871: 4"Stud

[DaveNJ]

Originally Posted by Mattman

All very well put.

Some other interesting talking points ....
-the Jewish settlements on land "belonging" to Palestinians are still there in spite of US resolutions, and were usually the targets for missiles before the ceasefire and after its cessation.
- much of the Israeli Army is Russian. They were immigrants fleeing the post-soviet mess looking for a better life. The Palestinians were born there and their children have been born into refugee camps in some of the most crowded and inhumain conditions in the world. And now they are imprisoned without even medical aid (humanitarian corridor opened by Israel? how generous!)
- it was widely reported, although officially denied, that Cheyney had OKed Israeli military action in advance
- Israel have been bombing administration and security force "targets" as well as the "terrorists". All police stations were levelled in the first 48 hours including one that was celebrating a passing out ceremony of cadets, killing 40 of them
- US have vetoed UN sanctions against Israel that would have allowed aid.
- Palestinians elected leaders from Hamas. A sign that the majority of Palestinians believe Hamas are the best group to defend their remaining land.

1. Those police officers were members of Hamas with guns. "Security forces" were used to overthrow Abbas in 2006, and many moonlight for other parts of Hamas' organization. Hamas is at war with Israel. These were Hamas members with guns. That's a military target. Unless you believe that Hamas police would not engage in combat, which they have clearly done before, there's no demarcation here.

2. Palestinians elected Hamas, but Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza. The Palestinians are in a state of civil war. It's not as simple as the party with the most votes leads. There's factionalism down to the family clan level. That's why organizing the Palestinians is so difficult. Israel doesn't have one negotiating partner, they have Abbas and they have other groups that are at war with it.

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.

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?

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? 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.

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.

[Mattman]

Originally Posted by DaveNJ

All you said.

A good argument .... which is why we have the mess in this area. Israel and Palestine need to both have a recognised place to exist, limited by recognised borders such as those in previous resolutions.

History has given different people "residential rights" to various areas over the years. In some cases (like the British Empire) it was temporary, and the residents regained control. In others it is transient ... and previous residents are permanently displaced. In these cases, claiming a 2000+ year-old God-given right of return is quite a difficult story to defend. But most of the Western countries played a part in this bugger's muddle. Just as most of the Middle East has practiced religion-based residency rules as you point out.

I would personally like to visit the birthplace of Jesus, which logically (if we apply Biblical land rights) should be "owned" by the Christians. Instead it is treated by irreverence by both Muslims and Jews alike, and Christian pilgrims can be caught in the crossfire, literally.

The point about Russian jews (and some of them were not Jewish, but simply migrants from Russia claiming jewish faith to get a new life) was the irony of an immigrant seeking a higher lifestyle displacing a resident to a concentration camp (refugee camp). The further irony of Russia is that Israel was financing, or at least assisting Georgia in its tussle with Russia recently .... hard to choose friends these days, isn't it.

[DaveNJ]

Originally Posted by Mattman

A good argument .... which is why we have the mess in this area. Israel and Palestine need to both have a recognised place to exist, limited by recognised borders such as those in previous resolutions.

History has given different people "residential rights" to various areas over the years. In some cases (like the British Empire) it was temporary, and the residents regained control. In others it is transient ... and previous residents are permanently displaced. In these cases, claiming a 2000+ year-old God-given right of return is quite a difficult story to defend. But most of the Western countries played a part in this bugger's muddle. Just as most of the Middle East has practiced religion-based residency rules as you point out.

I would personally like to visit the birthplace of Jesus, which logically (if we apply Biblical land rights) should be "owned" by the Christians. Instead it is treated by irreverence by both Muslims and Jews alike, and Christian pilgrims can be caught in the crossfire, literally.

The point about Russian jews (and some of them were not Jewish, but simply migrants from Russia claiming jewish faith to get a new life) was the irony of an immigrant seeking a higher lifestyle displacing a resident to a concentration camp (refugee camp). The further irony of Russia is that Israel was financing, or at least assisting Georgia in its tussle with Russia recently .... hard to choose friends these days, isn't it.

1. Show me the passage in the New Testament that lays claim to the land of Israel for Christianity. Jesus never makes claim to land, but rather the kingdom of heaven. He explicitly states his is not an earthly kingdom. Land theology really only belongs to two of the three Abrahamic faiths, and Islam appropriated a good degree of the idea from Judaism. Land theology only ever became important once Christians were powerful enough to conquer. You're confusing military power with scripture.

That said, even if the right is not given theologically why is a right of return for a people expelled 2000 years ago wrong? Is there a time limit for returning? If so, why can't Israel just stall until Palestinians lose all claim to their land?

2. Russian Jews immigrating to Israel didn't result in anyone getting SENT to Gaza. Displacement can occur in the West Bank, though.

As for Israel selling arms to Georgia, Georgia imported arms from many nations friendly with the US, Israel being one of those friends. Russian Jews weren't leaving Russia because Russia was such a great place to be a Jew. My ancestors are proof of that. You seem to think that all those Russian Jews make Israel have great ties with Russia. Not so. It's not like all those Jews left Russia because Russia was friendly with Israel, then Israel switched sides and backed Georgia.

[hayroob]

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[DJ Trashy]

Originally Posted by hayroob

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.

So - if I happened to share religious beliefs with Native Americans, I should be able to go to Manhattan and take it over because, after all, my 'people' were there first. Genius.

That's gotta be the best freakin' analogy I've ever come up with!

[hayroob]

Originally Posted by DJ Trashy

So - if I happened to share religious beliefs with Native Americans, I should be able to go to Manhattan and take it over because, after all, my 'people' were there first. Genius.

That's gotta be the best freakin' analogy I've ever come up with!

Well you and a lot of people with similar flimsy claims would have to get chased out of New Jersey and show up in Manhattan and the government of Canada would have to help you claim sovereignty.

[DJ Trashy]

Originally Posted by hayroob

Well you and a lot of people with similar flimsy claims would have to get chased out of New Jersey and show up in Manhattan and the government of Canada would have to help you claim sovereignty.

Works for me. And I get to do shrooms too! Bonus

[Cretaceous Bob]

It really is absurd to base modern land ownership on property lines of 2,000 years ago.

Where the fuck does that leave people like me, who have a varied background and no extreme religious views? Are you going to give me your house, DaveNJ? Because a homeland is essential for atheists from a line of immigrants who were reasonable enough to become assimilated into the country they moved to rather than try to forge it into something new. In fact, such a cause would be even more worthy than the Jewish one, because my people have NEVER had a homeland.

And if we're really going to consider giving a religious group land purely because their people were on it a long time ago, don't we have to ask why they had it in the first place? Even the Bible portrays the Jews as as warlike and bloodthirsty as every other peoples surrounding biblical Israel (like in Numbers, for example, when Moses commands Israelites to "kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." That's a quote from the motherfucking Bible). So by what right do the Jews own that land? If we do not believe their religion to be true, it is as likely as not that they gained the land by bloodshed, and that gives them no right to anything. If we are to believe their religion is true, we are now giving land to a religious group solely because they claim it was God's will. That would never hold up in our own courts of law for even the most trivial of matters, so why the hell does it work for an entire country? Any modern civilization that distributes land based on the will of a deity is a sham and a disgrace, and every other civilization would have a moral obligation to violently resist such nonsense.

[DJ Trashy]

Originally Posted by Cretaceous Bob

And if we're really going to consider giving a religious group land purely because their people were on it a long time ago, don't we have to ask why they had it in the first place? Even the Bible portrays the Jews as as warlike and bloodthirsty as every other peoples surrounding biblical Israel (like in Numbers, for example, when Moses commands Israelites to "kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." That's a quote from the motherfucking Bible). So by what right do the Jews own that land?

First we'd have to establish the authenticity of the record. Frankly you end up with multiple semi-nomadic tribes all over the place. But still, try tying those people from 1000 BC to any group of people today. I mean genetically. You can't do it. There is no unbroken lineage of Jewish heritage that has been proven. The religion is still here, but religion and ethnicity are two separate things. My ancestors were Quakers, but that doesn't mean I can go claim my gggggggreat grandfather's original land in northern Delaware. (and there's that pesky native American thing again)

Oh, and it's the same for Palestinians - most couldn't establish lineage directly back to 1000BC or so although they'd be closer than modern Jews. Jus' sayin'

[Cretaceous Bob]

Hell, speaking of ethnicity, I work with a woman who insists that the biblical Jews were African. Does she, as a person of African descent, have the right to lay claim to an Israeli's house?