danielpalos
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #301
Both, Judeans and Palestinians seem to have a similar, "chief complaint".
Political coincidence or political conspiracy?
Political coincidence or political conspiracy?
The Balfour Declaration
- Thread starter Shusha
- Start date
rylah
Gold Member
- Jun 10, 2015
- 23,397
- 4,953
- 290
Zionism came as an answer to the discrimination and pogroms against Jews in Europe, Asia and Arab pogroms in Syria-Palestine. The dire situation of the Jewish community was a continuous condition of Palestine.
Zionist activity was supported and coordinated by Palestinian Jews. The tools they used were a culmination of an age-old administrative system that served to help Palestinian Jews and elsewhere to survive. The same mechanism of financial aid and communication was transferred into an organized political party, that could efficiently represent that effort on the international arena.
The Balfour declaration wasn't about big dreams, it was about what already existed - and for a long time.
Zionist activity was supported and coordinated by Palestinian Jews. The tools they used were a culmination of an age-old administrative system that served to help Palestinian Jews and elsewhere to survive. The same mechanism of financial aid and communication was transferred into an organized political party, that could efficiently represent that effort on the international arena.
The Balfour declaration wasn't about big dreams, it was about what already existed - and for a long time.
Last edited:
Sixties Fan
Diamond Member
- Mar 6, 2017
- 68,152
- 12,261
- 2,290
Israel is central to Jewish religious and national identity: it is both a theological community and a political community. It is the one piece of land historically promised to the Jewish people as recorded in Genesis. It is the only land where the Jewish nation has ever experienced self rule. Despite the pervasive anti-Israel (/anti-Semitic) narrative, there has never been an autonomous Palestinian state in the area: it was ruled by a succession of empires until the Ottoman Empire fell in 1917 and the League of Nations granted the British a Mandate in 1920.
Archaeological discoveries continue to confirm the biblical record of a land promised to the Jews, who spoke and wrote Hebrew, and worshiped the God called YHWH in what is now called Israel at least 1,000 years before Jesus was born. Jews are the only people who have ever had an autonomous state on this tiny piece of land. They governed themselves as a national entity, producing kings, prophets and poets from whose pens flowed some of the most treasured writings in the history of the world.
Jews have inhabited the Holy Land continuously for 3,000 years. Despite attempts by successive occupying powers to expel them, communities of Jews have lived in the Holy Land continuously since the time of Abraham until the present, in, for example, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Jews returned to the Holy Land throughout the Diaspora period, notably from Spain and other Mediterranean countries in the late 13th and 14th centuries.
(full article online)
Balfour 100: we are not ashamed of (re-)creating the State of Israel
Archaeological discoveries continue to confirm the biblical record of a land promised to the Jews, who spoke and wrote Hebrew, and worshiped the God called YHWH in what is now called Israel at least 1,000 years before Jesus was born. Jews are the only people who have ever had an autonomous state on this tiny piece of land. They governed themselves as a national entity, producing kings, prophets and poets from whose pens flowed some of the most treasured writings in the history of the world.
Jews have inhabited the Holy Land continuously for 3,000 years. Despite attempts by successive occupying powers to expel them, communities of Jews have lived in the Holy Land continuously since the time of Abraham until the present, in, for example, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Jews returned to the Holy Land throughout the Diaspora period, notably from Spain and other Mediterranean countries in the late 13th and 14th centuries.
(full article online)
Balfour 100: we are not ashamed of (re-)creating the State of Israel
Sixties Fan
Diamond Member
- Mar 6, 2017
- 68,152
- 12,261
- 2,290
Shusha
Gold Member
- Dec 14, 2015
- 15,048
- 3,066
- 290
- Thread starter
- #305
The Balfour Declaration was nothing more than international support for the existing rights of an indigenous peoples to a national homeland (State) within their historical territory.
There is NO way for Arab Palestinians to disagree with that concept while demanding international support for THEIR existing rights as a long-tenured people to a national homeland (State) within their historical territory.
There is NO way for Arab Palestinians to disagree with that concept while demanding international support for THEIR existing rights as a long-tenured people to a national homeland (State) within their historical territory.
danielpalos
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #309
What is the holdup for Statehood for Palestinians? Israel can use a stable trading partner on its border.
danielpalos
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #312
The League of Nations?
danielpalos
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #313
I make a motion to start discussions on a UN marshal, taking charge of Palestine, and establishing a State for Palestinians.
danielpalos
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #315
How about a UN Administrator to make sure it happens, administratively?
danielpalos
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #317
Don't believe in "republican forms of democracy"?
Sixties Fan
Diamond Member
- Mar 6, 2017
- 68,152
- 12,261
- 2,290
BY JUDEA PEARL | PUBLISHED NOV 3, 2017 | OPINION
It has been 100 years since the Balfour Declaration – issued by the British government on Nov. 2, 1917 – offered the first international recognition of Jewish national aspirations. In many ways, its importance is obvious: it encouraged some 400,000 European Jews to emigrate to Palestine in the years 1917-1940, and made it possible to lay the groundwork for the State of Israel.
But there is another significance that has not been fully recognized among modern historians, even though it tells us more about the current obstacles to peace than any of the usual explanations. I am speaking of the politico-philosophical precedent set by the Balfour Declaration regarding national identity, land ownership, self determination and the notion of “indigenous people.”
On the surface, the declaration’s text touches on none of these issues. Known as “history’s most famous letter,” this 67-word text actually reads like a holiday greeting card: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice that civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
A close examination, however, reveals two asymmetries which, by today’s standards, would probably evoke bitter objections. First, the words “people” and “national” are attached to Jews, not to the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, who are referred to as “communities.” Second, the non-Jewish communities are assured “civil and religious” rights, not national rights, let alone a “national home.”
This asymmetry is probably what infuriated Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi who, in an emotional lecture on Sept. 25 this year, reportedly pounded the table and blasted the Balfour Declaration as “a declaration of war by the British Empire on the indigenous population of the land it was promising to the Jewish people.”
Khalidi’s outrage at former British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and his Declaration is hardly justified. First, the idea that the Arab population of Palestine harbors national aspiration would have been news to Balfour, just as it would have been to any political observer in 1917. Khalidi admits as much in his book, “The Iron Cage,” in which he labors to explain why Arabs did not develop a ripe sense of national identity until the late 1920s, when it was too late to “crush the Zionist Movement.”
Second, the Balfour Declaration did not preclude the creation of a “national home” for other national groups in the region, side by side with the Jewish polity. Ottoman Palestine, as we recall, embraced a huge territory which included Jordan and parts of Syria. Various partitions and coexisting constellations were proposed in the course of time, most notably by the Peel Commission of 1937 and by the United Nations in 1947. While Khalidi’s book never mentions these proposals as options, and we understand why, it was in effect the Balfour Declaration that opened these opportunities for Palestinian statehood.
(full article online)
The Balfour Declaration at 100 and How It Redefined Indigenous People
It has been 100 years since the Balfour Declaration – issued by the British government on Nov. 2, 1917 – offered the first international recognition of Jewish national aspirations. In many ways, its importance is obvious: it encouraged some 400,000 European Jews to emigrate to Palestine in the years 1917-1940, and made it possible to lay the groundwork for the State of Israel.
But there is another significance that has not been fully recognized among modern historians, even though it tells us more about the current obstacles to peace than any of the usual explanations. I am speaking of the politico-philosophical precedent set by the Balfour Declaration regarding national identity, land ownership, self determination and the notion of “indigenous people.”
On the surface, the declaration’s text touches on none of these issues. Known as “history’s most famous letter,” this 67-word text actually reads like a holiday greeting card: “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice that civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
A close examination, however, reveals two asymmetries which, by today’s standards, would probably evoke bitter objections. First, the words “people” and “national” are attached to Jews, not to the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine, who are referred to as “communities.” Second, the non-Jewish communities are assured “civil and religious” rights, not national rights, let alone a “national home.”
This asymmetry is probably what infuriated Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi who, in an emotional lecture on Sept. 25 this year, reportedly pounded the table and blasted the Balfour Declaration as “a declaration of war by the British Empire on the indigenous population of the land it was promising to the Jewish people.”
Khalidi’s outrage at former British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour and his Declaration is hardly justified. First, the idea that the Arab population of Palestine harbors national aspiration would have been news to Balfour, just as it would have been to any political observer in 1917. Khalidi admits as much in his book, “The Iron Cage,” in which he labors to explain why Arabs did not develop a ripe sense of national identity until the late 1920s, when it was too late to “crush the Zionist Movement.”
Second, the Balfour Declaration did not preclude the creation of a “national home” for other national groups in the region, side by side with the Jewish polity. Ottoman Palestine, as we recall, embraced a huge territory which included Jordan and parts of Syria. Various partitions and coexisting constellations were proposed in the course of time, most notably by the Peel Commission of 1937 and by the United Nations in 1947. While Khalidi’s book never mentions these proposals as options, and we understand why, it was in effect the Balfour Declaration that opened these opportunities for Palestinian statehood.
(full article online)
The Balfour Declaration at 100 and How It Redefined Indigenous People
Sixties Fan
Diamond Member
- Mar 6, 2017
- 68,152
- 12,261
- 2,290
The Balfour Declaration was the first time in modern history that a world power arose and told the truth: The Land of Israel is the ancient and sole homeland of the Jewish people, and they have the unshakable right to rebuild their national home," said Edelstein.
"Since then, there have been mountains of words and commentaries on Balfour's concise statement, but the truth it expressed was not washed away in the rivers of ink; it remains short and clear, correct today as it always has been. The right we have today to thank His Majesty's Government and Balfour in the Knesset building, in Jerusalem, in the sovereign State of Israel - is decisive evidence of this.
"If I had the right today to add a few words to the 67 words written in the Balfour Declaration and give it a current and personal touch, I would add: 'On the 100th anniversary of the declaration, the State of Israel must declare and even commit itself to all its citizens to strive for peace between its neighbors and to cultivate its entire population without giving up parts of the homeland ... The State of Israel must fortify its borders and continue the momentum of construction throughout the country, including the north, the south, the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria," Edelstein concluded his suggestion.
(full article online)
The words Edelstein would add to the Balfour Declaration
"Since then, there have been mountains of words and commentaries on Balfour's concise statement, but the truth it expressed was not washed away in the rivers of ink; it remains short and clear, correct today as it always has been. The right we have today to thank His Majesty's Government and Balfour in the Knesset building, in Jerusalem, in the sovereign State of Israel - is decisive evidence of this.
"If I had the right today to add a few words to the 67 words written in the Balfour Declaration and give it a current and personal touch, I would add: 'On the 100th anniversary of the declaration, the State of Israel must declare and even commit itself to all its citizens to strive for peace between its neighbors and to cultivate its entire population without giving up parts of the homeland ... The State of Israel must fortify its borders and continue the momentum of construction throughout the country, including the north, the south, the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria," Edelstein concluded his suggestion.
(full article online)
The words Edelstein would add to the Balfour Declaration
Sixties Fan
Diamond Member
- Mar 6, 2017
- 68,152
- 12,261
- 2,290
"Despite all the difficulties that have passed, and all the tensions within it, our State of Israel is strong, democratic, vibrant and successful. Today, the majority of the Jewish people speak Hebrew and live here in the land of Israel. A great sadness will always be with us because of the fact that our state arose only after the Holocaust, and that the declaration was not implemented before the worst disaster that our people experienced in the loss of the six million."
(full article online)
'Palestinians going 100 years backwards'
(full article online)
'Palestinians going 100 years backwards'
Similar threads
New Topics
-
-
Houston Drug Ring Busted, Taco Trucks Front for Cartel Meth
- Started by Mack The Finger
- Replies: 1
-
-
