Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the relocation of Israel to Germany.
"An outrageous gaffe, " said Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel. “I condemn [the comments] unreservedly. They have no place in civilised political debate,” said UK FS Jack Straw. “This is not the first time, unfortunately, that the Iranian president has expressed the most outrageous ideas concerning Jews and Israel,” Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.
Ignoring the practicalities and accepting that it could not have been done in 1948, why is everyone so “outraged” at this suggestion?
It’s no secret that Israel is not welcome in the region, and the Palestinians did rather have them thrust on them through no fault of their own.
Obviously it’ll never happen, but why the fuss over the mere suggestion?
… BTW, I do realise this man’s credibility was shot with his “wipe Israel off the map” comment, but does that mean everything he says from now on related to Israel will be greeted with an overkill of outrage?
I’m guessing that the subtext is ‘since the Germans didn’t do a really complete job on killing off the jews last time, lets put them back there and give em another shot.’ Whether this bone head meant it like that or not is debatable…but I think thats how its being read.
Its a ridiculous suggestion. The thing is a done deal and there is no way even if you went back in a time machine that you could change things. The jews were already there. They were already working towards declaring themselves as a soveriegn nation. The region really didn’t belong to any power since WWI. The Euro’s were slicing and dicing the region as they saw fit. Post WWII the US was onboard with a jewish homeland (they had major sympathy at the time). The Palestinians were given their shot at getting half the pie right then…but chose to want the whole thing. Their ‘buddies’ in the region (and with friends like that who needs enemies) decided to settle things through force of arms…and had their collective asses handed to them. Several times.
Its done…its finished. There is no going back at this point. So…it was kind of a stupid thing for Ahmadinejad if he was being serious (of course he probably wasn’t…he was playing to the crowd and giving them the code words they wanted to hear).
Part of the problem is that in the same statement he denied the Holocaust happened (here) and made comments along the lines of if Europe feels so bad about this happening maybe they should give the Jews land in Europe.
I understand what you’re saying Xtisme, but isn’t there some justification behind asking: “They faced injustice in Europe, so why do the repercussions fall on the Palestinians?” (from **Gooftroopag’**s cite)?
[ol]
[li]Removing any established people for the "convenience " of others is wrong. (We call it ethnic cleansing.)[/li][li]Who is going to compensate all the Israelis for their lost land, businesses, and other real investents that they will be forced to surrender? (That Israel faces a similar issue regarding land taken from Palestinians hardly justifies extending that injustice to the Israelis–particularly ALL the Israelis.[/li][li]A significant percentage of Israelis are descended from Jews who already lived in the region before the formation of the state of Israel. Why are they supposed to be removed?[/li][li]Germany has its own troubles, reconciling East and West and dealing with Turkish migrant workers. Why impose another 6 1/4 million people on them? [/li][li]Prior to WWII, there were only around 300,000 Jews in Germany. The majority of immigrants to the region came from Polnd, the USSR, the Netherlands, and other German-occupied countries, not Germany. Since no German alive, today, had anything to do with the rise of the Nazis, why is Germany selected to be the dumping ground for all these people?[/li][li]Ahmadinejad is a hate-mongering kook; why should anyone consider doing anything he suggests?[/li][/ol]
1- That’s what Israel has done to the Palestenians, and they don’t want 300,000 of them, which were pushed off, to have the right to ever come back. They attempted, as best as they could, to ethincally cleanse the place to create a Jewish state.
2- Who is going to compesate the Jews for their displacement? I suggest Germany.
3- Why should Germany be left with dealing with so many displaced Jews? Are you kidding?! No, really, are you kidding?
4- Because even a hate-mongering kook could stumble onto something, even if it’s by pure conincidence.
And so the solution now is to tell the Jews to go to Germany (as if that’s where they all came from)? Substituting one set of problems for another is not what I’d call productive.
What would happen if Israel somehow did move to Europe? Would anti-Americanism in the Middle East increase now that they were devoid of their regular scapegoat? Would anti-Europeanism increase instead? How would the Germans react to having Israel plopped down in, oh, say, the Black Forest?
And even if they all were descended from people who originally came from Berlin, so what, if they themselves were born in Israel?
Also a large percentage are immigrants and refugees from the rest of the Middle East, so just as reasonable suggestion as Germany would be giving them land somewhere in the Middle East, like Iran or say Israel.
Simply untrue.
Yes, there was terrorism on both sides at the founding of the state of Israel. But there was also a concerted effort to get the Palestinians to stay. The Arab leadership told them to get out of the way of their planned genocide.
Etc… No, the situation certainly was not one sided. Yes, there were some bloody incidents on both sides, but the fact of the matter is that it simply was not a campaign of ethnic cleansing on Israel’s part.
Why? Even those Jews, like many of my relatives, whose ancestors were part of the first wave of Aliah and who owned the land they lived on fair and square?
Considering that most of the Jews living in Israel did not come from Germany, doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd to make Germany absorb them all?
So supposedly the Jews are wrong because they exiled the Palestinians. So Ahmadinejad says the only right thing to do is exile the Jews. There seems to be a slight gap in the logic there.
I guess the question is where do the Jews “belong”? Ahmadinejad apparently doesn’t want to base this on where they’re living now. So he wants to send them back to Germany where some of their ancestors lived. As others have pointed out, before the Jews were living in Germany, their ancestors were living in Russia. And before the Jews were living in Russia, their ancestors were living in … Israel. The Jews were in fact living in Israel for a few thousand years before the Muslims arrived there.
Ahmadinejad’s arguments don’t make sense even if you accept his flawed premises.