Defending? By all the arab nations together attacking Israel? They did a pretty bad job of it then.
There was no country of Palestine. And they left their homes because they CHOSE to. My grandparents left Belarus because of pogroms. Are you saying that I have a right to my ancestral property back? Cool...
It wasnt about ancestral homes, they were their CURRENT HOMES. They werent making old claims, their claims are based on the fact that they were CURRENT residents as well as going back for many generations.
There were MANY palestinians towns and villages and they were indeed a cohesive community bound by culture, language, ethnicity, shared living space and concerns etc. Just because they had been previously colonized dosent change that they were indeed a "nation" of people.
They didnt CHOOSE to leave their lands, they were FORCED out by violence...quite a difference.
Or does that only apply to Jews?
That bit where you keep trying to make it a victim thing or a anti-sematic thing is really lame and has no basis in reality or place in this discussion. The jews werent victims here, they were invaders.
Two separate issues. Any Jew who doesn't agree with Israel's creation is an idiot, quite frankly. As for the politics, different politics at different times. But then you'd actually have to believe Israel has the right to exist to understand that. Frankly, I'm amazed at the fact that anyone still raises the issue of "right to exist". Do you do so with regard to the UAE? Iraq? Saudi Arabia?
Ah so any jews that dont agree with you are idiots? Gotcha. What right did they have to RID the area of its current population? Thats genocide, why do you think jews get some special "committ a genocide for free card"?
Of course not... but no anti-semitism there.
No there isnt any anti-semitism but its a convenient sheild for you to try and hide behind on this issue. That rhetoric and tactic is old enough now that it has lost its power.
Why should it? It won the land. People defeated in battle lose land. That's been the case throughout history. What other countries expansion by defensive battle (and immigration isn't battle and it was lawful)... do you have quarrels with? I'd wager none... but no anti-semitism there either, eh?
Nope, we had slavery too...should we also uphold that because its been done? Genocide is wrong, invading people to steal resources or their land is wrong and NO it shouldnt be rewarded nor accepted. It wasnt lawful immigration, it was forced onto the palestinians by the more powerful british who get to make whatever laws they want to benefit themselves but that dosent really make it legitimate or moral. Its the political will of the community that is legitimate and they objected strenuously to no avail.
Again, nope no anti-semitism..just a consistant stance against genocide and aggressive invasions.
Any Jew who thinks it should be a palestinian/jewish state is also an idiot. The palestinians don't want that any more than the Jews do. What that position wants is another Arab state in the mid-east.
Try again...
Oh so you do support apartheid practices. Its AN ARAB region and no one forced to euro jews to mass emmigrate by force to an arab region and commit genocide against the palestinians and then complain they are surrounded by arabs!
No thats an outright truth and the Israeli historians have gone quite public about it.
Actually, Jews were supposed to come in and share the land. They would have done that. The Arabs refused.
BZZZT try again, the zionist ideal was always to build a JEWISH STATE, not a jewish/arab state. Your revisionist history is truly jaw dropping.
One mo' time... try again.
You arent gonna get far on that lie by a loooooong shot.
http://www.democracynow.org/finkelstein-benami.shtml
NORMAN FINKELSTEIN: Well, I agree with the statement that there is very little dispute nowadays amongst serious historians and rational people about the facts. There is pretty much a consensus on what happened during what you can call the foundational period, from the first Zionist settlements at the end of the 19th century 'til 1948. There, there is pretty much of a consensus. And I think Mr. Ben-Ami, in his first 50 pages, accurately renders what that consensus is.
I would just add a couple of points he makes, but just to round out the picture. He starts out by saying that the central Zionist dilemma was they wanted to create a predominantly Jewish state in an area which was overwhelmingly not Jewish, and he cites the figure, I think 1906 there were 700,000 Arabs, 55,000 Jews, and even of those 55,000 Jews, only a handful were Zionists. So that's the dilemma. How do you create a Jewish state in area which is overwhelmingly not Jewish?
Now, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, at one point, he said there are only two ways you can resolve this dilemma. One, you can create what he called the South African way, that is, create a Jewish state and disenfranchise the indigenous population. That's one way. The second way is what he calls the way of transfer. That is, you kick the indigenous population out, basically what we did in North America.
Now, as Mr. Ben-Ami correctly points out, by the 1930s the Zionist movement had reached a consensus that the way to resolve the dilemma is the way of transfer. You throw the Palestinians out. You can't do that anytime, because there are moral problems and international problems. You have to wait for the right moment. And the right moment comes in 1948. Under the cover of war, you have the opportunity to expel the indigenous population.
