But as I pointed out, Israel became a country in 1948 and the Palestinian exodus occurred that same year. So after sixty-five years, how many Palestinians are there still living who were part of that exodus? Most Palestinians who are calling for a return to their homeland have never lived in that homeland. They’re people who were born in other countries who claim a right to a homeland because their ancestors used to live there.
And who does that sound like?
I’ve never really looked into this question (in part because, in the specific case of Israel/Palestine, it is so highly politicized that wading through the stuff put out by partisans of one side or another strikes me as too much effort), but to my mind this seems highly unlikely. We know that this area was subject to periodic invasions, massacres, mass displacements such as the Roman one, and influx of new arrivals.
While certainly some people now living there would be able to trace a certain percentage of their ancestry back to a common ancestor living in the same place, I would imagine that they would also have common ancestors living all over the place as well - Crusaders, Romans, Arabs, Turks …
And the true colors come out. It’s the fault of the Jews that control the media. If only they’d just stop reporting the atrocities done in the name of Palestinians.
Starting with the USS Liberty conspiracy theory was bad enough, but this is pure nonsense. Israel preemptively started the '67 war, the other ‘choice’ was to allow their neighbors to start it. Egypt and Syria were going to go to war with Israel in 1967 no matter what, there was no choice in the war happening or not.
From The Encyclopedia of Military History from 3500 B.C. to the Present, 2nd Revised Edition, R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy:
I recall a number of expulsions; I do not really recall any mass migrations into the region.
Regardless, to the extent that the population of “native” inhabitants is mixed, it is mixed pretty thoroughly among all the current groups. There is no strong record of separate groups moving into the region, then cloistering themselves so that they remained a wholly separate people. Similarly, there is no record that any “original” group has failed to intermarry with (or convert to the religions of) other peoples living in the region.
The point was that there is no basis to believe that the “original” Jews and Canaanites have managed to live side by side for 3,000 years without a lot of intermingling. However many invasions have occurred, the mixture has tended to occur across the board. The cultural lines that are closely bound to religion have waxed and waned as the power of different religious beliefs have waxed and waned, with some portion of the population simply converting to the “other” culture/religion when it became expedient.
It is more than probable that there is nearly as much “Jewish” ancestry (dating to pre-Roman times) among the Palestinians as there is among the Jews.
I do have to quibble with this: Israel started shooting, Egypt started the war. Your timeline is missing May 22nd when Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran against Israeli shipping. Blockades, while legal under the laws and customs of maritime warfare, are still an act of war.
The Romans imported Roman settlers (indeed for a while Jerusalem was renamed Alia Capitolina and resettled as a Roman colony, with the original inhabitants forbidden to enter it):
During the Byzantine period, what is now Israel was simply a province of the empire.
This province was then conquored by the Arabs, who added their own mix.
The Crusaders massacred the population of Jerusalem (again), but of course they did not kill everyone - but added their own mix to the locals.
They in turn suffered massacre, enslavement and expulsion at the hands of the Mamluks, whose imperium fell under the sway of the Ottomans.
No question. Other than (say) exclusive religious groups like the Druze.
Again, with certain exceptions. Remember, there exists remains of Samaritans and Jews still existing as seperate groups in the region, who presumably resisted conversion.
Some Palestinians of Nabulus claim descent from the Samaritans.
The Samaritans also bolster their case with genetic studies, the content of which I am unqualified to assess.
These, therefore are in fact an example of a group cloistering itself as a seperate population - again, allegedly.
I would imagine they were pretty thorougly intermingled.
With this difference: those who remained may be more thoroughly mixed with waves of outsiders than those who left, who did more or less hold themselves as a distinct, intermarrying group. For example, the Ashkenazim suffer from several genetic diseases as a result of continual intermarrying within the ethnicity.
You see this with the Samaritans, who are genetically distinct from the other local inhabitants of what is now Israel, because they kept to themselves (while the other inhabitants did not).
Looks convincing, but again, I’m not really competent to assess it.
Which is which?
:dubious:
Outside of former british colonies, what part fo the “west” back the israelis? How about non-western industrialized nations?
I don’t know why you don’t send every Israel thread to the pit. Half these threads either get locked or end up in the pit.
So was the blockade of Gaza was an act of war or are the rules different there?
Rather obviously, the issue is quite a bit more complicated than that.
But as you’ve decided to take a discussion of the 1967 war and turn it into “But but but Gaza 2010!”… well, I’m not going to play.
I don’t disagree with you; while the date of the closing of the Straits of Tiran isn’t listed specifically in the timeline it is listed as one of the four conditions that Israel announced it would go to war under, all of which now existed. A blockade is an act of war, but there is some squirreliness and wiggle room about it; the US set up a naval blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis but I doubt you’d say the US started a war with Cuba and the USSR in 1963. A naval blockade certainly is casus belli and as I said Syria and Egypt were going to go to war with Israel in 1967 regardless of Israel’s actions and as we both agree calling it a war of choice by Israel is palpably absurd. In any event, when your neighbor with whom you’ve had continued low level hostilities with and two full blown wars with in as many decades lists four actions any of which it will consider to be casus belli and you proceed to do not one but all four actions it’s kind of hard to look like an innocent party even if Egypt wasn’t already planning to go to war.
Well, you understand this stuff a lot better than I do and if even you have trouble making any sense of it then maybe things aren’t as clear to people like me as you think they are.
eta: or would the explanation reveal too many flaws in your defense of Israel?
Yeah, definitely not about to play your game.
Have a good day.
Well, Cuba, yes. If Cuba had wanted to say that we’d started a war, I think they’d have been justified. The USSR is a bit trickier, but it’s worth noting that the blockade nearly lead to WWIII.
I’m not sure how anyone, reading about the events that lead up to the '67 War, could reasonably conclude that this war was a war of aggression by Israel.
This isn’t a defense, it is just facts.
In contrast, the '56 War was a war of aggression by Israel (in cahoots with the UK and France).
Yeah, we gave in to peer pressure on that one. The cool kids said that they’d let us hang out with them if we gave them a hand, and we went along.
Come on, you know you want to.
So can Gaza say that Israel has started a war? Or is Gaza part of Israel? Or is it left deliberately in some limbo that allows them to be abused while treating their response to the abuse as terrorism? JAQ
I look forward to your enlightening response.
That’s why I’m somewhat surprised that the only person in this thread who claims to have an advanced degree that focused on this exact subject, provided a narrative that was counter-factual and hasn’t bothered to defend it besides dropping two names and calling it a day. Ah well, eh?
I believe it’s illegal to blockade one’s own country or a part of it.
Then no country does. A nation-state is an active exercise in the will of its participants.
I’ll bite.
The measures taken against Gaza are complicated by the fact of Gaza’s non-statehood.
What Gaza is depends on who you ask, and for what purpose. Some contend that Gaza remains “occupied” by Israel, but this is generally for the purpose of asserting that Israel has the duties established under international law incumbent on “occupying powers”. It is not, I would imagine, a statement that Israel literally occupies Gaza, given that Gaza is in point of fact ruled with an iron fist by Hamas, an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
Naturally, it is Israel’s contention that Gaza is not occupied by it, and that the government of Gaza is an enemy whith whom they have gone to war. The Gaza War of 2008-2009 “ended”, as it were, with mutual unilateral ceasefires rather than a peace treaty - a peace treaty with Hamas is impossible as Hamas does not recogize that peace with Israel is possible.
This complication was swept aside by the UN Panel tasked with figuring out the rights and wrongs of the Mavi Marmara affair. While critical of Israeli actions, they did find that the blockade itself was “legal” under international law (for what it’s worth). Reason: whatever Gaza is, it is clear they and Israel are in a de facto war (if under “unilateral ceasefire” at the time) and that Gaza is a de facto state.
Text is from the UN Palmer Report, which is found online in PDF form:
So to answer: yes, a blockade is, in general, an act justifying war; in this case, there existed a war; the blockade is “legal” as long as it does not go too far.
Some commentators disputed the Panel’s findings on this point, mostly by stating that the Panel ignored the fact that Hamas had declared a cease-fire, and that the blockade was in any case “disproportionate”.
For example:
Naturally this appears bizzare and unworldly from the non-anti-Israeli perspective. Why on earth should the Israelis, or UN, or international law, or anyone, put any reliance whatsoever on a purely self-serving “unilateral cease-fire” that allows the avowed enemy to rearm for the next round? War isn’t subject to self-announced “time outs, I’m getting beat” like that.
First I spent the evening following the Wendy Davis story, and then I had to deal with a loss of electricity.
So, Finn, I notice that you’re now doing what you accuse me of doing, i.e. hiding from a point I can’t refute. You won’t play the game with Damuri? No?
First of all, I notice that you’re trying to get me to say something anti-Jewish. Take the media. I don’t think that there’s some cabal of Jews running the media, nor do I think it’s just a demographic circumstance. Instead, the American news coverage reflects the (very common) prejudices towards those who seem more like Americans, and/or who are portrayed by foreign-policy elites as allies. This also colors the behavior of the foreign-policy community, and of the ruling classes in general. It’s Orientalism, in other words.
In the great book Beneath the United States, the author states plainly that U.S. governments and the agents thereof have never thought of Latin Americans as equals. He contrasts it with U.S.-France relations.
It’s the same thing. U.S. policy in the Middle East isn’t much different than U.S. policy elsewhere. This is where I disagree with Walt and Mearsheimer, and in fact that’s what I wrote about. The Israel Lobby is one hell of a thing, as anyone can see in this thread, but they don’t make policy.