This was added after I replied:
No, I don’t realize that. If the “Palestinians” want a state for constructive purposes they should be willing to accept having a Jewish minority just like Israel has an Arab minority.
Sure. That’s why the biggest clans today have these “foreign” names. Because they were trivial in numbers.
In 1800, there were 245K Muslims living in the area. But that doesn’t mean they were Arabs or even majority Arabs. The Ottoman empire moved all kinds of people into the area during its rule - Turks, Circassians, Albanians, Turkmenis. In 1878, an Ottoman law granted lands in the area to Muslim refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, also giving them exemptions from taxes and military service.
My understanding of recent history is as follows:
In the 1870s the Zionism movement was born. Jewish people began to move as families and in small groups to Palestine and purchased land from the local Arabs.
The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was a formal statement by the British government that they approved the concept of a Jewish homeland somewhere within the Palestine Mandate. Meanwhile Jewish immigrants continued to buy land.
After the end of WWII Jewish people flooded into Palestine because of the horror of the Holocaust.
In 1948 the United Nations created Israel and Palestine. Immediately the Arab nations attacked. The Palestinian Arabs were told to temporarily get out with promises of spoils of war once it was all over.
Against the odds the Israelis won that first war.
Which left many Palestinians landless and homeless - and unwanted by their Jordanian/Syrian/Egyptian hosts.
I would say it depends on the motivations involved. Nations get invented all the time. If it’s for constructive purposes then I don’t have a problem with it.
As I’ve said a couple times already, the group known as “Palestinians” were recently invented for purposes of undermining Israel. That’s the only reason why “Palestinians” exists. This is completely obvious if you look at their behavior as well as the behavior of other Arabs.
In any event, you should keep in mind the context in which this issue came up. Ralph124c wanted to know why the Egyptians cared about the conflict between Israel and the “Palestinians.” This question is easy to answer when you realize just who the “Palestinians” actually are.
I think that the UN partition plan of 1948 would have created a Jewish state and an Arab state, but it did not give names to those states.
I think two things need to be added here:
First, the failure to absorb the Arab refugees was motivated in large part by a desire to undermine Israel. The Arabs realized that by absorbing Arab refugees, it would legitimize Israel.
Second, at the same time, hundreds of thousands of Jews were chased out of places all over the Arab world. They had to flee places like Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, and even Gaza and the part of Jerusalem held by Jordan.
For the most part these Jews went to Israel where they were welcomed and offered citizenship.
Besides Jews and Arabs, millions of people all over the world were displaced in the 1940s. For the most part, all of these people have been absorbed into their host countries. All except the Palestinian Arabs.
Why is this an important part of the story? Because it shows that the Arabs hate the Jews (and value their honor) more than they love their own people. That’s the attitude that needs to change for the conflict to end.
Can you really see the Israeli settlers accepting that, even in the unlikely event the Palestinians will?!
I realize they were not invented by the Egyptians. They were a people, even if they had no reason for a conscious national identity or a name, long before Zionism was conceived.
I don’t know. I would guess that most would and some would not.
Anyway, you asked me whether I supported the concept of a “Palestinian” state. My answer is yes, subject to the conditions I described.
I’m not sure what your point is here. The group known as “Palestinians” are Arabs just like Egyptians are for the most part. That’s why Egyptians care about the conflict. It’s Arab nationalism.
I’m not sure what your point is here either. What are your criteria for determining whether a group is a “people”?
And in your view, when was Zionism conceived?
A sentient being might wonder what right the British had to take Arab land and give it to immigrants.
He might also wonder exactly how the British expected to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine without violating a major clause of the BD, namely “it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
Jewish scholars have pretty much established that the Arabs were driven out.
They were living there in Palestine, living next door to each other, marrying each other, since time immemorial, and they were apparently distinguishable from Egyptians and Syrians even then. That should be enough.
Well, I ain’t counting “Next year in Jerusalem.” I’m talking about the actual political movement Herzl started, that had its first Congress in 1897.
By the way, how do you define “Arab land”? For example, when the Arabs successfully chased the Jews out of Hebron in the 1930s, did Hebron become “Arab land”? Or was it “Arab land” before then? Is it “Arab land” now?
What about when Jews were chased out of Gaza in the 1940s? At that point, did Gaza become “Arab land”?
I really would like to know.
Oh, and do you agree that between 1948 and 1967, there was no Jewish control whatsoever over the West Bank and Gaza, and that in fact these areas had been successfully ethnically cleansed of Jews?
And do you agree that during this 20-year time period, there was no serious attempt by the “Palestinians” to establish a “Palestinian State” in this area?
If so, then why do you think it is that there was not such an attempt?
And please show me proof that there was a serious movement to set up a “Palestinian State” which was suppressed by the Ottoman empire.
And how exactly were they distinguishable?
Why not? Jews have been dreaming of returning to Zion for 2500 years.
The Brits made incompatible promises, for different reasons which must have seemed good at the time, to the Jews and the Palestinians. When they finally had to choose which group to betray, they chose the latter. In Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the World, Part II, p. 222: “When the war [WWII] began, Britain found itself in a (kosher?) pickle.” Pic of British officer musing: “Hmmm . . . We hate Hitler . . . We like the Arabs, who hate the Jews . . . The Jews hate Hitler . . . The Grand Mufti likes Hitler . . . Bother!”
I didn’t reallize people still believed Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial bullshit.
That’s almost as dumb as the claim that Ashenazis are all the descendants of Khazars.
In my last post, I was racing to find a url for the Benny Morris book before the edit window closed, and I inadvertently used a source that is tendentious against Israel. I apologize for that, and I hope that it won’t prejudice people against the book.
Lest anyone think Morris is a soft-headed liberal, or a self-hating Jew, I post this link to an interview of Morris from a pro-Israeli source, to make up for my last source. As the following excerpt shows, Morris takes the position that the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians was necessary and justified to establish Israel.
AS: Ben-Gurion was a “transferist?”
BM: Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish State with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist.
AS: I don’t hear you condemning him.
BM: Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish State would not have arisen here.
AS: For decades you have been researching the dark side of Zionism. You are an expert on the atrocities of 1948. In the end, do you in effect justify all this? Are you an advocate of the transfer of 1948?
BM: There is no justification for acts of rape. There is no justification for acts of massacre. Those are war crimes. But in certain conditions, expulsion is not a war crime. I don’t think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands.
AS: We are talking about the killing of thousands of people, the destruction of an entire society.
BM: A society that aims to kill you forces you to destroy it. When the choice is between destroying or being destroyed, it’s better to destroy.
AS: So when the commanders of Operation Dani are standing there and observing the long and terrible column of the 50,000 people expelled from Lod walking eastward, you stand there with them? You justify them?
BM: I definitely understand them. I understand their motives. I don’t think they felt any pangs of conscience, and in their place I wouldn’t have felt pangs of conscience. Without that act, they would not have won the war and the state would not have come into being.
AS: They perpetrated ethnic cleansing.
BM: There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide – the annihilation of your people – I prefer ethnic cleansing.
AS: And that was the situation in 1948?
BM: That was the situation. That is what Zionism faced. A Jewish State would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.
AS: What you are saying is hard to listen to and hard to digest. You sound hardhearted.
BM: I feel sympathy for the Palestinian people, which truly underwent a hard tragedy. I feel sympathy for the refugees themselves. But if the desire to establish a Jewish State here is legitimate, there was no other choice. It was impossible to leave a large fifth column in the country. From the moment the Yishuv [pre-1948 Jewish community in Palestine] was attacked by the Palestinians and afterward by the Arab states, there was no choice but to expel the Palestinian population. To uproot it in the course of war.
Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them.
AS: And morally speaking, you have no problem with that deed?
BM: That is correct. Even the great American democracy could not have been created without the annihilation of the Indians. There are cases in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.
As gene-pools. Post #61.
Sure, under the leadership of the Messiah. Zionism is a completely different animal. And many Jews objected to it for that reason. See The Chosen.
Tell me Brazzy, since you’re insisting that “the Palestinians” aren’t real and are “invented” do you also think that “Lebanese”, “Syrians” and “Iraqis” are also “invented”?
For that matter, since Americans, Canadians and Australians all speak the same language that they’re not “real” but are “invented” and should be termed “English”.
It could have been. If someone white had had the guts/brains/heart to suggest, “Hey, maybe this upstart Cherokee Republic of Sequoyah’s could be a State of the Union . . .”
I found this in post 61:
So let’s see if I have this straight:
If there is a group of people in a particular area, and you look at a subgroup of that people, and “part, perhaps the majority” of that subgroup descends from “local inhabitants” of the area, then the group qualifies as a “people” for you.
Do you I understand you correctly?
Lol, you do realize don’t you that Jews in the Babylonian exile in fact did return to Zion (sans Messiah)?