# pro-Palestinian thread, part 2 **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 11, 2009, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232 "2009-11-11T21:27:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Sevastopol](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@Sevastopol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sevastopol)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/221 "2009-11-19T14:51:28Z")
Disagree. Slow motion ethnic cleansing (used above) is a pretty sound description. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/222 "2009-11-19T17:24:59Z")
Like any other good Conspiracy Theory, it demands that the villains be Genius Fools. The Israelis want to exterminate the Arabs in their sphere of influence (honest!), and they can get away with it because the rest of the world (except for a few usual suspects) has been deceived but Israelis are just really lazy and incompetent so they’re doing it in “slow motion”… whereby the population in question steadily increases year by year. This just proves how duplicitous the Israelis are: their slow-motion-genocide results in an increase in their targeted population, every year, without fail. Nefarious! ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/223 "2009-11-19T17:28:33Z")
You just don’t realize they are in bed with the lizard aliens from V, Finn. It’s one of those blind spots you have… -XT ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/224 "2009-11-19T18:52:14Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > You just don’t realize they are in bed with the lizard aliens from V That doesn’t sound very kosher. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/225 "2009-11-19T20:27:46Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > You just don’t realize they are in bed with the lizard aliens from V Not only that, Islam is a harvesting tool of the Repto Sapiens. The secret Hebrew code is [here](http://www.hiddencodes.com/obama/index.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/226 "2009-11-19T20:40:29Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > The first step is to check the source, a good hint is that the word “Israeli” is inserted before his occupational agnomen, so as to lend ad hom style support to what he’s about to say. Ilan Pappe is… well… he’s not a very good cite. > > This deserves highlighting. The 4th Geneva Convention states, clearly, that Powers can be authorized to intern Protected Persons and temporarily confiscate land if its security/military necessity is at stake. The language on that point is actually quite clear. > > The joke was that the ICJ didn’t conduct any real inquiry, at all, into the military/security considerations. And yet they still arrived at a verdict. The situation was bad enough that it didn’t go unnoticed by the judges themselves. It was, laughably, shamefully, [a farce and a kangaroo court](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=10761808&highlight=kangaroo#post10761808). > > This is fictional. Palestinian civilian-targeted terrorism was alive and well in the 1920’s, and led by a man who’d go on to ally his faction with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi program of extermination and who is still publicly hailed as a hero and role model by Palestinian leaders as recently, to my knowledge, as Arafat. > > Additionally, a Palestinian state was prevented in forming in 1948 not by the Israelis, but by Jordan and Egypt. When the dust settled, it was them, not Israel, who were in control of Jerusalem and lands east as well as a good bit of land to the west of Israel proper. They deliberately and methodically prevented the formation of a Palestinian state and continued to claim the land as their sovereign territory. > > At the refugee conference in Homs, 1957, the resolution was that “Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem not based on assuring the refugees’ right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason”. Nasser in '61 said “If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.” > > The PLO was formed _before_ the Six Day War. Via Egyptian direction, and aimed at Israel. Jordan did not even give up its claims to “historic Palestine” officially until after it had already lost them for quite some time and it was looking like there might be a Palestinian coup that would remove the nascent dynasty from power. > > Chronology is not unimportant. > Neither are facts. > > Your alleged uncontroversial historical fact is fiction. > > Mandate Palestine was not owned 100% by Arabs, let alone Muslims, let alone “The Palestinians”, whoever they were exactly in 1823, or what have you. Same goes for the roughly four centuries it spent under Turkish rule. Or the time under the Mamluks, or the Romans, or… > > Talking about the situation as if all the land was owned by one group in the first place, let alone totally ignoring the distinctions between mulk and miri, is simply obfuscatory. > > This too is fictional. The PA had direct control over the supermajority of Palestinians and its own armed police forces during the ‘optimistic’ stages of the peace process. > > Also fictional. > The number of people who were expelled by force in '48 is, with best estimates, a fraction of those who fled because fighting was in/near their villages. You can’t really change “fled the war raging around them” with “driven out at gunpoint”. > They have a slightly different connotation, you see. And this is how these threads inevitably end up, arguing with the unfortunate cases who are desperate to apologise and justify ethnic cleansing. Even sources like Israeli historians who are using actual IDF documents are rubbished, facts become fiction. Palestinians using the now-internationally recognised right of resistance become terrorists, Israeli terrorists who actually attacked women and children and made attempts to ally with the Nazis don’t get a mention. However you want to apologise and explain away mass murder ethnic cleansing I suppose is entirely up to you, but it’s a sad spectacle. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/227 "2009-11-19T20:46:01Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > That was \*\*inside Jordan \*\*during a cluster-fucked cross border tit-for-tat raid. You’re being extremely disingenuous by claiming that I missed it. Here, it’s [post 144](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11784529&postcount=144) in this very thread where you quote where I already pointed this out to you and lamely tried to shift the topic of ethnic cleansing in Jaffa during the 50s which was again shown to be untrue. I mean what are you trying to do with this disingenuousness, run through the entire argument all over again? > > Uh-huh. I rather think it’s the very questionable factuality of the said info that would come under scrutiny that you’re avoiding. I mean for fuck’s sake, you’ve already presented factually correct information and quotes from an Armenian genocide denier and an Israeli “New Historian” so off base that his fellow “New Historians” accuse him of making shit up and the factuality of what you cited from them was accepted. You’ve cited electronicintafata and I took you to task for misrepresenting the information provided there without even noting until now that it was on electronicintafata. > > Honestly, if information from these sources remained the focus of the arguments and not the sources themselves, why are you so reticent to post this alleged information. Are they from Arab websites so extreme that they proclaim “Kill the Jews” all over the sites and thus any information would be as entirely suspect as using Stormfront as a source? Put up or shut up. > > What evidence? **You haven’t presented any.** Your entire argument is Arabs were ethnically cleansed during the '48 war, so the Israelis must have been murdering and expelling Arabs in large numbers during the 50s and 60s. But you can’t provide any proof of this happening at all, so we should what? Blindly believe in it because you want it to be true? All this despite that the [Arab population of Israel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citizens_of_Israel)has increased from 156,000 at the end of the '48 war to over 1,100,000 today. Color me confused, but isn’t ethnic cleansing supposed to result in the population decreasing? An Israeli-Arab village was inside Jordan? Who knew? Followed by more apologies and denial of historical events. Very unpleasant indeed. Here’s a non-Arab source detailing the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israelis in the 1950s and 60s : Between 1948 and 1967, Palestinians who remained within the borders of the state of Israel continued to be displaced. It is estimated that by the mid-1950s the number of Palestinians displaced by Israeli authorities comprised some 15 percent of the total Palestinian population inside Israel. At least 30,000 Palestinians were expelled from Israel between 1949 and 1956 (Rempel, 2003). This included large numbers of Bedouin and internally displaced Palestinians who were forced across the de facto borders of the state of Israel into the West Bank, Gaza Strip and into Syria (Segev, 1986; Masalha, 1997). Israel expropriated over half of the land owned by Palestinian citizens… As many as 400,000 Palestinians were displaced/expelled from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Israeli-Arab war. Half of the displaced population were refugees displaced for the first time in 1948 (Takkenberg, 1998). Few Palestinian villages were depopulated during the 1967 war. Depopulated Palestinian villages include Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba in the Latrun salient northwest of Jerusalem, the entire Moroccan quarter inside the Old City of Jerusalem, adjacent to the Western Wall, and the villages of Beit Marsam, Beit Awa, Jiftlik, and al-Burj as well as half the city of Qalqilya. Most of the refugees found shelter in Jordan, with smaller numbers seeking refuge in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. Displacement affected approximately 35-40 per cent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Rempel, 2003). Only those Palestinians (and their offspring) registered in Israels September 1967 census of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip were considered legal residents of the 1967 OPTs. The administrative measure effectively prevented most Palestinian refugees displaced in 1967 from voluntarily returning to their homes. The International Committee of the Red Cross did facilitate an agreement, however, between Jordan and Israel in August 1967 that established a process for the orderly return of the refugees. Out of more than 35,000 repatriation applications for some 140,000 persons, Israel only approved slightly more than 4,500 allowing less than 20,000 refugees to return to their homes. Israel rejected appeals by the ICRC to extend the time limit to enable the return of all those refugees wishing to do so (ICRC, 1970). Military orders promulgated in the 1967 OPTs effectively applied many of the same property laws employed inside Israel. Palestinian land was expropriated under military orders dealing with ‘abandoned’ land, ‘state’ property, military use, and public purpose, among others (Benvenisti, 1984; Dajani, 2005; Lein, 2002). In the aftermath of the 1967 war Israel acquired immediate control of more than 400 sq. km of land owned by displaced i.e. absentee Palestinians. While expropriated Palestinian property held by the state is not considered inalienable, the use of land acquired under these military orders (i.e., construction of Jewish colonies, including related infrastructure such as ‘bypass roads’), suggests _de facto_ permanent acquisition (Bisharat, 1992). JNF acquisitions are considered as the inalienable property of the Jewish people. … Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has led to further displacement primarily as a result of policies that aim or result in the alteration of the demographic composition of the 1967 OPTs. Sources of displacement include revocation of residency, denial of family reunification, deportation, land confiscation, and house demolition (Akram & Rempel, 2004). It is estimated that 20,000 Palestinians were displaced annually from the West Bank and Gaza Strip between 1967 and 1986 (Kossaifi, 1996). Expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip came to a halt with the beginning of the Oslo process, however, an amendment to the 1952 Entry into Israel Law authorized the expulsion of those Palestinians who entered the 1967 OPTs ‘illegally’ or without a permit. Israel began to expel Palestinians again in the context of the second _intifada_. Demolition of Palestinian homes largely continued during after the signing of the Oslo agreements with the exception of homes in areas which came under PNA jurisdiction. The rate of house demolition increased dramatically in the context of the second _intifada_ with particularly heavy impact on refugee camps (Amnesty, 2004). [http://www.forcedmigration.org/guides/fmo043/fmo043-3.htm](http://www.forcedmigration.org/guides/fmo043/fmo043-3.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/228 "2009-11-19T20:49:01Z")
> [@DWMarch](#): > > Mr. Dastardly, riddle me this: in all your claims of ethnic cleansing which go back sixty some years, why in the world is it taking so damn long? The Israelis have world-class weapons systems, the support of the US of A and a lack of give-a-damn in regards to what the rest of the world thinks of them. So why is it taking sixty some years to get rid of these pesky Palestinians? Why go so slow? Israel has every kind of weapon known to man, including nukes. They have a military that can take on every single nation around them and win without effort. They have every decisive advantage one could think of, minus support from the rest of the world which we’ve already established they don’t care about anyway. So what is taking so long when it comes to wiping out these soft targets called Palestinians? Lazy Israelis. They ethnically cleanse their Arab population the same way I clean my room. In about 200 years they might be done. Slobodan Milosevic failed to remove every Croatian or Bosnian Muslim from the areas his forces ethnically cleansed, but he was nonetheless guilty of ethnic cleansing. There’s no law that says if you don’t remove every single person then you’re not guilty of ethnic cleansing. It’s astounding how far some unfortunate people will go to apologise and justify ethnic cleansing, mass murder etc. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/229 "2009-11-19T21:52:40Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > And this is how these threads inevitably end up, arguing with the unfortunate cases who are desperate to apologise and justify ethnic cleansing. Even sources like Israeli historians who are using actual IDF documents are rubbished, facts become fiction. Palestinians using the now-internationally recognised right of resistance become terrorists, Israeli terrorists who actually attacked women and children and made attempts to ally with the Nazis don’t get a mention. However you want to apologise and explain away mass murder ethnic cleansing I suppose is entirely up to you, but it’s a sad spectacle. In other words, you can’t refute his post. If you want to discuss ethnic cleansing you have to address that fact that the Arab populations in many of the places you are pointing to is increasing and has been for some time. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/230 "2009-11-19T22:56:07Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > If you want to discuss ethnic cleansing you have to address that fact that the Arab populations in many of the places you are pointing to is increasing and has been for some time. Easy, the Palestinians are wisely breeding faster than the Israelis can blow them up because in addition to being pure irredeemable evil, Israel is slow. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/231 "2009-11-20T00:35:16Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Even sources like Israeli historians who are using actual IDF documents are rubbished, facts become fiction. Your reaction to a 100% accurate set of factual refutations is to try to change the subject and sling ad hom attacks, but the point you are, rather obviously, deliberately avoiding is that it’s not just some “Israeli historian” (and it is weird that you won’t stop using his nationality as some sort of ad hom medal). The point is that a known liar and admitted propagandist made claims which you take at face value and which many of us will not, for reasons that are obvious to many of us and sinister in your understanding. It’s also quite strange that even though your facts have been shown to be fiction and your support has been cut out from under you, you are still claiming that to speak truth to you is to support ethnic cleansing. If you check your logical proof, I’m sure you’ll see why “factual accuracy” =/= “ethnic cleansing”. > [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Palestinians using the now-internationally recognised right of resistance become terrorists Fiction, also. There is no such right. In point of fact, the 4th GC is quite explicit in that an occupying Power can take downright draconian measures in order to thwart such a “right”, nor is attacking someone while they’re trying to make peace with you “resistance”, nor is deliberately targeting civilians in order to spread fear anything other than terrorism. > [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Israeli terrorists who actually attacked women and children and made attempts to ally with the Nazis don’t get a mention. Bullshit generally doesn’t get much of a mention. Yours is a typical ploy, and rather predictable. You seek to equivocate “tried to offer the Nazis something in order to allow a percentage of European Jews to avoid being butchered.” with “ally with the Nazis”. Much like you tried to change “fled a war raging all around them” to the fiction of “driven off at gunpoint!!!”. No, the Jewish attempt to saves Jews from the Nazi program of extermination is not at all equivalent with standard military alliances, nor is it equivalent with the Mufti’s actual alliance with the Nazis for the purpose of killing Jews. It should probably also be noted that both Hamas and Fatah in its more unguarded moments still voice open and proud demands for actual genocide and ethnic cleansing. ~shrugs~ ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/232 "2009-11-20T01:50:16Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > An Israeli-Arab village was inside Jordan? Who knew? Umm, yeah, that was kind of my point. You’ve been hinging your proof on a cross-border raid into Jordan. Was Israel trying to ethnically cleanse Jordan? > [@](#): > > Followed by more apologies and denial of historical events. Very unpleasant indeed. Awww, that’s so cute, you think I’m an Israeli apologist. Actually I’m not, I’m quite sure I’ve written things that didn’t enamor me with **Alessan** and I’ve had some… heated disagreements with **FinnAgain**. But what the hell though, when you can’t refute and have nothing else, \*ad hominem \*. > [@](#): > > Here’s a non-Arab source detailing the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israelis in the 1950s and 60s : Wow, it’s like pulling teeth, but you’ve finally come up with something. Let’s see: > [@](#): > > As many as 400,000 Palestinians were displaced/expelled **from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip during the 1967 Israeli-Arab war**. Half of the displaced population were refugees displaced for the first time in 1948 (Takkenberg, 1998). Funny, I thought we weren’t discussing displacement of populations during wartime, but rather: > [@](#): > > I’m talking about Palestinians who lived in Israel and were ethnically cleansed/murdered in the 1950s/60s. > [@](#): > > Between 1948 and 1967, Palestinians who remained within the borders of the state of Israel continued to be displaced. It is estimated that by the mid-1950s the number of Palestinians displaced by Israeli authorities comprised some 15 percent of the total Palestinian population inside Israel. At least 30,000 Palestinians were expelled from Israel between 1949 and 1956 (Rempel, 2003). This I am genuinely interested in and want to look into further. I’m perfectly willing to call this ethnic cleansing. The problem is though, this is from an article written by Terry Rempel and he’s citing himself from an article called \* Housing and Property Restitution The Palestinian Refugee Case\* in a 2003 book called [Returning Home Housing and Property Restitution Rights of Refugees and Displaced Persons](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Returning-Home-Property-Restitution-Displaced/dp/1571052410), which doesn’t appear to be available online, and I’m not shelling out £100.00 to find his source. While trying to find his source I did find his [Who are Palestinian refugees?](http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Uk44Af-3M9QJ:www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR26/FMR2602.pdf+terry+rempel+badil&cd=44&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) in which he makes no mention of these ‘49-56 expulsions - but does quote everyone’s favorite historian Ilan Pappe. The closest I’ve found is “Excluding the Negev Beduoin, it is probable that the number of Arabs kicked out of, or persuaded to leave, the country in the border-clearing operations and in the internal anti-infiltration sweeps during 1948-1950 was around 20,000. If one includes expelled northern Negev Bedouin, the total may have been as high as 30,000-40,000.” from Benny Morris’ _Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited_ which I will grant you includes the year 1950. This still isn’t the 50s and 60s though. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/233 "2009-11-20T02:28:53Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > And this is how these threads inevitably end up, arguing with the unfortunate cases who are desperate to apologise and justify ethnic cleansing. On the contrary - these threads usually produce dramatic flashes of insight that open the eyes of posters who’ve previously taken refuge in stereotypes and dogma. Brilliantly innovative solutions to the Mideast crisis are proposed, to the acclaim of all concerned. There is an upsurge of optimism and the participants retire for drinks and hors d’oeuvres. You were just unlucky this time out. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/234 "2009-11-20T02:31:19Z")
When an OP starts out with a poisoned well, it’s not hard to see where it’s ultimately headed. It’s unfortunate, in that it could be (or could have been I guess) an interesting debate… -XT ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/235 "2009-11-20T02:39:28Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > Umm, yeah, that was kind of my point. You’ve been hinging your proof on a cross-border raid into Jordan. Was Israel trying to ethnically cleanse Jordan? > > Awww, that’s so cute, you think I’m an Israeli apologist. Actually I’m not, I’m quite sure I’ve written things that didn’t enamor me with **Alessan** and I’ve had some… heated disagreements with **FinnAgain**. But what the hell though, when you can’t refute and have nothing else, \*ad hominem \*. > Wow, it’s like pulling teeth, but you’ve finally come up with something. Let’s see:Funny, I thought we weren’t discussing displacement of populations during wartime, but rather: > > This I am genuinely interested in and want to look into further. I’m perfectly willing to call this ethnic cleansing. The problem is though, this is from an article written by Terry Rempel and he’s citing himself from an article called \* Housing and Property Restitution The Palestinian Refugee Case\* in a 2003 book called [Returning Home Housing and Property Restitution Rights of Refugees and Displaced Persons](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Returning-Home-Property-Restitution-Displaced/dp/1571052410), which doesn’t appear to be available online, and I’m not shelling out £100.00 to find his source. While trying to find his source I did find his [Who are Palestinian refugees?](http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:Uk44Af-3M9QJ:www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR26/FMR2602.pdf+terry+rempel+badil&cd=44&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us) in which he makes no mention of these ‘49-56 expulsions - but does quote everyone’s favorite historian Ilan Pappe. The closest I’ve found is “Excluding the Negev Beduoin, it is probable that the number of Arabs kicked out of, or persuaded to leave, the country in the border-clearing operations and in the internal anti-infiltration sweeps during 1948-1950 was around 20,000. If one includes expelled northern Negev Bedouin, the total may have been as high as 30,000-40,000.” from Benny Morris’ _Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited_ which I will grant you includes the year 1950. This still isn’t the 50s and 60s though. Yeah, just the first thing with you too. What part of Israeli-Arab don’t you understand? The village was on the Israeli side of the border. But I’ve got to ask this. Are you seriously claiming that 20-30000 people only were kicked out? Even the Israelis admitted the number was something like 700 000. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/236 "2009-11-20T02:40:34Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Your reaction to a 100% accurate set of factual refutations is to try to change the subject and sling ad hom attacks, but the point you are, rather obviously, deliberately avoiding is that it’s not just some “Israeli historian” (and it is weird that you won’t stop using his nationality as some sort of ad hom medal). The point is that a known liar and admitted propagandist made claims which you take at face value and which many of us will not, for reasons that are obvious to many of us and sinister in your understanding. > > It’s also quite strange that even though your facts have been shown to be fiction and your support has been cut out from under you, you are still claiming that to speak truth to you is to support ethnic cleansing. > If you check your logical proof, I’m sure you’ll see why “factual accuracy” =/= “ethnic cleansing”. > > Fiction, also. > There is no such right. > > In point of fact, the 4th GC is quite explicit in that an occupying Power can take downright draconian measures in order to thwart such a “right”, nor is attacking someone while they’re trying to make peace with you “resistance”, nor is deliberately targeting civilians in order to spread fear anything other than terrorism. > > Bullshit generally doesn’t get much of a mention. > Yours is a typical ploy, and rather predictable. > > You seek to equivocate “tried to offer the Nazis something in order to allow a percentage of European Jews to avoid being butchered.” with “ally with the Nazis”. Much like you tried to change “fled a war raging all around them” to the fiction of “driven off at gunpoint!!!”. No, the Jewish attempt to saves Jews from the Nazi program of extermination is not at all equivalent with standard military alliances, nor is it equivalent with the Mufti’s actual alliance with the Nazis for the purpose of killing Jews. > > It should probably also be noted that both Hamas and Fatah in its more unguarded moments still voice open and proud demands for actual genocide and ethnic cleansing. > ~shrugs~ And yet more nonsense about an Israeli historian with impeccablr academic qualifications. Sorry indeed. OK, from now on in this thread I’m just going to deal with the first bit of nonsense and leave it at that. I don’t have time to wade through all the nonsense. And the first new bit of nonsense in this thread is that you claim the right of resistance to an occupation is fiction. Richard Falk _(Richard Falk Albert G. Milibank Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton University and author of Human Rights Horizons [London: Routledge, 2000])_ Though the Israeli government and the US media persist in describing the second Palestinian **intifada** as a security crisis or a disruption to the “peace process,” in international law, Palestinian resistance to occupation is a legally protected right. [http://www.merip.org/mer/mer217/217\_falk.html](http://www.merip.org/mer/mer217/217_falk.html) I’m going with the Princeton Law Professor on this one. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/237 "2009-11-20T02:41:38Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > In other words, you can’t refute his post. > > If you want to discuss ethnic cleansing you have to address that fact that the Arab populations in many of the places you are pointing to is increasing and has been for some time. This is getting surreal. Look, if you move one family from their home and transfer them somewhere else on the basis of ethnicity then you’re an ethnic cleanser. Ethnic cleansing took place on a massive scale in 1948, at a slower pace thereafter with a spike in 1967, and still continues today. Whether the population hs increased or not over the last half century is irrelevant. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/238 "2009-11-20T02:46:37Z")
Why are there more Palestinian’s in Israel today than there were in 1948 then? They make up over 20% of the population of Israel, ehe? So…if Israel has been engaging in ‘ethnic cleansing’, can you explain how there are more Palestinian’s in the area now than before they started? -XT ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/239 "2009-11-20T02:52:18Z")
> [@me](#): > > Actually I’m not, I’m quite sure I’ve written things that didn’t enamor me with Alessan and I’ve had some… heated disagreements with FinnAgain. I was thinking about how I phrased this and I hope it didn’t sound like I was implying\*\* Alessan \*\*or **FinnAgain** are apologists; it wasn’t my intention at all and I apologise if it sounded that way. I meant that they are sometimes more pro-Israel than I am and we’ve disagreed on things in order to point out the absurdity of Dick painting everyone who disagrees with him as an apologist. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232/240 "2009-11-20T03:13:10Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > I was thinking about how I phrased this and I hope it didn’t sound like I was implying\*\* Alessan \*\*or **FinnAgain** are apologists; it wasn’t my intention at all and I apologise if it sounded that way. I meant that they are sometimes more pro-Israel than I am and we’ve disagreed on things in order to point out the absurdity of Dick painting everyone who disagrees with him as an apologist. Would you agree that roughly speaking, Israel kicked the Palestinians into 22% of the country and have kept them under a fairly unpleasant military occupation since, with ongoing, you know, transfer of some of the ones that remained somewhere else? Because that’s basically the point I was trying to make way back when. I just don’t see how that can be so controversial. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pro-palestinian-thread-part-2/517232.md?page=13)