Originally posted by Byron:
No, and neither does Israel, which has freedom of religion. Were you under the impression that it didn't?
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quote:First you'd need to create uninhabited territory with ample resources. If there are resources, even at marginal levels, the territory would not be uninhabited. So, you'd start by displacing (or worse) a large number of people from their homes to create an uninhabited territory. And, this is supposed to be better than what actually happened how???
Originally posted by George Spigot:
....and had the power to provide a homeland to the Jewish people that wasn't Israel but had ample resources and was uninhabited would you do it?
quote:Or before it, for that matter.
Originally posted by L'organist:
and failed utterly to stem the violence that erupted after the vote.
quote:Fortunately the plot entails 3 separate task forces, all of which report to an oversight committee, which then needs to report to the local Presbytery and then bring an overture to the annual General Assembly, which is then amended and sent for approval by 2/3 of the nat'l Presbyteries over the next year....
Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
...while the PLO (Presbyterian Church in Canada Liberation Organization) plots the downfall of the Zionist entity.
quote:So, what then are your parameters? If the impossible is possible, I can solve the problem in four sentences or less.
Originally posted by George Spigot:
And time travel is impossible. It's a thought experiment where you have the power to do these things.
quote:I suppose it is necessary to study the desires of pre-WWII Jews. Did they regard a return to the the region as more important than removing persecution?
Originally posted by George Spigot:
I'm interested in how much people feel Israel itself as a place to live is more or less important than having a suitable homeland anywhere else.
quote:I don't know about the Jewish people, but the Zionist movement was not so picky. Theodore Herzl was in discussions at various points about other possible homelands; Kenya and Madagascar, I believe, were among those discussed in the 1920s.
Originally posted by Porridge:
I can't think why the Jewish people would have accepted an uninhabited-yet-resourced parcel of land even if one existed and it were offered at the time.
The Passover haggadah always ends with "next year in Israel." Israel is the land promised the Jews by God; Israel is the site of the Second Temple; Israel as the land of the Jews is a basic tenet of the Jewish endeavor, and has been since Abraham dragged Sarah all over the Middle East looking for the spot he swore God promised him and the great nation he was to found.
He wasn't promised Siberia, or Nova Scotia, or Idaho (which is maybe the closest you can get to uninhabited-yet-resourced land), not so much.
quote:No because anyone who imagines that one could put a Jewish homeland anywhere else apart from where it is, is deluding themselves.
Originally posted by George Spigot:
....and had the power to provide a homeland to the Jewish people that wasn't Israel but had ample resources and was uninhabited would you do it?
quote:I think Uganda was among them too.
Augustine the Aleut: Kenya and Madagascar, I believe, were among those discussed in the 1920s.
quote:I suppose the subsidiary question would be whether it's ethical to propose such a relocation. It does seem rather similar to Nick Griffin's voluntary repatriation idea, or indeed a form of ghettoisation.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:I suppose it is necessary to study the desires of pre-WWII Jews. Did they regard a return to the the region as more important than removing persecution?
Originally posted by George Spigot:
I'm interested in how much people feel Israel itself as a place to live is more or less important than having a suitable homeland anywhere else.
Would a stable Isreal located elsewhere then begin pushing for a return to the middle-east? Would that push be peaceful?
quote:Indeed; forgive me but what a ridiculous notion is presented in the OP.
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:No because anyone who imagines that one could put a Jewish homeland anywhere else apart from where it is, is deluding themselves.
Originally posted by George Spigot:
....and had the power to provide a homeland to the Jewish people that wasn't Israel but had ample resources and was uninhabited would you do it?
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quote:It depends what you think the problem is. If the problem is that Eretz Israel was given to the children of Abraham unto the ages of ages, then the only possible solution must be engineering a Jewish return to Israel. If on the other hand the problem is that Jewish people are despised and persecuted, then I don't think there is any other oppressed minority group for which an acceptable solution would be 'let them live somewhere else'.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The whole thing, both what happened and alternate history proposal, is an ethical quagmire. No way to solve it without some ethical compromise.
quote:Perhaps you could help the discussion along and explain why you do not "accept the biblical imperitive (sic)". It certainly is one which seems to drive at least the religious parties in Israel, and as pointed out elsewhere leads to the hope "Next year in Israel". Or would you ascribe that to history rather than religion following Rome's expulsion of the Jews?
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I, perhaps unsurprisingly, do not accept the biblical imperitive.
I do think the problem is fairly complicated and not easily resolved. Even hypothetically.
quote:*I* think a suitable homeland anywhere else is just fine-- but I'm not Jewish. Israel as a particular geographic place has no particular significance in my theology or belief system. But, as others have noted, you might get a completely different answer from a Jew-- particularly one who survived the Holocaust. Just as you'll get a different answer from Palestinians displaced by Israel. And in the end, it is only those two opinions that matter.
Originally posted by George Spigot:
I'm interested in how much people feel Israel itself as a place to live is more or less important than having a suitable homeland anywhere else.
quote:Well, if it's a thought experiment on the impossible I'll change the parameters (send the Delorean to another date as suggested).
Originally posted by George Spigot:
And time travel is impossible. It's a thought experiment where you have the power to do these things.
quote:Ah, so you will recognise the historical claim to the land by the people who, since the time of Moses and drawing on their heritage from Abraham, have lived in that area from 1500 years BC
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
i see the bible as a semi-historical account rather than a divinely inspired text.
I think I would ascribe to the semi-historical even were I a believer.
quote:My ancestors probably lived somewhere in Sweden in 1500BC. Do I get to claim that too?
Mudfrog: Ah, so you will recognise the historical claim to the land by the people who, since the time of Moses and drawing on their heritage from Abraham, have lived in that area from 1500 years BC
quote:Then you have very little idea what being Jewish actually entails.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Mudfrog
No. Not unless you wish to scarper back to Germany or France. Leave room for the white interlopers from America, some of them will be headed there as well.
That they lived there and were forced out, yes. That they potentially have a right to live there, yes. That they have a right to move in and evict other people and treat them terribly? Not so much.
Whatever right the Jewish people have in the area, the Israelis do not have the same.
quote:LilBuddha, to try and put this politely, it really isn't a question of whether you accept the biblical imperative. The issue is that the Jews, for entirely understandable reasons, do.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
I, perhaps unsurprisingly, do not accept the biblical imperative.
I do think the problem is fairly complicated and not easily resolved. Even hypothetically.
quote:In 1948, somebody else and his followers had just tried to solve this 'problem', in ways that most of us, goy though we may be, still regard as totally abhorrent.
Originally posted by Alan Creswell
The biggest thing IMO is to eliminate the sense of the Jews being a 'problem' which needs a solution.
quote:I often have that very conversation (mostly internal of course) when reading the book of Joshua.
Originally posted by Porridge:
Or go back even further and have a word with the Abraham-types who occupied Canaan in the first place. "Are you quite sure it's THIS place God wants for you? Because, you know, there are people already living here, and umpty-leven
generations from now, your descendants are going to find themselves in a hell of a mess . . . "
quote:If changing parameters is allowed, I'm surprised no one has yet suggested the classical time travel move that would obviate the entire problem, as described in Dru Johnston's heart-felt - even plaintive - essay, "I think I should get more credit for killing Hitler."
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:Well, if it's a thought experiment on the impossible I'll change the parameters (send the Delorean to another date as suggested).
Originally posted by George Spigot:
And time travel is impossible. It's a thought experiment where you have the power to do these things.
quote:I don't see how anyone's understanding of themselves entitles them to take someone else's land off of them. That's the bottom line here; people living in Palestine at the time should have had a prior claim; I'd not react well to anyone telling me that their God told them they could take the land my house stands on, and I'm not surprised the Palestinian residents at the time didn't either. What of self determination for them?
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:Then you have very little idea what being Jewish actually entails.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Mudfrog
No. Not unless you wish to scarper back to Germany or France. Leave room for the white interlopers from America, some of them will be headed there as well.
That they lived there and were forced out, yes. That they potentially have a right to live there, yes. That they have a right to move in and evict other people and treat them terribly? Not so much.
Whatever right the Jewish people have in the area, the Israelis do not have the same.
quote:Well indeed; it seems to me that everything about this controversy is founded upon antiSemitism. There are a lot of people in this world who would still like the Jews to sit in a corner and die off. Why the hell send them to Alaska!?
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
I know the importance of having a Jewish homeland, but wasn't the real and true underlying element the elephant in the room we are skating around - nobody in the West wanted them in their country or on their doorstep?
quote:Great post.
Originally posted by L'organist:
No, for the simple reason that after the Shoa the largest population of Jews in the world was either in what is now Israel or one of the north american cities.
Since most of the surviving displaced Jews of Europe had either/or yiddish and hebrew as common languages, it would have made no sense to organise mass migration to an English speaking country.
In any case, the UN had voted on the partitioning of the land covered by the Palestine Mandate in 1947 and wealthy non-Jewish residents of areas which were to be ceded to the jews were already moving, mainly to Cairo and Beirut but Amman and Damascus also received a fair number.
It was also from early November (before the UN vote) that British forces started to withdraw from large areas of what was meant to become jewish controlled Palestine, and failed utterly to stem the violence that erupted after the vote.
So, if I could travel back to 1948, first I'd make sure it was January, not 14th May, and then I'd try to ensure that the approach by the Mandate Police Force was even-handed and give an ultimatum to John Glubb and Norman Lash that they either resign from their positions in the Arab Legion or remain and take Jordanian citizenship. And I'd do my utmost to jam radio broadcasts from Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq inciting armed attacks on jewish settlements.
And I'd ask the UN to send in peacekeepers to enforce to partition map and prevent not only the violence of the 'Independence War' but also stop the occupation of Jerusalem by Jordan, and the annexation of the Gaza strip by Egypt.
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quote:Ah. Accusations of antisemitism. I don't discuss Israel/Palestine with people who throw that accusation around.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:Well indeed; it seems to me that everything about this controversy is founded upon antiSemitism. There are a lot of people in this world who would still like the Jews to sit in a corner and die off. Why the hell send them to Alaska!?
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
I know the importance of having a Jewish homeland, but wasn't the real and true underlying element the elephant in the room we are skating around - nobody in the West wanted them in their country or on their doorstep?
The Jews were/are a nation in exile, not a religious denomination.
They have every right to the land of Israel - in any case, it's not as if they invaded a sovereign country and took over!
From memory in the early 1920s there were only 300,000 people living in Palestine. By 1948 there were 2 million(?) and a lot of the growth was from Arabs moving into the area to take the increasing job opportunities created by Jewish business ventures.
And not an insignificant number were illegal Arab immigrants.
So, this myth that the Jews took over someone else's country is far from the truth. Had Israel not been created it may still have been a sparsely populated are with a few historical ruins.
If the Arabs were so keen on the land in that area it makes you wonder why it was so undeveloped when Israel was given the land - and look at the success they've made of it!
The only democracy in the Middle East. Compare it to Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan... What do you want, for these guys to take over and replicate those dreadful places??
quote:I... what? The largest Yeshiva in Europe is about 3 miles away from where you live.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Anyway, a year or so ago I attended a barmitzvah on the Sabbath and a wedding (same family) on the Sunday. This was a liberal synagogue in the north of England, so nowhere near a Jewish 'community' that might be strong and confident.
quote:Well yes, I know that - I've been there and even shopped there. I was thinking of a liberal-type community.
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:I... what? The largest Yeshiva in Europe is about 3 miles away from where you live.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Anyway, a year or so ago I attended a barmitzvah on the Sabbath and a wedding (same family) on the Sunday. This was a liberal synagogue in the north of England, so nowhere near a Jewish 'community' that might be strong and confident.
quote:You've shopped at a religious school? I'm interested to know what you might have bought there.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:Well yes, I know that - I've been there and even shopped there. I was thinking of a liberal-type community.
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:I... what? The largest Yeshiva in Europe is about 3 miles away from where you live.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Anyway, a year or so ago I attended a barmitzvah on the Sabbath and a wedding (same family) on the Sunday. This was a liberal synagogue in the north of England, so nowhere near a Jewish 'community' that might be strong and confident.
quote:Are you for real?
Would you consider Siberia to fulfill your requirements? That is an interesting what-if. A secular Jewish homeland smack dab in the middle of Asia.
quote:Yes I know. I stated almost as much in my post, which you quote. I'm not making a value judgment. I don't see how that makes it any less interesting in the world of counterfactuals. World history would definitely have been different if all of those future Israelis settled along the Amur River instead.
Originally posted by L'organist:
posted by Prester Johnquote:Are you for real?
Would you consider Siberia to fulfill your requirements? That is an interesting what-if. A secular Jewish homeland smack dab in the middle of Asia.
This was the Soviet version of the Pale of Settlement and its inhabitants were subject to the same injustice and persecution in the Oblast as they had been in the Pale.
What you think of as an 'interesting what-if' was just a vast ghetto which was permitted partly to promote a rigorously secular jewish identity since the religion was anathema to the Soviet authorities.
quote:True. Instead of being threatened by Arab nations and Iran, Israel would be stuck between China, Mongolia and the USSR/Russia.
Originally posted by Prester John:
World history would definitely have been different if all of those future Israelis settled along the Amur River instead.
quote:There is a joke about the Borscht Belt somewhere in there, dying to get out. On a more serious note I think it is a good question but based upon the experiences of the Native Americans who were often forcibly moved to their own "national homeland" I don't think we can automatically assume it would have been a pleasant experience.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
]True. Instead of being threatened by Arab nations and Iran, Israel would be stuck between China, Mongolia and the USSR/Russia.
On the basis that Jews were split between North America and Europe, but were more secure and less unwelcome in North America, would a Jewish national homeland in the Catskills have been such a bad idea?
quote:Er...no: that area has quite enough ethnic tensions and violence presently as is, without throwing an extra lot in.
Originally posted by IngoB:
How about Khazaria, with core lands north of the Caucasus and a capital Atil in the Volga delta?
quote:Here are some actual statistics. Compare and contrast the Muslim population between 1915, 1945 and 1967 ...
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
From memory in the early 1920s there were only 300,000 people living in Palestine. By 1948 there were 2 million(?) and a lot of the growth was from Arabs moving into the area to take the increasing job opportunities created by Jewish business ventures.
And not an insignificant number were illegal Arab immigrants.
So, this myth that the Jews took over someone else's country is far from the truth. Had Israel not been created it may still have been a sparsely populated are with a few historical ruins.
quote:LOL, no I didn't mean there, I meant in the shops in the community in the surrounding streets
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:You've shopped at a religious school? I'm interested to know what you might have bought there.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:Well yes, I know that - I've been there and even shopped there. I was thinking of a liberal-type community.
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:I... what? The largest Yeshiva in Europe is about 3 miles away from where you live.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Anyway, a year or so ago I attended a barmitzvah on the Sabbath and a wedding (same family) on the Sunday. This was a liberal synagogue in the north of England, so nowhere near a Jewish 'community' that might be strong and confident.
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quote:So, Mudfrog. Given that the Palestinian Mandate was roughly 26,625km^2, and had a population of in 1947 of 1,970,000, that gives an average population density of about 74 people per km^2.
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:Here are some actual statistics. Compare and contrast the Muslim population between 1915, 1945 and 1967 ...
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
From memory in the early 1920s there were only 300,000 people living in Palestine. By 1948 there were 2 million(?) and a lot of the growth was from Arabs moving into the area to take the increasing job opportunities created by Jewish business ventures.
And not an insignificant number were illegal Arab immigrants.
So, this myth that the Jews took over someone else's country is far from the truth. Had Israel not been created it may still have been a sparsely populated are with a few historical ruins.
quote:When a sizeable portion of the land is little better than desert, (eg, the Negev) it can't support many people and Palestine was dirt-poor back then.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Well the UK today has a population density of 265 people per square km, so what's your point?
74 per square km sounds pretty sparse to me!
quote:Population density of Scotland is 67.5 per km^2. Again, does that qualify for your "a sparsely populated area with a few historical ruins" test? Glasgow? Edinburgh? Would you empty those cities and have their populations head south?
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Well the UK today has a population density of 265 people per square km, so what's your point?
74 per square km sounds pretty sparse to me!
quote:You could have chosen not to make it. But you did. You happened to be proved wrong. Okay?
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Oh come on, it wasn't supposed to be a demographically correct remark!
quote:This is now a different argument, regarding immigration and sovereignty. Palestine under the British Mandate contained several large cities and towns, as well as agricultural land, as well as unproductive desert. The Jewish immigrants didn't move to the desert. They moved into the cities and towns and the agricultural land which, as you full well know, already had businesses and farmers who were not predominantly Jewish.
What I was saying was that the area of the British Mandate in Palestine was hardly a fully developed, densely populated area. It was not a Sovereign state that the Israelis marched into like the Germans invading Poland!
The land was promised by the Balfour declaration and wasn't handled very well, I grant you. But please, let's get rid of the popular myth that Israel has taken over someone else's country.
quote:Thank you Karl. It took long enough in this thread for someone to finally point out what is, morally speaking, the bottom line.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:I don't see how anyone's understanding of themselves entitles them to take someone else's land off of them. That's the bottom line here; people living in Palestine at the time should have had a prior claim; I'd not react well to anyone telling me that their God told them they could take the land my house stands on, and I'm not surprised the Palestinian residents at the time didn't either. What of self determination for them?
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
quote:Then you have very little idea what being Jewish actually entails.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Whatever right the Jewish people have in the area, the Israelis do not have the same.
quote:Indeed. "Thou shalt not give land to someone else without consulting the people who liveth there" is obvious. The rest are side issues.
malik3000: It took long enough in this thread for someone to finally point out what is, morally speaking, the bottom line.
quote:Well, read Joshua and other parts of the OT, and yes, it goes beyond just "giving the right" to commanding it. So it's not surprising that some of the loudest proponents of Israel-no-questions-asked are American fundamentalists who tend to read these texts literally and woodenly.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I always wonder if the religious text says that God grants the right to ethnically cleanse?
quote:is sensible on the face of it, I fear that years of experience of public life means that my answer will not be the one he thinks might be obvious.
You would take seriously something proposed by a holder of those views? Particularly in relation to putting them onto a plateau with wildlife including predatory big cats, etc?
quote:Exactly this.
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
Much of this debate depends on who is defining it.
The post 1945 (post holocaust etc) scenario was that Jewish people said to themselves, never again would they allow their destiny to be controlled by non Jews.
In 1948, had the Arabs accepted the UN plan for a 2 state solution (as the Jews in fact did) , they'd have had the lions share of Palestine, they did not accept it, and as they say the rest is history.
To understand the region and Israel specifically, is to see things from the point of view that Jews do not (in any way shape or form) trust non Jews to shape their welfare and destiny. The Jewish state idea was founded by Theodor Herzel and he saw the intrinsic prejudice of French anti semitism in the infamous Dreyfuss case; modern Zionism was born.
With few exceptions, Arab leadership has rested on hyperbole, extremism and vitriolic attacks upon Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood and all the other Islamic extremists do not present solutions - just more of the same - continual conflict.
1948 could have been so different.
Saul the Apostle.
quote:How is Israel "Western colonialism"?
Originally posted by Philip Charles:
No matter what has happened to the Jews in Europe and there is no question they suffered one of the greatest evils in all of human history. No matter how much Jerusalem and Palestine were seen as being central to their culture and perceived as theirs by right, it remains that the creation of the state of Israel is one of worst cases of Western colonialism of the twentieth century. An injustice should not be resolved by creating another injustice.
Unlike the tribes of the Americas (and other places) the indigenous people of Palestine have powerful supporters in the Arab world.
We cannot undo the mistakes of the past. The problem we face is in the here and now.
quote:I have to assume you've never heard of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was, after the division of Africa, one of the most egregious acts of European hubris.
Originally posted by Byron:
How is Israel "Western colonialism"?
quote:The indigenous Jews of Palestine were Mizrahi Jews who remained after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, plus those of the Old testament diaspora, Egypt, Babylon etc, the Sephardic Jews from Spain who migrated across North Africa and merged with the Mizrahi. These were Jews with an arab cultural background. The migrants of the late 19th and 20th centuries were Ashkenazi Jews from Europe who had a western cultural background which was very different from the culture of the indigenous Jews. They brought their western culture with them and colonised Palestine. This western-Jewish culture was also imposed on the Mizrahi.
How is Israel "Western colonialism"?
quote:The new colonialists bought land off the old colonialists. Both the Ottomans and Ashkenazi were colonialists.
Zionists started arriving in numbers in the 19th century, when the Ottoman Empire ruled Palestine. They legally bought land and settled.
quote:Naturally they were cool about Ashkenazi migration as they were overwhelming the local population. The Ashkenazi Stern Gang started a campaign of terrorism when they were not getting their own way.
When the Ottomans finally imploded, the League of Nations set up a mandate, administered by Britain, which was, at best, cool about Jewish immigration, and all but closed the borders in the late 30s.
quote:The Zionists were a religious and cultural group from Europe and were citizens of European nations and imbued with their host nations' cultures. They decided to migrate. A persecuted religious group in England decided to migrate on the Mayflower and colonised North America. Both the Pilgrim Fathers and the Ashkenazi were colonialists even though they had "issues" with their home country.
At no point did a Western country attempt to colonize Palestine. Israel was a ground-up movement by Zionists, often in the face of Western hostility.
quote:When the Brits tried to give the indigenous people the right to self-determination they were bombed for their efforts.
and in any case, it was about self-determination, not imperialism.
quote:Perhaps this is true in Europe. It certainly is not in the US. Rather, the default political position is that Israel is given a free pass to create what, despite the ironic historical allusions, really cannot be called anything other than a ghetto. This side of the pond the rhetoric is very much the other way 'round.
Originally posted by Byron:
It also baffles me why Israel is subjected to such disproportionate scrutiny. Arab treatment of Palestinian "refugees" (the vast majority of whom are born and raised in Arab countries, and kept stateless and destitute as a propaganda tool) is barely known, let alone condemned, while Israel is subjected to rhetoric about apartheid and, unbelievably, Nazism.
quote:justice?
Originally posted by Byron:
I'm willing to accept that antisemitism isn't to blame, but if so, what is?
quote:You have the right to own England.
Gwai: Hell, my grandmother was sold from England to America. Do I have a right to go back to Yorkshire? It's my ancestral homeland.
quote:I think it is true in Europe. My explanation is that Israel claims to be a liberal democracy and is judged accordingly. None of the Arab countries make that claim and so they are not judged by the same standards.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:Perhaps this is true in Europe. It certainly is not in the US. Rather, the default political position is that Israel is given a free pass to create what, despite the ironic historical allusions, really cannot be called anything other than a ghetto. This side of the pond the rhetoric is very much the other way 'round.
Originally posted by Byron:
It also baffles me why Israel is subjected to such disproportionate scrutiny. Arab treatment of Palestinian "refugees" (the vast majority of whom are born and raised in Arab countries, and kept stateless and destitute as a propaganda tool) is barely known, let alone condemned, while Israel is subjected to rhetoric about apartheid and, unbelievably, Nazism.
quote:Of course you do. It's not North Korea!
Originally posted by Gwai:
Hell, my grandmother was sold from England to America. Do I have a right to go back to Yorkshire? It's my ancestral homeland.
quote:Inyo Country, sure. But if you give away any portion of L.A., Orange, San Bernardino, or San Diego counties you're going to have far more displaced persons than you had in Palestine.
Originally posted by Xifer:
When i lived in Eastern California in Inyo county, i had noticed certain similarities to the land of Palestine such as a river that ended in a salt sea and Hollywood filming sites for religious films. One of the thought fantasies i had at the time was to take one of the sides of the conflict, probably the Jews and build them a new Jerusalem in the Sierras and give by treaty five hundred miles of eastern California to include San Diego. Or we could give them Los Angeles and give San Diego to Arizona.
quote:or this from Article 13
The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim).
quote:Have any of the people who lobby for peace talks, the politicians who press for (and get) meaningless votes to 'recognise' a Palestinian state actually read this?
[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem, are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement. For renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad.
quote:These people repeat nonsense from The Protocols of the Elders of Sion because they believe in it and they're not alone, sharing their belief with people as diverse as the present Mufti of Jerusalem, the Saudi Education Minister and Kent Hovind - and the latter is still respected by organisations such as Living World Church (with a branch in Portsmouth), Oxford Bible Church, Light & Life Church, etc.
Palestine – from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, from its north to its south – is our land, our right, and our homeland. There will be no relinquishing or forsaking even an inch or small part of it, ...we shall not relinquish the Islamic waqf on the land of Palestine, and Jerusalem shall not be divided into Western and Eastern Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a single united city, and Palestine stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, and from Naqoura [Rosh Ha-Niqra] to Umm Al-Rashrash [Eilat] in the south.
quote:Not so irrelevant to non-Jews perhaps.
Originally posted by L'organist:
Whether or not Christians and Muslims regard Jerusalem as one of their holy cities is irrelevant - for Jews it is their holy city, the only one
quote:agreed. (see the wonderful West Wing for details).
Originally posted by L'organist:
For myself, I still think Jerusalem should belong to no state but rather be a world city, administered by the UN. For the rest, go back to the 1947 partition borders as a starting point and negotiate from there.
quote:or for that matter, building walls to ghettoize an entire people group and remove them from access to employment, agriculture, and commerce, thus creating a permanent dependent underclass.
Originally posted by L'organist:
But nothing can be done to sort it all out while people build tunnels under borders and fire rockets into towns and settlements.
quote:and vice-versa.
Originally posted by L'organist:
the Jews of Israel aren't going anywhere because they have nowhere else to go and the sooner the muslims of the middle east recognise that fact and stop trying to wipe them off the face of the earth the better for everyone.
quote:Not all Palestinians are Hamas. Fostering conditions where Hamas withers on the vine are paving the road to peace. Slowly crushing the Palestinians only strengthens Hamas.
Originally posted by L'organist:
Have any of the people who lobby for peace talks, the politicians who press for (and get) meaningless votes to 'recognise' a Palestinian state actually read this?
quote:As Hillary Clinton put it
The teachings repeatedly reject Israel's right to exist, present the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, teach Israel's founding as imperialism, and actively portray a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all.]
quote:While Israeli textbooks aren't perfect, there is a willingness to accept the right of people of religions other than Judaism to exist and to live within the borders of Israel.
I believe that education is one of the keys to lasting peace in the Middle East... Ever since we first raised this issue some years ago there still has not been an adequate repudiation of incitement by the Palestinian Authority. It is even more disturbing that the problem appears to have gotten worse. These textbooks don't give Palestinian children an education, they give them an indoctrination.
quote:Well, by that reasoning, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima worked. It pretty much eliminated Japanese aggression.
Originally posted by L'organist:
Yes, I agree that the internal 'security wall' is dehumanising (I've seen it up close and personal and it is vast and frightening) but you have to face the truth which is that since it was built attacks on smaller jewish settlements have almost entirely ceased, other than those by rocket from the Gaza strip, and other attacks, particularly by sniper, have more than halved. So until the Palestinian Authority acts on the things it agreed to in the Oslo accords - dismantling terrorist networks, confiscating illegal weapons, etc - it is likely to stay because the view on the Israeli ground is that it works and the figures of killed and injured back up that view.
quote:Actually no - on both counts.
Well, by that reasoning, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima worked. It pretty much eliminated Japanese aggression.
quote:Thanks for this. I suspect that most people are like me and are well informed of the Ashkenazi and European antisemitism and the Holocaust, but have little knowledge the history of the Mizrahi and Sephardi. However, I would still say the latter two were part of the indigenous population of Palestine despite their persecution.
My (late) aunt Sarah would have just loved to be described as being of "an arab cultural background"! Yes, she was born in Gaza, brought up in Hebron, moved back to Gaza; yes, her family had moved between Gaza, Hebron and points in between for at least 500 years, but in no way did she consider herself, or her ancestors, "culturally arab" - she was Jewish!
quote:Do you have a source for this?
Originally posted by L'organist:
Moreover the number of arab Christians enlisting in the IDF has been rising steadily and is now at a record high.
quote:Sorry, no, I don't. You seem to be missing the whole point of the analogy, which still stands.
Originally posted by L'organist:
Not quite the same, I think you'll agree.
quote:There's a wikipedia article on this, but I had seen an article on this in the Canadian Jewish News about 5 years ago (can't find the reference, sorry). More anecdotally, an Israeli Arab (Presbyterian, from the 1880s US missionary push into the eastern churches in the Holy Land) acquaintance (now an artisanal baker in Toronto) told me that her brother had enlisted to get training in electronics and had stayed on as they had put him in officer training. Another cousin had recently signed up as a nurse. She said that it is a good deal and has made things easier for the family, although she notes that things are not getting easier generally.
Originally posted by Jonah the Whale:
quote:Do you have a source for this?
Originally posted by L'organist:
Moreover the number of arab Christians enlisting in the IDF has been rising steadily and is now at a record high.
We had an Arab Israeli Christian staying with us recently, and he is studying medicine in Germany. He can't study medicine in Israel because he has not served (and does not want to serve) in the IDF. His sister is studying in Australia for the same reasons. This is one of the ways where Israel claims to be be non-prejudicial in terms of student intake, but in practice the reality is different.
quote:Yes it is. Even if we accept the Arab population growth between 1915 and 1948 was entirely due to guest workers and illegal immigrants, we are still saying that half of the 1915 population was displaced. The 1967 Arab population is half that of 1915.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
so not substantially different to what I said
quote:It's a question of scale.
Originally posted by Byron
I note an underlying hostility to immigration here. Is this specific to Palestine, or general? If it's not general, but specific to Jewish immigration to Palestine, why single that out?
quote:I think I didn't explain very well. He wasn't fleeing conscription - I know that Arab Israelis aren't conscripted. It was more that he couldn't get a place in a (good) university without having a record of military service. Or something. It seemed to make sense when he told me anyway.
Originally posted by L'organist:
Jonah the Whale
However, I fear you've been taken in because there is NO conscription of Arab Israeli citizens, either muslim or Christian, into the IDF. They can choose to enlist but it is not mandatory.
quote:I think it is more likely that the Palestinians are descendants of inhabitants of Judea who converted to Islam in the 7th century.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Something I've long wondered: are the Palestinians (and/or whoever else was on the land) descendants of those local people that the ancient Israelites were told to kill off?
(And my point is NOT that they didn't do it effectively enough.)
quote:Curious about this, I spent a jolly hour googling and the best information I could come up with was this:
Originally posted by Jonah the Whale:
quote:I think I didn't explain very well. He wasn't fleeing conscription - I know that Arab Israelis aren't conscripted. It was more that he couldn't get a place in a (good) university without having a record of military service. Or something. It seemed to make sense when he told me anyway.
Originally posted by L'organist:
Jonah the Whale
However, I fear you've been taken in because there is NO conscription of Arab Israeli citizens, either muslim or Christian, into the IDF. They can choose to enlist but it is not mandatory.
quote:As far as I can gather, this policy proposal (I don't think it's been implemented) was directed toward increasing the participation of ultra-Orthdox Jews (haredim) into the Israeli Defence Force and Israeli society, Israeli Arabs being an afterthought. Most of the existing incentives apply to those who have served in the IDF, and appear to fall primarily under the veterans preference which we are familiar with in Canada for government jobs and homesteading. I can't find anything about reserved places or preference in universities but there is a fair bit on the informal social and employment networking which military service brings.
Israeli-Arabs, like haredim, will be given the option to postpone service from age 18, and “personal, negative financial incentives” will only be implemented if goal numbers for those doing civilian service are not met.
Arab local authorities with more residents doing civilian service will receive greater funds than those with less. If goal numbers are not met, the government will consider decreasing funds in proportion to the number of residents who serve.
quote:L'organist
Originally posted by L'organist:
Agreed we should do all to foster peace.
How about making a start by banning all text books produced by the Saudi Education Ministry (certainly pre-2006) and those produced by the Palestinian Authority that were described thus by Palestinian Media Watchquote:As Hillary Clinton put it
The teachings repeatedly reject Israel's right to exist, present the conflict as a religious battle for Islam, teach Israel's founding as imperialism, and actively portray a picture of the Middle East, both verbally and visually, in which Israel does not exist at all.]quote:While Israeli textbooks aren't perfect, there is a willingness to accept the right of people of religions other than Judaism to exist and to live within the borders of Israel.
I believe that education is one of the keys to lasting peace in the Middle East... Ever since we first raised this issue some years ago there still has not been an adequate repudiation of incitement by the Palestinian Authority. It is even more disturbing that the problem appears to have gotten worse. These textbooks don't give Palestinian children an education, they give them an indoctrination.
Yes, I agree that the internal 'security wall' is dehumanising (I've seen it up close and personal and it is vast and frightening) but you have to face the truth which is that since it was built attacks on smaller jewish settlements have almost entirely ceased, other than those by rocket from the Gaza strip, and other attacks, particularly by sniper, have more than halved. So until the Palestinian Authority acts on the things it agreed to in the Oslo accords - dismantling terrorist networks, confiscating illegal weapons, etc - it is likely to stay because the view on the Israeli ground is that it works and the figures of killed and injured back up that view.
quote:These opinions transcend borders.
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Perhaps this is true in Europe. It certainly is not in the US. Rather, the default political position is that Israel is given a free pass to create what, despite the ironic historical allusions, really cannot be called anything other than a ghetto. This side of the pond the rhetoric is very much the other way 'round.
quote:Justice is blind. Why aren't progressives attacking the Arab states for treating their fellow Arabs as strangers in a strange land, a land the vast majority are born in?
quote:justice?
Originally posted by Byron:
I'm willing to accept that antisemitism isn't to blame, but if so, what is?
quote:Israel handed the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in return for peace, a chunk of land comparable in size to Israel itself. It was the Louisiana Purchase in reverse. Israel in effect halved itself to end war with its southern neighbor.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If you added
Until the Israeli's treated the Palestinians with a modicum of humanity, respected the agreements they made, etc.
Pretending the Israeli's are reluctant aggressors is naive at best.
The problems are far from one-sided.
quote:That would be the same Sinai peninsular that Israel took in the 1967 war, IIRC. Moreover, it's dirt poor, even in comparison with Israel and Egypt.
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:Israel handed the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in return for peace, a chunk of land comparable in size to Israel itself. It was the Louisiana Purchase in reverse. Israel in effect halved itself to end war with its southern neighbor.
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
If you added
Until the Israeli's treated the Palestinians with a modicum of humanity, respected the agreements they made, etc.
Pretending the Israeli's are reluctant aggressors is naive at best.
The problems are far from one-sided.
quote:Gaza was Egyptian territory too, so they were illegal occupations. How many have been killed by those rocket attacks in comparison to those killed in Gaza and the West Bank by bombing and bombardment by the Israeli armed forces?
Israel also dismantled its settlements pulled out of Gaza in '05. Its thanks? Rocket attacks.
quote:The best spin that could be put on that is that Israel took Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights as bargaining chips. Remember too that many members of Netanyahu's party are entirely opposed to any Palestinian state whatsoever.
Yes, the settlements are wrong, and Israel can be criticized for them. But the evidence suggests that when peace is on offer, Israel is willing to take it, at cost to itself. Problem is, many insist that peace is on offer when it ain't.
quote:They are. The human rights abuses across the Middle East are wide and vast, fuelled almost but not entirely by pre-post Cold War real politik and the need for oil. Up until now, almost every Arab county has been run by autocratic military governments or despotic monarchies. Further afield with have barmcake theocracies. They oppress their own populations far more than they cause problems outside their own borders.
Originally posted by Byron:
Justice is blind. Why aren't progressives attacking the Arab states for treating their fellow Arabs as strangers in a strange land, a land the vast majority are born in?
quote:As a NZer I know something about this. For the last 50 years or so we as a nation have been coming to terms with our colonial past and the effect it has had on the indigenous Maori. Two essential elements are.
Byron How d'you think Israel should move forward?
quote:Things were rough in the past and some Maori would have wanted that.
Byron There doesn't exist, amongst a large proportion of New Zealand's Maori citizens, a desire to drive the descendents of European settlers into the sea.
quote:Education will have a part to play, but action will be far more important.
All you say is positive, but won't happen until Israel's right to exist is accepted by all. Education is absolutely key to this. So, too, are Arab governments unequivocally condemning Hamas, and unequivocally supporting Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
quote:Well then, so long as that remains the case, there'll be no peace, 'cause yes, it's inflexible, and it's non-negotiable.
Originally posted by Philip Charles:
[...] "Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state." Is a show stopper. An inflexible stand which does not include the colonial aspect of Israel.. [...]
quote:No, and neither does Israel, which has freedom of religion. Were you under the impression that it didn't?
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Does Britain "sacrifice the core of its identity" by peacefully allowing other religious and ethnic groups to exist within its borders? [...]
quote:The difficulty with this approach is that is not acceptable (or even a possible topic of discussion) to the great majority of Israeli Jews, who will always (not unreasonably) point out that most of the surrounding states happily identify themselves as Islamic in their identity and that their Jewish communities no longer exist. I would prefer that states identify on civic values, but I really am not sure that this is on anyone's radar.
Originally posted by Philip Charles:
quote:Things were rough in the past and some Maori would have wanted that.
Byron There doesn't exist, amongst a large proportion of New Zealand's Maori citizens, a desire to drive the descendents of European settlers into the sea.
quote:Education will have a part to play, but action will be far more important.
All you say is positive, but won't happen until Israel's right to exist is accepted by all. Education is absolutely key to this. So, too, are Arab governments unequivocally condemning Hamas, and unequivocally supporting Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
"Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state." Is a show stopper. An inflexible stand which does not include the colonial aspect of Israel..
An Israel (may even be with a different name) where Jews can live out their lives as Jews in peace and harmony, a harmony that includes other religions. This is what we need to work towards.
quote:Why?
Originally posted by Byron:
It's been suggested that Israel's held to a higher standard 'cause it's an open democracy. To me, that's whack.
quote:IMHO, freedom of religion includes the right to marry a person of a different religion from yours. So, yes, I am under the impression that Israel does not have full freedom of religion. It may be better than Saudi Arabia or Sudan but that is not saying much.
Originally posted by Byron:
No, and neither does Israel, which has freedom of religion. Were you under the impression that it didn't?
quote:Maybe not because it's an open democracy, but how 'bout because Israel has received more than $120 billion in US aid? At the very least, that should give us cause for a public debate about where that $$ is going.
Originally posted by JoannaP:
quote:Why?
Originally posted by Byron:
It's been suggested that Israel's held to a higher standard 'cause it's an open democracy. To me, that's whack.
quote:Most of it goes to Gaza and the West Bank
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:Maybe not because it's an open democracy, but how 'bout because Israel has received more than $120 billion in US aid? At the very least, that should give us cause for a public debate about where that $$ is going.
Originally posted by JoannaP:
quote:Why?
Originally posted by Byron:
It's been suggested that Israel's held to a higher standard 'cause it's an open democracy. To me, that's whack.
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quote:It is still true that there are far more Jews in north America there are in Israel. And as far as I can see , the vast majority of them are happily getting on with their educated professional lives as respected doctors, scientists, businesspeople, musicians, etc without much sign of any desire to migrate to what their ancestors may or may not have regarded as their spiritual homeland (though it's certainly not where those ancestors migrated from).
Originally posted by Byron:
quote:The focus on '48 isn't the best way to frame it.... And, yes, the rest of humanity owed the Jewish people for not preventing the Holocaust. Borders should've been thrown open the moment the Nazi Party came to power. They weren't....
Originally posted by L'organist:
.... after the Shoa the largest population of Jews in the world was either in what is now Israel or one of the north american cities....
quote:You only have to look at the papers from that time to see why the 'West' was not accepting of migrants.
Originally posted by Tukai:
So in my books, rather than turning the clock back to 1948, I'd go for the 1930s and pray that the "west" was more accepting of forced migrants then than was actually the case.
quote:In the 1930s, there was a lot of support from Canadian Jews who disagreed with the Zionist project or who were associated with the CPC or the Arbeiter Bund. Most of the money went to buying farming machinery which was sent to the Region. There was some emigration from (depression-struck) North America to the Region but I gather that many got caught up into the Gulag at one point or the other. When I passed through on the Trans Siberian in the 1970s, all one could really see was the Yiddish lettering on railway station signs, although my Jewish Intourist guide in Khabarovsk mentioned that her family came to the region in the 1930s, then smiled, and said that her father came voluntarily.
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Interesting that no-one has mentioned this largely-failed alternative experiment
quote:mentioned by another shippie upthread
Originally posted by Matt Black:
Interesting that no-one has mentioned this largely-failed alternative experiment
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quote:Well Cliffdweller, the reasoning on my part to give them a seaport is that it would be beneficial for them in the 1940's were they shipping goods. They would only need a strip of land about 20 miles wide, but reaching almost to Carson City. It might even work to give them Las Vegas so they would have a Sodom/Gomorrah angle they would have to work. In the forties a lot of Jewish entertainers such as the Marx brothers were already settling in LA and a lot of influential positions in the movie business were managed by Jewish people. I think that California would have been a more laid back place for them and they would not need to exclude the persons already living there in the forties, because the religious conflict would not be so strong and people knew how to cooperate. Harpo Marx had a Catholic wife for goodness sake and they celebrated the entire set of Catholic and Jewish holidays. And the Northern Paiutes and Shoshones could be brought into the deal as long lost tribes. The gold miners might not like it so much but they could go dig on the other side of the sierras. If we had ceded eastern and a chunk of southern California to them, they could be dealing with the border tunnels without worrying so much about cheap rockets.
Inyo Country, sure. But if you give away any portion of L.A., Orange, San Bernardino, or San Diego counties you're going to have far more displaced persons than you had in Palestine.
quote:Do you imagine the existing resident Californians in the 40s would be content to be a part of Nuevo Israel instead of the US?
Originally posted by Xifer:
quote:Well Cliffdweller, the reasoning on my part to give them a seaport is that it would be beneficial for them in the 1940's were they shipping goods. They would only need a strip of land about 20 miles wide, but reaching almost to Carson City. It might even work to give them Las Vegas so they would have a Sodom/Gomorrah angle they would have to work. In the forties a lot of Jewish entertainers such as the Marx brothers were already settling in LA and a lot of influential positions in the movie business were managed by Jewish people. I think that California would have been a more laid back place for them and they would not need to exclude the persons already living there in the forties, because the religious conflict would not be so strong and people knew how to cooperate.
Inyo Country, sure. But if you give away any portion of L.A., Orange, San Bernardino, or San Diego counties you're going to have far more displaced persons than you had in Palestine.
quote:I've never seen this flag before and I'm not convinced that it was an official flag of Palestine (certainly not of the mandate). Perhaps it was a flag of a group or faction with Palestine? It's entirely possible that a mistake was made when making the flag book.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Maybe Shippies would be interested in the article that 1939 Palestine flag comes from. Neutral source?
quote:What are those several reasons?
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Pending better evidence, I'm suspicious of that photo for several reasons.
quote:Because people screw up?
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
badly drawn doesn't equal a completer error. Why would a French-published dictionary invent a flag or at least enter the entirely wrong one?
quote:Good link - the FOTW site seemed to have frozen when I tried to access it.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
This document describes that flag as the flag of the Palestine Jews. That's rather different to a flag of Palestine.
quote:Note that this happens quite frequently for political reasons - see various older Atlases on; the flag for the PROC/ROC, at which point they switched flags for Yemen, Egypt and Syria, whether a flag exists for Western Sahara, and so on.
Originally posted by Anglican't:
I suspect this was a flag used by Jewish groups within the Mandate which somehow found its way into the dictionary as 'the Palestine flag'. I'm not sure how it's evidence of anything.
quote:I wouldn't regard anything printed in Germany in 1941 as even remotely credible.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Interesting, but note the comment from the person who bought a German map printed in 1941 that had the flag, without the star of David (not surprisingly) as the Palestinian flag. One can only infer from this that the Germans (Nazi Government) believed the simple blue and white flag to be the national flag and removed the star because of their inherent anti-Semitism.
quote:Absolutely. A good atlas would usually qualify this sort of thing (with 'disputed territory' or somesuch) but it looks like they were pressed for space in this French dictionary.
Originally posted by chris stiles:
quote:Note that this happens quite frequently for political reasons - see various older Atlases on; the flag for the PROC/ROC, at which point they switched flags for Yemen, Egypt and Syria, whether a flag exists for Western Sahara, and so on.
Originally posted by Anglican't:
I suspect this was a flag used by Jewish groups within the Mandate which somehow found its way into the dictionary as 'the Palestine flag'. I'm not sure how it's evidence of anything.
quote:I think you underestimate how difficult information can be to find.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Interesting, but note the comment from the person who bought a German map printed in 1941 that had the flag, without the star of David (not surprisingly) as the Palestinian flag. One can only infer from this that the Germans (Nazi Government) believed the simple blue and white flag to be the national flag and removed the star because of their inherent anti-Semitism.
quote:That's nonsense. One could quite equally infer that the resident Jews took the simple blue and white flag and decided to alter it to their advantage.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
One can only infer from this that the Germans (Nazi Government) believed the simple blue and white flag to be the national flag and removed the star because of their inherent anti-Semitism.
quote:Well no, but they were hardly on the side of the Palestinian Jews, were they.
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:I wouldn't regard anything printed in Germany in 1941 as even remotely credible.
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Interesting, but note the comment from the person who bought a German map printed in 1941 that had the flag, without the star of David (not surprisingly) as the Palestinian flag. One can only infer from this that the Germans (Nazi Government) believed the simple blue and white flag to be the national flag and removed the star because of their inherent anti-Semitism.
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