Not that I don’t believe you… but… well… I don’t.
I have cites that show Israelis (or those who’d soon be Israelis) calling for arabs to stay.
Can you prove that Israel’s official policy was to expel the Palestinians in order to make room for the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of European Jews?
An excellent point; the Palestinians base their claim to territory on the same document that gave territory to the Jews. How can the Palestinians claim it conferred legal ownership to them but not to the Israelis?
Moderator’s Note: Wishbone, do NOT insult or “flame” other posters in Great Debates. If you can’t follow this rule, your stay at the Straight Dope Message Board is guaranteed to be a short one.
Several of the rest of should cool it a bit as well.
DonMartin88, I edited the quoted material in your original post a bit. Please review our copyright and quoted material.
And scrap metal dealers. All hail the scrap from WWII. My father still has a kurggerand from this guy yclept Mordechai.
Hm. On second thought, I should point out that I havn’t seen the coin in twenty years, so I’m not sure it’s a krugerrand, and that it was my grandfather that was the one who was selling the scrap (The owner of the company was a lawyer and a respected citizen, and couldn’t do the job on a sunday) My father tagged along once or twice, which is how he got the coin.
The real funny thing is one of the Hagannah’s, and later Israel’s, greatest arms-scroungers - a guy who could find an old Messerschmidt at the bottom of a junkpile in Minsk and have it in Haifa harbor by the end of the week, hidden under a hold full of onions - was a twentysomething Polish-Jewish con man called Simon Persky. You may know him better by his Hebrewised name.
Israel are a fact, but the country is still illegitimate because the jews took that land after a rather short and massiv immigrastion. There where few jews that where born in Palestine when Israel was declared in 1948. It wasnt’ even a separation, but a theaft - and they took it with the help of etnic cleansing.
The jews in Palestine (Gaza, West-Bank and Israel) didn’t count more than 6% of the population as late as 1914. :eek:
Over 80% of the arab-palestinian population lived in what today is Israel right before the war in 1948.
The main problem about discussing this conflict is that the zionists and their supportert use and produce myths, lies and propaganda on a large scale. It’s like a factory that produces myths and lies.
The thing that a postet in my OP are pretty close to the fact
Ya know, invective aside, you have a point. The local people of the region did get a raw deal. From the Brits, from the UN, from their own leaders and Arab brethren and yes, from certain elements of the Zionists. To deny this is revisionist. However, to put the the blame entirely on the shoulders of the Jews is also revisionist.
It was a bad idea that was handled in a ham-fisted manner by everyone involved.
But it’s done, and the question (as others have pointed out time and again on numerous threads) is, where do you go from here? Live in the past forever, nursing grudges against people long dead and gone, or turn 180 degrees and look toward a future of peace ad prosperity? There’s no physical law to prevent the Palestinians from emulating the Israelis and creating a vibrant society except a lack of will and leadership, and the manipulation by outsiders, who use them as pawns to preserve the status quo for their own political ends.
The ball’s in their court. The future is in their hands.
So this Persky guy’s hebrew name was Mordechai? Seriously? Did he wear a fur coat? (At least I seem to recall the story involving him wearing a fur coat.) Truthfully, we always assumed Mordechai was a completely false name.
It’d be a heck of a thing if we could find out the Israel side of the story. I always thought that Mordechai was part of the reason my father married a nice jewish girl.
DonMartin, a few points …
I, for one, do not excuse early Zionistic terror, even if I recognize that it was in the context of being the subjects of organized terror campaigns by the Arab side for years, even if I recognize that those Zionists who committed terror felt strongly about their case to survive in the land that they never stopped thinking of as home, and felt that they had no other option to fight for their rights with other than violent acts. I condemn those several dozen episodes as much as I condemn the thousands of terror acts committed by Arabs before and after this early Zionistic period. I find it … interesting … that you condem the early acts of terror by Zionists, but defend Arabs blowing up Jewish schoolkids on busses as “the only means they have to fight back the israely terror-attack.” Now I can understand a double standard applied to Israel today, since Israel places itself as a secular democracy (compared to totalitarian and theocratic regiemes otherwise endemic in the region), but not in judging the quasi and para military forces of early Zionism. Care to explain the reasoning behind your different standards?
I would also like your thoughts on the roughly equivilant numbers of Jewish refugees from Arab lands that were created in the same time period. These were Arab Jews who had, once again, lived in their homes in Yemen, Iraq, Iran, etc. for hundreds and thousands of years but who were driven out and had their property confiscated. These Jews were absorbed by Israel and the problem of the refugees “solved”. Are you as upset about their homes and land being “stolen”? If not, then why not?
Further I would like to point out the context that the properties within the Ottoman territory of Palestine was indeed home to Arabs for generations but that it had no particular significance to any of them other than the place they happened to live. Most of the Arabs at the time would have ben just as happy living on equivilant farmland a few miles down the road. For the Jews this land had (and has) a special spiritual and religious significance. In the balance of needs and justifications, giving the Zionists the postage stamp sized region that the partition originally allowed was a small concession to ask and could have been easily done.
If only.
For here is the key analysis at each step. If only the Arab side had negotiated a deal at any past point their position would be much better than it is today. They could have accepted the original partition and Israel would still be a postage stamp (look at those maps), but they attacked to kill them all and have all the land and lost. They could have accepted Israel then but did not and lost more land. They could have built a Palestine at any point up to 1967, or absorbed them … ah but the Arab countries annexed the land given to the “Palestinian people” instead and kept the refugges in tent camps at the borders, uneducated and uncared for, as political pawns. Good move that. Even after 1967 they could have negotiated return of all of the occupied lands in returns for assurances of peace but they refused. Arafat didn’t even bring any counter proposals back during the last great missed opporunity. Every time they missed an opportunity and put themselves in a worse place.
Israel is no more or less illegitimate than almost any other country on this planet. As to myths and lies, your posts contain quite a few … hoo boy, Russia, home the Pale of Settlement and the pogram, being bought off with the creation of Israel by the Brits, that’s a good one!
The question that matters is, however, what options remain today for each side. The Palestians can continue to attempt to use terror and rachet themselves into an increasingly hopeless place, or they can at least attempt to control the terror and negotiate in good faith, with more focus on what they need for a future functional state than on what they feel they somehow “deserve” as recompense for they feel are past wrongs. The Israelis can wait for a real partner who can deliver a negotiated solution and live with terror until then, or they can impose a unilateral settlement to protect themselves from terror until such a partner appears. The Fence should be an attempt to do the latter, although it is wandering a bit farther than it should to achieve that goal. Sharon screws up another good idea with cloddish implementation.
And Israel will continue to look after her own best interest as best she can.
I know this is a sensetive area and I’m not all that happy over whats happend the last 4 years after Sharons “walk”.
You must se suiced bombings in a certain context. I see these people, that the israely calls terrorists, as a recistance-movment fighting an occupation. The palestinians are also the underdog that have fealt the wrath of Israel - particulary the last 4 years. I support scuiced bombings to a degree on a emotional level. But I have difficulties about it on a strategic level. Do they blow them selves up because they recently have lost a family member - or do they do it in a calculated strategy?
Blaiming the intifata on Sharon’s visiting the Temple Mount is just plain wrong. It had been in the planning for months beforehand. His visit was simply an excuse/catalyst (depending on how cynical you want to be).
I do see them in a certain context. I see them as wrong, criminal, dangerous, stupid, causing more trouble than anything that could possibly hoped to be gained…
Well, guess what? The “wrath of Israel” has been upon them for the last four years particularly because it’s been over the last four years that they have doing more bombing/killing than previously.
In other words, you think it’s OK to blow up buses with school children but you’re not sure you would implement it because of “strategic reasons?” :rolleyes:
Zev Steinhardt
Nobody can legitimately support suicide bombings.
[ol]
[li]They kill inncoent civilians. This accomplishes nothing.[/li][li]They kill the bomber. This violates the religious laws of all faiths involved. And every would-be revolutionary deserves at least a chance of reaping the fruits of the revolution.[/li][li]The recruitment practices exploit the desparate & the mentally ill in an unethical manner.[/li][li]They are strategically useless. The West is simply more alienated after each bombing, more hostile. A tactic that kills, but which cannot achieve anything is immoral, unprincipaled, unethical, and stupid.[/li][li]No Government may view or negotiate with any private individual or private group on an equal footing, as if they were a government. Thus, terrorism is a failure.[/li][li]Any plan with the word “suicide” in it is automatically a dumbbell plan. [/li][li]As is the guy who thought it up. [/li][li]As is the guy who carries it out.[/li]
[/ol]
tell me this…
why have the illegal settlers increased with over 140% since the Olso-process began in 1993 ?
Why did the illegal settleractivity increase significant all through the 90’s?
why did the illegal settelements increase significant all through the 90’s?
is it because the jewish people are part of a long- and large scale calculated attemt to change the demograpy in Palestine ? - a new form of etnic cleansing?
I don’t know that to be a fact, but I’ll just accept it for the sake of the argument.
If the fact is as you presented it, it certainly is a valid question. I’m not going to defend everything the Israeli government has done. But to state that this is a justification for blowing up school buses of children is still wrong.
Oh puh-leez. If the Israelis wanted to, they could have expelled the Palestinians years ago. If they wanted to, they could have pounded them into complete submission years ago. If they wanted to, they could have marched all the Palestinians “into the sea” (as many wanted to do with the Jews since 1948). But they didn’t do so.
Zev Steinhardt
I’m re-reading Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad, published in 1869, and there definitely was a distinctive place–he uses the word ‘country’ sometimes, ‘Ottoman province’ at others–called Palestine. It was advertised as such in the ads for the excursion he went on, it was on the itineraries as such, and when they left Syria they officially entered it.
He didn’t think much of the then-ragtag Arabs and Jews he saw there (he called the latter the models for the Pharisees and very self-righteous) and went into pitiless detail about how desolate it all was then:
Terrific book; if you want a time capsule from pre-Zionist, pre-British Palestine by a sharp-witted if often prejudiced observer, pick it up.
Well Don, you’ve partly answered one of my questions: you judge terrorism of the worst sort okay if committed upon Jews in Israel partly because you agree with its ends. Implied is that if you do not agree with the ends then terror is to be condemned. Any means is okay if it is for a cause that you agree with, as long as it accomplishes the ends. Your problem with early acts of Zionist terrorism is therefore not the terror acts themselves, or that they were effective at achieving their ends (you believe), but that you feel the end was an unjust cause. It would’ve been just fine if you agreed with the cause, such as Arabs targetting Jews.
How about the other question? Are you concerned about the rights of the Jewish Arabs who were expelled? Should they at least be compensated for property that was confiscated? And if not, why not?
[Administrator Hat ON]
Banned wishbone/Milford Cubicle on suspicion of socking. The posts just a few minutes apart seem hinky.
[Administrator Hat OFF]
DonMartin88: Have you seen post 60 or did you skip it?
Are you going to retract your patently spurious claims, or is this simply a thread of anti-Israel rhetoric divorced from fact?
Okay, so it’s illigitimate because there was massive immigration?
Is there a prescedent in international law for this, or is this merely more rhetoric?
And, yes, it was a partition, or are you using rhetoric to suggest that the very UN Partition Plan was an act of theft?
And, ethnic cleansing??? That is wayyyy over the line, it’s simply not true, and I challenge you to find a cite that supports you.
Because, here, out of the mouths of Arabs themselves:
or here
And here
Do I really have to find even more cites?
Your position, put plainly, is wrong and you are arguing in the teeth of facts.
Will you retract your position, or argue blindly on?
Funny, so far only you have quoted lies and propaganda, I’ve dispelled those lies and propaganda, and you’re still attempting to say that it’s true.
Let’s assume, for discussion purposes only, that this is true.
Does a visit to the Dome of the Rock justify the murder of women and babies, of civilians and non-combattants?
In what context, exactly, do resistance fighters not fight against military targets but instead murder women and their children?
Then there’s the fact that the Arabs attacked Israel since its inception, does that mean that the Israelis would be justified in deliberately targeting and murdering Palestinian women and children?
Oh, well, they’re the underdog?
Continue killing babies and pregnant women please.
Ok… now let’s see if your position has consistency:
You live somewhere in northern Europe, which means that at some point in your history, one tribe of people slaughtered some folks from another tribe.
Would you support people descended from that tribe targeting your family members and killing them?
First, cite?
Second, if Oslo wasn’t rejected, there wouldn’t have been any more settlements, now would there?
Holy faulty rhetoric batman!
The systematic and planned extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group.
Please explain how changing demographics is genocidal?
How not murdering people is changed via rhetoric to murdering them?
Provide proof for this claim of “ethnic cleansing”
Especially since it was the Arabs in '48 who said
So we have actual genocide and an actual appeal, by arabs, to arabs, against your spurious claims.
Unless you can find some actual true positions to argue from, you’ve already lost this debate.
And by the way, are we debating 1948, or the present?
…in this type of situation. Much as the expulsion of the germans from East Prussia, the Palestinians left…and they ain’t coming back! It has been 56 years, and Israel is a fact.
However, I don’t understand a leader like Sharon…just the other day he was calling for 500 more houses to be built in the jewish west bank. Talk about pouring gasoline on a fire! Of course, Arafat is another “leader” who does nothing to preserve peace. He has broken every agreement he has ever made…not a very trustworthy guy.
Maybe, the “wall” is the solution…finish it, lock the gates, and forget the past.