Roadmap to HELL - One man caught on a barbed wire fence ....

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by anitram

Less than 7% of the land by 1947. For the record.

In 1947, 9% of the land was owned by Jews, 3% by Arabs who became Israeli citizens, and 18% by Arabs who either left before the 1948 war or after. The other 70% of the land was NOT privately owned by anyone. It belonged to the British Mandatory government and prior to that belonged to the government of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1947 the Arab population in Israel/Palestine numbered, 1,200,000. The Jewish figure at the time was 600,000. A combined figure of 1.8 million, much less than the nearly 12 million Jews and Arabs that live in Israel/Palestine today.

The Jews never had a chance of reaching a majority in the country given the restrictive immigration policy of the British. By contrast, the Arabs were free to come - and thousands did - to take advantage of the rapid development stimulated by area's owned by Jews. The Jews were a majority in the area allotted to them in the UN Partition Plan of 1947, as well as the majority in Jerusalem that was to be a United Nations run city under the UN Partition Plan.

[Strongbow]

Here are some interesting public comments by Arab officials on the issue of peace with Israel in 1947/1948:

"Unless the Palestine problem is settled, we shall have difficulty in protecting and safeguarding the Jews in the Arab world"
Syrian delegage, Faris el-Khouri, New York Times, February 19, 1947



"The Arab world is not in a compromising mood. It's likely, Mr. Horowitz, that your plan is rational and logical, but the fate of nations is not decided by rational logic. Nations never concede; they fight. You won't get anything by peaceful means or compromise. You can, perhaps, get something, but only by the force of your arms. We shall try to defeat you. I'm not sure we'll succeed, but we'll try. We were able to drive out the Crusaders, but on the other hand we lost Spain and Persia. It may be that we shall lose Palestine. But its too late to talk of peaceful solutions."
Arab League Secretary Azzam Pasha, September 16, 1947

"All our efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Palestine problem have failed. The only way left for us is war. I will have the pleasure and honor to save Palestine." Transjordan's King Abdullah, April 26, 1948

"The representitives of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arab's had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight"
Jamal Husseini before the Security Council, April 16, 1948


"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades."
Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, May 15, 1948

[Irvine511]

here's a thoughtful post that i enjoyed reading, it tackles hard, almost unmentionable questions:

And being critical of Israel does not mean you're an anti-Zionist. But a reader did note this 2006 column by Richard Cohen. Money quote:

I was thinking recently how a Burkean could defend the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. I'm not sure it's possible - which may say more about the limits of Burkean conservatism than Zionism. Although Jews obviously dwelled in Palestine for as long as anyone, their numbers were few in recent centuries until the grand experiment. Zionism began as an idea, another nineteenth century "ism", and was, like most radical ideas, controversial among Jews and Gentiles everywhere in its inception and since. It was radically utopian, an almost text book example of imposing an abstract concept - a settled Jewish nation after so long a diaspora - on a land already embedded with an existing geographic, demographic, religious and cultural reality.

Maybe you could see the emergence of Israel as a Burkean consequence of the Holocaust. But most Zionists are offended by this idea, and it seems to me that this makes sense as a Burkean defense of Israel for Europeans, but has little resonance for Jewish Palestinians, Arab Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, Persians, Kurds, and others more directly affected. I remain deeply committed to the idea of Israel, largely because the Shoah proved beyond any doubt that there was no security for Jews as a nation without a homeland. But the Burkean in me cries out prudentially against trying to coerce history - and tradition and settled populations - in this radical and sudden way.

The lesson of this, it seems to me, is not, however, that Israel should be abandoned. The lesson is that its leaders and people need to be sensitive to history, not embittered by it, however justified the embitterment might be. A Burkean could just about defend the creation and endurance of Israel (ending it now would be an even greater rupture than its beginning) but he should also be utterly unsurprised by reaction, resistance and resentment. Conservatives of all people should foresee this. When the lives and homes of hundreds of thousands are permanently and suddenly altered without their permission and against their religious beliefs, they will react. When families are still turfed out of their homes to make way for strangers of a different religious background, rage is a perfectly defensible, and rational, response. History matters, as Cohen explained:

My additional point would be that this resistance to the other encroaching on sacred ground is not a unique feature of the Arab psyche. (It is, however, horribly compounded by Islam's fetish for religious exclusivity on its own territory. This insistence on a religious monopoly on actual regions is much more repellent, it seems to me, than the Jewish people's search for a small place of their own around their historic capital. Israel, after all, does not ban Islam; Saudi Arabia bans Judaism. Between the relative land-claims of Judaism and the totalist land-claims of Islam, I'm with the Jews, both proportionally and as a matter of simple equity.)

But it is prudentially idiotic for Israel to act as if Arab resentment has no legitimacy or no justification. It is tone-deaf to create a Jewish state in the middle of the Middle East and then behave as if it had been there for ever. Israel is not France or Egypt, or even Canada. It is a young and contested idea on ancient, contested land, whose original inhabitants did not all just disappear in a biological holocaust, as in America.

It does not seem to me therefore nuts to urge a certain respect and tact from Israel toward its neighbors and the populations it displaced - even when it is not reciprocated. I'm not going to go into the long and awful history of the way in which the Arab world has treated Israel from the get-go, but I am saying that to add to the original proposition an ongoing, unstoppable colonization of a further swathe of land won in wartime is obviously against the interests of the Jewish state, and compounds and deepens the resentment from 1948 and 1967 and 1974. Not to see this context, indeed to claim that any and all grievances against Israel's existence - and, much more significantly, ongoing expansion - are entirely a function of Jew-hatred is to lose any nuance in diplomacy or human relations.

That's where the Israelis have lost me and some others. It was revealed first by how petulantly even the Kadima-led government responded to Obama's election. The Gaza war, conceptually defensible, was practically gruesome (Hamas and Israel share that blame), but the unapologetic, almost triumphalist and revengeful manner in which it was conducted and defended was and is shocking, as is the contempt for the wounded and dead on the Mavi Marmara. When your heart is hardened against the corpses of children buried in rubble, it is hardened too much. And the job of a real friend is to point this out, not to enable it.

Keep holding the mirror, Mr president.

Was Israel A Mistake? - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

[deep]

Originally Posted by Strongbow

Here are some interesting public comments by in 1947/1948:

you have referred to 1947several times as an example of why Israel exist today or the justification for how and where, Israel exist today.

OK, so going by your example or suggestion,
then 1947 should be where we go for the final boundaries.

Here you go.



more than generous, since by your information 600,000 Jewish inhabitants and 1200000 Palestinians at that time.

lets use the 1947 standard you keep bringing up, and allow Palestinians to control/govern all that territory. Of course Jews can stay and pay rent and live under the same deal Israeli Arabs have enjoyed all these years.

[Moonlit_Angel]

Thank you for that article, Irvine. That's exactly what I've thought before, too-it does seem odd that of all the places in the world to put Israel, we pick an Arab-heavy part. How did people not expect some conflict and complication would arise from that decision?

Also...

Jewish Palestinians

I'm glad this sort of thing was pointed out, as it makes for the argument that there are all sorts of people living in Palestine (as well as Israel). The main battle may be between two particular groups, but there are people of all backgrounds in both areas getting caught up in the crossfire, and I think it'd do the world well to realize and remember this.

Angela

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by deep

you have referred to 1947several times as an example of why Israel exist today or the justification for how and where, Israel exist today.

OK, so going by your example or suggestion,
then 1947 should be where we go for the final boundaries.

Here you go.



more than generous, since by your information 600,000 Jewish inhabitants and 1200000 Palestinians at that time.

lets use the 1947 standard you keep bringing up, and allow Palestinians to control/govern all that territory. Of course Jews can stay and pay rent and live under the same deal Israeli Arabs have enjoyed all these years.

I've continually stated that the UN Partition plan in 1947 was fair. But that was 63 years ago, and to go back to those boundries would require uprooting millions of people today that were not even born then. Any Palestinians or Arabs that are interested in a peace deal with Israel or a two state solution are not interested in going back to the 1948 borders with the United Nations in control of Jerusalem. They are interested in a Palestinian State that is within the pre-1967 borders of the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel has already agreed to let the Palestinians have Gaza as well as most of the West Bank. There are a few settlement sticking points plus the status of Jerusalem are the main land area's being contested.

[Bluer White]

Originally Posted by Moonlit_Angel

Thank you for that article, Irvine. That's exactly what I've thought before, too-it does seem odd that of all the places in the world to put Israel, we pick an Arab-heavy part.

Angela, where should 'we put' Israel?

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by Moonlit_Angel

Thank you for that article, Irvine. That's exactly what I've thought before, too-it does seem odd that of all the places in the world to put Israel, we pick an Arab-heavy part. How did people not expect some conflict and complication would arise from that decision?

Thats not really the history of what happened. The key to remember here is that this land of Israel/Palestine was Ottoman land for 400 years from 1500 to 1918. The land belonged to the Ottoman Empire as did the land where Syria is located, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and much of Saudi Arabia including Mecca and Medina.

At the end of World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and ceaced to exist. The sudden end of the previous government and state in the area for the past 400 years meant that there would be creation of multiple new states by the people who lived in these area's. That is how Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait exist today and its also why Israel exist today.

Without the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, none of these states would exist today. The Jews living in what is now Israel/Palestine wanted to form their own state as did the citizens of other area's of what used to be the Ottoman Empire.

So the idea to form an independent state once the Ottoman Empire collapsed came from Jews already living on their own land in Israel/Palestine. It did not come from the British or the League of Nations searching for an area of the globe to create a new state called Israel.

Israel/Palestine was also not "Arab Heavy" or populated heavily at all at the time the Ottoman Empire Collapsed.

In 2010, 12 million people live in Israel/West Bank/Gaza. But in 1918, there was only 700,000 people. The majority of the land was not privately owned and empty of any settlements.

[Irvine511]

not that i was asked, but "putting" Israel is beside the point, and seems to beg a question or response that's ready for a smack down.

it's there. period. and the Israelis aren't going anywhere. and no one is going to be pushed into the sea. period.

however, i think the point of the post that i posted is that it's impossible to sever present hostilities from history. and while my above sentence is all factual, imho, it's impossible to live without acknowledging the history behind the country's creation, and that understanding Arab resentment and anger is absolutely central to Israel's own self-interest and self-preservation.

[the iron horse]

Press>>>listen


Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully

He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully


~Bob Dylan

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

here's a thoughtful post that i enjoyed reading, it tackles hard, almost unmentionable questions:

The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.

The creation of any state, especially in the ashes of the sudden collapse of a 400 year old Empire is bound to be difficult. But what would Richard Cohen do? Would he of tried to keep the Ottoman Empire going? Lebanon, Iraq, and Kuwait were also formed around the same time on land from the Ottoman Empire and the years since then have seen war, terrorism and conflict as well.

Why would he deny the Jews who had been born in Israel/Palestine the right to form their own state, but give that right to every other ethnic group or nationality that was until just recently apart of the Ottoman Empire?

I was thinking recently how a Burkean could defend the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. I'm not sure it's possible - which may say more about the limits of Burkean conservatism than Zionism. Although Jews obviously dwelled in Palestine for as long as anyone, their numbers were few in recent centuries until the grand experiment. Zionism began as an idea, another nineteenth century "ism", and was, like most radical ideas, controversial among Jews and Gentiles everywhere in its inception and since. It was radically utopian, an almost text book example of imposing an abstract concept - a settled Jewish nation after so long a diaspora - on a land already embedded with an existing geographic, demographic, religious and cultural reality.

Well Andrew, in the mid-1800s there were less than 400,000 people living in the area of the Ottoman Empire known as Israel/Palestine. Most the land was uninhabited and un-developed. There was no existing cultural reality for the entire area. Each town and villiage had its own. No one identified the area west of the Jordan river that would one day become Israel/Palestine as some special seperate entity.

There were Jews living in this area before Jewish immigration from Europe started around 1880. While the Ottoman Empire were not going to allow the formation of an independent state on their territory, for decades they allowed Jews from Europe to immigrate to the area and settle, develop and privately own land.

So with the approval of the Ottoman Empire, the number of Jews living in what would become Israel/Palestine started to rapidly grow. The Ottomans were not opposed because the Jewish settlements were good for the economic development of the area. So in the 1880s, Jews from Europe started to settle in the area and the first native born Jews of recent European descent were born. By 1918 and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, there were tens of thousands of Jews living in the area that were native born.

Maybe you could see the emergence of Israel as a Burkean consequence of the Holocaust. But most Zionists are offended by this idea, and it seems to me that this makes sense as a Burkean defense of Israel for Europeans, but has little resonance for Jewish Palestinians, Arab Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, Persians, Kurds, and others more directly affected. I remain deeply committed to the idea of Israel, largely because the Shoah proved beyond any doubt that there was no security for Jews as a nation without a homeland. But the Burkean in me cries out prudentially against trying to coerce history - and tradition and settled populations - in this radical and sudden way.

But andrew, the idea to form Israel came from the SETTLED population of Jews living in the area at the time of the demise of the Ottoman Empire. It was not some magical idea created to protect Jews after the horrors of World War II. Why give all the other former citizens of the Ottoman Empire the right to form independent states, but not Jews?

The lesson of this, it seems to me, is not, however, that Israel should be abandoned. The lesson is that its leaders and people need to be sensitive to history, not embittered by it, however justified the embitterment might be. A Burkean could just about defend the creation and endurance of Israel (ending it now would be an even greater rupture than its beginning) but he should also be utterly unsurprised by reaction, resistance and resentment. Conservatives of all people should foresee this

Well, one should first know the history and should never sympathize with resistance and resentment that is based on MYTH and not FACT.

When the lives and homes of hundreds of thousands are permanently and suddenly altered without their permission and against their religious beliefs, they will react. When families are still turfed out of their homes to make way for strangers of a different religious background, rage is a perfectly defensible, and rational, response

This is NOT how the Jews settled the area when it was apart of the Ottoman Empire. It is not how most Jews settled the area during the British mandate, that is, the few who were allowed to emigrate given the severe restrictions the British put on Jews emigrating to the area.

Finally, it was the Jews who accepted the UN partition peace plan, and the Palestinians and other Arab countries that rejected it and then brutally invaded Israel in an attempt to destroy the state in 1948. It is the Palestinians and the Arabs that are responsible for the consequences of the 1948 war. They were offered peace, an independent state, and rejected the offer and tried to destroy Israel.

History matters, as Cohen explained:


Quote:
This is why the Israeli-Arab war, now transformed into the Israeli-Muslim war (Iran is not an Arab state), persists and widens. It is why the conflict mutates and festers. It is why Israel is now fighting an organization, Hezbollah, that did not exist 30 years ago and why Hezbollah is being supported by a nation, Iran, that was once a tacit ally of Israel's. The underlying, subterranean hatred of the Jewish state in the Islamic world just keeps bubbling to the surface. The leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and some other Arab countries may condemn Hezbollah, but I doubt the proverbial man in their street shares that view.

The fact that Hezbollah did not exist 30 years ago is irrelevant. There have been multiple terrorist groups that were either Palestinian Arab or just Arab over the past 62 years. Israel has consistently done what it needed to do since day one to protect its people. It is an amazing 62 year success story. The lack of education and economic opportunity in much of the Arab world is part of the reason why the proverbial man on the street has such a negative view of Israel and some how a positive one of Hezbollah.

But it is prudentially idiotic for Israel to act as if Arab resentment has no legitimacy or no justification. It is tone-deaf to create a Jewish state in the middle of the Middle East and then behave as if it had been there for ever. Israel is not France or Egypt, or even Canada. It is a young and contested idea on ancient, contested land, whose original inhabitants did not all just disappear in a biological holocaust, as in America.

Well, what about Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Kuwait, and Jordan? These countries were all mid-20th centuries creations in the same area, but somehow its ok that they were formed, but its not ok that Israel was formed? Why give all the rest of the former citizens of the Ottoman Empire the right to form NEW independent states, but exclude the Jews?

It does not seem to me therefore nuts to urge a certain respect and tact from Israel toward its neighbors and the populations it displaced - even when it is not reciprocated. I'm not going to go into the long and awful history of the way in which the Arab world has treated Israel from the get-go, but I am saying that to add to the original proposition an ongoing, unstoppable colonization of a further swathe of land won in wartime is obviously against the interests of the Jewish state, and compounds and deepens the resentment from 1948 and 1967 and 1974. Not to see this context, indeed to claim that any and all grievances against Israel's existence - and, much more significantly, ongoing expansion - are entirely a function of Jew-hatred is to lose any nuance in diplomacy or human relations.

Israel did not displace any populations. Israel chose peace in 1948, the Arabs chose war. The consequences of that war was the displacement of thousands of people. When are the Palestinians going to adopt a new strategy in getting an independent state? One that does not involve war and terrorism. Israel did not start the wars of the past, the Arabs did and are there for responsible for the consequences.

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by Irvine511

however, i think the point of the post that i posted is that it's impossible to sever present hostilities from history. and while my above sentence is all factual, imho, it's impossible to live without acknowledging the history behind the country's creation, and that understanding Arab resentment and anger is absolutely central to Israel's own self-interest and self-preservation.

The problem is that Andrew does not seem to know the factual history of the "creation" of Israel. So much of what is popularly believed by many Arabs and Andrew Sullivan about the "creation" of Israel is a MYTH, and not a FACT. If the Palestinians ever want to have their own state, the culture of violence and hatred will need to be replaced by education and non-violent action.

[BVS]

I've seen propaganda, the Bible, and Bob Dylan quoted as historical fact in here...

I'm a big fan of two, but none are historical fact.

It's kinda like America, our country is only a little over 200 years old and no one quite has the history right...

[Irvine511]

[Moonlit_Angel]

Originally Posted by Bluer White

Angela, where should 'we put' Israel?

I wasn't trying to imply it should be anywhere else. I honestly don't know where else would be a good place to put Israel, and don't really care, 'cause as Irvine said, Israel's there, it's always going to be there, and that's that, and hooray for that, I'm certainly no advocate of suddenly up and moving that country now after all this time. I was simply agreeing that it is an odd spot for them to plant a country, that's all I meant. If they want to put Israel there, fine, go for it. It's just strange, the fact that people on both sides are so surprised at the reaction that came from that decision. Perhaps they weren't expecting it to get as violent and lengthy as it became, though, I dunno.

Angela

[Vincent Vega]

Originally Posted by INDY500

I don't consider Helen Thomas' statements to be "legitimate criticism." But what the hell do I know as increasingly more and more people around the world echo her words and thoughts.

You implied that her earlier comments were in the same league of her most recent ones, and made it out to be that any criticism of Israel's action from the left equalled anti-Semitism or anti-Israelism.

[AliEnvy]

Originally Posted by Strongbow

They were offered peace, an independent state, and rejected the offer and tried to destroy Israel.

The continual positioning that Israel offers peace and Arabs reject it always smells like pure propoganda.

Does it ever occur to anyone that the terms of the "offer" (then or more recently) may not have been legitimate or balanced?

That the conditions of peace and an "independent" state of Palestine are on the unlilateral terms of Israel and in effect may actually require complete submission and dependence from Palestinians?

[BVS]

Originally Posted by AliEnvy

The continual positioning that Israel offers peace and Arabs reject it smells like pure propoganda.

Does it ever occur to anyone that the terms of the "offer" (then or more recently) may not have been legitimate or balanced?

That the conditions of peace and an "independent" state of Palestine are on the unlilateral terms of Israel and in effect may actually require complete submission and dependence from Palestinians?

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by BVS

I've seen propaganda, the Bible, and Bob Dylan quoted as historical fact in here...

I'm a big fan of two, but none are historical fact.

It's kinda like America, our country is only a little over 200 years old and no one quite has the history right...

Israel's right to exist is not based on propaganda, the Bible, or Bob Dylan, but the events that happened after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918. Its absurd and ignorant for Andrew Sullivan to be questioning the existence of Israel or declaring it a mistake. How can one consider it lawful and right for all of the citizens of the former Ottoman Empire to have the right to form states of their own, but deny that right to Jews?

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by Moonlit_Angel

I was simply agreeing that it is an odd spot for them to plant a country, that's all I meant. If they want to put Israel there, fine, go for it. It's just strange, the fact that people on both sides are so surprised at the reaction that came from that decision. Perhaps they weren't expecting it to get as violent and lengthy as it became, though, I dunno.

Angela

Again, the British, League of Nations did not search the globe and decide on spot to put Israel. The desire to form Israel did not come from the League of Nations, or the British, but Jews living in Israel/Palestine upon the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. How can it be ok for citizens living in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey to form those state, but its NOT ok for Jews living in Israel/Palestine to form a state of their own called Israel?