Israel vs Palestine

Eggy, not that it matters now, but back in the 1920's and 1930's, there were actually not that many Moslems living in that region. In fact, I believe that there was a slight majority of Chistians. As Jews started to migrate to the British Mandate after World war I, the british actually imported people from what is now Jordan to keep things balanced. very few people who consider themselves Palestinian has any more history there than do the Israeli Jews, many of whom were there first, if you want to get technical. The great majority of land in the area was owned by either the Orthodox Patriarchies of Jerusalem or the Turkish Government before 1920.

I'm going to pretty much stay out of this, except to say that I'm a practicing Jew, Darwin. (Okay, a practicing Reformed Jew, which admittedly means there is bacon in the fridge, but also a mezuzah on the door and a set of plates just for Pesach in the cupboard.) I also think that the state of Isreal is an abomination. Biblically, the Messianic Age (which it our job as Jews to herald in through Tikkun Olam) can't come as long as there is a "false" state of Isreal... which is any state of Isreal belonging to the Jews before that same Messianic Age. So there are some pretty huge theological issues with it. But, of course, my big complaint is that Isreal was in fact an ploy by the antisemitic French, British and American goverments to keep the displaced post-WWII Jewish refugees from flooding our/their shores.

Now, I'm not writing this to get you agree with me, or even to reconsider your position. Just to say that Zionism is NOT a monolithic Jewish belief.

You get two Jews in a room, you're bound to have three opinions on every topic! There are no monolithic beliefs among Jews!

B

P.S. I just realized I totally missed Darwin's point. Ignore me, I'm home sipping Nyquil!

I don't think the Jews "need" Israel to protect them. Anyway, they seem to get along pretty well in the US. All the creation of Israel has really done for the Jews is give people that don't like them a good target. Israel actually makes it easier to get at the Jews specifically, not the other way around.

I don't believe that the creation of Israel was worth the amount of destabiliation and conflict it has caused. I think it was a mistake, but what's done is done, I suppose.

Israel has had to take quite a few very morally questionable actions in order to defend it's (future) existance. I've also read about things Israel has done specifically to incite Egypt to do something stupid, so that Israel would regain more backing from Europe (Eurpoeans supposedly feel Israel is the greatest threat to world peace, which I don't doubt). The (Israeli) plan was/is to attack Egypt economically, by reducing the value of the Suez canal, for example.

On the other hand, the Arabs aren't exactly "sitting pretty" either. They do have a legitimate complaint about Israel's past actions, but they did attack Israel first.

Watching another group of people be "given" your lands, and then having your own people relocated out of the region (although due to fear of terrorism) would piss off most anyone.

Both groups bullcrap about how they want peace, but 100% of neither side really wants it. Some Jews aren't willing to accept any sort of consessions, but many are in their right mind and are willing to compromise. I'm sure the same goes for the Palestinians. The Palestinians unwilling to compromise are blowing things up or provoking terrorism. The Israelis unwilling to compromise pop up any time talks of peace start happening. I believe the 1995 peace talks died after an Israeli extremist assassinated the Israeli PM.

Now the Israelis feel so backed into a corner they've chosen Sharon to lead them. Side afterthought: I think the US would have a reaction similar to the Israelis have, honestly, so I can't say I blame the Israelis for electing Sharon.

I think it's really impossible to side with either side of the issue. I don't know if there's a solution either. Maybe in the form of a 3rd party (not the US) taking control of the entire area and making it sort of an international area. But that's such a radical move, it'll never happen unless some kind of WMD goes off down there, heh.

That's interesting, never heard that before.

Got along reasonably well in Germany too for a while.

Damn, I'm almost out of popcorn.

I'd like to thank all the posters up to this point for providing me with probably the funnist 20 minutes of entertainment at work that I've had for a looooong time.

I think that if both sides were really and truely serious about making peace, they would have made it by now, dispite any and all efforts by the extremists.

I thought that the US domestic murder rate is higher then the terrorist suicide bombings was nicely put as well.

flames to /de/null, please.

There are a lot of Israelis who have never even entered a Temple. Israel was founded by a variety of groups who were mostly socialists and not very religious socialists at that. The Kibbutz system, which is still strong, but MUCH more profitable than they were, is pretty well known for their collectivist, communal nature.Most of the really nutcake Ultra-Orthodox Israelis have gone there from Brooklyn.

The problem is that there are groups on both sides that DON'T want peace, not that neither group does.

Your average Israeli and your average Palestinian are pretty sick of it.

Heh, if Israel existed during WWII, do you think it would have stopped that? Not only would any Jews in Germany still be screwed, but Israel would be #1 on Shitler's hit list, I believe. "Wow thanks for rounding up all the Jews into one place for me!"

I fail to see how Israel has saved (or protects) Jewish people.

The American-Jewish population in the US gets along *quite* well, based on just about all information I've ever heard.

And if Israel had existed during WWII there would have been at least one country in the world where jews could have run to where they knew they wouldn't have been turned back at the border. They also would have known that they were in charge and didn't have to worry about laws suddenly changing into what they'd just fled from.

Darwin, I don't agree with everyone. I suppose I didn't make myself clear. I think it's stupid that people have to go around saying that a certain nation has the right to exist because it's something that shouldn't have to be said. However, it has to be said because other people say it has no right to exist. Do you get what I'm saying??? If not, can someone help me out to make myself clear?

What I think is this: If I had been PM of Israel 20 years ago I would have never, ever given a single thought of giving land back to the Palestinians. The Jews got it legally back in 1948 so it's theirs to keep. They got more land because they were attacked and kept that land to live on and for defense. It's their land so they should do whatever they want. Under me, the Palestinians would get nothing simply because the land now belongs to the Israelis.

However, since Rabin decided to give back some land and since there appears to be no other solution (except build a huge fence. . .oh wait, isn't that what Sharon is doing??. . .) then the Israelis need to cede most of the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. That means the orthodox Jews living in the West Bank are going to have to be removed.

But it's not that simple. . .there's the Jerusalem dilemma, the water dilemma, the contigous Palestinian territory problem, etc. . ...

As the situation is right now, it seems almost hopeless of anything positive happening any time soon.

I said that I don't think it would have stopped the Holocaust. (But it most probably would have directed more of Hitler's attention to controlling the Mideast, which is bad.) There's also the problem of refugees travelling the distance to Israel. And if they can travel as far as Israel (by sea, obviously), they could also get to the US or to many other countries. I don't think Israel would have been much help, historically speaking.

I'm also not so sure Israel wouldn't close it's borders if they started getting hundreds of thousands of refugees. Throw enough refugees at any country and eventually it'll start to feel strain. Especially one as small as that, which already has major disputes about where people are living.

But we're both speculating on this topic. I don't know if bringing up WWII history is very useful in showing that Israel protects the Jews.

All this combined with the "easy target" (that grouping everyone into a country creates) fails to strike me as a good way to protect a group of people.

I still don't think Israel protects the Jewish people any better. If anything it's only created more hatred and excalated conflicts. Maybe Bhodi's information about the US, France, and Britain not wanting the refugees was accurate afterall.

You're forgetting the 'right of return.' Israel can't close its borders.

It's all a moot point. Zion belongs to the Mormons now, which means Jews are now gentiles.

As mentioned earlier, laws can always be changed, even ones founded on questionable religious ground. Especially in light of humanitarian disasters (maybe just in the short term).

I can't justify taking either side of the overall issue. It's hardly worth killing people over, religious issues or not. People literally interpreting the exact words of religious texts are quite silly, IMO. The crap's been changed at (human) whim for ages!

Not talking about religious texts. I'm talking about political issues. Again, this is much more than a religious issue. There is a substantial number of 'secular jews' in Israel. The right of return is part of the Israeli charter. It's a fundamental part of Israel.

They did get to the US, and were then denied entry and sent BACK to Germany. The US, like most countries, has quotas on the number of immagrants in a certain group it will take within a specified year. It is, however, possible for the government to lift those restrictions to grant political asylum. The US Government of the time decided NOT to do that for some of the Jews escaping Nazi Germany, and returned them.

At the time Isreal was founded, there was huge political pressure for ALL the countries that had refused entrance to Jewish refugees to rethink their quota and asylum policies. Isreal was essentially "founded" in order to create a huge refugee camp - and keep what was considered an undesirable element (the Jews) from emmigrating to the US, France and Britain.

The Zionist movement was not mainstream within Judaism until after Isreal was founded, and the "place for refugees" argument for Isreal is largely responsible for its gaining such support. Personally, I think it's important that we continue to lobby for a change in immigration policies to open our borders to those fleeing genocide. (We also refused to help the Ethopian jews when their government said basically "Get 'em out or we'll execute them all"... Interestingly, Isreal was also slow to respond, but eventually did after huge pressure from the International jewish community.)

B

can someone fill me in on how israel was legally founded in 1948? who did that? who was there in 1947 or before?

just trying to get a better understanding...

No one still answered My question about why the Palistinians insist on going after Israel when their terrorty was in Iraq also.

How about the fact that there's more formerly Palestinian territory in either Syria or Jordan than there is in the occupied territories and Israel combined?

Well, the "Right of Return" concept does have some religious basis behind it. Is there a law or some other legislature (not that it would really effect the fact that it can be altered) that says Israelis have a "right" to live in Israel? Yes maybe they're granted citizenship, but AFAIK there is no Israeli constitution [stating something like this] anyway.

But this gets away from my point, which is that I don't think Israel does a very good job of protecting Jews. I think they could close their borders if a humanitarian disaster occurred, just like any other nation could...the Israelis can do whatever they feel is necessary.



If so, that definitely seems to put up a red flag that they'd reject a mass exodus to Israel [almost] as much as any other nation would.

And yes, the fact that Israel isn't the only country that has (so-called) Palestinian land is an interesting one. Israel's neighbors (including Saddam) don't really care about the Palestinians, they just use it as an excuse to poke at Israel. They're all friends over there.

The nation of Israel was formed after a vote of the United Nations to partition Palestine into Jewish and Moslem sectors. The vote was actually very close, with the US and Soviet Union voting for partition and the UK and many other European nations voting against. Palestine was totally a creation of the British, and had been administered by the UK since the end of WWI, when they took it away from the Turks, who had held it for five hundred years. The Turks were actually much more welcoming to the Jews - who really started to arrive in Palestine during the 1890's -after the Pogroms in Russia and Poland - than the British ever were. The British spent the three decades that they ran Palestine pretty much trying to keep as many Jews as they could out. After partition, the Palestinians, most of whom had moved to Palestine from Syria and Egypt during the 1920's, basically declared war and tried to drive the Jews out. The British tried to hold on, but they were almoost completely bankrupt after the war and were having trouble in India as well, so they finally pulled out and the Jews declared themselves a sovereign nation. This declaration was simultaneously followed by recognition by the US and a few other countries.

Incorrect. It's ethnic, not religious... hence the number of secular jews living in Israel.

It's hard to find information about that online. (The Palestinians also claim to have a "Right of Return" which totally overshadows anything Israeli related.) It does seem to have some [note, I say some and not all] basis in religious (Jewish) belief, though. I forget where I've read it before, though.

The point is basically moot anyway, it's just a red herring distracting from my original statement.

One of the big sticking points on any agreement is the Palestinian demand of the right of return to Israel for them. They need to get over the fact that this simply isn't going to happen. It would be suicidal for Israel.