Posted on 06/11/2005 6:21:18 PM PDT by CHARLITE
If you are so sure that “Palestine, the country, goes back through most of recorded history,” I expect you to be able to answer a few basic questions about that country of Palestine:
When was it founded and by whom?
What were its borders?
What was its capital?
What were its major cities?
What constituted the basis of its economy?
What was its form of government?
Can you name at least one Palestinian leader before Arafat?
Was Palestine ever recognized by a country whose existence, at that time or now, leaves no room for interpretation?
What was the language of the country of Palestine?
What was the prevalent religion of the country of Palestine?
What was the name of its currency? Choose any date in history and tell what was the approximate exchange rate of the Palestinian monetary unit against the US dollar, German mark, GB pound, Japanese yen, or Chinese yuan on that date.
Have they left any artifacts behind?
Do you know of a library where one could find a work of Palestinian literature produced before 1967?
And, finally, since there is no such country today, what caused its demise and when did it occur?
You are lamenting the “low sinking” of “once proud” nation. Please tell me, when exactly was that “nation” proud and what was it so proud of?
And here is the least sarcastic question of all: If the people you mistakenly call “Palestinians” are anything but generic Arabs collected from all over — or thrown out of — the Arab world, if they really have a genuine ethnic identity that gives them right for self-determination, why did they never try to become independent until Arabs suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War?
I hope you avoid the temptation to trace the modern day “Palestinians” to the Biblical Philistines: substituting etymology for history won't work here.
The truth should be obvious to everyone who wants to know it. Arab countries have never abandoned the dream of destroying Israel; they still cherish it today.
Having time and again failed to achieve their evil goal with military means, they decided to fight Israel by proxy. For that purpose, they created a terrorist organization, cynically called it “Palestinian people” and installed it in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. How else can you explain the refusal by Jordan and Egypt to unconditionally accept back the “West Bank” and Gaza, respectively?
The fact is, Arabs populating Gaza, Judea, and Samaria have much less claim to nationhood than that Indian tribe that successfully emerged in Connecticut with the purpose of starting a tax-exempt casino: at least that tribe had a constructive goal that motivated them. The so called “Palestinians” have only one motivation: the destruction of Israel, and in my book that is not sufficient to consider them a “nation” — or anything else except what they really are: a terrorist organization that will one day be dismantled.
In fact, there is only one way to achieve piece in the Middle East. Arab countries must acknowledge and accept their defeat in their war against Israel and, as the losing side should, pay Israel reparations for the more than 50 years of devastation they have visited on it. The most appropriate form of such reparations would be the removal of their terrorist organization from the land of Israel and accepting Israel's ancient sovereignty over Gaza, Judea, and Samaria.
That will mark the end of the Palestinian people. What are you saying again was its beginning?
You are absolutely correct in your understanding of the “Palestinians'” murderous motives. I am afraid however that you, along with 99% of the population of this planet have missed the beginning of WWIII (the enemy call it Jihad) quite a few years ago. The siege of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, an event to which the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner had so miserably failed to respond, can be very well used as the day WWIII stepped out of the pages of the Koran and into the current events. I pray the United States and Israel lead the world to victory in this war. Come to think of it, there is no choice, be you a Christian, a Jew, or even, believe it or not, a Muslim.
Yes.
And they consider Israel the "Little Satan" while America is the "Great Satan."
Why is no one listening to these people?
The only way I think this can be solved peacefully is for various countries to get together and agree to each take in a certain amount of Palestinians. For political and strategic reasons, Israel can't give up the West Bank even if it wanted to. Now I've had enough. Good day.
well the smarter tribes, esp in Canada, made treaties with the white man and those treaties are still being argued in land claims case even today, where the "white man" aka government has reneged on certain promises
but that is a different matter of course, because the conquerors agreed to a treaty and unlike the Muslims who have a rule that all treaties are only good for 10 years, if, courts will still consider, interpret and possibly uphold or order restitution for breaches of treaties that are a few centuries old
I agree! My sympathy and support is with Israel. I'm just another Gentile sinner but the way I see it... His Chosen People are still His ...and I'm one of His too.
So the real enmity between the Israelis and the local population is nationalistic? Funny I always thought it was primarily religious, with a pseudo-nationalistic element. In any case most ethnic Muslims don't consider themselves Israelis because that's a nationality which by it's very name implies a specific religious background.<
WFTR wrote:
Okay, what's your solution? Which land should be part of a "nation of Palestine?"
...
Of the three major cultures that have ties to the area, the oldest is the Jewish culture. The second oldest is the Christian culture, and the newest is the Muslim culture. Whatever the people around "Palestine" were before they became Muslims, there is no such thing as a modern Philistine or Canaanite. As long as your asking what right anyone has to that land, what right do the Muslims have to control so much of the Middle East? You can deplore the "might makes right" mentality, but the only reason that so much of the Middle East seems "traditionally Muslim" is that the Muslims forced themselves on those lands.
I have not argued that the locals (or Palestinians, or Trans-Jordan Jordanians, or Southern Syrians, or what ever you want to call them) have any particular right to the land.
My argument with FreedomCalls involved the claim to right. If Israel's right to exist is based on the Right of Conquest then technically all the talk about a historical Jewish right to a state in the region is as meaningless as the Palestinian claim to the same. Further, if the only right the Jews have to a sovereign state in Palestine is their physical power to make it happen, then there is no logical reason to condemn Muslims, foreign or domestic from trying to conquer Israel, because under the “Might makes Right” system they are logically only wrong if they fail.
However, if the Jews do have a right to the land, supplementary to a right of conquest then it become a matter of which ethnic group has a more legitimate claim. Perhaps the exiled Jews have a better claim, but we have to decide further whether culture or genetic history is a stronger basis for legal occupancy of the land.
As for a solution, I'm not even sure there is one. What I am sure of though is that a solution will not be found until the problem is properly identified. To this end I'm playing devils advocate against those who claim there is no such thing as a Palestine because I believe that argument is a very poor one.
Its weakness is that it seems to suggest that between the collapse of Roman power in the region and the rise of modern Israel no one lived there. The reasoning for this strange belief is that there was no local sovereign government in the region between the original Jewish kingdoms and the modern Jewish state (except for perhaps the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem). But just because Palestine was governed Imperially from Constantinople, then from Damascus, then from Ciro, then from Istanbul(Constantinople) again, then from London, and now finally locally from Jerusalem under what is from the locals point of view just another foreign administration, doesn't mean there haven't been indigenous locals living there all along. Culturally they may not be Canaanites, or Hebrews, or Greeks or Romans colonists. Culturally they are Muslims mostly, but that doesn't mean that they are not genetically the same people who have always lived there. Perhaps they have not historically always had local sovereignty, but I don't see how that intrinsically proves they should never have local sovereignty.
So to sum up my whole point: If Israel's right to exist is established by the Right of Conquest then any treaty stating an intrinsic right beyond that has no real meaning. And thus Israel will have to accept constant hostility from her neighbors, and domestic violence as long as there is a cultural division between Palestinian Muslims and Palestinian Israelis. At most she can condemn the tactics of her enemies as immoral, but not their motive without consequently delegitimizing her own right to exist.
If however we establish Israel's right to exist on historical ethnic grounds we will still come back to the right of conquest problem, since the question of cultural ethnicity and genetic ethnicity probably cannot be resolved without violence.
So the problem appears unresolvable sans a resort to ethnic violence and the establishment of either: 1) Complete military hegemony of the region by Israel, which works best in the long run, but unfortunately is not a likely outcome in this day and age because it would probably mean nukes, and certainly it would require Israel to deport or liquidate the intransigent Muslim population. 2)Or the other end game solution which is the destruction of Israel. But since we cannot morally support either of these options I'm not sure if there is a real longterm solution.
In any case claiming that there is no such thing as a Palestinian is a pointless argument. As I said before, whether you want to call the locals Palestinians, Southern Syrians, Trans-Jordan Jordanians, or modern Canaanites doesn't matter. And if you are going to argue that they don't exist at all, then answer who lived in modern Israel between the 7th century to the present?
Are you seriouly suggesting that the eight Muslims who hold seats in the the Israeli Knesset do not consider themselves to be Israeli?
That's what the "Palestinians" have always claimed. They claim to differentiate between Zionism and Judaism.
Jordanians. And they were just generic "Arabs" prior to the establishment of Jordan. Prior to that they were just citizens of the Ottoman Empire, part of the Syrian province. Just one of the many peoples in the region who spoke Arabic, not significantly different from any of the others in the surrounding areas.
It's interesting that you start with the 7th century. For if you start earlier the inhabitants of the area would be by far mostly Christians and Jews.
You left out the third option. Just let Israel control the land south of the Golan, west of the Jordan, and north of the Sinai. No more. They don't want, nor desire a "complete military hegemony of the region" just the land of Israel. The Arabs can have the rest of 99.9% of the area. Just leave the Israelis alone.
I started in the 7th century because that's when it was conquered culturally by the Muslims. But the local inhabitants were not racially purged (do you have any idea how logistically imposable it would have been for the Arabs to kill every individual in Roman Palestine?). Most simply converted, or left. It is the descendants of the local people who converted to Islam over a period of several centuries prier to the Crusades (though even then, as now, there were many pockets of Christian minorities, the oppression of whom was one of the main causes of the Crusades) who are what we call Palestinians. They are not genetically pure Arabs, they are a mix of Arab conquerors and the original inhabitants just as the modern French are not pure genetic Franks, mostly they are still Gauls. Your misunderstanding of the nature of the problem stems from your mistaken assumption that culture is equatable with genetic ethnicity. The Palestinians may be cultural Arabs because they are Muslim and speak Arabic, but that doesn't make them genetically Arab. This is what I mean by the genetic problem, since if we establish a Jewish right to the region on historical grounds we have to deal with the problem that not all the Jews left, some converted to Islam (Some to Christianity first and then Islam, and some vis versa probably).
Now remember I'm not saying definitively that the Palestinians have a right to sovereignty. I'm just trying to find a good reason for them to stop attacking Israel. I don't buy the argument that they don't exist and there for should accept Israel. It's utterly pointless to say the indigenous inhabitants of the region we call Palestine don't exist.
But I don't see any kind of logical solution to the problem, least not a solution which doesn't cancel both the Israelis right to a state as well as the Palestinians.
Barring the rise of a Palestinian Gandhi I don't think there is a solution. But even then a Palestinian Gandhi would probably be politically bad for Israel. Ironically the fact that the Palestinians use the violent tactics that they do probably is one of the reasons Israel has the support it does since no sane moral person would support the terrorist.
And so I come back to Israel needing to establish complete military hegemony in the whole region. The Muslims can afford to play the dithering game on the issue of Israeli right to existence. They don't have to attack Israel openly anymore, it's more effective for them to finance domestic terrorism against Israel. But we know that a great majority of Muslims want to see Israel gone. And, with the Might makes Right philosophy on which, as you say, Israel is justified, I can see no reason why they should stop. Which means Israel must crush her neighbors militarily so that she can assure her long term survival. But since that's not an option I don't know what will make it work.
I don't like philosophical loose ends, and the reasoning for Israels existence as established by the idea that they are stronger, or that they ethnically have more of a right then the locals leaves too many philosophical loose ends. Not to mention that the latter tends to rely on the former for practical enactment.
Personally my sympathy is with the Israelis, because I cannot condone terrorism and further I'm prejudiced against the Muslim religion. But personal sympathy and prejudice don't make rational arguments.
And how are they any different from the Mizrahi Jews? They are the descendents of the people who lived in the region who never converted to Islam but remained Jewish. The Mizrahi Jews and your "Palestinians" are descended from the same ancestors but simply now have different religions.
True, but they are a Minority (or were at least), If most Muslims are willing to live under a Jewish regime we would have no problem. Every thing I've herd though suggest that the indigenous Muslims (I'll use that term since you seem to take umbrage at "Palestinian") don't, as a majority, favor living under a Jewish dominion; and certainly Israel's neighbors don't like the idea.
If we could get all the indigenous Muslims to accept the Jewish authority then we have a solution, but I don't see how we can if our argument runs that the Jews have a right to the state and you as an ethnic group don't. If you could convince them that the Jews have a right to part of what is Palestine and the rest can be Muslim and autonomous the problem would be solved. But even then a local might just respond, “why do the Jews have a right to any part of Palestine, since they are mostly foreigners?” To which you would invariably have to respond with, well they did take the land so it's theirs. Which of course is no argument for peace. Thus the local Muslims have no reason to accept the authority of Israel. And, since they are unwilling, and since there will always be outside forces supporting that resistance, I don't see that it's a solvable problem for the state of Israel. At least, as I've said, the only real solution that I can see is Israel militarily crushing all its neighbors to such an extent that there would be no hope of resisting Israeli authority for the foreseeable future. A course of action which of course the rest of the world, including Israel's allies, will not allow.
Worth checking out - Ping!
Who are the palesimians? They are the proof that Bedouins were overly fond of their camels..
You missed my point entirely
No I didn't miss your point.
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