Quick Introduction to Israel and Palestine

[Erikl]

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.

[Mr.United_Nations]

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.

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.

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 December 8, 2012 by ExpandMyMind

[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?

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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 December 8, 2012 by ExpandMyMind

[Yamato]

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/content/israel-colonial-statethe-political-psychology-palestinian-nomenclature-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 December 9, 2012 by Erikl

[preacherman76]

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]

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?

[odas]

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.

Erikl you are trying to wash the palestinians away by absorbing them into a unity of arabs. That does not work buddy. Think of the slavs for example. Serbs, croats, ukrainians, slovaks, polish, slovenians, parts of bosnians....they all are slavs and do share a base of the same language, culture, mentality......yet there are clearly defined by their nationality. Looks like for you an arab is an arab is an arab. Your mindset has absolutly no historical value. Pure Goebels propaganda at its best.

Arabs, just like slavs, romans...are a multitude of religion, natinality, ethnic, ethymology, culture...as opposed to the artifficial unity of Judaism where one has only one nationality religion, culture...

You are arguing something that you can not argue. Palestinians are a seperate nationality, multi religious and distinguished culture.

[ExpandMyMind]

Erikl you are trying to wash the palestinians away by absorbing them into a unity of arabs. That does not work buddy. Think of the slavs for example. Serbs, croats, ukrainians, slovaks, polish, slovenians, parts of bosnians....they all are slavs and do share a base of the same language, culture, mentality......yet there are clearly defined by their nationality. Looks like for you an arab is an arab is an arab. Your mindset has absolutly no historical value. Pure Goebels propaganda at its best.

Arabs, just like slavs, romans...are a multitude of religion, natinality, ethnic, ethymology, culture...as opposed to the artifficial unity of Judaism where one has only one nationality religion, culture...

You are arguing something that you can not argue. Palestinians are a seperate nationality, multi religious and distinguished culture.

There's no point in trying to argue with this nonsense. Even the Israeli government have recognised there are and have been a Palestinian people. It is only silly deniers you find on the internet or as part of the far out Zionist camp like that try to claim such a thing.

It's a funny old situation. We have people being vilified for being holocaust deniers (99% of the time correctly vilified in my opinion), yet we have a fringe group of extremists who are entire people deniers - who aren't even nearly viewed in the same light. They deny the existence of an entire people and people don't even consider how disgusting an act that actually is!

Oh well, history is there to be read and learned. Anyone who is interested can find out the truth on their own.

[Erikl]

Erikl you are trying to wash the palestinians away by absorbing them into a unity of arabs. That does not work buddy. Think of the slavs for example. Serbs, croats, ukrainians, slovaks, polish, slovenians, parts of bosnians....they all are slavs and do share a base of the same language, culture, mentality......yet there are clearly defined by their nationality. Looks like for you an arab is an arab is an arab. Your mindset has absolutly no historical value. Pure Goebels propaganda at its best.

Arabs, just like slavs, romans...are a multitude of religion, natinality, ethnic, ethymology, culture...as opposed to the artifficial unity of Judaism where one has only one nationality religion, culture...

You are arguing something that you can not argue. Palestinians are a seperate nationality, multi religious and distinguished culture.

First, thanks for the Nazi analogue. Much appreciated... Second, with all your enthusiasm, you wrote complete nonsense.

The similarity between the Palestinians and other neighboring Arab people isn't the same as the (none) similarity between Poles and Serbs. It's even less so than the similarity between Austrians and Germans, which had centuries of different political history to diverse.

Until 80 years ago, all of these Arabic speaking, mostly Muslim people you call Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians etc., all belonged to tribes stretching for hundreds of miles, with no clear geographic boundaries. These tribes are known in Arabic as "Khamulah". They spoke exactly the same language, with slight local diversion, They didn't call themselves Lebanese or Palestinians or Jordanians until the French and British occupied the area after WW1 and divided the region according to it's geography. Many Palestinians still to these days have the same family names as Syrians or Iraqis. The entire region was all part of the Ottoman empire and before that to different Muslim caliphates and empires.

Second, and most important - I didn't deny, ever, the fact that today there are people called Palestinians. That would be complete stupidity. Just like I will not deny there are currently Arabs who call themselves Syrians, Lebanese etc. (though today it seems some citizens of Syria have more in common with the people of Gaza than their own country men).

I was, rightfully, mentioning the fact that there was no country or state called Palestine. It's a colonialist invention. The current definition of Palestine by the Palestinians is recent, and is a result of colonialism, not rooted in any lingual or historic or religious background.

Odas, you might have got me wrong here, but Ex knows exactly what I'm talking about, as he participate in this thread for few days now. So your reaction just show me how moot your argument is.

[ExpandMyMind]

Where was the comparison to the Nazis?

Many nationalist identities are 'recent'. This is no way nullifies the legitimacy of them. And 100 years ago isn't even what I would consider recent.

I know you've not been one to deny that there exists a Palestinian people, but you have tried to wash away their claim to the land by essentially claiming the same thing, albeit earlier in the timeline. Even if you were correct in your claim that there is no difference whatsoever between them culturally (even though cultural uniqueness can vary from village to village, never mind across entire continents), they still lived on the land for long before 90% of new Israel's population did, and therefore it is there's to define in any which way they decide. Autonomy and self-determination, Erik. Y'know, the human rights that allowed Israel to be born in the first place.

It matters not when a people gains their national identity (or, rather, start their quest for one); what matters is whether or not they have enough of a tie to a land to justify such an identity. European Jewish immigrants back then did not. They had no more of a claim than the Japanese would have over China, or the Australians would have over Britain.

And I'll go back to what I stated at the start of this discussion: you may try to claim that Israel in its birth was not a colonial venture, but there can be no denying that what has happened since '67 in the Occupied Territories most definitely is.

Edited December 9, 2012 by ExpandMyMind

[Erikl]

Where? when odas said: "Your mindset has absolutly no historical value. Pure Goebels propaganda at its best.".

Unless you don't know who Goebels was, no further details are needed.

I didn't even try to refute their claim for the lands. It is you, on the other hand, who try to claim Jews have no real claims for the land, and that the entire Zionist enterprise is a colonial venture, or can be compared to a colonial venture.

I claim both people have exact equal rights. I only claimed, that what the Palestinians claim is "historic Palestine", and so did Yamato (and you have shown no disagreement, btw), has no historic basis what so ever. There is no "occupied Palestine", because there was no Palestine. A Palestinian state wasn't taken away from the Palestinians, who didn't even exist as a nation back then. It was a colonial administrative division, that didn't belong anymore to it's Arab inhabitants than it did to it's Jewish ones. The only ones who seem to claim that the other side has no claim, and is an invader, is the Palestinian side and their supporters, you included. This position, long abandoned by even mainstream right-wing Zionists, seem to stick on your side. And this is what keeps peace away - the fact that Arabs want to re-write history, and claim Jews have no historical ties nor legal rights to the land.

And you cannot claim you didn't know your support just that, because it's kind of screams out of your posts and the "likes" you seem to keep on giving Yamato, which to be frank is more truthful to his agenda than you are, however misguided that agenda might be.

Edited December 9, 2012 by Erikl

[odas]

First, thanks for the Nazi analogue. Much appreciated... Second, with all your enthusiasm, you wrote complete nonsense.

The similarity between the Palestinians and other neighboring Arab people isn't the same as the (none) similarity between Poles and Serbs. It's even less so than the similarity between Austrians and Germans, which had centuries of different political history to diverse.

Until 80 years ago, all of these Arabic speaking, mostly Muslim people you call Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians etc., all belonged to tribes stretching for hundreds of miles, with no clear geographic boundaries. These tribes are known in Arabic as "Khamulah". They spoke exactly the same language, with slight local diversion, They didn't call themselves Lebanese or Palestinians or Jordanians until the French and British occupied the area after WW1 and divided the region according to it's geography. Many Palestinians still to these days have the same family names as Syrians or Iraqis. The entire region was all part of the Ottoman empire and before that to different Muslim caliphates and empires.

Second, and most important - I didn't deny, ever, the fact that today there are people called Palestinians. That would be complete stupidity. Just like I will not deny there are currently Arabs who call themselves Syrians, Lebanese etc. (though today it seems some citizens of Syria have more in common with the people of Gaza than their own country men).

I was, rightfully, mentioning the fact that there was no country or state called Palestine. It's a colonialist invention. The current definition of Palestine by the Palestinians is recent, and is a result of colonialism, not rooted in any lingual or historic or religious background.

Odas, you might have got me wrong here, but Ex knows exactly what I'm talking about, as he participate in this thread for few days now. So your reaction just show me how moot your argument is.

So where the German tribes, pruss, shawbs, hessens or the slavic tribes russians, poles, from what area serbs, croats and some bosnians come hence your misinformation about the connection, slovaks...... Then of course there are arab tribes like syrians, lebanese, palestinians...

As for the language are you aware of the difference of the german language that is spoken in munich and in berlin? Or in hessen and in hamburg. In some cases they do not understand each other unless they speak hochdeutsch.

One tribe, yet either seperated in austrians and germans as nationalities or grouped together lije bavarians, hessen, schwaben...in on country as one nation.

The same applys to arabs, slavs..

I undrstand that onesided history is a b****.

And please stop the holocoust denier crapp. The holocoust on the jews happened and lets hope it does not happen again. But by using the holocoust as an excuse your government is responsible for ethnic clensing, terrorism and massacres on the palestinians.

How long can one use the holocoust as an excuse? How can I hold a ten year old serbian child responsible for what happened twenty years ago? That would be insanity. But that is what your government is doing.

[odas]

Btw..you are welcome.

[ExpandMyMind]

In fact, his point about differing and unique tribes throughout Europe is exactly on the money. As I stated, cultural differences exist even between villages, and it does not matter when a people gain national identity. You fail to acknowledge these facts. What would you be suggesting? That the people of the Occupied Territories should absorb into other countries or something? This is nonsense. They already have a country. And it was referred to as a 'country' (not just a region of land) as far back as 1920.

[Erikl]

In fact, his point about differing and unique tribes throughout Europe is exactly on the money. As I stated, cultural differences exist even between villages, and it does not matter when a people gain national identity. You fail to acknowledge these facts. What would you be suggesting? That the people of the Occupied Territories should absorb into other countries or something? This is nonsense. They already have a country. And it was referred to as a 'country' (not just a region of land) as far back as 1920.

I am not, and you yourself admitted that these nationalities are new.

Plus it has nothing to do with the argument, which is that Palestine in the borders that you and others claim that the Palestinians have historic rights etc., do not exist because there was no Palestinian state, it's a colonial invention. I stand again, that both Jews and Arabs have the same rightful claim to the land. If you're looking for any Nazi-like opinions here, is the continued denial of Jews for rights in a country they currently live, let it be Israel or anywhere else.

See? it's easy to play ball with words until we reach a no-argument.

[ExpandMyMind]

Both Arabs and Jews that were indigenous to the land had equal claim. Immigrants did not.

This is easy for anyone looking at this without bias to understand. Immigrants would never be allowed to claim a part of a land they were not indigenous to in any other situation you could imagine happening in the World. Your bias lies in the belief that the majority of Jews in Palestine had a claim to a land they were only loosely connected to after being removed for 2000 years. It's ridiculous.

It's religious extremism, put simply. And it has spurned nothing but more religious extremism.

A nice series of quotes from Christopher Hitchens regarding this whole sorry affair:

In his 2006 debate with Martin Amis, Hitchens stated that "one must not insult or degrade or humiliate people"^[100] and that he "would be opposed to this maltreatment of the Palestinians if it took place on a remote island with no geopolitical implications". Hitchens described Zionism as "an ethno-nationalist quasi-religious ideology" and stated his desire that if possible, he would "re-wind the tape [to] stop Hertzl from telling the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land".

He continued to say that Zionism "...nonetheless has founded a sort of democratic state which isn't any worse in its practice than many others with equally dubious origins." He stated that settlement in order to achieve security for Israel is "doomed to fail in the worst possible way", and the cessation of this "appallingly racist and messianic delusion" would "confront the internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". However, Hitchens contended that the "solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists" and wondered "What did they imagine would be the response of the followers of the Prophet [Muhammad]?" Hitchens bemoaned the transference into religious terrorism of Arab secularism as a means of democratization: "the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad".^[98] He maintained that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a "trivial squabble" that has become "so dangerous to all of us" because of "the faith-based element."^[100]

And to top this with a massive logic bomb:

In Slate magazine, Hitchens pondered the notion that, instead of curing antisemitism through the creation of a Jewish state, "Zionism has only replaced and repositioned"^[98] it, saying: "there are three groups of 6 million Jews. The first 6 million live in what the Zionist movement used to call Palestine. The second 6 million live in the United States. The third 6 million are distributed mainly among Russia, France, Britain, and Argentina. Only the first group lives daily in range of missiles that can be (and are) launched by people who hate Jews." Hitchens argued that instead of supporting Zionism, Jews should help "secularize and reform their own societies", believing that unless one is religious, "what the hell are you doing in the greater Jerusalem area in the first place?" Indeed, Hitchens goes so far as to claim that the only justification for Zionism given by Jews is a religious one.

http://en.wikipedia.....80.93Palestine

Edited December 9, 2012 by ExpandMyMind

[Erikl]

Wow Ex, you sound like a member of the BNP :-X.

So I guess we should make a list of countries that have no right to exist:

1. Australia

2. USA

3. Canada

4. All of South America

5. Most of Europe

It's funny how your logic works - new nations that didn't exist as such, have claims to countries and states that didn't exist before, yet immigrants that arrived before those borders were even set aren't allowed. You're right, that kind of logic works only for the biased

[ExpandMyMind]

Wow Ex, you sound like a member of the BNP :-X.

So I guess we should make a list of countries that have no right to exist:

1. Australia

2. USA

3. Canada

4. All of South America

5. Most of Europe

It's funny how your logic works - new nations that didn't exist as such, have claims to countries and states that didn't exist before, yet immigrants that arrived before those borders were even set aren't allowed. You're right, that kind of logic works only for the biased

In their inception, yes, you would be correct. None of the above had a right to exist. But they do now, just as I believe Israel does have a right to now exist within its '67 borders. Too many generations have now been born to all of those lands, including Israel.

new nations that didn't exist as such

Just because they were not granted statehood by outside states, does not mean they did not exist. A country exists for as long as the majority of its indigenous populations say it exists. And again we're back to the same self determination that even allowed Israel to be born.

And you seriously have the cheek to accuse me of sounding like the BNP? What's that all about? Disappointed in ye wee man.

Edited December 9, 2012 by ExpandMyMind

[odas]

In 1500 BC I believe was the first writen document about the exictence of Palestine, found in ancient egyptian inscriptians. How many countries, nationalities and religions came after that which are accepted but not the palestines?

[Yamato]

History isn't a valid excuse to deny human rights, no matter what the history is. That applies to EVERYONE of every continent and every country.

[Erikl]

History isn't a valid excuse to deny human rights, no matter what the history is. That applies to EVERYONE of every continent and every country.

So let me see. Untill few posts ago, you were all claiming Palestinians are ancient nation and Palestine is an ancient state taken from the Palestinians by the Jewish invaders. You all seem to be united with the "fact" that most Israeli Jews have less rights to the land than Palestinians. Now, when that was refuted as bogus, you zig-zagged into claiming some "we are the world we are the people" crap that we all "equal" and we all deserve to be judged the same way. Sorry but you make me laugh.

I claim, as I've always claimed - both the Arabic speaking people that are now divided to 22 different countries deserve their own self-determination (it was proven 22 times after all), and both Jews deserve it. Both have the same claim for a country in the middle east. I do not accept the current, modern, definition of "Palestine", adhered by most Palestinians and many among you pro-Palestinian supporters, that they have rights to all of the colonial territory that the British named Palestine. They do not, for the simple fact that that territory was created with the mind of some of it being designated for a Jewish national homeland. That was legally validated serveral times in the past by both the League of Nations and the United Nations, since at least July 1921.

The last country to have any legal claims to the land was Turkey, as the legal descendant of the Ottoman Empire, and they've relinquished all claims to those lands (together with Syria, Lebanon and most of the other 22 Arab countries which were all part of the Ottoman Empire).

While there were administrative divisions in some historical empires called "Palestine" (and later from Latin became "Filistin" in Arabic), they weren't independent political entities. Nor was there ever a unique ethnicity with special linguistic, religious or cultural attributes specifically to such a geographical region, or any region that might resemble such a territory in the past (as opposed, for example, to the case of the Kurds). And also, none of those administrative divisions ever had the boundaries which the Palestinians claim is Palestine aka the boundaries that the British created in 1920. So the entire argument that Israel is currently sitting on an occupied Palestinian state is moot.

Even the claim that it exists on privately owned land, and thus might have taken it from it's people, is moot, as most of the land in the British Mandatory Palestine was government-owned.

Finally, Jews have been living in the land for centuries. Jews have become the most significant ethnic group in Jerusalem in the mid 19th century, decades before the secular (that's right, NON RELIGIOUS) Zionist movement was created.

Jews are an indeginous group in the middle east. Eruopean Jews have been immigrating from Europe to the region long before modern period, to study and to get close to Jewish holy sites.

Today, 50% of the Jews living in Israel have their roots in the Middle East, not Europe.

Many Palestinians today also probably arrive from Middle Easterners travelling the region during the centuries that it was all united under one single regime. This is the reason why you have Arabic speaking families stretching all the way from Israel through Lebanon to Syria etc..

Bedouins, or nomadic Arabs, have been immigrating the vast deserts in the middle east for centuries, until it was divided to the current different countries, and they'd become citizens of those countries.

So lastly, both Jews and non-Jews have valid legal and historic equal claims to the territory that was created by the British, named "Palestine".

Most Israelis accept this, and are willing to share that land in the form of two states solution.

Most Palestinians, however, do not recognize Jews' rights to the land, see them as colonialists, and Israel as a temporary, "Crusader" project that shall perish soon. And the pople of this forum, it seems, who support such nonsense, are fueling the conflict without knowing so. It's time for you to stand up and say no to this propganda.

P.S

The irony is that the only independent state to exist in the region from 60 BC to 1948, was the Crusader "Kingdom of Jerusalem" that existed from 1099 to 1291. So actually, if any of them exist today and will claim a country of their own, they have a serious case :-P.

Edited December 10, 2012 by Erikl