That’s my general feeling as well. My prediction is they’ll be left with pretty much nothing in the end, largely because they cannot accept, right or wrong, that Israel isn’t going anywhere for a very long time, and nothing will change that.
The “holy” land that they both claim they deserve and will fight till the end of time for needs to be dealt with in the same way my mother dealt with my brother and I when we both wanted the same toy. Neither of us could have it and she destroyed it.
They need to evacute everyone from the land and then make it inhabitable in some way.
Then give the jews some place that nobody wants anyway, like NewJersey.
I think you mean uninhabitable.
Dirty nukes might do the trick.
Or is there any way to, well, flood and permanently submerge everything between the Mediterannean and the Jordan?
[QUOTE=moof12 The Arabs, though historically not native to the region, have lived in Israel and the vast surrouding areas for the last 400 years. [/QUOTE]
Arabs are native to the region. Do you believe that the people living in the arab world all descend from the members of a handful of arabic tribes and that the huge populations living previously in the fertile crescent, in Egyptia, Mesopotamia, north-Africa, etc… vanished into nothingness? “Arabs” in Palestine or anywhere else for the most part descend from the populations who had been living there or moving there in the past, both before and after the Arab conquest. They adopted (and/or participated in the creation of) an arab culture, they converted to Islam, but they aren’t newcomers in the sense white american people, for instance, are.
Besides, the arab conquest took place 1300 years ago, not 400 years ago.
I do not see all these complications as relevant until they address one point. For generations the Palestinians occupied a land area. The powerful Jewish politiiians in the world got the UN to get the land turned over to people not living there. The residents were rounded up ,mistreated and evicted. For some reason they feel wronged. You must be able to empathise with that. No matter wahat side of the Zionist caldculus you acccept or reject ,in your heart you must understand that someone got screwed big time.
They continue to be screwed to this day. The Israelies have had ample time to set things right. I do not see them trying. They armed themselves to the teeth(actually the US did) and got aggressive. Argue whether or not they had to become a nasty aggressive state if you wish. But ,in my mind the Palestinians got screwed out of their homeland. And Israel has become a bad neighbor.
Virtually none of that is accurate, unfortunately.
The land was not turned over to ‘people not living there’. It was partitioned along ethnic majority lines, and to begin with, the local Arab populace didn’t own a majority of the territory anyways. Whether or not you want to blame the laws which governed land ownership under the Turks and the British, most of the land still wasn’t owned by the people who would later become known as Palestinians.
For the most part, the residents -were not- ‘rounded up and evicted’. Some were, indeed, especially during the Siege of Jerusalem. Others fled, both because of Arab propaganda/orders, the actions of Arab ‘irregulars’, the violence by groups like the Stern Gang, etc… For the most part, however, the exodus was not at the point of the sword. Such bombastic and untrue claims serve nothing.
The Israelis have made numerous offers of righting things. Original UN resolutions called for either resettlement or compensation. The Israelis built houses for the Palestinians, and other nations (and various Palestinian militant groups) either refused to allow people to move out of the refugee camps, or actually murdered those who tried.
Israel suggested that it might absorb upwards of 100,000 refugees, and negotiate for compensation for others, but the offer was refused as it would mean recognizing the state of Israel’s right to exist. At the Refugee Conference in Homs Syria in 1957, the Arab participants adopted a resolution stating “Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees’ right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason.”
Israel has also suggested that, as there were a comprable number of Jewish refugees expelled from Arab countries at the same time, that the Arab nations might help to absorb the Palestinan refugees, while Israel absorbed the Jewish refugees. For the most part, the Arab nations not only refused to absorb them, but set up laws creating an official policy of discrimination against them, forbidding them employment in many circumstances, for instance.
The phrase “The Arabs are willing to fight to the last drop of Palestinian blood is spilled” is not entirely innacurate.
Israel has made offers of absorbing refugees, has absorbed tens of thousands, and offered back the lion’s share of the 1967 gains in exchange for peace. They were met with the Three Noes.
If you don’t see the Israelis trying, then you’re ignoring the actual history of the region.
In addition, their original military buildup was without the US’ help. If you’re curious, The Pledge by Leonard Slater is a good place to start. It’s also innacurate to say that Israel ‘got aggressive’. They’ve fought a series of defensive wars against nations which since pre-1948 have had stated genocidal goals. Since '48, of course, the US has taken part in arming Israel. But to declare that they’re the aggressors is, simply, to ignore reality in favor of rhetoric.
The Palestinians could have had their homeland in 1948. There would be no refugees, and there would’ve been two functional states living in peace and prosperity since 1948.
I’ll leave it up to you do ask yourself who declared war on whom, what effect that had on the region, and who the actual agressors have been in every major war there. I’ll also leave it up to you to do some actual reading on Israeli peace initiatives and cooperation with their neighbors, rather than claiming that Israel has been a ‘bad neighbor’ to those regimes which’ve been trying to drive them into the sea for decades.
Are you saying that to be a Zionist, one must kill Arabs living on the West Bank? :dubious:
Seems they have been doing a piss-poor job of it. In spite of ruling the place for decades with overwhelming military force, they have somehow failed to institute a general massacre.
Who declared war on who. Their lands were in their minds taken away. You say an opportunity was given to then to sanction the land grab. They would then have been granted some kind of acceptance. Nice deal.
The Iraelies have been extremely agressive. They even sent their secret police into foreign lands ,without permission and kidnapped old Natzis. They violated national integrity. However their superiort understanding of right and wrong makes such acts permissable. They even spy on their allies like the US.
I wouldn’t say that, but some Dopers (usernames escape me) have indeed asserted in GD that you can’t be a good Zionist if you don’t insist on an Israeli West Bank ("Judea and “Samaria” being, after all, the real core territory of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah), meaning the Arabs have got to go sooner or later.
Some radical Israeli nationalists, BTW, go even further and claim Israel should include all the territory of the empire of King David. I recall reading in the Washington Post, during the 1982 Israeli intervention in Lebanon, that some Israelis were distributing leaflets with maps of that ancient kingdom, including Lebanon, and asserting a historic Israeli claim to it.
That’s the problem with “historical claims” to territory. They always overlap with other groups’ historical claims.
I notice that you have now abandoned most of your original claims, and are trying to change the subject instead.
Well, it could either be the ones who declared war, or the ones who had war declared upon them. Could go either way.
“In their minds?”
We’ve done this debate to death, both in the Pit and GD. The did not own the land that was ‘taken’. Again, we can blame that on the legal structure of the Ottoman Empire, or the British Empire, but disingenously claiming that the actual ownership of the land doesn’t matter if something different was “in their minds”, and using that to deliberately ignore who actually started a war isn’t exactly a good debating practice.
Or can I attack people if I claim I own something that I don’t, too? And then say that they’re the one who attacked me? Well, I mean, I can say it, but do you really expect someone who knows the facts to be convinced?
Sorry, no, you imagined that. Or can you cite, anywhere, where I said that? Can’t, can you? You are, perhaps, disingenously claiming that a ‘land grab’ occured when land that didn’t belong to them in the first place was partitioned?
Or are legal property rights now ‘in people’s heads’?
I have no idea what this means.
But it does seem that you’ve taken the ‘in their minds’ rhetoric, which ignores actual land ownership, and you’ve used that to spin the issue into some strange chimera about ‘land grabs’ and ‘some kind of acceptance’.
Please explain how land owned by the Ottoman Empire and British Empire was, actually and legally, owned by those who you claimed it was ‘grabbed’ from. Claiming that they had something in their heads isn’t exactly a land deed, now is it?
The fact that you keep repeating it doesn’t make it true. Nor does your willful ighnorance of who the actual aggressors in the numerous wars of the region make your screed true.
Which Arab countries, exactly, did they do this to?
And while we’re at it, are we supposed to feel sympathy for the butchers because they were ‘old’ when they were captured? That those who avoided justice were ‘kidnapped’ rather than being captured and forced to pay for their crimes against humanity?
If this is your standard for ‘aggression’, spying or covert ops against war criminals? Ignoring the fact that you’ve now deliberately shifted the goalposts away from supposed ‘aggression’ towards their neighbors, your logic would still label every nation on earth as ‘aggressive’ towards every other one. Which, of course, robs the word of any meaning at all. Not exactly a useful definition.
This is proof of what… exactly? Do you honestly think that nations don’t spy on their allies? Do you think we don’t spy on Israel? But, even if we take this definition of ‘aggression’ as a valid definition, one that robs the word of any contextual meaning, you still have ignored your original claims in favor of changing the subject.
Such sleight of hand doesn’t exactly prove your point.
Are you sure that’s what it means? Have there been any plans on saying that the Arab citizens of Israel, some of whom serve in the Knesset, have ‘got to go sooner or later’?
Even if we are to take as gospel the claim that ‘some dopers’ have advanced such a position, how does that answer Malthus’ challenge about the definition of the word “Zionist”?
Does a ‘radical’ serve as a good indicator of the mainstream of a movement?
Depends, as always, what movement is being discussed. But the general principle is, if it’s your enemy, then yeah. Otherwise, if it’s a movement you identify or side with, then hell, no. Since your conclusions are made up long time ago, exercise such as this (i.e. discussing on this forum) just comes as confirmation and strengthening rather than exploration and discovery.
FinnAgain, your post #86 was a hell of a good summary of events. Having posted similary things in the past though, I can say that though you are fighting the good fight, its probably in vain. You are attempting to fight with facts against entrenched ‘gut feelings’ and decades of revisionist history…well, that and pure ignorance in a few posters. Its like attempting to fight a bunch of buzzing flies with a hammer…by the time you nail one, two more have sprung up.
Still, I wanted you to know your efforts are appreciated. I’ve been following you in the various threads dealing with this recent flare up…and I think you’ve done a masterful job. FWIW.
-XT
Seems pretty thin to me. Why not rely on what the Israelis have actually done, rather than some genocidal assumptions concerning hot air blown by some unnamed persons on an Internet chat board?
Looks to me like there is no real debate within Israel itself. Israel has recently withdrawn from the Gaza Strip, has plans to do the same from the WB. I don’t see any real plans in the works for an expansion of the type you are talking about.
There are quite legitimate beefs about the Israeli handling of their relations with Palistinians. In particular, the Israelis are using Palistinian instragence as an excuse to clip off some prime pieces of territory for their own state. But hyperbolic accusations of genocidal intent just make those complaining of Israeli or Zionist actions or intentions appear absurd.
Fact is, there is no “equivalence” of the sort you appear to imply between the Zionists and their enemies. This does not make the Zionists 100% right in every self-interested action they do, obviously, but I certainly believe that “self defence against genocide” is a more legitimate form of violence than “attempt to commit genocide”.
Awww shucks, thank you kindly.
Probably right, all things considered. I’m hopeful that, at least here in GD, I can craft my arguments well enough to at least get a coherent point of view presented to members of the Peanut Gallery.
A very good analogy. I do get tired of refuting the same claims over, and over, and over again. But hey, I’ve got a thing for lost causes. I want peace in the middle east, after all.
Worth quite a bit. I’ve gotten little other than abuse most of the time, and it’s a bit of sunshine to see that my efforts are appreciated. Thank you kindly.
You downplay them spying on their allies./ Its not just the US its that we have made them possible. They owe us a lot. We deserve better. I found it disrespectful of a country that has sent billions there.
Standard for agression. let me see maybe 2 soldiers kidnapped in a raid. Answer more thab 2 weeks of bombing. Destroying the infrastructure and killing the innocent. Maybe some guily .if so unproven. the innocents are provable.
Do the Indians have a claim for most of our lands. I makes no sense at all unless you are disposed to accept everything on one side and reject all claims on the other.
In their minds is what we would feel if our land was taken. Forinstance the community seized it for emminent domain. and gave it to a company to make profits on it. You could justify it as right,but the land owner would feel his rights
were usurped. He would know who it really belonged to.
Your site is above. #76 I think.
What’s the world coming to when you can’t even pick on the Nazis anymore without somebody complaining?
Well, they’re victims of the Jews, too. Just ask 'em.
Maybe, but they were going into foreign countries without permission and taking away the Jews years before the Israelis started doing it back on them.
You have now totally and completely abandoned any pretense of defending your claims of Israeli ‘aggression’ towards its neighbors, as well as many of your other arguments. You’ve simply attempted to change the subject rather than addressing it.
If you refuse to debate the very points you are claiming, I’ll simply ignore the rest of your posts in this thread until you change your actions. I think we could both agree that’s quite fair. After all, if you don’t want to debate your own points, why should I?
The local football team called.
Evidently their goalposts have been moved to an entirely different state and they’re curious what info you have for them.
You start with claims that spying = aggression, and then reduce your claim, without ever admitting any form of mistake, to a claim of spying = disrespect?
And I’m curious, do you think we don’t spy on our allies? Do you think we don’t spy on Israel?
Ignorant of the concurrent rocket attacks targeted against civilians, the fact that attacking military targets is an act of war, or deliberately ignoring those facts in order to make a disingenuous rhetorical point? Ditto for Lebanon’s governmental complicity in the arming of Hezbollah.
And by the way, as long as we’re not aiming to butcher the English language, you might as well use words with their accepted definitions. If you’re using the third defintion, virtually a synonym for ‘violence’, then you’ve robbed the word ‘aggression’ of its most useful meaning, and reduced it to mere fluff.
All you would have ended up saying is: “Israel responds with violence to violence directed at it.” Shocking. Truly.
And here you’d think that attacks against Israeli civilians and the Israeli military would be a casus belli. Who knew that when a country starts a war with you, you can’t bomb them.
What’s that you say, Israel’s bombs don’t have the ability to avoid innocents? Hezbollah guerillas hiding in dense civilian areas don’t somehow make sure that when they’re attacked they don’t involve the people living around them?
While I’m at it, were the Allies the aggressors in WW II? After all, they killed innocents.
As for valid targets of war, here I thought that targets such as roads, airports, bridges, etc… were all valid if attacked for reasons of military necessity… like stopping the flow of men and weapons to Hezbollah.
Do false analogies prove anything?
Of course that’s the only way it could make sense. Not if someone actually knows about history and the events that actually happened.
And, of course, you haven’t accepted everything on ‘side’ says, deliberately ignoring actual history and rejecting all the claims the other ‘side’ has made… claims based on pesky facts.
You keep using that phrase. What on earth do you think it proves? “In their minds?” So? In my mind, I’m the King of the Moon. I suppose that, with that being the case, the US landing a space ship on my sovereign lunar surface is an act of war.
Right?
If I start killing US soldiers and they use force on me, they’re the aggressors, right?
Could I interest you in an analogy that isn’t obfuscative? Or, better yet, as analogies are always suspect, how about we discuss the actual issue? Novel concept, I know.
Yet again, as you keep ignoring it: the Palestinians did -not- own the majority of the land. Did not. Nuh-unh. Nopers. Not. No.
Again, what ‘rights’ do non-owners of land have to own the land? Can you provide something other than evasion?
What on earth are you talking about?