Israeli-Arab Wars and Palestinian Population Displacement
I couldn't help but notice that the only Israeli-Palestinian mention was from the 1940s. Seems to be me that the Palestinians have very effectively managed to leverage every non-lethal asset available to deter Israel from simply wiping the Palestinians from the planet, which Israeli could have (and probably should have) done long ago, while gaining significant concessions from the Israelis. While I think the whole "4GW" concept is a bit over-hyped, Hammes gives a decent summary in his book of how the Palestinians have manipulated the information domain to gain the sympathy of much of the world in spite of their frequent use of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. I don't think the Palestinians will ever gain control of Israel, but simply being in the position that they are in and forcing the restraint of the Israelis is remarkable, in my opinion.
War isn't acceptable, yet we discuss it.
Rhetorically, isn't putting a limit on discussion on a topic, no matter how contentious, not evading or eliding the issue?
Rex and Tom, I appreciate the polite and measured
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rex Brynen
Ken, I think there's a big difference between discussing war as an unavoidable instrument of policy--with an implicit but near universal assumption among SWJ posters that they would prefer less violent ways of attaining objectives, and a parallel assumption that most Western policy objectives are generally good ones--and casually suggesting it might be a good idea to slaughter 10 million men, women and children. (Having spent the day with survivors of the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Darfur, I'm particularly mindful of the issue at the moment.)
Simple test: would lightly endorsing "wiping Jews from the face of the planet" be considered acceptable SWJ discussion material too? I certainly hope not.
remarks and do not dispute what either of you say. You are certainly entitled to your opinions. While I do not share Schmedlaps opinion, I suggest he is entitled to it as well as to state it (here only with the Board owners tolerance). If it is to be refuted, I merely suggest that the opinion should be challenged and not just labeled as offensive and dismissed as "not acceptable."
That, unfortunately, is to my Scotch Irish genes condescending at best. It is also, I think, somewhat inclined toward hewing to a politically correct approach; an approach that I believe has very adverse impacts on frank and potentially unpleasant discussion of some critical topics that merit open and frank discussion. It is also an approach I'm regrettably too old to follow. :wry:
I can understand the offense caused, particularly to one who has been discussing the topic all day or to one who has been too close to the topic to be comfortable with it and I sincerely regret exacerbating any feelings on the topic. However I submit that most of us are here to learn and to discuss civilly topics that are not in and of them selves civil. For example, any discussion of the incidents either of you mention includes by definition a discussion of genocide.
Genocide may not be acceptable but it unfortunately occurs. It is not a nice topic to be sure but it is discussed and IMO should be. A possible or seeming advocacy or acceptance of the practice would seem to me to merit some discussion and a chance to clarify rather than adopting a dismissive or rejective tone on what seems to be merely an a priori statement.
Most of us are guilty of those on occasion... :o
No intent on my part -- or need to my mind -- to start a subthread; just explaining why I replied as I did and indicating I likely would again do so.
People think the consequences of 1948 were bad,
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rex Brynen
Probably to have tipped the balance to a PLO victory in Jordan in 1970-71, and inflamed passions to the point that neither the shift of Egyptian policy under Sadat, or the relative realism of Syria under Assad (1970- ) would have taken place....
it boggles the imagination to think what the consequences now would be, if Israel had "finished the job" in 1967. What Rex points out would have been the immediate and short-term consequences of such actions would just have been the beginning of something far worse than exists even today. Beyond a heavy and sustained "War of Attrition" between Egypt and Israel that would not have come to an end around 1970 as it did, what possibly could have resulted might have been a sort of twisted rerun of the Crusader Wars. And those sorts of wars don't end until only one side is left standing, and the losers lose everything.
-Some Kindling For The Fire
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914670.html
Last update - 15:55 19/10/2007
"Israel refuses to open talks with Lebanon over Shaba Farms
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent
Israel has refused a recommendation by a United Nations ambassador to begin negotiations with Lebanon over the disputed Shaba Farms area. According to the envoy, Geir Pedersen, the United Nations is becoming increasingly convinced that Shaba Farms belongs to Lebanon......."
I guess the UN will have to come up with official condemnation #12,834 for Israel ( I may have exagerated that number by a hundred or so)
Some reading material for anyone interested.
Understanding the basics are usually important.
The basics are that only when Israelis settle in Israel do Arabs care anything about it.
Jerusalem is not even mentioned in the Koran. It states “nearest mosque” (there were no mosques in Israel at the time) Which is actually in Medina.
The simple fact is, those who are called “palestinians” today have no right to that land at all.
Israel was deserted at the first part of the 19th century.
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/%7Edhershkowitz/ Photos of pre-Israeli state 19th century
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=79d_1184884637 A little movie.
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001137.html Totten
Myth of Palestine:
http://www.allthingsbeautiful.com/al...th_of_pal.html
Which states”
1. Palestine was a British invention after WWI and never existed as an independent state. Most of this "Palestine" is called Jordan today.
2. The small number of people (700,000) occupied the entire Palestine Mandate which included Israel, the West Bank, Golon Heights, Gaza and Jordan today. Most of the Arab populations lived East of the Jordan River.
3. The common usage of the word "Palestinian" refers to people who live in Palestine: Arabs (a "mixed race of Arabic speaking peoples"), Bedouins, Christians, Druze, and Jews.
4. Under Muslim rule the region had been reduced to a barren wasteland. Jews were the only people that produced anything causing resentment from the masses of illiterate and poverty-ridden Arabs. Jews never held any political power until 1948.
5. The British didn't want a Jewish majority in the region. This led in later years to a policy of systematically reduced immigration quotas, and indirectly to the death of millions of Jewish refugees in Europe twenty some years later. The British would illegally partition the region into Jordan, (forbidding Jews from living there) then stripped off the Golon Heights giving that to France and Syria. Calling the remainder "Palestine" then flooding it with outside Arabs.
6. Constant agitation by outside Arabs and others leading to riots and murders of Jews. The British did nothing to stop this. Immigration and travel restrictions were almost universally applied only to Jews, no restriction was placed on Arab immigration to help flood the region with Arabs the British favored. Jews were the only economic success even with all of this going on.
7. Whenever there were Arab riots, Jewish immigration was restricted. This was the beginning of the British Policy of Appeasement, and the success of terrorism. The success of terrorism goes on today and appeasement still fails today. When will they ever learn?
8. All lands acquired by Jews were purchased, not taken according to Arafat's Nazi Uncle in 1937 and the British. Haj Amin al-Husseini was a Nazi war criminal wanted in Yugoslavia and mixed Nazi ideology into Islam. Arafat in fact wasn't even a Palestinian, but was born, raised, and educated in Egypt. According to Forbes, his estate is estimated to be worth over $300 million while he locked his own people into concentration camps.
9. Between 1950 and 1967 when Jordan and Egypt annexed the West Bank and Gaza, they flooded the area with more Arabs. Even today most Arabs in the West Bank, etc. hold Jordanian passports and Jordanian citizenship. After 1967 Jordan/Egypt relinquished claims to the area then started to scream for a second Palestinian state in addition to the first Palestinian State of Jordan. Before that, they claimed Palestine meant land of the Jews.
10. Even with immigration from Russia in the 1990's, the majority of Israelis are descended from Arab, Asian, and African Jews including two-thirds of the 870,000 Arab Jews expelled from surrounding Arab Nazi states. Druze, Bedouins, Christians, and some Arabs sided with the Jews in 1948 and serve in the Israeli Army today. The Israeli military has three Arab generals.
11. Why did the British do this? It's about oil, stupid! Britian didn't give a damn about Arabs or Jews. Just like America today ignores Saudi terrorism it's still about oil.”
And part 2:
http://www.allthingsbeautiful.com/al...th_of_pal.html
Additional:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/palestine.htm
http://www.richardwebster.net/israelpalestine.html
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2006/0...t-of-land.html
Hopefully, this helps with understanding the land rights issue.
I got a bit of a shock when this arrived in my E-Mail...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Steve Blair
Cut and paste jobs from biased web sources never help anything....and that's "understanding the basics." Informed debate and discussion is one thing...and a good thing.
Let's hope we don't see this again.
I second that.
It was a tad unsettling to come across this.:eek:
Idigenous people are invisible to the Colonists
To Herzl and the millions of Zionists who have followed him, the Palestinians were invisible, simply because their existence did not matter. The very idea that indigenous people mattered at all did not come into currency in the capitols of the Western World, until it became apparent in the Cold War that their "hearts and minds" mattered...except in the case of Palestinians.
The 2-state solution is at best a bridge to a stable state. Stability will not be achieved until there is but one state: either a United State of Israel and Palestine, which would be two homelands comingled in one country and sharing the governance of the same; or a Jewish state with all Arabs removed or killed, who were once affiliated with the land called Palestine.
I do not believe that the Zionists will be allowed by the rest of the world to complete their intention to eradicate "Palestine" and to submerge the remnants of Palestinians into the larger genre called 'Arabs'. Of course, the Zionists are counting on the brute force of American military and economic power to cower the rest of the world into accepting whatever fate they eventually decide for the Palestinians. But, as long as the Palestinians have sponsors and supporters beyond the refugee camps and Occupied Territories, it will be difficult if not impossible for brute force to ultimately succeed.
simulated Palestinian refugee negotiations
In June, I helped organize and run three days of simulated Palestinian-Israeli negotiations on the refugee issue for Chatham House (Royal Institute of International Affairs) in the UK. This involved some 35 former and current officials (Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, Lebanese, US and others) and technical experts.
The simulation report is here, and the full project description can be found here.
We held it here (complete with bar open well past midnight):
http://www.eynshamhall.com/Images/home_page.jpg
There are times I do love my job :D
Vintages & What's the Point ?
OK, we now know that serviceman is a young 82 (roughly in the same vintage as Ken White), I'm a not so young 67 when I crawl out of bed in the morning, and Wilf is a handsome 46 (a mere babe, especially considering that our dads saw combat in the same theatre of war). And Schmedlap is a newly-born, even though he was probably 38 at 18.
Since age carries no particularly weight, we must look to the message and not the messenger. I can find all sorts of messages about Palestine-Israel before, during and after 1945-1948. E.g. (among many sites I've visited over the years), Palestine Remembered and The Jewish Agency for Israel. I've gone through both sites (the territorial nomenclature tells us their positions from the gitgo), with some "rigour" as Wilf might say. Compared to others here, my background in matters Palestinian and Israeli is minimal.
So, serviceman, what exactly are your points for discussion ? Take your time; please puntuate your sentences; and give us an organized presentation of your thesis.
Thanks in advance
Mike
PS: Schmedlap - your Moral Foundations Chart proves that you have a distinct adversion to causing harm (3.8 :). Marct and JMM were at the lower end of that scale (2.0 and 2.3); explained in our cases by too much genetic input from warriors who fought each other at the Battle of the Windmill. :D
are you israeli or do you just live there?
Hello
Are you Israeli or do you just live in Israel for professional or ideological reasons? I get the feeling that you weren't born in Israel or Jewish, but have adopted zionist theories and ideologies throughout your life? would this be correct?
Not that it makes much difference, it's just that you say that your current family ... ranges from Jewish terrorists to Brit Arabists...which is a tad out of the ordinary.
It is refreshing to hear your views from someone who was not born into them, as I believe.
rini e.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
William F. Owen
Serviceman,
I live in Israel. My current family spans those held in British prisons, as Jewish Terrorists, to those British Arabists who opposed the creation of the modern state of Israel - so please don't assume you have some superior knowledge of the issues. It ain't true and it doesn't help.
While I agree with some of your observations, you're being a bit too black and white. For example, Beit-Shean valley was pretty cleared "pre-emptively" as opposed to true "self-defence." - and you can run out breath arguing about Deir-Yassin, and a few other forgotten villages.
They have three versions of history here in Israel. "Ours, yours and theirs."
True. Then there's a case to made that history
is the main impediment to a resolution of the situation -- not that anything done here is likely to resolve much of anything... :wry: