Justifications?
The original Zionists realized that anti-semitism was on the rise in Europe, and that something had to be done to protect their fellow Jews. Being students of history, they knew that the best way to protect people is to give them their own land and the means to defend it; So they formulated a plan to do just that.
We needed a country, so we took the one we had the best claim to.
Unfortunately, we were too late to protect most of our European brethren.
Next time we’ll be ready.
The phrase often quoted, and used at the time, is:
Hmm. The people who were there before Zionism might have been surprised to be informed that they did not exist.
Just to preserve my good name with the moderators, maybe it’s time this thread stopped and I just move over to GD and read up before starting another firestorm.
I have heard justifications of the creation of the state of Israel that sounded quite a bit like the above mentioned justifications. Not quite the same of course, but the basic line was “the Jewish settlers improved the land while the Palestinians didn’t”. Also the idea that they were more civilized than the Arab Palestinians.
The myth that very few people lived in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans is paralleled by this quote:
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<< The flood of Jewish settlement didn’t begin until post-WW II. >>
Well, no, there were massive waves of immigration following the pogroms in Russia in the late 1800s (1880ish, IIRC) through WWI. While it is true that the Arab-Muslim population was the vast majority in the Holy Land for centuries, my earlier point was that there was a large minority of continual Jewish presence. The arguments against Israel tend to portray the Jews as somehow foreigners coming into the land to push out the native inhabitants, and that’s nonsense.
In the context that every new state has some “justification” for its founding: The U.N.'s justification for creating the State of Israel was definitely related to the persecution and murder of Jews during WWII. There were hundreds of thousands of Jews who survived the death camps and slave-labor camps, who had nowhere to go. They were displaced from all over Europe, and international sympathy for their plight led to the U.N. resolutions on partition (that is, creation of the state of Israel.)
And I do apologize, I did not mean to stereotype Palestinians. I certainly realize that there are large numbers of “Palestinian” Arab-Moslems who are citizens of Israel with full rights etc of citizenship. My statements were meant as generalizations to describe large historic movements, not as categorizations or stereotyping of any individuals.
C K Dexter Haven: Ah, see - You learn something new here all the time. I hadn’t been aware of that earlier migration. Thanks for the correction 
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the impression I always had was that the UN military came and dumped the new group in and forced the group living there at the time to leave.
Justin, your impression is way, way off base.
The immigrants during the early Zionist movement (1870s to 1935, say) tried to get to the Holy Land any way they could – they were fleeing persecution, and looking to make a new home in swamplands, desert, and barren rocks. The stories of these pioneers making the desert bloom are incredible.
The immigration after WWII were refugees whose homes and lives had been destroyed by the Nazi persecutions. They had no where to go, except to the ancestral home. The British tried to block the immigrants, and many snuck in illegally.
The situation became unmanagable, and the British took the question to the U.N., which voted in May, 1948, to partition the territory (thus to create two states, a Jewish state and an Arab state; as noted, there were at that time no people called “Palestinians”.)
The U.N. did not bring anyone into the area. The U.N. did not push anyone out of the area. The U.N. did not send peacekeeping forces until 1956ish, to the best of my recollection. The only thing the U.N. did was to declare and recognize the existence of the nation of Israel, thus providing the legal justification for establishing a government and self-rule.
my impression was that the movie Exodus was set in 1947 and it showed the UN creating a new state out someone else’s land. The “someone else” didn’t like it and they fought back.
I have never studied the subject so I might be completely way off base.
Let me start all over with my understanding of this “creation of a partition”.
I have always thought it would be similar to the UN coming in today and partitioning off Texas into 2 zones. 1 for the mexicans whose forefathers were kicked out in 1800 by the immigrants from Europe. I wouldn’t like it and would probably fight for home. Where is this analogy off base?
The notion of “justification” is kind of beside the point in a real world sense as some of the other posters have already noted. The “creation” of Israel via sub-division was a power play by the winners of WWII to help a group being persecuted by the losers that had been promised some recompense.
The “justification” of Israel can be discussed to death historically and theologically. In the end it was about power and the ability of the winners to have their way with the goods of the losers on behalf of whomsoever they choose (in this case the Jews). Not particularly fair or nice and possibly a bit embarrassing to our PC sense of fair play in 2001 but it simply shows our modern naivete and detachment from the roots of what really matters in the big cruel world, and what really matters in the end is power. The Israelis and Palestinians understand this a lot better than we do and the Israelis have simply played the game better to date.
justinh:
Well, that depends on who you believed the land “belonged” to, of course. Prior to the beginning of Zionism, the population of the land was indeed mostly Arab, but it wasn’t Arabs who ruled the land…it was Ottoman Turks. After the side that the Ottomans allied hemselves with in World War I, the British, on the victorious side, got it in the division of spoils that followed. By this time, though, and especially after World War II, the Jewish population of Palestine achieved parity with the Arab population, and they did so without displacing a single individual Arab from their land. So, to sum up the “belonged to” issue:
Who were the legitimate individual landowners in Palestine at the time of Partition? Both Jews and Arabs.
Who was the ruler of Palestine at the time of Partition? Britain.
When Britain wanted to cede control of Palestine, who to give rulership of the land to? U.N. solution: split it in half.
Jews were fine with this, Arabs weren’t.
Indeed you are. Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board and prepare to be educated.
The analogy is off-base in that, prior to partition, no Arabs were kicked off their land. The Zionists either bought their land with cash money from prior owners, or settled on ownerless land…Tel Aviv, for example, was originally nothing but swampland. So when the British decided to cede sovoreignty, who to give the land to was a legitimate question. Was Partition the right answer? I guess that’s for history to decide.
cmkeller,
so what you have is a rational britian giving control to the UN who rationally decides to split control up between 2 traditionally inhabitants (by definition those who were born there along with their parents and grandparents) and for some unknown reason one of the 2 group doesnt like it and revolts. That makes the revolting group look pretty irrational doesnt it?
To amend my Mexico analogy, what if I was not kicked out but just put under the control of these other groups. would that make it similar?
I wouldn’t call the Palestinians irrational. Misguided, maybe.
The one thing they always forget is that when you’re offered a deal, it’s only valid when offered. You can’t refuse it and then later, when the situation is less to your liking, turn around and ask for the original terms.
Its like a legal dispute, in which an arbitrator offers a deal which side refuses to accept. The matter is sent to court and the jury decides to award the side that supported the deal. Now, can the losing side - the ones who refised to settle - come up to their opponents and say: “So what’s with that offer you made?”
The United States decides to kick Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Louisiana out of the union.
The UN suggests that Texas should be divided into two sectors, one for Latinos and Blacks, the other for Anglos and Asians. They try to draw the border according to greatest population density of each group, but obviously everybody in Texas is mixed together and there are a few Blacks and Asians living in the Anglo-Asian sector, and a good number of Anglos and Asians living in the Latino-Black sector.
The Anglo-Asian side demands all of Texas for the Anglo-Asians and invades the Latino-Black sector, with help from newly independent Louisiana, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The Anglo-Asian side calls for all the Anglos and Asians living in the Latino-Black sector to leave their homes and come to the Anglo-Asian sector, promising to give them all the land and property of their Latino and Black neighbors once these latter have been driven into the Gulf of Mexico.
Vast numbers of Anglos and Asians leave their homes and head for the Anglo-Asian sector. Of the many Anglos and Asians that remain behind, most are unmolested, but a handful in remote villages are forced out of their homes by Latino-Black soldiers and also head for the Anglo-Asian sector.
Much to everybody’s surprise, the Latino-Black soldiers successfully resist the invasion of the Latino-Black sector despite being outnumbered 200 to 1. The Anglos and Asians who left their homes wait for the promised crushing defeat of the Latinos and Blacks, but it doesn’t happen. In the Latino-Black sector, locals and immigrants begin moving into the Anglo-Asians’ abandoned homes. The Anglos and Asians who left sit on the border of their own sector, in horrible conditions, in dire poverty, ignored and manipulated by the Anglo-Asian sector’s government.
The Anglo-Asians in this example are the Palestinian Arabs, the Latinos and Blacks are the Israeli Jews, as closely as I could represent them.
And that responds to the General Question in the OP precisely how?
Keep it in Great Debates.