posted
I've asked this question time and time again to those who disagree with how Israel is handling things.
Were you in complete control of Israel how would you change things? What would your response be to the terrorist attacks they endure on an almost daily basis now?
Are you suggesting they try something like what Gandhi did in India? What? I keep hearing arguments like "Israel shouldnt do X" and the response is, "But they are justified because their enemies do Y and want Z."
What should Israel be doing INSTEAD of what it does?
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posted
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there is no moral high ground in the Middle East. Everyone wants their chunk of land, and they are willing to kill for it.
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Thus killing in self-defense is equally immoral to killing for profit? Killing in self-defense is equally immoral to killing in defense of, say, a child? Killing one's self is immoral? Killing one's self to save others is immoral?
Yeah, I'm afraid what you've said before and say now isn't very persuasive. Your moral mathematics seem pretty inaccurate to me.
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When Isreal was created, how many hundreds of thousands of people were displaced? After the way Isreal was created in 1948, how could it ever possibly claim any kind of moral high ground?
The Palestineans and Arabs are no better, of course.
In this specific case, yes. Killing is killing is killing.
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I disagree. If you go back far enough you can always find some claim to any specific land.
What matters most is the here and now. In this situation there is a difference between the two sides. No question about it.
I doubt most of the people in the US would feel any different if the American Indians were the ones launching rockets at us.
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Indeed, Native Americans have just grievance with the US government in many, many ways. And I support them in all of them. Tribal lands, casinos, tax breaks, scholarships, tribal governments, I think all are only a fraction of what we owe while being a substantial portion of what we can actually give.
My sympathies and support would vanish entirely, though, if Native Americans had been involved in a campaign (in the modern era) of deliberately targeting civilians for murder as a political tool.
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Possibly because it did not make it a policy to target innocent civilians for murder to achieve political ends, thus it has some kind of high ground?
So...unless you're making the frankly stupid claim that displacement equals targeted murder of civilians, then yes, they do have the moral high ground. I say 'frankly stupid' because until recently, I never heard it actually made and am still astounded that it ever was.
You need to explain why exactly displacement-which was, by the way, returned to Jews living in Arab states, you know-is equivalent to the means Arabs and Palestinians use to remove their enemies: by murdering their civilians.
You have not done so, or even attempted to do so so far.
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quote:So...unless you're making the frankly stupid claim that displacement equals targeted murder of civilians, then yes, they do have the moral high ground.
I'm sure plenty of Americans would quietly give their land up if a stronger force asked nicely. Or bulldozed their homes. I'm sure Americans would never use all necassary force to take back land their saw as their own. I'm sure.
The civilian/soldier distinction is a cynical manipulation of language. It's the myth nations tell to themselves so they can go about acheiving their aims and polish their halo.
It's also a story only truly powerful nations can tell to themselves. If Isrealis or Americans were placed in a desperate enough situation, they'd happily bomb as many civilians as needed to achieve their goals.
I'm not a pacifist, but the cynical manipulations and self-deceptions that typically surround war are pretty pathetic. Admit that you have material or ideological goals and just get on with it. Forget the Just War crap.
That is not a call to a perpetual state of war, by the way. The desirability of various goals can be debated. It's the moral fluff that we should dispense with.
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So, you are making the claim that destruction and theft of property is equivalent to targeting civilians for murder?
Or are you making the completely irrelevant claim that 'Americans would do it too, so don't villify Palestinians'? Or what, exactly? You're doing an excellent bit of rhetorical acrobatics, but you haven't really answered the question I asked at all:
Is destruction and theft of property morally equivalent to targeting civilians for murder to achieve a political goal? It's a simple yes or no question, Foust. Answer it please, if you can.
Now, as to the rest of your post...
quote:I'm sure plenty of Americans would quietly give their land up if a stronger force asked nicely. Or bulldozed their homes. I'm sure Americans would never use all necassary force to take back land their saw as their own. I'm sure.
Actually, there have been Americans who had their homes, rights, and dignity stolen from them and did not do what you suggest that 'of course' Americans would do. African-Americans, for one. And they were slaves, not just evictees. So...please, don't feed me your 'I'm sure' nonsense. You need to re-examine the many histories of oppressed peoples throughout the world to see what 'you're sure' they would do.
And how effective it would be towards success, of course. In the past century, the most famous examples of peoples which have succeeded in regaining rights and sovereignty have been the ones which did not do what 'you're sure' they'd do.
quote:The civilian/soldier distinction is a cynical manipulation of language. It's the myth nations tell to themselves so they can go about acheiving their aims and polish their halo.
Of course it's a manipulation of language, Foust. Like the differences in definitions in a dictionary is 'a manipulation of language'. Considering that there is a serious difference between a soldier and a civilian. Or is this going to become a 'deny all terms and definitions' discussion? Frankly, those are tiresome and generally the resort of those who cannot effectively disagree on the merits of facts and opinions.
quote:It's also a story only truly powerful nations can tell to themselves. If Isrealis or Americans were placed in a desperate enough situation, they'd happily bomb as many civilians as needed to achieve their goals.
It's a story all nations which have ever made war in history-all of them, in other words, powerful and weak-have told themselves. And just because people will generally do anything if you artificially change their circumstances to make them their most desperate and murderous does not make being desperate and murderous 'moral fluff'.
quote:I'm not a pacifist, but the cynical manipulations and self-deceptions that typically surround war are pretty pathetic. Admit that you have material or ideological goals and just get on with it. Forget the Just War crap.
Just because material goals are served by a war does not mean the war is unjust. Furthermore, since when are all ideological goals 'cynical manipulations' and 'crap'? If you want to discuss pathetic, how about focusing that keen selective historical insight on the idea that if any group has one single self-serving motive, their entire cause is cynical and pathetic and crappy?
Give me a break. Don't talk to me about moral fluff when you selectively magnify lesser self-serving, cynical methods of one party and compare them to the much greater and more horrible methods of the other side, ignore everything else and say, "Morally equivalent! See!"
Oh, and since you spent awhile not doing so, just a pointed reminder: please answer my question. If you can. Personally, on the tone and position of this post of yours, I don't think you can-and I think you know it.
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: When Isreal was created, how many hundreds of thousands of people were displaced? After the way Isreal was created in 1948, how could it ever possibly claim any kind of moral high ground?
The vast majority of the Arabs who were "displaced" had been there for no more than a generation or two. You're buying into the myth of a large Arab population in the land prior to the beginning of Modern Zionism, when the land, according to all accounts, couldn't support a large population of any sort.
The UN split the 22% of Palestine that hadn't already been made into an Arab state (Jordan) into 7 pieces. Three for Jews, three for Arabs, and one (Jerusalem) that the UN wanted to keep for itself. The pieces given to the Jews and Arabs were all populated with Jews and Arabs, but the UN made the Arab sections the ones that had the bigger Arab populations (the Jews were left with whatever was left over, but we were willing to go with that).
Almost half of what was given to the Jews was the Negev desert, which was almost completely empty. But again, we were willing to take it, because we figured that we could find a way to make the desert bloom (and we did).
The Arabs were given most of the arable land. Arable land that hadn't been arable land until Jews showed up and made it that way.
But they weren't even willing to let us have a patch of uninhabited desert. They tried to kill us all. At the end of that war, we'd turned our three non-contiguous pieces of land into something contiguous, though the heartland of Judea and Samaria was taken by Jordan, and the coastal area of Gaza was taken by Egypt.
The Arabs who'd been living in the area for not very long at that point didn't have any major problem with this. There were no "Palestinian" protests against Egypt for holding Gaza. There were no "Palestinian" protests against Jordan for holding Judea and Samaria ("the West Bank"). The PLO was created in 1964, three years before Israel took those lands, and the "Palestine" it wanted to "liberate" was Tel Aviv and Haifa and every single inch of land that was under Jewish control.
In 1970, the PLO attempted to depose King Hussein of Jordan and take over Jordan, because Jordan is 78% of the original Palestinian Mandate. Hussein dealt with them appropriately, which was how they wound up in Lebanon, where they continued shelling Israel until 1982.
We don't just have the moral high ground. We have the only moral ground. All we want to do is live. All they want is for us not to live. Or why are they still living in refugee camps a year after we abandoned Gaza? Why haven't they declared statehood? We declared statehood when all we had were three separate cantons, one of which was nothing but desert.
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: Or bulldozed their homes.
Oh, spare me. Do you know why we started bulldozing houses? Because the bloody terrorists are heros of their people. And their families are treated as the families of heros. And for a very long time, they were getting paid a bounty. Go blow yourself up in a Jewish restaurant, and we'll give your family $25,000.
Some of these people were willing to risk their own lives, but didn't want to hurt their families in the process. So we made it clear to them that their terrorism would hurt their families. We couldn't just kill their families (though that's what the Arabs would have done), but we could knock their houses down.
You make it sound as though the terrorism is because of the house demolitions. That's like saying criminals commit crimes because there are jails. It's idiotic.
quote:Originally posted by Foust: The civilian/soldier distinction is a cynical manipulation of language. It's the myth nations tell to themselves so they can go about acheiving their aims and polish their halo.
That's sick.
quote:Originally posted by Foust: It's also a story only truly powerful nations can tell to themselves. If Isrealis or Americans were placed in a desperate enough situation, they'd happily bomb as many civilians as needed to achieve their goals.
Well, it's clear that you would. There are those of us who have a sense of morality, though. I understand that such a thing is utterly alien to someone with a basically sociopathic view of the world ("there's no right or wrong; just effective and not effective"), so you'll just have to take my word for it.
quote:Originally posted by Foust: It's the moral fluff that we should dispense with.
You make me want to go and wash my eyes. They feel dirty just from reading what you write.
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*sigh* Again Lisa, you voice my opinions as though they'd been distilled and magnified many times over...and make me view my own thoughts with a critical, regretful eye.
You can be as ineffective as Bean Counter, Lisa. I've gotten the impression in the past that you don't care who you alienate, and in defense of some things I can understand and even agree. You may believe that Israel does not need friends to survive, but do you think it requires no friends to survive?
Sometimes, I think that's what you're going for.
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quote:You make it sound as though the terrorism is because of the house demolitions.
Personally, I think some terrorism is because of the house demolitions. Do you believe all terrorists spring fully-formed from the minds of the gods?
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quote:Do you know why we started bulldozing houses? Because the bloody terrorists are heros of their people. And their families are treated as the families of heros. And for a very long time, they were getting paid a bounty. Go blow yourself up in a Jewish restaurant, and we'll give your family $25,000.
Some of these people were willing to risk their own lives, but didn't want to hurt their families in the process. So we made it clear to them that their terrorism would hurt their families. We couldn't just kill their families (though that's what the Arabs would have done), but we could knock their houses down.
You make it sound as though the terrorism is because of the house demolitions. That's like saying criminals commit crimes because there are jails. It's idiotic.
Hey, how'd that house-bulldozing program work out?
Oh-- the picture would be much more accurate, I believe, if the Israeli soldier was carrying a bazooka instead of a rifle.
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quote:Or are you making the completely irrelevant claim that 'Americans would do it too, so don't villify Palestinians'?
Eh? Where did I say "don't villify Palestinians"? I'm pretty sure I said they didn't have the moral high ground. If only there was a written record of what I said, so you could go back and re-read it, more carefully this time...
quote:Is destruction and theft of property morally equivalent to targeting civilians for murder to achieve a political goal? It's a simple yes or no question, Foust. Answer it please, if you can.
I'm also pretty sure I've made clear it isn't a question of moral values, but rather of power and language.
You might as well ask if me if the sound of the colour blue is high pitched. No matter if I say yes or no, you won't get a clear picture of what I think of your question.
quote:Actually, there have been Americans who had their homes, rights, and dignity stolen from them and did not do what you suggest that 'of course' Americans would do.
This is a non-sequitur. Barring the obvious fact that African slaves were never "Americans," African slaves rarely had the opportunity or ability to organize and fight back. I say rarely, because at times it did happen.
I thought you were claiming that the Palestineans are in the wrong for getting violent over lost territory (maybe I misread you). I said many groups would react in a similar way, including whatever group you're a part of. You responded with examples of groups that never had the opportunity for an organized response. Non-sequitur.
quote:Or is this going to become a 'deny all terms and definitions' discussion? Frankly, those are tiresome and generally the resort of those who cannot effectively disagree on the merits of facts and opinions.
Or, those discussions are a necessary recognition of certain realities about the way humans think.
quote:It's a story all nations which have ever made war in history-all of them, in other words, powerful and weak-have told themselves. And just because people will generally do anything if you artificially change their circumstances to make them their most desperate and murderous does not make being desperate and murderous 'moral fluff'.
All nations? That's a pretty strong statement. Whatever the truth of that statement is, it's also clear that in practice, the status of civilians is only valued insofar as killing civilians is not (perceived as) necessary to the war effort. See: Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Or, skim the stories about the initial conquest of Canaan in the Bible: not much respect for civilian status there.
quote:Just because material goals are served by a war does not mean the war is unjust.
No, but it is not hard to argue that the material goals are the primary motivating factor, and that the justness of a war is a matter of comfort for the weak hearted.
quote:Furthermore, since when are all ideological goals 'cynical manipulations' and 'crap'?
Eh... again, re-read what I said. Cynical manipulations in the service of ideology are crap, not the ideologies themselves.
quote:Give me a break. Don't talk to me about moral fluff when you selectively magnify lesser self-serving, cynical methods of one party and compare them to the much greater and more horrible methods of the other side, ignore everything else and say, "Morally equivalent! See!"
Yeah, I didn't do this either. Seriously. Re-read my posts. I said the origins of Isreali power make them equivalent to the Palistineans, not the ways they justify that power. Am I unclear, or are you uncapable of reading carefully?
quote:Oh, and since you spent awhile not doing so, just a pointed reminder: please answer my question. If you can. Personally, on the tone and position of this post of yours, I don't think you can-and I think you know it.
If it will make you feel better, I will answer your question.
wait for it...
"Yes"
quote:The vast majority of the Arabs who were "displaced" had been there for no more than a generation or two. You're buying into the myth of a large Arab population in the land prior to the beginning of Modern Zionism, when the land, according to all accounts, couldn't support a large population of any sort.
I suppose my history might be sketchy, yes. How many Palestineans do you claim were there? Were any forcibly removed, and if so, how many?
quote:That's sick.
I might have some halo polish in my garage, if you've run out of your own.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: (I have a feeling you are translating the British/Irish issue to the Israeli/Arab issue. And the fact is, they are not analogous.) [/QB]
Not really. My point with the N. Ireland comparison is only to point to a process that is working.
I think that the British/Irish issue does have some parallels - but only if you go back prior to the 1922. And there are similar parallels with the US/Native American conflict. The Native Americans didn't use the land at all efficiently; America can support way more people and in better conditions now than it did; the Native Americans regularly killed women and children during their resistance. Of course, no situation is going to be analogous in every aspect, but facets of history can help to illuminate the present.
You will notice that I don't do a lot of lobbying for white people to go back to Europe and leave the US to the Native Americans.
My point is that simplifying the situation to what the cartoon does: they are baby killers; we save babies - brings us further from any solution that isn't disastrous. Declaring them evil without recognizing that there might be reasons - not justifications, necessarily, but reasons - does limit the conversation to kill or be killed. We did that with the Native Americans to an extent. And we could do that because they were a limited population that nobody cared about. Muslims are not, so the consequences are greater.
I do want to say that I am not confusing you with other posters. Nor do I think that you share the positions of other posters. I respond to your posts rather than others because it is interesting and productive to converse with you and because I want you to know what I think.
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Thanks, Scott, that's very kind. FWIW you didn't sound flippant to me - you sounded frustrated. It is easy to get frustrated. It is less frustrating to respond mostly to Rivka because she is so reasonable in her posts. Right now work has made it harder to post complicated stuff quickly or often, so I have to pause before I react which cuts down on my natural snarkiness.
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quote:You make it sound as though the terrorism is because of the house demolitions.
Personally, I think some terrorism is because of the house demolitions. Do you believe all terrorists spring fully-formed from the minds of the gods?
That's a false dichotomy. I don't believe a single terrorist act has resulted from those demolitions. And you know something? Someone who reacts to the destruction of a house by killing people is an animal. Yes, you heard me. Lyrhawn, go and jump for joy. I'll repeat it, too. I won't say that someone who kills for a principle is an animal (necessarily), but someone who commits murder, let alone mass murder, because a physical structure was destroyed should be hunted down and killed like a dog.
Of course, I don't believe there's a single Arab who has done such a thing. So no, I'm still not calling them animals. Sorry, Lyrhawn.
Terrorists make choices. In some cases, they are raised that way. Does that reduce the degree to which they can be considered as having made a free choice? Are they to be considered like brainwashed POWs during the Korean War and Vietnam? Lacking culpability because they lack true volition?
Tell it to Sgt. Krupke. They may be depraved on accounta they're deprived, but that's not our concern. The danger they pose is. If there are any responsible individuals among them, they bear the responsibility to lock their lunatics up tight and to keep them from harming others.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Oh-- the picture would be much more accurate, I believe, if the Israeli soldier was carrying a bazooka instead of a rifle.
So we should limit ourselves to the same weapons? Some sort of "Marquis of Queensbury" rules? Sorry. They're trying to kill us. We'll use whatever weapons are effective.
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: I suppose my history might be sketchy, yes. How many Palestineans do you claim were there? Were any forcibly removed, and if so, how many?
None. Many of them did leave during the war because they figured it'd be smart to get out of the way while their brethren killed the Jews. They didn't plan to be gone long. They miscalculated. Badly.
I've mentioned this before, but you may not have been around. I spoke once with a woman who lives in Upper Nazareth. That's a Jewish town built near Nazareth, which is an Arab town.
Back in 1967, while Arab leaders were screeching about throwing the Jews into the sea, before the Six Day War, this woman walked into her kitchen, and saw a woman she knew from Nazareth walking around looking into cabinets. Like she owned the place.
She asked the woman what she was doing, and was told, "After the war, this will be mine. I'm just looking it over."
The land was not empty. But it was extremely sparse. There was virtually no infrastructure until the Zionists showed up and built it. The vast majority of the Arabs living there in 1948 had been there much less than a century. A generation or two at the most. They were Arabs; not Palestinians. They'd migrated there from other Arab countries, because the Jews were creating jobs.
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"So we should limit ourselves to the same weapons? "
All wars fought in the developed world since 1918 have featured some limitations on weapons. Failing to comply with these is an inherent war crime.
In this case, the situation is made more complex by the policing/gendarmie nature of operations, which requires more discretion.
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Is there any proof that violence by Israelis is dissuading Muslims on the West Bank to not blow themselves up in the marketplace?
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: And there are similar parallels with the US/Native American conflict.
Very true. But you're misidentifying the sides. Israel is more like the Native Americans. If you're identifying us with the Europeans, that'd mean that Europeans came into being in North America, and that it was European land. And that the Native Americans came in and conquered it when most of the Europeans were elsewhere against their will, and those who were left were unable to prevent the conquest.
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Who's land it WAS doesn't matter NOW. What matters is stomping out the mentality (on both sides) that maintains the right to murder people on the other side.
We can divvy up the back forty after you share your pottage and sit down and behave like civilized human beings.
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quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Esau is weeping for his dead children...
Huh? Abraham's sons were Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac's sons were Esau and Jacob. What on earth does Esau have to do with what's going on in Israel right now?
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: Who's land it WAS doesn't matter NOW. What matters is stomping out the mentality (on both sides) that maintains the right to murder people on the other side.
We don't murder people. Period.
quote:Originally posted by Scott R: We can divvy up the back forty after you share your pottage and sit down and behave like civilized human beings.
To repeat what was said before, if they were to lay down their arms, the conflict would end. If we do the same, we're dead. Your moral relativism is odious.
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: [QB] To repeat what was said before, if they were to lay down their arms, the conflict would end. If we do the same, we're dead.
Ever consider that maybe they feel the same way?
I'm sure you'll respond that it wasn't your side that started it, and your side is just defending itself. You have a point.
But the problem with 'an eye for an eye' is that everyone ends up blind.
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: [QB] To repeat what was said before, if they were to lay down their arms, the conflict would end. If we do the same, we're dead.
Ever consider that maybe they feel the same way?
They're doing a great job of showing it, considering the official positions of Hamas and Hezbollah both call for the complete and unconditional eradication of Israel.
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From Ahad Ha'am "Truth from the Land of Israel" 1891
"...if a time should come when the life of our people in the Land of Israel develops until it encroaches upon the natives to a smaller or lesser extent, they will not easily yield their position."
In 1948 somewhat over 700,000 Arabs were removed from their homes. Roughly half this number of Jews were removed from Arab lands and absorbed by Israel.
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: [QB] To repeat what was said before, if they were to lay down their arms, the conflict would end. If we do the same, we're dead.
Ever consider that maybe they feel the same way?
Consider? Sure. They don't. They say it themselves, loudly. Their goal is to keep shooting so long as there's a single one of them left and there's still a single one of us living in our land.
quote:Originally posted by Javert: I'm sure you'll respond that it wasn't your side that started it, and your side is just defending itself. You have a point.
I would, if you were as right as you are sure. But you aren't. The question you asked has nothing to do with who started it. It has to do with who is continuing it. We have stopped hostilities times without number. They always start again. I repeat, if they were to stop killing us, this conflict would be over. We're not fighting for land. It's our land, and we don't need to give it up to people who have no right to it, but we aren't fighting over land. We're fighting over them killing us. They, on the other hand, are fighting over us being there at all.
quote:Originally posted by Javert: But the problem with 'an eye for an eye' is that everyone ends up blind.
posted
And almost all those 700,000 Arabs (or whatever the real number was) arrived in Israel decades after Ahad Ha'am wrote those words.
If there were a couple of tens of thousands of them in the entire area in 1891, that's a lot.
And the Arabs were not "removed from their homes" in 1948. They left to get out of the way of the war they expected to eliminate the Jews. As I said before, that was a Very Bad Idea.
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Scott R: [qb]Esau is weeping for his dead children...
quote:Huh? Abraham's sons were Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac's sons were Esau and Jacob. What on earth does Esau have to do with what's going on in Israel right now?
From Wikipedia (bear in mind Edom is an alternate name for Esau)
The Edomites
The Bible refers to Esau's descendents as "Edomim" or "Edomites". The Edomite people are known from history to have been a Semitic-speaking tribal group inhabiting the Negev Desert and the Aravah valley of what is now southern Israel and Jordan.
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Trust me, sL knows that Edom descends from Esau. Neither is Ishmael, the origin of the Arabs -- according to their oral traditions as well as ours.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: 700,000 Arabs were removed from their homes.
They were not removed from their homes; they fled in anticipation of a war that would wipe out the Jews. They left because THEIR leaders told them to get out of the way of a march to drive the Jews into the sea.
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: From Wikipedia (bear in mind Edom is an alternate name for Esau)
Yes, I think I may have heard something to that effect. <grin>
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: The Edomites
The Bible refers to Esau's descendents as "Edomim" or "Edomites". The Edomite people are known from history to have been a Semitic-speaking tribal group inhabiting the Negev Desert and the Aravah valley of what is now southern Israel and Jordan.
And again, the connection would be...? There are no people in the world today claiming to be descended from the Edomites. Jewish tradition sees Rome (and all the cultures deriving from Rome, such as Europe and the US) as the inheritors of Edom, but that's midrashic, and isn't necessarily literal.
The Arabs see themselves as descendents of Ishmael, Edom's uncle. Granted, Esau did marry at least one daughter of Ishmael, so some Arabs may be of Edomite descent, but they don't claim it. That's biblical, and the little they have of the Bible in the Qur'an is totally garbled. Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Ishmael, rather than Isaac, Haman advising Pharaoh to build a great Tower... stuff like that.
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My sources are books rather than online. I had thought that the 711,000 was a UN estimate. In terms of "removed", I suppose it is a question of which "eyewitness account you read. There are plenty of recorded accounts of towns such as Deir Yassin or al-Ramla or Lydda where people were forcibly removed. I imagine there is some truth to both. I had thought that the Jewish population shift in 1948 was about half from Arab lands and about half from Europe, but again, sources differ.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I had thought that the Jewish population shift in 1948 was about half from Arab lands and about half from Europe, but again, sources differ.
I believe it was close, although more from Arab countries. (England was strictly limiting Jewish immigrants from Europe.) But the Jewish population increased something like 1.1 million around that time, so 650,000 or so from Arab countries would be about right.
And yeah, I have mostly book sources as well. But none in front of me at the moment.
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posted
In any case, my point was that it should have been an approximately equal switch (leaving aside the question of whether either group should have been forced/encouraged/whatever to leave their homes). But while the Jewish exiles from Arab lands were absorbed by Israel (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Europe and the US), Arab exiles were put in camps by the Arab nations -- or refused entry entirely.
Blame their 50+ years as displaced people on Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. They knew precisely what they were doing -- and continue to do.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: If you prefer, I can go back to ignoring you entirely.
Just to clarify, if I object to being called sL, you'll go back to ignoring me?
Oh.
Just curious. Do you object to me telling other people that I prefer to be called by my name, or is it just you that I should say such a terrible thing to?
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:You make it sound as though the terrorism is because of the house demolitions.
Personally, I think some terrorism is because of the house demolitions. Do you believe all terrorists spring fully-formed from the minds of the gods?
That's a false dichotomy. I don't believe a single terrorist act has resulted from those demolitions. And you know something? Someone who reacts to the destruction of a house by killing people is an animal. Yes, you heard me. Lyrhawn, go and jump for joy. I'll repeat it, too. I won't say that someone who kills for a principle is an animal (necessarily), but someone who commits murder, let alone mass murder, because a physical structure was destroyed should be hunted down and killed like a dog.
Of course, I don't believe there's a single Arab who has done such a thing. So no, I'm still not calling them animals. Sorry, Lyrhawn.
My god you're full of it. Thankfully katharina called you on it right away. You are declaring something then trying to justify it, but your justification doesn't work. When it comes down to it, you're saying that anyone who kills because something was taken from then is an animal, something physical, not something alive, where I think you even said things are less clear.
Someone who murders for the sake of houses or land is an animal. Your justifications are thin, vapor thin, so why bother making them? We all know how you feel. Baiting me doesn't make me look stupid, it makes you look ridiculous.
I wonder though, what this makes Israel for killing women and children in Lebanon and other places, for the sake of land, for the sake of houses.
Stop tying to have it both ways. Yet again you are calling them animals. It's your choice to do so, so live with it, and stop saying it then qualifying it. I think calling a group of people like that animals is dangerous, not for what it makes you into by being the one to call them animals, but for how you underestimate and judge them. It'll only hurt you in the long run.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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