103 replies to this topic

[ExpandMyMind]

Erikl, on 08 December 2012 - 04:20 PM, said:

Nope, they didn't. The settlements weren't built on any Palestinian villages. That's another lie propagated by the Palestinians and their oil-rich friends in the gulf.

And Israel doesn't even rule most of them. You see, Area C, which is about 62% of the West Bank, is home to only about 3% of the Palestinians, or about 50,000 amid some 350,000 Israelis. The rest, some 97%, are under Palestinian self-rule.

I just provided two links that prove you wrong. And there are many more examples. Every time Israel demolishes a Palestinian home and evicts the residents, this is part of a policy of ethnic cleansing.

UN official: Israel engaging in ethnic cleansing

http://www.ynetnews....4045623,00.html

http://www.haaretz.c...t-work-1.361196

[Erikl]

ExpandMyMind, on 08 December 2012 - 04:46 PM, said:

I just provided two links that prove you wrong. And there are many more examples. Every time Israel demolishes a Palestinian home and evicts the residents, this is part of a policy of ethnic cleansing.

UN official: Israel engaging in ethnic cleansing

http://www.ynetnews....4045623,00.html

http://www.haaretz.c...t-work-1.361196

I'm sorry, but there are no examples there, just more ranting.

I find it interesting though, that two of the four most serious newspapers in a country you accuse of ethnic cleansing, racism, colonialism and many other horrible things, are allowed to publish pieces like that. I guess we're not so bad after all.

I'm still waiting for proof of which settlement in the West Bank (or in Area C) was built on any Palestinian village. You didn't provide any proof.

[Erikl]

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Colonisation at its heart does not necessitate the qualifiers you have tagged to it. You don't need to be after resources (though Israel actually have taken control of the resources in the Occupied Territories, namely water and arable land, so it seems a bit lacking in logic that you would bring that up?), and you do not need to force a culture or religion on the inhabitants. While this has happened in the past with some colonial forces, at the heart of it, colonisation and colonial ventures are about just that - colonising another's land. Of which Israel and it's immigrant population were most definitely guilty of in the aftermath of WW2 and in the Occupied Territories in present day.

I'm sorry, no. This is actually not the definition of colonialism. You're just twisting and squeezing the definition in such a way as to suite it to our case. That's actually what you and Yamato are doing with most of the big words you've accused Israel for. Can't get real genocide or ethnic cleansing, let's play ball with the words so we can use them. Sorry, that's not how it works. If it doesn't quack like a duck, and doesn't look like a duck, it ain't a duck, no matter how strongly you feel about it. It's just not it.

And while we're at it, at the "heart of it" as you like to say, Jews cannot be colonizers in a place they lived for thousands of years, long before anyone spoke Arabic or practiced Islam. If anything, Arabs are the true colonizers of the Middle East, yet their colonialism started a thousand years ago, and continues to this day. Ask the Kurds, the Copts, the Maronites and the Assyrians. Oh wait, I guess if they'll ever be an Assyrian state or a Kurdish state and hundreds of thousands of them will come from the West to settle their country, it's colonialism, right?

[ExpandMyMind]

Erikl, on 08 December 2012 - 06:18 PM, said:

I'm sorry, but there are no examples there, just more ranting.

I find it interesting though, that two of the four most serious newspapers in a country you accuse of ethnic cleansing, racism, colonialism and many other horrible things, are allowed to publish pieces like that. I guess we're not so bad after all.

I'm still waiting for proof of which settlement in the West Bank (or in Area C) was built on any Palestinian village. You didn't provide any proof.

Nice non-reply, reply btw.

Show me where I claimed that settlements in the West Bank or Area C were built on Palestinians villages? Why randomly add that qualifier?

[ExpandMyMind]

Erikl, on 08 December 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

I'm sorry, no. This is actually not the definition of colonialism. You're just twisting and squeezing the definition in such a way as to suite it to our case. That's actually what you and Yamato are doing with most of the big words you've accused Israel for. Can't get real genocide or ethnic cleansing, let's play ball with the words so we can use them. Sorry, that's not how it works. If it doesn't quack like a duck, and doesn't look like a duck, it ain't a duck, no matter how strongly you feel about it. It's just not it.

And while we're at it, at the "heart of it" as you like to say, Jews cannot be colonizers in a place they lived for thousands of years, long before anyone spoke Arabic or practiced Islam. If anything, Arabs are the true colonizers of the Middle East, yet their colonialism started a thousand years ago, and continues to this day. Ask the Kurds, the Copts, the Maronites and the Assyrians. Oh wait, I guess if they'll ever be an Assyrian state or a Kurdish state and hundreds of thousands of them will come from the West to settle their country, it's colonialism, right?

Obviously the Jews who already lived there were not colonisers, but I'm sure you are aware (especially seeing as I mentioned them specifically) that the Europeans immigrants - the vast majority of new Israel's population - were the people who I was referring to and most definitely were colonisers. And those currently colonising the West Bank are also irrefutably colonisers who are part of a colonial venture.

Also, you are the one who added qualifiers to colonisation. Colonisation does not require such qualifiers. Modern colonisation has been known to include converting and assimilating with the indigenous populations, as you state, but at its heart, colonisation is the establishment of colonies or 'groups of people' in a land that belongs to someone else. Converting and assimilating are in no way necessary for it to be classified as colonisation.

Edited by ExpandMyMind, 08 December 2012 - 06:57 PM.

[Erikl]

ExpandMyMind, on 08 December 2012 - 06:47 PM, said:

Obviously the Jews who already lived there were not colonisers, but I'm sure you are aware (especially seeing as I mentioned them specifically) that the Europeans immigrants - the vast majority of new Israel's population - were the people who I was referring to and most definitely were colonisers. And those currently colonising the West Bank are also irrefutably colonisers who are part of a colonial venture.

Also, you are the one who added qualifiers to colonisation. Colonisation does not require such qualifiers. Modern colonisation has been known to include converting and assimilating with the indigenous populations, as you state, but at its heart, colonisation is the establishment of colonies or 'groups of people' in a land that belongs to someone else. Converting and assimilating are in no way necessary for it to be classified as colonisation.

Ah finally we fall to the good old "Israelis are Europeans". 50% of the Jews who currently live in Israel have no roots in Europe. Gather that with 20% Israeli Palestinians, and you have 70% of the current Israelis originating in the Middle East. So first of all let's throw that off the table.

But nonetheless - should a European woman convert to Islam and come marry a Lebanese - will their children be a legitimate middle easterner, or a colonizer?

Your argument is moot, and when you try to impose non-relevant definitions such as colonialism on the subject, you get yourself many paradoxes.

The problem is, you simply have an agenda, and from there everything comes from. You think the land belonged to the Arabs there, and Jews came en masses from Europe and took it. Well, you're wrong. Most of the land actually belonged to the Ottoman Empire. After it dismantled, international law acknowledged that the Jews have rights to the land. Historical ones. There was no Palestinian country or state before, so the Palestinians cannot simply claim everything was theirs, sorry that doesn't work that way.

For example, I'll give you another example. Back in the 1940s, the Christians in Lebanon were more than 60% of the population. However, thanks to demographic trends, they've become a minority, to the point they are now less than 30% of the population of Lebanon. Some of it, thanks to Muslim immigrants from surrounding Arab countries. Now, does that mean the Muslim Lebanese are colonizers, that they have no rights for the land? after all, they were a minority, and the fact they are a majority now is also due to immigration.

Ofcourse not.

And why not? because it is general knowledge that Muslims are natives to Lebanon just as Christians are. The fact that they are now a majority doesn't result in calling them colonizers or invaders etc.. However, for some reason, when a group of refugees emigrate from Europe, and make the Jews rise from single digit minority to 30% of the population, in about 70 years - that's wrong. That's colonization. Sorry, I don't buy into it.

Especially when much of the land was government owned, and since the last government gave up on any land claims (Turkey, the rightful legal descendant of the Ottoman Empire), then these lands belonged not to the Arabs, but to the Mandate, and hence to the League of Nations, which recognized the rights of both Jews and Arabs to the land.

That kind of mentality, that Arabs are the only right owners of the land, is what prevented from a Palestinian Arab country to be created back in 1947. Back then they wanted all, and to this day they wanted all.

And if you keep on encouraging them with these ideas, and showing them that such nonsense has any grasp among westerners, it'll only drive them further away from acknowledging Jews' rights in the Middle East, and give them a hope they can get rid of us.

[The New Richard Nixon]

I think Israel should belong to the Christians than to the Jews.

[ExpandMyMind]

For all the huffing and puffing, you only really made a few points.

First, I didn't say Israel was full of European immigrants. I stated clearly that 'new Israel' - that is Israel straight after its birth - was European immigrants. This is a fact which even you will not try to dispute. But anyways, you have omitted the largest group of non indigenous Israelis - Russians. Who account for 1/3 of the current Israeli population. 70%? Eesh.

Second, a land belongs to the indigenous inhabitants of said land. It did not 'belong' to the Ottomans, any more than Haiti belonged to the French. An occupier is not an owner. This being said, of course it belonged to the Palestinians, for they were the indigenous inhabitants, regardless of who occupies.

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After it dismantled, international law acknowledged that the Jews have rights to the land. Historical ones

This is complete nonsense. The Balfour Declaration did not even acknowledge that Jews had a right to the land, never mind international law. This is simply a ridiculous claim. All the Balfour Declaration promised to Jews was a 'national home' in another's country. They weren't even offered a state, but a home where they could live in another's country, respecting the rights of the 'indigenous population' (British words). Documented history mate, you should read it. There exists no right of 2000 year return anywhere in international law. Even Australians would not be granted mass passage back to Britain (though according to your fabricated, fantasy 'right', they would be). It is nonsense, international law recognised no such thing.

All that was 'recognised' after WW2 was that a load of European Jews now resided in Palestine and they wanted their own country. All that was 'recognised' was that a solution had to be found that would somehow be fair to those who had been put through so much in Europe, barely surviving extermination. In other words, you gained the 'right' to a state through pity and guilt, not international law.

Quote

However, for some reason, when a group of refugees emigrate from Europe, and make the Jews rise from single digit minority to 30% of the population, in about 70 years - that's wrong. That's colonization.

No, we are not referring to the immigrants who (in relatively small numbers) emmigrated to Palestine over the course of Zionism's history (70 years). We are talking about those who invaded en mass in the wake of WW2 and built their villages over Palestinian ones, and to a lesser extent those who illegally emigrated during the Mandate. The first example is emigration, the second (after WW2) would be colonisation.

The Arabs are the indigenous population of the land, so, back then at least, it was theirs by right, it did not belong to a group of European immigrants.




For all you talk of muslim extremists, Erik, it is Jewish extremists who caused this entire mess. Jews were offered largely unpopulated land outwith Palestine and they refused due to the absurd religious view that they had a right to something that was not theirs, a nonsensical 2000 year old right to return to a land that not even all Jews actually have a historical connection to. Your religious extremists have created potentially the most catastrophic situation in the history of the World, by inserting themselves into another's home and taking what was not theirs, all in the name of religion.

And the situation has been perpetuated largely by Israel's refusal to offer a solution to the refugee crisis they created. Israelis, many of whom were for decades receiving money from Germany due to their treatment (some no doubt still are), refused to offer the same to those that they wronged in exactly the same way! The double standards here are astounding, truly.

Edit - I should also mention that you still have not shown that for a colonial force to be defined as such, they need to force the indigenous population to assimilate and convert, etc. You have not, because this is not required to be defined a colonial force. Look it up (I'm sure you already have).

Edited by ExpandMyMind, 08 December 2012 - 08:19 PM.

[Erikl]

Omg... where should I begin?

First of all, I love it how you make your own laws and axioms, and then grow your own theories from there.

Jews, yes, also European Jews, have been living and immigrating into what is now Israel for centuries. There where tens of thousands of native Jews already living here for centuries. There were hudreds of thousands of Jews living all around the middle east.

New Israel had to absorb, in just few years, not only hundreds of thousands of holocaust survivors, but also persecuted Jews from all around the middle east. So right after it declared independence, it was no longer majority-european. As for Russian born - they are about 1 million, out of 7 million Israeli citizens. How did you get to the 1/3 of the population figure? Many Israeli Jews are Yemenite, Moroccan, Algerian, Syrian, Iraqi and Egyptian, Iranian origins. Even among the Russian immigrants, many are Iranian-speaking Jews from south Russia.

Next, your equation of French colonialism on Haiti to the Ottoman rule on the middle east is absurd. A more plausible equation, would be of French rule on France. The land was part of the Ottoman Empire for more than 400 years. It's inhabitants were citizens of the Ottoman Empire.

Next, yeah, the majority of the people who lived there spoke Arabic and practiced Islam, but many places in the area where acknowledged as wastelands - this is actually to these days where the largest concentration of Jewish towns are located. No one cultivated these lands, they were mostly swamps or dunes. And these were the lands Jews mostly settled and cultivated. I am talking strictly pre-1947, because after that other things apply.

Btw, in the beginning many Jews actually admired the Arabs and saw them as a role model - many forefathers of the Zionist movement talk of the local Arabs as a model of how the Jews should act like. Only after the British released religious extremists from prison, and the Arabs became brainwashed into anti-Semitic violence, also against the ancient Jewish communities, did things change to the worse.

As for the other nonsense you wrote - the Zionist movement was socialist, anti-religious. The mere fact it revived Hebrew was harshly criticized by religious Jews. And what other places were offered? Uganda? we then had the discussion of white Jews oppressing the Ugandans, no?

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Your religious extremists have created potentially the most catastrophic situation in the history of the World

Right. No exaggeration what so ever. Forget the Nazis, forget Communism, forget the Armenian genocide, the Kurdish genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the occupation of Tibet, or even the Syrian civil war - all of them are nothing, compared to the "most catastrophic situation in the history of the World"

[ExpandMyMind]

1 million are Russian born, but I was also referring to the descendants of the Russian born. If my figure was off (and it wasn't by too much) then I apologise.

Your claim that 70% of Jews in Israel are descended from the indigenous Jews of Palestine was far more off the mark, however.

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Next, your equation of French colonialism on Haiti to the Ottoman rule on the middle east is absurd. A more plausible equation, would be of French rule on France. The land was part of the Ottoman Empire for more than 400 years. It's inhabitants were citizens of the Ottoman Empire.

France? Just, no.

Let us use a British colonial venture if we must. The British granted their subversives citizenship, but it in no way legitimises their claim on another's land.

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Next, yeah, the majority of the people who lived there spoke Arabic and practiced Islam, but many places in the area where acknowledged as wastelands - this is actually to these days where the largest concentration of Jewish towns are located. No one cultivated these lands, they were mostly swamps or dunes. And these were the lands Jews mostly settled and cultivated. I am talking strictly pre-1947, because after that other things apply.

This is long debunked nonsense. There was no 'empty land'. (No doubt there were areas of empty land, but what I'm saying is the majority of Jewish villages and farms were not built on 'swamps and dunes'. They were built on villages and farms that already existed).

Quote

In 1901, Israel Zangwill wrote, “Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country.”¹ Joan Peters takes up this view, claiming a “profusion of evidence of an uninhabited Palestine [p.170],” and citing many travelers through Palestine to show that by the last half of the nineteenth century, the land was deserted and desolate.
Critics contend that Peters neglects accounts by early Zionist settlers who, in the words of one of her sources, “were genuinely taken aback to find Palestine inhabited by so many Arabs.”² As Porath notes, when Peters makes reference to Asher Druyanov’s collection of early Zionist settlers’ writings, she does not mention “the many passages in his two volumes referring to the presence of Arabs living in the areas where Jews had settled.”³ Other critics cite the Jewish writer Ahad Ha’am, who visited the area and related his experiences in an 1891 essay called “Truth from Palestine”:

We abroad are used to believing that Palestine is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed, and that anyone who wishes to purchase land there may come and do so to his heart’s content. But in truth this is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains that are not fit to grow anything but fruit trees–and this only after hard labor and great expense of clearing and reclamation–only these are not cultivated, because the Arabs do not like to exert themselves in the present for a distant future. For this reason the opportunity to purchase good soil does not always exist. Both the farmers and the large landholders are reluctant to sell good, productive land. Many of our brothers who came to Palestine to buy land wait for months, have criss-crossed the land and have not yet found what they seek. ⁴

http://capitalismmag...nd-part-2-of-6/

Another Joan Peters propagated (but not created) lie.

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Btw, in the beginning many Jews actually admired the Arabs and saw them as a role model - many forefathers of the Zionist movement talk of the local Arabs as a model of how the Jews should act like. Only after the British released religious extremists from prison, and the Arabs became brainwashed into anti-Semitic violence, also against the ancient Jewish communities, did things change to the worse.

This is a distortion of the truth. The rise of Palestinian hate for the Zionist stems from the Balfour Declaration, and more specifically, Zionist interpretation and planned implementation of said document. The indigenous population saw clearly that the religious Zionists wanted all of Palestine as their own. They wanted what was not theirs and this is what led to the violence between the two peoples. Releasing nutjobs from prison was not the cause.

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Right. No exaggeration what so ever. Forget the Nazis, forget Communism, forget the Armenian genocide, the Kurdish genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the occupation of Tibet, or even the Syrian civil war - all of them are nothing, compared to the "most catastrophic situation in the history of the World"

Please do not misrepresent what I say. I did not say this in the context you wrote and quoted. I clearly stated that it was 'potentially' the most catastrophic... ...I believe right now in the World that this is true. If war breaks out in the region at this moment in time it has the potential to be more destabalising than even the Second World War. This is not a comparison to Rwanda or Communism, as you try to portray, but simply an observation.

Edited by ExpandMyMind, 08 December 2012 - 09:41 PM.

[Yamato]

Erikl, on 08 December 2012 - 06:25 PM, said:

I'm sorry, no. This is actually not the definition of colonialism.

And when you're given the definition of ethnic cleansing, you ignore it.  

Ethnic cleansing (compare Serbo-Croatian etničko čišćenje^[1]) is the process or policy of eliminating unwanted ethnic or religious groups by deportation, forcible displacement, mass murder, or by threats of such acts, with the intent of creating a territory inhabited by people of a homogeneous or pure ethnicity, religion, culture, and history. Ethnic cleansing usually involves attempts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, and by the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.

[Erikl]

Israel's creation, far from being a foreign colonial transplant, can actually be seen as the vanguard of and impetus for decolonialization of the entire Middle East, including a significant part of the Arab world, following the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

Despite the essentially parallel processes of independence from colonial and protectorate influence over the first half of the twentieth century, only one of the national movements at the time and only one of the resulting states, namely Israel, is accused of being "colonial," with the term "settler-colonialist" applied to the Zionist enterprise
This term, however, can assume validity only if it is assumed that the "setters" have no indigenous roots and rights in the area. As such, this is yet another example of psychological manipulation for political purposes. The notion of "settler" dismisses any historical or biblical connection of Jews to the area. Hence, the importance of denial of Jewish rights, history, and claims to the area.
Lest there be any confusion about what a "settler" is, those who use the terminology "settler-colonialist" against Israel clearly mean the entire Zionist enterprise, including the original territory of the State of Israel in 1948. The "colonial Israel" charge is thus rooted in an ideological denial of any Jewish connection to the ancient Land of Israel.

As for the Balfour Declaration, what is not popularly recognized is how the Arab world benefited from the Balfour Declaration and how it served the Arab world in their nationalist goals and helped advance their own independence from the colonial powers of England and France.

The Balfour Declaration is historically viewed solely as the document that first recognized the rights of Jews to a national home and independence in Palestine. Accordingly, it is perceived in the Arab world as a document that began what was seen as an illegitimate process of dispossessing Arabs from their lands. What is not popularly recognized, however, is how the Arab world benefited from the Balfour Declaration and how it helped advance their own independence from the colonial powers of England and France. Nowhere is this made clearer than in the Peel Commission Report of 1937, which stated:
The fact that the Balfour Declaration was issued in order to enlist Jewish support for the Allies and the fact that this support was forthcoming are not sufficiently appreciated in Palestine. The Arabs do not appear to realize in the first place that the present position of the Arab world as a whole is mainly due to the great sacrifices made by the Allied and Associated Powers in the War and, secondly, that, insofar as the Balfour Declaration helped to bring about the Allies' victory, it helped to bring about the emancipation of all the Arab countries from Turkish rule. If the Turks and their German allies had won the War, it is improbable that all the Arab countries, except Palestine, would now have become or be about to become independent states.
The Balfour Declaration, thus, not only served as the stimulus for Jewish independence, but, curiously enough, served the Arab world in their nationalist goals as well. This was largely seen outside of Palestine, but insofar as Palestine is concerned, there was initially an absence of nationalism with a distinct "Palestinian" identity. The Peel Report notes, "The Arabs had always regarded Palestine as included in Syria." The plan, under an agreement between Emir Feisal and Chaim Weizmann (the Feisal-Weizmann agreement), was that the Arabs would recognize Jewish rights and independence over Western Palestine as called for in the Balfour Declaration, while Feisal's family would retain control of Syria and the area known as Trans-Jordan. The failure of this agreement, and the resultant conflict that ensued, was a result of the French refusal to relinquish their colonial control and recognize the rights of Emir Feisal in Syria.

http://rslissak.com/...irwin-jmansdorf

While the source might be biased, it's bottom line is clear - the reason and source for calling Israel a colonial enterprise is rooted in the notion that Jews have no, or inferior to Arab, rights to the land.

[Erikl]

As for the name Palestine, let's discuss few issues (again).

First, let us clarify who the "Palestinians" really are. The notion of a modern distinct "Palestinian people" with a language, culture and nationality of its own, is a new creation of Arab nationalist in the area, especially the PLO, in unison with the Arab League, and nurtured by the surrounding Arab nations and world media, after the ignominious Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel. The modern so-called "Palestinian people" are, in reality, a mixture of Arabs whose mother tongue is Arabic, whose religion is Islam, and whose culture is shared by most of the 22 surrounding Arab countries. There simply is not nor has there ever been a distinct Palestinian national entity. The term “Palestinian” has historically applied to anybody living in area, even Jews.
Second, as I have alluded to before, the name "Palestine" is the Romanized version of "Philistine," which was assigned, by the Romans to the region in the first century AD. It was a derogatory and humiliating term imposed by the Romans on the Jews, who constituted the vast majority of the people who lived there. Romans forced on the Jews and their land the name of an arch enemy of the Jews, the Philistines. Rome even went so far as to rename Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina. Thus, the name Palestine came into prominence and remained attached to the region until the end of the British Mandate period in 1947. However, Jews have always considered the land their homeland and Jerusalem its capital. In addition, the land was never without as many Jews as the governing power would allow.
More than that, for centuries after Rome expelled the Jews and renamed the land, Jews constituted a majority in Palaestina Secunda, the northern part of the land, until the late 7th century when Islam arrived from the Arabian peninsula.

Edited by Erikl, 09 December 2012 - 10:08 AM.

[preacherman76]

Yamato, on 07 December 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:

Oh how I would love to dump the whole bloody affair in the UK taxpayers' lap and let you deal with it. If we're always going to invoke the history as some kind of justification for Israel, of course the Brits are going to come up.

If US foreign policy is so great on this issue, you do it.   It's Britain's mess to begin with.

Hu? If we are going to ignore history, then you cant have any understanding of whats taking place today.

[Yamato]

preacherman76, on 09 December 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

Hu? If we are going to ignore history, then you cant have any understanding of whats taking place today.

???????

"Always invoking the history as some kind of justification for Israel" isn't a call to "ignore history".   I listen to people like Ron Paul who don't ignore history, not conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones who don't even know it.

Are you over all that 9/11 truther conspiracy yet?   I shouldn't accuse of "completely blaming the US for everything" regarding 9/11 now should I?