BTW, Did the Jews have "authorization" to barge into someone else's country, commit genocide, ethnic cleansing and a 50 year war against the original inhabitants? (aside from that old rag called "The Old TEstament") ... Jus sayin'
That is the kind of ignorant idea I used to have. It is time you got beyond the media failing to provide a true historical context for what is probably the most over-reported region of the planet.
Already in 1929 in Hebron "Palestinian" Arabs were massacring jews in Hebron. Jews who had live in Hebron for some thousands of years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre The way the media presents this story, the jews arrived in Palestine after WW2. There's never any mention of the Muslim Brotherhood joining forces with the principle muslim leader of the area and with the Nazis in the 1930s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini#In_Nazi-oc...
The media bear a terrible responsibility for their failure to provide any kind of historical context to the problems in Israel/Palestine.
Yuck. Wikipedia on the Middle East. I tried helping out with editing that area once and gave up in frustration. Lots of crazies on both sides, but I got the distinct impression that the pro-Israeli side was better organized, perhaps even funded. In any case, it looked to me like they were gaming WP for propaganda purposes (yes the other side was doing it too, but not in the same disciplined way) I'd never cite Wikipedia on anything controversial.
Benny Morris's book Righteous Victims seems to be a reliable source of information about the conflict. He's a an Israeli history professor, not exactly a virulent antisemite. It's worth noting that he describes the trigger for unrest leading up to the 1929 massacre as the growing understanding among Arabs that "...the disproportionate growth of the [Jewish community in Palestine], nurtured and sustained by [British colonial] measures, promised to turn them into a minority in their own land."[1]
Anyway, bringing up the 1929 massacre in this context seems like a non sequitur. You might as well justify the second Arab-Israeli war in terms of the massacre innocent Palestinians by Israeli militants at Deir Yassin[2], a considerably more cold-blooded, treacherous, strategically terrifying, blatant war crime that played a critical role in driving Palestinians off their own lands. (But I'm not making this justification.)
Great point. I also think Israelis are a lot more disciplined in this regard. You should check out Mepi, a website that takes the craziest and most fanatical of muslims and translates what they say to the Americans. Its a principal source of "information" to a lot of news outlets in the US. Engaging, constructive Arabic debate never makes it the US.
Jews had lived in the region for thousands of years, but there was a Zionist mass migration to Palestine (the Jewish population in Palestine doubled from 1922-1931) that likely increased tensions.
There has been violence from both sides of the conflict. On the Zionist side, there's another incident I've never heard mentioned in the media: the 1946 David Hotel bombing in which a Zionist terorist organization bombed a hotel in a strike at the British, killing 91 in one of the first historic examples of terrorism targeting civilians. This bombing was commemorated in 2006 by Benjamin Netanyahu and former members of the terrorist organization and a plaque was put up that effectively blamed the British, rather than the terrorist operation, for the deaths.
>it was supposed to be empty at the time of the bombing.
Not quite. According to Wikipedia "Warnings were sent by telephone, including one to the hotel's own switchboard, which the hotel staff decided to ignore, but none directly to the British authorities." There's a difference between phoning in a bomb threat in an occupied building and bombing an unoccupied building.
Yes the part of the hotel that was bombed was the part of the hotel that was used by the British military thereby invalidating your value judgement that the attack was meant to kill civilians.
The bombing killed many more civilians than they did British: "41 Palestinian Arabs, 15-28 British citizens, 17 Palestinian Jews, 2 Armenians, 1 Russian, 1 Greek and 1 Egyptian" according to WikiPedia. Not a surprising result when setting off a huge bomb in a hotel, even if in a specific area of a hotel. The list of the organization's previous attacks includes many directed against civilians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks). If the killing of civilians was indeed not part of their aim, you would think the organization would treat the operation as a tragic mistake and distance themselves from it rather than coming together to commemorate it in 2006.
We have justification and apologies for violence right here! This is part of the problem, because similar arguments from the other side will probably be grounds for well, you know what.
He's not ignorant or lying - you just need to look at Irgun's activities in the '30s and '40s to know that. Those guys were bombing a bus practically every day at some points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_attacks_during_th...), which makes the hand-wringing from Israel doubly pointless.
Perhaps the problem is that the Palestinians are slacking? They should blow up more things, not less...
I'm not going to defend Irgun because it's indefensible. It is simply a matter of fact that the attack was on the headquarters of the British military.
Edit: Your subsequent edits are quite sick and disturbing. You should consider reverting your text to the original comment.
The attack was on a hotel - that's also a matter of fact, and similarly indefensible.
And I edited about 30 seconds to a minute after my initial post, to make my points clearer. I don't think that's unreasonable, much less "sick or disturbing".
You should look up the Balfour Declaration and the Treaty of Sevres. The answer to your question, disregarding your hyperbole and nonsense (what is this pre-existing country you speak of), is yes.
What utter nonsense. The Balfour Declaration was something between BRITAIN and a Zionist organisation (during WW1). How does BRITAIN have the right to give land to European Jews, when said land was the home of Palestinian Arabs, under the then sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire?
Simple answer, they didn't have that right. And the ONLY reason they were able to actually exercise it, was because the Arabs (whom they had double-crossed) were instrumental in defeating the Ottomans.
The Treaty of Sevres, which adopted the Balfour Declaration, was signed between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire, which, as you so pointed out, had sovereignty over the territory at the time.
Sevres was, like Versailles, the final treaty imposed on the losers by the victors. The INHABITANTS OF PALESTINE were not party to it.
The Balfour Declaration was one of the most blatent acts of perfidy and outright dishonest double-crossing in modern history. At the SAME TIME that the British promised that they would uphold the rights of Arabs to self-determination - in return for the Arabs fighting (and defeating) the Ottomans - they also effectively bartered away land that WASN'T THEIRS to a 3rd party - the Zionists.
This was all in response to someone trying to pass off the above act of basic dishonesty as legitimate authorisation for Israel, and every bit of nonsense that has followed.
The only authorisation that "Occupied Palestine" (aka Israel) ever had, from a moral perspective, was the old story of white European has guns, white European wants your land, white European will come and take it.
Whatever the reason for why the Europeans wanted it (resources, more space, or "our holy book says it belongs to US") really doesn't matter. The whole thing is a sham, which is why 60 years after the fact and after countless beatings, you still haven't "convinced" the natives that you're right.
And while we're all lecturing each other about the finer points of history, might I point out that this isn't the first time that Europeans came and took that strip of territory from the locals. And eventually, the locals took it back, lock stock and barrel ....
Where did the "Palestinian arabs" come from? Arabia. What is their language? Arabic. What were they doing outside Arabia? Like the muslim conquest of north Africa, Spain, Persia, India, etc., the area of Palestine was taken by violent conquest. If Arabs had a right to be in Palestine by virtue of conquest, then Britain had the right (again by virtue of conquest) to do what it liked with the land. Why is it there is one standard for Arabs and a different standard for non-Arabs?
You try to use the narrative of colonialism, imperialism and racism, to obscure the fact that the islamic empire used weaponry and war to take control of almost every part of the world that is islamic (certainly all areas of africa, the middle east, europe and the indian subcontinent). And then it imposed its own forms of racism and colonialism on the subjugated people. Let's not even talk about the jews. Here's two books documenting the history of islamic slave-trading in Africa:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Legacy-Arab-Islam-Africa-Inter-relig...http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islams-Black-Slaves-History-Diaspora...
It seems it was every bit as bad as the racism and colonialism of the atlantic slave-trade. Even the UN expert panel on slavery in 1951 said that 1:20 people in Arabia was a slave. That was 1951. Three years after the establishment of the state of Israel.
Let's have some consistency here. At least the jews did not go into Palestine with weaponry and enslave the Arabs living there.
You really don't have a clue, do you? You're spreading complete nonsense out of total ignorance (akin to bigots trying to argue that "Palestinians" don't even exist).
For the benefit of others who might have had the misfortune of reading the above (you're too far gone to matter):
The Middle East has had civilisation for millenia (spelling?) before Europe had. Consequently, there have been a multitude of different ethnic groups/tribes/peoples who have held sway over one part or another. Hundreds upon hundreds of states & kingdoms, which were themselves swallowed up by one empire after another.
Today, you look upon the Middle East and see just one thing, Arabic speaking Muslims - and you blithely assume that they all came from Arabia.
Completely ignorant and false.
The final "civilisation" or movement (not sure what the right term would be here) which held dominated the Middle East was Islam. And it stayed, unlike all the others.
Most Middle Easterner's today are Muslim, and speak Arabic. But they are still descended from Phoenicians, Libyans, Egyptians, countless migrant tribes (many of whom are collectively labeled under "Bedouin"), Hebrews (yes - the Romans didn't ethnically cleanse the entire population!), Nestorian Christians, etc, etc.
The people never disappeared. They just now speak one tongue, and practice (mostly) one faith. Thats why we know mostly refer to them as "the Arabs".
Trying to pretend that they don't exist, or somehow became extinct, is ridiculous.
Where did the "Palestinian Arabs" come from? PALESTINE. Thats where.
What you'r saying is akin to fast-forwarding past centuries of continued European integration, and then saying that the people living in what used to be called France no longer have any right to that land, because they are part of a wider European state and they all speak Esperanto.
Anyone who would like to read a somewhat more balanced account of the origins of the "Arabs" would be well advised to read "History of the Arabs" by Philip Hitti.
And as for this gem:
"At least the Jews did not go into Palestine with weaponry and enslave ..."
(shaking my head) Is it possible for anyone who has not lived under a rock for half a century to write that claptrap?
