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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:17
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Natan - quote:
How did the Brits "take the land?" |
I understand that the British were the colonial power primarily responsible for setting up a "Jewish state" following WWII.
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what do you mean by "take the land" and when did it start? |
Stealing, and it began following WWII.
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Jews were buying up land at market prices throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but I don't think that can be called stealing in any known sense of the term in the English language. |
If the state of Israel constituted only those lands acquired by Jews through these means, then you'd be right (although their lands - Jewish owned lands - were stolen to form Israel). But some of the lands taken to form Israel were owned by Arabs who did not sell to Jews.
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Later, the Israeli government, after the 1948 war, began confiscated Arab property either because its owners were absent and unlikely to return, or for a variety of other reasons. |
That "confiscation" is called theft.
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But the Arab war of genocide and extermination cannot be viewed as defense against later Israeli land confiscation anymore than the German war of genocide and agression can be viewed as defense against later Polish and Czech expulsions of Germans and seizure of their property. |
If these Germans acquired Polish and Czech land by virtue of Nazi occupation, you'd be right. But many Arabs were on the land before Arab armies attacked Israel and the Germans did not attack the Poles and Czechs to stop them from "confiscating" land owned by Germans.
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So Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Russia are stealing German water and electricity? |
If they took land owned by Germans, yes.
But that's not what happened. The Germans were an occupying force and expelled (albeit replaced by another occupying force - the Russians).
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Are the Kurds stealing Iraqi oil? Not every border change is a theft. |
The Kurds have lived on that land for centuries.
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Not every border change is a theft. |
If your land is taken away by virtue of that change, then it is theft.
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Again, the expulsions can't be said to start before the 1948 war. |
I never said they did, I said they began afterwards.
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During that war, many Arabs left for a variety of reasons. |
Being forced off your land by someone else's war does not justify the "confiscation" of your land by the winner of that war.
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First, rich people started leaving because they were afraid of the general destruction of war. Later, they were kicked out either by Israelis afraid of hostile guerillas in their rear or Arab armies implementing a scorched earth policy. An example of the former would be the expulsion from Ramle and Lod, an example of the former, the expulsion from Haifa and Jaffa. |
None of which justifies the theft of their land.
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Who was killed for refusing to give up their land? |
I didn't say anyone was killed, I said they were faced with the predicament of death should they try to keep their land - a predicament that led them to flee. But I would not be at all surprised if some Arabs refused to give up their land and were killed for resisting.
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They have more rights then there supposed sole and legitimate representative, the one to whom it seems you would like to turn the land over to, that is, Yasser Arafat and the PLO. |
When did I say the land should be turned over to Arafat? He isn't the legitimate owner either.
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I disagree. There's a statue of limitations on these things; you can't demand back someone else's house just because your grandfather lived there two generations and many wars ago. If you disagree, I hope you'll be turning your house over the nearest Native American tribe. |
Statute of limitations is a legal concept invented by governments that often has nothing to do with honoring the rightful owner's claim to their land. And if any Indian can show his ancestors owned the land my house sits on, I will offer them money to buy the land or take my house and go elsewhere. But that isn't going to happen because Indians did not live on my little plot of land. Had I been alive 150 years ago while the land owned by Indians was being "confiscated", I would have opposed that policy, not defended it!
Two wrongs don't make a right...
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But you're ignoring that the primary purpose of the 1948 war was, on the Arab side, to exterminate the Jews, and on the Jewish side, to defend their property and lives from the Arab armies. |
Were the Indians wrong for trying to rid their land of Europeans who were taking it? Whatever the motives of foreign Arab powers, the result was the "confiscation" of Arab land - Arabs who were not part of the foreign attempt to get rid of the Jews.
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Good, so you also oppose resolution 242. |
If that resolution "granted" land owned by Jews and Arabs to other Jews for the creation of Israel, then yes.
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He speaks for the Arab governments just as much as G.W. Bush speaks for America and Mullah Omar speaks for the Taliban. |
Speaking for a "government" is not the same as speaking for Arab landowners who lost their possessions because of a war engaged in by others.
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He spoke on the eve of the '48 war, and besides, genocide is not under any circumstances a form of self defense. |
If someone tries to steal your home, then "genocide" against the perpetrators is a valid form of self-defense. He did not say they would seek out Jews throughout the world to kill, only those Jews occupying the land of Arabs.
If it was his intention to kill Jews who had a rightful claim to land in the Near East, then he was no better than any other thug. But his actions do not justify the confiscation of Arab lands.
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1) False, because "the theft of the land" cannot in any reasonable sense of the term be said to have begun before the war, and the Arabs declared their intention to exterminate the Jews before any land had been seized. |
It began with the UN resolution "granting" Jews someone else's land.
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2) The Arabs were driving Jews off of their property throughout the war and before it. |
"The Arabs"? Don't you mean SOME Arabs? My actions do not justify your theft of someone else's land.
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Both Jews and Arabs. |
Exactly! And did the UN resolution "granting" Jews the land for the state of Israel respect the property rights of Arab and Jewish landowners?
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Well, sometimes they sold the land, other times the Arab armies kicked them out. |
So the Israeli army never kicked Arabs off their land? Give me a break! Either you or Sirotnikov already said the Israeli army "secured" villages and that the land was "confiscated" because the rightful owners never returned or returned "too late".
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You're ignoring the people who were already there - the people (Jewish people) who were kicked off their land to create the West Bank and Gaza. |
And who did this? Other Jews? You didn't respond to my point, only identified others who were wrongfully forced off their land.
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The monkeys comment was inappropriate, but what Siro is saying is that before 1948, much of the growth of the Palestinian Arab population was through immigration, and afterwords through a high birthrate. Obviously no one tries to sneak in to a refugee camp to get the yummy UNRWA food. |
He cited an Arab population for 1947 and a more recent figure to claim they breed like wild monkeys while also claiming the Jews created an economic situation that attracted Arab immigrants. He needed to show how much of that increase was do to immigration and pro-creation by the original Arab population before making - "justifying" - his analogy.
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So you agree that the Jews were right to defend themselves from the Arab states? |
Not necessarily. If I am trying to steal your neighbor's home, you have the moral authority to help your neighbor defend what is his. However, if these Arab states also meant to remove or kill the rightful Jewish and Arab landowners, then they were in the wrong too.
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I can't think of a single instance where Palestinian Arabs organized to defend their villages as opposed to raiding Jewish ones. They didn't have an organized army, they weren't an independent country. |
Unless you can prove ALL Arabs living there were attacking the legitimate Jewish owners of land, then your comment is irrelevant.
Example?
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Again, the "theft of the land" cannpot be said to begin until After the Arab states launched their war of genocide. |
I don't care when it began, the fact is, it began.
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Before 1948, that's the only way land transferred from Arabs to Jews. Jews would raise a lot of money to buy land there for ideological reasons and also because of the desperate need of Russian and German Jews for a place of refuge, and the land's value to them was greater than its value to Arab farmers. |
Now you're citing the ideological and economic reasons for the buying and selling of land? I never said no land was bought or sold, only that the claim that Jews bought the land in an effort to deny the fact some land was stolen was an inaccurate generalization.
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If you can't come back, I don't think the government is obligated to hold then land until your government lets you take it while millions of refugees flood the area. |
But many did come back. My leaving for a year's vacation in Polynesia doesn't mean the "government" can hand my home over to one of the millions of immigrants to the US each year. Besides, not every Arab landowner just walked away from their land. And the UN resolution creating the state of Israel already took Arab lands before the war.
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And if more did than did not, then generally Arabs did |
Then it's up to you to prove your claim that more did than not. Did the fact many Japanese Americans had relatives in the Japanese army justify the "confiscation" of their lands?
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The Arab states could easily have settled the Palestinians in their own countries, for example, in the homes of the Jews they kicked out, but they chose not to. |
My neighbor's refusal to house me after you've stolen my home doesn't justify your actions.
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And the Jews had a right to station troops in these villages to prevent them from bein used to gun down Jews on the roads, as they were in fact being used. |
True, but not a right to steal the land or gun down Arabs not involved in the conflict.
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Yes, but if they were fearing as a result of Arab propaganda, I think the Arabs who made the broadcasts have to bear responsibility for their refugee status. |
What propaganda? That a UN resolution just handed over land owned by Arabs to the new state of Israel?
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Their rightful owners who stayed are usually still there, those who fled have been unable to return to this day and the land is now lived on by others. All of it is part of Israel, but that has nothing to do with whether it is owned by Arabs or Jews. |
Why couldn't they return?
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So the objection turns out not to be to the loss of individual property but the idea of Israel itself as an affront to Arab pride. |
Excuse me? The foreign Arab nations attacked on the heels of the UN resolution handing over Arab lands to create Israel. That was what I said, how you got something else from that is beyond me.
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Good, you're getting closer to the truth. But by this logic, the German invasion of Poland in 1939 was completely justified. |
How so? The Poles did not "confiscate" the lands of Germans in 1939.
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1) Again, any land confiscations began after the 48 war. |
The UN resolution and the willingness of the British and Israeli governments to enforce it constituted the confiscation.
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3) "You took my house, now I'm gonna kill you and your relatives and anyone else who happens to be nearby you" is even worse. |
Which doesn't absolve the thief of his crime. And once again, you're attributing the words of a foreign Arab "leader" to the Arab landowners whose land was taken.
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:17
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Sirotnikov -
While nothing you said about the "history" of the region addressed my statement, it has nothing to do with justifying the "confiscation" of Arab lands by the UN, the British, or the Jews, for the state of Israel. Can you justify that confiscation without pointing to the evil Ottomans?
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Erm, read your in depth history books instead of counting on "CNN 60 seconds about..."
Brits had nothing with expelling arabs. Infact they favoured them by limiting jewish emigration and weapons while not doing the same for arabs. |
Yeah, you already told me to read some history books. The British were the driving force behind the UN resolution "granting" the state of Israel Arab lands and they were the colonial power in charge of the region following WWII so I don't know how you guys can claim they weren't involved. The British left the region after Jewish terrorists killed British soldiers, but they left it in Israeli control in accordance with the UN resolution.
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150,000 Arabs did not give up the land.
Not only were they not killed, they are today 1,000,000 people. 20% of the Israeli public |
Yes, I applaud you'll for not committing genocide 
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No it's not, you're just trying to ignore it.
You say we are responsible for their misery.
When we show you that infact they live much better in Israel than under the PLO you claim it's invalid. Can't handle the truth? |
Who said the PLO should own those lands? Not me.
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Other arabs?
There are no "other" arabs.
And there was no palestinian nationality until it was invented after 67. |
Are you claiming there were no Arabs in that land who just wanted to be left alone on their property? That all the Arabs joined the war against Israel? As for the Palestinian nationality, so what? You'll have to explain it's relevance...
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Those arabs are and were all relatives and friends and allies. And they were not barred from carrying and owning weapons. |
Your generalizations are awfully convenient, kind of like the people who said the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Why did the Jews allow 150,000 Arabs to stay on their land if they were attacking the Jews? And what about all the Arabs who fled their land? Oops!
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Didn't America, in the 50s and 60s persecuted possible agents of communism? |
Yes, do you have a point? Are you suggesting the government had the right to take the lands of those deemed innocent?
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Didn't America in the 40s jailed Japanese immigrators? |
Geez, why do you guys continually try to justify the immoral actions of one group of people by pointing to the immoral actions of another group?
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Isn't America now treating with suspicion muslim or arab immigrants? |
I'm not. As for the government, a relative handful are being investigated. And if found innocent, they won't have their homes "confiscated". And many of the Arabs whose homes were taken to form Israel were not immigrants, the Jewish refugees arriving from Europe were.
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Most of the arabs, like most of the jews in 1948 Israel were immigrants that came between 1880 and 1948. |
And some were not, so what? If you own a piece of land and build a home on it, how would you react if someone showed up 30 years later to claim it as their own?
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The fact that Nazis declared war and claimed Greater Germany (Poland, Austria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia) was their natural land, doesn't make it their natural land. |
That's right, and that's irrelevant. Comparing Arab landowners in Palestine to Nazis won't cut it.
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Jews settled in swamps, made them into fertile territory and then arabs, who immigrated at the same time, decide that it's "all theirs". |
And these Arabs were just as wrong as the Jews who took lands owned by Arabs.
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Well if you admit it won't happen, what's the point? |
The point is you're responible for your actions. Unlike you guys, I don't defend those who steal other people's lands.
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And had they not declared war nothing like this would have happenned. |
Irrelevant. If you flee your property because other people are having a shootout on your land with the winner claiming your land as "the spoils of victory", claiming your loss was caused by the people who started shooting first doesn't absolve the "victor" of his crime - stealing your land.
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Israel decided to grab territory to defend itself and it's right because it serves Israeli security. |
Your security needs do not justify stealing my land.
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Had arabs really wanted to co-exist the war wouldn't start. |
Some Arabs obviously did want to co-exist or they would have been killing their Jewish neighbors long before the UN resolution.
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Arab violence up to 1948 - Against jews who immigrated there just like they did. Israeli deportatoins (limited) in 48 - Against arabs who posed a military threat. Most of the arabs fled before the war expecting it. |
I'm tired of repeating myself.
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It wasn't their land. They had rights for the land just like the jews. Less infact, since jews mostly paid for the lands they lived in, while arabs just came and settled. |
Some of it was their land.
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False.
This was said before any land was stolen and before Israeli armies got into action.
This was said prior to the declaration of war, and prior to Israeli response. |
It was said AFTER the state of Israel was created by the UN. It was no different than Lewis and Clark showing up in the west announcing to the Indians how they were now subjects of the USA. Had they known what that really meant - that their lands would soon be "confiscated" - they would have been justified in killing those trying to take their lands.
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Where is that "apparent" in Natan's text? |
It isn't in his text. Did I say it was?
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Arabs did began the war before the theft.
Infact, the conflict started in 1929 before jews even had any sort of forces, whether paramilitary or partisanic. |
A war between you and your neighbor doesn't justify stealing my land. Have I failed to explain this to you yet?
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It is false to say that the land was only arab. |
I didn't, you were the one who said the Arabs never owned the land. I asked the simple question: who do you think was their before 1948 and you acknowledged Arabs and Jews.
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Under which time were the arabs "free people"??
They were under the Ottoman Empire.
Trans Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudia were and are all feudalic kingdoms. |
That is what they would have done IF they were free, geez.
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No, they fled their homes mostly, and some who posed threats were deported. |
My comment was sarcastic.
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The lands were captred to allow for better defence, and since it was apparant the Arabs won't settle on going back to the way things were before the deportation, Israel stayed there. |
"The lands were captured, and Israel stayed there"! That is the relevant part of your statement. Oh, the "deportation" bit is interesting though. As I have said, many Arabs were kicked off their land - "deported". I imagine you will tell me they deserved this though.
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How about Jews who were kicked off their land?
You know that trans-jordan occupied the west bank - well guess what, the oldest jewish comminities, who stayed there since the judaic kingdoms were living there.
And they were all kicked out if not massacared.
So now they are mostly settlers going back to their lands.
I would agree for jews to wave their rights once arabs do. |
I see you guys cannot avoid trying to justify what happened by pointing to the immoral actions of others. If this thread was about Trans-Jordan and it's past immoral actions, I would be condemning those actions. But the thread is not about Trans-Jordan...
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Check an encyclopedia.
Anyway, being a human being of culture you should really be better with such images  |
Sorry, I live in a land where comparing humans to monkeys can be a very sensitive matter
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Or are you going to blame me of being stereotypical towards animals? |
No, just questioning your analogy. Usually someone refers to a group of people who re-produce at a fast rate as breeding like rabbits. I never heard wild monkeys used for such an anaolgy.
No, until you show how much of the population resulted from immigration after 1948 and how much from the original group procreating, your analogy is unsupported.
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When Arab villages were used for gathering intell. and perpetrating assaults against jews, since, infact, the arabs and jews were in a war, there is every moral authority to secure land. |
Not keeping it.
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Instead of taking POWs we deported them. |
Which means the innocent were deported along with the guilty.
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Most of the non-combatants fled before the war. |
And after the war were they informed they could come back to their lands?
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You keep changing dates. |
What dates have I changed?
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Deportation of Arabs started in 1948. Before that, no arabs were kicked out, let alone touched by jewish residence. |
When the UN announced the creation of the Jewish state, they were announcing the land now belonged to the people running the Israeli state - the Jews. The Arabs could read the writing on the wall.
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Arab hostilities towards jews started in 1929, while jewish politicians were debating about the best way to hopefully form a state without conflict with Arabs. |
How is this relevant?
Nice story, but your generalizations don't cut it.
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Why the "obviously" not if most of them immigrated from jordan and syria? |
Because Natan used a generalization that distorts the fact not all Arabs had relatives in the Arab armies attacking Israel.
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That was the exact reason why they were told to flee.
Arab armies didn't want to hurt their relatives by mistake. |
The fact some did have relatives doesn't mean they "generally" did.
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Well it's the active majority that counts. |
Not to those who were non-combatants.
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It's a bit hard to ask a person whether he attacked you before, when he carries a rifle. And if he doesn't it's hard to tell if he's speaking the truth. |
It's so much easier just deporting them, huh?
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simple solution - every village that aids the arab-league is conquered. If there is resistance - they are deported. True, not all deported had resistance. Shameful, but in war nasty things happen. |
Finally the admission I was waiting for. Now, what attempts did Israel make following the war to right the wrongs they committed? Did they keep the land?
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Geez, you are thick. |
You're too kind.
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We didn't try to steal it. |
No, it just fell into your hands like manna from heaven.
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They wanted all the land, part of which we owned or was allocated to us since we had a majority. |
"They"? Try to use factual terms like, "some". Normally, expedient generalizations are to be tolerated, but not when they are used to justify criminal behavior.
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The land we bought was not stealing. |
Never said it was, nor was all the land bought.
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The land we were allocated was due to a majority in those areas. |
A majority before the immigration of Jews?
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We didn't claim that land at all. |
What do you think the creation of a nation-state called Israel means? It means a claim to land.
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Over?
The war was never over. We are in a state of a stalemate conflict with the Arab countries, and Jordan and Egypt refuse to take position for the rest. |
I don't see your Arab neighbors launching any invasions. They may not like you'll being there, but the wars to remove you have not spanned the entire ~50 years since Israel's creation.
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The lands were occupied by arabs, not owned. |
Hmm...sounds like what Europeans said about the Indians.
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Some lands were owned by us and occupied by arabs. And they worked for us and were paid for the lands, even though we bought it from landlords. |
So you guys owned the lands and they were the occupying force? I'll have to be thicker to buy that nonsense.
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In any case -> We said "you don't like the division, let's sitdown and talk"
They said "we don't like you, die!"
We had two options:
a) hope they are reasonable people and die
b) leave land which we owned, into which we poured money and made it good. That means we are stateless and have to rely on the kindness of others.
c) fight
so we fought. |
And used the fact some Arabs wanted you to leave and used violence to make you leave as an excuse to steal from other Arabs, and you guys are still using that excuse in this thread.
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I've bought the appartmen next to yours. You're liecing the appartment from the land lord. I buy it and suggest we reach our own agreement. You say "die fiend!" I kick you out. |
So the Arabs who owned land were only leasing it? Another nice story...
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Sirotnikov
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<--- Yes, It's a "kitty" in a boot.
Feb 2000
time: 07:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Berzerker
I understand that the British were the colonial power primarily responsible for setting up a "Jewish state" following WWII. |
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Stealing, and it began following WWII. |
You're throwing around baseless generalizations.
The brittish were anti-jewish.
The jews didn't "steal" land.
When formed, Israel didn't even pretend for the lands it was allocated. Ben Gurion's message was basically "the UN acknowledged we have a right to form a state, let's talk what areas can we have and on what terms".
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If the state of Israel constituted only those lands acquired by Jews through these means, then you'd be right (although their lands - Jewish owned lands - were stolen to form Israel) |
Grr?
How were those lands stolen from jews if jews lived in them?
Those lands weren't private property but rather "jewish" property. There were jewish funds who bought lands, and private people who bought it for jews.
The idea of private property was against jewish principles then, as while trying to set up a state, they cooperated and lived as a community instead of individuals.
The kibutzes are based on the same thing.
And still, in Israel there is no private land, but all land is owned by the state, and you leise it for 99 years or so, when you pay for land.
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But some of the lands taken to form Israel were owned by Arabs who did not sell to Jews. |
It's problematic, since mostly the land belonged to either the ottoman government or smaller landowners. Israeli funds bought lands from the ottoman govt. and from the landlords.
Until the brittish occupation, palestine was a very feudalic place. So those who lived there didn't own it.
The division suggested by the brittish and another by the UN were based on the local majority in each area. True, jews were a bit over allocated, but the declaration of independance didn't proclaim it illegal for arabs to live there, nor did it say the devision must be according to the suggestions.
Israel suggested negociations.
I don't get your logic that well. Tell me, if you in america own a piece of land, does it mean it is no longer american ? Is it Berzerkerland? No, it's still american land.
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That "confiscation" is called theft. |
Well there wouldn't be theft had the arabs were more reasonable and chose not to declare war instead of talking.
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But many Arabs were on the land before Arab armies attacked Israel and the Germans did not attack the Poles and Czechs to stop them from "confiscating" land owned by Germans. |
No arabs were kicked from the land they sat in prior to the war.
And the confiscating started AFTER the declaration of war. You keep ignoring that.
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If they took land owned by Germans, yes.
But that's not what happened. The Germans were an occupying force and expelled (albeit replaced by another occupying force - the Russians). |
You are a very confused man.
These ideas of owning things, while nice and do work well inside of democratic states, do not really apply to geo-political conflicts, merely since there is no agreed upon authority to decide, nor does it have the power to enforce decisions.
Americans are now sitting on lands which previosly were spannish, french, brittish and originally indian. Are they stealing their water and electricity?
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The Kurds have lived on that land for centuries. |
And jews exist in judea and israel since around 5000 years ago. Even 12,000 years ago if you consider abraham a proper jewish authority.
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If your land is taken away by virtue of that change, then it is theft. |
That means that the settlers can't be uprooted, since a peace deal which will set borders will be theft
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I never said they did, I said they began afterwards. |
Then you can't say that the war declared by Arabs was a result of theft, since infact there was no theft prior to the war.
Israel was declared without borders.
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Being forced off your land by someone else's war does not justify the "confiscation" of your land by the winner of that war. |
Fine, then in that case we own this land anyway.
We owned it from 5000 BC.
We were expelled by the assyrians, babilonians and romans.
Does that mean that Arab conquerors in the 7th century AD can come here, and claim this as theirs?
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None of which justifies the theft of their land. |
It might be difficult for you to understand, but in a not perfect world, in war you do not justified things.
Since we had our lives and safety to think about this was justified.
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I didn't say anyone was killed, I said they were faced with the predicament of death should they try to keep their land - a predicament that led them to flee. |
Israelis didn't threaten them to leave.
Those who were expelled weren't asked nicely or even threatened.
Those who fled did so because of the impending threat of war, declared by ARABS.
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But I would not be at all surprised if some Arabs refused to give up their land and were killed for resisting. |
I wouldn't be surprised if jews refused to give up their owned lands and thier right for a state, and fought to save themselves and thier state.
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When did I say the land should be turned over to Arafat? He isn't the legitimate owner either. |
Do you actually suggest that this land once again turn into a feudalic regime in which every patch of land is owned by a small group?
Maybe I misunderstood you, in which case I'm sorry, but if you are actuially suggesting that instead of setting up states, land would be devided into little bits among private owners - you are an idiot.
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KrazyHorse
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Macedonia
May 2001
time: 00:17
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The brittish were anti-jewish |
Really? They allowed jewish immigration into Palestine at a time when the majority of Palestine's population was against it. Explain how overriding the wishes of the majority in favour of jews is anti-jewish, please.
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And jews exist in judea and israel since around 5000 years ago. Even 12,000 years ago if you consider abraham a proper jewish authority |
Most of the current Jewish inhabitants of Israel are descended from people who moved out of the current borders of Israel something like a thousand years ago and who didn't live there again until the last half-century. They are in no way entitled to walk back in and claim proper authority over the land any more than I'm allowed to go back to Scotland, buy up some land, declare my property a sovereign nation and allow open immigration to my friends.
Last edited by KrazyHorse on 08-01-2002 at 03:45
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Sirotnikov
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<--- Yes, It's a "kitty" in a boot.
Feb 2000
time: 07:17
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quote:
Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Really? They allowed jewish immigration into Palestine at a time when the majority of Palestine's population was against it. Explain how overriding the wishes of the majority in favour of jews is anti-jewish, please. |
They infact didn't allow immigration.
They began by limiting it and went on to making it illegal.
That didn't stop us from coming though
However, no such restrictions existed towards arabs from neighboring areas.
And infact many of the arabs immigrated into Palestine following the jewish immigration, since the jews started drying up the swamps and set up farms and agriculture. They were shor in working hands, so arab immigrated and worked for them.
Also, jews were not allowed to carry weapons. No such prohibitions applied to the arabs -> many jews were harrassed and massacared by arabs.
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Most of the current Jewish inhabitants of Israel are descended from people who moved out of the current borders of Israel something like a thousand years ago and who didn't live there again until the last half-century. They are in no way entitled to walk back in and claim proper authority over the land any more than I'm allowed to go back to Scotland, buy up some land, declare my property a sovereign nation and allow open immigration to my friends. |
Palestine was not that heavily occupied. It was an area of swamps, rocks and deserts with small amounts of people living here.
Most of the arab inhabitants of palestine in 1947 were descended from, or were those who immigrated into palestine during the same time frame like jews, but in bigger numbers.
Why are they entitled to a "greater palestine" and we're not entitled to "Israel"?
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Natan
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New York State
Sep 2000
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Berzerker
Natan - |
First, let me state that I am not going to respond to everything you’ve said, because it some places it would be tangential or redundant to do so, and this is a very long thread which I’ve already lost several attempted posts in due to bugs. If you think I left out anything important, just say so.
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I understand that the British were the colonial power primarily responsible for setting up a "Jewish state" following WWII. |
No, the British supported the Arabs on the theory that military aid would secure continued hegemony for them over the Arab world. That’s why they trained, equipped, and aided the Arab legion.
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If the state of Israel constituted only those lands acquired by Jews through these means, then you'd be right (although their lands - Jewish owned lands - were stolen to form Israel). But some of the lands taken to form Israel were owned by Arabs who did not sell to Jews. |
You seem to be under the misconception that all land in Israel is owned by the government. This is simply false. The government owns most of the land because they inherited it from the British, who nationalized whatever land they were unsure of the status of (the Ottomans were bad record keepers) and then some more land was acquired from absentee landowners or the Jewish National Fund, which turned its land over to the government. But there are and always have been plenty of people, both Jews and Arabs, who own their own land.
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If these Germans acquired Polish and Czech land by virtue of Nazi occupation, you'd be right. But many Arabs were on the land before Arab armies attacked Israel |
This is exactly analogous: Germans attack Poland to liberate Germans in Polish corridor, afterwards, Poles kick out same Germans in Polish corridor. Arabs attack Israel to liberate Arabs in it, afterwards, Israel kicks many of them out. Neither Arabs nor Germans are acting in self-defense here.
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and the Germans did not attack the Poles and Czechs to stop them from "confiscating" land owned by Germans. |
The Arabs weren’t acting to prevent land confiscation either, since:
A) it hadn’t started yet
B) They weren’t opposed to it
I’m emphasizing this, along with the genocidal nature of the Arab invasion, because you keep emphasizing the idea of self-defense, which you apparently think the Arab invasion was an example of. If that’s not what you meant, I’m sorry.
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If they took land owned by Germans, yes.
But that's not what happened. The Germans were an occupying force and expelled (albeit replaced by another occupying force - the Russians). |
No, land which had been in Germany in 1939 and indeed had been German since the middle ages was taken by Russia and Poland and in most cases, the German inhabitants expelled. Köningsberg has always been a German city.
[QUOTE}
I didn't say anyone was killed, I said they were faced with the predicament of death should they try to keep their land - a predicament that led them to flee.[/QUOTE]
Who threatened them with death? The Arab armies, yes (although they didn’t mean it) but not the Jewish ones.
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But I would not be at all surprised if some Arabs refused to give up their land and were killed for resisting. |
Obviously it’s impossible for me to prove that no Jew ever killed an Arab who refused to leave his property, but if you have any evidence that such events were at all common (one psycho doesn’t prove anything) I’d be interested to see it.
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Statute of limitations is a legal concept invented by governments that often has nothing to do with honoring the rightful owner's claim to their land. And if any Indian can show his ancestors owned the land my house sits on, I will offer them money to buy the land or take my house and go elsewhere. But that isn't going to happen because Indians did not live on my little plot of land. Had I been alive 150 years ago while the land owned by Indians was being "confiscated", I would have opposed that policy, not defended it!
Two wrongs don't make a right... |
I disagree. If two wrongs don’t make a right, that means you shouldn’t kick someone who paid good money for their home off of it because of an earlier occupant who was kicked off. Saying that a statute of limitations is illegitimate would throw vast swathes of the Earth into more or less permanent economic turmoil.
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Were the Indians wrong for trying to rid their land of Europeans who were taking it? Whatever the motives of foreign Arab powers, the result was the "confiscation" of Arab land - Arabs who were not part of the foreign attempt to get rid of the Jews. |
Right, and since that was the result rather than the cause, the Arab invasion was not self defense.
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If that resolution "granted" land owned by Jews and Arabs to other Jews for the creation of Israel, then yes. |
Again, ceding the land to Israel did not automatically disenfranchise its owners. In fact, the resolution which created Israel (181) specifically called for the recognition of the rights of all, stating that Israel would adopt a Constitution:
“d. Guaranteeing to all persons equal and non-discriminatory rights in civil, political, economic and religious matters and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion, language, speech and publication, education, assembly and association; “
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If someone tries to steal your home, then "genocide" against the perpetrators is a valid form of self-defense. |
No, civillians cannot be killed because people of the same ethnic group did a bad thing.
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He did not say they would seek out Jews throughout the world to kill, only those Jews occupying the land of Arabs. |
But throughout the middle east they would be expelled and throughout Israel/Palestine, killed.
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If it was his intention to kill Jews who had a rightful claim to land in the Near East, then he was no better than any other thug. But his actions do not justify the confiscation of Arab lands. |
Subsequent Arab actions during the war dispel any doubt which anyone could have had about Azzam Pasha’s statements.
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Exactly! And did the UN resolution "granting" Jews the land for the state of Israel respect the property rights of Arab and Jewish landowners? |
Yes. You’ve obviously never read it.
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And who did this? Other Jews? You didn't respond to my point, only identified others who were wrongfully forced off their land. |
First the British government (to prevent an Arab uprising) and later the Arab armies.
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He cited an Arab population for 1947 and a more recent figure to claim they breed like wild monkeys while also claiming the Jews created an economic situation that attracted Arab immigrants. He needed to show how much of that increase was do to immigration and pro-creation by the original Arab population before making - "justifying" - his analogy. |
But conjecture served just fine in place of statistics when you wanted to show that drugs don’t cause crime. Yeah, I know, it’s a cheap shot.
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Not necessarily. If I am trying to steal your neighbor's home, you have the moral authority to help your neighbor defend what is his. However, if these Arab states also meant to remove or kill the rightful Jewish and Arab landowners, then they were in the wrong too. |
It would be difficult to prove “intent,” but certainly they disrespected people’s property rights.
“If someone tries to steal your home, then "genocide" against the perpetrators is a valid form of self-defense.”
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I don't care when it began, the fact is, it began. |
This is vital in determining whether the Arab invasion was self-defence.
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Now you're citing the ideological and economic reasons for the buying and selling of land? I never said no land was bought or sold, only that the claim that Jews bought the land in an effort to deny the fact some land was stolen was an inaccurate generalization. |
Again, it would be impossible to prove that no Jew ever stole land from an Arab before the 1948 war, but if you have any evidence of it ever happening, I’d again be quite interested in seeing it, for the same reason. To be frank, it quite simply didn’t happen.
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My neighbor's refusal to house me after you've stolen my home doesn't justify your actions. |
If he’s stolen the other half and helped me drag you out, I think he’d better give you some help before he starts accusing me.
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True, but not a right to steal the land or gun down Arabs not involved in the conflict. |
Agreed, naturally.
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What propaganda? That a UN resolution just handed over land owned by Arabs to the new state of Israel? |
Either that the Jews were killing all Arabs in their wake, or that Arabs who stayed would be punished while Arabs who fled (part of a scorched earth policy, apparently) would be rewarded.
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Why couldn't they return? |
Arab policy for decades, IIRC.
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Excuse me? The foreign Arab nations attacked on the heels of the UN resolution handing over Arab lands to create Israel. That was what I said, how you got something else from that is beyond me.
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I thought you had actually read the resolution before mouthing off about it.
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How so? The Poles did not "confiscate" the lands of Germans in 1939. |
And the Israelis didn’t confiscate the lands of Arabs in 1946.
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The UN resolution and the willingness of the British and Israeli governments to enforce it constituted the confiscation. |
Wrong on all counts.
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:17
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Sirotnikov - quote:
You're throwing around baseless generalizations.
The brittish were anti-jewish.
The jews didn't "steal" land. |
Following WWII which colonial power was in charge of that region? The British! And I don't care if you think they were "anti-Jewish", they were the colonial power behind establishing the state of Israel with the UN's approval. And that establishment constituted the taking of lands owned by Jews, Arabs, and others who lived there, I call that stealing.
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When formed, Israel didn't even pretend for the lands it was allocated. Ben Gurion's message was basically "the UN acknowledged we have a right to form a state, let's talk what areas can we have and on what terms". |
And this helps your argument? This is an admission that land there was to be taken to form Israel, and I have no reason to believe the rightful owners of land prior to the UN's proclamation mattered one bit. Was this Gurion going to go around asking all the land owners if they would sell or offer their land to create this state?
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Grr? How were those lands stolen from jews if jews lived in them? |
If other Jews used those lands to create Israel. The rightful owners (some?) may have allowed for their property to be used for that purpose, but neither you nor I know this for sure. I merely allowed for the possibility that if there were Jewish land owners who did not want their lands used for this purpose, they would have been among the victims.
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Those lands weren't private property but rather "jewish" property. There were jewish funds who bought lands, and private people who bought it for jews. |
Then the property belonged to those Jews who funded their acquisition - still private property.
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The idea of private property was against jewish principles then, as while trying to set up a state, they cooperated and lived as a community instead of individuals. |
If the Jews who owned the land voluntarily offered it to create the state, then that was not theft.
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And still, in Israel there is no private land, but all land is owned by the state, and you leise it for 99 years or so, when you pay for land. |
Even Arab lands? Hmm...
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It's problematic, since mostly the land belonged to either the ottoman government or smaller landowners. Israeli funds bought lands from the ottoman govt. and from the landlords. |
Ah, so Jews bought the land from a thief? The Ottoman's had no moral claim to the land either. But it is problematic nonetheless since those Jews who now own lands previously stolen aren't going to give them up any more than any other people who now occupy once stolen lands are going to return them.
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Until the brittish occupation, palestine was a very feudalic place. So those who lived there didn't own it. |
Feudalism doesn't negate the moral claims of landowners to their land. IF Arabs living their stole the land recently from Jews, then those Jews would have a moral claim to the lands they lost. Given the fact so many conquerors have criss-crossed that land, establishing rightful ownership is difficult.
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I don't get your logic that well. Tell me, if you in america own a piece of land, does it mean it is no longer american ? Is it Berzerkerland? No, it's still american land. |
The situation here is irrelevant to what is moral or right.
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Well there wouldn't be theft had the arabs were more reasonable and chose not to declare war instead of talking. |
You're not listening (reading). It doesn't matter if some Arabs declared war on Israel. That doesn't justify using lands owned by other Arabs to create a country any more than Arabs using Jewish lands to form a country.
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No arabs were kicked from the land they sat in prior to the war.
And the confiscating started AFTER the declaration of war. You keep ignoring that. |
Are you suggesting the UN resolution, Great Britain and Jews meant to create Israel by using only those lands owned by Jews willing to turn the land over for that purpose and not lands owned by others who did not want to hand over the property?
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You are a very confused man. |
And I'm better than some at debating people without using insults.
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These ideas of owning things, while nice and do work well inside of democratic states, do not really apply to geo-political conflicts, merely since there is no agreed upon authority to decide, nor does it have the power to enforce decisions. |
And this reveals my "confusion"? They - ideas of ownership - don't work well within democratic states because majorities have proven themselves quite willing to ignore property rights. And if Arab armies took your land, that would be a morally neutral act because it happened during a "geo-political conflict"? The authority rests with the rightful owner and the power to enforce decisions should too.
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Americans are now sitting on lands which previosly were spannish, french, brittish and originally indian. Are they stealing their water and electricity? |
The colonial powers - monarchs - had no moral claim to the land so lets deal with the people who did settle the land. If they took Indian land, then they stole it. If they bought it, they are the rightful owners. If it was uninhabited and unclaimed as was most of the land, then they were the rightful owners. Those who stole land stole the resources - water, etc - from the rightful owners. Besides, there is strong evidence caucasoid peoples were among the first peoples to settle N America.
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And jews exist in judea and israel since around 5000 years ago. Even 12,000 years ago if you consider abraham a proper jewish authority. |
And their property rights should have been respected just like the rights of Arab landowners, not confiscated because of someone else's war. But what source do you have from Abraham going back 12,000 years?
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That means that the settlers can't be uprooted, since a peace deal which will set borders will be theft |
No, only if the border change causes the owners to lose their land. A border change doesn't have to uproot anyone.
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Then you can't say that the war declared by Arabs was a result of theft, since infact there was no theft prior to the war. |
Depends on the implications of the UN resolution and the intent of Britain and the Jews. If the creation of Israel meant the taking - near future or immediate - of Arab lands, then that may have been a cause for the war. If the state of Israel was created with only those lands belonging to Jews willing to hand them over, and there was no intent to take Arab lands, then there can be no justification for war. While I'm not a fan of pre-emptive strikes, Israel did bomb an Iraqi facility to slow their progress toward nukes, so the Arabs may have been launching a pre-emptive strike to stop Israel from taking Arab lands.
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Israel was declared without borders. |
Quite a declaration, a meaningless one. But obviously some of Israel's Arab neighbors didn't see it as meaningless.
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Fine, then in that case we own this land anyway. We owned it from 5000 BC. We were expelled by the assyrians, babilonians and romans. |
Umm...not according to the Bible. God commanded the Israelites to go throughout that land smiting the people who lived there. Besides, this is not about returning lands to the alleged descendants of long lost peoples, it's about recent events and the morality or immorality of those events.
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Does that mean that Arab conquerors in the 7th century AD can come here, and claim this as theirs? |
Nope. The land belonged to the people living their, not any conquerors regardless of their identity.
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It might be difficult for you to understand, but in a not perfect world, in war you do not justified things. |
Are you admitting the taking of Arab lands was unjustified?
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Since we had our lives and safety to think about this was justified. |
In your mind, not mine. A threat to my life does not justify taking your land.
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Israelis didn't threaten them to leave. Those who were expelled weren't asked nicely or even threatened. |
Those who were expelled were not threatened? That would be quite a trick...
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Those who fled did so because of the impending threat of war, declared by ARABS. |
The identity of those about to attack doesn't mean the winner of the war gets the land of people getting out of the way.
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I wouldn't be surprised if jews refused to give up their owned lands and thier right for a state, and fought to save themselves and thier state. |
What does this have to do with the possibility that some Arab land owners were killed for not leaving or giving up their land?
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Do you actually suggest that this land once again turn into a feudalic regime in which every patch of land is owned by a small group? |
I'm suggesting that the rightful owners be allowed to keep their land.
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Maybe I misunderstood you, in which case I'm sorry, but if you are actuially suggesting that instead of setting up states, land would be devided into little bits among private owners - you are an idiot |
A "state" is nothing more than a group of people. If you and your neighbors decide to create a "state" with my property, then you have committed an immoral act. Goodbye.
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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:17
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Natan - quote:
First, let me state that I am not going to respond to everything you’ve said, because it some places it would be tangential or redundant to do so, and this is a very long thread which I’ve already lost several attempted posts in due to bugs. If you think I left out anything important, just say so. |
Okay, much of our debate has been covered in my debate with Sirotnikov anyway and I find I'm just repeating arguments to both of you.
quote:
No, the British supported the Arabs on the theory that military aid would secure continued hegemony for them over the Arab world. That’s why they trained, equipped, and aided the Arab legion. |
I'm sure the British didn't want to antagonise the Arabs, but where were the pro-Arab, anti-Jewish British when the shooting began? Where did the Jews get the weapons to fight with? If the Brits were really as pro-Arab and anti-Jewish as you guys claim, they would have opposed creating Israel, but they didn't help the Arabs in their war so I have to believe they were walking a thin line between angering the Arabs and remaining aloof enough so Israel could become a state.
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You seem to be under the misconception that all land in Israel is owned by the government. This is simply false. |
I didn't say the government owns all the land, only that the state of Israel was formed using other people's land (or claiming jurisdiction over it).
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The government owns most of the land because they inherited it from the British |
And the British were a colonial power who used force to take land owned by others. I don't have a moral claim to an inheritance from a father who got the money from robbing banks.
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then some more land was acquired from absentee landowners or the Jewish National Fund, which turned its land over to the government. |
And why were these "absentee" owners gone? Expulsion? The war?
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But there are and always have been plenty of people, both Jews and Arabs, who own their own land. |
Subject to those ruling the new government.
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This is exactly analogous: Germans attack Poland to liberate Germans in Polish corridor, afterwards, Poles kick out same Germans in Polish corridor. Arabs attack Israel to liberate Arabs in it, afterwards, Israel kicks many of them out. Neither Arabs nor Germans are acting in self-defense here. |
First, the Germans attacked to gain "breathing room" along with their Russian ally, not liberate Germans living in Poland. Second, Poland was already a nation-state with a long history, Israel was a new state being carved out of lands owned by Jews and Arabs.
quote:
The Arabs weren’t acting to prevent land confiscation either, since:
A) it hadn’t started yet
B) They weren’t opposed to it
I’m emphasizing this, along with the genocidal nature of the Arab invasion, because you keep emphasizing the idea of self-defense, which you apparently think the Arab invasion was an example of. If that’s not what you meant, I’m sorry. |
I'll agree the actions of neighboring Arab nations probably wasn't altruistic, but they didn't attack until after it became clear the creation of Israel was imminent.
Whether they attacked out of a desire to protect Arab hegemony or defend Arabs living on those lands is another matter. But a rational and sincere person would have sat down and talked with this Gurion about just what "Israel" meant to Arab landowners there and the Muslim holy sites.
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No, land which had been in Germany in 1939 and indeed had been German since the middle ages was taken by Russia and Poland and in most cases, the German inhabitants expelled. Köningsberg has always been a German city. |
Then the Germans might have had a right to invade to an extent. But the fact Germany and Russia carved up Poland doesn't support that motive.
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Who threatened them with death? The Arab armies, yes (although they didn’t mean it) but not the Jewish ones. |
When the shooting begins, the threat of death comes from those doing the shooting. Just how did the Israeli army go around securing villages without threatening or killing people who wanted them off their land?
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Obviously it’s impossible for me to prove that no Jew ever killed an Arab who refused to leave his property, but if you have any evidence that such events were at all common (one psycho doesn’t prove anything) I’d be interested to see it. |
I have none, that's just what happens when a war starts. Even with smart bombs and surgical strikes, innocent people are often in the way.
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I disagree. If two wrongs don’t make a right, that means you shouldn’t kick someone who paid good money for their home off of it because of an earlier occupant who was kicked off. Saying that a statute of limitations is illegitimate would throw vast swathes of the Earth into more or less permanent economic turmoil. |
There is a difference between a government announcing how the land it just seized during a war now belongs to that government because the "statute of limitations" invented by that same government doesn't allow the people who fled for their lives because of the war to return to claim their land and the alleged descendants of a people lone gone from a piece of land arriving to claim ownership. If there were Arabs who simply refused to return with no coercion shaping their decision, then that land could and should have been sold off.
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Right, and since that was the result rather than the cause, the Arab invasion was not self defense. |
Self-defense is not limited to the person being threatened, you can act in defense of someone else. The relevant question becomes: were Arab land owners threatened with harm or being subjected to a newly created foreign government (Israel) that would soon or immediately claim authority to make decisions about them and their land? Like I said, the attacking Arab nations probably didn't care much about the Arabs living there, not enough to wage a war anyway. Their motives probably had more to do with protecting Arab hegemony or preventing Arab holy sites from coming under Jewish control.
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Again, ceding the land to Israel did not automatically disenfranchise its owners. |
Maybe you meant something else here, ceding the land is a disenfranchisement of the owners.
quote]In fact, the resolution which created Israel (181) specifically called for the recognition of the rights of all, stating that Israel would adopt a Constitution:
“d. Guaranteeing to all persons equal and non-discriminatory rights in civil, political, economic and religious matters and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion, language, speech and publication, education, assembly and association; “[/quote]
Sounds all very noble, and probably better than the existing situation. However, if I was an Arab land owner and was just told my existence was now subject to the decisions of others, I would consider that a "disenfranchisement" of my authority to live my life as I choose. And if anyone ever needed to see just how meaningless a "constitution" with rights written into really is, just look at the USA.
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No, civillians cannot be killed because people of the same ethnic group did a bad thing. |
Agreed, I was referring to the perpetrators, not the innocent. I have no doubt the attacking Arab armies would have murdered Jews who had rightful claims to land there. But that works both ways, in favor of those Arab land owners who were not taking part in the war. I understand nasty things happen in war time, but efforts to correct the correctable wrongs need to be made when the shooting is done. Did Israel make a sincere effort to see to it that the lands of "absentee" Arab land owners seized during the war were returned?
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But throughout the middle east they would be expelled and throughout Israel/Palestine, killed. |
Then he was just another mass murderer (or would-be mass murderer, lol)
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Yes. You’ve obviously never read it. |
Hehe, nope.
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But conjecture served just fine in place of statistics when you wanted to show that drugs don’t cause crime. Yeah, I know, it’s a cheap shot. |
Which is why I was only kidding with him. But he could have shown the actual immigration numbers of Arabs entering Israel after 1948 since it is relevant to his analogy.
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It would be difficult to prove “intent,” but certainly they disrespected people’s property rights. |
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Example?
“If someone tries to steal your home, then "genocide" against the perpetrators is a valid form of self-defense.” |
Now now, you got that example from the same post in which I asked for the example (I think). Besides, the key word in there is "perpetrators". I was not referring to all Jews, only those who were guilty of stealing Arab lands.
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This is vital in determining whether the Arab invasion was self-defence. |
True, but doesn't discount a perceived threat. If someone is walking around your land with a gun, calling the police is an act of self-defense. And I have to believe (well, maybe not) that the Arab neighbors perceived a threat of some kind. But I'll admit my position is a bit dicey given the fact the Arabs attacked so quickly without an effort to resolve questions pertinent to their concerns.
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Again, it would be impossible to prove that no Jew ever stole land from an Arab before the 1948 war, but if you have any evidence of it ever happening, I’d again be quite interested in seeing it, for the same reason. To be frank, it quite simply didn’t happen. |
Individual acts of stealing would be irrelevant to my argument. I don't know enough about the history of the land before 1948 (or after for that matter), but would be interested in any decent books on the subject. It's what happened after 1947-8 that I'm looking at.
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If he’s stolen the other half and helped me drag you out, I think he’d better give you some help before he starts accusing me. |
Lol.
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Either that the Jews were killing all Arabs in their wake, or that Arabs who stayed would be punished while Arabs who fled (part of a scorched earth policy, apparently) would be rewarded. |
But one not need believe this nonsense to want to get out of the way. I don't know if Arabs bought this stuff, but they did know a war was brewing and they would be in the way if they stuck around.
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Arab policy for decades, IIRC. |
You mean the policies of neighboring Arab countries? Where did the Arab immigrants who entered Israel after the war come from?
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I thought you had actually read the resolution before mouthing off about it. |
No, just what you guys have said about it, sorry for mouthing off.
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And the Israelis didn’t confiscate the lands of Arabs in 1946. |
Not physically, but the groundwork was laid. When you and your friends create a "state" that has jurisdiction encompassing my land, that is an attack on my sovereignty.
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Wrong on all counts. |
When Lewis and Clark told Indians way out in Idaho that they were now subjects of the Great White Father back east, was that a confiscation of their lands? Of course not, but it was a claim of jurisdictional authority which means a loss of soveignty and may lead to a physical confiscation of land depending on the whim of those with that authority. That is the confiscation I am talking about.
In addition to, of course, the confiscations that occured during and after the war...
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:17
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Can we just sum this up as:
Pro-Israel: You're wrong.
Not pro-Israel: No, you're wrong.
However, it seems to me that a lot of the pro-Israeli's believe creation myths of the equivalent of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and throwing silver dollars across the Potomac.
There was a lot of nasty sh*t between the Israelis and the Arabs for a long time. The act of the creation of Israel necessitated doing some very evil things, and because no group likes to think of itself as evil, that part of Israeli history is glossed over, and the evil of their enemies is overblown.
Yes, there was some Arab immigration into Palestine as a result of Jewish immigration, however, in 1917, there was something like 600,000 Arabs and only 60,000-100,000 Jews, the majority of them being Sapharidic Jews, who had lived there for centuries. It would be more correct to call them Arab Jews, so there vast majority of people in Palestine were Arabs (this leaves out the Armenians, for whom I have no numbers).
By 1947, the populations were 1.5 million Arabs and 650,000 Jews. So, Arabs multiplied at a rate of 2.5 and Jews at a rate between 6.5 and 13. We can certainly attribute Jewish population increase to immigration, which would mean that the majority of Jews in Palestine were now of European decent. It is not as easy to say that the growth in Arab population was due to immigration, though doubtlessly this did contribute.
The major, noticable, change, however, would be the massive influx of Europeans into a non-European land. This is what is forgotten by all sides. What is at issue is an indigenous struggle against Euroepan colonialism which takes on an anti-Jewish character, because those immigrants were Jewish. We can see a similar struggle in every land into which Europeans flooded: the Americas, Algeria, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Africa, Kenya, India, and Israel.
This is only to be expected. If outsiders are coming into your country and doing well while you are not, you are going to be pissed. Why were the European Jews doing so well? Well, on the one hand they worked d*mned hard, but on the other, they were receiving the help of a lot of wealthy people in Europe. Naturally they are going to do better than people without such aid, and who also lacked the technical know how of many of the Jews who were coming in.
However, it is not true that Palestine was a wilderness of desert and swamps. Yes, part of the coutrny was undeveloped, just as much of the US was undeveloped in 1917. But there were olive groves and citrus groves and tended flocks of animals and some small cities.
Like any feudal state (which the Ottoman Empire was), much of the land was owned by absentee landlords. Farmers and herders worked lands that their families had worked for centuries, but that they did not own, just like in Russia. Unlike Western Europe, the serfs had never been freed, the land had never been redistributed, and so there is going to be some resistence when some pasty-skinned outlander shows up and kicks you off your ancestral home. Like just about every other place on the planet this has happened, the resistence eventually turned violent.
Mostly, however, the mess is the fault of the Brits, who promised Palestine (which at the time consisted of what is today, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan) to both the Zionist movement and the Arabs, while intending to keep it for themselves. The Arab revolt resulted in an Arab state, Syria, which contained Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon within it. It lasted over a year, when the French and Brits, having given themselves a mandate to rule these territories, invaded and carved up Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian penensula.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:17
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Now, Faisal, the leader of the Arab reistence against the Ottomans welcomed the Jews. He wanted Jewish help in developing Syria. Jewish money and Jewish technical expertise were seen as key in making a modern Syria. When Syria was established, King Faisal extended his welcome to the Jews of Europe, but his reign was sadly brief. The Brits gave him Iraq as a consolation prize.
The French took the Northern part of Syria, then split it into two parts, one with a majority Christian population (Lebanon) which they thought would be easier to control and Syria. The Brits took the Southern part and called it Palestine, which they gave to Faisal's brother, Abdullah. (The Hejaz was ruled by their father, but that ended in the 20s when the Brits tacitly encouraged the Saudis to invade and annex it.) Abdullah continued his brother's policy of openness to European Jewry. His desire was to rebuild the broken parts of Syria into one united whole, and to do this he needed Jewish help. (Britain and France never came to an agreement about the exact boundry near the Sea of Galilee, which becomes important later.)
However, being a Jewish minority in an Arab country did not appeal to the leaders of the Zionist movement. One, white people should never be ruled by dark people. Two, they wanted to build their own country, not someone else's. Three, they didn't want to be the minority in any country. Sure, it always starts out nice, but a little while down the road they're confiscating your land and expelling you yet again.
Appealing to the British Empire, the Jews got their wish, sort of. Britain split Palestine in two, along the Jordan River. Now there was East and West Palestine. Prior to the partitioning, there were Jewish settlements on both sides of the Jordan. Most Jewish settlement was in and around the Sea of Galilee. After the partitioning, East Palestine was closed to Jewish settlement and West Palestine was set aside for the Jews. (At some point in the 20s the name of East Palestine was changed to Transjordan, literally, Across the Jordan, and West Palestine just became Palestine.)
Britain, of course, was hedging its bets. Its standard colonial practice was to support local elites, but also to set the population against different parts of itself. If they are too busy fighting each other, then they won't be busy trying to fight you. That's theory, anyways. Didn't always work that way. Get the Arabs and the Jews to fight, and you've extended your mandate in the region indefinately.
Now, there were two main elite families in West Palestine, the Nashishibis, who were both pro-Brit and pro-Jew and the al-Husseinis, who were anti-Brit and anti-Jew. When the Mufti of Jerusalem died, the Brits appointed an al-Husseini to the position, hoping this would buy the family off. This would be standard British colonial policy, supporting local elites and setting the population against itself. It is from this that the Jewish-Arabic feud begins.
The new Mufti of Jerusalem then worked up the population against the Jews. Now, this is definately an antio-Jewish act, but essentially it was anti-colonial. Jews were the colonists, so it makes sense to be anti-Jewish. Only seven years later, the Mufti lead the Arab revolt against Britain. The over all stragety was to drive the Europeans out of Palestine. Just as Tupac Amaru and Techumseh were anti-white and anti-Christian, so were the Arabs of Palestine anti-Jewish and anti-British.
In order to appease the Arabs, who were more clearly a danger to Brit colonialism than the Jews, they agreed to restrict immigration, which of course, pissed of the Jews. Now the Brits have both sides mad at them as well as each other. From 1936 to 1948, the Brits were in a near constant struggle against one group or the other.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:17
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By no means do I want to minimize the danger that Jewish immigrants faced in Palestine. There were quite a number of massacres of kibbitzs and anti-Jewish riots in the larger cities. But again, I liken this to the massacres that any colonial group faces when immigrating to a country that already has inhabitants.
I don't blame the Indians for killing Americans (or Brits by the other Indians. ) I don't blame Algerians for killing French settlers, and so while I am disposed to be absolutely opposed to the massacring of Jews, it needs to be looked at in the context of anti-colonialsm rather than the context of anti-Semitism. Wehn you are on the recieving end of the axe, however, I think that distinction is of cold comfort.
In any event, like settlers the world over, the Jews created self-defense groups, ranging from the more benign (the Haganah) to the terrorist groups liek the Stern Gang and the Irgun. (Eventually, even the Haganah spawned a terrorist group, the Palmach, but that's much later.) While the Haganah concerned itself with defending the settlers from attack, the Irgun and the Stern Gang retaliated, which of course, spawned Arabic retaliation, and further Jewish retaliation, and you see where this is going and where it has gotten us, as this is the same policy Israel practices today. Hasn't worked in seventy years, but maybe it will work tomorrow.
From 1936 to 1939, the Arabs of Palestine revolted against British rule. It was a nasty war, and a lot of Arabs got killed and Jerusalem got bombed. But, and this is important, after 1939, Arab resistence collapsed, and didn't resurface until the UN partitioned Palestine against the will of the majority of its inhabitats!
From 1939 until the Brits, left, however, they faced another enemy, the Jews. Ironically, it was because the Brits wouldn't left the Jews form organized military companies to help fight the Nazis. The Brits, probably rightly, felt that after the war these militias would be a problem (and they were). The Jews formed them anyways, but rather than fighting the Nazis, they got sent off to guard India. The Jews also demanded tha Palestine be opened to Jewish refugess trying to escape the Nazis, but the Brits having just put down Arab resistence had no desire to rekindle it.
And so Jewish terrorists began waging war against Britain. Ironically, this makes them co-belligerents of the Nazis. However, it was the Arabs the Nazis were trying to aid when they sent agents to Palestine. Palestine was probably the only place where the Nazis met with zero success, however (cuz they got caught).
After the end of WWII, returning Jewish vets began to wage a war of independence against Britain. By 1947, half of all British troops in the world were stationed in Palestine, fighting the Jewish terrorists. Finally Britain had enough and wanted out. They went to the UN and said, "Come up with a solution that is acceptable to both sides." The result was the Partition Plan, which, it needs to be stated, was only a proposed solution. On its face, it fails Britain's requirements and was therefore invalid.
Arab reaction to the plan was a revolt. From November 1947 to March 1948, the Arabs and Jews fought it out. Many Arab communities were neutral, though that didn't always protect them (Dier Yassin and others). Jewish communities were also massacred.
The UN partition plan wasn't really acceptable as it was to either side. It left a ridiculously convulted Jewish state (with a significant Arab population) that was mostly Arab land. Jerusalem was supposed to be an open city. The Arabs rejected it out of hand and the Zionists accepted it, intending to modify the final boundries.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:17
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So now we're down to that critical year, 1948.
The massacre at Dier Yassin happened, not, as some claim, that it was supporting Arab resistence. Rather, it was an Arab settlement overlooking the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Well, it's not important to have complete control of this road since neither it, nor Jerusalem were going to be part of Israel . . . unless they were going to be part of Israel. Despite Israelis declaration that it would accept the boundries established by the Partition Plan, even before the Arab invasion, they had already gone beyond those borders and were trying to incorporate new areas. Dier Yassin happened in March.
The Jews had a state. The Arabs of Palestine had no state. What happens to a land without a state? It gets one, imposed upon it, by invaders. All of the surrounding Arabs states had designs on Palestine. All of the surrounding kings had dreams of Greater Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. Of course, naked land grabs are never looked kindly upon (uless you're doing the grabbing). So, rather than calling it what it was, these Arab invasions to partition Palestine were proclaimed to be a war of liberating Palestine from the Jews.
Despite claims that the very existence of Israel was threatened, and despite the calims of the leader of one insignificant military group, there was no effort to force the Jews from Palestine. Ben Gurion's claim of 23 million against 700,000 is very inspiring, but the truth is that Jewish troops were never outnumberd and were much better trained than any Arab group with the exception of the British armed and trained Arab Legion.
Now the Arab Legion was a military unit of Transjordan. The Jewish Authority was also aware that it could probably handle every Arab group except the Arab Legion (and actual combat shows this was the case, all the other Arab groups were thrown out of Palestine altogether). The interesting thing is, the Arab legion never attacked the Israelis, but it did fight them. The forts along the road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were attacked by the Israelis (and repulsed) and the Arab Legion in Jerusalem also fough the Israelis. Now, as I wrote, Jerusalem was supposed to be an international city, so why were the Israelis fighting in places they weren't supposed to be? Because they, like everyone else, were tyring to conquer Arab Palestine.
Back to The Jewish Authority and the Arab Legion. Knowing that the Arab Legion was the only real military threat to the settlers, they dealt with them politically. Abdullah was still king in Transjordan, and he had never given up on his idea of reuniting Syria. Nor had he ever given up on his hope of having the Jews as part of Syria. He even offered the Jewish Authority and automatic half of all the seats in the Parliament as an incentive to join. The JA and Abdullah made an alliance to divide up Palestine. Israel would take it's alloted part, and Jordan would take the Arab part. Neither country had any desire to see an independent Arab state there, as it would ruin any future plans of incorporation. Golda Mier was dispatched to Aman to make this agreement. Abdullah stuck to it, the the JA did not.
None of the other Arab countries wnated to see Jordan get all the land. Half of the troops that Egypt sent to Palestine went to fight the Jordanians. Lebanon merely invaded Arab West Galilee and mostly sat the war out. Syria did attack an abandoned Jewish setttlement, but mainly they moved into areas that France had previously claimed as part of Syria (the disputed region on the Eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee). Iraq, being ruled by Abdullah's brother, Faisal (remember him?) sent troops to help Jordan. Only Egypt seriously attacked Israeli territory, and that was with bombers (Syria and Lebanon each attacked, but only half-heartedly and half-*ssed). This isn't to say that Jewish settlements outside the Jewish partition weren't attacked. They were, and some were massacred. There was a major Egyptian assault near Ashdod, but this was in the Arab sector.
Every major battle in the war took place outside the Jewish partition! It can be claimed that the best defense is a good offense, but that can only be seriously counted against the Egyptian thrust near Ashdod. Everywhere else, Arab troops were attacked. (Okay, Moshe Dyan did scare off an Syrian tank column with a one rusty howitzer, like I said, half-hearted and half-arsed.) Furthermore, after the first truce, Israel was always the instigator of new violence. There were four truces in 1948, and Israel broke them all. Israel even invaded the Sinai pennesula, and only left when the UN finally threatened Israel to back off.
Now, part of the UNs terms of recognizing Israel was that Israel agree to allow the Arab refugees back in to the new Israeli state. Israel did agree, but it has never allowed that to happen. Israel has already agreed to allow the Palestinians home. It just won't do it.
So, why did the Arabs flee Palestine? One side says it's because the Arab leaders told the Arabs to flee, and this did account for part. The other side said it's because because of Israeli threats, and this also accounts for part. Mainly, however, it was because there was a friggan' war going on and you get the frell out of the way when it comes towards you!!!!! Most refugees left the war zone because it was a war zone, just like in Afganistan and Kosovo and every other friggan' war zone. If you stay, you get killed, so you don't stay. You leave and come back when the fighting's moved on, only in this case, the refugees can't come back.
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Eli
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Israel
Jul 2000
time: 07:17
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Good posts Chegitz. You explained what happened very well, from an Arab point of view, which cannot be ignored. And, according to their point of view, which says that this land belongs to them and only to them, they have the full right to fight against the European colonists. Though IMO everything could be much better if not the incitement started by Haj Amin al-Husseini.
But why dont you try to rewrite this from a different point of view? And a fundamental princip of this point of view is that Eretz Yisrael "from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates" belongs to the Jews and only to the Jews. The connection of the Jews to the Land of Israel is not smaller than the connection of the Arabs that lived here(today the Palestinians) to the land. And of course try not to ignore 2000 years of persecution.
I'm sure that just like your previous posts helped me to understand better their position, this will help others to understand better the compromises that the Jews did.
So, rethink about what you wrote, but this time remember 2000 years of persecution and the unquestioned right of the Jews for this land.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:17
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It's not really an Arab viewpoint, at least not a non-socialist Arab viewpoint anyways. Yes, I might hear Edward Said say such things, but not someone who supports Hamas. Sadly, I think Hamas's view carries more weight in the Arab world than Said's.
On the other hand, the New Israeli historians would also be just as likely to say what I wrote (not least because what I wrote is based largely on their work). But this argument predates them, and was put forward by commie Jews like Maxime Rodinson and others. Natan's posted a link (in the Israel Shahak thread) to a page that pretty well explains the Trotskyist viewpoint towards Israel (which is labeled as anti-Israel, which is fair, because we are, but we are also anti-Palestine, anti-France, anti-USA, etc. we're opposed to all states and countries).
Do Israelis have legitimate security concerns? Absolutely. The Palestinian terrorists have gone beyond the pale in targetting civilians (but what can you expect from right-wing nut jobs?). Israel would be absolutely remiss in failing to protet its citizens from such a threat. However, any non-Israeli-propaganda-based-view of Israeli history shows that there were plenty of opportunities for Israel to do the right thing and chosing not to do so. I honestly do not believe that that you'd have this problem today if Israel had lived up to it's obligations and allowed the Palestinians refugees back into Israel in 1948-9.
As for the Jewish dream of returning to Israel? I have absolutley no-porblem with it what so ever. I think Jews should be able to go anywhere they want in the world. Yeah, it's unrealistic. I also think Arabs should be able to go anywhere they want. Everyone should be able to go where ever they want.
Hell, most of the time it was Jews themselves that kept them from returning to Palestine. Up until the establishment of Israel, religious (European) Jews were opposed to the project since only the messiah could reestablish Israel. It was secular (and often socialist) Jews who established Israel, and they haven't been around too long. Sephardic Jews probably could have returned to Palestine long before they were forced to, but why bother when they had it good where they were? Heck, the Iraqi Jewish community was the largest in the world for millenia.
Okay, addressing some (but not all) of your points. The concept of Eretz Yisrael (Greater Israel for the rest of you). Exactl when does the idea that Eretz Yisrael encompass the land between the two great rivers enter Judaism? Late nineteenth century, with Theodor Herzl. It's not an ancient dream, nor even a widely accepted one. It has no histoical basis what so ever. At it's greatet extent, the Kingdom of Israel under Solomon wasn't much bigger than Israel is today. And it didn't last beyond his death.
A people's connection to a land is always, in the last instnace, emotional, and so the Jews have as much right to the land of Palestine as the Palestinians. I've never said otherwise. It's not a matter of compromise or not. Israeli compromises are generally the kind of compromise that a mugger makes when he holds you at gunpoint and agrees to share your wallet with you. Sure, he could take it all, but stealing less isn't a compromise.
It's not a compromise when you agree to something and reneg. It's not a compromise to kick someone out of their house and agree to let them live in the garage. A compromise would be a joint Jewish-Arab Palestine, but that's a real compromise instead of a false one, so Israel will never even consider it.
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Natan
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New York State
Sep 2000
time: 00:17
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Berzerker: What you are know saying is that a border change is theft, and I think that's absurd. Also, it's quite clear that the British sided with the Arabs - they helped enforce an embargo on sending arms to Israel but armed (and trained) the Arab legion. The single largest source for Jewish weapons was the former east block (this spurred fears that Israel would go red) although the weapons came from a lot of strange places. Others included:
raids on British convoys
weapons bought up in various parts of the world from armies which were junking old equipment
weapons smuggled in by what were more or less criminals
Chegitz: Excellent summary, I'd like to argue with a few points though:
Firstly, your characterization of Sephardic Jews as "basically Arab." I think that both the sephardic Jews and their Muslim neighbors viewed the difference between them as deeper than simple religion in the sense we think of it now. There was a deep feeling in both Muslim and minority communities that Jews and Christians were inherenently un-Arab, because of their commercial and political cooperation with the west. Sephardic Jews were heavily involved in trade and in Algeria, assimilated entirely into the french community; Christians relied on outside protection to exercise rights they had never had before, such as by ringing church bells and holding specifically Christian processions on holidays. This is why outbreaks of anti-Christian and anti-Jewish violence were relatively common in nineteenth century Syria, and Christians and Jews behaved not as a minority trying to gain acceptance but as people trying very much to become part of the west. In fact, the major Arab nationalist doctrines, despite being invented by Christians, often emphasized the connection but Islam and Arabism - Michel Aflaq, founder of the Baath (the most successful Arab nationalist party) stated that the Arabs were made a nation by virtue of God's choosing them through the Muhammed and the Qur'an. Nasser put the Qur'anic formulation of the bismillah (in the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful) on all government stationary. So this characterization is not entirely correct.
Secondly, I disagree with the statement that the Zionists rejected the idea of Arab rule because they thought that “white people should not be ruled by dark people.” This is simplifying a complicated issue into a simple racial formula, which is not really correct. The Labor (socialist) Zionists truly believed that they were helping the Arab inhabitants of the country and many of them believed that they would ultimately create a bi-national state. The Jabotinsky revisionists (anti-socialist) Zionists, despite their hard-line view to the Arabs, were actually treating them more equally since their doctrine held that Arab resistance to Zionism was the natural reaction of any people, and in fact, the revisionists seemed to have little interest in talking about backward Arabs or Sephardim needing Zionist (Ashkenazi) help.
Some nitpicks:
You’re description of Zionism implies that the immigration was mostly motivated by ideology or perhaps economics. This isn’t really true. The real immigration was caused almost entirely by Jews fleeing persecution in Europe. The first major wave took place after the a series of pogroms in Russia, the second after Hitler took power, and the third after the War. Jews were trying to get out of Europe, either to Britain, to America, or to Israel, and I think that the view of the Jews as refugees is at least as signifigant as the view of them as foriegn colonizers.
I hate to turn this into just another ME thread, but I would have to respond to your parallel between the Irgun and Israel today by noting several big differences:
Firstly, Arab opposition to Israel has taken on a much more distinctly anti-semitic tone since that time, and secondly, you must at least acknowledge that Israel’s actions can be viewed as fighting Islamist terror rather than maintaining a colonial enterprise. But this is for another thread.
The next thing I take issue with is your description of the 1948 war. Firstly, the reason that the Jewish forces were operating in the area of Deir Yassin was that the Arab armies were trying to prevent supplies from reaching Jews in Jerusalem. Convoys carrying food and even ambulances were attacked.
Next, I disagree with you’re saying that Israel couldn’t have lost the 1948 war. As Trever Dupuy’s Encyclopedia of Military History (great reference, you should all buy it) says, Israel won the 1948 war because individual Kibbutzim were able to defend themselves against Arab armies without any real military experience and with miniscule equipment. This was not inevitable, as can be seen by the several Kibbutzim which were in fact destroyed. Furthermore, what must be remembered in this and subsequent Arab-Israeli wars is that the signifigance of the threat to Israel is far greater than the chance of defeat. That is to say, even if Israel was 95% sure of victory in 1948 (which I feel confident in saying it wasn’t) that still meant a 5% chance of total destruction and probable genocide.
You say that all but one of the major battles were fought outside the area Israel was alloted. This is not completely correct. Firstly, I think it ignores the Iraqi-Syrian invasion of the Hula valley. Secondly, it pretends that Jerusalem was or could have been an international city, which once the fighting started, it clearly could not have been. Again, the Arab siege of West Jerusalem had to be lifted unless Israel was to accept the ethnic cleansing of the Jewish population of Jerusalem. Also, I'm going to have to disagree with the idea that Israel had an agreement to divide Palestine with Abdullah until I see a real source for it - the subsequent viscious fighting suggests otherwise.
Some points on refugees:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC the Arab states did not want the refugees to return anyway, since they felt it would be a de facto recognition of Israel
Israel agreed to allow the original refugees back, not their five million grandchildren.
Many, many, people were made refugees in the 1940s. Tens of millions of them. The Palestinians are the only ones who people say must be allowed back now, three or four generations later.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Natan Also, I'm going to have to disagree with the idea that Israel had an agreement to divide Palestine with Abdullah until I see a real source for it - the subsequent viscious fighting suggests otherwise. |
Well, I found the book! Yay! How Israel Was Won: Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Baylis Thomas. I should be able to post his sources tonight and more detail about the pact itself.
As for what and who constitutes an Arab, that's a tricky question I always hate to dive into. Secular Arab nationalism certainly didn't rely on a defination of God as to who and what they were, and given the vast number of religious minorities in the area I think it's difficult to say the Sephardim weren't Arabs. They spoke Arabic and were racial indistinct from Arabs. Despite the claims of anti-Semites and the demands of the religion, Jews aren't always that exclusive about who they married, and within a several generations are indistinguishable from others. Indian, Japanese, Black and European Jews certainly look little like the Sephardim. So I think it's fair to characterize Sephardic Jews as Arabs. That's judgement call on my part, and feel free to disagree and take me to task.
As for why the Zionists rejected minority status in an Arab country, I'm speaking more about the leaders of the Zionist movement, who stayed in Europe longer than the immigrants did. "A land without a people for a people without a land," says something of what the Zionist movement felt about the inhabitants of Palestine, that they were of little consequence. Further, the fact that many of the immigrants were socialist doesn't really mitigate any feelings of white superiority. Socialists of that period were actually rather racist by our standards (one of the comments made about the Communist International was that it was the first time colonial comrades were made to feel like equals by their European comrades). (Don't know enough about Jabotinsky to comment.)
You are correct, as a summary I left out some important details, like the state of European anti-Semitism. Herzl, IIRC, was motivated by the Dreyfuss Affair, and in Russia absolutely horrible things were going on. In both France and Austria, the level of anti-Semitism was on the rise. But I see this more as a force for the establishment of Zionism. Many of the Jews who emigrated from Europe to Israel were young, idealistic students. Not so many refugees made it there. Most of them headed for New York.
I don't fault anyone who wants to go there. Heck, living in one of the world's oldest cities has massive appeal to me. I would love to live in Jerusalem. (But I'm a freak--which is one reason I'm planning on moving to St. Augustine next year, oldest European city in the US, and only a half hour South. But that's only five hundred years old. Imagine 8,000 years in Jericho! Talk about a connection to humanity.)
You are correct, the Arab states did not want the refugees to return home. Nor do they want them in their own countries. The cynical bastards ruling the Arab world have manipulated and abused and used the Palestinian refugees for their own ends. As long as they exist, those governments can point at evil Israel and distract their people from the brutality and corruption in their own governments.
It might be helpful to look at the Zionist-Palestinian conflict as a civil war. I think if both sides treated it that way, they might be able to find a way to start bridging the gaps and healing the hatred caused by 70 years of warfare. Israelis and Palestinians are more alike than they are different. Similar language, simliar religion, attachment to the same piece of land, and the whole world hates them and doesn't want them around.
Last edited by chegitz guevara on 09-01-2002 at 08:27
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Sirotnikov
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<--- Yes, It's a "kitty" in a boot.
Feb 2000
time: 07:17
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Che, nice posts. Haven't read them all actually. If you could put them all and more into a large text file and send me so I could print it and read it I would love it. Reading from the screen isn't fun.
At a light glance the posts seem ok. pretty reasonable. even quite good. Reminds me of things I read, so it's probably not all wrong and biased
Understand, I don't claim to be objective. I try to be as close to objectivity as I can, but I'm still biased a bit. It's only natural and normal. I also don't see it as my duty to be objective. My ideal machiavelian duty would be to lie my guts out. I don't do that though since I don't want to be such a person and even if I were such, it would only hurt my interests since you'd lose faith in me.
The pals do lie bluntly. That's one of the things that enrages me and makes me hate their leadership more with each day.
They are like the communists which used to make newsreals calling black white and white black. They distort and invent things. They deny things without skipping a heart beat.
You're a very intelligent and fair person. It's a shame IMO that you sometimes are too trusting of people with opinions similar to yours. Most extreme lefties I met were hardly as knowledgable as you are, and had more extreme ideas about Israel. Noam Chomsky IMO is a liar and quite a bit a raging paranoid lunatic. I also read he has connections with neo-nazi organizations in europe who are more than happy to publish his words, blaming america and israel of most of the world's faults.
When making a judgement, please take Eli's message into account.
[FLASH][BE BIG]
You are correct, the Arab states did not want the refugees to return home. Nor do they want them in their own countries. The cynical bastards ruling the Arab world have manipulated and abused and used the Palestinian refugees for their own ends. As long as they exist, those governments can point at evil Israel and distract their people from the brutality and corruption in their own governments. [/BE BIG][/FLASH]
Ok, now that we're done with that:
MarkG, Che says you're an evil greek. I suggest you delete all of his posts.
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Natan
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New York State
Sep 2000
time: 00:17
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Well, I found the book! Yay! How Israel Was Won: Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, by Thomas Baylis. I should be able to post his sources tonight and more detail about the pact itself. |
Good.
quote:
As for what and who constitutes an Arab, that's a tricky question I always hate to dive into. Secular Arab nationalism certainly didn't rely on a defination of God as to who and what they were |
And Arab nationalism was never successful except where it contained at least some religious component.
quote:
and given the vast number of religious minorities in the area I think it's difficult to say the Sephardim weren't Arabs. They spoke Arabic and were racial indistinct from Arabs. Despite the claims of anti-Semites and the demands of the religion, Jews aren't always that exclusive about who they married, and within a several generations are indistinguishable from others. Indian, Japanese, Black and European Jews certainly look little like the Sephardim. So I think it's fair to characterize Sephardic Jews as Arabs. That's judgement call on my part, and feel free to disagree and take me to task. |
We can discuss the nature of race and Jews in another topic, but let me summarize by saying this: If Sephardi Jews are to be viewed as Arabs, then the conflict was not Europeans vs. Arabs but Jewis vs. Muslims. Sephardi Jews were fervent Zionists, often more so then Ashkenazim, and it was more or less accepted that non-Muslims were not completely Arab, that they were part western. Sephardi immigration to Israel took place on a smaller scale (mostly because Sephardim were such a small percentage of the world Jewish population) then Ashkenazi immigration before 1948, but it was signifigant. Yemeni/Sephardi Jews made up about 25-30% of the Irgun's members, possibly more, and the history of Sephardi Jewish Zionism is often overlooked.
quote:
As for why the Zionists rejected minority status in an Arab country, I'm speaking more about the leaders of the Zionist movement, who stayed in Europe longer than the immigrants did. "A land without a people for a people without a land," says something of what the Zionist movement felt about the inhabitants of Palestine, that they were of little consequence. |
I think it says even more about how disconneced the Zionist movement often was from reality - Herzl had worked out the details of the Jewish state's future legal system and its opera houses before even securing the land or citizens for it, eastern european Zionists were only marginally better. But it certainly does say something about how Europeans viewed non-Europeans.
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Further, the fact that many of the immigrants were socialist doesn't really mitigate any feelings of white superiority. Socialists of that period were actually rather racist by our standards (one of the comments made about the Communist International was that it was the first time colonial comrades were made to feel like equals by their European comrades). (Don't know enough about Jabotinsky to comment.) |
I'm not in the business of being an apologist for the Labor Zionists (I think a lot of them were crackpots) but what I wanted to point out is that calling their condescending attitude the idea that "brown people shouldn't rule white ones" is an oversimplification which suggests a truly racial/"biological" objection to Arab rule, whereas what really bothered them was not the color of the Arabs' skin (half the ashkenazi Jews I know could pass for Palestinians) but that their culture and ideas were not western - they didn't want to exterminate or dominate the Arabs (at least they didn't think of it that way) they wanted to "help" them to "develop" western values.
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You are correct, as a summary I left out some important details, like the state of European anti-Semitism. Herzl, IIRC, was motivated by the Dreyfuss Affair, and in Russia absolutely horrible things were going on. In both France and Austria, the level of anti-Semitism was on the rise. But I see this more as a force for the establishment of Zionism. Many of the Jews who emigrated from Europe to Israel were young, idealistic students. Not so many refugees made it there. Most of them headed for New York. |
Only a very few of the immigrants were motivated by Zionist fervor. In fact, fairly quickly you can see Labor Zionists complaining bitterly about immigrants not motivated by ideology. Basically, Jews left for wherever they could, and those who couldn't reach America, for whatever reason, went to some other country, often Israel. My great-grandfather came to this country, but once new immigration restrictions were in place, he sent his relatives in Belarus tickets to go to then mandatory Palestine. As it happens they decided to stay (which turned out to be a terrible mistake) but many others went. By the 1940s, most of the Jews were city dwelling immigrants who had fled Russia or Germany. Much like the bedouin in Arab society, the ideological kibbutzniks have a bigger image, and perhaps bigger influence, then other Israelis, but it doesn't mean that they're more numerous.
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You are correct, the Arab states did not want the refugees to return home. Nor do they want them in their own countries. The cynical bastards ruling the Arab world have manipulated and abused and used the Palestinian refugees for their own ends. As long as they exist, those governments can point at evil Israel and distract their people from the brutality and corruption in their own governments. |
Agreed. I might add though that there is the limited exception of Jordan.
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It might be helpful to look at the Zionist-Palestinian conflict as a civil war. I think if both sides treated it that way, they might be able to find a way to start bridging the gaps and healing the hatred caused by 70 years of warfare. Israelis and Palestinians are more alike than they are different. Similar language, simliar religion, attachment to the same piece of land, and the whole world hates them and doesn't want them around. |
Yes, but it shouldn't be viewed as a civil war along the lines of America's or Britain's, but on the lines of Yugoslavia's or Rwanda's. In the end, the actual differences between people often tend to be less important than what they percieve - here in America, people of all ethnic groups get along fairly well, whereas in Rwanda, despite sharing language, religion, and culture, Hutus and Tutsis can't live together. The legacy of distrust and hatred is in and of itself a signifigant difference.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:17
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You know, Siro, you could always cut and past them into a text file yourself. 
BTW, some Pals lie bluntly, and it does disgust me, and if there were any Pals on this board, I'd take them to task for it.
I used to date this gorgeous Egyptian woman. Wow, face outta hyroglyphics drops down on my feet and praise Heaven on high I can't believe it she wants to have sex with me beautiful. . . . She was a lousy lay, though. She lived in the Sinai, twelve years under Israeli occupation. She always used to say she hated all Jews for what they did, but I kept getting on her case about that, pointing out all Jews weren't responsible for the occupation. I don't think our relationship was long enough for me to make an impression, but her husband coming home from Army training necessitated cutting it short. He was assigned to guard the embassy in Kuwait, and one year later, Hussein invaded. I know, it's a bit extreme to get rid of a girlfriend but what can I say? I was a bastard. 
Where were we? Oh right. Do your own work, cut and paste the posts yourself.
Natan, okay, Thomas' sources for the pact are Avi Shlaim, Collusion across the Jordan, 1988 and The Politics of Partition, 1990. Both are Columbia University Press. On page 115 of Collusion is a transcript the summary of the meeting that Elias Sasson (an Israeli official) gave to Moshe Sharret (Israeli Foreign Minister). See also Howard Sachar, A History of Israel, From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, vol 1 1986, (page 322) Knopf, and Simha Flapan, Birth of Israel, 1987, (page 39), Pantheon. There's some stuff in Flapan about US knowledge of meetings between Israeli and Transjordanian officers on May 1, 1948. (pages 177, 253, n. 28). There's also something about that in Mitchel Cohen's Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945-1948, (Princeton University Press, 1982, page 374).
From Thomas, How Israel Was Won, pags 50-51.
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The Palestinian-Arab state proposed by the UN partition plan was, on its own, neither economically nor militarily viable. Therefore it constituted tempting spoils for both Transjordan and the Jews once Britain withdrew. Of course, the Jews could not formally take over the UN-designated Arab state-to-be while at the time offically supporting a two-state solution. Moreover, on a practical level, it would have been impossible for a Jewish state to gulp down an Arab population more than double its size.13 Thus, the best immediate solution was to allow King Abdullah of Transjordan to annex the Palestine areas otherwise designated by the UN for the Palestinian-Arab state. . . .
On November 17, 1947, a week before the UN was to vote on the partition, Golda Meir and King Abdullah made a secret mutual nonagression pact: In exchange for Transjordan's noninterference with the establishment of the Jewish state, the Jews would allow Transjordan's territorial aquisition of Arab Palestine. . . . Meir and Abdullah agreed that their "common enemy" was the grand mufti of Jerusalem (Haj Amin el Husseini), the fanatical leader of Palestinian nationalism.16
13 Ben-Gurion kept open the route for future expansion into Arab areas by refusing to define the boundries of the Jewish state when declaring independent statehood.
16 The mufti was the common enemy because of his absolute refusal to make any accomodation to the Zionist cause. He was exiled by the British in 1938, fled to Germany and collaborated with the Nazis. His supporters threatened rival Palestinian leaders seeking accomodation and were behind the assassination of King Abdullah. |
Last edited by chegitz guevara on 09-01-2002 at 20:18
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Eli
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Israel
Jul 2000
time: 07:17
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Meanwhile, 2 Palestinians attack a guard post near an Israel Kibutz in Israel proper. Killing 3-4 Israelis and themselves.
But of course, when Israel destroys a few empty buildings again, it will be blamed for escalating the situation.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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I guess my opinion is simple (outside of saying Berz and Che are right).
I'm really really sorry the Jews were persecuted. Really I am. But it frankly doesn't matter how many were killed by Hitler - they don't deserve their own nation just because of that. It's preposterous. Otherwise, Muslims should have their own nation, as should Christians, as should Buddhists, and any other religious group that has been persecuted.
But why stop there? Let's give blacks their own nation, because of slavery. Let's merge all the Asians into one nation, because hell, they got **** on for years. And you can't forget the Native Americans - persecution hundreds of years ago on land they didn't claim to own OBVIOUSLY entitles them to a chunk of the US today.
But then again, Hitler sure persecuted Slavs, maybe there should be a Slavic nation. And just for kicks, let's make a nation for everyone Stalin sent to the gulags. And Spain and Portugal sure weren't very nice to the Indians in South America - maybe everyone who can claim Incan descent should get a brand spanking new Incan nation.
Oh, no? You DON'T think all those groups should have their own nation state? Oh, silly me - I forgot. Jews are a special case because they are, well, Jews. Can't afford to piss them off, can we?
JESUS H. CHRIST PEOPLE! USE YOUR HEADS! PERSECUTION DOESN'T ENTITLE YOU TO YOUR OWN NATION STATE!
If the Jews around the world think they are being persecuted, and need a safe haven or whatever, feel free to leave that nation - unless of course that nation won't let you. Sounds like a national sovereignty issue to me, that. But if you CAN leave, why the hell should you get your own nation? Why shouldn't you just immigrate to a nation more friendly to you, sorta like everyone else did who left for persecution reasons? Hell, come to the US! Kicks ass here, you'll even be protected by those WONDERFUL hate crimes laws they have going on - never mind we are creating laws and punishments based on race, it'll work out well if you aren't a straight white male who is either Protestant or Catholic.
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07-01-2002 11:14
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