Midnyte_Sun
Medianoche de Sol
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you're saying Israel was founded on a Jewish hate or prejudice against Arabs? You know what, you're right. When Herzl gathered Jews around and talked about a Jewish homeland it was because it was predicated on a hate for Arabs and he wanted to wipe out all Palestinians. Oh, wait, that wasn't it. He gathered Jews around and discussed a homeland initiative because of the rising anti-Semitism in Europe that saw Jews cordoned off into Ghettos and periodically slaughtered in pogroms…yes, yes, I think that's it. I think I read that somewhere.
IF you actually read what I said, I was referring specifically to the Anti-Semitism wrought forth by Zionism to the Arabs. They not only would not sell mutually with Arabs, but bought land for the sole sinister purpose of never selling in the future.
Az Herzl said, "We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us...Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly." - Source: America and the Founding of Israel by John Mulholl.
Furthermore, Zionism was used synonymously with ethnic cleansing, which was defined as "Transfer" by the war criminal and future 1st Prime Minister of Israel: Ben Gurion.
Ben Gurion: "Zionism is a TRANSFER of the Jews. Regarding the TRANSFER of the Arabs this is much easier than any other TRANSFER. There are Arab states in the vicinity...and it is clear that if the Arabs are removed, this will improve their condition." (Expulsion Of The Palestinians, p. 159)
Handwritten letter mentioning transfer (ethnic cleansing) can be found from declassified material released. You can read about it here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Ben-Gurion_letter#cite_note-Commentary-2
Unidentified (equally menacing) quote: ""We must do everything to insure they ( the Palestinians) never do return." Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. "The old will die and the young will forget." Source: Michael Bar Zohar's Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.
Ultimately, action speaks louder than words. The Israeli government will always cite the few Arabs in public office, it's controlled population of Arabs (criminals can be expelled to the West Bank and barred citizenship and have their home destroyed and given to a Jew). The Israeli government has been quoted by human rights lawyers as having over 50 discriminatory laws towards Non-Jews, and has been accused of even discriminating against non Ashkenazi Jews, as well as Jewish African migrants, including unlawful sterilization and preventing them from donating blood because of unfounded fears of AIDS. Furthermore, any criticism of Israel's policies was met with accusations of Anti-Semitism. I wish I could make these allegations up, but these are actually all documented.
Some examples:
Forced Sterilization:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/elisekn...igrant-women-with-birth-control/#2d6120fb2880
Discriminatory Laws:
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-b...minatory-laws-are-embedding-racial-inequality
Smearing Israel critics with ad-hominem Anti-Semitism
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/19/the_smear_campaign_against_cap_and_media_matters_rolls_on/
This is fallacious rhetoric. Israel is home to Jews of all origins, not just "colonizers of Eastern European origin" (getting dangerously close to some Ashkenazi prejudice there, but you're clever enough to cover your tracks). Sephardic Jews are a large number there too, and Israel's purpose isn't to exist for a specific subordinate populace of Jews, it exists so that Jews who are persecuted have a place to go, a notion that was anathema in the early 1900s when the initiative was raised.
Their persecution does not excuse ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Just to clarify something you may or may not be aware of. The issue of Aliyot was raised way back during the Ottoman Empire and earlier when Jews were granted passage to settle in Palestine and Syria when they thought their Messiah was going to return in the 1860's. Some Rabbis from Europe even travelled during the Crusades and were never heard from again, most likely murdered by the Crusaders.
Ah, yes, a page in this topic is incomplete without one of your well-researched but poorly thought out and even more poorly argued diatribes. Firstly, Jews rejected the land in Uganda and the USA specifically because they didn't want to be a guest population in a host country.
What a joke. Correct me if I'm wrong, you stated Jews deserve 'safe havens.' Did you not say that? Why are you beating around the bush and just say what you really wanted to say, Jews need a country of their own. Because Jews DO have safe havens all around the world. If the United States was not a safe haven, why are there equally as many as Jews in America than Israel? Why do Israelis and the Americans have dual-citizenship status? Even if the 'safe-haven' of Uganda would be easier to occupy, ethnically cleanse, and take as a nation of their own than Palestine, which already had people and human civilization in it?
They stipulated Israel because they had historic claim to it, and they wanted to be in control of their own land and policy.
Israel has less historic claim than the Palestinians. Would you like to compare past civilizations and history? Also, what makes you think these ardent Zionist nationalists and the ultra-conservative terrorist nut jobs that founded Israel could not control a safe haven in Uganda or the policies of that territory there in?
Land doesn't belong to those who live on it, it belongs to those who enforce their claim on it.
Might is right, eh? Is this how you justify ethnic cleansing of indigenous populations? You might sleep well thinking might is always right when it comes to land or property, but the majority of the world does not believe you. That is why more nations in the world recognize Palestine over Israel. Ignoring the will of the indigenous people is exactly what got Israel in the position it is now in the first place.
You keep coming in here and using morally reprehensible acts Israel has committed as logic for why Israel shouldn't have been founded nearly a hundred years ago now.
Nearly a hundred years ago? Try 69 years ago. Some people's parents are older than the apartheid state of Israel. Also, no I do not post their war crimes and international (legitimate) conspiracies to invalidate the state of Israel.
I'm in fact a Zionist, but only as far as it being founded as a true secular Democracy, and not a psuedo-democratic / apartheid/ overtly theocratic state that thinks a magical man in the sky gave them permission to treat the indigenous people as inferior and steal their land.
A despotic state that routinely bans human rights observers from visiting, murders protestors, members of the press, American citizens, American soldiers, spies on the US government, discriminates against Non-Jews, collectively punishes Non Jews, tries to get the United States to take out it's political rivals, and routinely calls for the ethnic cleansing, and permanent settlement of Palestinian land.
That is why Obama in his last speech at the UN said: "Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel ...(and if) Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land."
Retrospectively arguing against a decision with current knowledge is an epistemic fallacy; stop doing it, it makes you look ignorant and biased.
Epistemic Fallacy is what Israel was founded on. Remember the sinister but ridiculous and laughable motto for Zionism? "A land without a people for a people without a land."
My argument holds up just fine, because I live in the real world, not in your idealistic utopia where we get to go back in time and preemptively punish people for acts their state will commit in the future.
Future? Ethnic cleansing is happening now. Apartheid is happening now and has steadily been reinforced since the British mandate.
You lament the fact that Palestinians are "subjected to some of the most medieval methods of persecution known to man" - Jews having endured that treatment for going on over 2000 years is precisely why Israel exists and must exist.
By committing said ethnic cleansing and racism that was committed upon them? That's not how you do it.
I'd prefer if it was, but no, Israel doesn't have to be a pluralistic and secular democracy the same way Vatican City doesn't have to. p
False equivalency. Romans and Catholicism go hand in hand. Palestine was always multi-ethnic and pluralistic. One only has to see neighboring Lebanon to understand how ethnically diverse it once was. Palestine was under Muslim and Christian rule longer than any Jewish rule in the region. Not only that, many of the inhabitants are direct descendants of Phoenicians, Romans, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Jews, Bedouins, etc, that have lived there longer than most of the migrants and colonizers who migrated there during the turn of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
If Israel was an 'empty land' for Jews they would never have had so much resistance to it by the people they claim don't exist. To conclude, Israel did not retain any semblance of a nation since their empire was destroyed by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans. It has been in Non-Jewish control for over 1500 years. Israel was invented, as was the modern notion of 'Palestine.' Either way, it does not negate the indigenous population that not only lived there, but had aspirations for state hood after WW2. Every President until Present-elect Trump agrees on this principle, as well as the majority of the international community.
Israel exists to protect the existential rights of Jews and represents their interest to not have their synagogues burned down every month or their kids assaulted in the streets, it doesn't have to cede any of its religious or ethnic identity the same way the Vatican doesn't have to.
Again with the Vatican false equivalency. Here is why they are not in anyway the same in 3 very easy to digest examples:
1) Vatican City's ethnic identity is and was homogeneous. It was run and occupied by the Romans for over two thousand years. Their retainers were all ethnically Roman/Italian thus legitimately being theirs alone. No Dispute. On the other hand, the British Mandate was multi-ethnic spanning many of the world's major Abrahamic religions, ethnicities, and in which, the majority of the population there speaks Arabic. To be ignorant of this, is to be a historic revisionist.
2) Vatican City is only 110 acres 0.17 square miles. Palestine (Israel and Palestinian territories) is approximately 6,656,000 acres or ~10,400 square miles. Hardly the same size or scope!
3)Vatican City was given special status by the nation's own people. Israel was founded unilaterally without the consent of the nation's majority non Jews, and used terrorism to force the British to give them a state, and was partitioned without the consent of the majority of the people. Also, it was ethnically cleansed and continues to ethnically cleanse to fortify their state and eliminate any non-Jewish rivals.
I completely reject your false equivalency between the Vatican city and Israel.
Making it seem like Israel is "just another country" is either deliberately ignorant or willfully naive.
For geopolitical stability and prosperity, Israel should heed the warning of the international community from becoming a Pariah. However, to call it Israel
just another country is not fair. It is a special snowflake, and the only apartheid in the world - and even recognized as such by the late Pro-Apartheid South African Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd.
I don't think you really believe Israel should be a pluralistic democracy for the sake of the Palestinians though, I think you argue that point because you know how Jews being on equal/weaker footing to another population eventually pans out, and that's your angle.
Baseless assumptions. I believe Israel's true future is that of a pluralistic state with healthy relationships with its neighbors, maybe even a leader in the Middle East. My personal opinion for the past few years (if you scroll far back enough in these threads) is to have a one state solution, equal rights for all. It's future is not a closed off Jewish colony full of jingoistic deniers of precedent that has occurred in other former colonies with dismay and regret.
Don't bother replying to any of this, I know better than to converse with someone who's as unreasonable as you are and seemingly has no grasp on the historical context that made the creation of Israel a moral necessity.
You know better eh? But you just took time to reply to me and of course, made a subtle jab at calling me Anti-Semitic for criticizing Israel, as well as indirectly calling hundreds of thousands (maybe even a million or more?) of Jews , and millions more non Jew who oppose Israeli occupation and discriminatory policies of the Israeli government. I agree that I am wholly biased against a "Jewish state," apartheid, and their perpetual occupation, but save your anti-Semitism ad hominem for those who actually hate Jews.
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