks within Israel, accepting solutions that will Israel out of existence as Jewish charactered country: these they will not accept.[/li][/ol]
Somehow I don’t think that Norman Finkelstein is living in the same time space dimension as us.
In 1967 the Israelis fought a war with all their neighbouring states, they landed up grabbing half Jerusalem (the good bit) and what is now called the West Bank from Jordan also the Ghaza Strip which was under Egyptian administration.
Neither Jordan or Egypt want their territory back, although Egypt was later given back a chunk of desert which for some obscure reason they wanted.
Israel would not have minded the conquered territories, but they were not keen on the people living there becoming Israelis.
Rather foolishly the Israelis established settlements in the West Bank and Ghaza, they also established a ‘security strip’ between the West Bank and Jordan - I think the Jordanian government likes that. For security reasons they police movements within the West Bank.
However they do not adminster the areas, implicitly they recognize a ‘Palestinian’ government, and until recently were negotiating with it and giving it large sums of cash, which was tax collected from ‘Palestinians’ working in Israel. They even armed its police force - and were a bit annoyed to find those guns used against them.
Unfortunately ‘Palestinians’ tend to enter Israel with bombs, sling rockets at Israel and take pot shots at Israelis. This has led to a few problems, and those were exaccerbated by the ‘Palestinians’ electing Hamas as their government - and Hamas does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Israel is not really occupying ‘Palestine’, they don’t govern the place, they don’t impose taxes and they don’t impose laws. They do have checkpoints to prevent movement.
They also have built a very expensive security wall to prevent people slipping into Israel.
Last year Israel closed the settlements in Ghaza and they were getting prepared to close the settlements in the West Bank. Unfortunately rockets from Ghaza and the Lebanon made them think twice.
As an addendum, ‘return to 1967 borders’ is a code for ‘give up East Jerusalem and the new city they have built around it’. It sound reasonable to people who don’t know (or care) much about Israel - but that is completely non-negotiable, it is like giving New York back to the British.
Personally I think that Norman Finkelstein should spend a little time in Israel, if he hangs around a checkpoint between Israel and ‘Palestine’ then he stands a good chance of being blown up or shot. If he walked around in Ghaza or the West Bank then he stands a good chance of being kidnapped.
The USA has the world’s most powerful military, but it is not much use against terrorist tactics in Iraq.
The Jews may never have formally relinquished their claim to Israel (who would be the official spokesman to have done that anyway?) but there certainly was an extended period when the area was not under Jewish control.
The United Nations wouldn’t have been involved if Britain hadn’t first handed over the situation to the organization.
I think we’re in agreement here. The point I was making is that some pro-Palestinians argue that Israel should withdraw back to its original 1947 borders, claiming that that’s the only territory that Israel is “legally” entitled to. Israel responds to these claims by pointing out that it was the Muslims who opposed the 1947 demarcation line, so they cannot retroactively demand that the Israelis accept it and that it was the Muslims who originally tried to make the precedent that military occupation creates a legitimate claim on territory. Israel is basically telling the Muslims its claims to the land is based on the same principles that the Muslims originally set. How can Muslims refuse to accept the validity of their own principles?