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  1. #1
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    There have been complaints about me getting off topic on the thread about the Israeli students getting attacked so I have moved this specific discussion to its own thread.

    First, Whottt, I commend you for at least learning something about middle eastern history...many americans could care less. Unfortunately a lot of what you apparently consider to be "fact" is not true...it sucks, but the slanted way world history is taught in American high schools now one has to do additional independent research on their own to really come to an understanding of the issue, especially the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

    Second, I am not "pro palestinian"...I just understand why they are mad as ...they have been ed over badly not only by the Israelis but by other Arabs as well...

    Since you have taken the time to learn a little about the situation I will give you some more facts and my personal take on it. This is a brief summary. I know that you will Isolate specific statements I make and try to pick them apart but do a little objective research and you will find that my take is a lot closer to the truth than the "history" you stated as "fact" in the other thread...

    I will do this in multiple posts since I am also working and it is kind of long and I don't want to lose anything...

  2. #2
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    Please remember I am oversimplifying in some cases for the sake of brevity.

    This whole Israel thing basically started in 1800's...

    The concept of "repopulating" the historical Jewish homeland started gaining popularity in the late 1800's...There were basically two trains of thought among Jewish thinkers and scholars...one faction (the Diaspora) thought that Jews as a religion should integrate themselves into other societies and perpetuate their religion and their beliefs at a personal level as other religions did. The other faction (which soon came to be known as Zionists) though that Jews should move back to Palestine, buy land, and repopulate the area and eventually gain control of the historical homeland that way...and ultimately create a Jewish state.

  3. #3
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    The area then known as Palestine was occupied at the time by people that for the sake of this discussion i will call "palestinians" in many cases the occupiers thought they owned the land but didn't. Here is a couple of quotes.

    “[The Ottoman Land Code of 1858] required the registration in the name of individual owners of agricultural land, most of which had never previously been registered and which had formerly been treated according to traditional forms of land tenure, in the hill areas of Palestine generally masha’a, or communal usufruct. The new law meant that for the first time a peasant could be deprived not of le to his land, which he had rarely held before, but rather of the right to live on it, cultivate it and pass it on to his heirs, which had formerly been inalienable...Under the provisions of the 1858 law, communal rights of tenure were often ignored...Instead, members of the upper classes, adept at manipulating or cir venting the legal process, registered large areas of land as theirs...The fellahin [peasants] naturally considered the land to be theirs, and often discovered that they had ceased to be the legal owners only when the land was sold to Jewish settlers by an absentee landlord...Not only was the land being purchased; its Arab cultivators were being dispossessed and replaced by foreigners who had overt political objectives in Palestine.” Rashid Khalidi, “Blaming The Victims,” ed. Said and Hitchens“

    The aim of the [Jewish National] Fund was ‘to redeem the land of Palestine as the inalienable possession of the Jewish people.’...As early as 1891, Zionist leader Ahad Ha’am wrote that the Arabs “understood very well what we were doing and what we were aiming at’...[Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, stated] ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and cir spectly’...At various locations in northern Palestine Arab farmers refused to move from land the Fund purchased from absentee owners, and the Turkish authorities, at the Fund’s request, evicted them...The indigenous Jews of Palestine also reacted negatively to Zionism. They did not see the need for a Jewish state in Palestine and did not want to exacerbate relations with the Arabs.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice.”


    Thus the first major porking of the "Palestinians" was done by their own people.

  4. #4
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    The Zionists in Europe and the US were raising funds to purchase land in Palestine from these absentee Arab landlords. With the unrest in what was then Russia many jews fleeing persecution were transported to Palestine by the zionists to occupy this land.

    OK...thats the background.


    now for the politics.

    remember, I am not anti-jew or anti-Israel...you just have to understand how things work. If you don't believe it happened this way then research it yourself.

    With what we now know as World War I approaching, Great Britain found itself in a little quandary...it was gonna cost bazillions of dollars to go to war with Germany and they didn't have it.

    In an era before deficit financing and established bond markets there was a much closer relationship between countries and private banks. In Europe at the time THE banking badboys were the Rothschilds.

    Lord Rothschild was a committed Zionist.

    The quid quo pro for financing WWI was British support for a Jewish homeland.

  5. #5
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    As you know, we won WWI so it was time to pay up.

    At the Paris Peace Conference the name "Palestine" was applied to a clearly defined piece of territory - the area which today comprises Israel and Jordan. It was agreed that "Palestine" was to become a League of Nations Mandate, entrusted to Great Britain.


  6. #6
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    Great Britain then issued what is now known as the Balfour Declaration. Here it is verbatim:

    November 2nd, 1917

    Dear Lord Rothschild,

    I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

    "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

    I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

    Yours sincerely,

    Arthur James Balfour
    it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine

    hmmmm...now British hands were "clean" and they could look the other way while Palestinians were uprooted from their homes...

  7. #7
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    well...it wasn't long till the British had a bunch of pissed off Palestinians on their hands...

    trying to limit the damage, the British decided to par ion the region and thus limit the spread of the "Jewish Homeland" to the area that is Israel today...

    in July 1922, the British divided Palestine into two administrative districts. Jews would be permitted only in the western district. To the east, in what became known as "Transjordan", the British installed a Hashemite ruler named Abdullah, who had been expelled from the Arabian peninsula

    “In 1936-9, the Palestinian Arabs attempted a nationalist revolt... David Ben-Gurion, eminently a realist, recognized its nature. In internal discussion, he noted that ‘in our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us,’ but he urged, ‘let us not ignore the truth among ourselves.’ The truth was that ‘politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside’... The revolt was crushed by the British, with considerable brutality.” Noam Chomsky, “The Fateful Triangle.”


    in 1946 the division became official with the British granting TransJordan its independence. What is now Israel was still called Palestine and a British protectorate.


  8. #8
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    In 1940, the British restricted Jewish property buying to specific zones in Palestine in an attempt to placate the palestinian population but much illegal buying continued in the prohibited zones.

    By 1946 the Zionists had still only purchased 6% of Palestine, but the Zionists controlled the political process and the resident Palestinians were disenfranchised. The US became a leading player in trying to find a solution...mainly because of political pressure in the US...

    I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my cons uents.” President Harry Truman

  9. #9
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    sooo...with a little US armtwisting the US got the UN to vote on and approve the par ioning of the British protectorate into a Jewish Homeland section and a Palestinian section...all the Arab countries voted against it but it passed anyway. The areas that illegal buying had occured were included in the new Jewish Homeland section.



    “Arab rejection was...based on the fact that, while the population of the Jewish state was to be [only half] Jewish with the Jews owning less than 10% of the Jewish state land area, the Jews were to be established as the ruling body — a settlement which no self-respecting people would accept without protest, to say the least...The action of the United Nations conflicted with the basic principles for which the world organization was established, namely, to uphold the right of all peoples to self-determination. By denying the Palestine Arabs, who formed the two-thirds majority of the country, the right to decide for themselves, the United Nations had violated its own charter.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”

  10. #10
    Blood Dong
    Guest
    maybe KB homes or someone can just go over there and build neigborhoods, that would make me happy

  11. #11
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    In December 1947, the British announced that they would withdraw from Palestine by May 15, 1948. Palestinians in Jerusalem and Jaffa called a general strike against the par ion. Fighting broke out in Jerusalem’s streets almost immediately...Violent incidents mushroomed into all-out war...

    “Before the end of the mandate and, therefore before any possible intervention by Arab states, the Jews, taking advantage of their superior military preparation and organization, had occupied...most of the Arab cities in Palestine before May 15, 1948. Tiberias was occupied on April 19, 1948, Haifa on April 22, Jaffa on April 28, the Arab quarters in the New City of Jerusalem on April 30, Beisan on May 8, Safad on May 10 and Acre on May 14, 1948...In contrast, the Palestine Arabs did not seize any of the territories reserved for the Jewish state under the par ion resolution.” British author, Henry Cattan, “Palestine, The Arabs and Israel.”
    “Menahem Begin, the Leader of the Irgun, tells how ‘in Jerusalem, as elsewhere, we were the first to pass from the defensive to the offensive...Arabs began to flee in terror...Hagana was carrying out successful attacks on other fronts, while all the Jewish forces proceeded to advance through Haifa like a knife through butter’...The Israelis now allege that the Palestine war began with the entry of the Arab armies into Palestine after 15 May 1948. But that was the second phase of the war; they overlook the massacres, expulsions and dispossessions which took place prior to that date and which necessitated Arab states’ intervention.” Sami Hadawi, “Bitter Harvest.”
    The Deir Yassin massacre really polarized countries around the world about Israel...

    “For the entire day of April 9, 1948, Irgun and LEHI soldiers carried out the slaughter in a cold and premeditated fashion...The attackers ‘lined men, women and children up against the walls and shot them,’...The ruthlessness of the attack on Deir Yassin shocked Jewish and world opinion alike, drove fear and panic into the Arab population, and led to the flight of unarmed civilians from their homes all over the country.” Israeli author, Simha Flapan, “The Birth of Israel.”
    “By 1948, the Jew was not only able to ‘defend himself’ but to commit massive atrocities as well. Indeed, according to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War of Independence, acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes’...Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’” Norman Finkelstein, “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.”
    During May [1948] ideas about how to consolidate and give permanence to the Palestinian exile began to crystallize, and the destruction of villages was immediately perceived as a primary means of achieving this aim...[Even earlier,] On 10 April, Haganah units took Abu Shusha... The village was destroyed that night... Khulda was leveled by Jewish bulldozers on 20 April... Abu Zureiq was completely demolished... Al Mansi and An Naghnaghiya, to the southeast, were also leveled. . .By mid-1949, the majority of [the 350 depopulated Arab villages] were either completely or partly in ruins and uninhabitable.” Benny Morris, “The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.
    “We came to this country which was already populated by Arabs, and we are establishing a Hebrew, that is a Jewish, state here...Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages...There is not a single community in the country that did not have a former Arab population.” Israeli leader, Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi’s “Original Sins.”

  12. #12
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    The new state of Israel WAS attacked by surrounding countries but the attacks were uncoordinated and the armies were ill equipped. The only real organized army in the region was King Abdulla's Arab Legion and he took a pass and didn't participate...The remaining arab armys were no match for the Israeli army which was well organized and equipped with modern weapons...Even Israeli historians now concede that the survival of the new state was never in doubt and the myth of Israel fighting off the "overwhelming hordes" from 5 nations is just that..a myth...virtually all of the fighting was in the "arab" section of the Palestinian mandate and was just used as an excuse by the Israelis to continue their ethnic cleansing. 700,000 Palestinians were expelled in the ethnic cleansing of 1948.

    “That Ben-Gurion’s ultimate aim was to evacuate as much of the Arab population as possible from the Jewish state can hardly be doubted, if only from the variety of means he employed to achieve his purpose...most decisively, the destruction of whole villages and the eviction of their inhabitants...even [if] they had not participated in the war and had stayed in Israel hoping to live in peace and equality, as promised in the Declaration of Independence.” Israeli author, Simha Flapan, “The Birth of Israel.”

  13. #13
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    By the winter of 1949 there were 750,000 refugees living in caves, abandoned buildings, or in hastily constructed relief camps. Many of the starving were only miles away from their own vegetable gardens and orchards in occupied Palestine — the new state of Israel...At the end of 1949 the United Nations finally acted. It set up the United Nations Relief and Works Administration (UNRWA) to take over sixty refugee camps from voluntary agencies. It managed to keep people alive, but only barely.

    I agree that the surrounding Arab countries should have integrated these Palestinians into their societies instead of using them as political pawns but it didn't happen...but it is no surprise to me that the Israelis and the United States are universally despised by the Palestinians...

  14. #14
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    Don't believe me? How about these guys?


    "My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of 'Palestine', you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and not the Land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who have lived here before you came. Only if it is the Land of Israel do you have a right to live in Ein Hahoresh and in Deganiyah B. If it is not your country, your fatherland, the country of your ancestors and of your sons, then what are you doing here? You came to another people's homeland, as they claim, you expelled them and you have taken their land." Menahem Begin, quoted in Noam Chomsky's "Peace in the Middle East?"
    "Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs, We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we came here and stole their country. Why should they accept that?" David Ben-Gurion, quoted in "The Jewish Paradox" by Nathan Goldman, former president of the World Jewish Congress.

    "Before (the Palestinians) very eyes we are possessing the land and the villages where they, and their ancestors, have lived...We are the generation of colonizers, and without the steel helmet and the gun barrel we cannot plant a tree and build a home." Israeli leader Moshe Dayan, quoted in Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel"
    "The phenomenon that has prevailed among us for years is that of insensitivity to acts of wrong...[Consequently,] public opinion, the army, the police's...conclusion was that Arab blood can be freely shed. And then came the amnesty for those [convicted of the massacre] at Kafr Qasim, and some conclusions could be drawn again, and I could go on like this...It must make the State appear in the eyes of the world as a savage state that does not recognize the principles of justice as they have been established and accepted by contemporary society." Israel's second prime minister, Moshe Sharett, in 1961, quoted in Livia Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism."
    So anyway...that is how the state of Israel came to be...

    and people wonder why the Palestinians are pissed?

    *whew* I'm done...

  15. #15
    tlongII
    Guest
    TMI!

  16. #16
    Jimcs50
    Guest
    CC, don't confuse Whottt with facts.

  17. #17
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    hmmmm...I sense a very passionate indifference to this topic in here...

  18. #18
    Shelly
    Guest
    CC, I'd read all your posts, but I'm too lazy so I'll take your word for it.

    So, um...what CC said!

  19. #19
    MannyIsGod
    Guest
    And thats only the historical context.

    The actual palestian refugees living in the West Bank and in Gaza have such an incredibly ty quality of life. They are easily exploited by extremist groups into wasting their lives through terrorist attacks.

    Of nobody wants the conditions that Isreal has created in the occupied lands to be considered justification at for these activities, but the fact of the matter is that they have put into place a very fertile breeding ground for terrorism.

    Once again, there is a do entary tonight on HBO of all channels, called Death In Gaza which should give you a different perspective on the situatino than what you usually see presented in media.

  20. #20
    Whottt
    Guest
    LMAO.

    You and Jim keep sucking yourself off on me taking an interest in history CC.

    I have a degree in cultural anthropology, and I expect I have studied the history of the mideast with a far less biased view than you yourself...and probably the histories of South and Central America and Africa as well. And pooh pooh on Ameircan history keeping all you want but it's still more accurate than punching it up on an internet search engine.

    Funny thing about written history, you can always find something to back up most points you want to make, depending on where you are getting your information from.

    I'll get into this debate with you, taking the side that the Israelies have the more rhighteous cause...to an extent... but first I want to find a point at which we agree...

    And just for kicks I'd like to see if Manny and Jim agree on this as well.

    Are we all in agreement on the fact that what is now called Jordan and what is now called Israel are located in what has historically been known as the reigon of Palestine?

    I'll wait to see who agrees with that before going on.

  21. #21
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    I will agree that that region was given the name Palestine when it was assigned as a British Protectorate after WWI.

    Where I won't agree to is that Israel has any right to what is now known as Jordan.

  22. #22
    CosmicCowboyXXX
    Guest
    cultural anthropology huh?

    dang!

    I'll bet you have more education than your manager there at McDonalds...:p

  23. #23
    Whottt
    Guest
    Ok that's good enough. I am not asking you to agree that Israel has a right to what is now known as Jordan.

    I'd still like to see if the peanut gallery..er I mean Jim and Manny. Especially Jim...since he gets so worked up over this argument he likes to wish for someones death...

  24. #24
    MannyIsGod
    Guest
    Sure.

  25. #25
    Whottt
    Guest
    Hey it's not going to make me a millionaire or anything but it gives me one of an accurate world/historical view that isn't obscured by political bull .

    Yeah Cultural Anthroplogy and I minored in Astronomy.

    You could say I have an interest in where we came from and where we are going.

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