quote:Originally posted by Clive Candy: Trenchant insight. But what does this have to do with Israeli self-defense against Palestinians?
Fixed that for you.
That Nazis said they were acting in self-defense too.
Well, more specifically, the Nazis said that somebody kept stealing their donuts. No matter how tasty a given donut may be, I don't think it's theft constitutes a serious assault on a person such that concerns of self-defense comes into play.
I may be going against the grain here, but I think the Nazis were very wrong.
I'm also not sure that they even make donuts in Israel.
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: Anyone paranoid about abduction (yeah I can now say I have a child!) should never put their child in a car. Your child WILL be in an auto accident one day. The average person has about one accident every 13 years.
Everyday people are scared to death of getting on a plane, strangers taking their children, and terrorists. Yet we happily get into a death trap on a daily basis to drive to work and take our children to school.
Trenchant insight. But what does this have to do with Israeli aggression against Palestinians?
Hey Clive, I was just wondering if you seriously believe that the Israelis are the main aggressors in this CURRENT conflict? If so, I can only say wow. Regardless of how things went on in the past, at the very worst I would call it mutual aggression. (and that's a huge stretch for me since the goals of the two groups are so vastly different, and to me one of them is ay worse)
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quote:Originally posted by Papa Janitor: ... Lisa and Clive, maybe it would be better if you didn't speak directly to each other (though speaking about one another is probably worse). ...
It's official. My 20 month old son, who smiles, laughs and does exactly what you just told him not to, listens better than Lisa and Clive.
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: And there are plenty of Jews who would agree with you. It's a case of "those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Everyone seems to think that their world and culture is unique. I bet there were nice Spaniards who said the same thing you're saying back in 1450. And Germans who said the same thing you're saying back in 1925. Hell, there were Jews in the Spanish court and in the Weimar government. And believe it or not, when Hitler was elected, he got a not insignificant number of Jewish votes.
The Jews in Germany wanted nothing more to be the best Germans in the world. They were "Germans of Mosaic persuasion". When they'd hear about anti-semitism, they would say, "Oh, they don't mean us. They mean those dirty Ausyidden (eastern Jews) who insist on being different.
And then when things went bad, most of their good friends turned on them like rabid dogs. Okay, maybe many of them did so because they didn't want to get painted as Jew-lovers, but the motivation doesn't really matter.
See, if you'd said, "I would fight to prevent that from happening," I would have been happy. But when you say that it isn't realistic to think that it'll happen, it just saddens me that one more person won't be doing anything about it.
It is disturbing and depressing that I actually agree with what you write here. Teaching history these past couple of years has proved to me if nothing else that history does repeat itself. Assuming that the United States will never fall from the grace it has found is blind. Our 200+ years are a blink of an eye when looking at human history. It doesn't take a cataclysm to turn people against a minority group.
Now, I truly believe Jews are currently safer in the United States than in any other country at any other time in history. We have way too many minoroty groups for everyone to gang up on one specific group. But things change, they always do.
Well... this is an interesting report. Headline is "More global anti-Semitic incidents reported in 2009 than any year since WWII". And the US doesn't seem totally exempt, though the article doesn't say if the two anti-semitic murders in the US are more or less than previous averages.
posted
Two? Dude, statistical noise. I'd be unsurprised to learn that this is roughly equal to the amount of anti-atheist murders; but those rarely get media attention.
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posted
KoM, as I said, I don't know that the two in the US are part of the main trend. Just some examples. The trend seems to be global, and I don't think it's specifically based on anti-semitic murders.
It mentions that anti-semitic events in France, for instance, are up to 631 from 474 last year. That's not insignificant.
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posted
Well, with two anti-semitic murders in the US last year, if that kind of increase keeps up Lisa's fears will be well founded in a scant hundreds of years.
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posted
How many anti-semitic murders do you think occurred in Germany prior to the Nazi regime? It doesn't take a murderer to sit by and let terrible things happen. It just takes a climate of distrust/resentment/contempt/etc.
posted
Actually it is sort of nice that I would be mostly welcomed in Israel, Ireland, the UK, Germany, and Russia.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Again. WHy does that mean that Jewish people should get an extra back-up country?
Stop spinning it that way. In the first place, it's our homeland. Period. Forget the antisemitism -- it's our home. And we didn't lose title to it just because we were exiled from it by force.
There was never a time during our history when there weren't some people who braved the sea and the hostility of the occupiers (Christians, and then Muslims) to return. There were towns from which the Jews never left at all. They managed to keep a low enough profile that they were able to evade the powers which expelled us.
Don't think that Jews returning to our land is something that started with the secular Zionist movement. That's simply not true. It was the secular Zionist movement which ramped it up into waves and waves of immigration.
Prior to that, no state existed in our land. It was controlled from afar by foreigners who held it for reasons of economics and/or war. Rome and then Byzantium and then Egypt and then Istanbul again. Those of us who lived there and those of us who returned lived alongside the Muslims and Christians who lived there.
There was no Arab polity in Palestine. There was no Palestinian nation. There were Arabs who lived on each side of the Jordan river, as well as Arabs who lived further north, in what is now Syria and Lebanon. There was no national distinction between any of them. Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Petra... it was all one big area, with a very low populationd density, and a populace that had no nationality, but was ruled by whoever ruled. Most recently, the Ottoman Turks.
So Herzl saw what happened to Dreyfus in France, and started a Zionist movement, and Jews started returning home in larger numbers. Arabs from all over migrated to Jewish areas because they were creating jobs. We're talking about European Jews bringing European technology in and making areas that had been turned into desert bloom for the first time in centuries. Almost millenia. The Arabs were glad enough for the economic boom, but then WWI happened.
The Turks got into WWI and lost, so the whole area got taken away from them. The Europeans thought it'd be easier to manage the region if they split it into mandates and created little nation-states. They gave some to France and some to Britain. And Lord Balfour in Britain issued a proclamation stating that Britain looked favorably upon the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Not at the expense of any Arabs, mind you. There were no nations there, and no nationalities. That was only just getting started.
By this time, there were a lot of Jews who'd been living in the area for at least as long as most of the newly arrived Arabs. The allies split northern Syro-Palestine off and called it Syria. And called what was left just Palestine (which was roughly what's now Israel and the disputed territories and Jordan). Jews had raised money and bought substantial amounts of land from the owners of record before WWI, and they continued to do so afterwards. But then Britain found themselves with a Hashemite prince named Abdullah who needed a princedom. So they gave him all of Palestine to the east of the Jordan, and named it the Emirate of Transjordan. The Jewish villages in the east were forced out (I don't hear a lot about any "right of return" for us to the lands we owned in what's now Jordan, incidentally, where Jews can't even own land).
So we focused on the positive and kept building. But by this time, the Arabs realized that nationalism was going to be the wave of the future, and while they hadn't had a big problem with Jews as individuals living in what they considered an Arab region, the idea of Jews running things didn't sit well with them. So they started getting very antagonistic. In 1929, they butchered the students learning in the Jewish seminary in Hebron, and drove out an ancient community of Jews who'd lived there since before Muhammed.
Things got bad. The Brits by this time had changed their minds and decided that they needed the Arabs and their oil, and tried to stop any more Jews from immigrating. They made it illegal on pain of death for a Jew to be caught with a firearm (and hanged our boys who they caught). Meanwhile, they turned a blind eye to the Arabs and their firearms and their violence, figuring that they didn't have to kick us out. Once we realized that it was an unsafe place for us, we'd leave of our own volition.
But we didn't. We did something that Jews hadn't done for very many centuries. We fought. We defended ourselves, and we answered violence with violence. Finally, the Brits washed their hands of the whole thing and gave the mandate back to the UN (technically, they'd received it from the League of Nations, but the UN was the successor body). The UN decided to split the area (a mere 21% of the Palestine they'd been given as a mandate) into 7 sections. Three Arab sections, three Jewish sections, and Jerusalem. here is a map for you to see. Notice that more than half of what the Jews were given was the Negev desert, while the Arabs were given the heartland, with Jerusalem in the middle of one of the Arab areas, without any possible access for Jews. Look at that orange area, Kate, and tell me how long you think it'd survive.
So now we were down to an offer of 11% of the Palestine Mandate. But we accepted it. The Arabs rejected it and invaded. Iraq invaded. Lebanon invaded. Egypt invaded. Transjordan invaded. Saudi Arabia invaded. Syria invaded. They killed a full percent of the Jews. One percent might not sound like a lot, but in the US, that'd be about 3,000,000 people.
We managed to survive, and during the course of the war, we managed to take enough extra land that the three Jewish sections were attached. The Jews living in those other sections were killed or expelled. The Arabs living in our sections were given citizenship. Somehow, people lose sight of the vast difference in outlook between the sides.
That's our land, Kate. It isn't a "backup state", though it can serve that purpose as well, if need be.
We have sufficient basis for our ownership on religious grounds for that to be enough for some people. We have sufficient basis for our ownership on recent historical grounds to be enough for others. And then there are some people who want to throw a pity party and say that it's a matter of having a place to run to. All of these are true and valid, and none of them are the whole story.
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This is a purely religious idea, and I don't accept it anymore than I accept creationism.
I'd respond that there is no such thing as a "homeland," only places people live. Anything else is a nationalistic fantasy.
Which ties into this:
quote:Prior to that, no state existed in our land.
The only thing this means is that it would be easier to take the land, either by signing treaties or by force. States protect land by force, but they do not justify ownership in anyway. The lack of a state does not disqualify ownership.
quote:We managed to survive, and during the course of the war, we managed to take enough extra land that the three Jewish sections were attached. The Jews living in those other sections were killed or expelled. The Arabs living in our sections were given citizenship. Somehow, people lose sight of the vast difference in outlook between the sides.
That's our land, Kate.
You fought for it, and you won. No moral justification here.
If you minus out the religious narrative, you see it for what it is: the colonial legacy of the region.
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posted
I give up. Do you consider the colonial legacy to be invalid? That Isreal is less a state than other states established by force?
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posted
Can't speak for Foust, but personally I'm quite happy for the Israelis to have a state established and maintained by force. I just object to the said force being subsidised by my taxes. (And yes, I object equally to the subsidies to Egypt and Jordan.) There was perhaps some justification for the Great Powers enforcing limitations on ME wars in the seventies, when each side was the client of one party to the Cold War and things could escalate. But now we've got this alliance which, like NATO, has served its purpose and should go. There is no longer any national interest either for the US or for the European states in whether Israel is ruled by Jews or Arabs; let them fight it out. With knives, if necessary. Unfortunately this isn't very realistic as domestic politics.
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quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Can't speak for Foust, but personally I'm quite happy for the Israelis to have a state established and maintained by force. I just object to the said force being subsidised by my taxes. (And yes, I object equally to the subsidies to Egypt and Jordan.)
Same here, on all counts.
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And people wonder why I lose my temper discussing this issue. Who the hell do you think has a better claim on that area than we do? The Arabs? Based on what?
No other country in the world has to deal with ridiculous logic-chopping about its very existence like this.
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posted
If the country of Israel were a country that had no religious tolerance at all, then I may have a problem with it.
The thing is, Israel is one of the most religiously tolerant countries in the world. There are many holy sites for many of the worlds religions in the country of Israel that are important to Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Israel recognizes this and takes care of these sites and allows anyone to come and visit them. As far as I know, no one is denied.
I guess I just don't see what the problem is. There was fighting between people in the US and Indians back in the day, you could argue we did the same thing. The Muslim religion did the same in the Middle Eastern region. It doesn't mean one side is more right than another.
Personally I'm fine with Israel. It belonged to the Jewish faith for thousands of years. In the Jewish faith, it STILL belonged to them, even though they were not living there. In the Jewish faith, (correct me if I am wrong Lisa) the land was given to their people by God himself. When the Creator of the Earth gives you land, its yours. None of the "You can't really own land" arguments would apply in that case. To the Jewish people, it has been and always will be theirs.
I'm not saying it is right, just pointing this out or those that may not understand.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: The thing is, Israel is one of the most religiously tolerant countries in the world. There are many holy sites for many of the worlds religions in the country of Israel that are important to Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Israel recognizes this and takes care of these sites and allows anyone to come and visit them. As far as I know, no one is denied.
quote:When the Creator of the Earth gives you land, it's yours.
I'm glad to hear you say so. The Creator of the Earth appeared to me in a dream this morning and gave me your house. Please move out by the first of March. You can leave the keys on the porch.
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And people wonder why I lose my temper discussing this issue. Who the hell do you think has a better claim on that area than we do? The Arabs? Based on what?
No other country in the world has to deal with ridiculous logic-chopping about its very existence like this.
So if you do a very good job, you can spare some other poor nation down the road the same difficulty. Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:When the Creator of the Earth gives you land, it's yours.
I'm glad to hear you say so. The Creator of the Earth appeared to me in a dream this morning and gave me your house. Please move out by the first of March. You can leave the keys on the porch.
You take me out of context. I was pointing out that this was a common belief among the Jewish community. It does not reflect my views.
If you are joking with me, I apologize for not seeing that.
Dobbie, judging fromt he article you linked, my statement I made previously still stands. If you cannot produce proper documents, then you should be denied entry. The country needs to look out for the safety of others as well as the buildings. This is not a religious issue. I was pointing out that Israel does not discriminate religiously, not that they allowed anyone and everyone to enter any building they wanted without proper identification.
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quote:Originally posted by Geraine: The thing is, Israel is one of the most religiously tolerant countries in the world. There are many holy sites for many of the worlds religions in the country of Israel that are important to Christians, Muslims, and Jews. Israel recognizes this and takes care of these sites and allows anyone to come and visit them. As far as I know, no one is denied.
True that. I remember when I was first in Israel reading a letter to the editor in the Jerusalem Post. It was from a Christian tourist who'd gone up to the Temple Mount. She was so overwhelmed by the spirituality of being by the site of God's Temples that she began to recite Psalms quietly.
An Arab guard saw her lips moving and brought Israeli police over, who immediately arrested her. Eventually, she managed to convince them that she was a Christian, and not a Jew, so they let her go.
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quote:You take me out of context. I was pointing out that this was a common belief among the Jewish community.
I was mocking people who believe such justifications for naked land-grabs, which indeed includes many Jews. I'm aware that you don't believe anything.
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posted
Or, and this is just a wild suggestion here, you could stop giving the obvious troll exactly what he wants.
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quote:I give up. Do you consider the colonial legacy to be invalid? That Isreal is less a state than other states established by force?
All states, all laws, are established by force. Pointing that out is no moral judgment; my goal in that post was to remove moral justifications (as opposed to some kind of moral analysis) from the situation. Let's not pretend that what dictates the situation is anything other than force.
Israel is trapped in a situation where it cannot justify its actions, but (at least people like Lisa) refuses to acknowledge this. All that is really open to Israel is to say "don't like it? tough luck" - not "Goddidit." The rest of us are perfectly within our rights to say that we don't like it.
quote:Who the hell do you think has a better claim on that area than we do? The Arabs? Based on what?
No other country in the world has to deal with ridiculous logic-chopping about its very existence like this.
Well, when you've slaughtered or marginalized the Palestinians to the extent that Americans slaughtered the Native Americans, then the "logic chopping" will go away for you too. Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Who the hell do you think has a better claim on that area than we do? The Arabs? Based on what?
No other country in the world has to deal with ridiculous logic-chopping about its very existence like this.
Well, when you've slaughtered or marginalized the Palestinians to the extent that Americans slaughtered the Native Americans, then the "logic chopping" will go away for you too.
That's an imbecilic comparison. What's your basis for claiming that the Arabs have any more claim on the land than we do. Or ever did.
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quote:Originally posted by Foust: Israel is trapped in a situation where it cannot justify its actions, but (at least people like Lisa) refuses to acknowledge this.
I disagree. First many Jews moved to the area and purchased land. Then they asked for a country. Then they were told no, attacked, won a war, and took it.
Or do you mean the current situation where sixty years later no one's quite figured out what to do with the Palestinians? Cause that strikes me as a bit crazy. I don't pretend it would be easy or that it wouldn't require sacrifice, but I can't understand how this could possibly be so tangled as to take an entire lifetime to figure out.
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quote:Who the hell do you think has a better claim on that area than we do? The Arabs? Based on what?
No other country in the world has to deal with ridiculous logic-chopping about its very existence like this.
Well, when you've slaughtered or marginalized the Palestinians to the extent that Americans slaughtered the Native Americans, then the "logic chopping" will go away for you too.
That's an imbecilic comparison. What's your basis for claiming that the Arabs have any more claim on the land than we do. Or ever did.
They lived there for hundreds of years before Jews came en masse from Europe and started oppressing them.
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quote:Who the hell do you think has a better claim on that area than we do? The Arabs? Based on what?
No other country in the world has to deal with ridiculous logic-chopping about its very existence like this.
Well, when you've slaughtered or marginalized the Palestinians to the extent that Americans slaughtered the Native Americans, then the "logic chopping" will go away for you too.
That's an imbecilic comparison. What's your basis for claiming that the Arabs have any more claim on the land than we do. Or ever did.
They lived there for hundreds of years before Jews came en masse from Europe and started oppressing them.
Crap. Jews lived there for thousands of years. Yes, many of the Jews currently living there came recently, but the same is true of the Arabs currently living there. The town of Peqiin had a Jewish populace that lived there continuously since before the Roman conquest. Arab violence finally ended that last year. The continuous Jewish presence in Hebron was ended in 1929 by the Arab massacre.
Oppressing, my arse. They didn't start migrating in because we were oppressing them; they did so because we created jobs and made it possible for them to have a higher standard of living. Had we known that this would only whet their appetites, maybe we would have done some oppressing.
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quote: Yes, many of the Jews currently living there came recently, but the same is true of the Arabs currently living there.
MOST Jews currently living there came recently. The Arab population is far more native to the land than the Jewish one is. It's sad that the Romans and Germans screwed your people but that doesn't mean you have to take revenge on the Palestinians.
quote: The town of Peqiin had a Jewish populace that lived there continuously since before the Roman conquest.
Yes, perhaps. That one town.
quote: Arab violence finally ended that last year.
Maybe it's because the Arabs didn't like how those Jews were sympathetic to Arabs getting ethnically cleansed.
quote: The continuous Jewish presence in Hebron was ended in 1929 by the Arab massacre.
Once again, perhaps it's because those Arabs didn't care for Zionism -- something that was bad news for them. Indeed, it's a surprise more massacres didn't happen considering what Zionists Jews and their backers intended.
quote: Oppressing, my arse. They didn't start migrating in because we were oppressing them; they did so because we created jobs and made it possible for them to have a higher standard of living.
Oh certainly. The land was empty and there for the taking. The Arabs only came because they were attracted to Jewish money. What Arab natives?
quote: Had we known that this would only whet their appetites, maybe we would have done some oppressing.
Wet there appetites for what? They want you to leave entirely. The "we're creating jobs!" line was a mere ruse to pacify the Arab natives before their enemy was united enough to begin taking in earnest the land they coveted.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Are you supporting the massacre of Jews living in Israel Clive? A yes or a no will suffice.
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