I never disagreed with the point, old boy…was merely asking about the percentage. What we disagree with is what it means, since you seem to be fixated on the raw numbers, while I’m trying to explain what the numbers actually mean, and put them into a historical context of what was happening at the time, and why things happened the way they did. You seemingly only want to point to the numbers as some kind of proof that the Jews came in and stole the Palestinian’s ‘country’ from them, which, historically, isn’t even a rough approximation of what actually happened.
There wasn’t any pre-existing state in palestine to complain. It was part of the Turkish empire and then, grabbed by the British, part of the British empire under a “mandate”. Jews and Arabs alike were subjects of the Turkish Empire originally.
That’s sort of the whole point. Arabs living in the place would have to “create” a state just as much as Jews living in the place.
That was the original plan - to create two states: an Arab one, and a Jewish one. Only the Arab leaders rejected it, opting to instead wipe out the Jews in '48. The Jews won the resulting war, took even more land than what had been previously agreed; the Arab leaders noticably failed to create a “Palestine” out of what is now the West Bank (it was incorporated, together with its population, into Jordan).
Ok, so this is only about people immigrating to the US then. You then agree that the Jews had as much right as the Palestinian’s to legally immigrate, and as much right as the Palestinian’s to declare independence (from the British Empire in one of their protectorate regions), yes? Well great! We are in agreement then!
The historical context was that the Jewish population of Palestine was negligible until there was an organised Zionist movement in America and Europe that raised money to fund the settlement of Jews in historic Palestine with the eventual aim of setting up a state there.
I don’t agree that they had as much right as the Palestinians to set a state up there. It wasn’t possible for them to set a state up with massive ethnic cleansing as the founders of Israel admitted themselves. I don’t think any state can be set up on the back of ethnic cleansing.
Yes…and? Again, was the immigration legal or not? Were the purchases of land legal or not? By the time independence was ACTUALLY declared, both groups had significant numbers in the region (and due to improvements to the region it was actually worth fighting for). The ACTUAL sovereign of the region (i.e. the Brits) had waved their claims on the land. The UN sought to settle the issue bloodlessly by granting BOTH groups sovereign rights. The Israeli’s accepted the division…the Palestinian’s did not. The issue was settled through force of arms, with not just the Palestinian’s but with all of the other surrounding Arab nations jumping in.
Really? Do you have a cite that the founders of Israel said that? Because I’d have to ask the question…why did Israel agree to the UN division and dual sovereignty then? They signed off on it after all…while the Palestinian’s were the ones who rejected it. Why did Palestine NOT agree and decide to go for the whole shooting match?
Some friendly advice…check out Alessan’s location some time before making statements like the above. He LIVES there. And, frankly, I question your own grasp of all of this, in any case. Anyone who can sit there and say they can think of NO good thing to say about a country is so far beyond biased that there is really little point in continuing to debate them. Hell, I can think of good things to say about Nazi Germany and the USSR.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, whose parents fled persecution in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, minces no words in telling the real story of Zionism’s crimes against the Palestinians…
For example, in 1937 Ben-Gurion told the Jewish Agency Executive, the organization charged with procuring land for Jewish settlements in Palestine, “I am for compulsory transfer; I don’t see anything immoral in it.” Ten years later, Ben Gurion maintained his opposition to sharing Palestine with the Arabs by rejecting the UN partition plan because he believed it didn’t allocate at least the majority of Palestine to the Jewish state…
In a speech delivered to his own Mapai Party on December 3, 1947, Ben-Gurion made his aims clear:
There are 40 percent non-Jews in the areas allocated to the Jewish state. This composition is not a solid basis for a Jewish state. Only a state with 80 percent Jews is a viable state…
The price: The future__Like all Israelis who dare to tell the true story of what happened, Pappé was ostracized. He received death threats and was forced out of his job as a distinguished senior lecturer at the University of Haifa last summer. Citing an atmosphere of hate and bigotry, he decided to accept a job at Exeter University in England. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Pappe_Ilan/EthnCleansPales_bookreview.html