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Originally Posted by DaveNJ
3. Israel has plenty of ex-Russians. So what? A citizen of a nation is not necessarily born there. In our Civil War many Union soldiers were German or Irish immigrants fighting men with long ties to their respective southern states. A citizen is a citizen. Nations can enact different immigration policies if they so choose.
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Being in the land where your people can make a direct provable claim to and then being chased out by people who claim your land because they share a common faith with people who lived there before any modern land rights were established is hard to stomach. I think that Israel has a right to exist but they need to coexist with Palestine and recognize that any historical claims to the land aren't really going to hold water. Showing up and claiming occupied land as your own and then acting indignant is not a smart plan of action.
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Originally Posted by DaveNJ
I also notice you overlook that Israel was built on approximately one million Jewish immigrants from Arab nations over the years 1948-1957 who were illegally expelled and dispossessed of their property just as much if not more so than the Palestinians. Where is your call for their reparations?
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How does getting chased out of one place give you the right to chase someone else out of another place. If the Jewish people that were escaping tyranny wanted to claim their holy land as a safe haven, they need to play ball with the current occupants and not negotiate with Britain to eject the current occupants.
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Originally Posted by DaveNJ
It's not as simple as "this land was my grandfather's, kind of". Land claims can go even further back than that. Do Jews who were expelled centuries ago have a claim? If not, why do Palestinians?
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Historical land rights are very rarely recognized, especially in such a contested area. People who fought in the crusades' descendants could start showing up claiming land rights to big hunks of Israel. Land rights before that are more conjecture than real claims. Palestine was a well established nation long before WWII, but Britain colonized it, just like everything else, and decided to make decisions to favor the west instead of the current inhabitants. I really believe that after the holocaust the western world (specifically europe) was in shambles and already ramping up for the cold war, they had never seen such an atrocity committed against a people on such a scale and when it was over they offered to put them anywhere they wanted without really giving enough thought about long term problems and better solutions.
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Originally Posted by DaveNJ
What we have here is two groups of people that need two states. Israel needs to halt settlement in the West Bank and probably retract some of them as a good faith gesture.
However, it takes two to tango. The Palestinians need to get their shit together and get one government to represent them. That government needs to recognize Israel's right to exist and come to the bargaining table for peace.
Until then, more war, and it's going to hurt the Palestinians a lot more than the Israelis.
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This is good. Both sides need to want peace. Israel wants the land and position they currently have with no static from Hamas. Palestine wants Israel to give them back most of Israel. Neither one is really getting anywhere good.
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Originally Posted by DaveNJ
Oh, and this blind funding shit is just wrong. America funds Egypt's regime and sends them F-16's, too, Egypt just uses them to prop up their corrupt regime whereas Israel uses them on terrorists.
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Two things: We absolutely lob money at them, they have one of the most sophisticated armies in the middle east and they use it to great effect.
America funds lots of shit heads, that doesn't mean we should give Israel an insurmountable military edge over Palestine.