Israel and Palestine - Whose land is it?

[fewwillfindit]

I received an email today, posted below, and thought it would make a good topic for debate. I cannot vouch for the facts posted therein and it provided no source for the contents. This was one of those emails that people forward to everyone in their address book (which I hate), most of which are urban legend and pure bunk. What do you think?

NETANYAHU AT HIS BEST


Even those who arent particularly sympathetic to Israel s Benjamin Netanyahu, could get a good measure of satisfaction from this interview with British Television during the retaliation against Hamas shelling of Israel .

The interviewer asked him: How come so many more Palestinians have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?

Netanyahu: Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?

Interviewer: Why not?

Netanyahu: Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyones mind that the war was caused by Germany s aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London , the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden , burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen , some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish childrens hospital, killing 83 little children. Perhaps you have another question?

Apparently, Benjamin Netanyahu gave another interview and was asked about Israel s occupation of Arab lands. His response was, Its our land. The reporter was stunned " read below Its our land Its important information since we dont get fair and accurate reporting from the media and facts tend to get lost in the jumble of daily events.

Crash Course on the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

Here are overlooked facts in the current & past Middle East situation:


BRIEF FACTS ON THE ISRAELI CONFLICT TODAY


1. Nationhood and Jerusalem : Israel became a nation in 1312 BC, two thousand (2000) years before the rise of Islam.

2 Arab refugees in Israel began identifying themselves as part of a Palestinian people in 1967, two decades after the establishment of the modern State of Israel.

3. Since the Jewish conquest in 1272 BC, the Jews have had dominion over the land for one thousand (1000) years with a continuous presence in the land for the past 3,300 years.

4. The only Arab dominion since the conquest in 635 lasted no more than 22 years.

5. For over 3,300 years, Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even when the Jordanians occupied Jerusalem , they never sought to make it their capital, and Arab leaders did not come to visit.

6. Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in Tanach, the Jewish Holy Scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Quran.

7. King David founded the city of Jerusalem . Mohammed never came to Jerusalem .

8. Jews pray facing Jerusalem. Muslims pray with their backs toward Jerusalem .

9. Arab and Jewish Refugees: in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews . Sixty-eight percent left (many in fear of retaliation by their own brethren, the Arabs), without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The ones who stayed were afforded the same peace, civility, and citizenship rights as everyone else.

10. The Jewish refugees were forced to flee from Arab lands due to Arab brutality, persecution and pogroms.

11. The number of Arab refugees who left Israel in 1948 is estimated to be around 630,000. The number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands is estimated to be the same.

12. Arab refugees were INTENTIONALLY not absorbed or integrated into the Arab lands to which they fled, despite the vast Arab territory. Out of the 100,000,000 refugees since World War II, theirs is the only refugee group in the world that has never been absorbed or integrated into their own peoples lands. Jewish refugees were completely absorbed into Israel , a country no larger than the state of New Jersey

13. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: the Arabs are represented by eight separate nations, not including the Palestinians. There is only one Jewish nation. The Arab nations initiated all five wars and lost. Israel defended itself each time and won.

14. The PLOs Charter still calls for the destruction of the State of Israel. Israel has given the Palestinians most of the West Bank land, autonomy under the Palestinian Authority, and has supplied them.

15. Under Jordanian rule, Jewish holy sites were desecrated and the Jews were denied access to places of worship. Under Israeli rule, all Muslim and Christian sites have been preserved and made accessible to people of all faiths.

16. The UN Record on Israel and the Arabs: of the 175 Security Council resolutions passed before 1990, 97 were directed against Israel .

17. Of the 690 General Assembly resolutions voted on before 1990, 429 were directed against Israel .

18. The UN was silent while 58 Jerusalem synagogues were destroyed by the Jordanians.

19. The UN was silent while the Jordanians systematically desecrated the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives .

20. The UN was silent while the Jordanians enforced an apartheid-like a policy of preventing Jews from visiting the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

Questions for debate:

1) Is this revisionist history or merely anti-Arab propaganda?

2) Do Palestinians have a right to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, or does it rightfully belong to Israel?

[cnorman18]

Okay. We can leave it here; but let the record show that I have consistently responded to all the posts on these threads, point by point, and my own points and arguments have been neither refuted nor rebutted. The issue of the ownership of land was dealt with at length in post 47, on this page, as well as on another thread, and that information was ignored both there and here. Post 47 contains a great many points, including a discussion of responsibility for civilian deaths, which no one seems to care to dispute or even acknowledge.

Thanks to you for the debate, too. You have given me much to think about; but I'll stand by my position, which has been unchanged from the beginning. Two steps are essential before ANY progress toward peace can be made, and both are the responsibility of the Palestinians. To wit: the goal of the eradication of Israel, AND the relentless campaign of deliberately targeting unarmed civilians for mass murder, must BOTH be renounced and abandoned. I have seen no argument, no reasoning, and no alternate program or course of action that refutes that assertion.

[LiamOS]

You're right(as usual), but I was commenting on the ownership of land in a deeper sense. Although I certainly see where this argument is coming from and going, I fail to see any real progress being made in that the necessary assumptions, although conventional, are entirely arbitrary.

[cnorman18]

You're right(as usual), but I was commenting on the ownership of land in a deeper sense. Although I certainly see where this argument is coming from and going, I fail to see any real progress being made in that the necessary assumptions, although conventional, are entirely arbitrary.

In my opinion, the #1 goal for everyone concerned ought to be finding a way to stop the killing and to live together in peace. If the Arabs accept that Israel is here to stay, and will just stop killing its citizens, the Israelis will have no reason to do anything but help the Palestinian state succeed and grow prosperous. Happy neighbors are peaceful neighbors. Those who are convinced that the Israelis are heartless, bloodthirsty killers bent on murdering Arabs and ruling the Middle East will never believe that -- but then they can't bear to think about all the Arabs who live in peace and prosperity in Israel NOW, nor to acknowledge their existence.

The Israelis want peace and to stop being murdered. The Arabs want no Israel. That's where we are. It's a tragedy, but I don't see what the Israelis can do to move toward peace unless the two conditions I've described are met. Till those happen, we remain at Square One.

Every point I've made above in post 47 remains unanswered.

[DeBunkem]

Arab attacks on the Zionist Occupation can be understood by the fact that Zionism claims all land from Egypt to the Euphrates. This is the "Promised Land" made by the desert war god Yahweh to the nomad Abram (Abraham), according to the myth. Arabs are aware of this myth and perceived that the new Jewish immigrants claimed such as their birthright. Their attacks were both retaliatory (for Arab land already taken) as well as pre-emptive. This is the "Promised Land"...not just Occupied Palestine:

Genesis 15:18
That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River "

[cnorman18]

Arab attacks on the Zionist Occupation can be understood by the fact that Zionism claims all land from Egypt to the Euphrates. This is the "Promised Land" made by the desert war god Yahweh to the nomad Abram (Abraham), according to the myth. Arabs are aware of this myth and perceived that the new Jewish immigrants claimed such as their birthright. Their attacks were both retaliatory (for Arab land already taken) as well as pre-emptive. This is the "Promised Land"...not just Occupied Palestine:

Genesis 15:18
That day the Lord made a covenant with Abram: To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River "

Yeah, that continues to be the claim of apologists for Palestian mass murder. The fact is, that from the very beginning, the Zionists recognized that going back to the supposed Biblical promises was untenable. What you are describing here is actually Hyperzionism, a fringe political philosophy, and fairly describes neither the Zionism of the 19th and early 20th century, Zionism at the time of partition, nor the Zionism of today.

Modern Israelis have no such ambitions, not even for the West Bank and Gaza. From Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper of record:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday reiterated his position that the vision of Israel holding onto the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of its sovereign territory was finished. "Greater Israel is over. There is no such thing. Anyone who talks that way is deluding themselves," Olmert told the cabinet during its weekly meeting.

The map you posted is from the website of a bizarre hyper-fundamentalist Christian cult, a tiny splinter group which celebrates the Sabbath on Saturday, keeps the kosher laws and the Jewish festivals, and has no connection, according to their own materials, with any other group. It doesnt even show the Promised Land of the OT as your quote has it, from the Nile to the Euphrates -- territory which has NEVER, as in NOT EVER, been part of any kingdom or territory of Israel, not even during the supposed Unified Kingdom of David and Solomon. If were going to go to THIS bunch and claim that their beliefs are equivalent to "Zionism," you might as well include the rest of their vision for the Mideast -- nuclear war with Islam, Armageddon, the return of Christ in glory and the domination of the entire world by fundamentalist Christian cultists like themselves. Of course, that couldnt really be pinned on the evil Zionists, could it?

Nothing here; nothing but words put in the mouths of the evil Zionists that have nothing whatever to do with reality, with peace, or even with the present day.

Again, no acknowledgment of the decades-long campaign of Palestinian attacks against unarmed civilians chosen as primary targets for mass murder; no acknowledgment of the responsibility of the Palestinian terrorists for the deaths of Palestinian civilians due to their own inarguably criminal tactics; no acknowledgment of the openly and explicitly stated, and never renounced, Palestinian goal of the total eradication of Israel and the extermination or expulsion of every Jew in the Mideast; no acknowledgment of the Palestinian goal of ethnic cleansing in order to establish a Judenrein Arab nation in the West Bank, and eventually from the Jordan to the sea; no acknowledgment of endlessly repeated Israeli offers of land for peace; no acknowledgment of the blatant anti-Israel bias of the UN; and, finally, no acknowledgment of the FACT that looking to mutually exclusive historical narratives of the past -- especially the past of more than three thousand years ago -- offers no solutions, only more endless conflict.

no acknowledgment of anything but the unquestioning embrace of pure Palestinian propaganda, including even fictitious and long-discredited claims about the evil Zionists like those above, which ACTUALLY come straight from the Hamas charter:

"After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying."

Gosh, how credible. How compellingly fact-based and inarguably true. Yeesh.

When you're ready to actually acknowledge and talk about some of the FACTS above, and therefore to actually engage in meaningful debate as opposed to peddling one-sided propaganda, let me know.

The arguments above, in post 47 of this thread, remain uncontradicted.

[DeBunkem]

Nice strawman. I didn't say a thing about the "Elders of Zion." I quoted from Genesis and the promise Yaweh made to Abraham. Far as I know, most Jews and Xtians think this is Holy Text.
If you want me to take you seriously, put some serious facts down about who is killed in masses (the Palestinians) and who is purposefully targeting civilians (both sides, but Israel has precise targeting and the Palestinians are practically shooting blind). Meanwhile, enjoy:

An American Bribe that Stinks of Appeasement

By Robert Fisk

November 20, 2010 "The Independent" - - In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter's reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else's property would be regarded as preposterous. Three billion dollars' worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem " so goodbye to the last chance of the east of the holy city for a Palestinian capital " and, if Benjamin Netanyahu so wishes, a rip-roaring continuation of settlement on Arab land. In the ordinary sane world in which we think we live, there is only one word for Barack Obama's offer: appeasement. Usually, our lords and masters use that word with disdain and disgust.

Anyone who panders to injustice by one people against another people is called an appeaser. Anyone who prefers peace at any price, let alone a $3bn bribe to the guilty party " is an appeaser. Anyone who will not risk the consequences of standing up for international morality against territorial greed is an appeaser. Those of us who did not want to invade Afghanistan were condemned as appeasers. Those of us who did not want to invade Iraq were vilified as appeasers. Yet that is precisely what Obama has done in his pathetic, unbelievable effort to plead with Netanyahu for just 90 days of submission to international law. Obama is an appeaser.

The fact that the West and its political and journalistic elites " I include the ever more disreputable New York Times " take this tomfoolery at face value, as if it can seriously be regarded as another "step" in the "peace process", to put this mystical nonsense "back on track", is a measure of the degree to which we have taken leave of our senses in the Middle East.

It is a sign of just how far America (and, through our failure to condemn this insanity, Europe) has allowed its fear of Israel " and how far Obama has allowed his fear of Israeli supporters in Congress and the Senate " to go.

Three billion dollars for three months is one billion dollars a month to stop Israel's colonisation. That's half a billion dollars a fortnight. That's $500m a week. That's $71,428,571 a day, or $2,976,190 an hour, or $49,603 a minute. And as well as this pot of gold, Washington will continue to veto any resolutions critical of Israel in the UN and prevent "Palestine" from declaring itself a state. It's worth invading anyone to get that much cash to stage a military withdrawal, let alone the gracious gesture of not building more illegal colonies for only 90 days while furiously continuing illegal construction in Jerusalem at the same time.

The Hillary Clinton version of this grotesquerie would be funny if it was not tragic. According to the sharp pen of the NYT's Roger Cohen, La Clinton has convinced herself that Palestine is "achievable, inevitable and compatible with Israel's security". And what persuaded Madame Hillary of this? Why, on a trip to the pseudo-Palestine "capital" of Ramallah last year, she saw the Jewish settlements " "the brutality of it was so stark" according to one of her officials " but thought her motorcade was being guarded by the Israeli army because "they're so professional". And then, lo and behold, they turned out to be a Palestinian military guard, a "professional outfit" " and all this changed Madame's views!

Quite apart from the fact that the Israeli army is a rabble, and that indeed, the Palestinians are a rabble too, this "road to Ramallah" incident led supporters of Madame, according to Cohen, to realise that there had been a transition "from a self-pitying, self-dramatising Palestinian psyche, with all the cloying accoutrements of victimhood, to a self-affirming culture of pragmatism and institution-building". Palestinian "prime minister" Salam Fayyad, educated in the US so, naturally, a safe pair of hands, has put "growth before grumbling, roads before ranting, and security before everything".

Having been occupied by a brutal army for 43 years, those wretched, dispossessed Palestinians, along with their cousins in the West Bank who have been homeless for 62 years, have at last stopped ranting and grumbling and feeling sorry for themselves and generally play-acting in order to honour the only thing that matters. Not justice. Certainly not democracy, but to the one God which Christians, Jews and Muslims are all now supposed to worship: security.

Yes, they have joined the true brotherhood of mankind. Israel will be safe at last. That this infantile narrative now drives the woman who told us 11 years ago that Jerusalem was "the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel" proves that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has now reached its apogee, its most treacherous and final moment. And if Netanyahu has any sense " I'm talking abut the Zionist, expansionist kind " he will wait out the 90 days, then thumb his nose at the US. In the three months of "good behaviour", of course, the Palestinians will have to bite the bullet and sit down to "peace" talks which will decide the future borders of Israel and "Palestine". But since Israel controls 62 per cent of the West Bank this leaves Fayyad and his chums about 10.9 per cent of mandate Palestine to argue about.

And at the cost of $827 a second, they'd better do some quick grovelling. They will. We should all hang our heads in shame. But we won't. It's not about people. It's about presentation. It's not about justice. It's about "security". And cash. Lots of it. Goodbye Palestine.

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
-- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978

[cnorman18]

Nice strawman. I didn't say a thing about the "Elders of Zion." I quoted from Genesis and the promise Yaweh made to Abraham. Far as I know, most Jews and Xtians think this is Holy Text.

Want to talk about "strawmen"? I'm ready. Daily animal sacrifice at the Temple is Holy Text too, but that doesn't make it Israeli government policy. The Hamas charter and Palestinian propaganda is where you got the claim that the Israelis want all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, because it doesn't appear anywhere else. The fact that it's in the Bible is irrelevant; the majority of Israelis at the founding were secular Socialists, and the majority of Israelis are still secularists today. Pointing at the Bible and claiming it defines modern Zionism is a strawman of the first order.

If you want me to take you seriously, put some serious facts down about who is killed in masses (the Palestinians) and who is purposefully targeting civilians (both sides, but Israel has precise targeting and the Palestinians are practically shooting blind).

And if you want me to take YOU seriously, acknowledge the deliberate Palestinian tactic of using their own civilians as human shields, which clearly and obviously accounts for an enormous number of the "masses" of Palestinian dead -- AND the fact that those war crimes by definition continue to have the tacit blessing of the United Nations.

Tell me, is a suicide bomber who carefully places himself on a schoolbus full of children, or at a bus stop surrounded by pregnant women and mothers with babies, or in a synagogue during a Bar Mitzvah, or in a family's home during a Passover seder, or in a pizzeria surrounded by unarmed teenagers, or at a discotheque full of dancers, "shooting blind"? Who do you expect to swallow THAT one?

Oh, I forgot -- in your fantasy Mideast, those things don't happen at all, do they? Still hoping that no one notices your conscious and deliberate "blind spots," and claiming that YOU should be "taken seriously." How bizarre. But of course, we can never actually DEBATE any of that. You won't even admit that there's anything there to debate. "Those things don't happen, they don't happen, they don't happen..."

Meanwhile, enjoy:

An American Bribe that Stinks of Appeasement

By Robert Fisk

November 20, 2010 "The Independent"....

Thanks very much. You posted an opinion piece, so I shall post one as well. This is from a little over a year ago, but it's still apropos today -- and it has the advantages of being shorter, more to the point, and less filled with opinionated polemic. For a bit more on Robert Fisk, see below.

Meanwhile, enjoy:

Taking Exception: Terrorism Prevents Palestinian State

By Elliott Abrams

The Washington Post

Tuesday, September 8, 2009; 6:04 PM

In his response to my Sept. 8 op-ed, Jimmy Carter continues his practice of assuming that his travelogues constitute evidence and dismissing data that contradict his claims. This will persuade few people. I did not suggest that life was wonderful in the West Bank, only that it is not getting worse. Carter claimed life is deteriorating there, but neither economic nor poll data -- nor impressionistic evidence I have seen, including travelogues from recent visitors who report far easier travel in the West Bank -- sustain his claim.

The question is not whether Palestinians would prefer to see Israeli soldiers leave; no doubt they would, and no doubt those soldiers would rather be at home. But Carter overlooks the fact that after Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, it did not quickly institute a restricted road network or travel restrictions on Palestinians, nor did it build its security fence. Those came decades later, in the face of vicious acts of terrorism.

What puts Carter's goal of a two-state solution at risk is not settlements, but terrorism. It is terrorism that prevents Israel from leaving the West Bank entirely in Palestinian hands today, for Israelis learned a lesson after leaving Gaza and South Lebanon. A negotiated settlement is still possible, and it does not require a settlement freeze; instead it requires that Palestinian terrorists stop trying to kill Israelis, or that a Palestinian government be in place that is ready, willing, and able to prevent them from succeeding.

More FACTS there that you'll never so much as acknowledge, let alone comment upon or respond to. Oh, well. You're not the only one who reads these posts.

Now let's take a closer look at your latest "shocking quote":

"We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population."
-- David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978

I found a reference to that book, and to this specific quotation supposedly taken from it, on Wikiquote. It's very illuminating:

The quote "We must use terror, assassination . . ." is false. It does not appear in the source cited (Michael Ben-Zohar's biography of B-G), but only in secondary sources which purport to quote it from there. It does not appear in the Koenig Report either. There are plenty of revealing and outrageous quotes by Ben-Gurion, and other Zionist leaders. We don't need to add false, and easily disproved ones; and doing so will only serve to discredit the genuine quotes too.

Apparently another fake quote from MIFTAH, or some other anti-Israel site that doesn't much care about veracity. You seem to rely pretty heavily on sources like that. It's not a wise tactic, as I've proven over, and over, and over, and over.... But never mind. You keep posting 'em, and I'll keep "DeBunking" 'em, ironically enough. Why don't you try to find a REAL one once in a while, and then I can at least show how you took it out of context instead of proving it's just a flat-out fabrication?

Interestingly, CAMERA, which documents that same fake quote being attributed to yet another Israeli source -- popular fabrication, that -- also documents Robert Fisk, the author of the article you quoted above, as having used various fake and out-of-context quotes himself. Fisk's agenda is apparently the same as your own.

And, I repeat:

Again, no acknowledgment of the decades-long campaign of Palestinian attacks against unarmed civilians chosen as primary targets for mass murder; no acknowledgment of the responsibility of the Palestinian terrorists for the deaths of Palestinian civilians due to their own inarguably criminal tactics; no acknowledgment of the openly and explicitly stated, and never renounced, Palestinian goal of the total eradication of Israel and the extermination or expulsion of every Jew in the Mideast; no acknowledgment of the Palestinian goal of ethnic cleansing in order to establish a Judenrein Arab nation in the West Bank, and eventually from the Jordan to the sea; no acknowledgment of endlessly repeated Israeli offers of land for peace; no acknowledgment of the blatant anti-Israel bias of the UN; and, finally, no acknowledgment of the FACT that looking to mutually exclusive historical narratives of the past offers no solutions, only more endless conflict. In short, no acknowledgment of anything but the unquestioning embrace of pure Palestinian propaganda, including fake and fabricated quotes clearly intended to inflame and promote hatred and resentment.

When you're ready to actually acknowledge and talk about some of the FACTS above, and therefore to actually engage in meaningful debate as opposed to peddling one-sided propaganda, let me know.

Get used to reading that. I'll be posting it in every response to your attempts, till you finally acknowledge and respond to those issues. I've saved it to my WP so I won't have to go to so much trouble. I expect to be using it a LOT.

And still, of course -- the arguments in post 47 of this thread above remain uncontradicted.

[Musaa]

The Israeli claim to ownership of land that they took by force from the Palestinian owners is of course bogus because it has no basis in facts other than "might makes right." There have been many claimants to this part of the world, and one religions' myth book is no more valid than any other. Non-hebrew inhabitants were in posession of the land for thousands of years before Abraham supposedly wandered through as a nomad. There is no archeological evidence for any Exodus or 40 years of wandering in the desert or Slomon's temple at Jerusalem. No Jewish kingdoms. They only dwelled upon parts of Palestine. The evidence is that "Hebrews" were just an arbitrary collection of Semitic tribesmen outcast from other groups that worshipped the same deities. Even if one claims the Bible as proof of ownership, this "Promised Land" was contingent upon the Hebrews' obedience to the "Law." They were not obedient and were cast out. End of story.
The Romans called the territory Palestinum after the Hebrews were exiled. It was ever such afterwards. There have been both Jewish and Arab Palestinians in continuous habitation ever since. In fact, the palestinian Jews joined the Islamic Arabs in defending Jerusalem from the Crusaders.
As for peace now, it is the Israelis who continually do all possible to prevent peace or a two-state solution. They have never stopped building settlements for the racist settlers who never miss a chance to harass and intimidate Arabs. They are in open defiance of UN resolutions and hold thousands of palestinians in prison who have never been accused or tried. They regularly murder and maim unarmed Palestinians. They have set up something worse than Apartheid, as Desmond Tutu and other S. Africans who have seen the outrages can attest. Even the war criminal Ariel Sharon said it is "occupation." So I fail to see why we should give Israel a cent of our money or anything else. They killed dozens of our sailors for no reason in 1967 and execute human rights workers from here and all over the world. Israel the political entity, not the people (many of whom deplore this record), is a despicable pariah and abuser that we are enabling with billions of our tax dollars.




"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend
in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before
Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East." : John
Sheehan, S.J.

I agree truth is truth . I also see you have done your home work . What I find sad about the above they're people who know this is true and will turn a blind eyes as if its ok . It like coming in someone house take over and dare them to defend Themselves . And then set up rules for the owner of the house to go by . With help of other people tax money . Please don't come with the anti- labeling game ,Because this always come next . When the truth comes to light .

[cnorman18]

Well, if were going back to post #5, Ill pick it up at post #6ff.:

The Israeli claim to ownership of land that they took by force from the Palestinian owners is of course bogus because it has no basis in facts other than "might makes right."

And of course the claim that the area that is now Israel proper was obtained by force alone is bogus itself. As the OP quoted,

in 1948 the Arab refugees were encouraged to leave Israel by Arab leaders promising to purge the land of Jews. Sixty-eight percent left (many in fear of retaliation by their own brethren, the Arabs), without ever seeing an Israeli soldier. The ones who stayed were afforded the same peace, civility, and citizenship rights as everyone else.

This is verified by multiple reports and editorials in Arab newspapers of the time. Its a pain, but Ill be happy to look them up and post them on request. There are Arab and Muslim citizens of Israel today, and have been from the beginning and before, another fact that you never acknowledge or refer to in your repeated diatribes. There were, undeniably, atrocities, and on both sides; but few Arabs were forced to leave, and this is proven by the simple fact that so many of them chose to stay and are still there.

There have been many claimants to this part of the world, and one religions' myth book is no more valid than any other. Non-hebrew inhabitants were in posession of the land for thousands of years before Abraham supposedly wandered through as a nomad. There is no archeological evidence for any Exodus or 40 years of wandering in the desert or Slomon's temple at Jerusalem. No Jewish kingdoms. They only dwelled upon parts of Palestine. The evidence is that "Hebrews" were just an arbitrary collection of Semitic tribesmen outcast from other groups that worshipped the same deities.

These claims, though partially accurate, arent all universally accepted by either historians or archaeologists -- particularly the highly dubious allegation that there were no Jewish kingdoms and no Temple. Those claims seem to be the contention of authorities who support the Arab narrative more for political reasons than scientific.

In any case, as I have said before; with mutually exclusive views of the history of the region, there is no solution to be found by referring to the past. Israel exists; the Palestinians exist; and whatever solution is eventually, let us all fervently hope, found, ought to be fair and just to both sides. That seems reasonable to me.

Even if one claims the Bible as proof of ownership, this "Promised Land" was contingent upon the Hebrews' obedience to the "Law." They were not obedient and were cast out. End of story.

Not quite end of story. I dont claim the Bible as proof of ownership, but IF, as you say, one does refer to the Bible here, as you have just done, there is also the promise of the Jews RETURN to the Land.

The Romans called the territory Palestinum after the Hebrews were exiled. It was ever such afterwards. There have been both Jewish and Arab Palestinians in continuous habitation ever since. In fact, the palestinian Jews joined the Islamic Arabs in defending Jerusalem from the Crusaders.

Quite true; at one time, Jews and Arabs and Muslims lived together as neighbors. War is not inevitable here, and one side desiring the extinction of the other, which is the openly stated position of the terrorists, is not a route back to that time. The approach of Israel, a famously multicultural and pluralistic free and democratic society where Arab and Muslim citizens live in peace alongside their Jewish neighbors, is.

As for peace now, it is the Israelis who continually do all possible to prevent peace or a two-state solution.

Really? Concession after concession, offer after offer, all rejected and answered by more terror. Israel sanctioned and armed the PLO with Arafats assurance that terrorism would be fought by that organization, and then he was caught smuggling explosives and more weapons on the Karine A. Total and unilateral withdrawal from Gaza; result, more terrorism. Releases of hundreds of prisoners in exchange for one or two kidnapped Israelis; result, more terrorism. Offer of 97% or more of the land demanded for an independent Palestine at Camp David; result, not even a counteroffer, but the second Intifadah, which had been planned and prepared for for months. The pattern continues, and has for decades. One wonders who is doing all possible to prevent peace, and who has actually tried, over and over, to take concrete steps toward it and has been, over and over, rebuffed and offered more violence. The only option for "peace" ever offered or even envisioned by the Arab terrorists has been total surrender, the abolition of Israel, and the total withdrawal of all Jews from the Mideast.

They have never stopped building settlements for the racist settlers who never miss a chance to harass and intimidate Arabs.

Which I have agreed is wrong, and have also pointed out is reversible; all the settlements in Gaza -- all of them, without exception -- were evacuated and demolished, which, to read your posts, never happened. The result was not peace, but more missile and terror attacks from Gaza -- which, of course, to read your posts, also never happened and do not exist.

They are in open defiance of UN resolutions and hold thousands of palestinians in prison who have never been accused or tried. They regularly murder and maim unarmed Palestinians. They have set up something worse than Apartheid, as Desmond Tutu and other S. Africans who have seen the outrages can attest. Even the war criminal Ariel Sharon said it is "occupation."

None of this happened, or happens, in a vacuum. As is rather usual with your posts on this topic, you dont even acknowledge the existence of the vicious, murderous, and long-standing terror campaign against Israeli civilians, which long predates the Occupation and even the foundation of Israel; or the vicious and government-sponsored anti-Semitic propaganda that is endemic all over the Arab world; or the FACT that the terror organizations who keep this conflict boiling and boiling over have explicitly stated their intent to expel or exterminate every Jew in the Middle East and totally destroy and erase Israel. In SPITE of all those FACTS, you continue to insist that it is the Jews who are racist and practice apartheid, while, again, never even acknowledging that ethnic cleansing is the openly stated objective of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Brigade, the PLO, Hizbollah, and on and on.

One may endorse government-sponsored, bigoted propaganda, open declarations of genocidal intent, actual mass murder, and terrorism as effectively by remaining silent about them as by outright denial. A lie by omission is still a lie.

So I fail to see why we should give Israel a cent of our money or anything else. They killed dozens of our sailors for no reason in 1967 and execute human rights workers from here and all over the world. Israel the political entity, not the people (many of whom deplore this record), is a despicable pariah and abuser that we are enabling with billions of our tax dollars.

Offtopic. The topic of this thread is who owns the land, not US support for Israel, which is a topic a bit more complex and nuanced than has been presented here. The USS Liberty incident has been ancient history for decades, and rather a LOT has happened since then that is being ignored here -- like the decades-long terror campaign that you carefully and consistently avoid acknowledging. Your other views in this paragraph are very much a matter of opinion and not of proven, established fact.

Proposed map of Jewish land ownership as proposed and planned by Palestinians:



























(not an error)

"Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend
in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before
Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East." : John
Sheehan, S.J.

Oh, really? And with whom did the Arab states align themselves during WWII? Which nations in the Mideast were Soviet client states during the Cold War?

Once again; attributing all manner of evil and horror and foul motives to the side one opposes, and all innocence and goodness and sweetness and light to the side one favors, is neither probative nor intellectually honest. There are two sides to this story, and as long as the Arabs attitude is the same as yours, peace will never, ever come.

I feel strongly about these issues, too; but I have learned that rage, even righteous rage, is not conducive toward civil conversation or debate -- let alone negotiation, meaningful and just agreements, and peace.

And, just for good measure:

From here:

Arab Leaders Provoke Exodus

A plethora of evidence exists demonstrating that Palestinians were encouraged to leave their homes to make way for the invading Arab armies. The U.S. ConsulGeneral in Haifa, Aubrey Lippincott, wrote on April 22, 1948, for example, that local muftidominated Arab leaders were urging all Arabs to leave the city, and large numbers did so.

The Economist, a frequent critic of the Zionists, reported on October 2, 1948: Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit....It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.

Time's report of the battle for Haifa (May 3, 1948) was similar: The mass evacuation, prompted partly by fear, partly by orders of Arab leaders, left the Arab quarter of Haifa a ghost city....By withdrawing Arab workers their leaders hoped to paralyze Haifa.

Benny Morris, the historian who documented instances where Palestinians were expelled, also found that Arab leaders encouraged their brethren to leave. Starting in December 1947, he said, Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants treacherously acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments. He concluded, There can be no exaggerating the importance of these arly Arab-initiated evacuations in the demoralization, and eventual exodus, of the remaining rural and urban populations (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 590).

The Arab National Committee in Jerusalem, following the March 8, 1948, instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, ordered women, children and the elderly in various parts of Jerusalem to leave their homes: Any opposition to this order...is an obstacle to the holy war...and will hamper the operations of the fighters in these districts (Morris, Middle Eastern Studies, January 1986). Morris also documented that the Arab Higher Committee ordered the evacuation of several dozenvillages, as well as the removal of dependents from dozens more in April-July 1948. The invading Arab armies also occasionally ordered whole villages to depart, so as not to be in their way (The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 592).

Morris also said that in early May units of the Arab Legion reportedly ordered the evacuation of all women and children from the town of Beisan. The Arab Liberation Army was also reported to have ordered the evacuation of another village south of Haifa. The departure of the women and children, Morris says, tended to sap the morale of the menfolk who were left behind to guard the homes and fields, contributing ultimately to the final evacuation of villages. Such two-tier evacuation-women and children first, the men following weeks later-occurred in Qumiya in the Jezreel Valley, among the Awarna bedouin in Haifa Bay and in various other places.

Who gave such orders? Leaders like Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Said, who declared: We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in. The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down.

The Secretary of the Arab League Office in London, Edward Atiyah, wrote in his book, The Arabs: This wholesale exodus was due partly to the belief of the Arabs, encouraged by the boastings of an unrealistic Arabic press and the irresponsible utterances of some of the Arab leaders that it could be only a matter of weeks before the Jews were defeated by the armies of the Arab States and the Palestinian Arabs enabled to reenter and retake possession of their country.

In his memoirs, Haled al Azm, the Syrian Prime Minister in 194849, also admitted the Arab role in persuading the refugees to leave:
Since 1948 we have been demanding the return of the refugees to their homes. But we ourselves are the ones who encouraged them to leave. Only a few months separated our call to them to leave and our appeal to the United Nations to resolve on their return.

The refugees were confident their absence would not last long, and that they would return within a week or two, Monsignor George Hakim, a Greek Orthodox Catholic Bishop of Galilee told the Beirut newspaper, Sada alJanub (August 16, 1948). Their leaders had promised them that the Arab Armies would crush the 'Zionist gangs' very quickly and that there was no need for panic or fear of a long exile.

On April 3, 1949, the Near East Broadcasting Station (Cyprus) said: It must not be forgotten that the Arab Higher Committee encouraged the refugees' flight from their homes in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem.

The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies, according to the Jordanian newspaper Filastin (February 19, 1949).

One refugee quoted in the Jordan newspaper, Ad Difaa (September 6, 1954), said: The Arab government told us: Get out so that we can get in. So we got out, but they did not get in.

The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, assured the Arab peoples that the occupation of Palestine and Tel Aviv would be as simple as a military promenade, said Habib Issa in the New York Lebanese paper, Al Hoda (June 8, 1951). He pointed out that they were already on the frontiers and that all the millions the Jews had spent on land and economic development would be easy booty, for it would be a simple matter to throw Jews into the Mediterranean....Brotherly advice was given to the Arabs of Palestine to leave their land, homes and property and to stay temporarily in neighboring fraternal states, lest the guns of the invading Arab armies mow them down.

Even Jordan's King Abdullah, writing in his memoirs, blamed Palestinian leaders for the refugee problem:
The tragedy of the Palestinians was that most of their leaders had paralyzed them with false and unsubstantiated promises that they were not alone; that 80 million Arabs and 400 million Muslims would instantly and miraculously come to their rescue.

Further, on the oft-repeated allegation that the Israelis stole Palestinian land:

Look here, here, and here; Note this:

1. As far back as 1893, the Jews not only were already far from being a small minority in the areas where they had settled, but were the largest single group there (if one divides the non-Jewish population into Muslim and Christian), and

2. Substantial immigration of Arabs to Palestine took place during the first half of the twentieth century; from 1893 to 1947 while the Palestinian Arab population slightly more than doubled in areas where no Jews were settled, it quintupled in the main areas of Jewish settlement.

Look here, too. Note the chart on this page; at the time of the armistice in 1949, 8.54% of Israel was owned by either the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, the Jewish National Fund, or Jewish individuals. Less than half that, 3.96%, was owned by Arab individuals. The rest was state land, which was transferred from the Arab government to the new Israeli government by UN mandate.

The idea that Israel was stolen from the Arabs is, simply put, a myth; and the proof of that, as I keep saying without response or acknowledgment, is that very many Arabs did not leave during the War of Independence; they remained in Israel, were left in peace, and they and their descendants live in Israel today. Arabs in Israel own land, do business, vote, serve in the Knesset, worship freely, and live as full, peaceful and participatory citizens of their nation. Other than Tunisia and Morocco, are there Jews in Arab countries who can say that? Will there be Jews who may do that in the Judenrein Palestinian state?

From yet another post you skipped:

The idea that the Israelis brutally invaded Palestine, murdered thousands of Arabs, and drove them off their ancestral lands is simply untrue. There were atrocities, but those occurred on both sides; and the FACT is that the Arab refugees who left Israel were welcome to return in 1948. Thats a matter of record, and the reasons it didnt happen are not the fault of the Israelis.

From Resolution 194 of the United Nations General Assembly, passed on December 11, 1948, before the end of the War of Independence: Notice the portion marked in boldface.

Article 11 reads:

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

The Arab nations initially opposed this resolution, and few Arabs took the offer, specifically because of the refusal of the nations which attacked Israel to accept peace. Any Arabs who wanted to come home at the very beginning could have done so. Claiming that the right of return should extend two generations into the future, when a few hundred thousand refugees -- carefully and deliberately made to remain refugees for 62 years, unlike any refugees in human history anywhere in the world -- have multiplied into millions, and still have no intention of living in peace with their neighbours, is beyond ridiculous, no matter how heavily that idea is promoted in the Arab world.

There are a great many other facts and arguments that you have skipped over on this thread. Here is something I post regularly to another anti-Israel member (theres your anti, if you like) and it seems to be true of you as well:



Again, no acknowledgment of the decades-long campaign of Palestinian attacks against unarmed civilians chosen as primary targets for mass murder; no acknowledgment of the responsibility of the Palestinian terrorists for the deaths of Palestinian civilians due to their own inarguably criminal tactics; no acknowledgment of the openly and explicitly stated, and never renounced, Palestinian goal of the total eradication of Israel and the extermination or expulsion of every Jew in the Mideast; no acknowledgment of the Palestinian goal of ethnic cleansing in order to establish a Judenrein Arab nation in the West Bank, and eventually from the Jordan to the sea; no acknowledgment of endlessly repeated Israeli offers of land for peace; no acknowledgment of the blatant anti-Israel bias of the UN; and, finally, no acknowledgment of the FACT that looking to mutually exclusive historical narratives of the past offers no solutions, only more endless conflict. In short, no acknowledgment of anything but the unquestioning embrace of pure Palestinian propaganda, including fake and fabricated quotes clearly intended to inflame and promote hatred and resentment.

When you're ready to actually acknowledge and talk about some of the FACTS above, and therefore to actually engage in meaningful debate as opposed to peddling one-sided propaganda, let me know.

[Musaa]

An Israeli Draft Resister Goes to Prison Rather Than Serve in An Army of OccupationIn Israel and the occupied territories this week a nominal cease-fire continued between the Israeli military andPalestinians engaged in an 8 month uprising against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Settler leaderssaid yesterday that they will rise up in protest against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon if he doesnt resume overtmilitary action against the Palestinians, while Palestinian officials are demanding an immediate end to road closingsand travel restrictions that have devastated the economy of the territories.

The stark reality of Israels occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip may escape the attention of the U.S.mass media, which often chooses to portray the occupation as a battle between equals, but it is impossible to avoidfor the young Israelis who must serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. In recent years an increasing number of theseyoung men have sought to avoid military service as religious or political conscientious objectors, and some havesimply refused to serve in the IDF altogether.

Many of them have gone to prison rather than serve in the occupied territories, much like Israeli soldiers courtedprison rather than participate in Israels invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

Guests:

Rela Mazali, writer and activist and one of the founders of New Profile, a feminist organization workingto end the militarization of Israeli society and one of the organizations supporting Israeli draft resisters.
Gabby Wolf, an Israeli draft resister released on Tuesday after three months in military prison