Israel, Palestine, anti-religion DU'ers...I'm so confused now

[helleborient]

There have been past discussions where a number of DU'ers expressed their complete opposition to religion of any kind...religion as the root of all negatives in the world.

But...all of the recent discussion of Israel vs. Palestine seems to bring out a strong support of Israel as somehow morally superior to Palestinians...yet Israel's entire right to exist is based on a religious argument, unlike that of the Palestinians who are the native people to the area.

Israel attempts to create a charade of a true republic, yet it is obvious that those who are Jewish religiously, culturally, or ethnically have different rights than those who are not...most recently made explicity by the Israeli government putting into place laws controlling marriage for Palestinians (including their own citizens) differently than that for Jewish citizens.

For those who so strongly oppose religion in the public realm...is it only bad in the U.S. and not in Israel?

[Resistance]

1. the fact is

you can be as progressive, humanitarian and liberal as the next guy on a whole list of issues - but as soon as it comes to foreign policy towards Israel, people do a 180 and become so hawkish it would make Mike Savage proud.

Yes, this utterly defies all reason and logic, but ... that's how you've got to view the opinion/attitudes towards Israel: where total double standards and sheer hypocrisy are the standard.

[molly]

2. You have posted this in the wrong forum - obviously because

you are new - it belongs in the IP forum.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

3. UN Resolution 181 was the biggest mistake of the 20th century.

Partitioning Palestine into a 'Jewish' state and an 'Arab' state? Sounds a lot like 'ethnic cleansing' doesn't it?

I think 51 years later it is obvious that this was a mistake. Why can't we admit it? How about ONE state where all the citizens have equal rights?

What a concept.

[Resistance]

4. I am for a one-state solution

A state that is not based entirely on racial and religious discrimination - but given the circumstances I would settle for a two-state solution that both sides negotiated and fairly agreed upon.

[MaverickX]

7. so you want what Hamas wants...

Which Arab state would this resemble? Which Arab state allows Jews to practice their religion?

[StandWatie]

9. I imagine if Hamas won..

They might grumble but I really couldn't see them being too unhappy if things wound up with Jews in refugee camps in some "occupied territory" never allowed to build anything and a small voting minority left in "Palestine" proper treated as second class citizens.

It would probably look much like today.

Oh, and the answer to your question is all of them.

[durutti]

44. Not Saudi Arabia

Islam is mandatory.

[Fight_n_back]

93. Only Egypt

is the answer to the question.

Maybe Iraq will now...if any Jews have been left alive.

[Darranar]

94. There are quite a few Iraqi Jews, actually.

n/t

[Fight_n_back]

98. Quite a few is not very specific

in 40 years the number has been more than halved and not from emigration.

[Darranar]

102. You mean Iraqi jews haven't immigrated to Israel?

In fact, a very large number of them did.

I remember seeing some statistics on this from someone - maybe Aidoneous, but I'm not sure.

[Equinox]

127. Yang, you might want to read this:

I write this article for the same reason I wrote my book: to tell the American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors.

http://www.ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=36&aid=72

[Jim Sagle]

152. Yeah. Right.

[Equinox]

154. Eloquent as usual Sage Man.

[rini]

158. Oh my goodness

what a bunch of excrement!

[Jim Sagle]

151. At least a couple hundred, hey?

[shance]

18. Maverick - is it wrong for the Palestinians to want a peaceful place

to reside?

In truth, the Israelis and Palestinians should not be blamed for the initial set-up. The Brits and American Government should have been wise enough to see that this was a disaster waiting to happen. In 1917, there were plenty of places, including here in the United States where we could have created a state for Israel or for the Palestinians. I know that is water essentially under the bridge.

However, if we cared enough about peace at the time, or even care about it now, we would make it a priority for ALL of these individuals. One thing I will say, it baffles me to think that many Israelis believe that Neo-conservatives here in America are on their side. History is so quickly forgotten.

I am curious to know what solutions have even been tried?

Another thing regarding Howard Dean. How can one think he is being unfair when he speaks of trying to be fair? His wife is Jewish for crying out loud. What is the fear here in simply trying to be fair? Has anybody considered the fairness for the Palestinians. Perhaps if that was put into consideration, they would not be so desperate as to get on a plane and kill themselves and other innocent people. The only individuals I know who are willing to do that are people who have nothing to lose. They are doing it for their families and for the survival of whats left of the Palestinians.

Have those that call any of us anti-Semitic that DARE to look at this "fairly" even looked at the tremendous abuse of power and fundamentalism going on here. Have these people actually been to Palestine and Israel to see the unbelievable disparity in living conditions between the Israelis and the Palestinians? If you could call what the Palestinians are presently living in "living conditions". Its terrible and wrong. And quite frankly, I believe the US should do something for those people. I am speaking as a WASP who has never had any close ties with any Palestinians, but I have many Jewish friends, and may have some Jewish lineage in my past.

Bottom line: I believe both of these groups feel trapped. And in a sense they are. But there are solutions, there have to be, if there are individuals willing to give more and other countries that are willing to help. However, with the US pissing so many countries off right now, those options look pretty damn dim right now.

Personally, I wish more women were involved in more of the peace process. Smart, caring, intelligent, fair, progressive women. I think we would have already had this thing solved.

[no name no slogan]

20. Here's a few

-- Lebanon
-- Syria
-- Egypt
-- Morocco

The only Arab state that actively discourages non-Muslim religious practice is Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by an ultra-conservative Wahabist family.

As a matter of fact, most Arab countries have historically had large Jewish populations. Incidentally, they were also treated much more fairly than the were in Europe. Many of them held high positions in business, government and society. It wasn't until 1956 (when Israel, the UK and France attacked Egypt) that most of the Jewish communities in the middle east were expelled.

You really should do a little investigating, instead of making blanket assumptions about the Arab world.

[shance]

28. Who knew?

So much about Middle Eastern foreign policy I didnt know.

[Muddleoftheroad]

29. LOL

Sure, in Lebanon and Syria, if they let you live or let you stay.

[durutti]

45. In Syria

There are several active Jewish communities. They are subject to official repression -- but not nearly as much as, say, Muslims in India or Falun Gong in China.

[fujiyama]

53. Muslims in India

subjected to discimination? What the hell are you talking about? What about Hindus in Bangladesh or Pakistan?

The fact is, while there has been some violence against Muslims in India recently, but people of all religions exist quite peacefully for the most part.

Look, Israel may be a religously defined nation, but it's not the only one. Pakistan was also created out of religious identities, but I rarely hear anyone mentioning them on this board.

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[Equinox]

155. Ummm...we don't fork $4 Bill a year to Pakistan.

I thought I/P stood for Israel/Palestine. I keep getting this error message that says "You've entered India/Pakistan. Turn around and go back from whence you came."

Have I taken a wrong turn somewhere?

[cantwealljustgetalong]

80. not good enough...

"treated much more fairly than the(y) were in Europe"...

While you may be, I don't think that Jews have to be particularly accepting of their subordinately second class, and precarious existence in Arab countries, in which they were subject to periods of persecution and murder, and in which they could end up being expelled at the whim of their ruling classes, just because it was a whole lot better only when compared to the inquisitions, pogroms, and holocausts of Europe...

[durutti]

43. Nice Strawman Argument

Hamas wants a state exclusively for Muslims. They don't want secularism, democracy, or equality. That's the crucial difference.

This state wouldn't resemble any current Arab state. In a way, that's the point. Fatah has always been devoted to a secular, democratic Palestine. Because Arafat and his compatriots knew that these goals were incompatible with the interests of the other Arab states, the cornerstone of Fatah's agenda has been non-reliance on other Arab states.

And believe it or not, many Arab states have and do allow Jews to practice their religion.

In Islamic teachings, Jews and Christians in an Islamic state are to be a protected class, or dhimmi. They must pay a special tax, which is used to build their temples and churches. It's illegal to discriminate against them in any way. They don't have to serve in the military.

Thus, in the Middle Ages, the lot of Jews in Arab states was infinitely preferable to that which they suffered under Christian regimes. The renaissance in Jewish cultural life in Muslim-ruled Spain is referred to as the Golden Age of Judaism.

Anti-Jewish sentiment in the Muslim world developed primarily as a reaction to Zionism. Thus, Jews in many Muslim countries do suffer discrimination. Yet, in many cases, they are still permitted to practice their religion freely.

Jews are legally permitted to practice their faith in Iran. In Egypt, synagogues are built with tax dollars. In Syria, there are small Jewish communities in Damascus, Al Qamishli, and Aleppo.

[drdon326]

8. Rejoice, Resistance

There is a state not based entirely on racial and religious discrimination ....its a democracy called Israel.


(dont bother looking for any other states in the ME
where that occurs).

[Resistance]

10. that is simply untrue

Israel is based on racial and discrimination.

[MaverickX]

12. how so?

Muslims can't practice their religion in Israel? What rights are Arabs denied in Israel?

[drdon326]

26. I think you deserve an answer.

n/t

[newyorican]

48. Try reading the Or Report

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=335594&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

[Fight_n_back]

97. So?

What is your point? Do the actions of the LA, Philadelphia or New York police departments have anything to do with the legitimacy of the United States?

Where is the internal investigation in Syria, Jordan or Saudi arabia on how minorities are treated by the authorities?

[Name removed]

131. Deleted message

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[durutti]

49. This is How

The most basic form of discrimination is the Law of Return. Jews anywhere can come to Israel and instantly gain citizenship. Arabs must go through a years-long naturalization process. Converts to Judaism don't get instant citizenship unless they're Orthodox.

Citizens must carry an identity card, identifying them as a Jew or an Arab.

Almost all land is controlled by the Jewish National Fund, which will not sell land to non-Jews. Consequently, there's much segregation. In many cases, this segregation is official. For example, Muslims are prohibited from living in Jerusalem's "Jewish Quarter".

Large areas of Palestinian land are placed under Jewish control. Zoning regulations are used to prevent Arab communities from expanding. Thus, Arab communities are much more densely populated than Jewish communities.

Houses built outside the planning framework are subject to demolition. Yet while illegal building is tolerated in Jewish communities, it is harshly punished in Arab communities. There are 12,000 outstanding demolition orderes in Galilee allone.

Other forms of segregation are also prevalent. There are Jewish-only roads (Jews are identified by their license plates).

Arabs lived under military administration until 1966. They were denied the right the right to vote and to join labor unions. The disadvantages they suffered then still affect them today, in much the same way that the disadvantages once suffered by African Americans prior the the Civil Rights Act still affect them today.

Arabs (except the tiny Druze population) are not recruited into the Army. They're thus put at a huge disadvantage, since they don't get access to the many social programs that comes with military service.

Yeshiva students are exempt from military service, but still get all the benefits that typically are only available to those who serve in the military.

Since 1948, Palestinian land has been confiscated to make way for Jews.

In some universities, political activity is banned for Arab students.

Institutional discrimination is widespread. Around 40 percent of Palestinian Israelis live in poverty.

Bedouin land has been confiscated and handed to Jewish farmers. The Bedouin are forced into cities in an effort to "modernize" them, destroying their traditional way of life.

Resources are allocated very unequally. Jewish communities get the best in government services; Palestinian communities get the worst. This form of racism finds its most blatant representation in the over 100 Palestinian villages that are unrecognized by Israel. The vast majority of them existed before the establishment of Israel. Yet the government refuses to recognize them, leaving them without the most basic services like drinking water and health clinics. Some of them are literally fenced off from the rest of the country.

Unofficially Jewish-only beaches exist: http://www.geocities.com/NoApartheid/BeachApartheid.html

Police brutality against Palestinians is commonplace.

Scores of prisoners of conscience are held in Israeli prisons.

Zionist McCarthyism is commonplace. Some of the New Historians have had their jobs threatened because of their political views.

Vague laws against "incitement" are used as tools for political repression. Arab political parties are legally prohibitied from opposing Zionism.

And of course, there was the recent racist marriage law.

[chapter32]

79. What the Pro-Israeli posters think about this list?

No profanity please. Responding to each item at #49 would at least be educational.

[Name removed]

85. Deleted message

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[Darranar]

86. Well, there are a number...

of pro-Israel posters who think on this forum, IMO. Of course, there are plenty who don't...

[chapter32]

87. "There are a number of pro-Israel posters who think..."

Well, bring'em on!

[Darranar]

88. You mean you can't think of any?

At least two come immediately to mind... but I won't name names.

[chapter32]

91. Yes, I can think of few...

and I like them to respond to each point durutti has brought up. I'm just interested to see a rebuttal for my own education of I/P issues.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

130. response to the list...

a request for a response with an insinuation that pro-Israeli posters tend to respond with profanity does not instill much desire to indulge you...

I offer to you a response that follows seemingly acceptable (but, in my opinion, profane) sentiments as expressed in post # 43 paragraph # 6 -

"Anti-Arab descrimination in the Israeli state developed primarily as a reaction to anti-Zionism. Thus, Arabs in the Israeli state do suffer discrimination. Yet, in many cases, they are still permitted to practice their religion freely."

[chapter32]

145. The “List” boss, The “List”!

I was interested in a rebuttal to the entire “List”. The entire “List” boss!

BTW, thanks for "indulging"...

[The Magistrate]

118. A Few Points, Mr. Durruti

Military administration was not imposed on Arabs throughout Israel as a matter of ethnicity. It was imposed on border areas, beginning at a time when hostilities were barely in abeyance, and when a fear of "fifth column" activity was not unreasonable. Its worst feature was the seizure of land for security purposes, followed closely by requirement for permits to travel: the first was often misused for outright expropriation, and the second wrought great economic hardship in many instances.

Arabs have votd in every election in Israel: even the first in 1949 saw three Arabs enter the Knesset. It is true that advocacy of the dissolution of Israel is prohibited: to my knowledge no country quite allows such a platform by a political party, and revolutionists seldom field slates of candidates in any case.

Arabs are not subject to conscription, the reason given is in order to not force anyone to act against his fellow Arabs, or against his political aspirations. There are instancs of Arab enlistment. The exemption of Yeshiva students from conscription is widely resented among Israelis, as is the jurisdiction of rabbinical courts in many civil matters. These were things deemed necessary at the establishment of the state to secure political quiesence from the then largely anti-Zionist Orthodox leaders, and have become unfortunately entrenched. It is considerations like this some refer to here on occassion with statements Israel might have a civil war all its own in the absence of conflict with Arab Palestinians: though something of an overstatement, it is more true than not.

It is certainly true Arab Israelis are disfavored in many ways in Israeli society. A good deal of it is owing to bigotry. Some of these feelings seem unavoidable to me, as a practical consequence of the ethnic quality of the hostilities in which Israel and Arab Palestine have been long embroiled. It is wrong, but my expectations of human-kind are pitched rather low.

[durutti]

124. Re: Bigotry

Military administration was not imposed on Arabs throughout Israel as a matter of ethnicity. It was imposed on border areas, beginning at a time when hostilities were barely in abeyance, and when a fear of "fifth column" activity was not unreasonable.

The vast majority of Palestinian citizens were subject to military administration. It's impossible for either you or I to say whether or not these conditions were imposed due to security or bigotry. I suspect it's both. But certainly, the result was to put Arabs at a disadvantage in practice.

While security concerns may have justified military administration initially, they certainly don't justify a an 18-year regime of military administration.

David Ben Gurion and several other well-known leading figures in the early days of the Zionist state held bigoted attitudes not only towards Arabs, but also towards Jews of Middle Eastern descent.

Several other instances of bigoted attitudes among Zionists are notable. The Israeli Labour Party campaigned for people to boycott Arab businesses and for businesses to refuse to employ Arab workers. And of course, the whole idea of "transfer" is inherently racist.

It's also worth noting that Arabs were prohibited from becoming full members of Israeli labor unions until 1965.

BTW, South African blacks also had representatives in parliament under apartheid.

Its worst feature was the seizure of land for security purposes, followed closely by requirement for permits to travel: the first was often misused for outright expropriation, and the second wrought great economic hardship in many instances.

And similar measures persist to this day. To argue that these measures are in themselves alright, and that only the racist attitudes need to be gotten rid of, is no different than arguing that the United States' policy of "separate but equal" was O.K.

Arabs have votd in every election in Israel: even the first in 1949 saw three Arabs enter the Knesset. It is true that advocacy of the dissolution of Israel is prohibited: to my knowledge no country quite allows such a platform by a political party, and revolutionists seldom field slates of candidates in any case.

This is simply not true. Far-left parties all over the world advocate similar things -- the Scottish Socialist Party, for example. Sinn Fein is another.

Arabs are not subject to conscription, the reason given is in order to not force anyone to act against his fellow Arabs, or against his political aspirations.

Again, you assume the best about Israeli motives. Surely, Israeli policy has always been to repress any expression of Arab political independence. Arab political parties are prohibited from openly opposing Zionism. On several university campuses, Arab student political activity is banned.

There are instancs of Arab enlistment.

Only the Druze and some Bedouins serve. The vast majority of Arabs do not and cannot.

The exemption of Yeshiva students from conscription is widely resented among Israelis, as is the jurisdiction of rabbinical courts in many civil matters. These were things deemed necessary at the establishment of the state to secure political quiesence from the then largely anti-Zionist Orthodox leaders, and have become unfortunately entrenched.

And that makes it O.K.?

It is certainly true Arab Israelis are disfavored in many ways in Israeli society. A good deal of it is owing to bigotry. Some of these feelings seem unavoidable to me, as a practical consequence of the ethnic quality of the hostilities in which Israel and Arab Palestine have been long embroiled. It is wrong, but my expectations of human-kind are pitched rather low.

As I see it, the hierachy of ethnic and religious favoritism in Israel and the OT would look something like this:

1. Ashkenazi Jews
2. Sephardic Jews
3. Palestinian Israelis
4. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories

[durutti]

125. I Almost Forgot...

During the Sinai campaign, 3,000-5,000 Palestinian Israelis were expelled from their homes.

[Romulus Quirinus]

153. What I don't get is...

why the Palies don't do an MLK, Jr. on the Israelis. Minorities in the Southern US were treated just about as badly here, but they didn't go out and start bombing Bubba's BBQ or "White Only" restaurants. They did, however, end the disgusting apartied system, and they did it peacefully.

If hundereds of Arab citizens just started sitting in the middle of the road singing in Tel Aviv, there would be no way that they could be denied over the long term--even many "conservative" Likudniks are liberal by US standards. Confronted in this way, the political culture of Israel would not stand for this level of abuse. Reasonable people do unreasonable things, however, when confronted by dismembered bodies at their favorite pizza joint.

Dr. King had it right when he denounced violence, it only strengthens the arguments of oppressors and turns away those who would be otherwise sympatheic. If the PA would just crack down on the killers and organize resonable civil disobediance protests in Israel proper, then they would be unstoppable. They might not get everything they want, but it would be a sight better than what we have today!

[Gimel]

156. Response to post 49

Many of the points have been discussed previously on different threads. A number of the complaints are outdated (such as the ID card nationality or religion entry). Carrying an ID card is not the law. The usefulness for identification at government offices, banks, etc., only makes it a common practice. Similarly US citizens and residents carry a drivers' liscence for ID.

Religious Jews are now being drafted into the army, with very few exemptions.

There are beaches for religious Jews because of the modesty requirements and segregation of the women from the men. Is this what you refer to as unofficial Jewish-only beaches?

Police brutality? Palestinians are only allowed into Israel with proper authorization.

With a war going on and frequent terror attacts, the only way to prevent them is with constant vigilance. This means apprehending any suspicious person. Brutality is used only in extreme cases.

I have no more time to continue with this, so what remains can be addressed in another post.

[Violet_Crumble]

56. Here's one...

They're denied the right to purchase land that's available to other Israelis....

Violet...

[Feanorcurufinwe]

180. How about the right to not be arrested, detained, or killed without charge

or trial?

UA 202/03 Fear of torture and ill-treatment/detention
without charge

ISRAEL/OCCUPIED TERRITORIES 'Abd al-Nasser Quzmar (m), aged 30,
farmer

'Abd al-Nasser Quzmar, from the village of Izbat Salman in the West Bank, was
arrested on 16 June. He is being held without charge by the Israeli General
Security Services (GSS) in Israel and may be in danger of torture or
ill-treatment.

At 2am on 16 June, Israeli soldiers surrounded the house where he lives with
his wife, three children and other relatives, and ordered the whole family to
come out of the house. They asked whether 'Abd al-Nasser Quzmar was among them,
and when he identified himself he was arrested and immediately taken away. He
was taken to Kaddumim detention centre, in Kaddumim settlement, West Bank,
where he was held for around a week without being questioned. He was then
transferred to Petah Tikva, a GSS interrogation centre in Israel, where he is
still being held and interrogated. He has not been charged with any offence. On
25 June, and again on 9 July, his arrest warrant was extended to enable the GSS
to continue his interrogation. Under Israeli military law, he can remain
detained without charge or trial for up to three months. After that, he could
be placed under administrative detention, which would allow the Israeli
authorities to detain him indefinitely without charge or trial.

'Abd al-Nasser Quzmar's lawyer has been able to visit him regularly, although
he has been refused entry to the detention centre several times because his
client was under interrogation. 'Abd al-Nasser Quzmar has reportedly been
questioned for at least six hours every day since he was moved to Petah Tikva.
He has told his lawyer that he is often interrogated for 12 hours a day and
that he has on occasion been interrogated by up to four people from 10am until
3am the following day, thus depriving him of sleep. Such interrogation methods
can be considered as psychological torture with the aim of coercing a
confession. Amnesty International has consistently received reports of
Palestinians being tortured and ill-treated in Israeli prisons and detention
centres, and is concerned that other forms of torture or ill-treatment may be
used in the continuing interrogation of 'Abd al-Nasser Quzmar.

'Abd al-Nasser's family is not able to visit him, as the detention centre is
located in Israel, and Palestinians living in the West Bank do not have
permission to travel there. He has therefore been unable to see his fourth
child, who was born after his arrest.
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150592003?open&of=ENG-ISR

When killing becomes routine
By Gideon Levy

At the beginning of June, Nabil Jirdath, 48, a clothing merchant and the father of eight, drove from his store in Jenin to his home in the village of Silath al-Harthiya. With him in the car were seven of his family members, including children. Suddenly the car came under light-arms fire from a tank that was stationed on the main road. Jirdath was critically wounded and died a few days later.

It's possible that the soldiers wanted to frighten the occupants of the car, as the driver, for fear of the tank, had turned on to a bypass dirt road. And so the soldiers opened fire at the vehicle from long range. The result was an appallingly unnecessary death, which, as in many other cases, was of no interest to the Israeli public.

However, the lack of interest shown in the event by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this time assumed a horrific character: it turned out that the IDF Spokesperson's Office had no knowledge of the incident. Someone is killed but no investigation is made and no record is kept of the event anywhere - as though an animal was the victim. Is it possible that the soldiers in the tank didn't even bother reporting to their superiors that they had killed someone?
http://www.peaceredding.org/When%20killing%20becomes%20routine.htm

[Gimel]

204. Palestinian

These are Palestinains, not Israeli Arabs. There was certain to be a reason for the arrest, and a warrent was obtained, in the first case. The second ocurred in a war zone.

[MaverickX]

11. yeah I don't think Jews

Are allowed to openly practice their religion.

[IndianaGreen]

52. Israeli Arabs are treated as second class citizens

as are all non-Jewish Israelis. Their ID cards are different too!

Apartheid in any language is still apartheid.

[Gimel]

55. I'm not so sure

People react according to their background. Arab citizens in Israel are equal in every way. Mrs. Cohen ben Shlomo may look down on an Arab vendor, and may choose a Jewish doctor over an Arab physician, but those are individual preferences.

[durutti]

41. I Am for a One-State Solution Eventually

I favor the two-state solution as a first step to an eventual one-state solution. Ideally, there would be three phases in this process:

1. The establishment of a secular, democratic state of Palestine and the granting of the right of return to Palestinian refugees.

2. The reform of the Israeli government, changing it gradually from a racist, religious state to a state based on equality and secularism.

3. For years, the two states coexist peacefully. With the consent of the majority of the populations of both states, they merge, forming one secular, democratic state.

A dream? Sure, but a good one.

[Equinox]

46. Yes...a very good dream...

but in history, dreams have come true. I think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream....it's still becoming a reality, but a reality nonetheless.

[Fight_n_back]

167. Good for you

but unless you are for some sort of PNAC type invasion it isn;t up to you.

With regards to #2) You have no idea what you are talking about. Israel was founded by secular socialists the likes of which we in the US could only dream of. Please at least pretend to care enough about the subject to study it.

#3)Should the US and Mexico merge? Why not? Not that long ago the two states had land that overlapped.

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

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[Equinox]

16. Amen to that!

One democratic state....but that wouldn't fair well with AIPAC, Likud, Labor, National Union, Christian Zionists, the Settlers and I would suspect the majority of citizens within Israel.

We stress democracy only when it's convenient.

[Muddleoftheroad]

30. Using democracy to achieve the opposite

A one-state "democracy" wouldn't stay that way for very long. Jews have been horribly mistreated in the Arab world and are today. Do you think they will willingly embrace an Arab nation?

Not likely.

Why do so many of you persist in this fantasy? You know it won't happen.

[Equinox]

32. Who's to say that in this democracy, Jews will be mistreated?

...In Israel's democracy, Arabs both Christian and Muslim are still mistreated. Israel has no constitution guaranteeing all citizens equal before the law.

What I propose is a federalized state with a constitution that would guarantee everyone equal protection. Representation would be proportionate to the respective populations in the federation.

It is you who fantasizes to continue with the charade that is now a supposed democracy.

[MariMayans]

188. Israel didn't..

I'd be scared of being relegated to second class citizenship through the ballot box if I was them also. They could wind up being the dirty Arabs they have been kicking around for fifty years or so.

Of course if they ever did get outnumbered I think Israel would quickly see the benefit of some sort of declaration of human rights and non-descrimination that they have so far been resistent to.

[Equinox]

202. Good point, MariMayans...

n/t

[Gimel]

203. Israel does have a basic law

In lieu of a constitution, Israel's Basic Law provides for the government branches, the basic freedoms of individual liberty, freedom of press and assembly.
http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH00h50

[quilp]

23. Jews wanted a country and a democracy run by Jews.

The Arab Palestinians were in the way of both objectives. So they had to be removed. And they were. One man one vote, and "Israel" would cease to exist. That is the sole reason for the conflict.

If the Palestinians had been willing to accept Jewish government, the last fifty years would have been very different. Of course that is easier said than done. But looking at the situation of the Israelis and Palestinians today, it could be argued things would be a lot better for both. The Palestinians had been governed by the Turks and the British in the past without this appalling result. So the basic problem is probably ethnic and religious on both sides.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

179. The version of democracy you are espousing

sounds like "you have the right to vote - for what we tell you to vote for"

A democracy is run by the folks who are elected.

"A democracy run by <insert name of privileged group here>" is a contradiction in terms.

[Jackie97]

25. That would be nice.

Now, let's get the Israelis and the Palestinians to actually agree to live together in one country.

[rini]

58. Looks a lot like

what the UN did in 1948 and was refused by the Arabs with cries of "death to the Jews, we'll push them into the sea!"

[Darranar]

59. The UN partitioned the land...

they did not advocate a one state solution. Learn the facts.

[durutti]

175. The UN Did Not Partition the Land

The partition resolution was a General Assembly resolution -- it was not legally binding. Furthermore, it called merely for a provisional partition -- a temporary partition to see if the idea would work out. It was never intended as a permanent solution.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

177. Resolution 181 provided

however shakily, the legal basis for partitioning the land into a 'Jewish state' and an 'Arab state'

V. THE END OF THE MANDATE AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF ISRAEL

The situation in Palestine

The United Nations partition resolution did not provide a solution to the Palestine problem, and violence increased. In protest against the partition of their country, the Palestinian Arab Higher Committee called for a general strike. Palestinian-Jewish clashes proliferated with Jewish paramilitary forces operating more freely as British forces started their withdrawal. Sabotage, attacks on military installations and the capture of British arms by these groups became a major feature of the Palestinian scene, along with a proliferation of Jewish-Arab clashes. With events moving towards a major armed confrontation, Great Britain announced that it would terminate the Mandate on 15 May 1948, several months before the time envisaged in the United Nations plan.

The Security Council could not take any effective decision after discussing General Assembly resolution 181 (II) (the partition resolution) in December 1947. In March 1948 the United States draft proposal to enable the Council to act on the partition resolution failed, and the Council only called for an end to the violence in Palestine. Under the pressure of rapidly moving developments, the partition resolution did not even reach the stage of routine reference to the Sixth Committee for an examination of its legal effects and implications. The United Nations Commission on Palestine, established by resolution 181 (II), could not move to Jerusalem, and only could hold consultations in New York. The formation of the armed militia, intended to assist the Commission in its functions in Palestine, became impracticable in the face of the accelerated British withdrawal in a deteriorating situation where the casualty toll in the first three months after the approval of the partition resolution was 869 dead and 1,909 injured. 65/

Zionist policies of territorial expansion

As the British Government progressively disengaged from Palestine, and the United Nations was unable to replace it as an effective governing authority, the Zionist movement moved to establish control over the territory of the nascent Jewish State. At the same time the bordering Arab States made clear that they would intervene.

From writings of Zionist leaders, it is evident that Zionist policy was to occupy, during the period of withdrawal, as much territory as possible (including the "West Bank") beyond the boundaries assigned to the Jewish State by the partition resolution. A comprehensive military plan, called Plan "D" (or Dalet) was described by an Israeli official:

"In March 1948, Haganah High Command prepared a comprehensive operational Plan 'D', replacing plans 'A', 'B' and 'C' which had governed Haganah strategy in previous years. Zero hour for Plan D was to arrive when British evacuation had reached a point where the Haganah would be reasonably safe from British intervention and when mobilization had progressed to a point where the implementation of a large-scale plan would be feasible. The mission of Haganah was as simple as it was revolutionary: 'To gain control of the area allotted to the Jewish State and defend its borders, and those of the blocs of Jewish settlements and such Jewish population as were outside those borders, against a regular or pararegular enemy operating from bases outside or inside the area of the Jewish State'".

<snip>

The end of the mandate and the birth of Israel

As the hostilities in Palestine escalated, efforts intensified in the United Nations to find ways to stop the violence. A United States proposal to place Palestine under temporary United Nations trusteeship met strong opposition from Zionist leaders, who saw in it a possibility of a reversal of the partition decision. A move to negotiate a truce was similarly opposed. Weizmann describes this stage as follows:

"... In Washington it was already being taken for granted that, in deference to the 'facts', a fundamental revision would have to take place, and the November decision, if not actually reversed, deferred - perhaps sine die ...

"Under these circumstances I obtained an interview with the President of the United States ... The President was sympathetic personally, and still indicated a firm resolve to press forward with partition. I doubt, however, whether he was himself aware of the extent to which his own policy and purpose had been balked by subordinates in the State Department ... the United States representative in the Security Council announced the reversal of American policy. He proposed that the implementation of partition be suspended, that a truce be arranged in Palestine, and that a special session of the General Assembly be called in order to approve a trusteeship for Palestine, to take effect when the Mandate ended, i.e., on May 15th. In spite of all the forewarnings, the blow was sudden, bitter and, on the surface, fatal to our long nurtured hopes ...

"It had been anticipated that the trusteeship plan would be adopted without difficulty; but within the two months since its proposal, the situation had again altered radically;...

"... When it became clear in the Assembly that the trusteeship plan could not be adopted, another delaying formula was devised - a 'temporary truce': both parties were to cease fire, no political decision was to be taken, a limited Jewish immigration was to be permitted for a few months, and in exchange for this transient and dubious security the Jews were to refrain from proclaiming their State in accordance with the November decision ...

"On the issue of this truce, as on that of the trusteeship, I was never in a moment's doubt. It was plain to me that retreat would be fatal. Our only chance now, as in the past, was to create facts, to confront the world with these facts, and to build on their foundation ..." 77/

Israel declared its independence on 14 May 1948. The departure of the British High Commissioner the next day ceremonially signalled the end of the Mandate.

The declaration establishing the State of Israel traces the route of recent history that had brought it into existence:

"... In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the first Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.

"This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of 2nd November 1917, and reaffirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connexion between the Jewish people and Eretz Yisrael and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its national home.

"The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz Yisrael the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations ...

"On the 29th November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz Yisrael; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.

"This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State ..." 78/

During the months preceding the end of the Mandate, Jewish forces had moved to occupy key cities and areas in the territory designated for the Arab State. Ben-Gurion writes that before the Mandate ended:

"... no Jewish settlement, however remote, was entered or seized by the Arabs, while the Haganah ... captured many Arab positions and liberated Tiberias and Haifa, Jaffa and Safad ... So, on the day of destiny, that part of Palestine where the Haganah could operate was almost clear of Arabs". 79/
http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/561c6ee353d740fb8525607d00581829/d442111e70e417e3802564740045a309!OpenDocument

No, the land was not physically partitioned by UN troops. But Resolution 181 provided the legal figleaf used to establish the state of Israel.

[Darranar]

181. So?

It called for a partition - temporary or not. It did not call for a one-state solution.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

160. Informative history link from the UN

HISTORY OF THE PALESTINE PROBLEM

[Darranar]

13. The basis for Israel's right to exist...

is more than simply religious. It is also historical and legal.

[helleborient]

14. Waiting for the links....

[Darranar]

15. The Magistrate had a long post about it...

somewhere buried in one of those long threads in this forum.

Anyway, according to the partition by the general assembly, Israel has a right to exist legally. Additionally, Jews once lived in all of Israel until the exile by the Romans - therefore they have a right to live there historically. The historic ties to the land is the basis for my belief that the jewish state should exist there.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Darranar]

19. Disagreed...

The question of a Jewish state is still what it has always been: Is racism to prevent racism okay?

In this particular case, I'd have to say "yes" unless a better way to allow a refuge for the Jews is brought up.

[Resistance]

21. problem is, Darranar

we can't even get to that point in the discussion (when you ask "is racism to prevent racism okay") without first acknowledging that it is racism in the first place.

[papau]

33. cede land to a minority - in Albania/Kosovo this is a good?

So if Muslim minority it is good - but if Jew, it is not?

Not that logic has anything to do with anything political - but it is curious. Why did this not work for Armenians or Asian Greeks - but did work for Cyprus Turks. Indeed we have wars where muslims want the opposite as in Georgia and Kasmir.

These "rules" do not appear to be rules.

[quilp]

27. Is this also true for American Indians and Australian Aborigenes?

What about the Mexicans? Don't they have "historic ties"?

Is it true for the Philistines, the Celts, the Gauls? You could say, of course not. These people no longer exist. And give a few generations at this rate neither will the Palestinians. So that will solve that problem too.

[The Magistrate]

34. This May Be The Piece You Recall, Mr. Darranar

The historical attachment of Jews to the area is beyond peradventure. It is clearly recorded by Classical observers of Greek and Roman times. Although the Romans in suppressing a series of revolts near the start of the current era killed, exported as slaves, and put to flight from the place great numbers of Jews, there has been a continual presence of Jews there in appreciable numbers. Indeed, a large portion of what are today called Arab Palestinians are in likely fact descendants of Jews who in later Roman times converted to Christianity, and who's descendants later still converted to Islam. Another portion of them are descended certainly from various Roman settlers, as the area hosted several legionaires' retirement colonies in the latter imperial period. Nor is there any honest room for doubt that the Jews of Europe are descended from ancestors who departed the area in the Roman era, whether voluntarily in the time of late Republic, when colonies of Jews were already well established in Italy, Gaul, and Spain, or descended from exported slaves: while there was some conversion, particularly in the late Republican period, it was hardly the predominant constituent of these communities.

The Jewish religion contains several specific attachments to the area in question. Tales of a promise to Abraham and flight from Egypt to redeem that promise are taken quite seriously by many persons involved in the current dispute, though they carry little weight for me personally: the first is beyond any material proof, and there does not seem any archeological warrant for the second. There is, in fact, no particular reason to believe there was ever an irruption of this people into the area from anywhere, but rather that they were part of a cultural complex emerging four or five thousand years ago amid the hills around the Dead Sea and the Jordan valley, distinguished mostly by an absence of pig bones among the remains of its settlements. More important are the well attested facts that in the Classical period, Jerusalem was the center of the national cult of Judaism, revolving around the temple complex there, and that it remained so until this was broken by Roman power, as well as that throughout the current the current era, an eventual return to Jerusalem has been an item of Jewish dogma and faith wherever Jews were found. In its purely religious form, this envisioned the return as requiring the direct intervention of the diety through the medium of the Messiah, rather than through purely human effort, and for this reason, among others, many rabbis at the commencement of Zionist enterprise late in the 19th century denounced it as impious, and those of some Orthodox strains still do so today.

At its commencement, the Zionist enterprise was a wholly legal one, and used wholly legal means' namely, the purchase of land, Ottoman regulations on this subject having been altered in the late 19th century to permit ownership of land by title on something near the Western model, and allowing same to be held not only by Believers but by Un-believers as well. England's control of the region, gained by defeating the earlier conquerors of it, the Ottoman Turks, was wholly legal by the standards of time. Its ratification by a League of Nations Mandate in 1922 was in fact the final word of law on the subject, and the incorporation of the Balfour declaration into the Mandate made the establishment of a Jewish "National Home" in the region a requirment of international law. As a single dissenting vote would have blocked this, it may be taken as the considered expression of the community of nations throughout the world at that time. During the period of the Mandate, the means used by the Zionists remained the wholly legal ones of purchasing land, and disposing of it as the owner saw fit. There were no instances of expropriation whatever during the Mandate.
Arab Nationalist leadership chose to resist not by legal or political means, but by violence, directed against Jews, commencing in its fullest form with the Nebi Musa riots of 1920 at Jerusalem. A series of such attacks continued periodically into the 1930s, by which times there were armed wings of the vatious Zionist parties in existence. During the Arab Revolt begun 1935, the English authorities turned to enrolling Jews as policemen, and raising several military units of Jews as native levy under English officers. When the English authorities, having only with great difficulty suppressed this rebellion of the Arab Nationalists, adopted towards the latter a more conciliatory course, some splinters of these various armed Jewish contingents turned to attacks on Arabs, and on English police, military, and administrative officials. Once the Second World War commenced, these petered out almost completely, and the English authorities and the mainstream Zionist organizations made common cause against the Nazis. Toward the end of that war, various splinter elements commenced attacks on English authorities once more, and after the end of World War Two, relations between the English authorities and the mainstream Zionists fractured, mostly over the question of immigration, which the English were determined to hold to pre-war levels, and the Zionist meant to greatly expand.

The attempt by the United Nations to settle the matter by partitioning Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish zone and an Arab zone dissolved into warfare. This warfare the Jews won. This victory was ratified by widespread recognition of the government of Israel, and its admission to the U.N. as the government of all lands enclosed by the Armistice line worked out at the close of 1948. This certainly is a recognition of the classic right of conquest, as roughly a third of that land was origionally allotted to the Arab Zone. Fashions have changed somewhat, and few, myself included, are much inclined to invoke that right in regards to the lands overurun in the '67 war. As regards ethnic concerns, the state of Israel was founded to ensure there was at least one place where state persecution of Jews was a practical impossiblity. Given the sorry history of same in this world, that does not seem unreasonable to me, and the solution, though certainly imperfect, seems the only one practicable.

[Darranar]

35. Yes, it is...

thank you for reposting it.

[Lithos]

36. That is a good nutshell

Of a complicated scenario. Everyone should read Fromkin if they wish an expanded version of this, Act 1 if you will. However, the current play derives much of it's plot from the more interesting Acts 3 and 4 which are the 1967 and 1973 wars and the attempts to deal with the aftermath.

L-

[cherryperry]

169. Lithos the Moderator has stated

whom we should read as well as referred us to "the more interesting Acts 3 and 4 which are the 1967 and 1973 wars and the attempts to deal with the aftermath."?

Okay, boss, I will run to the library, but since it's still Sunday, allow me to refer you to one of the most interesting events which (I presume would be somewhere near the end of Act 3) is the lovely I/P -generated slaughter of the Israeli Olympic Team in Munich, Germany, in 1972. Or, must we limit our study to only those events occuring directly in I/P?

Thank you for your awaited clarification, Lithos.

[Violet_Crumble]

173. Just a hint...

There's only a tiny handful of people in this forum whose suggestions for reading should be taken seriously by anyone wanting to get a deeper understanding of the conflict than the usual knee-jerk 'They Are Bad Guys! Our Side Are The Good Guys!' crap I see some people post. And Lithos is one of those very few whose recommendations I respect and try to get a hold of to read. Unfortunately those who decide they have some obligation to shriek about terrorism and nothing but terrorism and ignore the big picture of the whole conflict don't get that same respect from me...

Violet...

[Name removed]

194. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

198. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

199. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

200. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Lithos]

201. Cherry perry

While I understand you have a very deep and personal tie to the 1972 assault on the Israeli Olympic Team in Munich, this event is heavily tied as an outgrowth of the 1967 war. The five terrorists who executed this crime belonged to a PLO group called "The Black September". Both the PLO and the events which lead to the namesake "Black September" eviction of the PLO from Jordan were direct results of the 1967 war.

While much can be made of both the 1967 and 1973 wars, they have had a tremendous effect on policy in the Middle East. The 1967 war proved that Israel was here to stay, the 1973 war proved that Israel was not all-powerful and showed the need for a negotiated peace.

L-

[quilp]

39. A narrative that is only going to convince convinced Jews

I'm sure a Palestinian could make a similar case for his people's "historic attachment" over the last thousand years. All of us are descendants of someone from somewhere. Most of us are mongrels. But our country is still the country of our fathers, and our inheritance. It is even possible the Philistines had an "historic attachment" to the same land before Moses was born.

The defunct league of Nation's Mandate was for Jewish "National Home". This, we are told was "wholly legal by the standards of the time". Would it be impertinent to inquire who's "standards" were the "wholly legal" authority? Had this "Mandate" been for a Jewish "State" surely it could have said so with some economy of letters. Since "a single dissenting vote would have blocked this", is it safe to assume, that the Palestinians, or even all the Arab countries never had one?

"The English were determined to hold to pre-war levels, and the Zionist meant to greatly expand". The English, who seem to have been the legal authority for the Zionists up until this point suddenly get pushed aside. "Legal" apparently has value only when it supports what you want.

"The state of Israel was founded to ensure there was at least one place where state persecution of Jews was a practical impossiblity. That does not seem unreasonable to me, and the solution, though certainly imperfect, seems the only one practicable." The moral of this seems to be: "Do unto others what has been done unto you." Even if they didn't do it.

[Alex88]

40. Well said

n/t

[Fight_n_back]

89. The post you are referring to

does not dispute any claim that Palestininas have to a homeland. Nor does it imply that Palestinains should not have a homeland. It seems the only people resentful of an ethnicity having its own home are those oppssed to Jews having one. Few here speak of Palestinian Nationalism the way they speak of Zionism. Few here will even discuss Wahabbism but Zionism has a special place in the hearts of the wilffuly naive American Left as the repsotory of all that is evil. This defies logic.

[Darranar]

90. Oh come on...

No one here thinks that Zionism is the repository of all that is evil. The american left, by the way, is cynical rather than naive.

[quilp]

126. Didn't the Palestinians already have a homeland?

I have NEVER been opposed to Jews having a country. In fact I think it a must! If Britan and America wanted to give the displaced European Jews a country, it should have been a piece of their own, not someone elses. However the Israelis now have three quarters of Palestine, and displaced millions of Palestinians in the process. Isn't that enough for you? Or are you opposed to the Palestinian Arabs keeping even a quarter of their former land?

[rini]

159. History 101

1. There never was a Palestine.
2. The land was never Judenfrei.
3. The vast majority of so-called Palestinians, like their feurer were born in other countries (the weasle is Egyption)
4. What's this European Jews bit? Does this mean you favor getting these Arabs out of the country, and turning it peacefully with full recognition over to Sephardic Jews?

defecate or get off the pot

[Feanorcurufinwe]

162. Revisionist History 101

This bit about Palestine not existing - it's like saying New England doesn't exist because there was never a country called New England. I find revisionist particularly scary - it reminds be of Holocaust deniers saying the Holocaust didn't happen.

[quilp]

165. Seems more like history "number two"

especially in light of your lasr sentence.

[Resistance]

51. this historical recollection is quite distorted

Magistrate as a respected and informed member of this board, I am disappointed to see you formulate such a one-sided summarization of the recent history of this conflict. If there was an intention to present a Zionist-only perspective which I missed, I apologize for mischaracterizing your recollection. I also do understand the limitations of the board, but I would like to cover the thing myself, from a Palestinian view if you don't mind.

First of all, I won't dispute anything from the first two paragraphs - everything there is true, although obviously you have left off the historical attachment which non-Jews may feel towards the region.

It's where you talk about the 'commencement of the Zionist enterprise' that I begin to find a disregard for the Arab/Palestinian perspective. Let's not forget the opposition within the Zionist movement itself which went against moves towards colonizing Palestine, and with sound reason: there were already people living on that land - 98% non-Jew, in fact. The trick for Herzl and his brand of Zionism was to somehow displace those numbers with mostly Jewish numbers, thus the raising of money by various Jewish groups to start buying up land.

Now you also do not include the promise of the British government to Sharif Hussein of Mecca that in exchange for Arab help in defeating the Ottomans, (quoting from the document) "Great Britain is prepared to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs in all the regions within the limits demanded by the Sherif of Mecca." - This is before the Balfour Declaration and Mandate Era; so you can see why Arabs might have been opposed to Balfour's famous promise of making Palestine a "Jewish homeland" instead.

Furthering Arab feelings of having had the promises to them violated was the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916 in which it was declared that Palestine was to be under international control - again betraying the McMahon-Hussein promise of Arab indepence in Palestine.

So then came along Balfour, promising the Zionists a "national home for the Jews in Palestine" - quite a shock to Arabs who had already been promised their reward for helping fight the Turks, don't you think? Much debate followed Balfour's Declaration - Britain fouled up, essentially, and in no way could keep it's promises to both sides. US President Wilson's King-Crane Commission in 1919 reported the following:

"If the principle (of self-determination) is to rule, and so the wishes of Palestine's population are to be decisive as to what is to be done with Palestine, then it is to be remembered that the non-Jewish population of Palestine - nearly nine-tenths of the whole - are emphatically against the entire Zionist program. To subject a people so minded to unlimited immigration and to steady financial and social pressure to surrender the land, would be a gross violation of the principal just quoted, and of the people's rights, though it kept within the form of law."

And further,

"It can hardly be doubted that the extreme Zionist program must be greatly modified. For 'a national home for the Jewish people' is not equivalent to making Palestine into a Jewish State; nor can the erection of such Jewish State be accomplished without the gravest trespass upon the 'civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.' The fact came out repeatedly in the Commission's conference with Jewish representatives, that the Zionists look forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, by various forms of purchase."

Moving on a bit, you also leave out the obligations of the Mandate System itself. The system was set up such that the authoritative state (Britain and France) would help facilitate and direct the inhabitants of certain territories towards independent Statehood. In fact, the territories known as "Class A" all went on to become states - that is, all of them except Palestine (the others were Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq). To further compound the problem in Palestine was British insistence on acceptance of the Balfour Declaration as part of the Mandate for Palestine. This the Arabs rejected. Why should they accept a declaration of making one of those Class-A territories a 'Jewish homeland', particularly when still roughly 90% of that area was not Jewish?

Unfortunately, the mufti of Jerusalem instigated violence on Jews in 1920 (the Nebi Musa riots) and in 1921. Magistrate, you write that "Arab Nationalist leadership chose to resist not by legal or political means" but frankly, there was no resisting the continued purchasing of land and Jewish immigration that infuriated what the British Shaw Commission correctly labeled the 'landless and discontented Arab class'. There was nobody for this group to appeal to. No recourse, and no "legal or political means" was going to turn Palestine into Palestinian control.

The Peel Commission in 1937 decided that it would be impossible to reconcile the differences between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and drew up a partition plan. A similar plan was developed by the Woodhead Commission. These were both rejected by the Arabs because they still viewed it as more broken promises by the British. Again, for them, Palestine was meant to be just like the other mandated areas - eventual control was to be turned over to the Palestinians. The White Paper of 1939 attempted to slow the land sales and Jewish immigration numbers, while in some way apologizing for conflicting promises made to Arabs and Jews. Neither side was particularly pleased with the plan, but it did have the effect of neutralizing Arab anger for a time.

As Jewish numbers in Palestine steadily increased, they began to make their own demands for recognition of statehood. After all, the British also promised the 'national homeland' which hadn't come to fruition yet. Jewish terrorist groups such as Haganah developed in the 40s, and they attacked the British in the hopes of entirely ousting them and declaring their state. They eventually got what they wanted - though Palestians never did, of course.

In 1946 the King David Hotel, which housed British government officials, was bombed by the Irgun and Menachim Begin. By the end of that year, nearly 400 had died from Jewish terrorism, which the British were entirely unable to suppress. In '47, Britain withdrew from Palestine.

The population at the time of UN control was now 31% Jewish (including illegal immigrants), yet the UN proposed Jewish statehood over 56% of the land. Furthermore, 80% of the territory marked for the Jews was still under Arab ownership. The Arabs viewed the proposal as more trickery by the Jewish side (with British help) in their quest to take all of Palestine. Remember, too, that the Zionist Org. of America voted in '46 for indeed a Jewish state covering the whole of Palestine. And sure enough, Jewish terrorist groups rejected the UN proposal because that plan would not grant all of Palestine.

Violence broke out upon passage of that UN partition plan in 1947. Ben-Gurion's Plan Dalet turned out to be more aggressive than defensive, as the Jews captured villages both within and without the Jewish allotment of territory according to the UN plan, and also seized Jerusalem. In April 48 at the Arab village Deir Yassin, 254 men, women, and children were killed. Palestinian terrorist groups responded with revenge killings of civilians, which of course, led to Jewish violence. Haifa was captured by the Jews, and Jaffa was attacked. Arabs fled by the thousands, fear stricken. In May 1948, the state of Israel was declared, unilaterally, with the US and I believe the Soviets granting immediate recognition.

The term you use, Magistrate, "imperfect", in your description of the solution of providing Jews a place of their own where they can be free of persecution is, an incredible understatement. I don't think many will disagree that the idea itself is a commendable one, but the means used to achieve this actual place were wrong. Betrayal, violence, terror, deception, and lies -- this is what you see from the Palestinian perspective.

I don't see how you can conclude that the misery and dispossession inflicted on Palestinians "does not seem unreasonable".

---

Quotes and statistics which helped me along with this recollection can be found at MidEast Web: http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm

[Darranar]

57. Well...

the post is out of context here. It was in reply to a post by another poster claiming that the only right the Jews had to the land was religious, and therefore unimportant. This was then used to justify suicide bombings. The Magistrate's post was refuting that.

By the way: The Balfour declaration never indicated that all of Palestine would be Jewish, only that there would be a Jewish homeland there. Frankly, in the light of the horrible events taht had occured to the jews by then and were yet to occur, in would be just to give them more land then their proportional amount due to the fact that immigration to such a Jewish homeland would certainly be heavy.

That promise is not contradicted by this one:

Now you also do not include the promise of the British government to Sharif Hussein of Mecca that in exchange for Arab help in defeating the Ottomans, (quoting from the document) "Great Britain is prepared to recognise and support the independence of the Arabs in all the regions within the limits demanded by the Sherif of Mecca."

because two states could have existed in Palestine - a Jewish one and an Arab one. Neither one promised all the land.

There were Jewish terrorist groups, such as Irgun, that brutalized the Arab population. However, I have read quotes from a leader of Hagganah that indicated that they were to minimize British casualties and only attempt to speed the illegal (according to a number of unfair British decries) immigration of Jews to Palestine.

Basically, for all these reasons I accept the Jewish state in Palestine as a legitimate state - despite the racism that exists there. The actions committed by that state against other states is what I do not accept.

[Resistance]

61. okay

I did try to acknowledge that maybe there was some context behind Magistrate's post that I was missing. Still, there were enough troublesome conclusions which I felt deserved a more precise examination from a Palestinian view.

I see your point on Balfour's Declaration, Darranar, but really, the population of Palestine was roughly 90% Arab to 10% Jew -- how is a foreign power going to come and tell any group that comprises 90% population of a particular region that they must split that region into two states? Plus, as time went on, with the land purchasing and increased immigration, it became more and more clear to Palestinian Arabs that Zionists were indeed serious about making a state right there on top of Palestine - yet there was no stopping it.

[Darranar]

63. How should the Jews avoid anti-semitism, Resistance?

I see and understand your points, and I'd like to know your answer to that question.

The solution given by the Zionists, a Jewish state, you seem to disagree with. What solution would you advocate?

[Resistance]

70. No, let me make this point clear

The solution by the Zionists "a Jewish state" stands on its own as a commendable one. But in actuality, to replace one native people, and by any means necessary - buying land, then taking land, illegal immigration, and ultimately violence and massacres of villages, forcing many more thousands to flee as refugees - is flatly wrong. That is the Palestinian perspective, which still has not been acknowledged as part of mainstream thought and judgement on the matter, yet it should be.

To answer your question - it's like all other discrimination and racial prejudices. I think it stinks and I don't advocate it. Not for gays, not for Jews, not for Arabs or American Indians, or any other group which faces these problems. My own personal belief on tackling the problem is to continue to educate ourselves and work towards a more enlightened society which tolerates and welcomes the differences between us as humans.

Bottom line though: you don't displace one group of people to provide refuge for another. Particularly when that displacement comes through violent and atrocious means as was the case in the founding of the State of Israel. I am sorry people don't like to face that reality, but it is what it is, and I only speak it because I know too many people choose to ignore it -- especially Democrats who should know better than to turn their backs when war crimes and human rights abuses are committed.

[Darranar]

75. How is it possible to prevent another Holocaust, though?

However much we educate people, crazy ideas that make people fearful have always been contagious. Nazism, with its anti-semitism, was one of those. Bush's ideology, basically less blatant Nazism while lacking some of the racism, is similarly contagious.

The fear of the Jews, and it is a rightful fear, is that anti-semitism will show its ugly face again in a big way, slaughtering more innocent Jews. The Zionist solution is a Jewish state; In palestine, because the Jews have a deep connection to that place.

Education and tolerance is happening, but that will take a long time until those ideas are accepted and practiced. And there will still be those who reject them and commit criminal acts against a certain race or sexual orientation.

How do we prevent those extremists from using genocide against a group of people? A refuge is one solution, but there's no place for a refuge to go that wouldn't displace anyone.

Once again, it ends up being a question of whether you can use racism to protect against racism. If there was no racism in the first place, there would be no need to combat it, but there is, and it isn't going to go away anytime soon.

[Resistance]

77. I think those are great points, Darranar

I think you are right that the goal of educating people enough to where tolerance of others is accepted and practiced is a long way away. And unfortunately there will be people who abuse and harm others based on some form of warped prejudice or discrimination.

I also want to make clear that I am not fighting the existence of the Israeli State as it stands now. What has been done in the past is in the past and that refuge is now a reality - something which I do not advocate should now be torn down or destroyed or have their people blown to bits due to the fact they are citizens of that State. What I do argue is for Israel to stop taking more and more land, and to end the criminal - and often outright terrorist - actions against the people whose land is being stolen. I argue for an immediate return to the negotiating table on both sides, and for an international force to keep the peace - it is done elsewhere in the world, so why not in Israel and the O.T.? Only the US and Israel opposes it!

Another thing I argue for is to start acknowledging the historical wrong that was committed on the Palestinians and to seriously re-examine some of the harmful myths against Palestinians (and Arabs in general) which seem to justify the ongoing atrocities against them.

I know I didn't answer your question "how to prevent another Holocaust" - it is obviously an important one, but really, who has the answer to it? I would like to know! Discussion like this helps.

[Equinox]

81. Darranar,

Jews are not the only people in history to have faced horrible persecution.

Should we just develope a state for everyone out of fear for what may or may not occur in the future?

How about a land for people with blonde hair who are left handed. A similiar one for blondes who are righties and so on and so forth. Where is the line drawn?

Essentially, what makes Jews so special that they get a homeland (at the expense of others) but everyone else must live in the world according to internatational law?

[Darranar]

83. Indeed, they are not...

but Israel is the only country in the world with a Jewish majority. Many of those other persecuted people have a place where they are the majority. The only exception I can think of are the kurds, and I wholeheartedly support a Kurdish state.

[Classical_Liberal]

174. You prevent holocausts, by standing up for the rights of the persecuted

The persecuted are not exclusively Jews, and no other persecuted group claimed the right to displace people because of past persecution. Frankly the state of Israel makes a holocaust more likely. What happens when Arabs get nukes? You've just bunched all the jews into a dinky place. Israel is no hedge against persecution or a holocaust. It actually makes the latter possiblity to more likely, if you consider the problem of nuclear proliferation which has only been exagerrated because of the preemption stratigy the Likudites in both Israel and America are persuing. The state of Israel is water under the bridge now, but this policy of taking more and more land certainly isn't making it more secure. It making it less secure.

[Darranar]

182. i disagree...

I do not think that the Arabs will use nukes against israel. I do not think, either, that the existence of the state of Israel is threatened. The security of its people is, but that is not the issue.

I don't support Israel stealing more land from the Palestinians. The occupation must end soon.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

163. The same way all people fight discrimination, prejudice and injustice.

Not by adopting the worst aspects of those who oppressed them in the past.

[Darranar]

164. What way? n/t

n/t

[Feanorcurufinwe]

178. You are being deliberately obtuse.

I wrote:

"The same way all people fight discrimination, prejudice and injustice.

Not by adopting the worst aspects of those who oppressed them in the past."

You wrote: "What way"

Jews are not the only group in history that has been the target of discrimination, prejudice and injustice. My point is that two wrongs don't make a right. The way to defend yourself from discrimination, prejudice and injustice is to stand up for your own rights without inflicting discrimination, prejudice and injustice on some other group.

There has been plenty of discrimination, prejudice and injustice against blacks in America. Is the answer for blacks to have their own country in which they can practice discrimination, prejudice and injustice against whites?

[Darranar]

183. It's not always true...

that two wrongs don't make a right. If your family is going to die unless you flee, and in order to flee you must hurt an innocent person, are you justified in doing so? In my view, yes, as long as there is no other option.

It's the same thing here. The Jews have been ethnic cleansed and have been victims of genocide and prejudice. How do you prevent genocide against them?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

185. Your logic is flawed. The ends do not justify the means.

In your example, it is understandable that you might do harm to an innocent in order to save your family, but that doesn't make it right.

What if that innocent person where to learn of your plan before you enacted it? Would they then be justified in killing you to preempt your attack on them? Or in killing your family to remove your motive for harming them? What if you had to harm 2 innocent people to save your family? 2000 innocent people? 2000 innocent children?

What if you believed that in order to protect your family, you needed to exterminate an entire ethnic group? Would that make it right?

[Darranar]

186. Okay...

so you let all the innocent people in your famly die because you won't injure one innocent person. That's fuzzy morality.

You say taht the ends don't justify the means. What means would you use to bring out the same ends? Or would you not have those ends, and allows Jews to be attacked in crimes of genocide?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

187. I'm not saying it is easy to do the right thing, always.

But in even using the example you did, you showed that you knew, in your conscience, that it would be wrong - however, you felt it would be justified by the 'end' of saving your family.

I'm saying you should use means that you know are right. Means that don't bother your conscience.

Really, I am done with this discussion. If you believe the ends justify the means I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise. There are plenty of suicide bombers targeting innocent Israeli civilians who believe the exact same thing and I don't believe I'd be able to convince them of my viewpoint either.

[Darranar]

189. So...

from a moral perspective, you'd let three die (the members of the family) because you wouldn't injure one? That STILL is fuzzy morality. Sometimes means that aren't moral should be used to attain ends that are moral. Sometimes, they shouldn't. It depends; you seem to be saying that it never is true that the ends justify the means.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

191. Is it a matter of simple addition?

You have ignored the questions I asked in the earlier post:

What if that innocent person where to learn of your plan before you enacted it? Would they then be justified in killing you to preempt your attack on them? Or in killing your family to remove your motive for harming them? What if you had to harm 2 innocent people to save your family? 2000 innocent people? 2000 innocent children?

What if you believed that in order to protect your family, you needed to exterminate an entire ethnic group? Would that make it right?

Please answer these questions.

Where do you draw the line? Yes, I do believe that it is never true that the ends justify the means.

Why do people commit evil acts? Do they consciously say to themselves "I am going to be evil"? Oh, there are some sociopaths and maladjusted personalities who do. But I believe that more often, they use something that they consider a 'good end' to justify their evil acts.

[Darranar]

192. Okay...

I draw the line where the loss is equal or surpasses the gain. The problem is that in real life you rarely know where that line is.

Does that sufficiently answer your question?

[Feanorcurufinwe]

193. I should have dropped this earlier.

I will never convince you that the ends don't justify the means and you will never convince me that they sometimes do.

And since you are not responding to my actual points it's not even any fun to discuss it.

All fanatics, whether they are exploding a bomb on a bus or firing a missile into a residential neighborhood, believe their evil act is justified by some 'greater good'.

I guess you understand their reasoning. I don't.

[quilp]

66. Resistance: The only "context" behind "M"s post was this

60. I had the impression that the Jewish claim to Palestine was "historic".

If it isn't, what is it?

Is it "Religious": God? Abraham? Moses? Burning Bushes? Promised Land? Exodus?

Is it "Political": Balfour? UN mandates? American money?

Is it "Conquest": Missiles? Tanks? Bulldozers? Terrorism? Assassination?

Is it "Ethnic": "Settlements"? "Security" Walls? Apartheid?

I'm not interested in your selective use of history, UN mandates, legalisms, encyclopedic quotations, inebriated language, or sophistry.

Snip>

Resistance:
I certainly thank you for you post. I am not in your class when it comes to scholarship on the Palestinians issue. But I have never been able to accept the "Israeli" version. There is a reason Palestinians are called "Palestinians".

To me it as always been simply a matter of Jewish desire for a state and a democracy controlled by them. The Arab Palestinians were in the way of both. They had to be removed. And they were.

[Resistance]

73. I dont view myself in any special class of scholarship

but I have spent some time reviewng the historical record - and from several sources - so I thank you for the compliment.

I think your conclusion there is correct, about Arab Palestinians being in the way - and the trick was how to get them out, while getting Jews in. You hear all sorts of myths these days, about how Palestine was a "land without people for a people without land" (or something along those lines) yet the reality is that Jews only comprised somewhere under 5% of the population when the Zionist movement began to form.

But this is also not to say that the "Jewish desire for a state" is wrong in itself. I don't think it is wrong at all. What is wrong is the means employed by the Zionists who sought to make this desire a reality - with violence, with lies, deception, terror - to use the phrase "by any means necessary" is, unfortunately, entirely accurate.

The problem for me now is the terror and lies still continues to this day.

Btw, check out that mideastweb link sometime. The account they give is one of the most balanced that I am aware of.

[quilp]

64. Darranar: Your memory fails you. This was the original post:

60. I had the impression that the Jewish claim to Palestine was "historic".

If it isn't, what is it?

Is it "Religious": God? Abraham? Moses? Burning Bushes? Promised Land? Exodus?

Is it "Political": Balfour? UN mandates? American money?

Is it "Conquest": Missiles? Tanks? Bulldozers? Terrorism? Assassination?

Is it "Ethnic": "Settlements"? "Security" Walls? Apartheid?

I'm not interested in your selective use of history, UN mandates, legalisms, encyclopedic quotations, inebriated language, or sophistry. What do YOU think??

[Darranar]

65. Sorry...

do you have a link to the thread?

[quilp]

67. D. I wouldn't know how to give you one if I had one. But...

The title of the thread was "Palestinian leaders seek new cease-fire..." Posted by Drdon.

[Darranar]

68. Okay. I found it...

and I realized that the post by you that I was thinking of was in another thread, here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=124&topic_id=8045#9278

The text of the post I was thinking of:

Biblical

Aren't "Passover", "Exodus", and "Promised Land" part of the great mythology (this is not meant pejoratively) that justify the Zionist
claim to the land "Israel"? Not being a Jew I have merely understood this to be the case. If the basis of their claim is not Biblical what is it?

The fact is, however, that you asked what the basis for the Jewish claim to the land was. The Jewish claim, not the Palestinian perspective on the Jewish claim. The Magistrate replied with a rather accurate (in my view) summary of the Jewish claim.

[Darranar]

69. And by the way...

The Magistrate originally posted that post here for those who want to examine its context.

[quilp]

72. Yes, and I put my two cents in on that too.

"This narrative would only convince convinced Jews."

[quilp]

71. Dannar: True. But you said no.

As I recall you seemed to put little store on any religious claim. This is what so surprised me because I thought that was really what it was all about. That is why I asked about the "historical" claim.

The problem with "historical accuracy" is it is almost entirely depends on who is telling it.

[The Magistrate]

104. A Few Points, Mr. Resistance

As has been indicated, this cursory article was an attempt to summarize elements of the Zionist view, and not an exhaustive history. Buried in the archives of the old forum is an extended effort at that, up to about 1922, at least.

First, concerning the undertaking to the Hashemite Hussein of Mecca. This specifically excluded lands to the west of Damascus, Homs, Hama, and Aleppo, and so forms a poor basis for any claim to the coastal regions of Palestine. Nor was there any particular allegiance to the Hashemites among the people of that region, either currently or historically. As Hussein emerged from the period with both his sons ensconced as rulers, in Iraq and Trans-Jordan, he certainly had scant ground for complaint against England. The English undertaking in this case was based on the misapprehension that Hussein, as Sherif of Mecca, would be followed enthusiastically against the Ottoman by not only Arabs but Moslems throughout the world. Events proved otherwise, and Hussein's following did not even extend to the whole of the Arabian peninsula.

The Sykes-Picot agreement was between the Western allies, with no reference to natives. It did origionally stipulate a codominium of England, France, and Czarist Russia in Palestine, as well as promising France great tracts in Anatolia, among other things. Prime Minister Lloyd George did indeed break his word to France in many ways (Russia having gone Bolshevik and out of the picture), largely on the basis, as even Clemenceau understood, of England having provided all the western effort against the Ottoman in the course of the Great War in the region.

Indeed, that the English government spoke out of both sides of its mouth in this matter is not in dispute, nor is it in dispute that the Arabs of Palestine were opposed the Zionest endeavor. The English government resolved its policy in accordance with what Lloyd George and Churchill felt best served England's interests in the region. These viewed the Zionists as a more reliable agency for furthering England's interests in Palestine than the Arab Nationalists there, and so the latter were disregarded. This was partly because of the European orientation of the Zionists, and partly because they displayed superior political skills in dealings with the English government at this time.

It is worth noting that the Mandate's acceptance of the Balfour declaration was contingent on Churchill's White Paper, which stated imposition of Jewish nationality on the area was not intended, while affirming Jewish residents were to be considered there by right and not on sufferance. It is true that Mandatory Palestine turned into a Crown Colony in all but name, but a large part of this was precisely because the various Arab parties there refused to participate in the various schemes proposed for tutulary self-government. This boycott, it seems to me, was an error of strategic judgement, on many levels.

Resistance to the purchase of land by Jews could well have been conducted: it required only political and social solidarity, and a resolve by the landowning class to place national concerns over immediate profit. Participation in the various councils origionally proposed for the Mandatory administration would have offered a far better platform from which to contest increases in Jewish immigration, than the rebel posture adopted instead, and its reliance on violence against Jewish communities. The partition plans of the late thirties each would have provided a great deal more to the Arabs than either that enacted by the United Nations, or what ensued from warfare following. Events have shown that accepting either would have been a wiser course.

In dealing with later events, you either mischaracterize somewhat the Hagganah, or conflate it with the Etzel. The Hagganah did not, as a rule, engage in violence against England, although they did accumulate arms and smuggle immigrants. By the period after World War Two, there was a'foot in Mandatory Palestine a multi-sided conflict of bewildering complexity, involving English authorities and armed Jewish and Arab groups, each of the latter variously factionated in internal hostilities. Arabs killed one another, Jews, and the occassional Englishman, Jews killed Englishmen and Arabs and the occassional Jew, English troops killed Jews and occassionally Arabs. England did not depart Palestine until the spring of 1948, several months after the United Nations vote for Partition.

A great deal of heavy fighting between Jews and Arabs took place while English administration was still in place, and during the period, that administration was rather partial to the Arab cause. The Najjada Society militia at Jaffa, for instance, was given guns directly by English officials, though the doing was unofficial. The Arab campaign to isolate Jewish settlements was well underway through March of '48, and was marked by many instances of torturous atrocity: without in the slightest justifying what was done at Dier Yassin, the men who did it felt they were themselves taking vengeance, as you suggest Arab killings after that date were motivated. The offensive launched during April by the Palmach and Etzel was aimed at restoring communications to various Jewish communities, including that in the "New City" area of Jerusalem, and was aggressive in character, as most good military plans are. The fact is that war was well underway before the English evacuation, and before the Israeli declaration of statehood.

It seems to me that the thing did not have to work out to dispossession and misery for Arab Palestinians. Even acceptance of the partition of '47 would certainly have produced a better result for the people of Arab Palestine than issued from the war fought against it. Indeed, it seems to me that at almost any stage of the venture, an endeavor towards compromise and accomodation from Arab Nationalist leadership would have produced a better result for the people of Arab Palestine than did the course of rejectionism chosen.

[Resistance]

113. you make "rejectionism" sound like a bad thing

If you break into my home, then demand that we negotiate terms in which you may be permitted to live there, I might well 'reject' your offer. Why blame me, later on, when you decide that since I 'rejected' your terms, you instead throw me out on the street?

Obviously now that we can look back and see that the Zionists were going to get their state regardless of the opinion of the native inhabitants living on the land, it is easy to say that "compromise and accomodation" would have been the better course for the people of Arab Palestine. These types of twists and spins on the actual history are something I strongly object to.

Thanks for giving your opinion on my post - maybe some of the finer details we can get into at a later time.

[Name removed]

116. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Resistance]

123. thanks

for the most misinformed post ever

[durutti]

50. Nope

General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding. Or, I should say, Israel is the most adamant in pointing out that General Assembly resolutions are not binding, since countless such resolutions have been passed in condemnation of Israel.

Furthermore, the resolution to which you refer called for a provisional partition -- a temporary partition to see if partition would work at all. The United Nations never legally ordered or sanctioned partition as a permanent solution to the Palestinian question.

As for Israel having a historical right to the land: even if every single Jew who comes to Israel is biologically related to the ancient Israelites, there's still no case for a historical right to Palestine.

Before the Israelites conquered Palestine, it was controlled by the Hyskos, the Hittites, and the Canaanites. Why should Jews alone have the right to the land, and not the descendants of the Hyskos, the Hittites, and/or the Canaanites? And if it's legitimate for Israel to claim a right to the land based on conquest, then isn't it also legitimate for the Romans, the Egyptians, the Arabs, or the Turks?

And as I've noted before on this board, the Bible provides a highly mythologized, ethnocentric history. It is not a reliable historical record. The united kingdom of Israel was no hegemonic power: it was at most a small tribal kingdom. This is not "revisionist history". See: http://www.truthbeknown.com/biblemyth.htm

It can be said pretty conclusively that Israel never controlled all of historical Palestine, or even all of modern-day Israel. Even forgetting the new discoveries outlined in the that Ha'aretz article, it's accepted that the hills of western Palestine were inhabited by the remnants of peoples who'd populated the area before the Israelites.

The Canaanites were the original inhabitants of Palestine. Those who conquered the lands after the Canaanites interbred with the inhabitants, from the Hyskos to the Arabs. Thus, Palestinians can trace their heritage back to the Canaanites, who in fact inhabited and controlled the area before the Israelites.

This doesn't mean, of course, that all the Jews whose descendants didn't live in Palestine before the Zionists came should now be kicked out. That would constitute a crime against humanity. But it does mean that it's totally absurd to expect Palestinians to "compromise" more; the Palestinians have already made a huge compromise by forsaking 78 percent of the land that's rightfully theirs.

I don't believe that Israel has a "historic right" to exist. But I accept Israel's essential right to exist now -- because otherwise, I don't see the bloodshed ending anytime in the near future.

[IndianaGreen]

22. Religion never belongs in the public sector!

Although religious faith has made significant contributions in advancing human rights in the world, such as the anti-slavery movement and in America, the abolitionist movement, this was done by people of faith acting in the public square.

Religion never belongs in the public sector! I find it amazing that many of those that would oppose mandatory prayer in the public schools and the posting of the Ten Commandments in public building, fail to understand how wrong it is to invoke the Bible as justification for turning a deaf ear to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and its subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Just as Jefferson spoke of a wall of separation between Church and State in his Letter to the Danbury Baptists, we Marxists adhere to the even more specific call by Marx, Engels and Lenin that religion must play no role in the affairs of the State:

Socialism and Religion (1905)
V.I. Lenin

The modern class-conscious worker, reared by large-scale factory industry and enlightened by urban life, contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself here on earth. The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth.

Religion must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists usually express their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these words should be accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen's religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become absolutely free associations of like minded citizens, associations independent of the state. Only the complete fulfillment of these demands can put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief, violating men's consciences, and linking cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by the established church. Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/dec/03.htm

[Muddleoftheroad]

31. Thanks for making me laugh

Any time I see a Lenin quote crop up in a religion discussion, I almost fall on the floor laughing.

Who next? Mao?

[IndianaGreen]

37. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions...

Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable.

--V.I. Lenin

Your knee-jerk opposition to anything having the socialist label is proof that you are a beneficiary of the American educational system, a system that exists to produce good consumers that never question their capitalist masters.

Congratulations!

[Resistance]

38. more Chomsky-esque gibberish, Indiana?

nice going ;)

[bemildred]

42. Mao and Lenin, what a couple of idiots, eh?

[Equinox]

47. I think Muddleoftheroad laughed at you IndianGreen,

because it threatened the "great" image of Israel.

Hence, the knee jerk response.

Good post btw, IndianaGreen.

[durutti]

78. Good Post

Contrary to popular belief, Lenin didn't advocate religious persecution. He was personally an atheist and thought that the state should be secular and encourage secularism, but at the same time thought that discrimination on the basis on religious beliefs was wrong. He even argued that people of faith should be allowed to join the Bolsheviks.

[Gimel]

137. Join the atheists

that makes sense. He definitely didn't discriminate!

;)

[durutti]

150. Socialism isn't necessarily anti-religious

As evidenced by the prevalence of liberation theology in Latin America, and the Catholic Worker movement in the U.S.

[Fight_n_back]

117. Quoting VI Lenin

proves that you don't have an original bone in your body.

What people do is more important than what they say. Lenin was no friend of religous freedom or freedom of any kind except the freedom to exchange a Czarist oligarchy for one that included himself.

[quilp]

76. Lenin was talking about "Church", not "religion".

I think the two should be very carefully distinguished.

When you think of the appalling history of the "Church", both Protestant and Catholic in the 19th Century you can hardly blame these guys for wanting to remove their secular power.

There is no country I know of where a "Church" is strong and the people enjoy either freedom, or a good standard of living.

Religion, on the other hand, is a private matter and should remain so.

[Jackie97]

24. I'm not anti-religion....

I do think that it's important to try to keep religion and politics away from each other though. The mixture of religion and politics have led to disaster after disaster over the centuries. It's bad for the United States to do. It's bad for Israel to do. It's bad for the Palestinians to do (who also think that God's on their side).

[Gimel]

54. No article posted

Unfortunately, there is no published article to begin the discussion. The thoughts expressed by "helleborient" are an opinion, such as the statement Israel's entire right to exist is based on a religious argument, unlike that of the Palestinians who are the native people to the area.

This viewpoint is very limited, and surely does not express the scope of the facts.

For those who so strongly oppose religion in the public realm...is it only bad in the U.S. and not in Israel?

Why, I might counter, is the expression of religion only good in America and bad in Israel? The day Christmas is banned and Easter also, as a holiday; when public displays of the "nativity" on state or municipal property are outlawed, I'll agree with you.

I don't advocate cleansing religion from the public realm or its values from social law and school education. I'm just pointing out blind spots in your argument.

[Name removed]

62. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

82. hey tough guy...

your enire post from beginning to end is a personal attack on Gimel, who had some valid points in her post (as she usually does), unlike you, who did nothing but THREATEN to tear her post apart and repeatedly insult her, much like a thug would do...

[Name removed]

92. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Gimel]

138. You were enraged

Apparently I treaded on your cherished beliefs.

[Name removed]

139. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

141. Tarot card or a Crystal Ball are not necessary...

to see the obvious...

add a Psych 101 class, and, there is no getting around what your last few posts tell us...

[Name removed]

142. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

143. you have already been enlightened as much as is feasible...

see post # 138...

[newyorican]

144. I've got a better idea

see "Punked".

Buncha sissies that get a stiffy at the thought of killing arabs, but get bent out of shape when rhetorically smacked across the nose.

Punked is appropriate.

[cantwealljustgetalong]

147. harumph...

well, that's telling us...

[Name removed]

157. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Fight_n_back]

84. I'm so confused now"

What religeous idea is Israel based on?

Why are you only concerned with Israeli provincialism? Have you not studied the other nations in the area? Why not?

Israel is not a republic and attempts no charade to present itself as such.

Understanding Israeli marriage laws is harder than you are letting on. No one here will be able to explain it to you. I doubt an Israeli could explain it to you.

The struggle in the Middle East is not a moral struggle. It is a struggle over land and water. There is a multicultural parlimentary democracy that has freedom of religeon and allows every citizen the right to vote and there is Yassir Arafat.

As far as religeon...you should do some research. Which countries in the Middle East allow multiple religeons to exist?

The situation is not as clear cut as you are trying to make it.

[newyorican]

95. We know...

LOL

[Fight_n_back]

96. Brilliant reposte

for someone who can't see quote marks.

Of course, everyone here knows you can't answer those questions.

[newyorican]

99. actually...

it's one quote mark...uh, what were you saying about "seeing" again...

[Darranar]

100. Please see...

durruti's post on this thread (the one about discrimination by Arabs) and address his points.

What questions did you ask in your post, anyway?

[drdon326]

101. $10 says Newyorican will answer....

with the same insight as post 95.

on edit: yang you owe me $10.

[Darranar]

103. You lose ten dollars.

n/t

[drdon326]

106. Sorry, DARRANAR.....

SAME INSIGHT.

[Name removed]

107. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[drdon326]

108. LOL

Now , answer yangs questions, please.

[newyorican]

119. Well since you said please...

that is the magic word, after all...but be warned, you may prefer the flip responses afterwards...

What religeous(sic) idea is Israel based on?

You are kidding right..."Jewish Homeland"?

Why are you only concerned with Israeli provincialism?

I'm not. This is the I/P folder. You might have a point if this was a general topic forum, but it's not. It sounds plain silly to hear constant whining about, "Why do you always/only criticize Israel...". If you are really interested in my points of view, feel free to browse other forums. If discussing Israel as a separate subject bothers you so much you can either complain to Skinner about killing all discussion or you can go play solitaire.

Have you not studied the other nations in the area?

Yes.

Why not?

Umm, I said yes.(tapping mic)Is this thing working?

Israel is not a republic and attempts no charade to present itself as such.

What?

Understanding Israeli marriage laws is harder than you are letting on. No one here will be able to explain it to you. I doubt an Israeli could explain it to you.

What an inane attempt to avoid discussing the rasict marriage law recently passed. It's perfectly understandable to the extent that it is racist. Feigned ignorance at this point insults no ones intelligence but your own.

The struggle in the Middle East is not a moral struggle.

I agree, this struggle has been notable in its lack of morality in the leadership on all sides.

It is a struggle over land and water.

Your powers of observation are the stuff of legend, but no mention of sacred sand or Holy Land? I am surprised.

There is a multicultural parlimentary democracy that has freedom of religeon(sic) and allows every citizen the right to vote and there is Yassir Arafat.

Is that even a sentence? Your point, here, is lost in ranting.

As far as religeon(sic)...you should do some research.

This is addressed to the original poster, bad spelling and hubris...yuck.

Which countries in the Middle East allow multiple religeons(sic) to exist?

Now this is a stupid question, forgive the bluntness. There are christian populations thoughout the ME. You may be talking about Judaism (or trying to) without actually saying it. If so, be direct.

Syria: Sunni Muslim 74%, Alawite, Druze, and other Muslim sects 16%, Christian (various sects) 10%, Jewish (tiny communities in Damascus, Al Qamishli, and Aleppo)

Egypt: Muslim (mostly Sunni) 94%, Coptic Christian and other 6%

Lebanon: Muslim 70% (including Shi'a, Sunni, Druze, Isma'ilite, Alawite or Nusayri), Christian 30% (including Orthodox Christian, Catholic, Protestant), Jewish NEGL%

Jordan: Sunni Muslim 92%, Christian 6% (majority Greek Orthodox, but some Greek and Roman Catholics, Syrian Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Protestant denominations), other 2% (several small Shi'a Muslim and Druze populations) (2001 est.)

These examples were *stupid* easy to find Yang. Maybe you should take your own advice, "As far as religeon(sic)...you should do some research."

The situation is not as clear cut as you are trying to make it.

Says the fog-enshrouded one.

[Darranar]

122. Your answers are better than mine...

I guess i had more trouble trying to answer statements.

[Fight_n_back]

133. Your first answer is your undoing

Catholocism is a religeon. There are no atheist Catholics. There are no diseases inherent only to Catholics. There are, however, countries in which there is a huge Catholic majority and those nations, even when democracies, have laws that reflect the Catholic majority. Those nations, I suppose, should cease to exist. Judaism is more than a religeon, it is a nationality. There a Jews who practice almost every religeon. If I want to join Auguata National Golf Club converting to Baptist wouldn't work.

Israeli marriage laws are difficult to understand because each religeon handles its own marriages. Why the marriage laws are considered germain is beyond me. In the US gays cannot marry, does this mean that we have no right to exist as a nation? Thirty years ago it was illegal in many states for blacks and whites to marry but that wasn't the reason we shouldn't have been in Vietnam. Is the point that there is racism in Israel? WOW, imagine that!


Your statistics show an amazingly small number of Jews. Gosh golly is that becuase over 600,000 Jews were expelled from the nations you mentioned? (that number is stupid easy to find).

You have no interest in discussing the conflict in the Middle East, your only interest is in discussing Israel and I defy you to point to a post of yours in which Israel is shown in a positive light.

You don't want Jews to have a homeland. That is your only point. You use data as a drunk uses a lampost, for support rather than illumination. The reason that you withhold the right of Jews to self government while supporting for everyone else in the world would be a good starting point for meditation.

If there were no Israel and Jordan still subjugated ALL of the Paelstinains instead of just most of them you wouldn't give a rats ass about them. You would be busy organizing a boycott of Starbucks.

You also have a tremendous amount of animosity towards me yet you have no idea what my opinions are of any of the major issues. In other words, you are generally talking out of your ass.

[newyorican]

135. It's a shame the info about...

the side-effects of drinking out of aluminum cans came out so late.

It's obvious I'm playing chess with someone that is intent on playing checkers.

Catholocism is a religeon.

Okay, that's all I can take...it's r-e-l-i-g-i-o-n. Besides that, your legendary powers of observation are hard at work again.

There are no atheist Catholics.

I hope there is a point here somewhere.

There are no diseases inherent only to Catholics.

Zzzzzz

There are, however, countries in which there is a huge Catholic majority and those nations, even when democracies, have laws that reflect the Catholic majority.

Please cite "countries in which there is a huge Catholic majority" and some example of how they, "have laws that reflect the Catholic majority". Your question is too vague. I just can't tell if it's an attempt to be clever, or an attempt to hide ignorance.

Those nations, I suppose, should cease to exist.

I might "suppose", but I'm still curious about the soundness of your premise.

Judaism is more than a religeon, it is a nationality.

Surely you are not suggesting that Jews abandon Tel Aviv and move to Judea, are you? Yang, you can only slice it one way, one time. Slice it more than once and shit falls apart. You can't flip-flop back and forth to suit the arguement of the moment. Bad form and all that you know...

There a Jews who practice almost every religeon.

What?

If I want to join Auguata National Golf Club converting to Baptist wouldn't work.

Being jewish is no longer a problem, being wealthy and connected is...

Israeli marriage laws are difficult to understand because each religeon handles its own marriages.

Bullshit, this law is written on paper. You seem to be alone in "not understanding" that it is a racist law.

Why the marriage laws are considered germain is beyond me.

Why is the sky blue? :crazy:

In the US gays cannot marry, does this mean that we have no right to exist as a nation?

Why do you want to discuss gay marriage when the point you're trying to avoid is a law preventing citizenship by racial criteria.

Thirty years ago it was illegal in many states for blacks and whites to marry but that wasn't the reason we shouldn't have been in Vietnam.

It's a *real* shame about those damn aluminum cans...

Is the point that there is racism in Israel? WOW, imagine that!

An admission, even if sarcastic. A brief moment of lucidity??

Your statistics show an amazingly small number of Jews. Gosh golly is that becuase over 600,000 Jews were expelled from the nations you mentioned? (that number is stupid easy to find).

Your question was, "Which countries in the Middle East allow multiple religeons(sic) to exist? which I answered with some examples. If you're *only* interested in "Jews" why didn't you address "Jews" directly? Damn shoddy wordcrafting if you ask me...

You have no interest in discussing the conflict in the Middle East, your only interest is in discussing Israel and I defy you to point to a post of yours in which Israel is shown in a positive light.

Into mindreading now, eh Miss Cleo? When did I become the topic, or is this "DUs oldest profession, attacking the messenger" - a phrase I now borrow from DrDon. I defy you to stay on topic and prove you have a reading and writing comprehension level of a HS grad.

You don't want Jews to have a homeland. That is your only point. You use data as a drunk uses a lampost, for support rather than illumination.

Hey Yang, this isn't about me, remember, the topic, discussion forum, the original questions...I now it can be difficult, but try to concentrate.

The reason that you withhold the right of Jews to self government while supporting for everyone else in the world would be a good starting point for meditation.

I'm withholding? You overestimate my abilities.

If there were no Israel and Jordan still subjugated ALL of the Paelstinains instead of just most of them you wouldn't give a rats ass about them. You would be busy organizing a boycott of Starbucks.

If Jordans arm was in my pocket up to the elbow and doing as you imply, then they would be the target of criticism, not that I expect you to allow that fact disturb a truely warped view.

Why on earth would I boycott starbucks? Did I miss something?

You also have a tremendous amount of animosity towards me yet you have no idea what my opinions are of any of the major issues. In other words, you are generally talking out of your ass.

I'm sorry Yang, did I hurt your feelings...*sniff*. Well the solution is to deliniate your positions on major issues so we can all finally stop wondering if you're stark raving.

[Name removed]

171. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[newyorican]

176. *yawn*

With not one point addressed. Checkers tournament is next door dearie, this is the chess match. BTW, hate projects badly.

:boring:

[MariMayans]

190. as far as Lebanon goes..

Israel destroyed the only synagogue in Lebanon bombing Beirut. They couldn't convince the Jews there to move to Israel or that their synagogue was really Arafats hangout, but I don't know where they congregate anymore.

[cherryperry]

195. cite, please; link, please, but

please don't bother if it's simply a pro-PLO site.

Many thanks.

[Darranar]

196. What sites do you consider not PLO?

[cherryperry]

197. Oh, that's easy. The ones that are not PLO. eom

[MariMayans]

205. here..

An article published in the New York Times in 1982 relates how shortly after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in that year, an Israeli shell targeted the Maghen Abraham synagogue, blowing a hole in its roof while some 60 Jewish and Muslim refugees were sleeping there.
The assault came after Israeli artillery had fired from East Beirut and gunboats cruising offshore had been persistently pounding Wadi Abu Jmil, a district well known for being a Jewish quarter, said neighborhood residents.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/features/29_08_03_a.asp


It's the Daily Star (a damn good paper and quite independent Israeli propaganda aside), I linked to it because it was the only online source I could find but the usual footnote used on histories of the Lebanese invasion is a Yediot Ahronot story.

[Darranar]

110. Actually...

he pointed out that there was only one quote. That's more insight.

You still lose ten dollars.

Who were you betting, anyway?

[drdon326]

112. Not one answer to Yangs questions.

i was betting yang.

btw, im a card counter in black-jack.

[Darranar]

114. Yang's questions...

Well, first of all, Israel is a JEWISH state. If you contest that that doesn't matter, read durruti's post above about how it indeed does.

This is the I/P forum, not the Kuwait/Saudi Arabia/Egypt forum. And they get quite a bit of criticism in FA/NS and GD if you look.

[Fight_n_back]

115. ???

What question were you answering exactly?

[Darranar]

120. These ones...

What religeous idea is Israel based on?

Why are you only concerned with Israeli provincialism? Have you not studied the other nations in the area? Why not?

[Fight_n_back]

134. Then they are bad answers

There are atheist Jews, Budhist Jews, Christian Jews. How many atheist Baptists do you know?

The Israel/Palestine conflict involves every nation in that area. Pretending otherwise is only an attempt to dodge your support of abhorrent regimes like Syria and Saudi Arbabia.

[Darranar]

146. "Christian Jews"?

Uh, no. Perhaps they're Jewish according to Jewish halachah, but the fact is that they're Christian, not Jewish.

Btw, I despise the regime in Suadi Arabia.

[Fight_n_back]

166. No

Once you're a Jew your a Jew all the way, from your first circumcision to your last oy vey. There are genetic diseases that Jews get there are no diseases that Baptist pass on to their children.

[Darranar]

168. You're speaking of Jew...

ethnically, I am religiously.

[IndianaGreen]

170. Jews for Jesus are not Jews!

And I know of no rabbi that would consider them Jews. They are Evangelical Christians, and very fundamentalist at that!

There are genetic diseases that Jews get there are no diseases that Baptist pass on to their children.

Tay-Sachs may be most common among Jews of Eastern European ancestry. As to what that has to do with being a Jew, I have no clue! But according to Stanford University, it is all due to random chance!

Stanford research points to chance as cause of genetic diseases in Ashkenazi Jews

STANFORD, Calif. -- A population of Jewish people known as the Ashkenazi Jews have an unusually high risk of several genetic diseases, and up until now, no one has understood why. Was it random chance that made mutations so common or did evolution play a role in keeping mutations around?

The answer to this question, said researchers at Stanford University Medical Center, appears to be chance. Their findings appear in the March online issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics and in the journal's April print edition.

Some disease mutations unusually common in Ashkenazi Jews, who make up 90 percent of the American Jewish population, include Tay-Sachs disease and some forms of breast cancer, high cholesterol and hemophilia. Four of these disorders, including Tay-Sachs disease, are in a class of diseases called lysosomal storage diseases. People with these disorders lack enzymes that break down toxins into harmless compounds. Instead, the toxins are stored in cellular compartments called lysosomes, where they can build up to high levels and eventually damage the cell.

<snip>

Risch also looked at the regional distribution of mutations in Ashkenazi Jews, and the age of those mutations. He found three points in time when mutations entered the population. One mutation has been in the Jewish population for 120 generations - around the time that the Jewish people formed a distinct population in the Middle East. This mutation causes a type of hemophilia called Factor 11 deficiency type II.

The majority of the mutations -- including all of the mutations in lysosomal storage genes -- entered the population when the Ashkenazi Jews formed a coherent group about 50 generations ago. The final mutations cropped up in the Lithuanian Ashkenazi Jews about 12 generations ago.

http://www.stanfordhospital.com/newsEvents/newsReleases/2003/02/ashkenazi.html

[Darranar]

184. His point is...

that Judiasm is partially an ethnicity, which is correct.

[dai]

161. support for SA?

Pretending otherwise is only an attempt to dodge your support of abhorrent regimes like Syria and Saudi Arbabia.

Do you really believe that Israel's critics on this board support Syria's and Saudia Arabia's regimes?

Conservatives often use this bizarre logic to defend America's aggressive policies. "You can't criticize X unless you criticize Y". It is somewhat akin to assuming that opponents of the Iraq war were pro-Saddam.

[newyorican]

132. I answered the questions Doc...

and I even responded to the rantings, even the real stupid ones.

And what's my reward? You guys disappear to rub your collective asses which are red-hot from the spanking you just recieved? Yes? No?

Inquiring minds want to know...will either Doc or Yang respond to the points in post #49, *please*?

[newyorican]

105. Some advice...

stay away from Vegas...I hope that doesn't *confuse* you too...LOL

[Fight_n_back]

109. Ya got a love a guy

that is the only one laughing at his jokes.

[Darranar]

111. I'm laughing at them, too...

they're funny. Of course, I also laugh at Jim sagle's ain't nuthin but shit line, so don't think I'm being discrimanatory of the basis of politics.

[newyorican]

121. "answers" in post #119

I may not be asked to answer questions afterwards however... :D

[Equinox]

128. I'm laughing too...between you two, Yang, Newyorican's making sense.

But then I don't fault you because you did say you were confused at the onset.

[Name removed]

Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

129. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[FDRrocks]

172. I like to equate it

(disregarding religious texts)...

What if Mexico were to demand they have thier whole country back? Would the supporters of Israels back Mexico? If not, that seems blatantly hypocritical, to me.