You demand a cite for land ownership, I give one, the research of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a massive block of text pulled from it that discusses the amount of land involved in each category and which categories actually gave title, and you keep on demanding a cite. Red’s own cite is shown to be false, and one that doubles the previous British count of land ownership while claiming that waste land was owned, and even the previous one that his cite is based off of conflated mulk with musha… and your response is to talk about the land laws as if it’s just about the Jews of the time period. :smack:
I point out that under the Ottoman land codes only a very small number of people actually had title to the land, and instead of addressing who did and did not have deeds of ownership, you claim it’s about whether they were Jews or not. To say nothing of your Witnessing about the “right” of return, which you still haven’t cited while avoiding each and every single request for such a cite, but still arguing that the UN clearly set out such a “right” even though the relevant documents are non-binding.
We’ve been going in circles for days anyway. You have faith that words on a piece of paper work much like magic spells and can effect external reality if they’re ignored (because words have meaning!:rolleyes:), even if the result of actual history is almost totally different from what those words say and the only actual effects were seen from people doing things, not saying things. The words still did it via some undefined and undefinable mechanism (magic usually is).
There’s nothing new to be said and I doubt you’re going to point out anything the UN actually did to create the state of Israel, or why the British, who acted in many ways to stop the creation of Israel and didn’t vote for it anyways, “created” Israel. It’s just part of your Witnessing. I should’ve known better.
And fee simple ownership is not the only form of interest in land. I still don’t see why you think land ownership is so important to the issue of what to do with the Palestinian refugees. Your statements seem to be driving towards a resolution where you will take responsibility for the people who were actually displaced in 1948 (or 1967 or whenever they ebcame refugees) but not their descendants and even then ONLY if they owned land in fee simple before they left.
Once again fee simple ownership is not the only form of interst in land. There were usufructs that were heritable (as in you could pass on those usufruct rights to your children but you couldn’t sell them to third parties) that gave possessory rights to people while the title was held by the state, there was communal land that wasn’t owned by an individual and couldn’t be sold or conveyed by an individual but which the individual had the right to use and occupy nonetheless. Why is fee simple ownership the only type that you think counts?
Happily, in the recent past the public discussions around the Israel/Palestine issue have become grounded in evidence, even in somewhere so resistant to reasoned and dispassionate deliberation as the US media. It’s the online world at work. Nonetheless, there remains a militant cadre of mindless unprincipled support for Israel. It loses the debate daily on the key issue - Israeli predations and land theft in Palestine. What to do? Avoiding and covering up the issue hasn’t seemed to work for it for a while. So there is this mad scramble to fashion a makeshfit rationale to validate the Israel that empirical evidence condemns. Hence the pettifoggery as to the detail of land title.
Yes, what a silly little detail to argue over, whether or not various bits of land in question are actually owned by Palestinians. It’s so much easier if we just pretend that they are, then we can avoid the whole pesky question of land ownership rights.
It’s the same kind of ‘insignificant detail’ we’ve seen brushed aside again and again all through this thread. Why, let’s not look at who actually owned the land, let’s just say it’s all Palestinian. And heck, let’s not look at the fact that usufructs were the rights given to groups to live on and use (but not own) land, only as long as certain conditions were met. Let’s just say that too was Palestinian land. And when Israel’s most strident anti-settlement groups certifiy that the majority of land under dispute is simply not Palestinian owned at all, using the primary source-data that is the most accurate and reliable source of records on what land was was privately owned and what land wasn’t? Well, screw them. And who cares if only mulk granted title and any number of other arrangements only granted the right to conditional use on land that the state owned? Let’s just say those are Palestinian lands too.
The real test of an argument is not when it agrees with the facts, but when it agrees with your politics, it seems.
Much like your repeated claim that while groups like Hamas explicitly endorse genocide, it’s only those pesky Zionist media puppets who dare claim that Hamas is genocidal. We all know, as you’ve told us many times, that Hamas would be happy if all the Jews in Israel just vanished, by magic. (Hey, maybe we can get a UN resolution on that count, we know they too work by magic). And Hamas just means Zionists and doesn’t really hate Jews, even when they explicitly differentiate between Israel, Jews, and Judaism. Honest.
You can argue (again) for why Iran should have the ability to commit genocide against Israel, or why it’s totally rational to want to destroy Judaism by fire but at the end of the day, all your rhetoric still can’t accomplish the death of a single Jew or a single Israeli. Ah well, eh?
The degree to which a person actually owned what they claim to have been deprived of is surely a most significant issue when it comes to the question of how, and if, they (or their descendants) are to be compensated.
A cursory google search for “children born in refugee camps” yields several cases where the children of refugees born in refugee camps are considered refugees (at least by the host state) rather than citizens of the state in which the refugee camp is situated.
Perhaps we can give agree that sometimes the children of refugees are themselves refugees? That some parts of the world sometimes does consider the children of non-Palestinian refugees to be refugees.
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Yet again, you can’t “repatriate” someone who wasn’t a citizen in the first place, you can’t claim that people have a right to move back to land that they didn’t own in the first place and your logic for assigning “refugee” status means that if, 100 years from now, Lebanon still kept Palestinians in refugee camps, that someone born 150 years after the '48 war… would be a refugee of that war.
Are you agreeing with me that land ownership has NOTHING to do with the right of return? Or are you merely saying that EVEN land ownership doesn’t entitle you to the right of return?
I read your link to the FAO site and it doesn’t seem to say what you think it says. It recognizes several types of interests in land in addition to Mulk. Miri seems to give people the right to use and occupy land that is titled to the state.
“State land (miri) used for farming was often given in concession; it eventually became hereditary and was divided up according to Islamic inheritance laws: estates divided into individual lots paved the way for privatization. In general, occupation rights are inheritable both for the direct assignee and for the cultivating tenants, so that according to ‘Urf law, tenants may also transmit occupancy by sale and by inheritance. However, throughout history assigned land could in principle be confiscated and returned to the ruler (crown or state). Thus a certain margin of insecurity remained.”
There even seemed to be some sort of communally owned land that might have conveyed the right to use and occupy.
“Communal land and its management were a peculiarity of many parts of the region, where erratic climatic conditions made production risky and therefore the community was used as security. Jointly owned villages practising crop farming were known as musha when the whole territory was undivided.”
It sounds like you are picking out a particular type of land ownership (that I read was largely limited to urban areas and large land owners (I read that as few as 25 arab families owned the majority of arab owned mulk land).
All land can be taken away by the state (see condemnation). But conceding that condemnation is different than Miri land, why does that distinction make a difference? Why does any sort of interest in land at all make a difference?
You don’t think that the war of 1948 was contemporaneous with the date which the UN set for the partition plan? Are you really placing that much stock in the fact that Israel “declared independence” ONE DAY BEFORE the date the UN partition plan went effective? Didn’t the arabs ignore the Israeli “declaration of independence” and invade on the date that the UN said Israel sprung into existence (of course there was armed conflict all along but the arab nations didn’t really invade until then did they)?
“On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the state of Israel, and the 1948 Palestine war entered its second phase, with the intervention of several Arab states’ armies the following day.”
You may not be placing very much weight on the UN actions today but the zionist cause certainly seemed to put at least some significance on it:
“The Jewish leadership accepted the partition plan as “the indispensable minimum,” glad as they were with the international recognition but sorry that they did not receive more.”
I’m sure there is some sort of excuse why that doesn’t matter because Israel fought alone so it doesn’t owe its statehood to anyone.
"Funds were gathered by Golda Meir from sympathizers in the United States, and Joseph Stalin supported the Zionist cause at the time, so Jewish representatives of Palestine were able to sign very important armament contracts in the East. "
I have no narrative. I have no agenda. I have no skin in the game. How about you? I only ask because you seem to constantly fall back on accusing me of trying to push some sort of mythology or narrative. I have no motive to twist facts, do you?
Thats your opinion. Its wrong but you are entitled to it.
So there was no significant time period during which the Brits were helping the zionist cause?
The Balfour declaration was 1917, Churchhill’s white paper was 1922 (5 years later and it doesn’t really read like a recission of the balfour declaration), there was another white paper in 1937 where the Brits do in fact say that they think they’ve done enough at which point they started sending Jews back to Hitler. If the Brits weren’t doing anything to help and were actually hindering them the entire time (or most of that time up to 1937) then please explain why the zionists were so upset by the 1937 white paper and please explain the Jewish population explosion in Palestine under British rule?
Yeah except the cite doesn’t seem to say what you think it says.
My point was that you were picking a very narrow definition of what was a valid interest in land and MORE IMPORTANTLY it is an odd attempt to try to tie the rights of refugees to return to the place from which they were displaced to the refugee’s status as a landowner.
Land ownership has nothing to do with the right of return except, as Malthus points out below, if it is the basis for some form of restitution (I doubt that this would be relevant even in restitution, which will probably be made on a per capita basis or in the form of a block grant and start-up aid to the new Palestinian state in exchange for taking in all the Palestinian refugees and abandoning the right of return).
After placing so much emphasis on the UN’s approval before 1948, it seems like the UN never mattered after 1948. Frankly I think that you can shut up all the arab states by telling them that the arab Jews should also have a right of return but that still leaves 4.7 millions Palestinian refugees that you have not accounted for very well.
And what significance does that have? Other than to say that Israel won’t get invaded or sanctioned for not following the resolution, why does that make the right of return any less real?
Is your point that the partition plan was “merely a recommendation” by the UN so it didn’t really do anything in the creation of Israel?
What question of land ownership. Once again when you talk about the right of return, where does land ownership enter the equation?
Those usufructs were passed down from generation to generation. They were distributed on death to the children based on the inheritance laws.
But once again I don’t understand what land ownership has to do with the discussion.
Pot calling kettle.
I can see where you are coming from but after 60 years do you really think it is sensible (or even feasible) to try to compensate people on an individual level? The way I see it we will ultimately end up with a Palestinian state that will accept some amount of money and aid from Israel in exchange for abandoning the right of return.
I’m not going to address your misuse of facts to further your narrative, it’s gotten way too old. I provided proof that only mulk land was actually owned, and the rest was merely given temporary and conditional usage rights, and you’re back at using that too to argue your claims. They owned land, they didn’t own land, doesn’t matter, the facts aren’t important except how they can be hammered into your narrative.
You are building your argument backwards.
I will point out, however, why Witnessing leads to these sorts of problems when you’re not looking at the facts to build a cohesive narrative, you’re looking at your narrative and trying to plug facts in to it. You can say “pot kettle” all you want, but as you’ve come to this debate not knowing the basis facts, and decided to argue anyways (often even after you’ve been corrected on the facts), this is just boring. Especially since it seems that not only do you not feel you have to learn the facts before you debate them, and that anything that shows you’re wrong is “distorted history”, but even when you’re shown to be flat out mistaken, you’ll repeat the same errors a bit later on. Or you claim that the UN created Israel because they used it as justification… and yet if they’d said that their justification was a God-given right to the land, you wouldn’t be arguing that Israel is divinely created. Created by a magic spell invoked by UN sorcerers? Sure. Created by God? Now that’s just silly.
Case in point, you’re now repeating something that was shown not to be true, and that you admitted wasn’t true, but you’re repeating because it fits into your narrative. After we just did the same dance.
You make the same error here That time saying: "So what exactly precipitated the war of 1948? I was under the impression it started the day after the UN “created” the Israel. " I pointed out the facts. Rather basic facts, I might add, that one should already have before arguing about a time-line of causality. "No. The UN Partition Plan was approved on November 29, 1947.
On May 14, 1948 the declaration of independence made by Israel was met with a war of extermination by the surrounding Arab states. " Your response was to try to find new facts to support the same argument you were just making. Sure, your original argument was that the Arabs invaded the day after the UN “created” Israel (which of course never happened in this universe), but when caught on the fact that such a claim is fictional, you then decided that a better argument would be that the Arabs invaded when the Brits left. If your argument is shown to be based on non-facts, just try to switch supporting facts in mid-argument, because your conclusion must be right, or else you wouldn’t be trying to find facts to support it… That’s the very hallmark of an argument that works backwards from a conclusion rather than forwards from facts. Then you reverted to a modified version of your original claim, that Israel declared independence the day before the UN Partition was supposed to go into effect.
Again I tried to clear up your factual mistakes and pointed out that the Partition wasn’t to take effect until two months after the British withdrew. You then admitted that you were wrong and were ignorant of the facts (while trying to handwave them away since they didn’t match with your narrative.) When shown that all your facts were wrong, that didn’t matter, as your argument wasn’t based on the facts anyways, but based on a conclusion that was in search of facts to justify it. So you rationalized a new way to support your conclusion “The partition hadn’t technically taken effect when hostilities commenced? There was certainly baptism by fire but the birth (while premature) was from the womb of the UN and the British efforts to facilitate a Jewish homeland in palestine.”
Of course, when shown that the British didn’t try to facilitate a Jewish homeland from about 1922 on, and in fact actively tried to stifle it in a great many ways, you tried to find new facts to support that conclusion, too. When pointed out that a non-binding UN resolution that wasn’t agreed to by both parties, didn’t inform the geography in question, and was never implemented at all couldn’t be said to have done anything, you found way to rationalize that away, too.
And now, of course, you’re using the exact same mistake you already had cleared up for you, and trying to base your Witnessing on the same non-fact. Again.
It was pointed out to you that this was simply fictional. You admitted it wasn’t correct. Now you’re using it, yet again, as support for your narrative.
If the UN tomorrow votes that the sun would rise, why then, the UN caused the sun to rise.
And if the UN tomorrow votes that the sun will rise an hour later than it really will, why, then the UN caused the sun to rise too.
And if the UN tomorrow votes that the sun will not rise and instead the moon will turn neon green and illuminate the world, and the sun rises? Well, the UN caused the sun to rise.
First of all, no you haven’t. You merely claimed that mulk was the only type of interest in land that counted. Aside from the fact that I have proven you wrong, you still haven’t told me why land ownership makes any sort of difference when discussing what to do with refugees from that land (even if they didn’t own it in fee simple).
ROFLMAO, the irony is excruciating.
Pot calling kettle.
I don’t remember saying that.
You position seems to be that noone who is not in possession of all the minutiae of facts should attempt to engage in a debate about the issue of Palestinian refugees. Its like being wrong on an irrelevant fact makes me “disingenuos” and “witnessing” I have no dog in this fight, I have no connection to the area or to either of the religions that have become involved in this conflict. I have no motive to distort facts or to cherrypick them. And yet you constantly seem to accuse me of these motives. I think its projection.
You keep saying you “proved me wrong” on some point when you haven’t and you keep focusing on irrelevant pieces of information. I may have overstated the UN’s role in the creation of Israel at first but once I admit that, how many times can you bring up my shift in position? How much mileage can you get out of that?
It seems to me that November 29th is a pretty important date in Israel. Why is it so important if the partition plan didn’t “actually do anything”?
Yeah starting the following day when the brits were sup[posed to leave and the Partition plan was supposed to take effect. Their invasion was not focused on the declaration, it was focused on the partition.
OK so they invaded the day of. Does that mistake really make me a mystical thinker? Does that mistake really cast doubt on everything else I say?
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You then admitted that you were wrong and were ignorant of the facts (while trying to handwave them away since they didn’t match with your narrative.)
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You must have meant to link to another post because I don’t see where I admit I am wrong in that post. I have in fact admitted that the UN’s role in the creation of Israel is not as critical as I once thought, it was a necessary but not sufficient for the creation of the state of Israel but I have not come to that conclusion based on anything YOU have said.
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Of course, when shown that the British didn’t try to facilitate a Jewish homeland from about 1922 on
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Sure, if you ignore everything between 1922 and 1937, then sure.
What? The declaration ceremony took place the day before the partition was supposed to take place. The arabs invaded ON THE DAY that the partition was supposed to take place.
Yes that is a pretty succinct and accurate portrayal of my argument for why the UN created Israel.:rolleyes:
Well, I can’t say its been fun but I think we can all agree that you have yet again failed to defend your distorted view of the world and I have learned a few things about Israeli history (and Ottoman land laws) in my research for this thread.
Well, I don’t think it has to be. I think that more reasonable factions in Israel and the Arab world can agree on a two state solution with 1967 borders (more or less), perhaps with a demilitarized zone and nation to nation reparations in exchange for the right of return and the absorption of Palestinian refugees into the New Palestine or the surrounding arab states.
Yep, thanks for demonstrating the point yet again. None of your claims above are true. Not one. And I just brought the actual facts to your attention, yet again, in the post you’re responding to. And now you’re repeating your non-factual claims, again, because you are working backwards from your conclusion and trying to find facts, or creating non-facts, if they seem to support your position. As you are Witnessing, your argument simply does not change no matter what new information is brought up.
When your premises are found to be false, you just create some more premises, or wait a bit and use the false-premises again, because you’re attempting to support your conclusion with any facts that you can look up, and not drawing a conclusion from the facts once you’ve figured out what they actually are. Either that or you are forgetting what’s true and what’s been debunked and using whatever sounds like it will support your conclusion.* In the post you’re responding to I just pointed out that the partition wasn’t supposed to take effect until at least two months after the British left. * And yet you immediately make the same exact mistake, in all caps, again, because you have a conclusion you’re Witnessing for. And you need to find something that you can say is a fact, and which seems to support it.
Just like you just were given proof that only mulk land was actually owned, and the rest was merely given temporary and conditional usage rights… and since that gets in the way of your conclusion, you’ve simply decided that it’s not true.
Or your Witnessing for how the British allegedly created Israel, and despite all the evidence showing you that you’re wrong, you maintain that the time period from 1917 to 1922 defined what happened rather than the quarter of a century afterward. When your conclusion needs support, you’ll claim that UNGAR 194 created Israel. But when you need support for a different claim, all of a sudden Britain not supporting 194 doesn’t matter at all and the British still created Israel.
As you’re Witnessing, no matter how the facts change, and no matter how the logic changes, it still (miraculously, just like the magic UN incantations) produces the exact same result.
Your repeated use of non-facts and your claims that all the facts are “distortions” since they falsify your conclusion? It does indeed cast doubt on the entirety of your argument. If you can’t even get the basic history correct, and if no matter what that history is it just happens to be usable by you to support your conclusion? It’s a pretty good hint that not only are your factual claims suspect, but your reasoning is really rationalizing to support a conclusion that is based on faith and stands independent of any possible facts, and as such, independent of any possible factual refutation.
It’s really quite obvious, and you’d most likely recognize the failure of such a tactic as well as what arguing from a conclusion and trying to find facts to support it looks like… if it was used to support something you weren’t Witnessing for.
“We know that evolution is wrong because we can’t explain how flagella evolved. Oh, we can? Okay, then evolution is wrong because we can’t explain how the eye evolved. Oh, we can? Okay, then evolution is wrong because we can’t find any fossil evidence of transitional forms. Oh, we can? Okay then, evolution is wrong because we can’t explain how flagella evolved.
And stop distorting facts and claiming that I need to know all these minutae to have an informed opinion. And don’t say I’m Witnessing, because I’m not up for tenure in the biological sciences and I’m not seeking any grant money, so how could I be Witnessing for a faith-based conclusion of mine? I have no skin in the game, I’m obviously not Witnessing for my pre-determined conclusion that evolution is false. I bet you’re just projecting, and we can all agree that you’ve yet again failed to defend your distorted view of how biology works.”
You keep saying the same things over anfd over again without giving us anything to rely on but your word. If I am mistaken about some details then point them out but in the end they are simply detail with less than earth shattering relevancy.
Your indignation at my ignorance doesn’t seem to be shared by very many people. Maybe its because your version of history is so twisted that noone wants to sign on with your version.
I’ve explained to you why you are wrong. No amount of rationalization on your part is going to change the FACT that these people had the right (a right that you could leave to your heirs) to use and occupy land. When it comes to deciding what to do with refugees, your talk of mulks and miris are a distinction without a difference. But good luck trying to tie the right of return to miulk ownership (I don’t think I’ve heard this argument anywhere else before so at least its not a tired and cliche argument, its simply wrong).
No its mostly because you distort facts.
Well DO you have any skin in the game?
BTW what ever happened to:
“I’m done, Witness away.”
You seem to be unusually invested in this argument. Why is that?
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tags is sacrosanct. Normal editorial rules apply: that is, you may indicate omitted portions of a quote by the use of ellipses “…” and you may add text to clarify a word using square brackets (e.g., “her [the sister’s] friend”), but you may **not ** add editorial comments or edit a quote so as to change the substantive meaning; nor may you substitute text such as “some blather” or “more nonsense” inside the
I will note that you have still not retracted your fictions about what caused the Arab invasion and when it was.
You don’t get out the requirements for factual accuracy that easily, I’m afraid. I’m happy to let you Witness for your view of a UN staffed by magicians casting magic spells which create nations since it’s obvious that nothing could convince you that words on a piece of paper alone don’t create nations. But I will continue to point out where your facts are wrong.
For instance:
.
To someone unaware of the facts it might even seem that way. If you need cites for when the partition was supposed to into effect and when the declaration of independence was for Israel, then rather obviously you have made claims about both without knowing the facts of either. That is, you are working backwards from your conclusion and trying to find premises to support it.
Nope. You Witnessed for why the facts don’t matter and no matter what the facts are, your conclusion remains unchanged. The facts show that you’re trying to substitute a conditional and temporary right to land usage, on state land, that could be revoked and which was dependent on its continued cultivation… with actually owning land and having a right to live on it. Trying to switch “a conditional and revocable right to use land” with “owning land” doesn’t rebut the facts.
Just like you are obfuscating the facts that the ability for one’s descendants to also rent the land didn’t mean that they owned it either, and did in fact mean that you could only keep renting the land within your family and as it was state land; tenants (as opposed to owners) had absolutely no right to dispose if it in any other way by selling it or granting title to anybody else since those rights are reserved for land owners
You may want to claim that there was no effective difference between “owned land” and “didn’t own land.” but the facts don’t change just because you’re Witnessing for a different conclusion. Just like it is clear what your argument is about if “owned land” and “didn’t own land” are just as good as either other and don’t make a difference to the conclusions you draw from them, since you’ve already got the conclusions and you’re looking for facts to support them.
Likewise, it’s been pointed out to you that no such “right” of return exists as the only documents which set it up are non-binding UN resolutions, but as the UN is magic I won’t point out again that the facts show you’re wrong.
Likewise, you’ve made at least one post for every one of my posts here. This tactic is sadly predictable but utterly weak.
Oh, and since you’ve decided to try to take the discussion to another thread, I’ll respond to it here.
First, you are not “everyone”. Believe it or not you are only one person.
Second, I have not said you were stupid. I will note that your complaint about being ignorant of the topic when time and again you’ve shown that you don’t know the basic facts is rather uncompelling. Just like you have yet to retract your fictional timeline when the Arab armies invaded months before the partition was to take effect, but because the UN is magic, in your alternate universe they really invaded on the very day it was supposed to take effect.
Third, your claim that I’ve called you a liar is, shall we say, ironically less even a little bit true.
I’m sure you can explain how your claims aren’t fiction. And I’m sure it will make total sense, like how while Israel was dealing with the PLO to finalize peace deals, and dealing with Fatah to negotiate for peace, and cracking down on Hamas, it really wasn’t negotiating for peace and was supporting Hamas. Obviously, that isn’t fictional at all and you can support your claims. Heck, you can support any other of your non-fictional claims that have been contradicted by the actual facts, because your claims are really honestly true.
I just can’t be bothered to deal with one of those hideous splintered posts. I’m happy for people reading the thread to decide for themselves what is fact and what is fiction.