REALIST, First, it's not their land. It belonged to Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. These countries haven't asked for the land back yet. Israel exists, by UN mandate Israel exists. Only when the Arabs accept this can there be peace. The Palestinians are also building "illegal" settlements, but no one wants to talk about that. WHY isn't the situation in India and Israel the same? Plain and simple the Israelis are subject to public opinion. The populace of Israel would demand a settlement of the issue IF the terror bombings would stop and peaceful resistance implemented. It was either in this post or the other one that you brought up that no WMD have been found in Iraq. you're wrong. Some have, worse yet, the mobile chem labs Powell said existed (and was scoffed at for it by France) exist. They've found two of them. Leaders of Saddam's former Regime have said they were ordered to destroy the weapons when the US attacked (not because of the Inspectors) Underground facilities were discovered at a place UN inspectors had been numerous times, the UN inspectors couldn't find this place. Saddam had 12 years to hide weapons, thy're hidden well. Some were transfered to Syria starting in 1995. Another reason given for the war was Iraq's link to Terror. This has been soundly established with four different terror camps being taken down and several international terrorists being caught. Oh, and the meeting of Atta with Iraq intelligence in Czech has been verified. But none of this matters to you, I'm sure, as it doesn't fit your HATE AMERICA FIRST program.
For Hamas
by Yerusalyim 27 Replies latest social entertainment
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Realist
yeru,
you just don't get it do you?
for arabs it doesn'T matter in which country they live ...whether it be jordan or syria or egypt. they simply don't want to be ruled by jews and have their land stolen by jewish settlements! can you comprehend that? i guess not...
WMD were found....riiiiggghhht.....and the US media just wants to keep that secret so noone gets scared right?! LOL
Oh, and the meeting of Atta with Iraq intelligence in Czech has been verified.
sure it has! LOL
as it doesn't fit your HATE AMERICA FIRST program
this pitiful comment is always your last resort! LOL LOL LOL
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avishai
a) where is that number from?
The 1906 census form jerusalem.
b) we are not talking about one city which might have had a predominant jewish population but about the entire area which was/and in part still is primarily arabic.
Once again, a common fallacy. The arabs have had control over temple mount for some time. It is the second holiest site to Islam. Most of the"arabs" traditionally in that area were/ are bedouins, nomads, who recognize no boundaries, & did'nt want most of what now constitutes modern day israel as it had been over farmed for millenia & had become desert & swampland as a result. The "palestinians" that most people speak of only settled in this area after the jews returned & made it habitable in the late 1800's, early 1900's, or were shipped in by England to deliberately cause dissension in the 1940's. So, read your HISTORY before you believe the propoganda widely dissemenated to cast the palestinians as victims who lost their ancestral homeland. I give a crap over which "religion" controls this area, but yeru has a point, non-violence would be the most effective way if they wanted the area, muslims used this tactic, along w/ hindu's against england not 60 yrs. ago to great effect. It is a blood feud & arafat is a terrorist. He sucks. He invented hijacking as a terror tactic.
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Realist
So, read your HISTORY before you believe the propoganda widely dissemenated to cast the palestinians as victims who lost their ancestral homeland.
i did read my history...finkelstein for instance. he has quite a different story to tell.
the myth of the empty land that was cultivated only by jews is of course very convinient and a result of history written by the winners.
PS: thanks for the census thing.
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ThiChi
Realist:
The facts you left out:
MYTH
“The Jews have no claim to the land they call Israel.”
FACT
A common misperception is that all the Jews were forced into the Diaspora by the Romans after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and then, 1,800 years later, suddenly returned to Palestine demanding their country back. In reality, the Jewish people have maintained ties to their historic homeland for more than 3,700 years.
The Jewish people base their claim to the Land of Israel on at least four premises: 1) the Jewish people settled and developed the land; 2) the international community granted political sovereignty in Palestine to the Jewish people; 3) the territory was captured in defensive wars and 4) God promised the land to the patriarch Abraham.
Even after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the beginning of the exile, Jewish life in the Land of Israel continued and often flourished. Large communities were reestablished in Jerusalem and Tiberias by the ninth century. In the 11th century, Jewish communities grew in Rafah, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jaffa and Caesarea.
The Crusaders massacred many Jews during the 12th century, but the community rebounded in the next two centuries as large numbers of rabbis and Jewish pilgrims immigrated to Jerusalem and the Galilee. Prominent rabbis established communities in Safed, Jerusalem and elsewhere during the next 300 years. By the early 19th century — years before the birth of the modern Zionist movement — more than 10,000 Jews lived throughout what is today Israel. 1 The 78 years of nation-building, beginning in 1870, culminated in the reestablishment of the Jewish State.
Israel's international "birth certificate" was validated by the promise of the Bible; uninterrupted Jewish settlement from the time of Joshua onward; the Balfour Declaration of 1917; the League of Nations Mandate, which incorporated the Balfour Declaration; the United Nations partition resolution of 1947; Israel's admission to the UN in 1949; the recognition of Israel by most other states; and, most of all, the society created by Israel's people in decades of thriving, dynamic national existence.
“Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its 'right to exist.'
Israel's right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel's legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement....
There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its 'right to exist' a favor, or a negotiable concession.”
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ThiChi
MYTH
“The 'traditional position' of the Arabs in Palestine was jeopardized by Jewish settlement.”
FACT
For many centuries, Palestine was a sparsely populated, poorly cultivated and widely-neglected expanse of eroded hills, sandy deserts and malarial marshes. As late as 1880, the American consul in Jerusalem reported the area was continuing its historic decline. "The population and wealth of Palestine has not increased during the last forty years," he said. 12
The Report of the Palestine Royal Commission quotes an account of the Maritime Plain in 1913:
The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts...no orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached [the Jewish village of] Yabna [Yavne]....Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen....The ploughs used were of wood....The yields were very poor....The sanitary conditions in the village were horrible. Schools did not exist....The western part, towards the sea, was almost a desert....The villages in this area were few and thinly populated. Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants. 13
Lewis French, the British Director of Development wrote of Palestine:
We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria....Large areas...were uncultivated....The fellahin, if not themselves cattle thieves, were always ready to harbor these and other criminals. The individual plots...changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbors, the Bedouin. 14
Surprisingly, many people who were not sympathetic to the Zionist cause believed the Jews would improve the condition of Palestinian Arabs. For example, Dawood Barakat, editor of the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram, wrote: "It is absolutely necessary that an entente be made between the Zionists and Arabs, because the war of words can only do evil. The Zionists are necessary for the country: The money which they will bring, their knowledge and intelligence, and the industriousness which characterizes them will contribute without doubt to the regeneration of the country." 15
Even a leading Arab nationalist believed the return of the Jews to their homeland would help resuscitate the country. According to Sherif Hussein, the guardian of the Islamic Holy Places in Arabia:
The resources of the country are still virgin soil and will be developed by the Jewish immigrants. One of the most amazing things until recent times was that the Palestinian used to leave his country, wandering over the high seas in every direction. His native soil could not retain a hold on him, though his ancestors had lived on it for 1000 years. At the same time we have seen the Jews from foreign countries streaming to Palestine from Russia, Germany, Austria, Spain, America. The cause of causes could not escape those who had a gift of deeper insight. They knew that the country was for its original sons (abna'ihilasliyin), for all their differences, a sacred and beloved homeland. The return of these exiles (jaliya) to their homeland will prove materially and spiritually [to be] an experimental school for their brethren who are with them in the fields, factories, trades and in all things connected with toil and labor. 16
As Hussein foresaw, the regeneration of Palestine, and the growth of its population, came only after Jews returned in massive numbers.
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ThiChi
MYTH
“All Arabs opposed the Balfour Declaration, seeing it as a betrayal of their rights.”
FACT
Emir Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein, the leader of the Arab revolt against the Turks, signed an agreement with Chaim Weizmann and other Zionist leaders during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. It acknowledged the "racial kinship and ancient bonds existing between the Arabs and the Jewish people" and concluded that "the surest means of working out the consummation of their national aspirations is through the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab states and Palestine.” Furthermore, the agreement looked to the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and called for all necessary measures “...to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil.” 22
Faisal had conditioned his acceptance of the Balfour Declaration on the fulfillment of British wartime promises of independence to the Arabs. These were not kept.
Critics dismiss the Weizmann-Faisal agreement because it was never enacted; however, the fact that the leader of the Arab nationalist movement and the Zionist movement could reach an understanding is significant because it demonstrated that Jewish and Arab aspirations were not necessarily mutually exclusive.
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ThiChi
MYTH
“Palestine was always an Arab country.”
FACT
The term "Palestine" is believed to be derived from the Philistines, an Aegean people who, in the 12th Century B.C.E., settled along the Mediterranean coastal plain of what are now Israel and the Gaza Strip. In the second century C.E., after crushing the last Jewish revolt, the Romans first applied the name Palaestina to Judea (the southern portion of what is now called the West Bank) in an attempt to minimize Jewish identification with the land of Israel. The Arabic word "Filastin" is derived from this Latin name. 3
The Hebrews entered the Land of Israel about 1300 B.C.E., living under a tribal confederation until being united under the first monarch, King Saul. The second king, David, established Jerusalem as the capital around 1000 B.C.E. David's son, Solomon built the Temple soon thereafter and consolidated the military, administrative and religious functions of the kingdom. The nation was divided under Solomon's son, with the northern kingdom (Israel) lasting until 722 B.C.E., when the Assyrians destroyed it, and the southern kingdom (Judah) surviving until the Babylonian conquest in 586 B.C.E. The Jewish people enjoyed brief periods of sovereignty afterward before most Jews were finally driven from their homeland in 135 C.E.
Jewish independence in the Land of Israel lasted for more than 400 years. This is much longer than Americans have enjoyed independence in what has become known as the United States. 4 In fact, if not for foreign conquerors, Israel would be 3,000 years old today.
Palestine was never an exclusively Arab country, although Arabic gradually became the language of most the population after the Muslim invasions of the seventh century. No independent Arab or Palestinian state ever existed in Palestine. When the distinguished Arab-American historian, Princeton University Prof. Philip Hitti, testified against partition before the Anglo-American Committee in 1946, he said: "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in history, absolutely not." 5
Prior to partition, Palestinian Arabs did not view themselves as having a separate identity. When the First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations met in Jerusalem in February 1919 to choose Palestinian representatives for the Paris Peace Conference, the following resolution was adopted:
We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds. 6
In 1937, a local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, told the Peel Commission, which ultimately suggested the partition of Palestine: "There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria." 7
The representative of the Arab Higher Committee to the United Nations submitted a statement to the General Assembly in May 1947 that said "Palestine was part of the Province of Syria" and that, "politically, the Arabs of Palestine were not independent in the sense of forming a separate political entity." A few years later, Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, told the Security Council: "It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." 8
Palestinian Arab nationalism is largely a post-World War I phenomenon that did not become a significant political movement until after the 1967 Six-Day War and Israel's capture of the West Bank.
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ThiChi
The Rat Bastards:
HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement)
Description
Formed in late 1987 as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Various HAMAS elements have used both political and violent means, including terrorism, to pursue the goal of establishing an Islamic Palestinian state in place of Israel. Loosely structured, with some elements working clandestinely and others working openly through mosques and social service institutions to recruit members, raise money, organize activities, and distribute propaganda. HAMAS's strength is concentrated in the Gaza Strip and a few areas of the West Bank. Also has engaged in peaceful political activity, such as running candidates in West Bank Chamber of Commerce elections.Activities
HAMAS activists, especially those in the Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, have conducted many attacks--including large-scale suicide bombings--against Israeli civilian and military targets. In the early 1990s, they also targeted Fatah rivals and began a practice of targeting suspected Palestinian collaborators, which continues. Increased operational activity in 2001 during the intifadah, claiming numerous attacks against Israeli interests. Group has not targeted US interests and continues to confine its attacks to Israelis inside Israel and the territories.Strength
Unknown number of hard-core members; tens of thousands of supporters and sympathizers.Location/Area of OperationPrimarily the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Israel. In August 1999, Jordanian authorities closed the group’s Political Bureau offices in Amman, arrested its leaders, and prohibited the group from operating on Jordanian territory. HAMAS leaders also present in other parts of the Middle East, including Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.
External Aid
Receives funding from Palestinian expatriates, Iran, and private benefactors in Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab states. Some fundraising and propaganda activities take place in Western Europe and North America -
Realist
thichi,
i think you pasted exactly this material already in a recent thread....and i posted a rebuttal to it....i think we should continue the israel discussion there.