Then I think you need to read it more carefully, particularly the part about the Jewish Territorialist Organization and its leader Israel Zangwill, whose sometime advocacy of a Jewish nation somewhere other than the biblical land of Israel is quite well documented.
The reason the Arabs hated Israel originally is that Israel encompasses Jerusalem, which is a holy city for Muslims, too. It’s where Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven.
The reason the Palestinians hate Israel is that the Israelis took most of their remaining territory (not unjustifiably) after the various Arab-Israeli wars.
There are no holy cities in Bulgaria, as far as I am aware. If you carved out a section of largely empty land and called it Israel, most Bulgarians probably wouldn’t care, assuming the prior residents were appropriately compensated. That, of course, largely ignores the fact that there are plenty of essentially uninhabited regions left in the world. Hell, they can take their pick from the plains states, as far as I (and probably most Americans) are concerned.
Even better if you integrate the new Israel somewhat with whatever nation-state you carve it from. With Israel comes excellent opportunity for economic development, top-flight military technology, and so on. Most countries would love to have them, in a purely economic discussion.
If the whole Arab world hadn’t descended on Israel with the intention of “pushing the Jews into the sea”, and then lost the war that they started, the refugee problem wouldn’t be what it is today. Playing the blame game gets nowhere. What matters is that Israel exists in the here and now, and is not going anywhere, and any peace plan for the future needs to have the Arabs acknowledging that (and so far, I don’t really see them doing it.)
So, what I’m hearing from you is that if someone decides to split off from the mainstream view and form his or her own splinter group to do something that runs contrary to the majority view, that this constitutes serious ‘debate’. Correct?
-XT
What you’re hearing from me is that there was serious debate in the early 20th-century Zionist movement about the practicability of creating a Jewish nation in the biblical land of Israel and the options for creating it somewhere else.
You’re not hearing from me any claims that a majority of Zionists ever espoused Zangwill’s type of alternative Jewish nationalism in preference to establishing Jewish settlement in the biblical land of Israel. However, an opinion doesn’t need to have majority support in order to provoke serious debate.
Are you talking about moving the entire population of Israel to some sovereign country and then carving out territory from within their borders, or are you talking about moving them to, say, Bulgaria, and then basically making them all Bulgarian citizens? If the later, then you are right (within the parameters of the fantasy that you COULD move all of the Israeli citizens, let alone all the building and such). However, if you are talking about carving out a new, sovereign nation of Israel from some other countries existing borders…well, I’d have to say that both Bulgaria and the US governments might be a bit tense about doing so, dontcha think?
-XT
Stalin also tried to create a Jewish settlement in Birobidzhan. It was called the “Jewish Autonomous Oblast” and Jews were settled there to engage in agriculture. It was a pretty shitty piece of land, all the way out in Siberia, and the project was not a success.
The guy and his followers were fringe Kimstu. There was no serious debate within the Zionist community as a whole. This is like saying that there is serious debate in the US that we should all go back to living in trees, or that the nation would be better off if we had a totalitarian fascist/communist/moony/whatever government instead. There are fringe groups who espouse such things, but, well, they are FRINGE groups, ehe?
No, it doesn’t…but there wasn’t a serious debate over this. Just a fringe guy who was so far off the tangent of the mainstream and wasn’t taken seriously so that he formed his own splinter group to pursue different ends. To have a SERIOUS debate then both sides have to be able to capture a large enough number of advocates to make the debate real. There is serious debate between Republican plans and Democratic plans. There is no serious debate between Pub or Dem plans and, say, the plans of the US National Socialist Group, or the with one of the US Communist parties.
-XT
Create it as an autonomous area within the Republic of China on Taiwan, and watch the United Nations’ collective head explode.
Um, you want me to pack my bags and move… why exactly? 
I grew up here. I happen to like it here. Great weather, great beaches, wonderful big/small city both to live in and raise children in…
Holiness doesn’t even come into it.
Now you’re merely embarrassing yourself.
Emphasis added.
Certainly, the alternative Jewish nationalism of Zangwill and the ITO was always a minority view among early 20th-century British Zionists, and I never asserted otherwise.
But to claim that its influence never rose to the level of “serious debate” in the Zionist movement—or, even more absurdly, that it was comparable to tiny modern lunatic fringe groups advocating “that we should all go back to living in trees”—is ridiculous.
I believe Emigrants from Israel have exceeded Immigrants to Israel since 2005.
I need to recheck my sources as it doesn’t really add up considering settlement expansion.
Has anyone else heard this?
Amen to that.
Know what our holy sites are? The freeway system. Also the shopping malls, opera houses, libraries, movie theaters, universities, bars, restaurants and coffee shops; factories, farms, garages, artists’ studios and biotechnology research institutes. If you were able to move all of the above and more… we’d still tell you to fuck off, because this is our home. We’re not a problem that needs to be solved, we’re a country.
That is bullshit. You need to read a book or something. Effectively all the territory of Israel was taken from Palestinian Arabs, and, from their perspective, totally unjustifiably. There were very fews Jews living in the area before 1948 (when the state of Israel was established in Palestine), and they were co-existing reasonably peaceably with the Palestinians before then. Jerusalem is a holy city for three religions. Maybe they would all like to own it, ideally, but there is no reason to think that Muslims, like Christians, would not be content with free access to it. Indeed, it is not even their holiest or second holiest city. Arabs beyond Palestine hate Israel today because of the way the Israelis have treated their Palestinian Arab brothers. Suppose some group managed to kick all the Americans out of Iowa so it that could be taken over by foreigners. How do you think the rest of America would feel about that? How do you think the former Iowans would feel? Mad as hell, and justifiably so.
And do you seriously think that anywhere in this overpopulated world there is a region of decent land (i.e., not desert or tundra or similar) capable of supporting the population of Israel that is uninhabited, or even close to being uninhabited? Iowa might be the best bet, at that.
I have to ask… what books have *you *been reading?
The more serious dispute is between the Saudis and the Iranians. The IP issue doesn’t presently affect the security of anyone but themselves and their immediate neighbors. I’m not denying the Palestinians have genuine grievances or deserve a state but Israel is being used as a distraction to cloak the failures and ambitions of political actors who are evidently more intelligent than you are, and I’m not talking about the Palestinians. Israel will soon recognize a Palestinian state, either via soon-to-start negotiations or the extension of America’s security umbrella to itself and the GA Arabs, which will facilitate meaningful cooperation between the two peoples. Iran will get the bomb, maybe the Turks will too. Afterwards, people who regularly ask the kinds of questions you do can use their capacity for vitriol and inability to be fatigued to further push another people towards greater militarism. But they’ll probably stick to the old ones.
Gee, why not move the ‘palestinians’ back to where they came from? because thats not Israel.
Maybe we should all swap every 5 months or so. Dibs on Canada.
Actually, on second thought, maybe this is worth examining :rolleyes: I suggest we try a smaller model experiment though… Y’know, just to make sure this whole “moving a major population center” thing is feasible…
So, let’s just take New Orleans and move it 50 miles upriver so it doesn’t get drowned in Kartina II.
Heck, let’s just take the French Quarter and plunk it down next to Baton Rouge. With the money saved by not moving the rest, we could build much better houses and infrastructure for the rest of the erstwhile population of NOLA.
It would also give the Louisiana Assemblycritters something to do in the evening without having to go out of town. Win-win!
What…? No…?! Why not…!!!
Several thousand years back, you mean? Gee, I don’t know, the trek from Ur to California (a place including locations whose climate and geology are similar to those of Israel, making it a suitable Promised Land) might have taken a while.